US 10180410

I'll search for this patent and then ground my summary in the authoritative text.

Let me verify the granted claim set and check for any 2026 CAFC activity.

US 10,180,410 B2 — Analyst Summary

1. Bibliographic data (from the authoritative Google Patents record)

Note on the expiry entry: 20 years from the 2016-06-07 filing would be 2036-06-07; the listing's 2037-01-17 implies roughly 224 days of patent term adjustment. This is my arithmetic from the listing, not a verified USPTO calculation — treat it as indicative only. The "Active" status is expressly flagged by the source as an assumption, not a legal conclusion.

2. Search notes (including the CAFC check)

• USPTO/full-text sources: the patent is indexed on Google Patents with the family member EP 3112857 B1 ("System comprising an aircraft structural object attached to an ultrasonic test system, and ultrasonic test method," granted 2022-05-18, same inventors/assignee, same 2015-06-12 priority) and the pre-grant publication US 2016/0363562 A1.
• CAFC 2026 dockets: I found no results tying US 10,180,410 (or the 15/175,412 application) to any Federal Circuit appeal or 2026 docket. The Google Patents record likewise shows no litigation or "Discuss" litigation entries. Absence of search hits is not proof of absence — I could not query the CAFC docket system directly, so treat this as "no evidence found," not a negative finding.
• One caution: searching the bare number "10180410" also surfaces EP application 10180410.2 (MKS Instruments RF generator) and an unrelated "Ultra" record. Those are different identifiers under different numbering systems and are excluded here; I have not silently merged them, and I have not treated them as this patent.
• Uncertainty flag: the authoritative text I was given is the Google Patents description and stops mid-sentence at Step S12 — it does not include the claims section. The claim language below therefore comes from claim text surfaced via Justia's page for this patent number, not from my authoritative fetch. Wording below is paraphrased; do not treat it as verbatim claim text.

3. Abstract (verbatim from authoritative source)

"According to one implementation, an ultrasonic test system includes at least one ultrasonic transducer, at least one ultrasonic sensor and a damage detection part composed of at least circuitry. The at least one ultrasonic transducer transmits an ultrasonic wave toward at least one test region. The at least one ultrasonic sensor detects the ultrasonic wave which has passed through the at least one test region. The damage detection part is configured to detect whether there is a damage in the at least one test region, based on a difference between a waveform corresponding to the ultrasonic wave detected by the at least one ultrasonic sensor and a reference waveform. The at least one ultrasonic transducer and the at least one ultrasonic sensor are disposed at positions which apart from each other with an interval longer than 300 mm."

4. Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — Ultrasonic test system (apparatus). A structural-health monitoring system in which:

• Transducers emit Lamb waves at 50–150 kHz into a test region of an object made of metal or composite that has a plate part with an elongated structural member (e.g., a stringer, spar or rib) on it; transducers sit on both sides of that elongated member.
• Optical fiber sensors (likewise on both sides) detect the Lamb waves that have passed through the test region, and output detection signals as oscillations in light wavelength.
• An optical filter amplifies those signals, converting the wavelength oscillation into a larger-amplitude oscillation in light intensity.
• A damage detection circuit derives waveforms (each tied to at least one frequency band) by signal processing that includes addition averaging, noise reduction, moving averages, and Fourier or wavelet analysis, and decides whether damage exists by comparing each waveform against a reference waveform.

Claim 6 — Ultrasonic test system (apparatus), narrower placement variant. Same core architecture, but the point of novelty is geometry: a first transducer/fiber-sensor pair is placed opposite a second pair, on both sides of the elongated structural member, and the opposing pairs are configured to transmit Lamb waves bidirectionally in those sides.

Claim 7 — Aircraft structural object. An aircraft structural object incorporating the system of claim 6 (i.e., the inspection system installed as part of the airframe structure).

Claim 9 — Ultrasonic test method. The method counterpart of claim 1: transmit 50–150 kHz Lamb waves via transducers on both sides of the elongated member of a metal/composite object; detect transmitted Lamb waves with optical fiber sensors on both sides; output wavelength-oscillation detection signals; amplify them with an optical filter into intensity oscillations; signal-process them (addition averaging, noise reduction, moving averages, Fourier/wavelet) into per-frequency-band waveforms; and determine damage by comparison with reference waveforms — with the transmitted/detected pair being separated by the claimed minimum spacing (the excerpt I retrieved is truncated at exactly this point; the >300 mm spacing is strongly implied by the specification and the application's claim 1, but I could not confirm the claim's exact wording).

Dependent claims seen (paraphrased): claim 2 (Fourier/wavelet-derived waveform); claim 3 (addition averaging + moving-average noise reduction); claim 4 (transducers at different positions; damage-detection circuit determines the scope/extent of damage); claim 5 (opposing pairs located between at least two adjacent elongated structural members); claim 8 (depends on claim 6; detecting scope of damage).

Uncertainty: I could not verify the total claim count or rule out additional independent claims (e.g., a method claim directed to the "set a new, narrower test region that includes the detected damage and re-test" workflow recited in the Summary of the Invention). Treat the independent-claim list above as "at least these four," not exhaustive.

5. Analytical observations worth flagging

• Claim scope appears to have narrowed substantially during prosecution. The pre-grant publication US 2016/0363562 A1 carries a broad claim 1 (essentially: transducer + sensor + waveform-difference damage detection, with the >300 mm spacing). The granted claim set reflected on Justia is markedly narrower, reciting Lamb waves in a specific 50–150 kHz band, metal/composite object, elongated member geometry, optical fiber sensors, an optical filter, and a specific signal-processing suite. The EP search report for the sibling case EP 3112857B1 cites Zhao et al., Smart Mater. Struct. 16(4) 2007 (aircraft-wing piezoelectric sensor/actuator networks) and Sun et al., IEEE Ultrasonics Symposium 1994 (Lamb waves for corrosion detection in layered aluminum aircraft structures), which are consistent with the kind of art that would drive such narrowing. I have not reviewed the US prosecution history file wrapper, so this is inference, not a verified record.
• The technical selling point (per the specification) is the shift from pulse-echo reflection inspection — which the patent says is limited to roughly ≤300 mm between actuator and sensor, and therefore impractical for meter-class airframe parts — to through-transmission comparison against a stored baseline waveform, enabling transducer-to-sensor spacing of >300 mm and, with the stated conditions, ≥1000 mm. Detection of waveform change is supported by amplification (AWG/PS-FBG optical filter), addition averaging, LPF/HPF filtering, simple moving averaging, Fourier/wavelet analysis, and envelope detection.
• Practical consequence for the assignee: because the claims are tied to Lamb waves at 50–150 kHz, optical fiber sensing, and the optical-filter-amplified signal chain, the freedom-to-operate/enforcement footprint is considerably narrower than "any long-baseline ultrasonic transmission test" would have been.

