US 10119860

I'll verify the patent details against live sources, including any litigation or CAFC activity.

US Patent 10,119,860 B2 — Verification Summary

Search basis: USPTO/Google Patents full text (fetched 2026-09-24), uspto.report, patentleaderboard, plus targeted searches for litigation, PTAB, and CAFC 2026 docket activity. No docket, IPR, or district-court record was returned for this patent number. I could not exhaustively query PACER or the CAFC docket directly, so treat "no litigation found" as a negative search result, not proof of absence.

Bibliographic data

Uncertainty note: "Filing date" is ambiguous for this family — the PCT was filed 2014-04-30, while the US national-stage application entered on 2016-08-25. Google Patents lists the operative filing date as 2014-04-30. The 2035-01-04 adjusted expiration is consistent with 20 years from the PCT filing date plus patent-term adjustment.

Abstract (as issued)

A calibration method for an absolute responsivity of a terahertz quantum well detector and its calibration device. The device comprises a driving power supply, a single frequency laser source, an optic, a terahertz array detector, a terahertz dynamometer, a current amplifier, and an oscilloscope. The method uses a power-detectable single-frequency laser source as calibration photosource to obtain the detector's absolute responsivity at the laser frequency; a normalized photocurrent spectrum of the detector is then used to derive absolute responsivity at any detectable frequency. The periodically driven single-frequency source and the array detector/dynamometer combination allow direct measurement of incident power on the calibrated detector.

Independent claim 1 — Device (plain language)

A calibration apparatus comprising seven elements: (a) a driving power supply; (b) a single-frequency laser source connected to the driving supply that emits terahertz laser when driven; (c) an optic on one side of the source that converges the terahertz laser; (d) a terahertz array detector on one side of the optic that measures the cross-sectional shape of the convergent spot at the focal point; (e) a terahertz dynamometer on one side of the optic that measures the total power of that convergent spot; (f) a current amplifier that powers the quantum well detector and extracts/amplifies the loop current as a voltage signal; and (g) an oscilloscope connected to both the current amplifier and the driving supply, displaying/reading that voltage signal and using the driving supply's output as its external trigger reference.

Independent claim 6 — Method (plain language)

A method of calibrating absolute responsivity using the claim-1 device, in eight steps:

• S1 — drive the single-frequency laser source with a square wave of period t so it radiates terahertz laser at the same period, frequency f.
• S2 — adjust the optic to a preset position to form a converging focal point.
• S3 — place the terahertz array detector at the focal point; measure the spot's cross-sectional shape and compute area S′.
• S4 — place the terahertz dynamometer at the focal point; measure total spot power P′.
• S5 — place the quantum well detector at the focal point; power it via the current amplifier; read the amplified voltage signal U on the oscilloscope, trigger off the driving supply's reference signal, and reposition the detector until U reaches a maximum U_max.
• S6 — compare spot dimensions to the detector's photosensitive-surface size, compute the largest overlap area S″, and derive incident power P = α·P′·(S″/S′), where α is the transmittance of the detector's cooling-Dewar window at frequency f.
• S7 — compute photocurrent I = G·U_max from the amplifier sensitivity G, then the responsivity at the laser frequency R_f = G·U_max / P.
• S8 — using the normalized photocurrent-spectrum amplitude a (a<1) at frequency f, compute R_max = R_f·(1/a) at the peak frequency f_max; and using the amplitude b (b<1) at another frequency f_j, compute R_j = R_f·(b/a).

Dependent claims: 2 — the source is a terahertz quantum cascade laser or a carbon-dioxide gas laser; 3 — the optic is at least two polyethylene lenses; 4 — the driving supply is a pulse signal generator; 5 — the oscilloscope is a digital oscilloscope with at least two measurable channels; 7 — S′ is computed by a circular-area approximation; 8 — the dynamometer's sensitive area exceeds the spot area, and, because the square wave has a 50% duty ratio, the spot's total peak power is twice the measured average power.

Worked example in the specification (for context)

THz QCL at 3.902 THz, 5 ms square wave (13.1 V actual load on the QCL); spot treated as a 0.6 mm circle → S′ = 0.2826 mm²; measured average spot power 600 µW → P′ = 1200 µW; high-strength polyethylene 3 mm Dewar window transmittance α = 0.64 → P = 768 µW; amplifier G = 50 µA/V at U_max = 6.38 V → I = 319 µA; R_f = 0.415 A/W; normalized response at 3.902 THz a = 0.65 → R_max = 0.638 A/W at the 3.21 THz peak (3.2 K, 40 mV bias); b = 0.58 at 3.1 THz → R_j = 0.370 A/W.

Prosecution / prior-art record

• Cited in the patent (6): US8208505B2; JP2003075251A; US2013/0266034A1; CN102323040A; US2014/0103904A1 (Zhiyong Tan, Apparatus and Method of Power Measurement for Pulsed Terahertz Quantum-Cascade Laser, also issued as US8749225B2); CN102721468A.
• Non-patent citation: Zhang Pei, "Research on Spectral Response Testing System for QWIP," Information Science and Technology, 1135-29, ISSN 1674-0246, pp. 49-55.
• Notable later-cited/related item: CN103983293B (assigned to the 41st Research Institute of CETC), "THz photodetector absolute spectral response rate calibrating installation and method," published 2016 — a separate family that cites this one.

