US 10078030

I'll run targeted searches for this specific patent number, then summarize against the authoritative full text I already have.

Search results — scope and limits

My searches targeted the exact string 10078030 (and the "US10078030B2" grant form). Results returned only patent-text sources (Google Patents, Justia, FreePatentsOnline, Patents-Review, Golden wiki). I found no USPTO litigation record and no CAFC docket entry (2024–2026) associated with this patent number. I do not have live access to PACER/CM-ECF or the CAFC docket system through the available tool, so this is an absence-of-evidence finding, not a verified "no litigation" conclusion. Treat the "no CAFC 2026 activity" statement as unconfirmed.

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Bibliographic data (from the authoritative full text)

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10078030B2/en ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/10078030

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Abstract (verbatim)

Embodiments of the described system are related to detecting and locating liquids. The system comprises at least one sensor tile, wherein each sensor tile includes a first plurality of conductive lines attached to a first side of a substrate and a second plurality of lines attached to a second side of a substrate. In a preferred embodiment, the first plurality of conductive lines is arranged to be offset 90 degrees with respect to the second plurality of conductive lines. The system also contains at least one processor operably connected to the first and second plurality of conductive lines by at least two multiplexer pieces. The sensor tiles, multiplexer pieces, and processor are interconnected by conductive connectors.

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Plain-language overview of the claims

Claim 1 — independent: "sensor tile system"

A liquid-detecting sensor tile usable as roofing material on a structure, containing:

• a first plurality of conductive lines;
• a second plurality of conductive lines, electrically insulated from the first until a liquid bridges them;
• a substrate to which both pluralities are attached on the same side; and
• insulators placed between the two pluralities at their intersection points, so the lines stay insulated from one another until a liquid electrically bridges them.

Key point: the only structural distinguishing feature beyond generic elements is the arrangement of both line sets on one face plus insulators at the crossings. Notably, this claim is directed to the same-side/insulator embodiment (FIG. 1B), not the opposite-sides embodiment emphasized in the abstract and FIG. 1A — an internal inconsistency worth flagging.

Claim 2 — independent: "system … comprising a plurality of sensor tiles connected to form an array"

Each sensor tile comprises:

• a sensor tile substrate with first and second sides and at least first and second edges;
• a first plurality of conductive lines connected to connectors substantially at the first edge, mounted on the first side;
• a second plurality of conductive lines connected to connectors substantially at the second edge, mounted on the second side (opposite-side architecture), electrically insulated from the first plurality until a liquid connects them;
• a first multiplexer connected to the first-edge connectors and a second multiplexer connected to the second-edge connectors; and
• a processor connected to both multiplexers, configured to detect an electrical connection formed between any line of the first plurality and any line of the second plurality.

Claim 3 — dependent on claim 2

Requires that the array of sensor tiles be operably connected to a network and provide processor outputs to the network indicating detection of a liquid by the array. (This is the only claim reciting networked reporting; it adds no further structural limitation.)

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Observations worth noting

1. Claim/abstract misalignment. The abstract's central characterization (lines on opposite sides, "offset 90 degrees," two mux pieces) maps to claim 2, whereas independent claim 1 covers the same-side + insulators variant. The specification supports both (FIG. 1A and FIG. 1B), so this is a claim-drafting observation, not a support defect I can substantiate.
2. Narrow claim set. Only three claims were granted; the broad "processor configured to determine the type of liquid present based on electrical properties" concept appears only in the specification (as a described embodiment), not in any granted claim.
3. Prosecution history is not available to me here. I did not retrieve the file wrapper; I cannot say what was argued or why claim 1 issued in the same-side form.
4. Forward citations of note include Trevillyan Labs US11788918B2/US12123807B2 ("Fluid detection fabric"), Getzner Textil CH717585A1/EP3933137A1, bygg AI GmbH WO2021116233A1/DE102019134398B4, and Carlisle Construction Materials US12338629B2 — indicating continued activity in roof-membrane leak detection, though post-lapse.

If you want, I can attempt a further targeted search for any district-court case naming Wassarman, Inc. as plaintiff/defendant, or for the CAFC docket by party name rather than patent number.

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

Let me run additional targeted searches to confirm, including party-name searching.

Litigation search — US Patent 10078030

Bottom line: I found no litigation involving US 10078030. After searches targeting the patent number (in both 10078030 and US10078030B2 forms) and party-name searches on the patent owner, no district court case, ITC action, PTAB proceeding, or CAFC appeal naming this patent was returned.

What I searched

False positives I ruled out (these are not this patent)

• DISINVEST LTD — "Company number 10078030" at UK Companies House (company #10078030, Chippenham, Wiltshire). A UK corporate registration number that coincidentally matches the patent number; unrelated to patents or litigation.
• EP 3933137 A1 / CH 717585 A1 (Getzner Textil AG) — cites US 10078030 B2 as prior art ([XAI]) in a leak-location sensor mat. This is a citation, not an assertion or a case.
• US 10,621,228 (MemoryWeb), US 9,253,239 (Bradium), US 7,454,002 (SportBrain), US 7,756,507, US 9,043,093 — these appear in Unified Patents IPR petitions and PTAB/court filings returned by keyword matching. None involves patent 10078030.

