US 9995051

I'll verify current litigation/docket status and cross-check the bibliographic data before summarizing.

Let me check for any Federal Circuit appeals or district-court assertions of this exact patent.

1. Search posture and scope caveats

What I searched: (a) the USPTO/PTAB ecosystem for the literal string 9995051 and 9,995,051; (b) PTAB petitions involving the assignee Zodiac Pool Systems LLC; (c) Federal Circuit / district-court activity referencing this patent number.

What I found, and what I did not find:

• I found no CAFC docket in which U.S. Patent No. 9,995,051 is the appealed patent, and no IPR whose challenged patent is 9,995,051. If a 2026 CAFC appeal on this number exists, I could not verify it — treat that as an open question rather than a negative finding.
• 9,995,051 appears in 2026 PTAB records only as an exhibit, not as the challenged patent:
  • Beatbot Technology (USA) Co. Ltd. v. Zodiac Pool Systems LLC, IPR2026-00200 (filed Jan. 26, 2026; discretionary denial May 19, 2026) — Patent Owner Exhibit 2028 is the "Prosecution History of U.S. Patent No. 9,995,051" (used as a priority/§315(b) or family-relationship exhibit against the '191/'766/'207 family). Source: https://sandbox.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2026-00200/Beatbot_Technology_%28USA%29_Co._Ltd._v._Zodiac_Pool_Systems_LLC/
  • IPR2026-00202 (Beatbot, re U.S. 11,003,191) lists Exhibit 1013 = "U.S. Patent No. 9995051 B2" as background/priority art. Source: https://ai-lab-cl-prod.azurewebsites.net/case/ptab/IPR2026-00202/doc/1015
  • Wybotics IPRs IPR2026-00158/-00159/-00160 (instituted) target 11,003,191, 11,262,766, and 11,880,207 — descendants of the '051 family, not '051 itself. Source: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1558741](/patent/1558741)/download-documents
• The 2025–2026 Zodiac enforcement campaigns I found (E.D. Tex. 2:25-cv-582; C.D. Cal. 2:25-cv-08526; N.D. Cal./C.D. Cal. Beatbot actions) assert the '029, '031, '191, '766 and '207 patents. I did not see '051 itself named in an asserted-patent list, though I cannot rule out its inclusion in a complaint I could not read in full.
• Separate number — do not conflate: US 9,995,050 is a different Aqua Products patent ("Method and apparatus for communicating over a two-wire power cable…", issued June 12, 2018). Your instruction to interpret identifiers literally matters here.

Date note: the prompt states today is April 26, 2026, but returned records run through Aug. 2026 (and a maintenance-fee event dated Dec. 12, 2025). I'm reporting search results as retrieved, flagged where they post-date your stated date.

2. Bibliographic summary of US 9,995,051 B2

Family (same priority, 2012-07-10): US 9,388,595 · US 10,338,599 · US 10,739,785 · US 11,003,191 · US 11,262,766 · US 11,880,207 · US 2024/0176355 A1; foreign: AU 2013206751 B2, ES 2527883 R1, FR 2993298 B1.

3. Abstract (as granted)

A pool cleaning system for cleaning debris from a submerged surface of a swimming pool includes a self-propelled pool cleaner having rotatably-mounted supports for supporting and guiding the cleaner on the pool surface; an electric motor for enabling the rotation of the rotatably-mounted supports on the pool surface; at least one camera to capture imagery of the pool surface; a controller, in electronic communication with the at least one camera, to determine a cleanliness characteristic of the pool surface on which the cleaner has passed based on the camera imagery and generate a control signal to direct movement of the cleaner based on the cleanliness characteristic of the pool surface, wherein the control signal directs movement of the cleaner to reclean a portion of the pool surface where the cleanliness characteristic fails to satisfy a predefined threshold.

4. Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — camera-driven "clean until clean enough" system

A pool-cleaning system with all of:

1. A self-propelled pool cleaner with rotatably-mounted supports (wheels/rollers/tracks) that carry and guide it on the submerged surface.
2. A filter that retains debris removed from the submerged surface.
3. An electric motor that drives rotation of those supports.
4. At least one camera that captures imagery of the pool surface.
5. A controller in electronic communication with the camera that:
   • determines a "cleanliness characteristic" of the surface the cleaner has already passed over, based on the camera imagery; and
   • generates a control signal steering the cleaner's movement based on that characteristic,
   • where the control signal sends the cleaner back to reclean a spot whose cleanliness characteristic fails a predefined threshold.

In plain terms: the camera inspects the area already cleaned, the controller judges whether it's actually clean enough, and if not, the cleaner is driven back over that specific spot. The "predefined threshold" concept is broad — the specification's only worked example is color matching (does the surface match its intended/original tile color) at [0069]-region text of the description, and a surface that was missed entirely is automatically deemed to fail.

Claim 16 — same idea, but with an added dedicated cleanliness sensor

Claim 16 is the second independent claim and largely mirrors claim 1, differing in the input set:

1. Self-propelled cleaner with rotatably-mounted supports; 2. electric motor driving those supports; 3. debris-retaining filter; 4. at least one camera; plus 5. at least one sensor to detect a cleanliness characteristic of the surface the cleaner has passed.
2. A controller in electronic communication with both the camera and the sensor to generate a control signal directing cleaner movement based on the cleanliness characteristic,
3. where that control signal directs the cleaner to reclean a portion failing the predefined threshold.

The literal claim text reads "…in electronic communication with the at least one camera and the at least one sensor to a generate a control signal…" — that apparent typographical error is in the granted claim and I've reproduced it verbatim rather than correcting it.

Practical distinction: claim 1's cleanliness determination is expressly image-based; claim 16 requires a second, non-camera sensor feeding the decision, so an accused product that decides cleanliness purely from imagery reads more naturally on claim 1 than on claim 16.

Scope notes on selected dependents: claim 2 (camera carried by the cleaner), claim 3 (controller carried by the cleaner), claim 6 (onboard digital processing of imagery), claim 7 (remote processor does the digital processing), claim 8 (sensor carried by cleaner), claims 12/13 (dry station housing the controller, or controller remote from both cleaner and dry station), claim 14 (portable electronic device displaying a graphic of the pool showing uncleaned portions as the cleaner traverses).

5. Uncertainty / confidence statement

• High confidence on title, inventors, application/filing/issue dates, priority chain, claim count and the two independent claims — all taken from the authoritative full text.
• High confidence that 9,995,051 is not currently an IPR-challenged patent and did not surface as a CAFC 2026 appealed patent in my searches. Moderate confidence that it is not asserted in the 2025–2026 Zodiac complaints; I could not read every exhibit/claim chart, so this is not a definitive negative.
• Moderate confidence on the 2032-08-26 adjusted-expiration date — that figure comes from the Google Patents legal-status field, and I have not independently recomputed the PTA award against the USPTO Patent Term Adjustment record.
• Google Patents carries a "Family has litigation" badge (darts-ip family ID 49850474); that is a family-level flag, not proof that '051 itself is in suit.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 9995051 across the specified sources.

Let me search the litigation-specific sources.

Summary of Findings

I did not find any litigation that asserts U.S. Patent No. 9,995,051 itself. The searches returned no district court complaint, ITC complaint, or Federal Circuit appeal in which US 9,995,051 is a patent-in-suit. What the searches did surface is substantial litigation involving sibling patents in the same family (all sharing the 2012-07-10 priority date and titled "Pool cleaning system and method to automatically clean surfaces of a pool using images from a camera"). I am reporting those below because they are the closest relevant activity, but I want to be explicit that they assert different patent numbers, and per your instruction I have not substituted them for the '051 patent.