Litigation / CAFC status (as of this search)

No CAFC appeal, PTAB proceeding, or district-court case naming US 10,119,860 was surfaced. Maintenance fees for years 4 (2022-04-29) and 8 (2026-04-15) have been paid; status is listed Active. This is a negative search result only — I do not have direct PACER/Docket Navigator access, so if you need a litigation-clearance statement, that must be confirmed against PACER and the CAFC docket directly.

Strict-ID note: All identifiers above are reported literally as they appear in the sources (e.g., application 15/121,520; CN 201410066672.2; PCT/CN2014/076639; expiration 2035-01-04). No numbers have been normalized or corrected.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10119860 across litigation-tracking sources.

Let me search more targeted litigation sources.

Let me check more specific litigation databases and the patent's litigation history pages.

Litigation Search Results for U.S. Patent No. 10,119,860

Bottom line

I found no known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 10,119,860. No district court action, no Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit appeal, and no PTAB (IPR/PGR) proceeding tied to this specific patent number appeared in any of the sources I was able to reach and review.

What I searched

I queried general web/litigation indexes (including sources that surface PACER-derived dockets, CourtListener/Recap documents, USPTO PTAB petition documents, and patent-litigation aggregators such as Unified Patents-style trackers and drugpatentwatch) for the exact identifiers "10119860" and "10,119,860". I also searched by technology/owner terms (terahertz quantum well detector; Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology).

Why I am not reporting any cases

Every hit that surfaced was a different identifier or a non-litigation document — I did not auto-correct any of them into a match:

• DE 101 19 860 A1 (Hydrometer GmbH) — a German patent cited in a GCC patent-gazette reference list. This is not U.S. 10,119,860.
• U.S. Patent No. 10,179,140 (Exeltis USA v. Lupin, D. Del.) — a different number appearing in a drug-patent case.
• U.S. Patent No. 10,517,860 (the "'860 patent") (Acadia Pharmaceuticals v. Zydus, C.A. No. 25-187-GBW, D. Del.) — a similar-looking but different patent number; not U.S. 10,119,860.
• U.S. Patent No. 10,585,959 / 10,867,001 / 11,100,184 / 11,971,937 (AccuSearch Technologies v. Google) — unrelated numbers.
• Various Unified Patents / PTAB documents referencing patents such as 7,454,002; 7,092,671; 9,603,860; etc. — none are 10,119,860.

I deliberately excluded all of these rather than report them as matches for the patent you asked about.

Context on the patent (for completeness, not a litigation finding)

• Patent: U.S. 10,119,860 B2 — "Method for calibrating absolute responsivity of terahertz quantum well detector and device thereof."
• Application: US 15/121,520 (U.S. national stage of PCT/CN2014/076639); granted 2018-11-06.
• Assignee / current owner: Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences.
• Family: also CN103776547B and WO2015127715A1.
• Status (per the patent record reviewed): Active; adjusted expiration listed as 2035-01-04. (Legal-status fields are the provider's assumption, not a legal conclusion.)

This is a research-institute-owned metrology/calibration patent with a small patent family and no visible U.S. enforcement history, which is consistent with my finding of no litigation.

Important caveats

• My searches relied on public web-indexed litigation data, which is not guaranteed to be complete or current. PACER dockets, CourtListener/Recap, Docket Navigator, Lex Machina, and Unified Patents' caselist are the authoritative sources, but I was unable to confirm negative results directly against the full paywalled/docket-level databases within this session.
• Absence of results is not proof of absence of litigation. A case could exist that is not indexed in the sources that were reachable.
• I have not found any evidence of: (a) any district court complaint asserting 10,119,860; (b) any CAFC appeal referencing it; or (c) any IPR/PGR challenging it.

If you need a definitive check, the recommended next step is to run the exact number "10,119,860" directly in PACER (all district courts), Unified Patents' litigation caselist (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist), and the PTAB Patent Trial Track / USPTO Patent Center "Litigation" and "PTAB" tabs for application 15/121,520.

Conclusion: Based on the sources I could reach, there is no known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 10,119,860.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings on file. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings for US 10,119,860 as of the most recent ingest, and my independent web searches (PTAB E2E/PTACTS, CourtListener, Federal Circuit docket coverage, and third-party patent-monitoring databases) surfaced no petition, institution decision, final written decision, or appeal naming this patent. The breakdown is therefore 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied. Defensive posture: the patent has never been stress-tested at the PTAB, so there is no cancelation to hand you a free win, but also no petitioner-side work product, no FWD claim construction, and no estoppel on the books — an invalidity case would be built from scratch rather than inherited.

No proceedings to itemize

Because the canonical structured list is empty and no proceeding numbers exist anywhere in the public record, there is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner} section to write. Per the operating rules, I will not invent proceeding numbers or import fact patterns from unrelated patents (the search hits that used "IPR" and "Petition" language — e.g., Western Digital v. Godo Kaisha IP Bridge (US 9,608,198), PGR2025-00067 (US 12,190,198), the Neenah/Schwendimann appeals — involve different patents and are not relevant here).

What I checked and what I found:

One caveat, stated plainly: PTAB activity is not fully visible in third-party databases for petitions filed very recently, and ODP ingestion lags. I could not find any indication of a recently-filed but unindexed petition, but I also cannot prove a negative to 100%. If you are defending an active demand, confirm directly via PTAB E2E (https://ptab.uspto.gov) using the patent number and application number 15/121,520, and check Docket Alarm / CourtListener for any co-pending district-court case, since parallel litigation is the usual trigger for an IPR.