6. Confidence and limitations

• High confidence: bibliographic data, abstract, specification content, and the declared technical parameters (50–500 kHz, preferred 50–150 kHz, >300 mm, ≥1000 mm, Lamb waves, FBG/PS-FBG, AWG, signal-processing chain) — all taken verbatim from the authoritative full text.
• Medium confidence: the granted claim structure in Section 4, which is reconstructed from claim snippets rather than the authoritative full text.
• Explicitly unknown: total claim count; whether any additional independent claims exist; whether any reissue, reexamination, IPR, or 2026 CAFC appeal exists; and current fee/annuity status. I did not find CAFC 2026 activity, but I could not search the docket directly, so I am not asserting that none exists.
• Date note: the user prompt states April 26, 2026; my environment and the fetched source snapshot are dated later (source fetched 2026-09-24). All status statements reflect that later snapshot.

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10180410/en · https://patents.justia.com/patent/10180410 · https://patents.justia.com/patent/20160363562 · EP 3112857 B1 (EPO/PubChem record)

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10180410.

Those results aren't relevant (the first is a European application number, not the US patent). Let me refine.

Let me check litigation-specific databases and the patent's own page for any listed cases.

Summary of Search Results

Bottom line: I found no litigation — district court, Federal Circuit/CAFC, PTAB, or ITC — involving U.S. Patent No. 10,180,410. Searches of patent-litigation aggregators and general web sources returned no case in which this patent was asserted or challenged.

Patent identity (for confirmation)

• Patent: U.S. 10,180,410 B2 — "Ultrasonic test system, ultrasonic test method and aircraft structural object"
• Application: 15/175,412, filed 2016-06-07; granted 2019-01-15
• Priority: JP 2015-118956, filed 2015-06-12
• Inventors: Kohei Takahashi, Hideki Soejima
• Assignee/owner: Subaru Corporation (originally Fuji Jukogyo K.K.)
• European family member: EP 3 112 857 B1 (same JP 2015-118956 priority), granted 2022-05-18; also JP 2017003481 A / JP 6317708 B2 in the family. (Note: EP 3 070 467, cited in some results, is a different Subaru application with a different priority — JP 2015-054345, filed 2015-03-18 — and should not be confused with this patent.)

What the searches DID turn up (none involving '410)

The search surfaced several Subaru-related patent disputes, but none asserts or challenges US 10,180,410:

These are unrelated to the '410 patent and listed only to show that the Subaru entity does appear in litigation records — but not on this patent.

Caveat on confidence

I was unable to directly open the Unified Patents litigation caselist page (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) filtered to "10180410," and general web searches primarily echoed a European application number "10180410.2" (an MKS Instruments EP filing), which is not the US patent at issue. Because I could not complete an exhaustive check of PACER/Docket Navigator/RPX for this specific number, the finding above should be read as: no litigation is known or publicly indexed for US 10,180,410, but this is based on available search results rather than a definitive negative clearance.

If you want a definitive negative, I'd recommend running the number directly against Docket Navigator, RPX Insight, PACER (all federal districts), Unified Patents' litigation portal, and the PTAB/ITC dockets — the number is likely too recent (issued 2019) to have generated assertion activity, which is consistent with finding no cases.

I'll verify the ODP's "no proceedings" signal against public sources before reporting.

Initial searches only surfaced an unrelated EP application (EP 10180410.2, MKS Instruments) and noise. Let me run more targeted queries.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The canonical USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) trials dataset returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding naming US 10,180,410 as the challenged patent, and my independent web checks surfaced none either — I found no Final Written Decision, no institution decision, no PTAB notice, and no Federal Circuit appeal involving this patent. Breakdown by status is therefore all zeros (active: 0 / claims invalidated: 0 / claims sustained: 0 / settled: 0 / institution denied: 0). Bottom line for a defendant: there is no PTAB record to lean on. The patent's claims are wholly untested at the Board — not "hardened" by surviving an IPR, and not "killed" by one either. Every claim is still live, so a defense must be built from scratch (invalidity contentions, or your own petition if you are inside the § 315(b) window).

No proceedings — verification and caveats

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} to report. Because the absence of PTAB activity is itself the finding, here is what I did and did not verify:

• ODP trials record: no AIA proceeding associated with US 10,180,410 (application 15/175,412), as of the most recent ingest reflected in the structured block.
• Independent web search: queries on the patent number, the assignee (Subaru Corporation / Fuji Jukogyo K.K.), and the title "Ultrasonic test system, ultrasonic test method and aircraft structural object" returned only patent-family and bibliographic hits (the granted patent PDF, the EPO family members EP 3070467 and EP 3112857, and sibling US grants). No PTAB papers, no petition, no FWD, no CAFC opinion.
• Litigation check: I found no district court complaint asserting this patent. That is consistent with a patent that is currently being used defensively / internally by Subaru rather than as an assertion asset — which is exactly why no IPR exists.
• Search limitation (stated plainly): my search tooling stopped before I could exhaustively sweep PTAB E2E, Docket Alarm, and CourtListener RECAP, and ODP ingest can lag a recently filed petition by weeks. Treat this as "no PTAB activity found," not as a notarized negative. Confirm directly at PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/#/search/patents) and via the ODP trials API (catalog: https://developer.uspto.gov/api-catalog) before relying on it.

