US 10240956

I'll search for this patent number and any related litigation.

Let me check for any litigation or appeal activity involving this patent or its owner.

US 10,240,956 B2 — Verification Summary

I confirmed this patent directly from Google Patents' full-text record for US10240956B2 and a second independent aggregator (ipqwery). No results were returned for the identical number in a litigation, CAFC, or IPR context. One caution on search hygiene: the plain string "10240956" also matches DE10240956B4 (a German patent for "Heterogeneous core-shell microgels") — that is a different national series and is not related to the subject US patent.

Bibliographic Data

Abstract (as issued)

A thermal-type flowmeter having a heated flow-sensing probe and a temperature-sensing reference probe, in which the flow is passed through nozzles to form two jets, and those jets are directed at the heated portion of the heated probe and the temperature-sensing portion of the reference probe, while flow around the supporting portion of the heated probe is minimized. This allows low gas flows to be measured without capillary elements that are subject to plugging and that can create unwanted pressure drops.

Prior Art Cited on the Face of the Patent

US 4,199,981 A (Wen Young); US 5,347,876 A (Gas Research Institute); US 2005/023794 A1 (Visteon Global Technologies); US 2009/0272187 A1 (Hitachi, Ltd.); US 2015/0192442 A1 (Sierra Instruments, Inc.). Forward citation of record: USD 871,946 S1 (Sonotec Ultraschallsensorik Halle GmbH, 2020) — a design patent, not a technical citation.

Independent Claim 1 — Plain-Language Overview

Claim 1 is the only independent claim. In plain terms, it covers a thermal flowmeter in which:

1. Sealed flow path — A body defines the entire fluid flow path through the meter (nothing bypasses the body).
2. Blocking baffle — A baffle inside the body entirely blocks that path, splitting the body into a first chamber and a second chamber arranged serially in the flow direction.
3. Only two openings — The baffle has only first and second openings, and those two openings carry the entire flow from the first chamber into the second (i.e., no leakage path, no third passage).
4. Two jets — Each opening has an inlet open to the first chamber and an outlet open to the second chamber, so each generates a fluid jet in the second chamber.
5. Probes in the jets — A heated probe sits in the second chamber with its heated portion immediately downstream of the first opening and inside the first jet; a reference probe sits in the second chamber with its temperature-sensing portion immediately downstream of the second opening and inside the second jet.

Practical scope note: The independent claim is directed to the arrangement of body/baffle/two-jet/probe geometry, not to the electronics, the nozzle curvature, or the tip-versus-post distinction. Those details appear only in dependents (e.g., claim 2 = converging nozzles with wider inlet than outlet; claim 5 = support posts positioned "proximate but not in front of" the nozzle; claim 6 = probes identical). Claim 7 (two separable parts with probes and baffle in one part) is the disassembly-for-cleaning feature. The strongest literal limitations for infringement/validity analysis are the closed-system words: "the entire fluid flow path," "only first and second openings," and "the entire fluid flow."

Litigation — Explicit Uncertainty Flag

I found no district court, CAFC, or PTAB record for US 10,240,956 or for CDI Meters, Inc. in the searches performed. Because I could not query PACER or the CAFC docket system directly, and because this is an actively maintained small-entity patent (4th-year fee paid, status "Active"), I cannot state with authority that no proceedings exist — only that none surfaced in the sources reachable here. This should be verified against PACER and the CAFC docket before being relied upon.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10240956.

Let me search more specifically on patent litigation databases.

Let me check a few more targeted sources for any litigation records.

Litigation Search Results: US Patent 10,240,956

No litigation involving US Patent 10,240,956 was found.

I searched litigation-focused sources (Unified Patents litigation portal references, CourtListener, Docket Alarm, PTAB records, and general web searches for the patent number and its owner/assignee) and could not identify any district court, Federal Circuit, or ITC case in which US 10,240,956 has been asserted, challenged, or put at issue.

What I was able to confirm about the patent (from the authoritative full text)

Evidence considered

1. Patent-family and citation data — The Google Patents record shows only one family member (the US application itself) and lists no litigation ("Litigation" field is absent). The only citing document is a design patent (USD871946S1), which is not a litigation event.
2. Related-cases / "Similar Documents" — These reflect citation neighbors (e.g., US 7,654,157; US 5,347,876; US 2009/0272187), not asserted litigation for this patent.
3. Assignee litigation searches — Searches for "CDI Meters" infringement actions and for inventor "Dennison" returned no infringement complaints; results were product/warranty documentation (e.g., CDI 25 Flowmeter manual) rather than court filings.
4. Unified Patents / PTAB searches — Returned Unified Patents activity related to other patents (e.g., RE45543, 10,476,868, 10,013,158, 7,792,256, 10,621,228, 10,326,987). None referenced 10,240,956. No IPR/PGR/CBM proceedings on this patent were found.

Caveats on confidence

• I could not access PACER or the Unified Patents litigation portal directly in this session, so my conclusion relies on indexed public sources (CourtListener, Docket Alarm, Google Patents' litigation field, PTAB filings, and general web results).
• It is possible a recently filed or non-indexed case exists that these sources do not surface. However, based on everything available, the record indicates this patent has not been litigated to date.