Why the '051 patent shows "Family has litigation"

The Google Patents record for US 9,995,051 carries a "Family has litigation" flag pointing to Darts-ip family 49850474. That flag is family-level, not patent-level, and I could not retrieve the underlying Darts-ip case list. So the flag is consistent with my finding: the family is litigated, but I have no evidence the '051 patent itself was ever asserted.

Family-member litigation found (does NOT assert '051)

Post-grant / PTAB activity touching the '051 record

• Beatbot Technology (USA) Co. Ltd. v. Zodiac Pool Systems LLC, IPR2026-00200 (PTAB) — filed 2026-01-26, denied institution (discretionary denial) 2026-05-19. This IPR concerns U.S. 11,262,766, not '051. However, Patent Owner's Exhibit 2028 is expressly "Prosecution History of U.S. Patent No. 9,995,051" and Exhibit 2030 is the prosecution history of U.S. 10,739,785 — i.e., the '051 file history was introduced as evidence in a proceeding about a sibling patent.
• Wybotics Co. Ltd. v. Zodiac Pool Systems, IPR2026-00159 (PTAB) — referenced in the same exhibit list; patent(s) not confirmed in my sources.

Bottom line

• No litigation asserting US 9,995,051 was identified. If you need a definitive negative, this should be confirmed against a complete litigation database (Darts-ip, Lex Machina, RPX, or PACER full-text) — my searches are web-indexed and could miss a low-visibility suit.
• The identified enforcement campaigns by Zodiac Pool Systems / Aqua Products against pool-cleaner competitors (Wybotics/Winny and Beatbot) assert other patents in the same family ('029, '031, '191, '766, '207), not '051.
• The '051 patent appears in the record only indirectly — its prosecution history was filed as an exhibit in IPR2026-00200.

Caveats on the record

1. Date discrepancy: Your prompt states the current date as April 26, 2026, but one search result (Docket Alarm) lists events dated 2026-04-28 and a 2026-05-19 termination. I have reported the dates as they appear in the sources rather than reconciling them.
2. I was unable to open the Darts-ip family-litigation record or the Unified Patents caselist for these numbers, so the family's full litigation history may be broader than the web-indexed cases above.
3. Identifiers are reported literally as found; I have not normalized or "corrected" any patent or case numbers.

I'll verify the structured data against public sources before drafting.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks before concluding.

PTAB / AIA Trial Proceedings — U.S. Patent No. 9,995,051 B2

Patent: Pool cleaning system and method to automatically clean surfaces of a pool using images from a camera
Patent Owner: Zodiac Pool Systems LLC (originally Aqua Products, Inc.)
Priority date: 2012-07-10 · Filing date: 2016-07-11 (continuation of Ser. No. 13/545,918) · Granted: 2018-06-12 · Adjusted expiration: 2032-08-26
Source for claim text/abstract: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9995051](/patent/US9995051)/en

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding in which U.S. Patent No. 9,995,051 B2 is the challenged patent, and independent web searching surfaced none. The breakdown is therefore: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials.

Defensive posture: the opposite of "hardened." Not a single claim of the '051 patent has ever been tested at the PTAB. Claims 1–22 are 100% UNTESTED. There is no FWD to cite, no cancellation to rely on, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel binding any party as to this patent. A defendant facing an assertion of the '051 patent today is the first challenger — which is both an opportunity (no adverse preclusive rulings, no claim-construction baggage from a prior panel) and a risk (no free kill; you would fund the entire IPR from scratch, and the patent owner has already litigated pool-cleaner validity once in this family and knows the drill).

Proceedings on U.S. 9,995,051 B2

None. There is nothing to report at proceeding level.

I will not manufacture proceeding numbers. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (canonical ODP list) is empty, and my searches returned only documents in which the '051 patent appears as evidence or context — never as the challenged patent:

That is the full extent of the '051 patent's footprint in PTAB records: it is a reference and a prosecution-history exhibit, not a target.

Adjacent family activity (NOT proceedings on the '051 patent — context only)

These matter to a defendant because Zodiac is currently asserting the continuation children of the '051 patent, and those children are under attack. Do not conflate them with the '051 patent when building an estoppel argument.

• IPR2013-00159 — Zodiac Pool Systems, Inc. v. Aqua Products, Inc. — This is not the '051 patent. It challenged U.S. Pat. No. 8,273,183 (a different Aqua Products patent, "Automated swimming pool cleaner having an angled jet drive propulsion system"). Final Written Decision 2014-08-22 held claims 1–9, 13, 14, 16, 19–21 unpatentable and denied Aqua's motion to amend. Institution had been granted 2013-08-23 as to those claims but not as to claims 10–12. Panel: APJs Brian J. McNamara, Rama G. Elluru, James B. Arpin. The denial of the motion to amend produced the en banc Federal Circuit decision in Aqua Products, Inc. v. Matal, 872 F.3d 1290 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (holding the PTO may not place the burden of proving patentability of proposed substitute claims on the patent owner). I include this only because it is the same corporate family and the same Aqua/Zodiac pool-cleaner campaign — it creates no estoppel and no precedent as to U.S. 9,995,051.
• IPR2026-00158 / -00159 / -00160 — Wybotics, Co. Ltd. v. Zodiac Pool Systems LLC (petitions filed 2025-11-25; institution decisions expected early June 2026). Challenged: claims 1–3 of U.S. 11,003,191; claims 1–5 of U.S. 11,262,766; claims 1–8, 11–14, and 19 of U.S. 11,880,207. Wybotics filed a stipulation dated 2026-03-31 agreeing that, if instituted, it will not pursue § 102/§ 103/indefiniteness invalidity grounds on the challenged claims of those patents in Zodiac Pool Systems LLC v. Wybotics, Co. Ltd., No. 2:25-cv-00582-JRG-RSP (E.D. Tex.) or Wybotics Inc. v. Zodiac Pool Systems LLC, No. 2:25-cv-08526-CAS (C.D. Cal.).
• IPR2026-00200 / -00201 / -00202 — Beatbot Technology (USA) Co., Ltd. v. Zodiac Pool Systems LLC (filed 2026-01-26). Discretionary denial on 2026-05-19 (Director/Board discretionary-denial decision, Paper 10 in IPR2026-00200). Beatbot also filed Sotera-plus stipulations on 2026-02-27 in all three. The denial appears to rest on § 314(a)/§ 325(d)-style discretionary grounds in view of the parallel and earlier-filed Wybotics petitions and the co-pending district court litigation.
• IPR2026-00393 / -00394 / -00395 — Beatbot v. Zodiac (filed 2026-06-05, pending). If instituted, FWDs would be due roughly mid-2027.

Caution / uncertainty: I confirmed the proceeding numbers, petitioner/patent-owner alignment, and the discretionary-denial outcome for the Beatbot January 2026 filings. I could not independently verify the exact challenged-claim sets for every one of the June 2026 Beatbot filings or the final disposition of the Wybotics petitions. Treat the family table above as directional, and verify against PTAB E2E before relying on it.

Strategic summary

Claim status on the '051 patent: all 22 claims UNTESTED. Claims 1–22 — including independent claims 1 and 16 and every dependent claim — have never been the subject of an institution decision, an FWD, or a certificate of cancellation. There is no narrowed claim set to work with and no dead claim to attack a demand letter over. All 22 claims remain live, subject only to the ordinary presumption of validity and the 2032-08-26 adjusted expiration.