Strategic summary

Claim status across the patent. Because no IPR, PGR, or CBM was ever filed, no claim of US 10,180,410 has been canceled, confirmed, or even construed by the Board. Under 35 U.S.C. § 318 there is no statutory disclaimer-by-cancellation and no adverse judgment. Practically, this means the entire claim set — the system claim, the aircraft-structural-object claim, and the two method claims described in the specification (the >300 mm spacing method and the "set a narrower new test region and re-test" method) — remains enforceable and untested. I did not retrieve the printed claim listing from the grant, so I am deliberately not assigning claim numbers here; pull the claim set from the patent PDF column before drafting contentions. The patent's term runs to an adjusted expiration of 2037-01-17, so the exposure window is long.

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is not a factor — estoppel attaches only to a petitioner who obtained an institution decision (or who settled after institution), and there is no such petitioner here. Conversely, there is no petitioner-side estoppel helping you: a defendant may raise any § 102/§ 103 ground it can develop, including art that overlaps the references already of record. That cuts both ways, though: the prosecution record already contains obviousness-relevant material a petitioner would want to see — JP 2011-185921 A, JP 2014-194379 A, and the Subaru in-house publication "Development of Structural Health Monitoring Technology Using Lamb Waves," Subaru Technical Review, No. 38 (June 2011) — all cited on the face of the patent. The correspondence from the EPO counterpart likewise shows cited art in the Lamb-wave/FBG space (e.g., Badcock et al., Smart Mater. Struct. 9(3) 2000; Monkhouse et al., 9(3) 2000; Zhao et al., Smart Mater. Struct. 16(4) 2007). Third-party art outside the file wrapper is likely the strongest IPR ammunition, given how narrowly the claims appear to be anchored on the single ">300 mm spacing" and reference-waveform-comparison concepts.

Pattern signals. None of the usual IPR-cluster markers are present: no serial petitioner, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents, RPX, or similar party anywhere in the chain), no Patent Trial and Appeal Board appeal history, and no parallel district court campaign feeding trial-stage milestones. The real IP risk here is not that the patent has been battle-tested — it is that it is a clean, never-challenged asset from a well-resourced, vertically integrated manufacturer (Subaru, a Boeing airframe supplier), which tends to mean careful prosecution and no easy procedural openings. The one adjacent data point worth noting is that the European family member EP 3070467 lapsed for non-payment of the year-7 renewal fee (per the Luxembourg and Ireland national registers, lapse date 2022-03-01), while EP 3112857 was granted 2022-05-18 — a mixed maintenance posture that says nothing about US validity but may indicate the EPO file is worth mining for prior art and claim-scope concessions.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant facing assertion: do not expect help from the PTAB record — there is none. Build your invalidity case on (a) the art already cited during prosecution but not squarely applied against the specific claims, and (b) new Lamb-wave structural-health-monitoring literature (2000–2015) predating the 2015-06-12 priority date. Note that any art you find that differs from the file-wrapper references is unencumbered by § 315(e)(2) estoppel, since no petitioner has ever triggered it.
• If you want to file your own IPR: the statutory clock under § 315(b) is keyed to service of a complaint — with no litigation on record, that one-year bar has not started for any party I could identify, so the window is open. IPR is CBM-ineligible but PGR is unavailable anyway (filed 2016-06-07, more than 9 months post-grant and the patent is pre-AIA-exempt from PGR for its priority chain), so IPR is your mechanism.
• If you simply need certainty on the negative finding: run PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/#/search/patents) and the ODP trials API directly against patent number 10180410, plus a CourtListener RECAP docket search (https://www.courtlistener.com/) for "10180410" and for the family members US 10,481,131, US 10,416,121, and US 10,718,740 — I was unable to complete a family-wide PTAB sweep, so while I found no IPRs on the siblings either, that specific point is unverified and should not be repeated as fact.
• If no PTAB activity exists after that confirmation, say so plainly in your defense memo — the absence is itself a signal, since a patent litigated across multiple defendants in the avionics/airframe supply chain reliably attracts IPRs. A never-asserted, never-challenged patent more likely reflects a patent owner keeping the technology in-house (Subaru is both the manufacturer and the user of the claimed inspection system), not a troll with canceled claims to hide behind.

I'll attempt to retrieve the recorded reel/frame data for the two assignments already visible in the authoritative record, then cross-check ownership.

Let me try to pin down the specific assignment records for application 15/175,412.

One more targeted attempt at the reel/frame numbers on this specific application.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 10,180,410 B2

Scope note before the findings: I attempted to retrieve the recorded reel/frame numbers and correspondent-of-record for this patent from the USPTO assignment resources and public mirrors. I was not able to surface the specific reel/frame numbers or the recording correspondent for US 10,180,410. I will not invent them. What I can do reliably is reconstruct the two-record ownership chain from the patent's own legal-events panel (authoritative source supplied in this analysis) and corroborate the corporate reorganisation externally. The reel/frame and correspondent fields are the two data points that remain open and should be pulled directly at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 10180410 or application 15/175,412).

Inventors

Both are listed on the front page as inventors with the Applicant: FUJI JUKOGYO KABUSHIKI KAISHA, Tokyo (JP), and both appear as assignors on the 2016-06-07 assignment record (the Google Patents entry names them explicitly: "Assignors: SOEJIMA, HIDEKI, TAKAHASHI, KOHEI"). That is strong, documented evidence they were in-house Subaru/FHI personnel, not outside consultants.

Pattern assessment: I found no evidence of inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months of filing, and no pre-fire-sale signal. The technology is documented in FHI's own publication ("Development of Structural Health Monitoring Technology Using Lamb Waves," Subaru Technical Review No. 38, June 2011), which points to a continuous in-house R&D program rather than a one-off filing farm. Current employment of either inventor is not determinable from the sources I reached — treat that as unknown, not confirmed.

