US 10295470

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent number.

US Patent 10,295,470 B2 — Analyst Summary

Verification note: All bibliographic data below is taken from the authoritative full text of the patent supplied (Google Patents, US10295470B2, fetched 2026‑09‑24) and corroborated by the USPTO/EPO‑family records surfaced in search. I did not find any CAFC 2026 docket, district‑court case, or USPTO proceeding naming this patent number. One search hit showed an IPR (IPR2025‑00990, Mercedes‑Benz Group AG et al. v. Phelan Group, LLC) centered on U.S. Patent No. 10,259,470 — a different number (10,259,470 vs. 10,295,470), unrelated subject matter (vehicle keyless entry). I am not conflating them. Per your strict rule I interpret the IDs literally: no litigation record exists for 10,295,470 on the evidence I could retrieve, and I flag that as a confidence limitation rather than asserting a definitive "no suits filed."

Bibliographic Data

Abstract (verbatim)

"To provide a microspectroscope that can perform a wide range mapping measurement with high sensitivity, at high speed, and with high wavelength resolution. The Raman spectroscope comprises: a unit for linearly irradiating excitation light; a movable stage for a sample; an objective lens for focusing Raman light from the linear irradiation region; an incident slit provided at the imaging position of Raman light; a spectrometer for diffusing the passing light; a CCD detector for detecting Raman spectral image; and a control device for controlling the mapping measurement by synchronizing the movable stage and the CCD detector. The control device controls the movable stage to move in the direction orthogonal to the longitudinal direction of the linear irradiation light and obtain one average spectrum. At the same time, the control device is configured to perform the cycle of the CCD detector while the stage is moving to obtain one average spectrum of the moving region of the linear irradiation region in one light detection cycle."

Independent Claim — Plain‑Language Overview

Claim 1 is the sole independent claim. It claims a microspectroscope for 2‑D or 3‑D mapping measurement, comprising:

1. Beam shaping unit — shapes irradiation light into a line (e.g., a cylindrical lens, or a laser‑line‑generator + collimator, or a galvanometer‑scanned beam).
2. Movable stage — positions the sample at the focus of the line‑shaped light.
3. Focusing lens — collects light back from the linear irradiation region on the sample.
4. Slit — placed at the image plane of that region and oriented parallel to the long axis of the line image (serves as the spectrometer's entrance slit).
5. Spectrometer — disperses the slit‑passed image in a direction orthogonal to the line's longitudinal direction.
6. CCD detector — a 2‑D array (line‑direction × dispersion‑direction) that detects the dispersed image.
7. Control device — synchronizes the stage and detector, and specifically includes:
   • a continuous‑scanning control portion that moves the linear irradiation region without stopping in the direction perpendicular to its long axis (i.e., stage keeps moving throughout the measurement cycle);
   • a light‑detection control portion that runs an exposure‑period + read‑out‑period cycle during that continuous motion and obtains one average spectrum per cycle for the region swept during the cycle; and
   • a mapping‑data configuration portion that stores that per‑cycle average spectrum and builds the mapping data.

Practical thrust: Instead of stepping the stage and exposing at each stationary point (conventional "line mapping"), the stage scans continuously and the CCD integrates continuously, so each read‑out yields an averaged spectrum for a whole grid/square — trading fine spatial resolution for far higher speed, while retaining high wavelength resolution (thin slit) and high sensitivity (high‑NA objective + full/partial binning).

Dependent Claims (all depend, directly or indirectly, on Claim 1)

• Claim 2 (from 1): the controller sets stage velocity and/or detection cycle period so the swept range is a square with side equal to the line's longitudinal dimension.
• Claim 3 (from 2): read‑out performs full binning — all pixels in a line along the image's longitudinal direction are read out collectively.
• Claim 4 (from 1): the swept range is instead a rectangle, the long side being n× the short side (n = integer ≥ 2), with the line's longitudinal dimension as the long side.
• Claim 5 (from 4): read‑out uses ordinary/partial binning — the line‑direction pixels are divided into n groups, each group read out collectively (giving n averaged spectra per cycle).
• Claim 6 (from 1): adds a switch that moves the beam‑shaping unit on/off the optical axis; when the focused round‑beam spot diameter is taken as the "focusing limit," the linear region formed via the shaper has a width corresponding to that limit and a length 2 to 500 times the width.
• Claims 7–10 (from Claims 2, 3, 4, 5 respectively): each carries the Claim 6 switch/2–500× dimensional limitation in combination with the respective parent feature.

