US 10281273

I'll verify against live sources before summarizing.

US 10,281,273 — Verification note

I searched for the exact number 10281273. Results confirm it is a real, in-force grant; I found no CAFC 2026 docket entry, IPR, or litigation involving this patent number, and one caveat on dates (below). Two of my hits for "10281273" were unrelated coincidental numeric matches (a Brazilian VPN procurement decision and a Peruvian voter-list entry) — excluded as noise, per the strict literal-identifier rule.

Primary corroborating sources:

• Google Patents: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10281273/en
• Unified Patents: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-10281273-B2
• Justia: https://patents.justia.com/patent/10281273

Summary

Date caveat (flagged, not resolved): Unified Patents lists priority 2015-12-23, filing 2016-09-22, grant 2019-05-06, expiry 2037-09-22 — each one day earlier than Google Patents/Justia. This is almost certainly a timezone/date-attribution artifact (also note Unified reports app. no. 15274112 vs. 15/274,112 in the same document). I am recording both rather than picking one; the statutory filing date of record should be confirmed against USPTO Patent Center if it matters.

Abstract (as granted)

A sensing system (1) in which a desired trajectory determining section (32) determines a first desired trajectory θ(t) (t<t1) whose first derivative is continuous, a second desired trajectory θ(t) (t2≤t<t3) whose first derivative is continuous, a third desired trajectory θ(t) (t1≤t<t2) configured with a common tangent line to the first and second desired trajectories, and a fourth desired trajectory θ(t) (t3≤t<t4) configured with a common tangent line to the second desired trajectory in the current-time cycle and a first desired trajectory in a next-time cycle. A drive mechanism controlling section (33) controls the drive mechanism to track the desired trajectories.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The patent has 4 claims total; claims 1 and 4 are independent (claim 4 is the method counterpart of claim 1). Every claim is limited to the trajectory-generation scheme, not to any particular sensor hardware.

Claim 1 — sensing system (apparatus). Four elements:

1. A sensor that gathers information about surrounding space at a certain (fixed) time interval — the spec's embodiment is a laser range finder (LRF) emitting laser light at prescribed intervals; a camera/image sensor is expressly contemplated as an alternative.
2. A drive mechanism that swings the sensor's reference axis (the LRF optical axis Xc) about an axis (embodiment: the robot's yaw axis Z) within a range bounded by a first angle and a second angle in a drive-mechanism coordinate system. Embodiment: a stepping motor.
3. A desired trajectory determining section that, treating one full back-and-forth swing as a cycle divided into four periods — a first period containing the first-angle endpoint, a second period containing the second-angle endpoint, and two intermediate periods bridging them — determines four trajectories:
   • First trajectory (first period): angle-vs-time curve whose first derivative (angular velocity) is continuous through that period.
   • Second trajectory (second period): same, with continuous first derivative.
   • Tangent-matching condition: the slope of the second trajectory at its start equals the slope of the first trajectory at its end; and the slope of the second trajectory at its end equals the slope of the first trajectory at the start of the next cycle. In effect, the incoming and outgoing velocities at each direction-reversal point must match.
   • Third trajectory (first intermediate period): simply the straight tangent line to the first trajectory at the end of the first period — i.e., constant angular velocity across the bridge.
   • Fourth trajectory (second intermediate period): the straight tangent line to the second trajectory at the end of the second period — again constant angular velocity, and by construction it lines up with the next cycle's first trajectory.
4. A drive mechanism controlling section that commands the drive mechanism to track those trajectories.

The technical payoff stated in the spec: because the first/second trajectories have continuous first derivatives and the third/fourth trajectories are tangent-line bridges, angular velocity is continuous (never discontinuous) across an entire cycle, removing the velocity discontinuity at direction-reversal that would otherwise overload the motor; and because angular velocity is constant during the two intermediate periods, the sensor data acquisition density is constant over at least those periods.

Claim 4 — sensing method. Same four-period framework and identical four-trajectory determinations as claim 1, recast as steps ("desired trajectory determining step" and "drive mechanism controlling step") performed by a system comprising the sensor and the drive mechanism. It is co-extensive in scope with claim 1 apart from the apparatus/method statutory category distinction; note claim 4 does not itself recite the tangent-slope-match limitations in the abbreviated a-2 form? — to be precise, it does recite them verbatim in the "inclination of a tangent line…" language, so the two independent claims are substantively parallel.

Dependent claims

• Claim 2 (depends on 1): the first trajectory is twice differentiable with respect to time at and around the first-angle time point, and the second trajectory is likewise twice differentiable at and around the second-angle time point → smooth (not merely continuous) angular-velocity change at the reversal points.
• Claim 3 (depends on 2): at least one of the first and second trajectories is a circle. In the spec, all three circular-arc segments use radius r, and r is set to not more than 0.5 × the movable angle range a, which the applicants show keeps |dθ/dt| at or below the peak velocity of a comparable sinusoidal trajectory (their eqs. 22–29, with the 2r ≤ a condition). Figures 6A–6D contrast r = 1.5 (better than sinusoidal) against r = 2.5 (worse).

Note on the claim-language variant

The granted claim 1 uses "inclination of a tangent line," whereas the pre-grant publication US 2017/0184397 and the Google Patents description text use "slope of a tangent line" for the same limitation. I am flagging this rather than smoothing it over, since it is a literal textual difference between the published application and the granted claims; the granted wording is the operative one.

Prior art cited (11 references, per the face of the patent)

JPH02197813A (Matsushita Electric Works), JPH0798381A and JPH09304535A (Omron), US6407527B1 (Canon), JP2007225434A (Yaskawa Electric — the 3D measuring device discussed in the Background), JP2008020370A (Toyota), US2010/0053715A1 (O'Neill), US2012/0236379A1 (Lighttime), US2014/0063489A1 (Faro), US9285477B1 (Apple), US2017/0261939A1 (Casio). Two Japanese Office Actions (2018-10-23; 2019-02-26) are listed as non-patent citations. One family member citing the family: CN107218920B (2020-07-10).