Original assignee

• Entity on the issued patent (front page): Assignee SUBARU CORPORATION, Tokyo (JP); Applicant at filing: FUJI JUKOGYO KABUSHIKI KAISHA (Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd.). The name difference is purely the 2017 corporate renaming — see the timeline.
• Primary line of business: Automotive (Subaru-brand vehicles) and aerospace — Fuji Heavy Industries / Subaru is a long-standing airframe manufacturer and Boeing supplier (wing/centre-wing box components, including composite structures). The patent's claimed subject matter — Lamb-wave structural health monitoring of aircraft structural objects (spars, ribs, stringers on a panel) — sits squarely in that aerospace business line.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? The specification frames the system both as a manufacturing-time inspection tool and as a permanently attached/periodic-inspection part of the aircraft structure ("the ultrasonic test system 1 can be attached to the aircraft structural object as a part... it becomes possible to simply inspect whether damage has arisen in the aircraft structural object... at the time of maintenance and inspection after a flight"). So the practice is internal NDT/SHM — Subaru is both the manufacturer and the user of the claimed system. It is not, on this record, a system Subaru sells to third parties as a standalone product.
• Current status: Operating. Fuji Heavy Industries announced the name change on 2016-05-12, shareholder approval followed, and the change took effect 2017-04-01 → Subaru Corporation (TSE: 7270). Not acquired, not dissolved, not in bankruptcy. The 2017-05-12 USPTO record is the registration of that name change, not a transfer of ownership.

Assignment timeline

Two recorded events are visible for this patent. Both are on the patent's legal-events panel; both are labelled "reassignment" there.

1. 2016-06-07 (recorded) / execution date not exposed in the sources I could reach — Reel/Frame: not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (initial inventor-to-company assignment, recorded contemporaneously with the 2016-06-07 filing)
   • Assignor: Kohei Takahashi; Hideki Soejima
   • Assignee: Fuji Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha (Fuji Heavy Industries Ltd.), Tokyo, JP
   • Correspondent: not retrieved — this is precisely the field a shell-entity analysis would turn on, and I could not surface it. Flagged as an open item.
   • Context: Initial corporate assignment on filing; ordinary employee-inventor rights transfer. No third party involved.

2. 2017-05-12 (recorded) / change effected 2017-04-01 — Reel/Frame: not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Change of Name (expressly so labelled by the source)
   • Assignor: Fuji Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha
   • Assignee: Subaru Corporation
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Change of name only — the same legal person, re-registered under a new corporate name. No change in beneficial ownership. Corroborated by FHI's own press materials (Tokyo, 2016-05-12 / 2016-06-28) and by the parallel national-register renamings (e.g., Cambodia IR record "Subaru Corporation (Change Name and Address)"; Hong Kong Journal entry "Kabushiki Kaisha Subaru (Subaru Corporation), 1-20-8, Ebisu, Shibuya-ku, Tokyo").
   • Lead for verification (unconfirmed): a public mirror shows a bulk recording titled "Patent Assignment from Fuji Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha to Subaru Corporation" (plainsite assignment id 8889140) listing a large number of FHI applications/designs on a single record — consistent with a portfolio-wide change-of-name filing that would include 15/175,412. I could not confirm this patent is among the applications in that bundle, so treat it as a lead, not a finding.

No post-2017 assignment exists on the record. The chain terminates with Subaru Corporation.

Note on record types: The Google Patents legal-events feed shows only the two events above. It does not expose reel/frame, execution dates, or correspondent — those live only in the USPTO Assignment Center abstract of title. If you need those fields, they must be pulled there directly; I am not going to back-fill them from memory.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10180410
    2016 : Filed by Fuji Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha
         : Inventors assign to Fuji Jukogyo
    2017 : Corporate name change to Subaru Corporation
    2019 : Patent granted

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data (no NPE signals — ownership remains with the original operating company).

This patent has only two recorded ownership events: the inventors' original assignment to Fuji Jukogyo Kabushiki Kaisha recorded 2016-06-07, and a pure Change of Name to Subaru Corporation recorded 2017-05-12 (effective 2017-04-01). Neither event transfers beneficial ownership outside the original corporate family, no shell/licensing LLC, known asserter, or defensive aggregator appears anywhere in the chain, and there is no litigation for a pre-assertion transfer to precede. The verdict is recorded as Insufficient data strictly because the chain contains no NPE-relevant activity to score (and because the reel/frame and correspondent fields — the evidence that would let me rule out an anonymous recording agent — could not be retrieved); it is not an expression of doubt about who owns the patent. The positive finding is that a clean, wholly operating-company-owned chain is affirmatively visible on the two records above.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 10180410) — retrieve the reel/frame numbers, execution dates, and the correspondent of record for both entries to close signals #3 and confirm nothing post-2017 has been recorded. The same records are indexed at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

Cross-references that did not change the verdict but are worth noting: the European sibling EP 3 112 857 B1 (same JP 2015-118956 priority) granted 2022-05-18 to the same owner, and a related Subaru US grant, US 10,416,121 ("Composite material molding jig, composite material molding method, ultrasonic test system, ultrasonic test method and aircraft structural object"), indicate the SHM programme is a multi-patent in-house family — the opposite of a single-package fire-sale asset. I did not verify the assignment records of the siblings, so I make no assertion about their ownership chains.

I'll research this systematically, grounding everything in searches for this exact patent number.

The initial searches returned noise. Let me target the citation sections specifically.

The citation data isn't surfacing in general search. Let me target patent-record aggregators directly.

Verification status first — what I could and could not retrieve

I must be blunt about the central limitation, because it governs the confidence of everything below.

I could not retrieve the front-page "References Cited" (patent citations) list for US 10,180,410 from the USPTO record in this session. My queries for this specific number repeatedly returned other records — the most persistent distractor being EP application 10180410.2 (an MKS Instruments RF-generator filing), which is a different identifier in a different numbering system and is not this patent. I have not merged them.

Two consequences:

1. The authoritative full text I was given (Google Patents, fetched 2026-09-24) contains the Description and Abstract but no citation block — the Google Patents "Citations" / "Patent Citations" table was stripped from the fetch. So the authoritative source also does not supply the list.
2. I will therefore not fabricate a citation list. Below I report (a) the references that are confirmed from the authoritative text, (b) the art cited on the EPO family member, clearly labeled as such, and (c) an explicit §102 analysis with the caveats that follow from not having the U.S. file wrapper.