Note: Only Claim 1 is independent. Claims 7–10 each depend on a different earlier claim but share the Claim 6 subject matter; I have this from the Justia claim listing mirroring publication US 2018/0067053 A1, which matches the patent text.

Uncertainty Flags

• Litigation/docket: I could not confirm any 2026 CAFC appeal or district‑court action involving US 10,295,470. My searches did not surface the patent in any litigation database; I make no affirmative claim that none exists. Do not treat this as a clearance or freedom‑to‑operate conclusion.
• Assignee "current" status: Google Patents labels the current assignee JASCO Corporation and "Active" legal status, but those are the aggregator's assumptions, not a legal determination; no reassignment away from Jasco was found.
• Claim scope: The plain‑language overview reflects the literal claim language; no claim‑construction order or prosecution‑history disavowal specific to this patent was located.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10295470 across litigation databases and patent sources.

The initial results reference a different patent (US 10259470). Let me search more targeted litigation sources for the exact number.

Let me search more specific litigation databases and PTAB records for this exact patent.

Summary of Findings

No litigation involving US Patent 10,295,470 is known. Based on my searches of litigation-relevant sources, I found no district court case, Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit appeal, PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR), or ITC action in which US 10,295,470 has been asserted, challenged, or otherwise at issue.

What the patent is

• US 10,295,470 B2 ("Microspectroscope"), current assignee JASCO Corporation, inventors Kento Aizawa, Tsutomu Inoue, and Masateru Usuki.
• Application No. 15/560,256; priority date 2015-03-25 (JP 2015-062307); filed 2016-03-22; granted 2019-05-21.
• It claims a confocal Raman-type microspectroscope for two-/three-dimensional "line macro mapping," synchronizing a movable stage with a CCD detector to obtain average spectra.

What the searches returned (and why they are NOT this patent)

All hits containing the digit-string "10295470" were false positives and must be read literally per your instruction:

1. Different patent number. Multiple litigation-database results referenced US Patent No. 10,259,470 (exhibit "EX1001 - U.S. Patent No. 10259470") in Mercedes-Benz Group AG et al. v. Phelan Group, LLC, IPR2025-00990 (an automotive/driver-authentication dispute). This is a different patent (10,259,470 ≠ 10,295,470) despite the similar digits. It is not the JASCO microspectroscope patent.
2. A gene database ID. Several hits show "ID: 10295470" referring to a CRISPR-associated gene annotation (SGGBAA2069_c14690) in patent sequence listings — unrelated.
3. A Brazilian company registry number. A JUCISRS (Rio Grande do Sul business registry) filing lists "10295470 TEKFIRE SISTEMAS DE SEGURANCA E AUTOMACAO LTDA" — unrelated.

None of these relate to US 10,295,470.

Confidence and caveats

• High confidence that no publicly reported litigation is indexed for this specific patent. JASCO is a research-instrument manufacturer (Raman, FTIR, CD spectrometers), and its patents in this family are typically used defensively; no assertion campaign involving this patent appears.
• Caveat: I was unable to run a full, direct docket query against PACER, the Unified Patents litigation portal, or the PTAB API within this session (my tool steps were exhausted). My conclusion rests on the searches I completed. Public litigation coverage of patents that are never asserted is inherently incomplete, and a brand-new filing could exist that is not yet indexed.

Recommended direct verification steps

To confirm definitively with authoritative sources:

1. USPTO Patent Center / Patent Trial & Appeal Board (PTAB) — search for the patent in PTAB "Patent Number" search to catch any IPR/PGR.
2. PACER / CourtListener (RECAP) — run a full-text query on "10,295,470" or "10295470" across district court dockets (CourtListener's RECAP full-text search would surface any complaint citing it).
3. Unified Patents litigation portal — search the patent number in the "caselist" database.
4. Lex Machina / Docket Navigator / Patexia — patent-level litigation search (the Patexia results I found were for the different patent 10,259,470).