Bottom line: Based on my searches, there is no known litigation involving US Patent 10,240,956. If you need a definitive negative, a direct PACER docket search for "10,240,956" in the "Patent" case type (or a Lex Machina/Unified Patents portal query) would be the authoritative confirmation.

PTAB Proceedings Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,240,956 B2 ("Thermal flowmeter")

Source of record: The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block states that the USPTO Open Data Portal API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest. I ran independent web searches against PTAB/PTAB-E2E-adjacent sources, Google Patents, and general docket reporting for this patent number, for "CDI Meters" as patent owner, and for Roger Dennison as inventor in an AIA-trial context. Nothing surfaced. Per the task instructions, the default — and here the confirmed result — is no PTAB activity on file.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. There are no IPRs, no PGRs, and no CBM reviews (CBM review sunset on 2020-09-20 and is unavailable for this 2019-grant patent in any event). Consequently there is no breakdown by status — nothing active, nothing invalidated, nothing sustained, nothing settled, no institution denials — and the bottom line for a defendant is not "the patent has been hardened by surviving IPRs" and not "claims are already canceled." It is the third posture: the patent's validity has never been tested at the PTAB, so every claim (1–7) is fully live, fully untested, and fully available to be challenged in a first-filed IPR. That cuts both ways for a defendant: no claim is dead, but no petitioner has burned the good art either, and there is no § 315(e) estoppel standing in your way.

No per-proceeding sections are possible: there are no proceeding numbers to report, and I will not invent any. (The task instruction "do not invent proceeding numbers" is directly on point.)

What is on file instead — related-record context

Because there is no docket to summarize, the useful defensive intelligence is the surrounding record. The following are facts from the patent document and prosecution/family data provided in the prompt, not PTAB findings:

• Ownership/assertion profile: Current assignee is CDI Meters, Inc. (Woburn/MA-area flowmeter manufacturer); inventor Roger Dennison; recorded assignment 2016-05-27 (Reel/Frame 038738/0842); maintenance fee paid 2022-06-07 (4th year, small entity). This is an operating-company patent owner, not an NPE — one predictor of why no IPR has been filed (operating companies are asserted less often, and settlements are likelier).
• Claim set that would be at issue: 7 claims. Independent claim 1 recites a body defining the entire flow path, a baffle that "entirely blocks the fluid flow path," first and second chambers, "the baffle having only first and second openings," a heated probe with a heated portion in the first jet, and a reference probe with a temperature-sensing portion in the second jet. Dependents 2–7 add nozzle geometry (inlet wider than outlet), jet-area-minimization-at-max-allowable-pressure-drop, distal-tip placement, support-post-not-in-front-of-nozzle, "the heated probe and the reference probe are identical," and the two-separable-parts limitation.
• Prosecution-art citation list (the examiner's citations, not PTAB grounds): US 4,199,981 (Young); US 5,347,876 (Gas Research Institute); US 2005/0223794 A1 (Visteon); US 2009/0272187 A1 (Hitachi); US 2015/0192442 A1 (Sierra Instruments). These five references are the obvious starting point for any § 102/§ 103 attack, but note that they are only what the examiner considered — they carry no estoppel effect on you.
• Family: One application (US 15/132,762), priority to provisional 62/149,820 (2015-04-20); granted 2019-03-26; adjusted expiration 2036-12-14. A sibling Dennison/CDI patent, US 9,664,544 B2 ("Thermal-type flowmeter having separate probe mounting arrangement…"), issues from a different family and likewise shows no AIA trial challenge in searches.
• Caveat: My searches for district court litigation involving CDI Meters returned no reliable hits before the tool budget ran out. I therefore make no representation about whether the '956 patent has been asserted in litigation — only that no PTAB proceeding exists. If you are a defendant, confirm the litigation posture via PACER/Docket Navigator before relying on the "never asserted" inference; the absence of an IPR is the only claim I can support here.

Strategic summary

Claim status: 1–7 are all UNTESTED. The PTAB has never cancelled, narrowed, or affirmed a single claim of the '956 patent. There is no FWD to cite, no certificate of cancellation, and no surviving-claim list to hand a court. Any defendant must therefore attack claim 1 (and dependents 2–7) from scratch. The claim-1 limitations worth focusing on are the very ones that read like deliberate prosecution hedges against the cited art: "entirely blocks the fluid flow path," "only first and second openings," and jet-directed tips with posts kept out of the jets. If you can find art showing two baffle apertures feeding jets onto a heated/reference probe pair — the Visteon US 2005/0223794 A1 auxiliary-flow-passage reference and the Sierra US 2015/0192442 A1 mass-flow-meter-hardware reference are plausible leads, though that reference postdates the 2015-04-20 priority date and raises § 102(b)/§ 102(a)(1) prior-art-date questions you must work through — the "only first and second openings" and "entirely blocks" language is where a petitioner should aim.

Estoppel landscape: essentially nothing is barred. Because no IPR was ever instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is not triggered for anyone — no petitioner, no privy, no real party in interest has been estopped on any ground. There is also no § 325(e)(2) PGR estoppel and no estoppel from a dismissed or settled proceeding (a pre-institution dismissal triggers no estoppel at all). Practically, this means a defendant today can raise any § 102 or § 103 ground, including art that was before the examiner and art that was not, subject only to the ordinary IPR time bar (§ 315(b) — one year from service of a complaint alleging infringement) and general § 325(d) discretion to deny on art already considered.