Uncertainty

I have no authoritative information on any post-grant challenge, reissue, reexamination, terminal disclaimer, or court proceeding for US 10,281,273, and my searches surfaced none. Absence of a search hit is not proof of absence — a docket-specific check (USPTO Patent Center / PTAB, and the CAFC and district-court dockets) would be needed to state that affirmatively. I also could not confirm the one-day date discrepancy noted above.

I'll search litigation databases for US patent 10281273.

Let me search additional litigation-specific sources.

Bottom line

No litigation — district court, PTAB, ITC, or CAFC — involving U.S. Patent No. 10,281,273 ("Sensing system and sensing method," Honda Motor Co., Ltd.) was identified in the sources searched. I could not find any complaint, IPR/PGR petition, ITC § 337 investigation, or Federal Circuit appeal in which 10,281,273 is the asserted or challenged patent.

I want to be explicit about the confidence level here: this is a negative finding from a limited set of searches, not a certified clearance search. Absence of hits in the sources I could reach is not proof that no case exists (particularly for very recent filings or sealed/consolidated matters).

What I searched

• General web searches: 10281273 patent litigation, US10281273 lawsuit Honda patent infringement, "10,281,273" patent infringement, "10281273" patent case number district court complaint
• Unified Patents litigation portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) — the patent page for US-10281273-B2 exists, but I found no linked litigation entries; the portal record shows only patent metadata (ratings, assignee, renewal fees)
• CourtListener/RECAP and RPX Insight results — all hits traced to other patents or other subject matter, none to 10,281,273
• PTAB-related results (ptacts.uspto.gov, Docket Alarm) — no petition naming this patent

The patent itself (context)

• US 10,281,273 B2, application 15/274,112, Honda Motor Co., Ltd., inventors Takumi Kamioka and Kenta Tanaka, claiming priority to JP 2015-252337 (priority date 2015-12-24 per the patent text), granted 2019-05-07, status Active.
• The patent family is small: only US 15/274,112 and JP 2017-116418 A appear as family members. There is no continuation/divisional family — one fewer vector for litigation.
• The prosecution record shows only prior-art citations (e.g., US 6,407,527; US 2010/0053715; US 2012/0236379; US 2014/0063489; US 9,285,477; JP 2007-225434) and two Japanese Office Actions (Oct. 23, 2018 and Feb. 26, 2019). Nothing indicating adversarial proceedings.

False positives to flag (do not treat these as this patent)

• plainsite.org docket 25v3cynv8 — this is a USPTO patent application captioned with "Patent Application No. 10281273," applicant Klaus Hoffmann, examiner Robert C. Scheibel, titled around NAT/NAPT router address translation. This is an unrelated application whose number coincidentally matches the digits 10281273. It is not U.S. Patent No. 10,281,273 and involves no Honda patent. The STRICT RULE against auto-correcting identifiers cuts both ways here: the identical digit string does not make this the same right.
• Honda-related infringement suits that surfaced (e.g., Phelan Group LLC v. Honda, 2:23-cv-00606 (E.D. Tex.), asserting the "Fleming" driver-authentication patents; Auto Brilliance LLC v. Nissan/Honda, 2:22-cv-00337/00338 (E.D. Tex.) asserting US 7,337,650; Neo Wireless v. American Honda, 2:22-cv-01824 and 2:22-cv-11403) all involve Honda as a defendant and other patents. Honda is the owner of 10,281,273, so a suit on this patent would more likely name Honda as plaintiff (or the patent would appear as an IPR challenge against Honda).
• Honda Sensing class actions (e.g., the CMBS/front-camera defect cases) are product-liability/consumer matters — no patent dimension.

A metadata discrepancy worth noting

The Unified Patents portal page for US-10281273-B2 reports priority date 2015-12-23, application date 2016-09-22, grant date 2019-05-06, expiration 2037-09-22, examiner "Bolda, Eric L." These differ by one day/one name-field from the authoritative patent text (priority 2015-12-24; filed 2016-09-23; granted 2019-05-07; expiration 2037-09-23). Per the operating rule to prefer live search results, I'm reporting the portal's values as-writ­ten rather than silently harmonizing them, but the discrepancy suggests the portal's dates are simply offset and should not be relied on for FRCP/statutory-deadline calculations without checking USPTO Patent Center directly.

Recommended verification steps (if you need a certified answer)

1. USPTO Patent Center / PAIR for 15/274,112 → "Litigation" tab and "Assignment" history (a transfer to an NPE/PAE is the usual precursor to assertion).
2. PTAB (ptacts.uspto.gov) endpoint review — search the patent number directly for any IPR/PGR.
3. Unified Patents Litigation caselist filtered by patent: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist?patents=10281273
4. Docket Navigator or RPX Insight — commercial, most reliable for district court coverage and consolidated cases.
5. PACER dockets for Honda Motor Co., Ltd. and American Honda Motor Co., Inc. as plaintiff.
6. Check the Japanese counterpart (JP 2017-116418 / application 2015-252337) for any JPO opposition or invalidation trial, which would not appear in U.S. dockets.

If you'd like, I can next pull the Honda assignment history for 15/274,112 to confirm whether the patent has ever left Honda's ownership — that's the single most informative check for whether assertion is plausible.

I'll verify the "no PTAB activity" baseline against live sources before writing anything.

No PTAB hits so far. Let me run a few more targeted checks — litigation, CAFC, and any PTAB trial number for the '273 patent.

One more check on the PTAB E2E / ODP portal directly and any Federal Circuit appeal.

PTAB Proceedings — US 10,281,273 B2 ("Sensing system and sensing method")

Proceedings overview

Total: zero. As of 2026-09-29 there are no AIA trial proceedings of any type — no IPR, no PGR, no CBM — on US 10,281,273 in the USPTO Open Data Portal. There is likewise no Federal Circuit appeal from any PTAB decision on this patent, because there is no PTAB decision to appeal. Bottom line for a defendant: nothing is cancelled, nothing is settled, no estoppel has attached to anyone, and the entire validity fight is still ahead of you, unwasted. The patent is not "hardened" — it is simply untested. Four claims (1–4; claims 1 and 4 independent) stand exactly as they issued on 2019-05-07, and every prior-art ground you can think of is available to you.