Strategic summary

Claim status. All claims are UNTESTED at the PTAB. The patent issued 2018-11-06 with 8 claims (claims 1–5 device; claims 6–8 method), and none has been canceled, narrowed by statutory disclaimer, or held unpatentable in any AIA trial. The only validity-type record is ordinary ex parte prosecution: the family page lists a single non-patent citation (Zhang Pei, "Research on Spectral Response Testing System for QWIP," Information Science and Technology, ISSN 1674-0246, pp. 49–55), which appears to be examiner-cited art, not an adversarial challenge. Because there is no FWD, there is also no Board claim construction to lean on — a defendant would be litigating claim scope from first principles (e.g., what "cross-sectional area S′," "largest area S″ of the overlapable region," and the calibration steps of claim 6 require).

Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel running against anyone, because no IPR/PGR has been instituted. That cuts both ways:

• No estoppel burden — a defendant can assert any § 102/§ 103 prior-art ground in district court without worrying that it "reasonably could have been raised" in a prior IPR.
• No free roadmap — conversely, there is no petitioner-side expert declaration, no institution decision framing the strongest art, and no FWD findings to borrow for an invalidity contention or an IPR petition of your own.
• The full universe of printed publications and patents remains available; nothing has been spent or estopped.

Pattern signals. None of the classic adverse-pattern indicators are present:

• No repeat petitioner (there is no petitioner at all).
• No defensive aggregator — Unified Patents is not in the chain for this patent (Unified appeared only in unrelated search hits concerning other patents).
• No patent-owner PTAB appeals, because there are no Board decisions to appeal.
• The owner is a research institution — Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (recorded assignee; small-entity status confirmed by maintenance-fee events 2022-04-29 and 2026-04-15). Research-institute patents are asserted far less often than NPE portfolios, which is consistent with the clean PTAB history. Note also that the sibling family members are Chinese (CN103776547B) and PCT/CN2014/076639 (WO2015127715A1), and the US national stage is the only US member — no broad US assertion campaign is evident.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant facing assertion of US 10,119,860:

1. Don't look for a PTAB silver bullet — there isn't one. No claim has been canceled, so any infringement theory the patent owner pleads against claims 1–8 is, at the PTAB level, unchallenged. Nothing here lets you say "claim 1 is dead."

2. Treat the empty history as a green light for your own IPR/PGR, subject to timing. With no prior petition and no § 315(b) one-year clock running against you unless and until you are served with a district-court complaint, you are free to file a first IPR. There is no General Plastic follow-on-petitioner problem, no Fintiv overlap from a prior PTAB case (only from whatever parallel district case exists), and no § 325(d) issue beyond the examiner-cited Zhang Pei reference — which you should distinguish from your art and be ready to address under Advanced Bionics.

3. Confirm the record yourself before relying on this memo. Check PTAB E2E (https://ptab.uspto.gov) for application 15/121,520 and patent 10,119,860, and search CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com) and Docket Alarm for any district-court case and any appeal. Petitions filed in the last few months may not yet appear in ODP or third-party databases.

4. If it stays clean, the practical posture is: validity is a blank slate. Your leverage will come from a well-built § 103 combination against device claims 1–5 and method claims 6–8 (note that claim 6 incorporates the claim 1 device by reference and adds the calibration math of steps S1–S8), not from any inherited invalidation.

Bottom line for the demand-letter scenario: there is no PTAB cancelation to wave at a plaintiff, and no Board ruling narrowing or upholding the claims. The patent is neither "hardened by surviving two IPRs" nor "gutted by canceled claims" — it is simply untested. Any assertion of claims 1–8 today rests on a validity record that has never been examined adversarially.

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

Let me pull the assignment record and correspondent details directly.

Let me try to locate the actual assignment document and its correspondent of record.

I hit the tool-search cap while trying to retrieve the correspondent-of-record fields, so I'll flag precisely what I could and could not verify.

Inventors

Pattern assessment: No unusual pattern. There is no evidence of inventor departure — the lead inventor (Cao) remains publishing and filing at SIMIT/CAS through 2026, over a decade after the 2014 filing date. The all-inventors-assign-to-employer structure is the standard institutional-ownership rule for Chinese Academy of Sciences institutes, not a pre-sale aggregation. I found nothing suggesting a portfolio fire-sale trigger.

Caveat: I could not independently confirm each inventor's specific lab/business-unit affiliation beyond "SIMIT/CAS"; the employer attribution is by virtue of the recorded assignment and the institute's publication record, not a payroll document.

Original assignee

Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology, Chinese Academy of Sciences (SIMIT/CAS) — named as both original and current assignee on the issued patent and in the single recorded assignment.

• Primary line of business: Government-funded academic research institute (state research institute under the Chinese Academy of Sciences). Core work spans microelectronics, MEMS, wireless sensing, and — relevant here — terahertz quantum-cascade lasers and terahertz quantum-well photodetectors.
• Does it ship a product embodying the claims? Not in the commercial sense. The claims cover a calibration apparatus and calibration method, and the specification describes a laboratory bench setup (QCL source, polyethylene lens train, THz array camera, THz dynamometer, current amplifier, oscilloscope). This is a metrology/characterization rig used internally to characterize the institute's detectors, not a marketed product. The institute does fabricate and demonstrate THz QCL/QWP devices, but I found no evidence of a SKU-level commercial offering of the claimed calibration device.
• Current status: Operating — SIMIT/CAS remains an active research institute, holding the patent, and actively filing new THz-related applications (e.g., the 2026 filing above). No acquisition, dissolution, or bankruptcy is indicated.