Estoppel landscape: clean slate. Because no AIA trial has ever been instituted on the '051 patent, § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to no one as to the '051 patent. Every § 102/§ 103 ground based on patents and printed publications remains available to a defendant/declarant in district court. Note two traps, however: (i) if you are also a defendant in the Zodiac v. Beatbot or Zodiac v. Wybotics litigations and you file or join the family IPRs, the Sotera-type stipulations you would likely sign are scoped to the challenged claims of the '191/'766/'207 patents, not to '051; (ii) a party that is a privy of Wybotics or Beatbot cannot re-raise, against the '051 patent, grounds it raised or reasonably could have raised in those other proceedings on those other patents — but art you would use against '051 is generally a different ground, and § 311(b) art for '051-based invalidity should remain open. Get a conflicts/privy check before filing.

Pattern signals. (a) Same petitioner, multiple IPRs: Beatbot filed 3 petitions in January 2026 (all discretionarily denied 2026-05-19) and 3 more on 2026-06-05; Wybotics filed 3 in November 2025. Both are repeat filers focused on the camera/vision-related continuation patents, not on the '051 patent itself. (b) Patent owner is aggressive and sophisticated: Zodiac/Aqua Products has been in continuous pool-cleaner patent litigation since at least 2012 (Aqua Products v. Zodiac, 1:12-cv-09342-TPG (S.D.N.Y.)), has defended an IPR through en banc Federal Circuit review (Aqua Products v. Matal), and is currently running a multi-front campaign (ITC Investigation against Aiper, French proceeding, E.D. Tex. and C.D. Cal. actions against Wybotics, and a declaratory-judgment action by Wybotics). (c) No defensive aggregator in the chain — no Unified Patents or RPX petition appears anywhere in this record. (d) Practical read: Zodiac has chosen to assert the continuation children ('191, '766, '207, '599, '785) rather than the '051 patent. That may reflect term, claim scope, or prosecution-history optics. It also means the '051 patent remains an un-litigated reserve weapon.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not cite any FWD for the '051 patent. There is none. Any argument that "the PTAB already invalidated" any claim of the '051 patent is false and should not be made.
2. Confirm the ODP result yourself before any filing. Verify at PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) and via the patent's Google Patents "Litigation"/family page (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9995051/en) that no proceeding has been filed against the '051 patent since the last ingest. The family is under active, ongoing attack, and new petitions against the '051 patent itself could be filed at any time — institution decisions for the June 2026 Beatbot petitions and the November 2025 Wybotics petitions fall in the 2026 window, so re-run the check close to any filing deadline.
3. If you are asserted on the '051 patent, you are the first PTAB challenger. Budget for a full IPR from scratch: file within the § 315(b) one-year window from service of the complaint, expect a § 314(a) Fintiv-type discretionary-denial fight because Zodiac is actively litigating (the Beatbot January 2026 petitions were denied on discretionary grounds while an earlier Wybotics set was pending), and consider a Sotera-plus stipulation to neutralize the parallel-litigation discretionary argument. Institution decision is due within 3 months of the POPR or the POPR deadline (§ 314(b)); the FWD is due within 1 year of institution, extendable up to 6 months for good cause (§ 316(a)(11)).
4. Coordinate with the co-defendant IPRs. If you (or a privy) are already in the Zodiac v. Wybotics or Zodiac v. Beatbot matters, map the Sotera/estoppel stipulations carefully — they are scoped to the continuation patents' challenged claims, and you do not want a stipulation drafted broadly enough to be read against you on the '051 patent.
5. Prior-art diligence is the whole ballgame. Because no panel has ever construed a claim of the '051 patent and no estoppel exists, your invalidity position turns entirely on (i) the 2012-07-10 priority date and whether the "controller determines a cleanliness characteristic from camera imagery and steers the cleaner to reclean" limitation is fully supported in the parent 13/545,918 disclosure, and (ii) whether the asserted combination is art the petitioner in IPR2013-00159 did not already use (Henkin/McMyers/KLM-type jet-drive art is a different technical space).
6. Watch the continuation IPRs as a bellwether. The Beatbot and Wybotics petitions attack the camera/vision claims of the children — substantively the same family disclosure as the '051 patent. If the PTAB institutes on those, the surviving claim constructions and any written-description findings will tell you a great deal about how a panel would likely read the '051 claims.

Primary links for verification

• Patent (full text, claims, family): https://patents.google.com/patent/US9995051/en
• PTAB E2E / Patent Trial and Appeal Board: https://ptacts.uspto.gov
• Aqua Products, Inc. v. Matal, 872 F.3d 1290 (Fed. Cir. 2017) (en banc): https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/cafc/15-1177/15-1177-2017-10-04.html
• IPR2026-00200 docket (Beatbot v. Zodiac, discretionary denial 2026-05-19): https://sandbox.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2026-00200/Beatbot_Technology_%28USA%29_Co._Ltd._v._Zodiac_Pool_Systems_LLC/
• Wybotics IPR stipulation (2026-03-31), PTAB petitions portal: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1558741](/patent/1558741)

Confidence note: I have high confidence in the core conclusion — no AIA trial proceeding on U.S. 9,995,051 B2 — because both the canonical ODP block and independent searches agree, and every '051 hit was as an exhibit. I have moderate confidence in the precise claim sets and statuses of the adjacent family IPRs; those should be re-verified on PTAB E2E before being cited.

I'll research the assignment records and ownership history before assembling the analysis.

Let me pull the specific assignment records and litigation/assertion history.

US 9995051 B2 — Ownership & Assignment Reconstruction

Patent: US 9,995,051 B2 — "Pool cleaning system and method to automatically clean surfaces of a pool using images from a camera"
App. No.: 15/207,065 · filed 2016‑07‑11 · granted 2018‑06‑12 · priority 2012‑07‑10 (continuation of 13/545,918, now US 9,388,595 B2)
Source of record data: Google Patents legal events (USPTO assignment data mirrored) for US9995051B2.

Retrieval caveat up front: I was able to reconstruct the reel/frame-level chain from the mirrored USPTO assignment events, but I could not retrieve the correspondent of record field for these specific reels. Google Patents' legal-events feed does not expose the correspondent attorney/agent, and my live lookups of the Assignment Center reel serials returned no usable correspondent data. I am therefore leaving the Correspondent line marked [not retrieved] for every entry rather than guessing. Signal #3 (repeat correspondent) is consequently unclear — not "not present." Verify directly at the Assignment Center search page: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search 9995051) or https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

Inventors

Pattern notes:

• This is a two-inventor, single-employer patent. Both inventors executed an assignment to Aqua Products, Inc. on 2016‑07‑14 (recorded 2016‑08‑05), i.e. four years after the 2012‑07‑10 original filing and three days after the 2016‑07‑11 continuation filing. That is the normal "confirmatory assignment on continuation filing" pattern, not a separation event.
• Notable absence: there is no evidence of an inventor-departure pattern. The classic fire-sale tell — all inventors leaving the original assignee within 12 months of filing — does not appear here. Both inventors were still assigning to Aqua Products in mid‑2016, and the portfolio was not sold off; it was absorbed by a competitor/acquirer four years later. I found no evidence either way on what became of the inventors after 2016 — treat that as unknown.

Original assignee

Aqua Products, Inc. (New Jersey) — named assignee on Reel 039599/0876 and the original assignee of the issued patent.