⚠️ Flag on the task template: the prompt's example language refers to "claims 1-5." This patent has four claims, not five (1 apparatus, 2–3 dependent, 4 method). Any demand letter or invalidity contentions citing "claim 5" are citing a claim that does not exist — worth checking, since it is a hallmark of copied-over boilerplate.

No proceedings to enumerate

The required per-proceeding format has nothing to fill in. Recording what I actually checked, so the null result is auditable rather than assumed:

Two false positives to avoid, both Honda-related but completely irrelevant:

• IPR2016-01472, American Honda Motor Co. v. Blitzsafe Texas, LLC, Patent 7,489,786 (E.D. Tex. 2:15-cv-1274) — Honda as petitioner, different patent entirely.
• IPR2017-01538, Aisin Seiki / Toyota / American Honda v. Intellectual Ventures II, Patent 7,928,348 — Honda as joinder petitioner on IV's patent.
  Neither involves US 10,281,273, and neither involves Honda as patent owner.

Also checked and found absent: ex parte reexamination, PGR (note: PGR is time-barred anyway — the § 321(c) nine-month window closed 2020-02-07, and PGR-eligibility under § 321(b)(1) is doubtful for a patent with a 2015 priority date and post-AIA filing, though § 321(b)(2) could theoretically reach a broadening amendment — there is none on the record). CBM is unavailable regardless: the claims are a sensing/scanning apparatus and method, not a "financial product or service," and the AIA § 18 transitional program sunset on 2020-09-16.

Strategic summary

Claim status. Claims 1, 2, 3, and 4 are all live and untouched. Nothing is canceled. Nothing has been held patentable by the Board either — which is a distinction that matters: there is no PTAB precedent construing "inclination of a tangent line," "first intermediate period," or "twice differentiable," so a defendant's claim-construction position on those limitations is genuinely open. The only prior adjudicative gloss comes from the examiner and from two Japanese Office Actions (2018-10-23; 2019-02-26) listed as non-patent citations — i.e., JP counterpart prosecution, not a US validity determination. Note also the claim-wording wrinkle already flagged in the earlier sections: the granted claims say "inclination of a tangent line," while the published application and spec text say "slope." A challenger should consider whether that change carries any § 112 or prosecution-history weight; nobody has litigated it.

Estoppel landscape — clean slate. Because no IPR/PGR was ever instituted, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel exists against any petitioner or privy. There are no § 315(e)(1) or § 325(e)(1) estoppels either. There is no statutory bar under § 315(b) for anyone, since there is no evidence any party has been served with a complaint alleging infringement of this patent (the patent appears never to have been asserted). Practically: you may file an IPR on any § 102/§ 103 ground over any prior art, including art already cited on the face of the patent, and you may run parallel district-court invalidity theories without an IPR-estoppel trap closing on you. That is the most favorable posture a challenger can have.

Pattern signals. There is no pattern, and the reason is structural: the patent owner is Honda Motor Co., Ltd. — an operating company, not an NPE. The prompt's "the troll has no case" framing simply doesn't fit here. Honda is a serial IPR petitioner (it has publicly advocated before Congress for PTAB access as a defendant-side tool, and is a recurring petitioner against automotive NPEs), but it has never been a PTAB patent owner on this patent. No defensive aggregator (Unified, RPX, LOT, Open Invention Network) appears in the chain — Unified merely publishes a public record page. If you are adverse to Honda on this patent, expect a well-resourced, practicing-entity patent owner with the resources to defend a trial and appeal.

The absence is the signal. Well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs; this one has been asserted (so far as I can find) never. Either the technology is differentiated enough that competitors design around the trajectory-generation scheme rather than fight it, or the assertion economics have never justified it. Do not read the empty PTAB docket as "the patent is strong." Read it as "no one has bothered to test it."

Term. Expiration is 2037-09-23 per Google Patents (Unified shows 2037-09-22 — the same unresolved one-day discrepancy flagged earlier; it is immaterial to this analysis, but confirm against USPTO Patent Center if the exact date ever matters). That is a long runway: ~11 years remaining, with the 4th-year maintenance fee paid 2022-10-26 and the 8th-year fee now due around 2026 — worth watching, since non-payment is itself a cheap invalidation path with zero estoppel cost.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant and want to invalidate:

1. You have a full, unencumbered IPR. File within one year of service of any complaint (§ 315(b)) — and note that filing early avoids Fintiv-style discretionary-denial risk, which is precisely the burden Honda has lobbied about. There is no prior petition to worry about under General Plastic.
2. Start with the art already on the face of the patent (11 citations), which the examiner considered but which no adjudicative body has ever tested for § 103 combinability: JPH02197813A (Matsushita Electric Works, scanner driving circuit for light beam scanning), JPH0798381A and JPH09304535A (Omron, scanning distance measuring devices), US6407527B1 (Canon, motor drive control), JP2007225434A (Yaskawa Electric — the 3D measuring device the patent's own Background section discusses), JP2008020370A (Toyota), US2010/0053715A1 (O'Neill, lidar scanning system), US2012/0236379A1 (Lighttime, ladar MEMS scanning), US2014/0063489A1 (Faro, laser scanner), US9285477B1 (Apple), US2017/0261939A1 (Casio, motor driving).
3. Attack the arithmetic, not just the hardware. The claims are pure control-law limitations and the specification supplies the enabling math itself — eqs. (1)–(22), including the stated constraint that radius r ≤ 0.5 × movable angle range a. A § 112(a)/§ 112(b) theory that the claims are not commensurate with the disclosed radius bound (or that "twice differentiable" is indefinite as applied to the claimed § 112(f)-free structural element) is a genuinely unexplored angle with no PTAB or district-court estoppel standing in the way.
4. Consider ex parte reexamination as a cheaper parallel track — no estoppel, no Fintiv, and the § 315(e) trapdoor never closes. There is no record of a prior reexam here.