Pattern signals: none of the usual ones are present. No serial petitioner, no multiple-petition pattern (no General Plastic problem), no PTAB appeal history, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents, no RPX, no IP Edge-style proxy) in the chain, and no Patent Owner adverse-judgment or substitute-claims activity. What you have is a quiet, single-family, operating-company mechanical patent that has simply never been challenged — a plausible profile for either a low-assertion patent or one whose owner has chosen licensing over litigation.

Recommended next steps

• Do not plan around an invalidated claim. There is no FWD disposition to quote, because none exists. Any internal invalidity memo should state plainly: "No AIA trial proceeding has been filed against US 10,240,956; claims 1–7 are presumptively valid and untested."
• Run the § 315(b) clock first. If CDI Meters (or any successor/assignee) has served you with a complaint alleging infringement of the '956 patent, you have one year from service to file an IPR. Confirm the service date and confirm whether the plaintiff is a real party in interest in any parallel action before filing.
• Fresh-art IPR is a genuinely open path — unlike a hardened patent that has survived two IPRs, this one offers a clean first-mover opportunity with no estoppel and no § 325(d) presumption of examiner-considered art beyond the five references listed above. Commission a focused prior-art search on two-nozzle jet-impingement thermal mass flowmeters, including pre-2015 catalog/technical literature from the cited competitors (Sierra Instruments, Visteon, Hitachi) and older thermal-anemometer and split-flow-meter art.
• Consider the alternatives if IPR economics or the time bar cut against you. The 2025 landscape (record high PTAB procedural denials; ex parte reexamination requests at an all-time high) means ex parte reexamination of claims 1–7 under 35 U.S.C. § 302 is a live, cheaper fallback — it has no petitioner estoppel and no statutory one-year bar, and it is available to the patent owner's competitors and to third parties via the SNQ route.
• If a PTAB proceeding is later filed, the milestones to diarize are: (i) Patent Owner Preliminary Response due 3 months after notice of the petition (37 C.F.R. § 42.107(b)); (ii) institution decision within the statutory 6 months of petition filing (§ 314(b)); and (iii) Final Written Decision within 12 months of the institution date (§ 316(a)(11)), extendable up to 6 months for good cause. Track filings via USPTO PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) and any resulting appeals on CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%2210240956%22) and the Federal Circuit's docket.

Confidence statement: I am highly confident there are no PTAB proceedings on this patent — both the ODP structured block and my independent searches agree, and I found no PTAB E2E docket, no FWD, and no CAFC appeal. I am not confident about district-court assertion history; my last search on that point was cut off, so treat the litigation posture as unverified and check PACER before relying on it. No proceeding numbers, panels, grounds, or dispositions have been invented; where information does not exist, I have said so rather than filling the template.

I'll research the assignment record and related context before compiling the report.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 10,240,956 B2

Patent: US 10,240,956 B2 ("Thermal flowmeter") | App. 15/132,762 | Priority 2015-04-20 | Filed 2016-04-19 | Granted 2019-03-26 | Current assignee of record: CDI Meters, Inc. (search verified at Google Patents and USPTO Assignment Center).

Inventors

Unusual-pattern check: none triggered. This is a one-inventor patent for a single-person-founded instrument company. There is no multi-inventor team whose departure could signal a portfolio fire-sale. The same inventor continues to appear on later CDI Meters filings (e.g., US 11,359,946, filed 2020; US 2026/0092797, filed 2025), confirming a continuing rather than exiting inventive relationship with the assignee.

Original assignee

CDI Meters, Inc. — Woburn, Massachusetts (formerly Belmont, MA); incorporated in Massachusetts; founded 1992.

• Ships a product embodying the claims: YES. CDI Meters manufactures the CDI 5200 / 5250 series thermal mass compressed-air flowmeters, which the company markets per its own site ("The meter clamps around a pipe with its flow-sensing probes projecting into the pipe through drilled holes" — cdimeters.com). Distributors describe the 5250 as "a thermal mass design, gauging the flow rate of compressed air and nitrogen via the heat required to maintain the differential between its probes."
• Primary line of business: manufacturing of compressed-air flow measurement instruments (industrial process flow instruments), with related design, build and calibration services; also acts as a distributor of complementary instrumentation.
• Scale: small/operating. Directory data (D&B; Thomasnet) lists 1–9 employees and sub-$5M annual sales; MA incorporation records show active operation. This is a bona fide operating company, not a licensing vehicle.
• Current status: operating, and still the assignee of record. The patent is maintained (4th-year maintenance fee paid 2022-06-07 per the legal-events record; adjusted expiry 2036-12-14).

Assignment timeline

Only one recorded assignment exists in this chain. It is the routine inventor→company employment assignment made in connection with the original filing — not a post-issuance transfer.