Why an absence finding is credible here (context, not proof)

The patent lapsed 2022-10-24 for failure to pay maintenance fees (effective 2022-09-18), per the authoritative legal events. An expired patent can still be asserted for past damages, but the combination of (a) a 3-claim patent family with no continuations or foreign counterparts (Country Status: US only), (b) a small-entity assignee, and (c) lapse over three years ago makes it a very unlikely assertion candidate — consistent with finding no cases.

Limitations — please read these before relying on this answer

1. I could not query the databases you named directly. I could not confirm whether https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist has a searchable entry for this patent, and I have no access to PACER/CM-ECF, Docket Navigator, Lex Machina, or the CAFC docket system. This is an absence-of-evidence finding from open web search, not a verified "no litigation ever filed" conclusion.
2. Party-name searching is weak with this assignee. "Wassarman" searches returned zero results, which suggests the name is not indexed in litigation news/aggregators. A PACER party search for "Wassarman" as plaintiff would be the definitive check.
3. This contradicts nothing in the authoritative patent text; it also does not resolve the open item flagged in the prior section. The previously generated summary labeled "no CAFC 2026 activity" as unconfirmed — that characterization stands, and I have not improved on it.
4. The task header date (April 26, 2026) differs from my operating date (September 29, 2026). My searches covered whatever the index currently holds; neither date changes the result.

Recommended definitive checks

• PACER Case Locator — party search: Wassarman and Wassarman, Inc. (all districts, all years).
• CAFC docket — party-name search under Rule 47.5 style indexing for "Wassarman."
• Docket Navigator / Lex Machina — direct patent-number query on 10078030.
• PTAB (PTActions) — search 10078030 under the patent-number field for any IPR/PGR.

If the answer must be categorical: as of this search, no litigation involving US Patent 10078030 is known to me, and I state that as an absence-of-evidence finding subject to the access limitations above — not as a certification that none exists.

I'll verify the ODP "no proceedings" baseline against live sources before drafting.

Let me confirm with narrower queries targeting PTAB dockets and any litigation/appeal chain.

One more pass to rule out a Unified Patents or aggregator filing, and to check for any Federal Circuit appeal.

PTAB / AIA Trial Analysis — US 10078030 B2 ("Liquid detection system")

Canonical source of record: the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied with this prompt (USPTO Open Data Portal ingest).
Verification window: web searches run 2026-09-29 against Google Patents, Justia, FreePatentsOnline, PTAB E2E document mirrors (ptacts.uspto.gov), ipwatchdog.com, and CourtListener.

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Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings on file for US 10078030 — no IPR, no PGR, no CBM — so there is no claims-invalidated / claims-sustained / settled / institution-denied breakdown to report (0 active, 0 invalidated, 0 sustained, 0 settled, 0 denied institution). The defensive posture this gives a defendant is not "the patent is hardened by surviving IPRs"; it is the opposite and weaker case for the patent owner: no third party ever had to spend money to kill this patent because the patent owner let it die on its own — the maintenance fee lapsed, and the patent is recorded Expired – Fee Related, with the lapse event dated 2022-10-24 and the fee-lapse effective date 2022-09-18, against an anticipated expiration of 2037-01-19. The correct defendant-side framing is: all three claims are untested at the PTAB, but the patent is expired and unenforceable unless and until it is revived — and IPR-validity arguments are not your lead issue.

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No proceedings to report — and why the absence is the finding

Because the format calls for a per-proceeding entry, I am stating plainly rather than padding the section: no proceeding number exists for me to report, and I will not invent one. The per-proceeding template (type, filed date, panel, grounds, institution decision, FWD at claim level, settlement, appeal, defensive value) has no rows to populate.

What I can give you is the negative-result workup, including one live false-positive trap:

False-positive to avoid — do not conflate the "'780 patents." One of my searches returned the sentence "As noted above, IPR2024-01196 has been filed against the 780 Patent" from a Unified Patents petition-to-terminate in Ex Parte Reexamination 90/015,746 (docket UP-EPR-10601780; https://ipwatchdog.com/wp-content/uploads/2026/03/Petition-to-Terminate-Reexam-90015746-2-6-2026.pdf). That document bundle also contains Amazon Web Services, Inc. v. Croga Innovations, Ltd., IPR2025-00884, U.S. Patent No. 10,601,780. The Unified docket number (…10601780) tracks US 10,601,780 (Croga), not US 10,078,030 (Wassarman). Likewise, a CourtListener hit referencing a "'780 patent" was US 10,842,780 (an Astellas hydrogel ANDA case) — also unrelated. None of these involve US 10078030. Three different patents share the colloquial "'780" label; assign them carefully before citing.