If you are the patent owner: the clean PTAB record is an asset only until it isn't. Don't over-read it. Your claim language survived Japanese prosecution but has never met an adversarial US construction of "inclination of a tangent line" or "first intermediate period," and your central r ≤ 0.5a constraint lives in the specification, not the claims — meaning a defendant will argue it is not claim-limiting while simultaneously arguing § 112. Consider whether a narrowing continuation with the radius bound in the claims is worth pursuing before an IPR forces the issue.

Verification links:

• USPTO PTAB E2E / PTAB Center (search "10,281,273" to confirm no matter exists): https://ptacts.uspto.gov/
• Google Patents record: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10281273/en
• Unified Patents record (confirming no AIA challenge logged): https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-10281273-B2
• Justia: https://patents.justia.com/patent/10281273

Confidence and limits. I am high-confidence that no AIA trial proceeding exists for US 10,281,273, based on (a) the structured ODP block in this prompt returning none and (b) multiple independent web searches surfacing none. Absence of a search hit is not proof of absence: the definitive check is a docket-level query at PTAB E2E and Patent Center, which I cannot execute directly here. I found no post-grant challenge, reissue, reexamination, terminal disclaimer, or court proceeding of any kind, and I found no evidence the patent has ever been asserted — but I would not state the latter affirmatively without a district-court docket sweep (PACER / Docket Alarm / CourtListener) across all districts, since a complaint filed and quickly dismissed could evade my searches.

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

Inventors

Employer attribution is not guesswork here: both men are named assignors on the sole recorded assignment, which conveys their rights to Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (reel 039845/0161), and the assignment statement recites "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:KAMIOKA, TAKUMI;TANAKA, KENTA."

Unusual patterns — none found.

• Both inventors appear on the same instrument, not on separate inventor-by-inventor assignments. That is the standard employer-style pre-filing assignment, not a fragmented ownership situation.
• The assignment was executed 2016-06-10 and recorded 2016-09-23 — the same day the US application 15/274,112 was filed. Assignment executed before filing is the opposite of the fire-sale precursor you'd be looking for.
• No evidence of either inventor departing Honda within 12 months of filing. Kamioka in particular continues to accrue Honda-assigned filings (aggregator sites count ~10 patents under his name at Honda), which is inconsistent with a departing-inventor/portfolio-shedding pattern.
• I could not independently confirm the inventors' precise internal Honda entity (Honda R&D Co., Ltd. vs. Honda Research Institute Japan Co., Ltd.) from the record — both are Honda subsidiaries and both would assign upward to the parent. Stated as a limitation, not a finding.

Original assignee

Honda Motor Co., Ltd. (1-1, Minami-Aoyama 2-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-8556, Japan) — the entity named on the issued patent and still the owner of record.

• Primary line of business: global automotive, motorcycle and power-equipment manufacturer; NYSE-listed (HMC), SEC registrant, investment-grade. The robotics/sensing R&D reflected in this patent (LRF on a mobile robot platform, swinging about a robot yaw axis) sits inside Honda's autonomous-mobility and humanoid-robotics programs.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? The specification itself is written from the perspective of a production-oriented implementation: the sensing system 1 "is mounted on a robot ... and is configured to provide acquired sensor data to a control mechanism of the robot," with an express fallback to "a mobile body, such as a vehicle, or ... a stationary object, such as a monitoring camera system." Honda has shipped vehicle-borne lidar/LRF-based driver-assist and automated-driving systems and has shipped robot platforms in this lineage, so the assignee is unambiguously an operating company rather than a paper holder. I am not asserting a specific current Honda product reads on claims 1–4 — I do not have that evidence — only that Honda is a product-shipping operating entity in the relevant technology space.
• Current status: operating. No bankruptcy, no receivership, no dissolution. Honda paid the 4th-year maintenance fee on 2022-10-26 (large entity, original event code M1551), confirming live ownership and continued economic interest.

Assignment timeline

One recorded assignment exists for this patent.

• 2016-06-10 (executed) / recorded 2016-09-23 — Reel 039845 / Frame 0161
  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: KAMIOKA, TAKUMI; TANAKA, KENTA (joint inventors)
  • Assignee: HONDA MOTOR CO., LTD. (Japan)
  • Correspondent: not determinable from the sources I could reach. Google Patents' legal-events block reproduces the reel/frame and the free-format text ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:KAMIOKA, TAKUMI;TANAKA, KENTA;REEL/FRAME:039845/0161") but does not expose the correspondent field, and my attempts to pull the underlying cover sheet PDF for that reel/frame returned nothing. Flagged as unverified — do not treat any attorney name as established for this reel/frame. For context only (and expressly not attributed to this reel/frame): Honda's other recorded assignments on the public legacy-assignment server show two recurring correspondents — WHDA (8500 Leesburg Pike, Suite 7500, Tysons, VA 22182) and RANKIN, HILL & CLARK LLP (23755 Lorain Road, Suite 200, North Olmsted, OH 44070, with Honda Patents & Technologies North America, LLC also named as authorized to complete the assignment instrument). Either is plausible as the filing correspondent here; neither is confirmed for 039845/0161. There is also only one link in this chain, so the "recurring correspondent" signal is structurally unassessable.
  • Context: inventor-to-employer assignment, executed pre-filing. Routine corporate capture of employee invention rights by the operating parent — not an acquisition, fire-sale, securitization, or transfer to an asserter.

Post-issuance assignments: none. Seven-plus years after grant (2019-05-07), the patent has never left Honda. The only subsequent legal event on the face of the record is the 2022-10-26 maintenance-fee payment, still tendered by the large-entity owner.

Corroboration: Unified Patents' patent page for US-10281273-B2 independently lists Parent Company: Honda Motor Co Ltd, with no intermediate or downstream entity. Consistent with Google Patents and Justia.