Assignment timeline

One recorded assignment exists. The chain is a single inventor-to-employer transfer at the §371 national-stage entry — there is no post-issuance transfer of any kind.

• Executed 2016-08-18 / recorded 2016-08-25 — Reel 039540 / Frame 0668
  • Conveyance: Assignment — "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)"
  • Assignor: CAO, JUNCHENG; GU, LI; TAN, ZHIYONG; ZHU, YONGHAO (all four joint inventors)
  • Assignee: SHANGHAI INSTITUTE OF MICROSYSTEM AND INFORMATION TECHNOLOGY, CHINESE ACADEMY OF SCIENCES
  • Correspondent: Not verified. I could not retrieve the correspondent/attorney name, firm, or address for reel 039540/0668 within this session — the Assignment Center record and the legacy-assignment document image did not surface in the searches I was able to run before hitting the tool limit. I am not going to guess a firm name here. Note the conveyance text is the generic USPTO "SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS" boilerplate, which is common for institutional filings; the absence of any foreign corporate correspondent (no US NPE-side counsel, no registered-agent service address) is itself consistent with an in-house/academic filing rather than an asserter-prepared record.
  • Context: Internal institutional ownership consolidation — the standard employment/institutional-property assignment by which the four CAS inventors conveyed their rights to their employer. This is a change-of-ownership-to-employer, not an acquisition, securitization, fire-sale, or transfer-to-asserter.

Everything after that is administrative, not an ownership change:

• 2018-04-24 — entity status set to SMALL
• 2018-10-17 — patent granted
• 2022-04-29 — 4th-year maintenance fee paid
• 2026-04-15 — 8th-year maintenance fee paid

No security agreements, no licenses, no mergers, no change-of-name, no releases appear in the record. For the purpose of this task: the Assignment Center effectively has nothing beyond the original inventor→employer assignment, and that is itself the finding — the original assignee still owns the patent outright.

Verification link: Search patent number 10,119,860 (or application 15/121,520) at the USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (legacy interface: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). The reel to pull is 039540/0668.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10119860
    2014 : Priority filing CN 201410066672
         : PCT filed 2014-04-30
    2016 : Inventors assign to SIMIT CAS
         : Recorded reel 039540 frame 0668
    2018 : US patent issued 2018-11-06
    2022 : 4th year maintenance fee paid
    2026 : 8th year maintenance fee paid

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The sole assignee is a Chinese Academy of Sciences research institute. No "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix, no Delaware/Texas single-member LLC, no registered-agent service address anywhere in the record (reel 039540/0668). None of the enumerated tells are satisfied.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. The only assignee is SIMIT/CAS. It matches none of the listed NPE families (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, DGC, Spangenberg entities) and no Unified Patents/RPX high-frequency-plaintiff directory surfaced it. Corroborating the negative: the patent is cited by CN103983293B (CETC 41st Research Institute) — i.e., it sits in the citation net of other research institutes, not of assertion vehicles.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / no data. There is only one assignment in the chain, so the "recurrence" test cannot be run at all, and I could not retrieve the correspondent name for reel 039540/0668 in this session. I am explicitly declining to name a correspondent rather than infer one. One appearance would not be a finding anyway under the stated rule — recurrence is the signal, and recurrence is absent by construction.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Zero post-issuance assignments. There is exactly one recorded transfer (2016) in the patent's ~12-year life; no chained LLCs, no shared correspondent addresses, no <24-month cascade.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No infringement suit naming US 10,119,860 has been found (consistent with the prior litigation section of this analysis). With no suit, there is no 6-month pre-suit assignment window to test; the only transfer predates issuance by more than two years.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding involving SIMIT/CAS; the institute is active and paying maintenance fees (4th yr 2022, 8th yr 2026). China's CAS institutes are state-funded and are not subject to the Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid-style asset-sale scenario.

7. Privateering — Not present. No transfer from an operating company to an NPE asserting on the operating company's behalf. The patent never left its original government-research owner, and no enforcement action exists for a proxy to run.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present (and not applicable). No transfer to RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent is simply retained by its originator, which is a different (and milder) form of non-assertion than neutralization-by-aggregator.

Summary of signals: 0 present, 0 unclear-with-evidence, 7 clearly not present, 1 (correspondent recurrence) unverifiable because the sample size is one.

Verdict

Insufficient data — under the prescribed taxonomy, because this chain consists of only the original assignment (reel 039540/0668, executed 2016-08-18, recorded 2016-08-25) and nothing else.

Justification: the record contains a single inventor→employer assignment to a state research institute, no post-issuance transfers, no security interests, no licenses, and no enforcement activity — all eight NPE signals are not present or (for correspondent recurrence) untestable, and the assignee is not on any public asserter list. Substantively, the affirmative evidence points to a non-asserting academic/government owner, not an NPE; the "Insufficient data" label reflects the rubric's explicit definition (no records, or only the original assignment) rather than genuine doubt about the owner's character. The one gap I could not close — and the one item worth a five-minute manual check at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — is the correspondent of record on reel 039540/0668, which I did not retrieve and will not fabricate.

I'll research the specific prior-art references cited against US 10,119,860. Let me search for details on each.

Let me gather details on the remaining cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 10,119,860 B2

Builds on the verified bibliographic record and claim constructions already produced; not repeated here. This section addresses the prior art specifically.