Flagged contradiction / uncertainty: the previously generated Patent summary section reconstructed granted claim 1 (medium confidence, from Justia) as a narrow through-transmission claim. But the authoritative "Definitions/Summary" text states claim-like language in broader terms ("…a damage detection part composed of at least circuitry… The at least one ultrasonic transducer and the at least one ultrasonic sensor are disposed at positions which apart from each other with an interval longer than 300 mm"). These two pictures of claim 1 are in tension. Because the granted claim set was never obtained verbatim here, any claim-number mapping below is provisional. This is a live contradiction I cannot resolve without the file wrapper.

A. Applicant-cited patent documents — confirmed from the authoritative text

Only two patent documents are expressly cited in the authoritative Description. Both are cited in the Background as "refer to":

Both published before the 2015-06-12 priority date, so each is prior art under AIA §102(a)(1) (the application has a 2016 effective filing date, so AIA §§ 102/103 govern).

Statutory framing (important): the patent cites these as background — i.e., as evidence of the state of the art the inventors were improving on — not as anticipatory references applied against the claims. The specification uses them to define the problem: such reflection-based actuator/sensor systems, it states, "require to be disposed with an interval of not more than 300 mm at most."

§102 anticipation assessment

Anticipation under §102 requires a single reference disclosing every claim element arranged as claimed.

• As to the through-transmission limitation. The authoritative Summary/claim language requires that the sensor detect "the ultrasonic wave which has passed through the at least one test region," and the transducer/sensor pair be spaced >300 mm. Both JP references are pulse-echo/reflection systems (the FBG receives reflected waves) and are characterized in the patent itself as limited to ≤300 mm. A reference that measures reflected waves does not disclose the claimed through-transmission detection, and a ≤300 mm system does not disclose the claimed >300 mm spacing. Neither reference anticipates an independent claim requiring either element.
• As to the broader pre-grant claim picture. The pre-grant publication US 2016/0363562 A1 is reported to have carried a broad claim 1 (transducer + sensor + waveform-difference damage detection with >300 mm spacing) — see the Patent summary section's Section 5. Even under that broader framing, the JP references still do not disclose the "wave which has passed through" the region, because they detect reflected waves. Still no §102 anticipation.
• Correct ground. These two references are best characterized as §103 obviousness material (single-reference-plus-common-knowledge or in combination with other art), not §102 anticipators. Anyone asserting otherwise should be met with the "passed through/reflected" distinction and the ≤300 mm characterization the patent owner itself adopted.

B. Art cited on the EPO family member (EP 3112857 B1) — NOT confirmed as U.S. citations

The European counterpart EP 3 112 857 B1 ("System comprising an aircraft structural object attached to an ultrasonic test system, and ultrasonic test method," granted 2022-05-18, same inventors/assignee, same JP 2015-118956 priority) lists the following under "Citation (examination)" in the EPO publication (source: http://data.epo.org/pise-server/rest/collections/lgpi/EP3112857B1.pdf). These are European examination citations. I could not confirm that any of them appear on the U.S. front page, and they are non-patent literature, not "patent citations":

§102 conclusion for all four: none of these discloses the full claimed combination (through-transmission of 50–150 kHz Lamb waves past an elongated structural member into an optical-fiber sensor, amplified by an optical filter, compared against a reference waveform after the recited signal-processing chain). None anticipates. They are the art most likely to have driven the U.S. claims to narrow during prosecution (consistent with the Patent summary section's Section 5 inference), and they are §103 fodder.

C. Non-patent literature on the face of the patent (carried over)

The previously generated Strategic summary flagged a Subaru in-house publication — "Development of Structural Health Monitoring Technology Using Lamb Waves," Subaru Technical Review, No. 38 (June 2011) — as appearing on the face of the patent. I am not re-verifying that here (I could not re-confirm it in this session), and I state it only so the record is complete. Under AIA §102(a)(1)/(b)(1) it is a potentially self-disqualifying-type reference if it qualifies, and it is §103 material at minimum.

D. What I could NOT confirm (stated plainly)

• The complete U.S. front-page "References Cited" list — both the "U.S. Patent Documents" and "Foreign Patent Documents" tables, plus any "Other Publications." Retrieving this is the entire deliverable you asked for, and it is the one thing I could not pull. I have not guessed at it.
• Whether any U.S. patent document (e.g., a Lamb-wave or FBG-SHM patent) is on the '410 front page. A candidate such as US 7,963,165 B2 ("Non-contact feature detection using ultrasonic Lamb waves") surfaced in search but is not confirmed as a citation of '410, so I do not list it as one.
• The U.S. file wrapper / IDS contents and the examiner's applied references — unverified.
• The exact publication days for JP 2011-185921 A and JP 2014-194379 A (year only, confirmed).

Forward citations are not prior art. Note that search surfaced US 11,940,420 ("Acoustic signal material identification with nanotube couplant") citing US 10180410, and a US 2016/0363562 A1 pre-grant publication in the same family. These are later documents citing '410 (or the family publication); they are not §102 prior art against '410 and are excluded from the tables above.

E. Recommendation to close the gap

To obtain the authoritative, USPTO-sourced citation list (which I could not), pull one of:

1. USPTO Patent Public Search → patent number 10180410 → "References" / "Citing" tabs.
2. USPTO PatentCenter → for application 15/175,412, open the IDS / Form 1449 / PTO-892 (examiner's "Notice of References Cited") — this is the definitive list of what the examiner considered and applied.
3. The grant PDF front page (column 1, "(56) References Cited") at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/.../US10180410.pdf.

If you can paste the (56) block or the PTO-892 from the file wrapper, I will produce the reference-by-reference §102/§103 mapping with exact claim numbers — which is not responsibly possible from what is currently available.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual prior-art references of record and adjacent Lamb-wave SHM literature. Let me verify the key references first.

Now let me verify the remaining references of record and pull the granted claim set.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,180,410 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Scope, caveats, and what this analysis is built on

Carried-forward caveat (still operative). The authoritative full text I was given ends mid-sentence in the description and does not contain the claims. The claim numbering and element lists below are taken from the reconstructed set in the earlier "Patent summary" section. Two of those reconstructions cannot both be right, and the difference is outcome-determinative:

• Pre-grant publication US 2016/0363562 A1 claim 1 is broad: transducer + sensor + waveform-vs-reference detection + >300 mm spacing. Nothing more.
• The granted claim 1 as reconstructed adds Lamb waves at 50–150 kHz, a metal-or-composite object, an elongated structural member, optical fiber sensors, an optical filter, and a specific signal-processing chain.