⚠️ Carried-forward flag (from the prior section, not resolved here): Unified Patents dates this patent one day earlier on every field (priority 2015-12-23, application 2016-09-22, grant 2019-05-06, expiry 2037-09-22) than Google Patents/Justia (2015-12-24 / 2016-09-23 / 2019-05-07 / 2037-09-23). This is almost certainly date-attribution, but it is worth noting because the recorded assignment date (2016-09-23) matches the Google Patents filing date — i.e., on Google's dates the assignment was recorded the same day the application was filed, which is a coherent story. On Unified's dates it would be recorded one day after filing, which is also coherent (recordation lag). Either reading is benign; there is no ownership consequence.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10281273
    2015 : Inventors employed at Honda
         : JP priority JP2015252337 filed
    2016 : Assignment executed 10 Jun
         : Recorded 23 Sep reel 039845 frame 0161
         : US application 15/274112 filed 23 Sep
    2019 : Patent issued 07 May
    2022 : Fourth year maintenance fee paid

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data — applying the rubric's literal definition ("no records, or only the original assignment").

Justification. The entire ownership history of US 10,281,273 consists of a single recorded assignment, reel 039845/0161, executed 2016-06-10 and recorded 2016-09-23, conveying inventors Kamioka and Tanaka's rights to Honda Motor Co., Ltd.; there is no post-issuance transfer of any kind, and the 2022-10-26 maintenance-fee payment confirms Honda still holds and values the asset. On that record every NPE/troll signal is "not present" — no LLC assignee, no known asserter, no cascade, no pre-suit transfer, no bankruptcy, no defensive-aggregator endpoint — so the "insufficient data" call reflects the absence of an assertion chain to analyze, not uncertainty about who owns the patent. The one genuine gap is signal #3: I could not retrieve the correspondent of record for reel 039845/0161, which is the field most likely to reveal a repeat-player attorney, so that box stays unclear rather than being filled by inference.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search property number 10281273 or reel 039845 frame 0161) and the legacy mirror at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Cross-checks: Google Patents legal events https://patents.google.com/patent/US10281273/en and Unified Patents https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-10281273-B2. Recommended next step: pull the 039845/0161 cover sheet directly (legacy-assignments PDF endpoint) and the JP 2015252337 → Honda assignment, since a Japanese-employer family member sometimes carries a different correspondent than the US filing and would resolve signal #3.

I'll verify the patent and its cited references against live sources before analyzing.

Now let me verify the substantive content of each cited reference.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 10,281,273 B2

Scope note / limits on this pass: The authoritative source for the citation list is the patent face and description supplied in the full text above. I verified titles, dates, and abstracts where search returned them; where a reference's content could not be independently retrieved in this pass, I say so explicitly rather than characterizing it. I also note the earlier date discrepancy (Unified Patents shows priority 2015‑12‑23 / filed 2016‑09‑22 / granted 2019‑05‑06 / expiry 2037‑09‑22, one day earlier than Google/Justia) — my new searches reproduced the Unified figures exactly, so the discrepancy stands unresolved as previously flagged.

Legal framing caveat: What follows is a technical mapping, not a legal opinion. Anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102 requires a single reference disclosing every limitation arranged as in the claim. On the face of it, no cited reference anticipates any of claims 1–4; the record shows the examiner allowed the application over this art, and the art is directed at scanning-sensor hardware/measurement, not at the claimed four-segment trajectory-generation scheme. The realistic role of these references is § 103 obviousness and/or background. I flag that explicitly rather than manufacturing anticipatory readings.

Key structural point about the claims

Before the reference-by-reference table: all four claims are dominated by one limitation group —

a desired trajectory determining section that divides a swing cycle into a first period, second period, and two intermediate periods, and produces (i) a first trajectory with continuous first derivative, (ii) a second trajectory with continuous first derivative, with tangent-slope matching at the period boundaries and across cycles, (iii) a third trajectory that is the tangent line to the first trajectory at the end of the first period, and (iv) a fourth trajectory that is the tangent line to the second trajectory at the end of the second period; plus a drive mechanism controlling section tracking those trajectories.

The hardware elements (a sensor sampling at a fixed interval; a drive mechanism swinging a reference axis between first and second angles) are old and generic in this art. The novelty concentrates in the four-segment, C¹-continuous, tangent-bridged trajectory scheme. That is why the closest cited art attacks only the hardware preamble.

The 11 cited references

Asterisks reflect Google Patents' legend (* cited by examiner; † cited by third party) as it appeared in the furnished text; the table there carried asterisks only on refs 4, 7, 8, 9, 10, 11.

§ 102 assessment, reference by reference

Threshold timing rule. US 10,281,273 has a priority date of 2015‑12‑24 (JP 2015‑252337) and a US filing date of 2016‑09‑23. Under the AIA §§ 102(a)(1)/(a)(2), a reference is prior art only if its effective date precedes 2015‑12‑24 (or, for a published application, if its filing date precedes that date).

• Refs 1–10 (1989 through 2013) all comfortably predate 2015‑12‑24 and are § 102‑eligible in date terms. But none discloses the fourth (c) element — the four-period division with two C¹-continuous trajectories and two tangent-line intermediate trajectories having matched end slopes and next-cycle slope matching. Each reference at best shows a scanned/rotatable sensor and its driver. Assuming they disclose the hardware, that leaves the entire point of novelty undisclosed; there is no single-reference anticipation of claim 1 or claim 4, and a fortiori none of the dependent claims 2–3 (twice-differentiability at the angle extremes; circular trajectory).
• Ref 11 (US2017/0261939A1), Casio — its earliest date (2016‑03‑11) is after the 2015‑12‑24 priority date. It therefore cannot be § 102(a)(1) art, and for § 102(a)(2) purposes its filing date also postdates the priority date. It is not prior art against claims 1–4 as long as the JP priority claim to 2015‑12‑24 is valid. If priority were ever lost, this reference's relevance would have to be re-evaluated — but even then it is a stepping-motor driver, disclosing no trajectory scheme.
• Self/companion document: US2017/0184397A1 (the pre‑grant publication of this same application, published 2017‑06‑29) is not prior art; it is the same disclosure. It appears in the "Similar Documents" list and should not be treated as a § 102 reference. (The earlier section's flag about "inclination" in the granted claims vs. "slope" in the publication stands and is unrelated to anticipation.)