• Product: Yes — Aqua Products was a manufacturer of robotic/suction pool cleaners sold under the Aquabot and Pool Rover brands. The related jet-drive technology in the same portfolio was commercialized in the Pool Rover robotic cleaner (released 2001; the Federal Circuit briefing records >100,000 units in the first ten years, with jet-drive products accounting for more than two-thirds of Aqua's pool-cleaner sales).
• Primary line of business: Pool-cleaning equipment manufacturing (operating company, not a licensing entity).
• Status: No longer independent. Aqua Products was affiliated with Fluidra, S.A. as early as the 2013–2016 Aqua v. Zodiac IPR (Aqua's Federal Circuit Rule 26.1 disclosure names Fluidra, S.A. as the real party in interest), and the patent was formally assigned into Zodiac Pool Systems LLC effective 2020‑08‑13 (Reel 054163/0305) following the Fluidra/Zodiac merger. The Aquabot/Aqua Products brand continues under the Fluidra/Zodiac umbrella (e.g., "Aqua Products™ Evo™" robotic cleaners, marked "©2020 Zodiac Pool Systems LLC").
• Note on the parent: the parent case (13/545,918) issued as US 9,388,595 B2; this patent is one of eight US family members (9,388,595 → 9,995,051 → 10,338,599 → 10,739,785 → 11,003,191 → 11,262,766 → 11,880,207 → 2024/0176355), all now under Zodiac Pool Systems LLC.

Assignment timeline

Chronological, all six recorded events. Execution dates are from the USPTO events; reel/frame as shown in the mirrored legal events.

1. 2016‑07‑14 (executed) / recorded 2016‑08‑05 — Reel 039599/0876

• Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Inventors' Interest)
• Assignor: Kameshwar Durvasula; William Londono Correa (individually)
• Assignee: Aqua Products, Inc. (New Jersey)
• Correspondent: [not retrieved] — Assignment Center correspondent field not accessible from the mirrored events; verify at source.
• Context: Original acquisition — confirmatory inventor assignment executed three days after the 2016‑07‑11 continuation filing, perfecting Aqua Products' title on the new application.

2. 2018‑07‑02 (executed) / recorded 2018‑07‑05 — Reel 046500/0291

• Conveyance: Security Agreement (ABL Intellectual Property Security Agreement)
• Assignor: Aqua Products, Inc.; Zodiac Pool Systems LLC; Cover‑Pools Incorporated (grantors)
• Assignee: Bank of America, N.A. (California)
• Correspondent: [not retrieved]
• Context: Securitization — the patent pledged as collateral in a group-wide asset-backed revolving credit facility; the multi-grantor structure shows the patent was swept into a portfolio lien alongside Zodiac and Cover‑Pools, confirming it sat inside the group's IP collateral pool.

3. 2018‑07‑02 (executed) / recorded 2018‑07‑05 — Reel 046622/0001

• Conveyance: Security Interest (Security Agreement)
• Assignor: Aqua Products, Inc.; Zodiac Pool Systems LLC; Cover‑Pools Incorporated
• Assignee: Credit Suisse International (England)
• Correspondent: [not retrieved]
• Context: Securitization — second, parallel lien in favour of Credit Suisse recorded the same day as the Bank of America ABL lien (dual-lien financing structure), not a transfer of ownership.

4. 2020‑08‑13 (executed) / recorded 2020‑08‑28 — Reel 054163/0305

• Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignor's Interest)
• Assignor: Aqua Products, Inc. (New Jersey)
• Assignee: Zodiac Pool Systems LLC (California)
• Correspondent: [not retrieved]
• Context: Internal reorg / post-merger consolidation — Aqua Products' IP was moved into Zodiac Pool Systems LLC following the Fluidra–Zodiac combination; this is the only ownership transfer in the patent's life, and it is affiliate-to-affiliate, not a sale to a third-party monetizer.

5. 2022‑01‑27 (executed) / recorded 2022‑02‑01 — Reel 058922/0901

• Conveyance: Security Interest — Assignment (Intellectual Property Security Agreement Assignment)
• Assignor: Credit Suisse International
• Assignee: HSBC Bank USA, N.A. (New York)
• Correspondent: [not retrieved]
• Context: Securitization — successor security agent substitution; HSBC took over the secured-party role from Credit Suisse. Ownership unchanged.

6. 2022‑01‑27 (executed) / recorded 2022‑02‑03 — Reel 058982/0912

• Conveyance: Release (Release by Secured Party)
• Assignor/party giving release: Bank of America, N.A.
• Parties released: Zodiac Pool Systems LLC; Zodiac Pool Systems, Inc.; Cover‑Pools Incorporated; Aqua Products, Inc.
• Correspondent: [not retrieved]
• Context: Securitization unwind — release of the 2018 Bank of America lien (Reel 046500/0291), consistent with refinancing; leaves the HSBC lien (Reel 058922/0901) as the surviving security interest.

Non-assignment legal events worth noting (not part of the chain): grant 2018‑05‑23; 4th‑year maintenance fee paid 2021‑12‑13; 8th‑year maintenance fee paid 2025‑12‑12 — both as large entity, confirming the patent is still live and still held by a large corporate owner, not abandoned to a shell.

Bottom line on the chain: exactly one ownership transfer (Aqua Products → Zodiac Pool Systems LLC, 2020), bracketed by four financing recordings. There are no chains of LLCs, no licensing vehicles, and no named monetization entities anywhere in the record.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9995051
    2012 : Original application filed by Aqua Products
    2016 : Continuation application filed
         : Inventors assign to Aqua Products
    2018 : Patent granted
         : Security agreement with Bank of America
         : Security interest to Credit Suisse
    2020 : Assigned to Zodiac Pool Systems LLC
    2022 : Security interest moves to HSBC
         : Bank of America releases its lien
    2025 : 8th year maintenance fee paid

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT.
The only ownership transfer is Reel 054163/0305 (executed 2020‑08‑13, recorded 2020‑08‑28), Aqua Products, Inc. → Zodiac Pool Systems LLC. Zinc is an operating manufacturer of pool equipment with a Carlsbad, CA headquarters address (2882 Whiptail Loop East, per ITC 337‑TA‑1326 filings) — not a registered-agent service address. No "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix anywhere on the chain. The Aqua Products / Aquabot / Evo product line continues to ship under Zodiac.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT.
No assignee in this chain appears on any of the listed NPE rosters (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi‑LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). Stanford's NPE Litigation Database categorizes Zodiac Pool Systems as an "8 Product company" in the related case Zodiac Pool Systems, Inc., et al v. Aqua Products, Inc., 3:14‑cv‑02119 (S.D. Cal.) — i.e., Zodiac is coded as an operating company, and there the two product companies were litigating against each other, which is the antithesis of an NPE posture.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR.
This is the one signal I cannot responsibly call. The correspondent of record for Reels 039599/0876, 046500/0291, 046622/0001, 054163/0305, 058922/0901 and 058982/0912 was not retrievable from the mirrored events, so I cannot tell whether a single filing attorney recurs across the chain. Note the structural expectation: recording a group-wide ABL security agreement (Reels 046500/0291 and 046622/0001) is typically handled by outside financing counsel of the lender, and the release (058982/0912) and the 2020 intra-group assignment by the group's IP counsel — but that is an inference from the nature of the filings, not a recorded fact, and I am not treating it as a finding. Pull the correspondent fields at the Assignment Center to resolve.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT.
One ownership hop in eight years. There is no sequence of chained LLCs, no shared registered-agent addresses, and no sub‑24‑month cascade. Reels 046500/0291, 046622/0001 and 058982/0912 are lien recordings by banks, not ownership conveyances, and must not be counted as transfers for this signal.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT.
The single ownership transfer (2020‑08‑13) is not tied to any suit naming US 9,995,051. I found no infringement action asserting the '051 patent itself; the visible enforcement activity in this field involves sibling patents — ITC Inv. No. 337‑TA‑1326 (Zodiac Pool Systems LLC + Zodiac Pool Care Europe v. Wybotics et al., instituted 2022‑08‑29) asserting US 8,393,029 and US 8,393,031, and the earlier IPR2013‑00159 (Zodiac petitioning against Aqua's US 8,273,183). The Google Patents "family has litigation" Darts‑IP flag reflects this broader Aqua/Zodiac fight, not an assertion of the '051 claims. I cannot date a first suit on the '051 patent, so a 6‑month pre-litigation window cannot be established.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
No Chapter 7/11, no 363 sale, no distressed auction anywhere in the record. The 2020 transfer (Reel 054163/0305) sits inside the Fluidra–Zodiac combination (EU merger file M.8738), a strategic industry consolidation, not a bankruptcy estate sale. The Aquatron divestiture to BWT was an EU competition remedy affecting a different entity, not this chain.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT.
No operating company transferred this patent to an NPE to assert on its behalf. The enforcement actually observed in this technology space is brought in Zodiac's own name (ITC complainant = Zodiac Pool Systems LLC / Zodiac Pool Care Europe), which is direct operating-company assertion, the inverse of privateering.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti‑NPE) — NOT PRESENT.
The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents or OIN. It terminates at Zodiac Pool Systems LLC, a 100%‑owned operating subsidiary of Fluidra, S.A. (per Fluidra's own subsidiary disclosures). No neutralization signal.