If granted claim 1 is the broad version, the § 103 case below is essentially dispositive on two references. If it is the narrow version, the case requires the 4–6 reference combination set out in § 5. Verify the printed claim set (columns 20–24 of the grant) before relying on any of this.

Gaps I could not close. I exhausted my search budget before I could independently verify (a) the content of Monkhouse et al., Smart Mater. Struct. 9(3) 2000; (b) the content of Subaru Technical Review No. 38 (June 2011); (c) the author list of the JSME J. System Design and Dynamics 5(5) 2011 paper; (d) the exact bibliographic details of the ICAS 2006 paper. Those items are flagged [UNVERIFIED] where used. I did not find any art in this session that squarely discloses the optical-filter (AWG/PS-FBG) wavelength-to-intensity amplification element against an FBG receiver — see § 7.

Date law. Application filed 2016-06-07 with § 119 foreign priority to JP 2015-118956 (2015-06-12). Filed after 2013-03-16 → AIA § 102/§ 103 governs. Effective filing date = 2015-06-12. All references below predate it. Critically, several of the strongest references are the applicant's own (Fuji Heavy Industries / Subaru) earlier publications. This matters:

Common ownership (§ 102(b)(2)(C)) does not disqualify them. That provision removes prior-art status only for art that is prior art solely under § 102(a)(2). JP 2011-185921 A, JP 2014-194379 A, JP 2011-191230 A, Subaru Technical Review No. 38 and the JSME 2011 paper were all publicly available printed publications before 2015-06-12, so they are § 102(a)(1) art. The § 102(b)(1)(A) grace-period exception also fails: the earliest of them published ~3.5 years before the effective filing date, far outside one year. The applicant's own 2011-2014 SHM publications are therefore fully available as § 103 art.

(Contrast: EP 3 070 467 B1 / its US counterpart, which share Subaru's JP 2015-054345 priority of 2015-03-18, published only in 2016 and are not prior art to the '410 for their disclosure. The EPO search report's citation of JP H11-211700 A, however, is available art — see § 4.)

1. The legal framework actually being applied

Important framing point: the '410's own Background concedes the art and the problem — "[o]nly damage in a short distance from an actuator and a sensor can be detected… an actuator and a sensor require to be disposed with an interval of not more than 300 mm at most." That concession is an applicant admission setting the § 103 starting point and supplies the motivation ("an inspection of a large aircraft part… requires… a large number of actuators and sensors with a high density, and that is not realistic").

2. Prior-art inventory

Not prior art (flagged so it is not misused): EP 3 070 467 B1 / US 10,481,131 / US 2016/0274062 (Subaru, JP 2015-054345 priority) — published after 2015-06-12. Their content is useful only as evidence of what the applicant itself regarded as known/obvious at the time (they place the low-frequency 50–150 kHz band in the reflection/position role and 200–500 kHz in the through-transmission role — a contradictory mapping to the '410, which assigns 50–150 kHz to the through-transmission role). Both mappings cannot be independently inventive on the same facts.

3. Element-by-element mapping (broad claim-1 hypothesis)

Conclusion on the broad hypothesis: R1 alone, or R1 in view of R6, discloses or renders obvious every element of the published claim 1. R1 supplies the through-transmission baseline-comparison architecture on an aircraft wing with sparse (necessarily >>300 mm) transducer spacing. R6 supplies the optical-fibre receiver, the explicit 100 kHz Lamb-wave excitation, the "reference waveform of the undamaged sheet," and the time-gated waveform norm — i.e., it is essentially the same invention in a research-paper form, three years before 2011.

4. Element-by-element mapping (narrow granted-claim hypothesis)

R2 is a Fuji Heavy/Subaru reference cited on the face of the '410. R6, R7 and R8 are the applicant's own concurrent SHM work. The practical effect is that the claimed invention is, in large part, the applicant's own 2007–2014 published program plus the ordinary engineering work of productising it — the classic KSR fact pattern of "the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."

5. Specific § 103 combinations, with motivation

Combination 1 — R1 + R6 (+ R4): the core architecture

Renders obvious: published claim 1 and granted claims 1 and 9 (through the signal-processing/architecture elements, excluding the optical filter).

• R1 supplies the entire inventive concept at the architectural level: sparse PZT array on an aircraft wing, pair-wise through-transmission acquisition, normal-condition waveforms as baselines, defect detection and location by comparing later waveforms to baselines.
• R6 supplies the same concept in an optical-fibre sensor system at 100 kHz, applied to stringer construction in an aircraft fuselage, with an explicit record-the-undamaged-reference-waveform-then-compare protocol and time-gated waveform-norm extraction.
• Motivation: both are ultrasonic guided-wave SHM for aircraft airframes; both identify the same problem (large-area inspection vs. signal degradation) and adopt the same solution (sparse through-transmission baselines). Combining R1's sparse-array/aircraft-wing platform with R6's fibre-sensor/100 kHz implementation is the substitution of one known sensing element (fibre-optic) for another (PZT receiver), each known to work in the same system, to obtain the known advantages the '410 itself recites — no frequency dependence of sensitivity, receiving directivity (specification, col. 9–10). MPEP 2143 rationale (B).
• Anticipated rebuttal — "R1 teaches away": R1 says "strong attenuation and scattering impede guided waves for large-area inspection." This is a statement of a known problem, not a teaching away — R1 immediately continues "Nevertheless, small, low-cost and light-weight piezoelectric (PZT) discs were bonded to various parts of the aircraft wing, in a form of relatively sparse arrays" and reports success in "complex aircraft wing structures." A reference that acknowledges difficulty and then implements the technique anyway does not teach away; it supplies the motivation (the known problem the invention addresses).

Combination 2 — Combination 1 + R2 + R5/R9 + R4: the 50–150 kHz Lamb-wave limitation

Renders obvious: the "Lamb wave at 50–150 kHz, metal or composite object" limitations.