• Executed 2016-04-21 / recorded 2016-05-27 — Reel 038738 / Frame 0842
  • Conveyance: Assignment (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST)
  • Assignor: DENNISON, ROGER
  • Assignee: CDI METERS, INC. (a Massachusetts corporation)
  • Correspondent: not exposed in the indexed Google Patents legal-events record (which lists only owner name, nature of conveyance, reel/frame, and effective date). It must be read from the Assignment Center abstract page image; I will not guess it. No repeat-correspondent signal can be evaluated from the available machine-readable record — there is only this one filing anyway.
  • Context: Original acquisition / employment assignment — inventor assigns his own application to his company at filing. No consideration flow beyond the ordinary employment relationship.

No post-issuance assignments are recorded. No security agreements, mergers, change-of-name filings, licenses-of-record, releases, or corrections. This is itself the finding: the original assignee still owns the patent.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10240956
    2015 : Provisional application filed
    2016 : Non-provisional filed by Dennison
         : Assigned to CDI Meters Inc
    2019 : Patent issued
    2022 : 4th year maintenance fee paid

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The sole recorded assignment (Reel 038738/0842) moves the patent from the individual inventor to the operating manufacturer, i.e., the opposite direction from the NPE pattern. Assignee "CDI Meters, Inc." is a Massachusetts manufacturing corporation founded 1992 with a real product line, not a "Holdings/IP/Ventures"-suffixed single-purpose LLC, and no registered-agent-service address is recorded.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. No assignee in the chain appears on any RPX / Unified Patents / generally circulated high-frequency-plaintiff list. The only assignee is CDI Meters, Inc., which does not appear in those directories; no litigation involving CDI Meters as plaintiff was located in searches.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Not present / not evaluable. There is only one link, so recurrence cannot exist. The recording correspondent is not machine-readable in the sources fetched; with a single, ordinary employment assignment there is no cross-link pattern to detect even if recovered.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Zero post-issuance transfers; no chained LLCs, no common-principal pattern, no <24-month conveyor.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. The only assignment (2016) predates issuance, and no infringement suit naming this patent was located. There is no litigation to which a transfer could have been timed.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding involving CDI Meters was located; no docket evidence of a §363 patent sale. The assignee remains an active operating company.

7. Privateering — Not present. No transfer to a third-party NPE asserting on CDI Meters' behalf; no SEC filing or press coverage indicating such an arrangement (CDI Meters is private and makes no such disclosures).

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent sits with its original operating owner.

Verdict

Insufficient data — but specifically because the chain contains only the original assignment, per the definition given ("no records, or only the original assignment"); the record is not opaque, it is simply a one-link chain.

Justification: the sole recorded conveyance is Reel 038738/0842 (executed 2016-04-21, recorded 2016-05-27), which moves the application from inventor Roger Dennison to CDI Meters, Inc. — the operating manufacturer of the CDI 5200/5250 thermal mass compressed-air flowmeters embodying the claims — and no post-issuance assignment, license-of-record, or assertion activity exists. All eight NPE signals are not present, and the available evidence affirmatively indicates a non-NPE, operating-company-owned patent rather than an assertion vehicle; the chain has never left its original owner.

Verify: search patent number 10240956 at the USPTO Assignment Center (record set also mirrored at assignment.uspto.gov).

Caveat on scope: The correspondent-of-record field could not be recovered from the indexed machine-readable sources and is not asserted here; confirming it requires pulling the Reel 038738/0842 abstract page image directly from Assignment Center. Nothing in this report is legal advice or a legal conclusion as to ownership or validity.

I'll search for the patent record and each cited reference to build a grounded prior-art analysis.

US 10,240,956 B2 — Prior-Art Analysis

1. Reference verification (USPTO / Google Patents record)

Note on the legal framework: because the effective filing date is 2015‑04‑20 (post‑AIA), AIA 35 U.S.C. §102 applies.

2. Scope of the independent claim (the anticipation target)

Claim 1 requires all of:

1. a body defining the entire fluid flow path;
2. a baffle that entirely blocks the flow path, defining first and second chambers arranged serially, the baffle having only first and second openings, and those openings passing the entire fluid flow from chamber 1 into chamber 2;
3. each opening having an inlet open to the first chamber and an outlet open to the second chamber, each creating a jet in the second chamber;
4. a heated probe in the second chamber with its heated portion immediately downstream of the first opening, in the first jet; and
5. a reference probe in the second chamber with its temperature-sensing portion immediately downstream of the second opening, in the second jet.

Dependents add: nozzles with wider inlet than outlet (2); jet areas minimized for max flow at max allowable ΔP (3); heated/sensing portions in distal tips (4); support posts "proximate but not in front of a nozzle" (5); probes identical (6); two separable parts, probes and baffle in one part (7).

3. The five cited references

(a) US 4,199,981 A — Wen Young, "Flow control device for fluids flowing in a closed conduit"

• Citation / dates: US 4,199,981 A; division of Ser. No. 769,181 filed 1977‑02‑16 (now US 4,099,700); granted 1980‑04‑29. Also listed with priority date 1977‑02‑16.
• Description: A flow-control device with a flow sensor plus a servo-driven valve. The sensor has a self-heated thermistor located in the divergent discharge throat of a nozzle in the flow stream ("hydrodynamically focused fluid stream"), and two unheated thermistors placed elsewhere in the fluid at arbitrary points distant from the nozzle for temperature compensation. The valve pinches an elastomeric tube against a ball/anvil.
• Pertinence / possible §102 mapping: Relevant to claim 1's "heated portion immediately downstream of the first opening … in the first jet" (element 4) and to the general idea of a second, unheated temperature-compensating thermistor (element 5). But it does not anticipate claim 1, because it lacks: (i) a baffle entirely blocking the flow path defining two serial chambers with only two openings (elements 1–2); (ii) a second nozzle/jet; and (iii) a reference thermistor positioned immediately downstream of the second opening / in a second jet — the reference thermistors are expressly "at arbitrary points distant from the nozzle," i.e., the opposite of the claimed placement. It also fails dependent claim 2 (no second nozzle). Best characterized as §103 art against claims 1 and 4 (tip-in-jet concept), and against the general thermal-principle premise.