Search limitation, stated for the record: my final targeted query (Unified Patents / ex parte reexam against Wassarman) was cut off by a tool step limit, so the aggregator check is incomplete. Note also that an ex parte reexamination would not appear in the "PTAB proceedings on file" block at all, since it is a Central Reexamination Unit proceeding, not an AIA trial — so its absence there is expected and non-probative.

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Strategic summary

Claim status. All three claims of US 10078030 — independent claim 1 (same-side conductive lines with insulators at intersections), independent claim 2 (arrayed sensor tiles, opposite-side lines, two multiplexers, processor), and dependent claim 3 (network-connected array reporting liquid detection) — are UNTESTED at the PTAB. Nothing has been canceled; nothing has been sustained. But "untested" overstates the risk to a defendant, because the patent's own status line governs: it is Expired – Fee Related. There is no live validity fight to win because there is (currently) no live patent to assert. Note the internal inconsistency the earlier section in this analysis already flagged: the abstract and FIG. 1A describe opposite-side lines offset 90°, while granted claim 1 covers the same-side-with-insulators variant — so any revival-based assertion would arrive with a claim/abstract mismatch and a very thin (3-claim) set to work with.

Estoppel landscape — largely academic here. With no IPR/PGR ever instituted, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is not triggered against anyone: there is no petitioner and no privy carrying a bar. That cuts both ways. It means a defendant is not estopped from anything, and could theoretically run any § 102/§ 103 ground it can find; but it also means no one has a prepaid, tested invalidity record to inherit. The far more relevant statute is § 315(b): the one-year clock to petition for IPR runs from service of a complaint, so if a revived patent were ever asserted, a defendant would have a full year and a clean slate of art — the cited examiner art (US4719407A, US4947470A (both Southwest Research Institute, geomembrane liner leak location) and US5537095A (Hill-Rom, incontinence detection)) plus the substantial later art in this space (Detec Systems US10352047B2; Trevillyan Labs US11788918B2 / US12123807B2; Getzner Textil CH717585A1 / EP3933137A1; bygg AI WO2021116233A1 / DE102019134398B4; Carlisle US12338629B2) would all be in play.

Pattern signals. No repeat petitioner, because there is no petitioner at all. No patent-owner appeal practice, because there is no adverse FWD to appeal. No defensive aggregator in the chain — Unified Patents surfaced only as the unrelated Croga reexam requestor. The single most telling data point is the fee lapse: maintenance fee reminder mailed 2022-05-10, lapse recorded 2022-10-24 (effective 2022-09-18), patent owner entity status Small Entity. A patent owner that does not pay its own maintenance fee is not a serial enforcer, and this patent's commercial life effectively ended ~4 years post-grant.

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Recommended next steps

1. Do not lead with PTAB work product. There is no FWD, no institution decision, no settlement, and no Federal Circuit docket to link. There is nothing to quote at USPTO PTAB E2E or CourtListener for this patent. Say so plainly in any opinion you write; the absence is the substance.
2. Lead with the fee lapse and enforceability. Verify current fee/status at USPTO Patent Center (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10078030B2](/patent/US10078030B2)/en points to the same record) and confirm whether any petition to revive under 37 C.F.R. § 1.378 has been filed. My working assumption — flag as an assumption, not verified — is that the ordinary unintentional-delay revival window measured from the missed fee (i.e., on or about 2024-09-18) has closed, meaning revival would now require a heightened showing. Confirm before relying on it either way.
3. If a demand letter citing US 10078030 lands, the response is a status challenge first, invalidity second: (a) the patent is recorded Expired – Fee Related as of 2022-09-18/2022-10-24 and presumptively unenforceable; (b) all three claims are PTAB-untested, so the owner cannot point to any surviving-claim record; (c) if revival is attempted, a § 102/§ 103 attack on the 3-claim set is unencumbered by § 315(e)(2) estoppel, and § 315(b) gives a year from service to file.
4. Close the two verification gaps before finalizing. (i) Re-run the Unified Patents / defensive-aggregator and ex parte reexamination sweep for US 10,078,030 specifically — my final query was truncated. (ii) Run a PACER/CourtListener party-name search on Wassarman, Inc. and on inventors Dana Wassarman and Sebastien Weyland, since a district-court assertion (and the resulting § 315(b) clock) would not appear in the ODP AIA-trial block. If both come back empty, the conclusion — no AIA trials, patent lapsed for nonpayment, no litigation found — is firm and a defendant's posture is straightforward.

I'll verify the assignment record against available sources before reconstructing the chain.

Let me check the assignee's corporate footprint and any assertion activity.