If you can confirm which of those databases you'd like me to target, I can attempt a more focused retrieval.

Bottom line: As of the available record, no litigation is known for US Patent 10,295,470, and I found no plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, or status to report because no case was located.

I'll start by verifying the structured data (which reports no ODP-indexed proceedings) against public sources.

Let me run more targeted searches to make sure nothing is hiding outside the ODP index.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 10,295,470: 0 (zero). The structured PTAB proceedings block derived from the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and my independent web searches surfaced no PTAB proceeding, no Final Written Decision, no institution decision, and no Federal Circuit appeal naming this patent — the breakdown by status is therefore 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution-denied, and the bottom-line defensive posture for a defendant is "the patent is untested, not hardened." There is no PTAB record to harden it (no claim survived an IPR attack) and equally no PTAB record to weaken it (no claim has been canceled). Whatever the patent's validity posture is today, it is the same posture it had on the day it granted: all 10 claims stand as issued, and nobody has yet tried to take them down at the Board.

⚠️ Search-hygiene flag (false positive): a targeted search for "10295470"/"10,295,470" returned IPR2025-00990, Mercedes-Benz Group AG et al. v. Phelan Group, LLC, which involves U.S. Patent No. 10,259,470 — a different patent (vehicle-security art, asserted via a Phelan Group campaign; petition filed 2025-05-11). That is a transposition of digits, not a proceeding against US 10,295,470. Do not import it into a chart for this patent.

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No proceedings to report

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner} block to populate. I am stating that plainly rather than manufacturing an entry. For completeness, here is what I checked and what I found:

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all 10 claims UNTESTED. US 10,295,470 issued 2019-05-21 with 10 claims, 11 drawing sheets, naming Kento Aizawa, Tsutomu Inoue, and Masateru Usuki as inventors and JASCO Corporation as assignee, claiming priority to JP 2015-062307 (2015-03-25), with an anticipated expiration of 2036-03-22. Because no IPR or PGR was ever filed, no claim has been canceled, no claim has been confirmed, and no claim has been construed by the Board. The independent claim is a microspectroscope apparatus claim (beam shaping unit for linear irradiation; movable stage; focusing lens; slit parallel to the longitudinal direction of the linear-irradiation image; spectroscopic unit dispersing orthogonally to that direction; a two-dimensional light-detection unit; and a "mapping measurement control unit" having a continuous-scanning control portion, a light-detection control portion that produces "one average spectrum" per light-detection cycle, and a mapping data configuration portion). Dependent-claim coverage includes the full-binning read-out (all light-receiving elements in a line read out collectively), the n-division "ordinary binning" variant of the second embodiment, the square-grid/n-rectangle velocity-and-cycle control, and the switching unit / 2-to-500 length-to-width ratio limitations.

Estoppel landscape: effectively a blank slate, which cuts both ways. Because no IPR was ever instituted against this patent, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is not triggered against anyone. There is no petitioner, no real party in interest, and no privy carrying a heightened burden before the district court or the Board. Practically, that means a defendant today can file an IPR on any § 102 or § 103 ground without worrying that some earlier petitioner already burned the art, and JASCO cannot point to a prior adverse FWD to argue that "the art was already considered and rejected." The corollary is that a defendant gets no free ride either: there is no prior Board construction to lean on, no FWD finding of unpatentability to piggyback on, and no PTAB record to admit under § 282 or as persuasive authority. The prior art cited on the face of the patent — notably US 9,588,328 B2 (Kalkbrenner), plus US 2012/0257037 A1 (Raicu), US 2013/0050782 A1 (Heng), US 2014/0002819 A1 (Kobayashi), US 2014/0313313 A1 (Soenksen), WO 2006/028439 A1, WO 2009/093050 A1, and JP 2012-189891 A — is fair game, but note that anything actually before the examiner during prosecution carries the usual higher bar to use as an IPR ground.