What each reference is actually useful for

• § 103 / background — scanning lidar & laser scanners: refs 2 (Omron scanning rangefinder), 7 (O'Neill lidar scanning), 8 (Lighttime MEMS ladar), 9 (Faro laser scanner), 10 (Apple scanned TOF). These establish that swinging a sensor's reference axis through an angular range to sample surrounding space was well known. They support a "preamble is old" argument but supply no teaching or suggestion of the tangent-line-bridged trajectory, the matched-slope boundary conditions, or the constant-angular-velocity intermediate segments that give the claimed constant data-acquisition density.
• § 103 — the rotatable 3D measuring sensor: ref 5 (Yaskawa JP2007225434A) is the most on-point cited reference because it is the one the applicants themselves chose to distinguish in the Background — a CCD camera rotated in yaw and pitch for 3D measurement. It speaks to elements (a)/(b) only.
• § 103 — motor/drive control: refs 4 (Canon) and 11 (Casio) and 1 (Matsushita scanner driving circuit) go to element (b)/(d) — that a motor (including a stepping motor) can be commanded to an angle. None addresses trajectory shape, velocity continuity, or the discontinuity problem the patent solves.
• § 103 — angle-range centering/mobility: ref 3 (Omron JPH09304535A) is notable because the specification expressly contemplates setting the center of the movement range (e.g., to the robot's direction of travel or to a direction derived from measured surroundings). Ref 3's optical-axis adjustment within a scan tolerance is the kind of teaching that could be cited against that optional feature — but that feature is in the description, not in any claim, so it cannot support a § 102/§ 103 rejection of claims 1–4.
• Ref 6 (Toyota JP2008020370A) — autonomous mobile device; context art only, and I could not retrieve its text in this pass, so I decline to characterize it further.

Additional items on the record (not "cited references" proper)

• ES2128091T3 — Siemens AG, "Speed control with jog limitation" (priority 1994‑10‑21; published 1999‑05‑01). This appears only in the "Family Cites Families" list (a citation in the JP family), not as a US citation. It concerns speed control with end-of-travel limitation — thematically adjacent to the reversal-at-the-limit problem — but it is not a cited reference on the US face and its full text was not retrieved.
• Non-patent citations: Japanese Office Action dated 2018‑10‑23 (3 pp.) and Japanese Office Action dated 2019‑02‑26 (4 pp.) — these are the JP prosecution actions, on which the JP family member JP2017116418A was presumably allowed. Useful for prosecution-history context only.
• CN107218920B (西北仪器公司, 2020‑07‑10) — a document citing this family; it is later art and cannot be prior art.

Ranking: most relevant prior art for US 10,281,273

1. JP2007225434A (Yaskawa) — most relevant overall for the rotatable-sensor/3D-measurement preamble; it is the reference the patent itself distinguishes.
2. US2014/0063489A1 (Faro, "Laser Scanner") and US2010/0053715A1 (O'Neill, lidar scanning) — strongest on scanning sensor + rotatable beam axis.
3. US2012/0236379A1 (Lighttime, MEMS ladar) — scanning drive mechanism.
4. US9285477B1 (Apple) — scanned-beam 3D depth acquisition.
5. JPH0798381A / JPH09304535A (Omron) and JPH02197813A (Matsushita) — early Japanese scanning-rangefinder and scanner-drive art; the Omron '535 application is the most useful for the "movable angle range / range centering" sub‑point.
6. US6407527B1 (Canon) and US2017/0261939A1 (Casio) — motor/stepping-motor drive control; ref 11's dates likely exclude it from § 102 entirely.
7. JP2008020370A (Toyota) — autonomous-mobile context, unverified content.

Explicit uncertainties

• Not legally concluded: I state no anticipation opinion; I state that on the retrieved text, the cited references do not disclose the trajectory-determining limitation that carries the claims, and that the examiner allowed over them. A full § 102 analysis would require each reference's complete specification (including figures), which I could not retrieve for refs 1, 4, 6, and partially 3 and 5 in this pass.
• The one-day date discrepancy (Unified vs. Google/Justia) remains unresolved as previously flagged and could matter for the § 102 effective-date cutoff; confirm against USPTO Patent Center.
• I found no new post-grant challenge, IPR, or litigation relating to US 10,281,273 in these searches — absence of a hit is not proof of absence.
• The asterisk attribution (examiner vs. third-party citations) is taken from the furnished Google Patents table and is presented as-is rather than corrected.

I'll ground this analysis in live-source checks of the cited references before mapping them against the claims.

Strong hit on the O'Neill lidar reference. Let me check the remaining cited art for trajectory/motion-profile teachings.

JP 2008-020370 (Toyota) looks directly on point for the density motivation. Let me pull its specifics and check the remaining references.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,281,273 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note: This analysis builds on the previously generated summary and verification note (claim decomposition, filed/priority dates, and the "slope" vs. "inclination" claim-language flag are not repeated here). I was cut off mid-verification by a tool-step limit, so I explicitly separate verified reference disclosures from title/assignee-only references below. Nothing in the latter category is asserted as disclosure.

1. Legal framework and threshold determinations

Governing statute. The application was filed 2016-09-23 with a foreign priority claim to JP 2015-252337 (2015-12-24). Both dates post-date 2013-03-16, so AIA §§ 102/103 apply. The effective filing date for prior-art purposes is 2015-12-24 (AIA § 102(d)(2)).

Prior-art qualification check. This matters because two of the eleven cited references are dated after the effective filing date:

Two consequences:

• US 9,285,477 B1 is usable only under § 102(a)(2) — i.e., only for subject matter it actually describes, and disqualified if that subject matter was commonly owned (it was not; Apple vs. Honda). It cannot be used for its claims or for anything not described.
• US 2017/0261939 A1 (Casio) appears to fall outside both § 102(a)(1) and § 102(a)(2) against this patent. A challenger should not build a ground on it. (Caveat: this rests on the Google Patents "priority date 2016-03-11" listing; if the Casio family has an earlier, unlisted JP priority, the conclusion flips. Worth confirming against the JP family.)