Inventors

Pattern check — inventor departure: Not present / no data. Both named inventors assigned their rights to Wassarman, Inc. one day before the non-provisional was filed (executed 2017-01-18; application filed 2017-01-19), which is the standard operating-company in-bound assignment, not a departure. There is no recorded assignment moving rights away from Wassarman, Inc. anywhere in the chain, so there is no evidence of an inventor exit preceding a portfolio sale. I found no source establishing either inventor's subsequent employment; do not infer departure.

Caution: Dana Wassarman is the assignor and the assignee's namesake. That coincidence is a founder-ownership pattern, not a shell-entity signal, because the assignee is identified as an operating company in the specification itself (the patent describes commercial sensor tiles and mux/CPU pieces, not a licensing program).

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Original assignee

WASSARMAN, INC., identified in the USPTO assignment record as a Texas corporation. Original and current assignee per the record; the filing was made with the assignment already in place.

• Primary line of business: physical liquid/leak detection hardware for built structures — sensor tiles for roofing, walls, floors, pools, tanks, pipelines. The specification describes manufacturing detail (substrate engineering, 22-gauge stranded aluminum or tinned copper wire, snap connectors, sensor tiles sized to one roofing "square" ≈ 10 ft × 10 ft) at a level consistent with an operating company building a product, not a holding vehicle.
• Product shipped embodying the claims: Unclear. The specification and claims are written as product engineering, and the assignee name is the inventors' own company, but I did not locate any product literature, trademark, website, or commercial offering for "Wassarman, Inc." in the sources available to me. I will not assert either way.
• Current status: Unclear — no corporate record located. No bankruptcy filing, no M&A announcement, and no SEC filing surfaced (consistent with a small private entity; SEC cross-reference does not apply). The patent itself lapsed for nonpayment of maintenance fees effective 2022-09-18 (events 2022-10-24 LAPS/STCH; FP 2022-11-15), which is at least consistent with a small entity that wound down operations or abandoned the program. That is a corroborating circumstance, not a determination of corporate status.

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Assignment timeline

One recorded assignment. That is the entire chain.

• 2017-01-18 (executed) / recorded 2017-01-19 — Reel 041018/0131
  • Conveyance: Assignment (event code AS; "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST; SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS")
  • Assignor: WASSARMAN, DANA; WEYLAND, SEBASTIEN (as individuals)
  • Assignee: WASSARMAN, INC., TEXAS
  • Correspondent: Not determinable from the sources available to me. The Google Patents legal-events record exposes only the reel/frame, the parties, and the conveyance text; it does not reproduce the PTO-1619 cover-sheet correspondent field, and I was unable to retrieve the underlying Assignment Center entry for reel 041018/0131. I am not going to name a firm here — I have no evidence of one. This is a genuine gap in the record I can see, and it is the one field you asked for that I cannot supply.
  • Context: In-bound founder/inventor-to-operating-company assignment, executed the day before filing. Not a fire-sale, not a securitization, not a transfer-to-asserter, not a change of name.

Post-issuance assignment record: NONE. There is no assignment recorded after the 2018-09-18 grant. The only post-grant legal events are fee-related (2022-05-10 reminder; 2022-10-24 lapse; 2022-11-15 FP). Under your framing: the original assignee still owns the patent. Ownership of US10078030 never left the inventors' own company.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10078030
    2016 : Provisional filed by inventors
    2017 : Non-provisional filed
         : Inventors assign to Wassarman Inc
   2018 : Patent issued
    2022 : Maintenance fee lapse
         : Patent expires for nonpayment

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

Forward-citation note (context, not ownership): the patents citing US10078030 — Trevillyan Labs US11788918B2 / US12123807B2, Getzner Textil CH717585A1 / EP3933137A1, bygg AI GmbH WO2021116233A1 / DE102019134398B4, Carlisle US12338629B2 — are third-party patents. They are cited by those documents, not assigned from Wassarman. None of them puts any interest in US10078030 into an NPE's hands, and citing them in an ownership chain would be a material error.

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Verdict

Insufficient data — under your taxonomy, the "only the original assignment" case.

The complete record is a single in-bound assignment, executed 2017-01-18 and recorded 2017-01-19 at reel 041018/0131, transferring Dana Wassarman's and Sebastien Weyland's rights to their own company, Wassarman, Inc. (Texas), one day before filing. Nothing moved after that: no post-issuance assignment, no shell LLC, no known asserter, no cascading transfers, no litigation found, and the patent simply lapsed for nonpayment of maintenance fees effective 2022-09-18. With a one-link chain, five of the eight NPE signals are structurally impossible to satisfy, and the two that could theoretically apply (1 and 8) are affirmatively absent.

Two caveats I will not paper over: (a) I could not retrieve the correspondent of record for reel 041018/0131, which is the single most useful field you asked for, so signal 3 is not assessable rather than clean; and (b) my litigation check is an absence-of-evidence finding only — I do not have PACER/CM-ECF or the CAFC docket through the available tool, and I found no district-court case naming Wassarman as plaintiff or defendant in the searches I ran.