• Lamb waves for large-area damage detection in composites: R5 ("large-area damage detection"), R9 ("rapid large-area scanning").
• Lamb waves in aluminium aircraft structures with amplitude/time-of-flight metrics: R4, R9, R10.
• Explicit 100 kHz Lamb excitation with fibre sensors: R6 — already inside the claimed range.
• Motivation / predictability: the claimed range is not a discovery. R4 explains the f·d dispersion trade-off quantitatively — lower frequency ⇒ longer wavelength ⇒ less attenuation and less scattering but more sensitivity to gross thickness/loss. Choosing a frequency at the low end of the conventional Lamb-wave band to buy penetration across a long baseline is routine optimisation of a disclosed parameter, and R6 had already landed at 100 kHz by 2006. The '410's own text confirms this was arrived at by ordinary examination ("as a result of examinations, it was confirmed that when an ultrasonic wave… not less than 50 kHz and not more than 500 kHz…") — i.e., the applicant describes routine experimentation, not an unpredictable result.

Combination 3 — Combination 2 + R3 (+ R2): plural transducers/sensors, bidirectional transmission, opposing pairs, damage extent

Renders obvious: claim 4 (plural transducers at different positions; determination of damage extent) and claim 5 (opposing pairs between adjacent elongated members).

• R3 expressly teaches arraying two or more transducers or two or more sensors in a direction orthogonal to the propagation direction so that three or more different propagation paths are obtained without moving the devices. That is the claimed "plural transducers at different positions… existence range of the damage" logic in express terms, plus the averaging/outlier-rejection discipline that recurs in the '410's signal chain.
• R1 independently supplies localization from pairwise paths (RAPID), which is the claim 4/8 "existence range of damage."
• R2 teaches plural FBG sensors at fixed, distinct positions on the same object.
• Motivation: the '410's own justification is entirely functional — "when the ultrasonic transducers 2 are disposed at different positions… a test region R can be widened in an array direction." Widening coverage by adding array elements is the stated purpose of the array, and R3 already discloses the orthogonal arraying that produces multiple paths. MPEP 2143 rationale (A)/(C).
• "Opposite directions / bidirectional" (claim 6): transmitting the same test volume from two opposing directions is a standard NDT technique to make ray paths dense; the '410 concedes it is "effective… from a viewpoint of making pathways of ultrasonic waves U dense" (Step S1). R3's "3 or more propagation paths without moving the devices" reaches the same result.

Combination 4 — Combination 3 + R7 + R8: FBG + broadband Lamb + frequency-band waveform analysis

Renders obvious: the FBG limitation and the "waveform in at least one frequency band obtained by Fourier/wavelet analysis" limitation.

• R7 discloses exactly the claimed sensing platform: MFC actuator + FBG sensor, broadband Lamb waves, integrated into CFRP aircraft laminates, delamination detection, with a quantitative damage index.
• R8 discloses converting the FBG output into a frequency vs. propagation-time 2-D distribution, identifying Lamb modes, and diagnosing damage from changes in mode-specific frequency-domain feature values. That is squarely "obtaining a waveform corresponding to a frequency band by frequency analysis" (claims 2/3, and the claim 1 Fourier/wavelet recitation) — and it predates the priority date by nearly four years and belongs to the same applicant.
• Motivation: frequency-band decomposition is the standard way to separate Lamb modes (R4, R8) and to reject noise; the '410 states the benefit in exactly those terms — "it becomes possible to detect a change in waveform with targeting simpler waveforms… a detection sensitivity… can be improved further." Predictable, known benefit.

Combination 5 — the two-stage / coarse-to-fine method claim

Renders obvious: the second independent method claim (detect damage in a wide first-pass region → set a new, narrower test region including the damage → non-destructively test it).

• Motivation is intrinsic and admitted. The '410's own reasoning is a textbook inspection-workflow argument: "when damage was detected in a test region R… a narrower test region R can be set for a flaw inspection" and "a flaw inspection can be performed by another test method which can detect a position of the damage… a peak of an ultrasonic reflected wave."
• The prior art already supplied the pieces: R1's baseline comparison is cheap and wide-area; R4/R9/R10 and R3 supply the higher-resolution, position-resolving second-stage methods (time-of-flight, amplitude minimum localization, dispersion analysis). "Finding first, characterising second" is elementary NDT practice, and the two-stage structure produces nothing more than the expected result: lower total inspection cost. MPEP 2143 rationale (D); KSR ("a court must ask whether the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions").
• Note the objective-evidence counterweight: the specification frames the two-stage architecture as the solution to the "time, labor, and cost" problem of whole-aircraft inspection. A patentee would argue this is a long-felt need. The rebuttal is that the "need" is a commercial/planning optimisation, and the prior art (Zhao's RAPID) had already demonstrated wide-area detection followed by localisation.

Combination 6 — multi-frequency (if any claim recites plural frequency bands / high-pass & low-pass filtering)

R4's f·d dispersion discussion, R11 (defect determination from a transmitted 3.5 MHz wave plus a reflected 2.25 MHz wave) and R8's mode-specific analysis collectively render obvious the use of different frequency bands for different detection roles. This is the concept the applicant later claimed in the sibling family (EP 3 070 467 / US 10,481,131), which is itself evidence that the mapping of frequency band to detection role was a matter of design choice rather than invention.

6. Secondary considerations

For the patentee:

1. Long-felt need / failure of others. The Background frames a concrete, articulated problem: conventional pulse-echo inspection requires ≤300 mm actuator-sensor spacing, so meter-class airframe parts would need an unrealistic density of sensors. If the record shows that the industry knew of this problem for years and did not solve it, that is probative. This is the patentee's strongest argument.
2. Possible unexpected results at ≥1000 mm. The specification repeatedly reports "it was confirmed that an ultrasonic wave U could actually be received with a sufficient SNR using an ultrasonic sensor 3 disposed at a position away from a certain ultrasonic transducer 2 by not less than 1000 mm." If the >300 mm / ≥1000 mm spacing is genuinely beyond what the art predicted, In re Soni-type unexpected-results evidence could attach — but only if the claim requires that range and the data is shown to be unexpected, not merely successful.
3. Copying / industry adoption. If Subaru's SHM system went into production airframes, that would be relevant.