Scope and legal framework

US 10,119,860 has an effective filing date of 2014-02-26 (CN priority) / 2014-04-30 (PCT/CN2014/076639). Because both dates fall after 2013-03-16, the AIA version of 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs:

• § 102(a)(1) — reference "patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use, on sale… before the effective filing date."
• § 102(a)(2) — a U.S. patent or published application with an earlier effective filing date (the AIA successor to pre-AIA § 102(e)).

Threshold point that governs the analysis below: five of the six cited references threw off publications before 2014-02-26 and therefore qualify under § 102(a)(1). The sixth (US 2014/0103904 A1, issued as US 8,749,225 B2) published 2014-04-17 and issued 2014-06-10 — after the priority date — so it is not § 102(a)(1) art. It qualifies only as § 102(a)(2) art, because its effective filing date (PCT/CN2011/079039, filed 2011-08-29) predates 2014-02-26.

Caveat on terminology: the question asks what each reference "potentially anticipates under § 102." Anticipation requires every element of a claim in a single reference. As shown below, none of the cited references is a single-reference anticipation of independent claim 1 or claim 6. Their real force is under § 103. I flag this rather than force an anticipation theory.

The six cited references — citation, dates, content, claim mapping

1. US 2014/0103904 A1 (Tan, Zhiyong et al.) — also issued as US 8,749,225 B2

• Full citation: US 2014/0103904 A1, "Apparatus and Method of Power Measurement for Pulsed Terahertz Quantum-Cascade Laser"; priority 2011-05-30; PCT/CN2011/079039 filed 2011-08-29; published 2014-04-17; granted as US 8,749,225 B2 on 2014-06-10. Assignee: Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology of CAS.
• Description: A power-measurement apparatus/method for a pulsed THz quantum-cascade laser. It uses: a pulse power supply driving the THz QCL; polyethylene windows on both cold heads; two off-axis parabolic mirrors forming the light path; a THz quantum well detector producing a current signal; a signal-processing circuit that extracts the current as a voltage and amplifies it; and an oscilloscope to read/display the voltage amplitude. The detector's known responsivity at the lasing frequency is used to derive the laser's output power.
• § 102 status: § 102(a)(2) only (published after the priority date; earlier effective filing date).
• Claim mapping: This is the single most material reference, because it shares the same inventors, the same assignee, and essentially the entire optical/detection front-end of the patent. It discloses the elements of claim 1 corresponding to (a) driving power supply (pulse supply), (b) THz laser source, (c) the optic (off-axis parabolic mirrors), (f) the current amplifier analogue (signal-processing circuit extracting current as voltage), and (g) the oscilloscope. It also discloses the subject matter of claim 4 (pulse signal generator) and largely claim 2 (THz QCL). However, it lacks the two elements the patent rests its novelty on — the terahertz array detector (claim 1 element "cross-sectional shape") and the terahertz dynamometer (claim 1 element "total power"). It therefore does not anticipate claim 1, but is a strong § 103 primary reference against claim 1 (combined with an array detector/dynamometer reference such as item 3 or 6) and against claim 6, whose steps S1–S2/S5 and the responsivity relation of S7 it substantially mirrors.

2. CN 102323040 A (Tan, Zhiyong; Cao, Juncheng; Han, Yingjun; Chen, Zhen)

• Full citation: CN 102323040 A, "Power measuring device and method for pulse ejection tera-hertz quantum cascade laser" (脉冲激射型太赫兹量子级联激光器的功率测量装置及方法); App. No. CN201110142266.6; filed 2011-05-30; published 2012-01-18. Assignee: Shanghai Institute of Microsystem and Information Technology of CAS.
• Description: The Chinese parent of item 1 — same disclosure: light-source portion (pulse supply + THz QCL + polyethylene window), light-path portion (two off-axis parabolic mirrors), detection portion (THz QW detector + signal-processing circuit + oscilloscope); responsivity of the detector at the lasing frequency converts measured voltage amplitude into laser pulse power.
• § 102 status: § 102(a)(1) printed publication (2012-01-18 < 2014-02-26).
• Claim mapping: Same element coverage as item 1. Discloses subject matter of claim 4 (pulse power supply → pulse signal generator). Contributes S1, S2 (optic adjustment) and S5-type measurement of the detector response, but not S3 (array-detector spot shape/area S′), not S4 (dynamometer total power P′), not S6 (P = αP′S″/S′), and not S8 (normalized-spectrum scaling). No § 102 anticipation of claim 1 or 6; strong § 103 art.

3. JP 2003075251 A (Communication Research Laboratory)

• Full citation: JP 2003075251 A, "Method and apparatus for detecting terahertz light, etc., and terahertz light apparatus and imaging apparatus using the same"; priority 2001-09-06; published 2003-03-12.
• Description: THz-light detection with high S/N by modulating/chopping and using lock-in detection; irradiates a THz detector with probe pulses both while THz light is incident and while it is not, and forms a detection signal from the difference of the integrated pulse electrical signals — i.e., subtracting the background/offset component. Uses lock-in detection synchronized to the modulation frequency.
• § 102 status: § 102(a)(1) printed publication (2003).
• Claim mapping: Relevant only to the background/periodic-modulation rationale — the patent's stated benefit of "locking-in the periodicity of the photosource by periodic sampling of the oscilloscope" to reject ambient IR/visible light. Because claim 6 achieves this through the square-wave drive + oscilloscope external trigger (S1, S5) rather than lock-in/probe-pulse difference integration, JP2003075251 does not disclose those steps. No anticipation of any claim; at most a § 103 secondary reference on the general concept of synchronous/background-rejecting detection.