Lien footnote for completeness: Reels 046500/0291 and 046622/0001 (both 2018‑07‑05; Bank of America and Credit Suisse) and Reel 058922/0901 (2022‑02‑01; HSBC succeeding Credit Suisse) are security interests — collateral pledges arising from ordinary corporate finance. They name Aqua Products, Inc., Zodiac Pool Systems LLC and Cover‑Pools Incorporated jointly, which is the signature of a group credit facility, and they none of them transfer title.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Justification: The chain contains exactly one ownership transfer — Reel 054163/0305 (executed 2020‑08‑13, recorded 2020‑08‑28) moving the patent from Aqua Products, Inc. to Zodiac Pool Systems LLC — and every other recording is a bank security interest (Reels 046500/0291, 046622/0001, 058922/0901) or a lien release (Reel 058982/0912). The terminal assignee is a Fluidra, S.A. subsidiary that manufactures and sells the accused/embodying class of goods — robotic pool cleaners, including the Aqua Products Evo / Aquabot line carried over from the original assignee — and that asserts its own patents in its own name against competitors (ITC Inv. No. 337‑TA‑1326 against Wybotics; ongoing PTAB proceedings with Wybotics and Beatbot Technology). There is no shell LLC, no NPE assignee, no known asserter, no bankruptcy, and no defensive-aggregator endpoint anywhere in the record; the only unresolved signal is #3, because the Assignment Center correspondent fields could not be retrieved and must be checked at the source.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search 9995051) — and cross-check the individual reels 039599/0876, 046500/0291, 046622/0001, 054163/0305, 058922/0901, 058982/0912 for the correspondent-of-record fields I could not retrieve.

I'll research US Patent 9995051 and its cited prior art references.

Let me research the key cited references to assess their disclosure and dates.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 9,995,051 B2

A. Confirmation of the target patent

I located the specific record for US 9,995,051 B2 (not a similar number). Key bibliographic data, verified against the Google Patents record and the Justia/patent-family entries:

The patent is a continuation of US 13/545,918 (filed 2012-07-10, now US 9,388,595), and the head of a large continuation family (US 10,338,599; US 10,739,785; US 11,003,191; US 11,262,766; US 11,880,207; US 2024/0176355). All share the 2012-07-10 priority date, so for §102 purposes the critical date for the family's own art is 2012-07-10, and most cited references predate it comfortably.

B. The cited references (the "prior art" of record for US 9,995,051)

The list below is the front-page citation list of US 9,995,051 (the "Patent Citations (29)" set — those without an asterisk are examiner-cited; those with an asterisk came in via the foreign family members). I have grouped them by relevance.

B.1 — Most relevant references (pool/submerged cleaning + dirt/cleanliness sensing or camera)

1. US 5,613,261 A — "Cleaner"

• Citation: Kawakami et al., Minolta Co., Ltd.; filed 1994-04-14; published/granted 1997-03-25.
• Disclosure: Autonomous moving floor cleaner with a sensor detecting the degree of dirt on the surface, and a driving controller that changes speed/cleaning mode based on measured dirt. Importantly, it compares dirt levels before and after a cleaning pass to judge cleaning effectiveness, and stores a map of clean-surface reflectivity values against which current reflectivity is compared. Optical (reflectivity) sensing, not an imaging camera; floor/terrestrial, not a pool.
• Potentially relevant claims: claim 1 (cleanliness characteristic of a surface "on which the cleaner has passed"; comparing before/after), claim 8 ("at least one sensor to detect the cleanliness characteristic"), claim 16 (sensor-based cleanliness characteristic). The camera-imagery limitations of claims 1/16 and claim 6 are not disclosed. This is the strongest §102-flavored reference but does not fully anticipate, because the "camera to capture imagery" and "based on the camera imagery" elements are absent.

2. US 2004/0040581 A1 — "Method of and apparatus for controlling the operation of a suction-type pool cleaner"

• Citation: Azoteq (Pty) Ltd (Bruwer); filed 2001-02-28; published 2004-03-04.
• Disclosure: Applies to a suction-type pool cleaner; sensors detect the presence of dirt on the submerged surface and then divert the cleaner to the dirty area. Sensors may be light-sensitive and respond to contrasting colors indicating presence/absence of dirt; markers on the pool floor can be sensed. Control means adjust direction/speed/suction based on sensed inputs.
• Potentially relevant claims: claim 1 (system for cleaning a submerged pool surface; controller directing movement based on a detected condition), claim 8/16 (sensor detecting cleanliness), claims 10–11 (directing the cleaner to the portion). It does not disclose a camera capturing "imagery of the pool surface," nor a recleaning-control signal keyed to a threshold — and it uses a suction cleaner, not the rotatably-mounted-support/electric-motor architecture of claim 1.

3. US 2014/0009748 A1 — "Pool Cleaner with Laser Range Finder System and Method"

• Citation: Leonessa et al.; filed (parent) 2012-06-27; published 2014-01-09.
• Disclosure: Low-cost autonomous robotic pool cleaner with a camera plus dual-laser range finder on board; a controller in communication with the camera controls movement of the pool cleaner based on output from the camera; camera is configured to identify objects/debris; SLAM-based mapping of the pool.
• Potentially relevant claims: claim 1 (camera capturing imagery; controller using camera output to control movement), claims 2/17 (camera carried by the cleaner), claims 3/6 (controller on-board/digitally processes imagery). But this reference is dated 2014-01-09 (frame-out for claim-1 subject matter relative to the 2012-07-10 priority? it was filed 2013-06-27, claiming 2012-06-27 priority) and it does not disclose determining a "cleanliness characteristic" or recleaning to a predefined threshold; it is directed to ranging/mapping. Its real role is as a §103 combination reference, not §102.

4. WO 2012/023676 A1 and US 2013/0151061 A1 — "Cleaning robot and underwater sediment cleaning apparatus and method"

• Citation: Pohang Institute of Intelligent Robotics / Korea Institute of Robot & Convergence; priority 2010-08-20; WO published 2012-02-23; US published 2013-06-13.
• Disclosure: Underwater cleaning robot for sediment; camera and control of cleaning operation.
• Potentially relevant claims: claim 1 (underwater/submerged cleaning vehicle with a camera and a controller controlling the cleaning operation). Does not disclose the "cleanliness characteristic satisfying a predefined threshold" recleaning logic.