(b) US 5,347,876 A — Gas Research Institute, "Gas flowmeter using thermal time-of-flight principle"

• Citation / dates: US 5,347,876 A; filed 1992‑01‑07; granted 1994‑09‑20. (Applicant/assignee: Gas Research Institute.)
• Description: A thermal time-of-flight (TOF) flowmeter: a pulse-heated tungsten wire (pulser, ~25 µm × 2 mm) with a downstream resistance-thermometer sensor (~5 µm × 1.25 mm) at a fixed ~1 mm spacing; combined with a nozzle of known flow area so TOF yields volumetric flow. Preferred embodiment: nozzle with a relatively large inlet and a smaller throat, pulser at the throat; a two-stage nozzle in series with TOF sensor pairs at each stage throat; a downstream diffuser to recover dynamic head and reduce pressure drop. Includes in-situ gas-property compensation using the zero-flow TOF.
• Pertinence / possible §102 mapping: Relevant to the concept of accelerating flow through a nozzle and thermally sensing at/near the nozzle throat/exit (supports a §103 case for the nozzle-jet arrangement of claim 1 and claim 2), and to nozzle sizing for a target flow range (obliquely claim 3). It does not anticipate claim 1: the two thermal elements are a single time-of-flight pair in one nozzle, not a heated probe in a first jet plus a reference probe in a second, parallel jet; where two nozzles appear they are in series, with two pulser/sensor pairs, not one probe per nozzle; and there is no baffle entirely blocking the flow path defining two serial chambers with only two openings. It also arguably teaches away on the second-jet reference probe (its "sensor" is a TOF temperature sensor, not a temperature-reference element). §103 art, not §102.

(c) US 2005/0223794 A1 — Visteon Global Technologies, "Fluid flow meter having an auxiliary flow passage" (granted as US 7,047,805 B2)

• Citation / dates: US 2005/0223794 A1; filed 2004‑04‑09; published 2005‑10‑13; granted 2006‑05‑23 as US 7,047,805 B2. Inventors: Zurek, Lawrence; Myers, Eric.
• Description: A mass fluid flow sensor for an engine duct. A nozzle 39 with a circular inlet and longitudinally converging elliptical side surfaces creates a "critical area" 43 of uniform velocity at nozzle exit 41. Hot element 44 is mounted at the nozzle exit within that critical area; cold wire element 46 is mounted outside the flow passage, in the duct air stream; an IAT element 48 provides ambient temperature. A wedge deflector at the outlet creates a low-pressure zone. Circuitry holds the hot element at a fixed ΔT (~200 °C) above the cold element and outputs a flow signal.
• Pertinence / possible §102 mapping: This is the closest of the five to claim 1, because it discloses a heated element situated at a nozzle exit in a uniform-velocity jet, plus a second (cold/reference) element and ΔT-based thermal flow measurement. It still does not anticipate claim 1: the reference element 46 is deliberately placed outside the bypass passage in the free duct stream, not in the second chamber and not in a second jet immediately downstream of a second opening; there is only one nozzle (so a two-jet, two-opening baffle is absent); and there is no baffle entirely blocking the entire flow path defining serial first/second chambers. Notably, the '956 specification itself squarely addresses this architecture in its background: "If only the heated probe were exposed to a concentrated jet of air and the reference probe were exposed to the air entering the meter, performance might be acceptable at low flow rates and at pressures close to that at which the meter was calibrated." That passage is effectively the patentee's argument distinguishing this reference, and it is the key file-history/Written-Description hook a challenger would have to overcome. Best positioned as §103 art against claims 1, 3, 4 (and, combined with other art, claim 2).

(d) US 2009/0272187 A1 — Hitachi, Ltd., "Thermal type flow meter"

• Citation / dates: US 2009/0272187 A1; priority 2008‑04‑30; published 2009‑11‑05.
• Description: A thermal flow meter for engine/exhaust use having a first main heating resistor MH1, a second main heating resistor MH2 set to a different temperature, and sub-heating resistors SH1/SH2 that heat the support members/lead wires of the main resistors to eliminate heat flow from the main resistors into their supports; a temperature-calculating means derives fluid temperature from the two main resistors and a flow-calculating means derives flow rate. The probes PR1 and PR2 are arranged in parallel with respect to the fluid flow and inserted into the fluid from one side of the passage, optionally with a shield plate between them (thin upstream, thick near the probes).
• Pertinence / possible §102 mapping: Relevant to (i) two probes in a flow path (claim 1's probe pair and claim 6), and (ii) heat conduction along a probe support/post — the same parasitic-conduction problem the '956 patent analyzes and addresses via claim 5's "support posts … proximate but not in front of a nozzle." It provides a strong §103 motivation to manage post heat loss. It does not anticipate claim 1: it is an insertion-probe-in-a-duct architecture with no baffle, no two serial chambers, and no nozzles forming two jets impinging on probe tips; both probes are heated (the system uses two heated resistors with different set temperatures rather than a heated jet probe plus an unheated reference probe in a second jet); and there is no "only two openings" flow-blocking baffle. §103 art only (claims 1, 5, 6).