Verify the chain directly at the USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 10078030), which should return exactly one hit — reel 041018/0131 — and will display the correspondent field I could not obtain.

I'll run targeted searches for the patent and its cited references, then build the prior-art analysis.

US 10078030 — Prior-Art Analysis

Scope note / method. I confirmed the target record is exactly US 10078030 B2 ("Liquid detection system," Wassarman, Inc.), not a similar number. I did not retrieve the USPTO PatentCenter file wrapper directly (no live PACER/PatentCenter access through the available tool); the prior-art list below is taken from the authoritative full text already in hand, specifically the "Patent Citations (3)" table that mirrors the references printed on the face of the grant. I flag where a detail comes from a secondary source rather than the primary document.

The citations of record (the three references on the patent face)

All three issued more than a year before the 2016‑01‑19 priority date, so each is §102(a)(1)/(a)(2)-type art (i.e., §102(b) art in substance) — their dates are not in dispute.

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Reference 1 — US 4,719,407 A (Converse et al., Southwest Research Inst.)

• Full citation: US 4,719,407 A; inventors Merle E. Converse and David W. Shultz; assignee Southwest Research Institute, San Antonio, TX; Appl. No. 06/824,440; filed Jan. 31, 1986; granted Jan. 12, 1988. (Inventor/assignee/appl. no. confirmed via uspto.report, https://uspto.report/patent/grant/4,719,407.)
• Description: A mobile/remotely-operated survey vehicle that travels across the surface of a contained liquid in a geomembrane-lined impoundment and measures voltage-gradient changes in the liquid, correlating them to a leak location. It injects current from a DC source and senses the low-resistance path formed where liner integrity is lost. It is a survey/scanner apparatus, not a laminar sensor sheet.
• Potentially anticipates? No — none of claims 1, 2, or 3.
  • Claim 1 requires a substrate with two pluralities of conductive lines on the same side plus insulators at the line intersections. US 4,719,407 has no such substrate, line grid, or intersection insulators.
  • Claim 2 requires a sensor-tile array with connectors at tile edges, two multiplexers, and a processor detecting line-to-line electrical connection. US 4,719,407's electrode-based vehicle/telemetry architecture does not disclose these elements.
  • Claim 3 (networked reporting by the array) likewise is not disclosed.
• Actual role: Background art establishing the general principle of electrical leak detection in membrane/liner systems; at most a §103 secondary reference, not an anticipatory one.

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Reference 2 — US 4,947,470 A (Darilek, Southwest Research Inst.) — closest reference

• Full citation: US 4,947,470 A; inventor Glenn T. Darilek; assignee Southwest Research Institute; Appl. No. 311,178; filed Feb. 14, 1989; issued Aug. 7, 1990; 32 claims. (Confirmed in the patent's own PDF front page, US4947470.pdf.)
• Description: Places an array of electric/magnetic field detectors on one side of the liner, in a plane parallel to the liner at known locations; impresses a voltage across the liner; a leak current creates an electric/magnetic field detected by the array, and the leak is located geometrically from orthogonal measurements. Two modes: monitoring and location.
• Why it is the most relevant: Its specification expressly discusses two wire-grid methods (in the Background/Related-art discussion):
  • the "low resistance measuring method" — "electrical wires arranged in a grid under the liner. The media under the liner separates the grid wires from each other. Leaks are indicated by detecting a decrease in resistance between two or more wires. The leak is located by locating the intersection of the two perpendicular wires having low resistance"; and
  • the parallel-wire dielectric method (TDR along two adjacent wires).
    It also notes the prior grid method's drawback — "the wires must be bare, so that corrosion … may destroy the wires."
• Potentially anticipates? No — but it is the most substantive §103 reference.
  • The grid of perpendicular wires separated by an intermediate medium, with location by wire intersection, is conceptually close to the cross‑point interrogation idea in claim 1/claim 2. However, claim 1 requires both line pluralities attached to the same side of a substrate with insulators placed between the lines where they intersect — the reference's wires are separated by sub-liner soil/media, and the grid passage sits in the Background describing pre-existing practice rather than being the reference's own claimed subject matter. A single-reference §102 case against claim 1 therefore cannot be made out (at least not on this record, and not without the file wrapper).
  • Claim 2's modular sensor-tile array + connectors at opposite edges + first/second multiplexers + processor is not disclosed.
• Actual role: Strong obviousness reference for the "crossed-conductor grid; liquid bridges adjacent conductors; locate by intersection" concept; supports a §103 combination with Ref 1 or Ref 3.

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Reference 3 — US 5,537,095 A (Hill-Rom Company, Inc.)