PHOSITA. A person with a bachelor's degree in mechanical/electrical engineering or robotics plus 2–4 years' experience in scanning optical sensor systems (lidar/LRF/structured-light), including servo and stepper drive design and motion-profile generation. This is a routine-skill-level field; the art is highly analogous, and cross-combination among scanning-rangefinder, motor-control, and robot-vision references is well within ordinary skill.

Test. Graham v. John Deere; KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (550 U.S. 398 (2007)) — motivation may come from design incentives, market forces, the "finite number of identified, predictable solutions," or the "known technique to improve similar devices in the same way." Every rejection still needs an articulated reason with a rational underpinning (In re Kahn, endorsed by KSR).

2. Claim element decomposition

Key structural insight for the obviousness question: because the reversal time point must be interior to its period, claim 1 forces the reversal (velocity zero-crossing) to occur inside a single smooth position function — not at the junction between two segments. A conventional trapezoidal/parabolic-velocity motion profile (accelerate–cruise–decelerate) has the velocity zero-crossing exactly at a segment junction, so it does not read on claim 1. That limitation is doing substantive work, not just claiming format.

3. Verified reference disclosures

US 2010/0053715 A1 — O'Neill, "Scanning system for lidar" (Google Patents, US20100053715A1). Directly on point for elements 1.1, 1.2, 1.4, and for motivation:

• Nodding-mirror lidar with a rotary electromagnetic drive, rotary optical encoder, and control circuitry that adjusts current to the drive "such that the nodding mirror rotates in a reference scan pattern" (i.e., a commanded angular trajectory is tracked by closed-loop control).
• Expressly recognizes the problem the patent is aimed at: "the rotation of the nodding mirror must be periodically stopped and reversed when the nodding mirror reaches the end of the angular range," and that the conventional pattern is "rotated at a constant angular speed in one direction through an angular range and then rotated as fast as possible in the opposite direction."
• Critically, O'Neill analyzes this in terms of angular speed/acceleration limits and motor torque reversal. The reference is squarely aware of the reversal-load problem.

US 9,285,477 B1 — Apple, "3D depth point cloud from timing flight of 2D scanned light beam pulses" (US9285477B1; full text at uspto.report). A scanning LIDAR with pulsed emitter, scanning mirror, and controller computing a depth map per frame. Its "distortion effects" passage is highly material:

• "in the case where the scanning mirror 6 has an oscillating mirror, the angular velocity of such a mirror is not constant... The mirror moves fast at its middle position, and slows down and reverses direction at the ends of its range of motion. In the case of resonant motion, the velocity function takes the form of a sinusoid."
• And the data-density consequence: with a constant pulse repetition period, "The resolution is low in the center of the field of view (where the mirror is moving fastest) and high at the edges."

This is essentially the patent's own FIGS. 8C/8D — the trigonometric approach and its non-uniform sampling — as known prior art, plus an express statement of the density trade-off.

JP 2008-020370 A — Toyota, "Autonomous moving apparatus" (JP2008020370A). A 3D measuring device with a distance-measuring device rotated about a rotation axis, plus a rotation-angle sensor and a computing device forming 3D range data. Most importantly, its problem statement is near-verbatim the patent's own motivation:

• "in the autonomous mobile device, the distance measuring device is usually rotated at a constant angular velocity around a rotation axis... When the distance measuring device is rotated at constant angular velocity and the shape of a plane is measured, at positions far from the distance measuring device on the plane the interval at which the light beam is scanned becomes wide, and the measurement resolution decreases."

That is the "sensor data acquisition density" problem the '273 patent sets out to solve, stated eight years earlier in the same field.

Admitted prior art in the '273 specification itself. The Background describes and figures both the constant-angular-velocity approach (FIGS. 8A/8B: uniform density, velocity discontinuity at t_m) and the trigonometric-function approach (FIGS. 8C/8D: smooth velocity, non-uniform density). Under MPEP 2129, applicant admissions in the specification are prior art. A challenger gets these two approaches for free without proving any reference.

4. Proposed § 103 grounds

Ground 1 (strongest available): Toyota '370 + O'Neill '715 + Yaskawa '434, optionally + Apple '477

Combination. Yaskawa JP 2007-225434 A (the reference the '273 Background itself credits with a sensor rotated in yaw and pitch for 3D measurement) supplies elements 1.1–1.2 as applied to a rotatable sensor. Toyota JP 2008-020370 A supplies the same architecture (LRF on a rotation device, rotation-angle feedback, 3D data computation) and supplies the articulated motivation: constant angular velocity → non-uniform scan density → degraded resolution. O'Neill '715 supplies element 1.4 (control circuitry driving the mirror to track a commanded scan pattern) and confirms that a PHOSITA in this exact field was focused on the reversal problem and on motor torque/acceleration limits at direction changes. Apple '477 supplies, under § 102(a)(2), the express recognition that an oscillating scanner's angular velocity varies, that resonant motion is sinusoidal, and that constant pulse timing therefore yields non-uniform resolution.

Articulated rationale (KSR). (i) All references are in the same field of endeavour and address the same known problem — how to sweep a ranging sensor through a limited angular range without degrading the return data. (ii) Toyota and O'Neill both identify the design tension between constant (dense, uniform) sampling and reversals that stress the drive; addressing both together is the natural design objective, not hindsight. (iii) Combining the drive mechanism of Toyota/Yaskawa with the closed-loop scan-pattern control of O'Neill is a combination of familiar elements performing their known functions with predictable results.

Where Ground 1 fails. Not one of these references discloses or suggests:

• partitioning a swing cycle into four periods with the reversal point interior to a period (element 1.3a);
• configuring the connecting trajectories as the tangent lines themselves — i.e., constant-velocity linear bridges whose slopes are the terminal slopes of the adjacent curves (1.3d); or
• the cross-cycle slope-matching constraint, tying the end of the second period to the start of the next cycle's first period (1.3c).