5. CN 101139007 A — "Underwater cleaning robot"

• Citation: Beijing Institute of Technology; priority 2007-07-31; published 2008-03-12.
• Disclosure: Underwater cleaning robot (camera-based navigation/control of the cleaning robot).
• Potentially relevant claims: claim 1 (submerged cleaning vehicle, camera, controller). Again, no reclean-to-threshold teaching.

6. US 2004/0025268 A1 — "Submersible pool cleaner with integral rechargeable battery"

• Citation: Joseph Porat; filed 2002-08-12; published 2004-02-12.
• Disclosure: Submersible robotic pool cleaner with on-board power; supports the "self-propelled cleaner with rotatably-mounted supports and electric motor" architecture of claim 1.
• Potentially relevant claims: claims 1, 4, 15, 16, 22 (self-propelled cleaner, motor, filter). This is an apparatus-architecture reference, not a cleanliness-sensing one.

7. WO 2004/019295 A1 — "Pool cleaner with on-board water analysis, data recording and transmission device"

• Citation: Aqua Products Inc.; priority 2002-08-23; published 2004-03-04.
• Disclosure: Pool cleaner carrying water-analysis, data-recording and transmission electronics on board the cleaner.
• Potentially relevant claims: claims 3, 7, 9, 13 (controller/processor on-board or remote; data transmitted off-board). Note: this is the applicant's own earlier work (Aqua Products), so it is also the closest thing to a "home" reference on the on-board electronics point.

8. US 2007/0094817 A1 — "Automatic pool cleaner"

• Citation: Polaris Pool Systems, Inc.; priority 2005-11-03; published 2007-05-03.
• Disclosure: Automatic pool cleaner generally; useful for the cleaner architecture. Claim 1 preamble/architecture only.

9. US 2013/0269097 A1 — "Swimming pool safety apparatus and method"

• Citation: Fahad M. Alammari; priority 2012-04-16; published 2013-10-17.
• Disclosure: Pool camera/safety monitoring. Relevant to the security-camera embodiment of the specification (cameras 32 as home/pool security cameras) but not to the cleanliness-determination claims.

B.2 — Tank/vessel inspection with on-board camera (submerged imaging)

10. US 5,205,174 A — "Scavenger submersible visual and acoustical tank inspection system and method"

• Citation: Eugene B. Silverman; filed 1991-05-24; granted 1993-04-27.
• Disclosure: Submersible vehicle carrying video/acoustic sensors for inspecting water/tank interior surfaces; the classic teaching of a submerged vehicle using a camera to image a submerged surface.
• Potentially relevant claims: claim 1 (camera captures imagery of a submerged surface; controller acts on it) — but it inspects rather than determines cleanliness/recleans.

11. US 5,616,883 (referenced in the WO 2017/055737 background discussion of this family) and EP 0 811 432 A2 — "Device for cleaning of water tanks" (Pehrson; priority 1996-06-04; published 1997-12-10) — submersible cleaning of tanks with sensor/imaging aspects. Relevant background to claim 1's "submerged surface" and camera-on-vehicle concepts.

B.3 — Remote-display / remote-monitoring references (relevant to claims 12–14)

12. US 2002/0097322 A1 — "Multiple video display configurations and remote control of multiple video signals transmitted to a monitoring station over a network"

• Citation: David A. Monroe; priority 2000-11-29; published 2002-07-25.
• Potentially relevant claims: claims 12–14 (dry station/remote controller; remote monitoring; display of camera imagery over a network). Supports the remote-monitoring/display aspects, not the cleanliness-recognition aspects.

13. EP 0 687 964 A1 — "Programmable remote control system for a vehicle"

• Citation: ZELTRON S.p.A.; priority 1994-06-14; published 1995-12-20.
• Potentially relevant claims: claims 5, 12, 13 (controllable/programmable vehicle with remote station).

14. US 2011/0091329 A1 / US 8,043,070 B2 — "Pumping System with Two Way Communication" / "Speed control"

• Citations: Stiles Jr. (Pentair), filed 2004-08-26; published 2011-04-21 and granted 2011-10-25.
• Potentially relevant claims: claims 12–13 (a "dry station"/remote control communicating with a submerged cleaner).

B.4 — Miscellaneous references of record (low relevance to the independent claims)

Foreign-family (third-party) citations of note: US 2007/0242134 A1 (Zernov, "Submersible video viewing system," 1998-11-05), US 2004/0052418 A1 (Delean, "Method and apparatus for probabilistic image analysis," 2002-04-05 — image analysis, relevant to the "digitally processed imagery" claims 6/20), JP 2005-304516 A (Funai, "Self-propelled vacuum cleaner," 2004-04-16 — dirt-detect vacuum), US 7,427,220 B2 (McGill, "Amphibious robotic device," 2006-08-02), WO 2009/149428 A1 (Hawkeye Systems, "Above-water monitoring of swimming pools," 2008-06-05 — above-water camera monitoring of a pool, relevant to the "external, non-submerged camera" embodiment), US 8,709,243 B2 and US 8,623,201 B2 (Smartpool, pool-cleaning vehicle logic/water treatment, 2008–2009), and IL 217093 A (P S I Pool Services Israel, "Energy saving automatic pool cleaner," 2011-12-19).

C. Assessment: what is actually §102 versus §103 art

I want to be candid about the §102 question you posed. On the face of these references, none of the cited references is a clean, single-reference anticipation of independent claim 1 or claim 16. The reason is the specific combination the independent claims require:

1. a self-propelled cleaner with rotatably-mounted supports + electric motor + filter;
2. at least one camera capturing imagery of the pool surface; and
3. a controller that (a) determines a cleanliness characteristic of a surface the cleaner has passed over based on that imagery and (b) generates a control signal to re-clean a portion whose cleanliness fails a predefined threshold.

Mapping that against the closest references:

• US 5,613,261 (Minolta) has the "cleanliness/dirt degree" + before/after comparison + driving-control concept, but it is an optical reflectivity sensor on a dry floor cleaner — it lacks the camera imagery and the pool environment. It therefore cannot anticipate claim 1 or 16; it is at most a §103 reference for the "cleanliness characteristic … fails to satisfy a predefined threshold" element (the reference's own comparison against a stored clean-surface reflectivity value is closely parallel to the claimed threshold test).
• US 2004/0040581 A1 (Azoteq) has the pool-cleaner + dirt-sensor + divert-to-dirty-area concept, but no camera imagery and no threshold-based recleaning of an already-passed surface. Again §103 material for claims 8/16, not §102.
• US 2014/0009748 A1 (Leonessa) has the pool-cleaner + on-board camera + controller-controlling-movement-from-camera-output, but no "cleanliness characteristic" and no recleaning threshold. §103 material for the camera/controller elements of claim 1/2/3/6.
• The tank-inspection (US 5,205,174) and above-water monitoring (WO 2009/149428) references supply the "camera imaging a submerged/surface region" element but nothing about cleanliness thresholds.

Bottom line: the most relevant single references are US 5,613,261 (Minolta) and US 2004/0040581 A1 (Azoteq), with US 2014/0009748 A1 (Leonessa) and the Pohang/Korea underwater cleaning-robot publications (WO 2012/023676 A1 / US 2013/0151061 A1) rounding out the close field. These are best characterized as §103 obviousness references, individually or in combination, rather than §102 anticipatory references. If you want a specific mapping of which claims each one touches:

• Claim 1 / 16 (independent): US 5,613,261 + US 2004/0040581 A1 + US 2014/0009748 A1 (combined).
• Claims 2, 3, 6, 17, 20 (camera/controller carried by cleaner; imagery digitally processed): US 2014/0009748 A1.
• Claim 8 / 9 / 16 (separate sensor detecting cleanliness; sensor on cleaner): US 5,613,261 and US 2004/0040581 A1.
• Claims 10, 11, 21 (drive/steer toward the portion to be recleaned): US 2004/0040581 A1 (diversion to dirty area).
• Claims 12–14 (dry station / remote controller / portable electronic device display): US 2002/0097322 A1, US 2011/0091329 A1, US 8,043,070 B2.
• Claims 4, 15, 22 (motor mechanically connected to supports; controller controls motor power): US 2004/0025268 A1 (Porat).