• Full citation: US 5,537,095 A; assignee Hill-Rom Company, Inc.; filed Oct. 29, 1993; issued July 16, 1996. Inventor listed as "Dick et al." in a later Hill-Rom patent's reference list (US10646379.pdf); I did not independently confirm the full inventor set from the primary front page, so treat the inventor attribution as secondary-source.
• Description: An incontinence detection pad having a plurality of electrical circuits (spaced conductors) on the pad, each circuit's linear dimension correlated to a liquid volume. A power source/controller applies voltage and checks continuity of the spaced circuits, counting shorted circuits to report a wet event and its volume. Conductors may be metallized Mylar, conductive ink/glue, or metallized thread (reusable pads). It expressly describes two prior forms — conductors spaced through the pad thickness with fabric separating them (Norton U.S. 5,137,033), and a single conductor woven back and forth in a horizontal plane with a break, shorting when fabric between adjacent points wets (Kelly U.S. 4,539,559).
• Potentially anticipates? No — none of claims 1, 2, or 3.
  • Claim 1: a bed pad with conductors separated through the pad thickness or a serpentine single conductor is not the claimed same-side, two-plurality, insulator-at-intersection tile architecture.
  • Claim 2/3: no sensor tiles, edge connectors, dual multiplexers, or networked roof-array reporting.
• Actual role: Most useful for the generic concept that fabric-separated conductors close a circuit when wetted and that a controller can count shorted circuits to characterize the wet event — a §103 teaching for the "electrically insulated until bridged by a liquid" limitation and for the processor-detects-connection feature.

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Bottom line

Overall: The three references of record are the classic membrane-leak-detection / moisture-sensing family, and they collectively supply much of the functional backdrop (electrical leak detection; crossed-conductor grids located by intersection; wetted fabric closing a conductor circuit; a controller counting shorted circuits). None of them, alone or as reflected in the face-of-patent listing, discloses the structural combination that distinguishes the granted claims — the same‑side dual-conductor tile with insulators at the crossings (claim 1), and the modular sensor-tile/edge-connector/two-multiplexer/processor array (claim 2). On the current record these are §103 references, not §102 anticipators.

Caveats I want to be explicit about: (a) I did not pull the USPTO file wrapper, so I cannot report any applicant remarks or examiner reasons for allowance that would explain the narrow three-claim set; (b) the "grid of wires" and "parallel-wire" passages in US 4,947,470 appear in its Background, describing known methods, which weakens any expectation that it was relied on to disclose rather than merely contextualize; (c) the five "Cited By" forward references (e.g., Trevillyan Labs US 11,788,918 / US 12,123,807; Getzner CH717585 / EP3933137; bygg AI WO2021116233 / DE102019134398; Carlisle US 12,338,629) are later art and are not prior art against US 10078030 — useful only for state-of-the-art context, so I have not analyzed them as anticipatory.

Contradiction flag: my earlier summary's observation that the abstract/claim-1 mismatch (abstract describes the opposite-sides, 90°-offset, two-mux architecture of claim 2, while independent claim 1 claims the same-side + intersection-insulator variant) is reinforced here: the prior art of record aligns almost entirely with the claim‑2 (opposite-side/grid/mux) side of the disclosure, leaving the claim‑1 same-side/insulator variant as the most structurally distinct subject matter — which is consistent with why the granted set is so small, though I cannot confirm that from the file wrapper.

If you want, I can attempt to retrieve the actual USPTO PatentCenter/Global Dossier file wrapper text for application 15/410,076 to see the examiner's cited art and any §102/§103 rejections, which would let me tie these references to specific claim rejections rather than inferring.

I'll ground the obviousness analysis in the three references actually cited on this patent's face, then check their disclosures.

Key finding already: the cited US4947470A discusses grid-wire resistance methods. Now checking the third cited reference.

Two more checks: whether roof-specific electrical leak-location art appears on this page's prior-art listing, since claim 1 recites "roofing material."

Obviousness Analysis — US 10078030 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst note on dates. The task header says April 26, 2026; my operating date is September 29, 2026 (the prior section already flagged this discrepancy). Nothing in this analysis turns on which date governs.

Builds on, does not repeat, the prior sections. I rely on their bibliographic table, claim breakdown, and the flagged claim/abstract misalignment. One point from that work is load-bearing here and I will develop it rather than restate it: claim 1 is directed to the same-side/insulator embodiment (FIG. 1B), which is a different structure from claim 2's opposite-sides grid. That bifurcation materially changes the § 103 case for each claim.

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1. Art-qualification screen — what on this page actually counts as prior art

The target's effective filing date is 2016-01-19 (provisional 62/280,256, incorporated by reference). Application 15/410,076 was filed 2017-01-19, i.e., post-AIA, so AIA §§ 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) govern.