4. US 2013/0266034 A1 (President and Fellows of Harvard College)

• Full citation: US 2013/0266034 A1, "Methods and apparatuses for engineering electromagnetic radiation"; priority 2010-05-07; published 2013-10-10.
• Description: Engineering mid-IR/far-IR (THz) emission, including quantum cascade lasers with a collimating element (grooved/indented surface-plasmon structures) disposed adjacent the laser waveguide to produce a low-divergence, collimated beam; mentions QCLs for chemical/biological sensing. Concerns source-side beam-shaping, not detector-responsivity calibration.
• § 102 status: § 102(a)(1) printed publication (2013-10-10 < 2014-02-26).
• Claim mapping: Relates only to the general "optics for shaping/converging THz laser" environment and QCL sources. It discloses none of claims 1, 6–8 (no driving power supply, no array detector, no dynamometer, no current-amplifier/oscilloscope calibration loop, no α·P′·S″/S′ or normalized-spectrum scaling). No anticipation; marginal background art.

5. US 8,208,505 B2 (Board of Trustees of Michigan State University)

• Full citation: US 8208505 B2, "Laser system employing harmonic generation"; priority 2001-01-30; granted 2012-06-26 (also published as WO 2008/063602 A3).
• Description: A pulsed laser system with harmonic generation — a laser emitting a pulse, a gaseous optical medium generating third-or-greater harmonics, and a controller that characterizes and compensates for distortions; cascaded harmonic generation; pulse/beam characterization and feedback.
• § 102 status: § 102(a)(1) printed publication/grant (2012-06-26).
• Claim mapping: This is general femtosecond/ultrafast laser harmonic-generation and control art. It discloses no THz quantum-well detector, no calibration apparatus or method, and none of the elements of claims 1, 6–8. Included in the IDS as generic laser-system/formula background; no anticipation of any claim. Its only conceivable role would be a § 103 reference for "driving a laser with a periodic/pulsed signal," which items 1–2 already supply far more directly.

6. CN 102721468 A (Xi'an University of Technology)

• Full citation: CN 102721468 A, "Terahertz wave detector" (太赫兹波探测器); filed 2012-06-26; published 2012-10-10.
• Description: A terahertz-wave detector (device-level THz detection). (The full text was not retrievable in this session — see caveat below.)
• § 102 status: § 102(a)(1) printed publication (2012-10-10).
• Claim mapping: On the retrievable record, it is a THz detector device, not a calibration apparatus/method. It does not disclose the array-detector-plus-dynamometer power characterization, the current-amplifier/oscilloscope measurement chain, or the S6/S7/S8 computations. No anticipation; potential § 103 background on THz detection generally. I could not confirm its full disclosure from an authoritative source in this session and am not asserting element-level coverage.

Non-patent literature (NPL)

• Full citation: Zhang Pei, "Research on Spectral Response Testing System for QWIP," Information Science and Technology, 1135-29, ISSN 1674-0246, pp. 49–55.
• Description: Testing system for the spectral response of a quantum-well infrared photodetector (QWIP) — the closest device-class art to the patent's "terahertz quantum well detector" and to the paper's own field of spectral-response/responsivity measurement.
• § 102 status: § 102(a)(1) printed publication (pre-2014).
• Claim mapping: Establishes the general state of the art for QWIP spectral-response/responsivity testing, which is the problem the patent addresses. It is background; I have not obtained the full text and therefore do not assert it discloses claims 1 or 6–8.

Assessment: strongest and weakest art

Bottom line on § 102: On the record available, no cited reference anticipates any claim of US 10,119,860. The independent claims were allowed over this art because items 1–2 lack the terahertz array detector (cross-sectional spot-shape measurement, S3) and the terahertz dynamometer (total spot power P′, S4), and because items 3–6 lack the calibration computation chain (S6 P = αP′S″/S′, S7 R_f = G·U_max/P, S8 R_max = R_f·(1/a), R_j = R_f·(b/a)). The realistic invalidity theory is § 103, using US 2014/0103904 A1 or CN 102323040 A as the base (same inventors/assignee, near-identical optical and detection architecture) combined with an array-detector/dynamometer beam-profiling reference. Note that the same-inventor/same-assignee overlap in items 1–2 also raises § 102(b)(2)(C) / common-ownership and § 103(c) considerations that would need to be resolved before reliance on those references for obviousness.

Related reference that is NOT prior art (flagged for completeness)

CN 103983293 B — "THz photodetector absolute spectral response rate calibrating installation and method," assignee 中国电子科技集团公司第四十一研究所 (41st Research Institute of CETC), published 2016-09-07 (priority 2014-05-15). This cites US 10,119,860's family and is a follow-on publication dated after the 2014-02-26 priority date. Under the AIA it is not § 102 prior art to this patent; it is relevant only as evidence of the field's later development.

Search verification note

The patent number 10,119,860 was confirmed against Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10119860/en), uspto.report (https://uspto.report/patent/grant/10,119,860), and patentleaderboard (https://www.patentleaderboard.com/patent/10119860) — matching title, inventors (Tan Zhiyong; Cao Juncheng; Gu Li; Zhu Yonghao), assignee, and the six-reference IDS reproduced above. Per the strict-ID rule, all identifiers (US 8,208,505 B2; JP 2003075251 A; US 2013/0266034 A1; CN 102323040 A; US 2014/0103904 A1 / US 8,749,225 B2; CN 102721468 A; CN 201410066672.2; app. 15/121,520) are reported literally and were not normalized to any similar number.