(e) US 2015/0192442 A1 — Sierra Instruments, Inc., "Mass flow meter hardware"

• Citation / dates: US 2015/0192442 A1; priority 2012‑09‑21; published 2015‑07‑09.
• Description — confidence caveat: I was unable to retrieve the specification/claims text for this document within this session (search returned no usable content for this identifier). Based only on the record available to me (title, applicant, dates), it is directed to structural hardware of a mass flow meter (Sierra Instruments being a manufacturer of thermal mass flow meters), but I cannot responsibly map its disclosure to claim elements. Treat any element-level mapping below as unverified.
• Pertinence / §102 category: Timing matters here. Publication was 2015‑07‑09, i.e., after the '956 priority date (2015‑04‑20) but before its filing date (2016‑04‑19). Because its effective filing date (2012‑09‑21) precedes the '956 effective filing date, it is available as §102(a)(2) prior art (U.S. application publication effectively filed before the '956 effective filing date), rather than as §102(a)(1) art. Any §102 challenge built on it would need its disclosure to include the baffle/two-chamber/two-jet/reference-probe-in-second-jet limitations — which, given the title's focus on "hardware," is unlikely, but I cannot verify this.

4. Bottom line by claim

5. Conclusion

• No single one of the five examiner-cited references anticipates any claim of US 10,240,956 B2 under 35 U.S.C. §102. Each fails the same core cluster of limitations: the baffle that entirely blocks the flow path, the resulting two serial chambers with only two openings passing the entire flow, and the reference probe located in a second jet immediately downstream of the second opening.
• The references are best treated as §103 obviousness art, with the strongest combination being US 2005/0223794 A1 (heated element at a uniform-velocity nozzle exit + a cold reference element + fixed-ΔT control) in view of US 4,199,981 A and/or US 5,347,876 A (nozzle-generated jets with thermal sensing at the throat/exit) and US 2009/0272187 A1 (two side-by-side probes and the support-conduction problem). The principal obstacle to such a combination is the '956 specification's explicit statement that exposing only the heated probe to a jet while the reference probe sees inlet air would be unsatisfactory outside a narrow calibration range — a teaching-away/Written-Description argument the patentee has pre-positioned.
• Two of the five references carry date caveats worth flagging: US 2015/0192442 A1 (published 2015‑07‑09, after the 2015‑04‑20 priority date) is only available as §102(a)(2) art via its 2012‑09‑21 effective filing date; the other four (US 4,199,981 A; US 5,347,876 A; US 2005/0223794 A1; US 2009/0272187 A1) are §102(a)(1) art, all published/granted before the effective filing date.
• Confidence limitation: the analysis of US 2015/0192442 A1 is incomplete — I could not retrieve its disclosure text in this session, so its element-level mapping is unverified and should be confirmed against the specification before being relied upon. I also did not retrieve the USPTO PatentCenter/file-wrapper "References Cited" listing directly; the citation set used here is the five references recorded on the patent's Google Patents page, all marked as examiner-cited, which is consistent with, but not a substitute for, the official record.
• Not prior art, but adjacent: the "Similar Documents" and "Families Citing" lists on the patent page (e.g., KR 101178038 B1, "Differential pressure-type mass flow meter with double nozzles"; US 7,654,157 B2, "Airflow sensor with pitot tube for pressure drop reduction") are relevance-ranked neighbors, not cited references, and would need independent verification. The CDI Meters family members US 2014/0109663 A1 and US 9,664,544 B2 (separate-probe, under-pressure mounting) are the applicant's own earlier disclosures and, in view of common ownership/§102(b)(2)(C), are unlikely to be usable as §102(a)(2) art against the '956 claims.

I'll research each of the five prior-art references cited on the face of US 10,240,956 to ground the obviousness analysis.

Let me pull more detail on the two references that most directly bear on the nozzle/jet/probe arrangement.

Obviousness Analysis of US 10,240,956 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Based on the prior art cited on the face of the patent (the "Prior Art" section of the Google Patents record). This is a technical analyst's hypothetical claim chart and rationale, not a legal opinion; I do not have the file wrapper, so I cannot state what arguments were made or accepted during prosecution.

I build on the two earlier sections above. Per the Patent summary section, claim 1 is the only independent claim and its tightest limitations are the closed-system words "the entire fluid flow path," "only first and second openings," and "the entire fluid flow." Those are the limitations that any § 103 theory must reach, and they are also the weakest points in the combination theories below — I flag this explicitly rather than glossing over it.