Pattern signals: none. There is no repeat petitioner (there are no petitioners at all); the patent owner has never pursued a PTAB appeal (there is no FWD to appeal); and no defensive aggregator appears anywhere in the chain — JASCO is a Japanese analytical-instrumentation manufacturer (Hachioji, Tokyo) that appears as a patent owner only, not as a serial PTAB petitioner or a frequent litigation target. The patent's EPO family member EP3276336B1 (MICROSPECTROSCOPE, granted 2022-12-07) did traverse opposition-adjacent examination in Europe, and a related Jasco confocal-Raman family (EP3299861B1, EP4752620A1) is still being prosecuted — that activity is prosecution/EPO-side, not AIA-trial-side, and should not be charted as PTAB activity. My leading hypothesis for the zero count is that this patent has never been asserted, and IPRs against analytical-instrument patents are almost always reactive to litigation or licensing demands; a secondary hypothesis is an ODP ingest lag, but that is unlikely to matter here because the same searches across PTAB Decisions, Google Patents legal events, and the Federal Circuit surfaced nothing either.

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Recommended next steps

If no PTAB activity exists — say so plainly, and treat the absence as the signal. Here it does. Two consequences follow for anyone on the receiving end of a demand letter or an infringement complaint asserting US 10,295,470:

1. You are very likely one of the first, if not the first, accused infringer. Zero IPRs on a patent that has been in force since 2019-05-21 strongly suggests no prior assertion campaign. That is a negotiating fact: there is no settled claim construction, no adjudicated validity posture, and no prior licensee set to benchmark against. If you are weighing an IPR, you would be building the record from scratch — with no § 315(e)(2) estoppel risk from a predecessor, but also with no roadmap.

2. File the IPR early and get the clock started. There is no prior Board work to rely on, so the fastest route to a validity answer is your own petition. Note the governing milestones under 35 U.S.C. §§ 314(b) and 316(a)(11): the Board's institution decision is due within 6 months of the petition's filing date (or of the last-served preliminary response, whichever is later), and the Final Written Decision is due within 12 months of institution. Know the one-year § 315(b) bar from service of a complaint before you decide, and if a district-court action is already pending, weigh the current discretionary-denial practice under § 314(a) (Fintiv-type factors) before filing.

3. Sequence your documentary evidence with the family in mind. Because the patent is untested, the useful prosecution-history anchor is the EP3276336B1 examination record and the Extended European Search Report dated 2018-11-26 in the corresponding EP application — those citations may become IPR art, but confirm each reference's date and whether it was already of record in the US file before you build a ground on it.

4. Do not rely on any PTAB outcome you cannot verify. I could not locate an FWD, institution decision, settlement, or CAFC appeal for this patent, and I am not going to link to one. If your outside counsel or a third-party claim chart hands you a "PTAB decision on the '470 patent," treat it as a suspected transposition (most plausibly US 10,259,470 / IPR2025-00990 or another '470-series patent) until the proceeding number is traced to a PTAB E2E docket that actually lists US 10,295,470 as the challenged patent.

Confidence note: the zero-count finding is high-confidence for the ODP dataset and consistent across every public source I could reach, but I cannot rule out an unindexed, recently-filed petition given ODP ingest lag. If a proceeding number for this patent surfaces later, the correct move is to pull the petition and institution decision directly from PTAB E2E and re-run this analysis — the framework above (claim-level disposition, estoppel scope, panel composition, CAFC disposition) is what will need to be filled in.

I'll research the assignment record for US 10,295,470, starting with the USPTO Assignment Center and cross-referencing sources.

Assignment Chain Analysis — US Patent 10,295,470 ("Microspectroscope")

Scope note / data limitation: My live tool access terminated before I could execute a direct query against USPTO Assignment Center or pull the recorded reel/frame and correspondent fields. Everything below is reconstructed from the authoritative patent text supplied (Google Patents legal-events table, which mirrors USPTO assignment records) and resolved search hits. Where a field could not be verified, I say so rather than guess. The reel/frame number and the US correspondent of record were not retrievable in this session.

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Inventors

Pattern note: All three inventors are named assignors on a single "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST" recorded to JASCO CORPORATION. There is no evidence of inventor departure and no separate inventor-side assignment to a third party — every inventor conveyed directly to the operating company. This is the ordinary employee-inventor → employer chain for a corporate R&D lab; it does not show the "all inventors leave within 12 months" fire-sale precursor. Note also that a related European family member (EP3299861B1, "Confocal Raman Microscope," filed 2017-09-26) names only Aizawa and Inoue, so Usuki's contribution appears confined to the US/JP line — worth a note, but not an ownership signal.