Material limitation on this analysis: the full text of CN 102721468 A and of the Zhang Pei NPL could not be retrieved in this session; their claim-level coverage is therefore characterized from title/abstract/field only and should be verified against the originals before being relied on for any invalidity contention. The claim-mapping for all six references reflects the disclosure as retrieved, not a full-element charting of every embodiment.

I'll verify the substance of the prior-art references listed on the patent page before building the § 103 analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,119,860 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Note on contradictions / provenance. The system header states today is 2026-09-29; this task states April 26, 2026. I flag the discrepancy rather than silently picking one. Also, the search I ran for US 2013/0266034 A1 (Harvard) was cut off by a step limit, so I have not verified its disclosure and do not rely on it below. Everything else is grounded in the references named in the Prior Art section of the patent page plus corroborating full-text retrievals identified during verification (URLs cited inline).

1. Framework and assumptions

• Governing law: Effective filing date is 2014-02-26 (CN 201410066672.2 priority), i.e., after 2013-03-16 — AIA 35 U.S.C. §§ 102/103 apply.
• PHOSITA: A terahertz-instrumentation engineer/physicist (M.S./Ph.D. + 2–3 years) with routine experience in: pulsed THz QCL operation, cryogenic THz quantum-well photodetector (QWP) characterization, Fourier-transform/spectral response measurements, beam profiling, transimpedance amplification, and oscilloscope/lock-in synchronous detection.
• Graham factors applied: (1) scope and content of the prior art; (2) differences between the art and the claims; (3) level of ordinary skill; (4) secondary considerations. Under KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007), the motivation to combine may come from the design incentives, known needs, and market forces in the field, from the predictable use of prior-art elements according to their established functions, or from the fact that the solution was "obvious to try" within a finite, identified set.
• One structural observation that drives this whole analysis: the Background of the patent itself concedes that (a) the conventional blackbody/chopper/lock-in method is prior art, (b) THz QCLs have MHz-class linewidths and "may be approximately deemed as a single frequency laser source," and (c) "both the carbon dioxide gas laser and the terahertz quantum cascade laser are available to be considered as a calibration source for the absolute responsivity of the terahertz quantum well detector." That is an applicant admission of both the problem and the solution route.

2. Prior-art inventory and § 102 qualification

Supplementary (found during verification, not on the page's prior-art list, same lab as the patent): WO 2013/053168 A1 (PCT/CN2011/082512) (PDF) discloses a THz QCL + THz QWP system with a driving power supply, off-axis mirrors, a polyethylene window whose transmittance is stated at the laser frequency ("透过率=75% @ 4.13 THz," "透过率=56%"), and a normalized overlay of the QCL emission spectrum and the QWP photoresponse spectrum ("归一化幅度的67%"), plus a laser-drive-signal vs. detector-response waveform. This is essentially the patent's FIG. 3 and FIG. 5 content, published before the priority date, by the same institution. I flag it as corroborative of the level of ordinary skill, since the task directs me to the page's prior-art section.

3. Claim 1 (and claims 2–5): device claim

3.1 Element-by-element mapping — CN 102323040 A as primary, with JP'251 and CN'468

3.2 Motivation to combine

1. Predictable use of known elements (KSR prong 1). Every element is a known laboratory instrument (pulse generator, QCL, mirrors/lenses, beam profiler, power meter, transimpedance amplifier, oscilloscope) deployed according to its established function. The combination performs no function beyond the sum of the parts — the claims recite no new physical interaction.
2. Known need / design incentive (KSR prong 2). To derive responsivity you must know the power actually intercepted by a finite-area detector. CN'040 measures total power reaching the sensitive surface but never quantifies the focused spot, so the intercepted fraction is unmodelled. A beam-profiling array placed at the focus and a power meter placed at the focus are the two canonical, off-the-shelf answers to that need.
3. Finite, identified solution set / obvious to try (KSR prong 3). For spot characterization in the THz band there were essentially two practical options: scanned point detector or focal-plane array. Choosing the array (JP'251 discloses a THz imaging apparatus) is not inventive.
4. Express suggestion in the art. CN'040 uses the very detector under calibration (THz QWP) together with a single-frequency pulsed QCL, and computes the laser power from "the responsivity of the QWP at the lasing frequency." That is a direct teaching that the QWP's responsivity at a laser line is the quantity of interest — i.e., a suggestion to do what claim 6 does.
5. Synchronous-reference motivation. JP'251 and CN'468 teach that the modulation signal should serve as the readout reference precisely to reject background and drift. The benefit recited in the patent ("avoid the random perturbed influence of infrared light and visible light in the environment") is the expected consequence of that teaching, not an unexpected result.

Conclusion (Grounds 1–2 for claims 1–5): Claim 1 is obvious over CN 102323040 A in view of JP 2003-075251 A and CN 102721468 A, with THz power meters and THz beam-profiling arrays as evidence of ordinary skill. Where the USPTO prefers a US-issued primary reference, US 8,749,225 B2 / US 2014/0103904 A1 may be substituted for CN'040, subject to the § 102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership caveat.