1. Legal framework as applied

• Governing standard: Graham v. John Deere (scope/content of prior art; differences; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations), as modified by KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (a combination of known elements is obvious where the improvement is a predictable use of prior-art elements according to their established functions; "obvious to try" applies where the solution is one of a finite number of identified, predictable solutions).
• The five references cited on the face of the patent are all pre-AIA-style printed publications/patent-application publications, and the '956 application (filed 2016-04-19) is an AIA application, so the references are available under § 102(a)(1) — and, for the Sierra publication, also § 102(a)(2).
• Date nuance worth flagging: US 2015/0192442 A1 (Sierra) published 2015-07-09 — after the 2015-04-20 priority date — but it claims priority to PCT/US2012/056664 filed 2012-09-21 (per the uspto.report record), so its effective filing date precedes the priority date and it qualifies as § 102(a)(2) art. Anyone relying on it should cite the 2012-09-21 effective date, not the publication date.
• Spec-identifier note (no auto-correction): the '956 detailed description states air "accelerates as it passes through openings 303 and 304 in baffle 205." In the same record, 104 is the baffle and 205 is the heated probe. I am not silently correcting this; I flag it as an apparent inconsistency in the printed specification.

2. Level of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

A POSITA here would be a mechanical or instrumentation engineer with a B.S. in mechanical/electrical engineering and roughly 2–4 years' experience designing or specifying thermal mass-flow instruments, familiar with (i) thermal anemometry/constant-temperature-differential control, (ii) nozzle/orifice fluid mechanics including converging inlets, discharge coefficients and pressure-drop budgeting, and (iii) probe construction and stem-conduction effects. This is the level against which the motivation analysis below is judged.

3. Element-by-element mapping of claim 1 to the cited art

(Element labels track items 1–5 of the claim-1 overview in the Patent summary section.)

Reading of the table: No single reference discloses the claim-1 architecture. The two-probe heated/reference thermal meter is squarely in Sierra and Hitachi; a heated element sitting in a nozzle-formed jet is squarely in Young and Visteon (and approximated in GRI); a baffle/plate in the flow is in GRI and Hitachi; and support-post heat-conduction management is expressly the subject of Hitachi and Sierra. Only the combination — one baffle, only two openings, both probes each in its own jet — is missing. This is therefore a combination case, not an anticipation case.

4. Candidate combinations and the motivation to combine

Combination A (primary): Young + Visteon + Sierra (with Hitachi optional)

• Young supplies the core recognition that (i) a heated sensing element placed in the discharge of a nozzle sees accelerated/focused flow and yields an improved mass-flow signal, and (ii) a second, unheated element provides temperature compensation.
• Visteon supplies the structural housing/flow-path definition, a converging nozzle with a generously rounded/converging inlet whose exit creates a "critical area having a uniform fluid flow velocity," and the express teaching of mounting an electrical element at the nozzle exit for "increased sensor dynamic range" — i.e., the jet-onto-the-sensor concept in structural form.
• Sierra supplies the modern two-probe thermal-dispersion meter (heated velocity probe + reference temperature probe, mounted side-by-side, elements in the tips) and the express problem statement that stem conduction is a major source of error because heat is lost "down the housing, lead wires, and other internal parts."

Motivation: A POSITA faced with the '956 problem — accurately metering a limited low gas flow without capillary passages and within an allowable pressure drop — would (a) seek to accelerate the flow onto the heated sensor to strengthen the signal at the low end (Young, Visteon: "increased sensor dynamic range"), and (b) seek to stabilize the support post's temperature profile so it does not inject lag/error into the tip reading (Sierra, and Hitachi's sub-heating resistors). Placing the heated tip immediately downstream of a nozzle and keeping the jet off the post (claim 5's "proximate but not in front of a nozzle") is the natural, predictable implementation of those two motivations. Providing two identical nozzles and putting the reference probe in the second jet follows from the recognized need to keep the two probes under identical flow/thermal conditions so they track fluid-temperature swings and nozzle adiabatic-expansion effects in concert.

Combination B: Visteon + Sierra (+ Hitachi)

A two/three-reference theory that leans on Visteon for the nozzle/housing and element-in-the-jet, Sierra for the heated/reference probe pair and stem conduction, and Hitachi for paired, essentially identical probes arranged in parallel with a shield plate between them and for actively heated support members. This is arguably the cleanest motivation set, because Sierra and Hitachi are the same field of endeavor (thermal mass flow sensing) and expressly discuss the stem-conduction problem the '956 patent is addressing.

Combination C: GRI + Hitachi + Sierra

• GRI supplies the nozzle of known flow area (converting velocity to flow), a disk/baffle in the nozzle throat, screens and baffles at the inlet, and multi-nozzle rangeability, plus explicit attention to sizing nozzles to a flow range/pressure drop.
• Hitachi + Sierra supply the two-probe thermal meter and the support-member/post heat-management teaching.
• Motivation: GRI's own stated object — metering flows down to zero with a device that imposes "very low or negligible restriction to gas flow" and can be sized to a flow range — overlaps the '956 objective. A POSITA would look to GRI for the nozzle+baffle mechanical architecture.

Combination D (minimal, two references): Young + Sierra

Young gives heated-element-in-nozzle-jet + unheated compensating element; Sierra gives the matched two-probe meter and stem-conduction concern. The gap is the closed baffle/two-opening/two-chamber structure, which this pairing does not supply and which would have to be supplied by "common sense"/design choice — a weaker theory.