D. Important 2026 development: newly asserted art (not in the patent's own citation list)

Because the record shows this family is in litigation, I checked for current challenges. A petition in IPR2026-00202 is asserting art that is not among the references cited on the face of US 9,995,051, and this is likely the most material prior-art question for the patent as of today. The grounds are built on:

• Cui — a pool cleaner using a CCD camera to continuously capture images of pool surfaces, compare them with pre-stored standard images of clean surfaces, and adjust crawling speed/cleaning force based on detected debris (housing with brushless DC pump motor, IR distance sensor, CCD camera, filter bag, industrial control computer, track crawling mechanisms, stepper motors). This is a notably close §102/§103 reference to the camera + "compare to a clean standard" concept.
• Fu-007 — an underwater cleaning robot with an on-board controller in a sealed drive-control enclosure.
• Knoll — a pool-cleaning robot with a rotating light-beam source and rotating camera for distance determination / wall-following.
• Renaud — a swimming-pool cleaner with a vision system that identifies debris areas by optical contrast and directs the cleaner to the debris.

(Per the strict instruction, I am reporting these identifiers literally as they appear: "Cui," "Fu-007," "Knoll," and "Renaud." The petition also characterizes Durvasula — i.e., this very family — as the primary reference in some grounds, which is worth flagging.)

I would treat this IPR art as materially more dangerous than anything in the patent's cited-by-examiner list, because Cui in particular appears to disclose the camera + stored clean-standard-image comparison that maps closely onto the "determine a cleanliness characteristic … predefined threshold" limitation.

E. Caveats

• I was working from the authoritative full text you supplied plus live search results; I did not independently re-verify every front-page date against USPTO PatentCenter, and the search for the last two references (Pohang WO/US pair details) returned truncated data before tool limits were reached. Where I state a priority vs. publication date, the "publication" date is the reference's own printing date, not necessarily its §102(b) critical date.
• Dates: the patent's priority date is 2012-07-10; its filing date is 2016-07-11; grant is 2018-06-12. Because all claims are supported by the 2012 parent, pre-AIA practice and the 2012-07-10 critical date are the right framework for art printed after 2012-07-10 but before 2013-07-10 (2013-06-27/2014-01-09 Leonessa filing, and the 2013-10-17 Alammari publication, fall in that window and will need the §102(a)/(e) versus §102(b) analysis done carefully).
• This is a technical prior-art landscape, not a legal opinion. It should be reviewed by counsel before being used in any validity, IPR, or infringement position.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual prior-art references listed on the patent page (the "Citations (25)" / "Patent Citations (29)" and "Family Cites Families" tables). Let me verify the key references before combining them.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 9,995,051 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent under review: US 9,995,051 B2, "Pool cleaning system and method to automatically clean surfaces of a pool using images from a camera"
Applicant/Assignee of record at grant: Aqua Products, Inc. (now Zodiac Pool Systems LLC)
Application: US 15/207,065, filed 2016-07-11, continuation of US 13/545,918 (filed 2012-07-10; issued as US 9,388,595 B2)
Earliest priority date: 2012-07-10
Inventor of record: Kameshwar Durvasula; William Londono Correa
Source of record: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9995051/en

Caveat: this is a technical analyst's opinion on the strength of a § 103 challenge, not legal advice. A real invalidity position turns on claim construction and on priority/effective-filing-date determinations that I flag in Part VI below.

I. Framework and the Level of Ordinary Skill

Under Graham v. John Deere and KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, the inquiry is (1) the scope and content of the prior art, (2) the differences between the prior art and each claim, (3) the level of ordinary skill, and (4) objective indicia. For a POSITA here, I would define the level as: a bachelor's degree in mechanical, electrical, or computer engineering (or equivalent) plus about two to three years of experience with autonomous/robotic pool cleaners and machine vision or optoelectronic sensing, or alternatively a technician-level background with substantially more hands-on experience in same.

Importantly, every reference the examiner cited is drawn from one of two crowded arts that this patent sits at the intersection of:

• Autonomous pool/underwater cleaning (H-Tech, Polaris, Aqua Products, Maytronics-adjacent art, Pohang, CN 101139007 A), and
• Absorbed-light/image-based surface-condition sensing with closed-loop cleaner control (Minolta US 5,613,261 A; Delean US 2004/0052418 A1; Zernov US 2007/0242134 A1; Leonessa US 2014/0009748 A1; Sony US 9,182,228 B2).

That shared field is central: where the references are from the same field and address the same problem, motivation to combine is presumed to be present (KSR; In re Kahn).

II. Claim 1 — Prior-Art Coverage, Element by Element

The independent claim is narrow in the elements that would actually be contested. Nearly all of its mechanical content is old in the pool-cleaner art; the only genuinely differentiating element is "determine a cleanliness characteristic … based on the camera imagery" and "directs movement … to reclean a portion … where the cleanliness characteristic fails to satisfy a predefined threshold."

Difference analysis: the only element not literally met by a single reference is the camera as the cleanliness-sensing modality (Minolta uses a near-IR reflectivity sensor) versus the cleanliness-threshold decision (Leonessa uses the camera for navigation/mapping/debris identification, not a threshold pass/fail). Each half is squarely disclosed; the claims sit between two references that each disclose the missing half.

III. Primary Grounds of Obviousness

Ground 1 — H-Tech (US 5,507,058 A) + Minolta (US 5,613,261 A) + Leonessa (US 2014/0009748 A1)

This is the strongest combination and would render claim 1 (and claims 2–6, 10, 11, 15) obvious.

• US 5,507,058 A supplies the cleaner architecture: a self-propelled submerged-surface cleaner with track treads, sealed on-board battery, on-board sensors and microprocessor "programmed to execute a selected one of a number of cleaning programs," Hall-effect position sensing, and forward/reverse/turn control. That maps directly onto claim 1's cleaner/supports/motor/filter/controller and onto claim 5 ("execute one or more cleaning programs") and claim 15 (controller controlling power to the motor).
• US 5,613,261 A supplies the closed-loop cleanliness logic: a non-contact optical sensor reading surface reflectivity, a stored reference value for a clean floor, a comparator that computes "degree of dirt" as a difference, and a driving controller that changes movement and cleaning aggressiveness based on that computed value — precisely the "cleanliness characteristic … fails to satisfy a predefined threshold → reclean" architecture of claim 1. Minolta even stores a position-indexed map of reflectivities (memory 92 + position detector 94), i.e., knowing where the sub-par areas are.
• US 2014/0009748 A1 supplies the camera. Its controller "receive[s] an input from … the camera, and position[s] the pool cleaner … based on the input," captures "images of a floor surface … under the pool cleaner," "identifies specific location of debris within the … environment," and "track[s] movement … to ensure that the entire swimming pool floor has been traversed."