⚠️ Two traps worth stating explicitly. (a) US10352047B2 (Detec Systems, priority 2017-01-13) is after 2016-01-19 and is therefore not prior art — a near-miss that looks citeable and isn't. (b) The "Cited By" references are the most technically on-point documents on the page (Trevillyan "fluid detection fabric," Getzner Textil sensor mat, bygg AI roof moisture localization). They are all post-dating and cannot be used against these claims. Anyone building a § 103 chart from the "Cited By" table would be citing inadmissible art. I flag this because it is the single most likely error in an automated analysis of this page.

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2. Framework and PHOSITA

Graham/KSR framework. Obviousness requires: scope and content of the prior art; differences from the claims; the level of ordinary skill; and secondary considerations. Under KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007), a combination is obvious where the elements were known, the combination was "according to known methods," and it yields no more than predictable results; a motivation may be found in the problem to be solved, the teachings of the references, or the ordinary creativity of a PHOSITA, and an explicit "teaching, suggestion, or motivation" is not required post-KSR.

PHOSITA here: a B.S. in electrical, civil, or architectural engineering (or equivalent), with 2–3 years' experience in electrical moisture/leak-detection systems for building envelopes or containment liners, including familiarity with conductive textiles/printed conductors and simple resistance/continuity sensor electronics. The subject matter is uniformly electromechanical and DC-resistive/continuity-based — no unpredictable arts, which matters for the reasonable-expectation-of-success prong.

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3. The three cited references — what each actually teaches

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4. Claim 1 — same-side grid with insulators at intersections

Differences from the art, element by element:

Why a PHOSITA would combine '095 and '470. Both solve the identical problem — detect liquid by sensing a liquid-created electrical bridge across a deliberately non-conductive separation — and both use the same physics. The motivation is bidirectional and grounded in the references' own text:

1. '095 lacks location. It reports that liquid is present and roughly how much (number of shorted circuits), but never where. '470 supplies exactly that: location from the intersection of two crossed conductors, a technique it presents as known and workable.
2. '470's method is criticized for reliability. Its own stated defects — groundwater sensitivity, contaminant residue, and bare wires that corrode — are cured by '095's construction: conductors on a sealed substrate, optionally of conductive ink or metallized thread (i.e., integrated into the substrate rather than loose bare wire). Notably, this is precisely the solution the '030 specification itself adopts ("the conductive wire may be insulated except in locations where liquid detection is intended"). A PHOSITA reading '470's corrosion criticism is led toward, not away from, the substrate-borne conductor arrangement of '095.
3. Predictability. Both are DC continuity/resistance systems. Placing two crossing conductor sets on one face of a sheet with a dielectric at each crossover is the standard cross-point matrix arrangement — the very row/column addressing scheme '470 already relies on to name an intersection. "A court must ask whether the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions." KSR, 550 U.S. at 417. This is.

Expected result: a tile in which any wet crossover shorts one row-line to one column-line, and the identity of the pair gives location — no new function, no unexpected property.

Skewer of the "roofing" preamble. "may be used for a roofing material" is permissive and recites intended use, not structure. A preamble limits a claim only where it is necessary to give life and meaning to the claim; a permissive use recitation that adds no structural element does not distinguish an otherwise-obvious structure. And the roof field was itself old: US9500555B2 and (per the Similar Documents list, content unverified) US7652481B2 and US20150259923A1 are directed to roof leak detection.

Confidence: moderate-to-high for obviousness, with one caveat — see § 7.

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5. Claim 2 — opposite-side modular array with two muxes and a processor

This claim is easier than claim 1, because the reference disclosing it is unusually literal.

'095 does the heavy lifting:

• Opposite-side architecture — "electrical conductors… spaced through the thickness of the pad with fabric separating the strips, such that when the pad is moistened by urine through its depth the circuit becomes complete from the top to the bottom of the pad." That is claim 2's first plurality on the first side, second plurality on the second side, separated by the substrate, bridged by liquid.
• Connectors at the tile edges — '095 provides "a connector having a plurality of pins for connection to the pad," plus initialization that "notes which connector pin corresponds to the conductor."
• Scanning a plurality of conductors — the controller operates by "sequentially applying power source voltage to each pin and checking for continuity to adjacent pins." Functionally, that is a multiplexer: it collapses many conductor channels onto a reduced I/O interface by serial scanning. The '030 specification's own definition ("a processor used to convert multiple parallel signals into a single serial communication signal") describes nothing more than this conventional function. Where an array has hundreds of lines and a processor has tens of pins, using a mux is a "known technique… used to improve similar devices in the same way." KSR, 550 U.S. at 417.
• Processor configured to detect a connection between any line of the first set and any line of the second set — '095's controller detects shorts between specified conductor pairs, by construction.

'470 supplies the array/geography limitation:

• "An array of… detectors is placed on one side of the liner… on a plane generally parallel to the liner, and the location of each detector is known"; the leak is located geometrically from known detector positions.
• It operates in "two modes" — "A monitoring mode detects leaks anywhere in the liner. A location mode is used to locate a leak" — which maps onto claim 2's detection function plus the specification's location-reporting function.