For the challenger — and these are strong:

1. The "≥1000 mm" result is self-described as routine. The specification attributes it to "setting appropriate conditions" reached "as a result of examinations" — the language of routine optimisation, not of an unpredictable finding. Under KSR, where a result is achieved by a finite number of predictable alternatives with a reasonable expectation of success, it is obvious even if the degree of success was not known in advance.
2. The need was already being met by the art. R1 (2007) placed sparse PZT arrays on a full aircraft wing panel; R5 (2000) and R9 (1994) articulate large-area Lamb-wave detection; R6 (2006) demonstrated 100 kHz Lamb waves with fibre sensors on a fuselage with stringer construction, using reference-waveform comparison. A long-felt need cannot be shown where the art was already addressing it.
3. The applicant's own publications are the closest art. R3, R7 and R8 (2011–2014, all Subaru/Fuji Heavy) teach plural-path arraying, MFC+FBG broadband Lamb sensing in CFRP, and frequency-domain mode analysis respectively. A patentee arguing nonobviousness while its own four-year-earlier publications disclose the components is in a very weak position.
4. The internal contradiction between siblings. The '410 assigns 50–150 kHz to the through-transmission waveform-change role. The sibling EP 3 070 467 / US 10,481,131 assigns the low (50–150 kHz) band to the reflected-wave/position role and high (200–500 kHz) to the through-transmission role. The same applicant mapped the same bands differently in two co-pending cases — compelling objective evidence that the band-to-function mapping is a design choice, not an inventive contribution.
5. No nexus for any objective evidence. Secondary considerations must be tied to the claimed invention. Any commercial success here flows from the airframe, not from the claimed inspection method. And because the entire system is used in-house by the patent owner (Subaru being both maker and user), there is no evidence of third-party copying.

7. Where the § 103 case is weak — be honest about this

Three elements are not squarely met by the prior art I have been able to verify in this session:

1. The optical filter (AWG / FBG / PS-FBG) that converts the FBG's wavelength oscillation into a larger-amplitude intensity oscillation. This is the element most likely to survive. FBG interrogation by an edge filter — including arrayed-waveguide-grating demultiplexing of FBG sensor arrays — is textbook and predates the priority date, and the PS-FBG as a sharp-peak filter was known for other purposes. But I did not locate a verified reference in this session that discloses the specific arrangement of overlapping the FBG's reflectance peak with two AWG transmittance peaks to obtain a differential, amplitude-amplified intensity output. A petitioner must find that reference; without it, claim 1 (if it recites the optical filter) is vulnerable to surviving on that element alone. This is my top recommended search target.
2. Addition averaging combined with moving-average (simple moving average) noise reduction. Signal averaging for SNR improvement in ultrasonic NDT is ubiquitous, and moving-average smoothing is elementary signal processing, so the combination is almost certainly obvious under MPEP 2143 (A) — but I found no specific reference of record disclosing the two applied in sequence to a Lamb-wave detection signal. This is a 30-minute literature search away from being cured, and such a reference would be free of § 315(e)(2) estoppel (no IPR has ever been filed on this patent).
3. The narrow-baseline "new test region narrower than the first" limitation, if the claim requires the new region to include the damage (i.e., a re-registration/coordinate-mapping step). If read literally, the claim may require the second-stage region to be positioned so as to contain the located damage — which requires knowing where the damage is. That is disclosed by R1 (RAPID gives location) and R4/R10 (position from time-of-flight/amplitude minimum), so the gap is closeable, but the exact claim wording matters and I have not confirmed it.

Everything else in the reconstructed claim set appears to be met by R1, R2, R3, R6, R7 and R8 — several of which are the applicant's own publications.

8. Bottom line

• If granted claim 1 is the broad pre-grant claim 1 (transducer + through-transmission sensor + reference-waveform comparison + >300 mm): invalid as obvious over R1 (Zhao 2007) in view of R6 (Pfeiffer/ICAS 2006). Both disclose the through-transmission-baseline architecture; R1 on a real aircraft wing with sparse (necessarily >300 mm) arrays; R6 at 100 kHz with fibre sensors, a reference waveform of the undamaged structure, and stringer construction. Motivation: same field, same problem, same solution, and the claimed benefit is precisely the known benefit of fibre sensing.
• If granted claim 1 is the narrow reconstructed version: invalid as obvious over the combination R6 + R1 + R2 + R3 + R7 + R8, with R4/R5/R9/R10 supplying the Lamb-wave/large-area/frequency-selection context. The only genuinely contestable element is the optical-filter amplitude amplification, and the additive-averaging/moving-average pair; both are ordinary engineering, but each needs one more reference to close.
• The single most damaging fact for the patentee is that the closest art is the applicant's own 2006–2014 published work — R2 is on the face of the patent, and R3, R7 and R8 are the same company's publications in the identical technology. That defeats any attempt to argue the components were unavailable or unexpected.
• Do not rely on any of this before confirming the printed claim set. The claim-text uncertainty flagged in the earlier sections is not academic: it changes this from a two-reference case to a six-reference case.

Confidence

• High: the content and dates of R1, R2 (JP 2011-185921 A / US 8,483,978 B2), R3 (JP 2014-194379 A), R4, R5, R9, R10, R11; the AIA/§ 102(b)(2)(C) and § 102(b)(1)(A) analysis; the sibling-family contradiction; the conclusion that no verified reference reaches the optical-filter amplification element.
• Medium: R6 (ICAS 2006) — I have the operative text but not verified bibliographic authorship [UNVERIFIED]; R7 (JSME JSDD 2011) author list [UNVERIFIED]; R8 (JP 2011-191230 A) — abstract-level only [UNVERIFIED]; the granted claim numbering and element list (carried forward from the earlier section, itself flagged medium confidence).
• Unknown / not verified: Monkhouse et al. 2000 (flagged in the earlier section as EPO-cited, but I could not retrieve or verify it here); the printed claim set of the grant; whether any § 103 art exists specifically for the optical-filter and averaging elements. I hit my search-step limit before closing these, and I am not going to assert them.