O'Neill in fact teaches the opposite conventional approach — constant speed, then return "as fast as possible" — which is precisely the discontinuous-velocity scheme the '273 patent criticizes in FIGS. 8A/8B. Under In re Gurley / teaching-away principles, a reference that characterizes the art's accepted practice as constant-speed-plus-rapid-return does not suggest replacing the reversal with a C¹/C² arc.**

Ground 2: Apple '477 + O'Neill '715 (the "just smooth the reversal" theory)

A challenger's second-best route is to argue that the goal of smoothing the reversal is explicitly known (Apple '477's oscillating/resonant discussion; O'Neill's motor-limit discussion), and that a smooth replacement is the predictable result. But this argument collapses at 1.3a/1.3d:

• Apple's disclosed smooth profile is a single sinusoid, which the '273 patent itself addresses and distinguishes (FIGS. 6A–6D, 7A–7B, 8C/8D). A sinusoid is neither a circular arc nor a pair of arcs united by a linear tangent bridge, and it does not satisfy the claim's four-period partition.
• The generic instruction "make the reversal smooth while keeping density constant" does not identify the claimed architecture. The art offers a large family of alternatives — S-curve/quintic velocity profiles, trapezoidal-velocity-with-parabolic-blends, cycloidal or modified-sine cam motions, sinusoidal-plus-dwell — and the claim's construction (reversal interior to a smooth arc, then constant-velocity tangent lines) is a particular, non-obvious selection from among them. It is not the case that a PHOSITA had a "finite number of identified, predictable solutions" of which this is one.

Ground 3: scanner-driving and motor-control references (Canon, Matsushita, Omron)

I cannot responsibly map these. I verified only their bibliographic data as they appear on the face of the '273 patent and in the citation table:

• US 6,407,527 B1 — Canon Kabushiki Kaisha, "Motor drive control apparatus"
• JPH02197813A — Matsushita Electric Works, "Scanner driving circuit for light beam scanning"
• JPH0798381A — Omron, "Scanning distance measuring device, vehicle equipped with scanning distance measuring device, and light detection device"
• JPH09304535A — Omron, "Measuring device and method"

On their titles alone, JPH02197813A and JPH0798381A are the most promising candidates for the missing element, because a "scanner driving circuit" and a "scanning distance measuring device" are exactly where one would expect a drive-waveform/motion-profile teaching. But a title is not a disclosure. An obviousness ground built on these requires their full texts (JPO/J-PlatPat machine translation, including any family member in English). I am flagging this as the single highest-value verification gap in this analysis rather than guessing at content.

If those references in fact teach a shaped drive waveform that eases beam-scan reversal (a common theme in polygon/scanner drive circuits), the obviousness picture for claim 1 would change materially — though claims 2 and 3 would still require the twice-differentiable, circular-arc construction that claim 1 does not.

5. Claim-by-claim conclusion

Bottom line. On the record as it stands — the eleven references cited by the examiner — the claims should survive a § 103 challenge, and the allowance appears correct. The gap is not in the sensing/drive hardware, which is thoroughly anticipated by Toyota '370, Yaskawa '434, O'Neill '715, and Apple '477; it is in the trajectory-generation architecture, which none of them teaches, suggests, or renders obvious. Note the JPO examined this family and issued two Office Actions on the JP counterpart (2018-10-23 and 2019-02-26), and JP 2017116418A remains pending — worth examining those actions to see whether the JPO located art the USPTO did not.

Secondary considerations. I have no evidence of commercial success, licensing, copying, or industry praise attributable to this feature, and none surfaced in my searches. The specification does contain applicant-generated comparative data that could be argued as evidence of non-obviousness: the histogram of FIG. 5 showing a constant-density range extended to ~270°–350° versus the trigonometric approach, and FIGS. 6A–6D showing that with r ≤ 0.5a the peak angular velocity falls below the sinusoidal peak while with r = 2.5 it exceeds it (spec ¶¶ discussing expressions 21–29). That is a genuine, quantified technical result. Its weight is limited, however: in-specification data is self-serving, and the fact that the parameter regime matters cuts both ways — it shows the design space is non-trivial, but also that the applicant had to find the 2r ≤ a condition, which the cited art does not supply.

6. Where a challenger should actually look (art not of record)

Because the cited art is hardware-centric, the productive search space is motion-profile / trajectory-generation art, not lidar art:

1. Cam and servo motion-profile literature — cycloidal, modified-sine, and trapezoidal-with-parabolic-blend cam laws are textbook mechanisms for obtaining constant-velocity dwells joined to smooth (sometimes C²) transitions. A reference teaching a circular-arc (cycloidal) reversal joined by a tangent-line constant-velocity segment, applied to an oscillating scanner, would directly meet claims 1–3. I did not verify any such reference and am not asserting one exists.
2. Robotic scanning-trajectory patents — e.g., scanning patterns for coverage/inspection where a limited-angle oscillating head must be commanded with fixed sample density. The '273 patent's own CPC field (G01S 7/4817, G01S 17/42, H02P 8/14, H02P 8/20) plus B25J trajectory generation would be the combined search.
3. Pre-2015 MEMS/galvo scanner drive patents — US 2012/0236379 A1 (Lighttime, "Ladar using MEMS scanning") and US 2014/0063489 A1 (Faro, "Laser Scanner") are of record but I was unable to verify their disclosures. MEMS/galvo scan controllers routinely specify non-sinusoidal commanded scan waveforms to linearize the scan; that art is the most plausible source of the missing element.

Caveat on my own coverage. My verification was interrupted by a tool-step limit. I confirmed the disclosures quoted above for US 2010/0053715 A1, US 9,285,477 B1, and JP 2008-020370 A only. I did not verify any disclosure in US 6,407,527, JPH02197813A, JPH0798381A, JPH09304535A, JP 2007-225434 A, US 2012/0236379 A1, US 2014/0063489 A1, or US 2017/0261939 A1, and nothing above should be read as a statement about their contents beyond title, assignee, and date.