Motivation, articulated for a POSITA: (a) Minolta itself states the reading step may be performed by "other types of sensors … capable of quantitatively measuring the condition of a floor surface" and stresses that optical sensors work "in a state of non-contact … at high speed," so substituting a camera for a reflectivity head is the kind of predictable substitution KSR sanctions; (b) a camera returns spatially resolved, multi-pixel data (and color data) rather than a single-point reflectance value, which predictably improves the ability to localize the sub-par area that claim 1 requires the cleaner to navigate back to — the same advantage Leonessa touts for mapping/route optimization; (c) both Minolta and Leonessa are directed to the same problem (ensuring complete and adequate cleaning of a floor while minimizing wasted travel), so their combination is "a combination of familiar elements according to known methods … yield[ing] predictable results."

Ground 2 — Leonessa (US 2014/0009748 A1) + Minolta (US 5,613,261 A) + H-Tech/Polestar pool-cleaner mechanics

Same result with Leonessa as the primary "camera steers the pool cleaner" reference and Minolta as the secondary teaching of a dirt threshold plus re-cleaning. This ground is attractive because Leonessa is pool-cleaner-specific and therefore attacks any argument that a POSITA would not have thought to put a camera on a submerged pool cleaner, and any argument that underwater imaging (glare/refraction) was a barrier — Leonessa expressly solves underwater light/reflection problems with laser lines and a camera.

IV. Dependent Claims and Independent Claim 16

These fall with comparatively little additional art:

The graphical-depiction claims (14, and to a lesser extent the FIG. 7/FIG. 8 disclosure) are the only place where the intrinsic record adds color, but the claimed subject matter — a graphic of the pool and its uncleaned portions — is a conventional data-presentation feature. Aqua Products' own earlier application already discloses a remote/hand-held display driven by an on-board cleaner processor, and Minolta already discloses a map of floor condition by position. Combining a location-indexed cleanliness map with a remote display is a predictable use of known UI elements (KSR; In re Rose / design-choice-type reasoning).

V. Objective (Secondary) Considerations

Points against obviousness are limited and mostly procedural:

1. The patent issued over these exact references on 2018-06-12, and the family is flagged on the face of the document as having worldwide litigation (https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=49850474). The Office's allowance and the litigation suggest the patentee will argue the combination was non-obvious even if the pieces were known.
2. Commercial success / long-felt need: the "dry station + on-board controller + remote server" architecture recurs across the family (US 10,338,599 B2; US 10,739,785 B2; US 11,003,191 B2; US 11,262,766 B2; US 11,880,207 B2) and later third-party filings cite this family heavily (e.g., Hayward's US 10,214,933 B2; Maytronics' ES 2,681,694 T3; Zodiac's FR 3,041,980 B1 "SWIMMING POOL CLEANING SYSTEM WITH IMAGE TAKING DEVICE"). Patentee may argue this reflects industry recognition of the claimed solution.
3. Subsequent art post-dating priority (e.g., Hayward US 10,107,000 B2, "Pool cleaner with optical out-of-water and debris detection," filed 2015-02-24) shows continued independent development, which cuts both ways: it evidences the field's trajectory but does not rebut obviousness, and it is not prior art to the 2012-07-10 priority date.

Against these, the KSR "predictable results" and "known technique to improve a similar device" rationales are strong, and the mechanical elements of claim 1 are individually and collectively ancient in this art.

VI. Weaknesses, Defenses, and Caveats a POSITA Should Flag

1. Effective-filing-date risk cuts both ways. The '051 was filed 2016-07-11 as a continuation of US 13/545,918 (2012-07-10). If any given claim term is not supported by the 2012 parent's written description, that term's effective date becomes 2016-07-11, which makes all of these references unambiguously prior art. Monitor this issue.
2. Leonessa's date. US 2014/0009748 A1 published 2014-01-09 and was filed 2013-06-27 — both after the 2012-07-10 priority date. It is only usable against the '051 if the AIA § 102(a)(2) "effectively filed" date is carried back to its provisional, U.S. Prov. 61/664,945, filed 2012-06-27, and the relied-upon disclosure is supported by that provisional. Treat Leonessa as qualified-but-challengeable prior art. The Minolta (1997) and H-Tech (1996) references carry no such risk and should anchor the ground.
3. "Reclean a portion" localization. The best non-obviousness argument is that Minolta's response to heavy dirt is a mode change (slow down, more fluid, faster sponges) rather than the claimed geographically-targeted return-and-reclean. The counter is Minolta's position-indexed reflectivity map (memory 92 + position detector 94) plus Leonessa's debris-location and coverage-tracking disclosure, which together render targeted recleaning an obvious design choice.
4. Teaching away. The specification itself admits that external cameras suffer glare/refraction and suggests dedicated, modified optics for submerged capture. A patentee may argue this undercuts the motivation to substitute a camera. The strong rebuttal is Leonessa, which demonstrates a working camera on a submersed pool cleaner and even explains the water-absorption problem (green 532 nm lasers chosen because "water absorbs approximately fifty times more of red light than … green").
5. Cited-by-art showing the claim's breadth. Note that later-issued members of this family (e.g., US 10,739,785 B2, US 11,003,191 B2, US 11,262,766 B2, US 11,880,207 B2) are themselves listed as citing the '051 — consistent with the patentee refining claims across continuations, which is a signal that at least some claim scope was adjusted to avoid art.

VII. Bottom Line

The two most probable § 103 grounds are:

• Ground A: US 5,507,058 A (H-Tech) in view of US 5,613,261 A (Minolta) and further in view of US 2014/0009748 A1 (Leonessa) — renders claims 1–6, 10, 11, 15, and 16–22 obvious.
• Ground B: US 2014/0009748 A1 (Leonessa) in view of US 5,613,261 A (Minolta) and a conventional robotic-pool-cleaner chassis reference (H-Tech US 5,435,031 A / US 5,507,058 A; Polaris US 2007/0094817 A1; Finezilber US 2011/0301752 A1) — same result, and better insulated against an "underwater cameras were not contemplated" argument.

Claims 7, 12, 13, 14 are best attacked with Aqua Products WO 2004/019295 A1 / EP 1 540 612 B1 (remote processing over telephone/Internet, external power-supply-integrated display, hand-held display device) and Monroe US 2002/0097322 A1 (networked remote monitoring station), each of which predates the 2012-07-10 priority date by nearly a decade.

The overall § 103 exposure is high for claims 1–6, 10, 11, and 15–22, and moderate for the remote-processing and graphical-display claims 7, 12, 13, 14, where the patentee has slightly more room to argue that no cited reference taught presenting a location-indexed cleanliness map with distinct uncleaned/under-cleaned portions on a remote display.

Primary sources cited (as listed in the "Citations (25)" / "Patent Citations (29)" and "Family Cites Families" tables of the patent page):

• https://patents.google.com/patent/US9995051/en (the patent under review)
• https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5613261A](/patent/US5613261A)/en (Minolta — Cleaner)
• https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/a0/89/51/f299a97a675078/US5507058.pdf (H-Tech — Automatic pool cleaning apparatus)
• https://patents.google.com/patent/US20140009748 (Leonessa — Pool Cleaner with Laser Range Finder System and Method; granted as US 9,086,274 B2)
• https://patents.google.com/patent/US11262766 (family continuation showing the cited art table)
• http://data.epo.org/gpi/EP1540612B1 (Aqua Products — Pool cleaner with on-board water analysis, data recording and transmission device, WO 2004/019295 A1)
• https://www.patents-review.com/a/20110301752-reversing-mechanism-programmable-steerable-robot.html (Finezilber — Reversing Mechanism For A Programmable Steerable Robot)
• https://patents.google.com/patent/US20020097322A1 (Monroe — Multiple video display configurations and remote control of multiple video signals to a monitoring station over a network)