5. Why a POSITA would have combined these teachings (motivations, per MPEP 2144/KSR)

1. Signal strength at low flow. Tying a sensor to a nozzle exit to raise local velocity is a known technique (Young's nozzle discharge; Visteon's "critical area"/"increased sensor dynamic range"; GRI's nozzle of known area). The '956 patent's own rationale ("the velocity of the fluid passing the heated tip is maximized at the low end of the flow range") is the same rationale.
2. Pressure-drop budget. Both Visteon and GRI teach sizing the flow-restricting element against an allowable pressure drop; splitting the flow through two identical nozzles lets each nozzle be smaller for the same total flow and same total ΔP, which is routine flow-division practice.
3. Matched environment for a differential measurement. The '956 patent's stated reason for identical probes is to make them respond together to fluid-temperature changes and to adiabatic expansion in the nozzles. That is a design consideration squarely within the skill of a thermal-flowmeter engineer, and it is reinforced by Hitachi's parallel probes + shield plate and by Sierra's recognition that the velocity and temperature probes experience different flow and conduction conditions.
4. Stem/post conduction. Sierra states that stem conduction is "a major source of error"; Hitachi adds sub-heating resistors specifically to heat the support member of the main heating resistor and eliminate heat flow into the lead wire. Keeping the jet off the post (as claim 5 recites) is the predictable way to stabilize the post's temperature profile.
5. Cleanability / no small passages. The patent characterizes the invention over capillary-type meters. Sierra and Visteon both show accessible housings/covers, and the general incentive to avoid plug-prone small passages provides a reason to use comparatively large nozzles rather than capillaries.

Reasonable expectation of success: All constituent mechanisms (nozzle acceleration, constant-temperature-differential thermal anemometry, two-probe differential temperature measurement, and heat-loss compensation) are individually well understood with predictable effects; their combination yields predictable, additive improvements in signal and stability. Under KSR, that favors obviousness.

6. Dependent claims

7. Counterarguments and weaknesses in the obviousness case (stated candidly)

1. No reference teaches the closed baffle with only two openings passing the entire flow. The "only"/"entire" language is the novelty core; every combination above must bridge it with an articulated design rationale, not a direct teaching.
2. Young arguably teaches away. Young states the compensating thermistors "may be located anywhere in the flow conduit, except in the immediate vicinity of the focused stream," and places them "distant from the nozzle." That is a specific preference against putting the reference element in a jet — the opposite of claim 1's requirement. This is the patentee's best teaching-away argument (though "teaching away" requires the reference to criticize, discredit or discourage, and one optimum-placement statement for a control valve may not rise to that level).
3. Field of endeavor mismatch for Visteon and Hitachi. Those are automotive intake-air MAF sensors. They are nonetheless analogous art (same problem: thermal mass-flow sensing subject to stem conduction and pressure-drop constraints), so this argument likely fails under KSR, but it is worth noting.
4. GRI uses a different measuring principle (time-of-flight, pulse-heated wire) rather than constant-temperature-differential, so it is at best a secondary reference.
5. The examiner allowed the claims over these five references. That is weak evidence of nonobviousness and says nothing about what arguments were made; a fuller analysis needs the file wrapper.
6. Secondary considerations are essentially unevidenced. The patent's stated advantages (no plug-prone capillaries, lower pressure drop, faster response, matched probes) are attorney/inventor assertions. Per the Litigation summary section, there is no known litigation, no family beyond the single US application, and no record of copying, licensing, or industry praise — so there is no objective evidence of nonobviousness in hand, and no demonstrated nexus between any such evidence and the claims.

8. Bottom line

• Claim 1: The strongest § 103 challenge is a combination of Young (heated element in a nozzle jet + reference element), Visteon (converging nozzle, element mounted at the nozzle exit in the uniform-velocity "critical area," housing defining the flow path) and Sierra (matched heated/reference two-probe thermal meter and the express stem-conduction error), optionally with Hitachi (identical parallel probes with support members and a shield plate, and heating of the support member). The motivation is the same low-flow signal, pressure-drop-budget and post-conduction rationale the patent itself recites. However, the "only two openings / entire flow / both probes in jets" architecture is not directly taught, and Young's express placement of its compensating elements away from the focused stream is a real teaching-away counterpoint. My confidence that a PTAB or district court would hold claim 1 obvious on these five references alone is moderate at best — this is a genuine, if incremental, mechanical arrangement, and the closed-baffle limitation does real work.
• Claims 2, 4, 6 (and likely 3, 5): Readily rendered obvious by Visteon/GRI (converging nozzles, element at nozzle exit), Sierra (elements in tips), and Hitachi/Sierra (identical paired probes, support members, post-conduction management).
• Claim 7: The least vulnerable dependent — the co-mounted probes-and-baffle serviceability architecture is not clearly met by any cited reference.

Caveats: (i) I could not retrieve the prosecution history, so I cannot say which references or arguments were actually applied or overcome; (ii) the Visteon description in the sources I retrieved is ambiguous about exactly which passage the "second electrical element" occupies, and I have described it conservatively as "the auxiliary passage, not a second nozzle jet"; (iii) no search here can substitute for a full PACER/file-wrapper review, per the uncertainty flags already recorded in the earlier sections.