'407 supplies remote reporting (see § 6).

Motivation to combine. A PHOSITA facing a large roof — the specification itself notes roofs are quantified in 100 ft² "squares," and '470 notes impoundments "encompass many acres" — would modularize the '095 pad into tiles to cover area, chain them ('095's connector), and scale the conductor count with multiplexed scanning ('095's sequential pin scanning) plus a central processor ('470's known-position computation). Motivation is explicit in the problem to be solved: coverage + location + a single point of reporting.

Confidence: high. '095 alone discloses nearly every structural element except tiling and the two-mux/processor topology, and those two are conventional engineering at the claimed scale.

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6. Claim 3 — network-connected array reporting detections

Claim 3 adds no structure; it recites that the array is "operably connected to a network" and "provides processor outputs indicating detection of a liquid by the array to the network."

• '407 expressly teaches remote transmission of leak-detection data: readings are "transmit[ted]… via a data telemetry link to a data collection unit," where they are "processed to determine the location of the leak(s)."
• '095 teaches outputting the detection result to a human decision-maker ("indicates to a care provider that an incontinent event has occurred").
• '470 teaches the monitoring-mode concept (continuous surveillance pending a leak).

Substituting a modern network link (the specification's own CPU piece lists WiFi/Bluetooth as examples) for a 1988 data-telemetry link is the classic substitution of one known element for another to obtain the predictable result of remote notification. KSR; In re Fritch. Confidence: very high — claim 3 is the weakest claim in the set.

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7. Where the case is weakest — counterarguments a patentee would press

I want to be candid about the soft spots rather than present a one-sided chart.

1. The "insulators… where the lines intersect" limitation (claim 1) has no clean, literal antecedent. '470 says the media under the liner separates the grid wires, but it never expressly describes a discrete insulator element at each crossover, and its grid wires are depicted in the sub-liner medium rather than on a shared sheet. The better argument is that a same-plane crossing grid cannot function without interposed dielectric at the crossings — so the element is inherent/necessarily present in any operative cross-point grid. That is a real but argumentative position, not a clean paper anticipation.
2. '470 contains what looks like a teaching away. It states: "a limitation of both wire methods is that they are affected by fluctuations in the groundwater level. Also, contaminant liquids may remain in the sub-liner media after the leak is repaired, making the method less useful for detecting subsequent leaks. Another disadvantage of the resistance measuring method is that the wires must be bare, so that corrosion and chemical action may destroy the wires." The rebuttal is that (a) each criticism is directed at the sub-liner installation environment (groundwater, buried bare wires) and does not apply to a dry, above-deck fabric tile; (b) criticism of a known alternative is not a teaching away unless it would lead a PHOSITA to abandon the approach; and (c) '470 simultaneously endorses the grid method's core insight — location at the wire intersection — and thereby teaches the very capability the combination seeks. Still, this is the best non-obviousness argument available, and it is where an examiner's allowance most plausibly rested.
3. '095 is a medical pad, not a roofing product. A patentee could argue field-of-invention distance. Under KSR, however, the relevant test is whether the reference is "reasonably pertinent to the particular problem" — and the problem (liquid bridges spaced conductors separated by a non-conductive medium to close a circuit) is identical. Analogous art.
4. No file wrapper available to me. I did not retrieve the prosecution history (consistent with the prior section's limitation), so I cannot say whether the examiner considered '095 at all, or why claim 1 issued in same-side form. If '095 was not before the examiner, this is a classic "art not considered" posture. If it was considered and overcome, the applicant likely distinguished on the crossover-insulator element — the weakest link above.
5. Claim 1's same-side form is the harder target precisely because the substrate cannot do the insulating. Having both line sets on one face means the substrate is not the separator, which is why the drafters had to add the express insulator element. This is a drafting-driven vulnerability as much as a technical one, and it connects directly to the claim/abstract misalignment the prior section flagged.

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8. Secondary considerations

The record supplies no objective indicia: no evidence of unexpected results, no nexus-bearing commercial success, no articulated long-felt unmet need, no industry praise or copying evidence. The patent's lapse for non-payment of maintenance fees (effective 2022-09-18, per the legal events) is not itself a Graham factor, but it is consistent with a commercially marginal 3-claim, US-only family — a posture in which strong secondary-consideration evidence is unlikely to have existed.

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9. Bottom line

No clean single-reference anticipation of any claim (claims 2 and 3 require multi-tile/array topology that no single reference shows). The case is a combination case, and its strength is concentrated in claims 2–3.

Where I would expect the real fight: claim 1's "insulators positioned in between the first and second pluralities of conductive lines where the lines intersect," on a same-side substrate. That limitation — not the grid, not the wetting-bridge detection, and not the roofing preamble — is the only element for which I could not locate a clean, literal disclosure in the three cited references, and it is the natural explanation for why a 3-claim patent issued at all.