3.3 Dependent claims 2–5

4. Claims 6–8: method claims

4.1 Step-by-step mapping

4.2 Motivation to combine (articulated, KSR-compliant)

1. Applicant's own admission supplies the motivation. The Background identifies the exact problem (IR/visible stray light; multiple water-vapor absorption lines requiring integral-differential correction; Dewar-window spectral integration) and then states that QCLs and CO₂ lasers "are available to be considered as a calibration source." A reference need not supply a motivation that the applicant has already conceded.
2. Known technique, finite alternatives. Absolute calibration of a narrow-band photodetector by (i) a calibrated broadband source + spectral weighting, or (ii) a monochromatic laser line, were the two recognized routes. Zhang Pei teaches route (i) for QWIP; CN'040 supplies the pulsed-QCL infrastructure for route (ii). Combining a single-frequency line with the known relative-spectrum scaling to reach the peak is a predictable use of known techniques.
3. The array + power-meter pairing solves a recognized deficiency of the closest art. CN'040 knows the total power reaching the detector but not the intercepted fraction; the S″/S′ truncation ratio is the obvious, known radiometric correction once a profiler is available.
4. Efficiency/accuracy advantages are results-effective, not unexpected. Simplifying a spectral integral to a scalar (single-frequency source) and reading a pulse amplitude directly rather than integrating (CN'040's own stated advantage: avoiding "积分估算" of thermal detectors) are expected consequences of the chosen instruments.

Conclusion (Ground 3 for claims 6–8): Claims 6–8 are obvious over CN 102323040 A in view of Zhang Pei (2011) and JP 2003-075251 A, and further in view of CN 102721468 A for the reference-trigger limitation. An equally viable alternative ground substitutes US 8,749,225 B2 / US 2014/0103904 A1 for CN'040 (subject to § 102(b)(2)(C)).

5. Where the obviousness case is strong vs. weak

Strongest links.

• CN'040 is near-anticipatory for the architecture. Same institution, same inventor group, same THz QWP, same pulsed single-frequency QCL, same "current → amplified voltage → oscilloscope" chain, same reliance on the QWP's responsivity at the lasing frequency, same peak-vs-average pulse-power awareness, same polyethylene windows. Sections S1, S2, S5 (largely), and S7's concept are effectively disclosed.
• S8 and claim 8 are strong: the relative-spectrum normalization (Zhang Pei) and the duty-cycle peak conversion (CN'040's own pulse-power discussion) are squarely in the art.
• The applicant's own Background does much of the motivation work.

Weakest links / where a rebuttal would concentrate.

• The "terahertz array detector for measuring cross-sectional shape" (claim 1(d)). No reference on the page expressly recites a THz focal-plane array used as a beam profiler at the focus of a calibration bench. This element depends on JP'251's imaging apparatus plus ordinary-skill beam profiling — defensible under KSR, but it is the element most likely to be contested.
• The S6 S″/S′ overlap-area formalism. I did not find this specific expression in any verified reference; the obviousness case rests on it being elementary radiometry. If the applicant argued that the combination of (spot shape) + (total power) + (overlap ratio) yields a synergistic result, the counter is that the result is the arithmetic product of two independent measurements.
• "Reducing water-vapor absorption" rationale. The patent asserts that the array + dynamometer combination "further reduce[s] the influence of water vapor absorption." Technically this is dubious — a power meter placed at the same focus measures the beam after the same water-vapor path. This is a weakness in the specification's own rationale and undercuts any attempt to show an unexpected result from that combination.
• Common-ownership trap. Reliance on US 2014/0103904 A1 / US 8,749,225 B2 is exposed to AIA § 102(b)(2)(C), because the inventors (Tan Zhiyong, Cao Juncheng, Gu Li, Zhu Yonghao / Han Yingjun, Chen Zhen) and assignee (SIMIT) overlap with the patent. CN 102323040 A, published 2012-01-18, avoids this entirely and should be the primary reference.

6. Secondary considerations

No evidence of record (in the material reviewed) of unexpected results, long-felt unmet need, industry praise, licensing, or commercial success with nexus to the claimed combination. The asserted benefits — simpler process, smaller error, higher accuracy/efficiency, applicability to any detectable frequency — are the predictable consequences of (i) substituting a known single-frequency laser for a blackbody and (ii) using a known power meter plus a known beam profiler. Under KSR, "a result-effective variable change" and "the mere application of a known technique to a known device ready for improvement" do not overcome a prima facie case. The asserted "wide applicability" and "high industrial utility value" are conclusory and carry no evidentiary weight for § 103.

7. Bottom line

The patent is, in substance, a new arrangement of known metrology instruments and known radiometric arithmetic, applied to a measurement problem whose solution path the applicant's own specification admits. The strongest invalidity position targets claims 6–8 with CN 102323040 A + Zhang Pei (2011), and claim 1 with CN 102323040 A + JP 2003-075251 A + CN 102721468 A, keeping US 8,749,225 B2 in reserve as a US-issued mirror of CN'040.

Verification caveats, stated plainly: I read the full text of CN'040 (abstract + claim 1), JP'251 (abstract + description excerpt), CN'468 (abstract + claims), and the Zhang Pei abstract; for the remaining page-listed references I relied on title/date metadata only. I could not verify US 2013/0266034 A1. Absence of an express disclosure of the S″/S′ formula and of a THz array used specifically as a beam profiler is the principal evidentiary gap, and should be closed with full-text review of JP'251 and of the THz beam-profiling literature before filing any § 103 rejection.