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Original assignee

JASCO Corporation (JASCO Corp) — the entity named on the issued patent and the current assignee (Google Patents lists "Current Assignee: Jasco Corp").

• Primary line of business: Manufacturer of analytical and spectroscopic instrumentation (Raman, FTIR, circular-dichroism, UV-Vis spectrometers, chromatography, and related optical instruments). This is a genuine operating company, not a holding vehicle.
• Product embodying the claims: Yes — the patent is a hardware/software system patent (confocal Raman microspectroscope with linear-illumination "line macro mapping"). JASCO is a commercial vendor of Raman microspectroscopes, and this disclosure reads as an internal instrument-architecture patent rather than a licensing asset. (I could not confirm a specific commercial model number in this session.)
• Status: Operating, going concern. No bankruptcy, dissolution, or acquisition event surfaced. No SEC filings apply — JASCO is a privately held Japanese company (Tokyo/Hachioji-area headquarters).

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Assignment timeline

One (1) recorded assignment exists. There are no post-issuance transfers.

• Executed date: not separately verified / recorded 2017-09-21 — Reel/Frame NOT RETRIEVED IN THIS SESSION
  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: Kento Aizawa; Tsutomu Inoue; Masateru Usuki (jointly)
  • Assignee: JASCO CORPORATION
  • Correspondent: ⚠️ Not retrieved. Google Patents' legal-events table does not expose the correspondent field, and I could not reach Assignment Center to extract it. (For reference, the EP family member lists agency "Henkel & Partner mbB" — that is the European representative and is not evidence of the US recording correspondent. Do not conflate the two.) No recurrence flag can be assigned.
  • Context: Routine employee-inventor assignment to the employer/operating company — not an acquisition, fire-sale, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

Supporting application events (not assignments, for context):

• 2015-03-25 — Priority date (JP 2015-062307).
• 2016-03-22 — Application filed / PCT filing date (assignee JASCO Corp).
• 2017-09-21 — US national-stage entry of App. No. 15/560,256, coinciding with the recorded assignment date.
• 2018-03-08 — Publication of US20180067053A1.
• 2019-05-21 — Patent granted (US 10,295,470 B2).

Finding: Only the original inventors→employer assignment is of record. Per the task rubric, the absence of any subsequent assignment normally means the original assignee still owns the patent, which is consistent with JASCO being listed as current assignee.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10295470
    2015 : Priority filed in Japan
    2016 : PCT application filed by JASCO
    2017 : Inventors assign to JASCO
         : US national stage entry
    2019 : Patent granted

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. No transfer of any kind out of JASCO; no "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" assignee appears in the chain. The only recorded assignee is the operating manufacturer.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. JASCO Corporation does not appear on any public NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, etc.). No such entity appears as assignor or assignee.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / unverifiable. There is only one link in the chain, so "recurrence" is structurally impossible to establish here. The correspondent name + firm could not be retrieved (see timeline caveat). No finding.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Exactly one recorded assignment. No chained LLCs, no common-address transfers.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. The only assignment (2017-09-21) predates grant (2019-05-21) by ~20 months and is not tied to any suit — and no infringement suit naming this patent exists (consistent with the earlier litigation findings for this patent).

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No Chapter 7/11, no sold-in-proceedings record. JASCO is a solvent operating company.

7. Privateering — Not present. No transfer to an NPE asserting on JASCO's behalf; no SEC or press coverage of such an arrangement.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present as an aggregator transfer. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at the original operating assignee.

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Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment of record).

Justification: The entire ownership chain consists of the single inventors→JASCO CORPORATION assignment recorded 2017-09-21 (Reel/Frame not retrieved), with no subsequent transfer, no NPE assignee, no cascading LLCs, and no litigation or bankruptcy event. JASCO is an operating instrument manufacturer that still owns the patent, so no NPE pattern is supported — but because no post-issuance assignment exists and the reel/frame and correspondent were not machine-verifiable in this session, the evidence is limited to the original assignment, which the rubric classifies as Insufficient data rather than a positive "defensive" finding. There is no shell entity, asserter, or aggregation endpoint to point to.

Verify directly at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 10295470). Confirm the reel/frame, the correspondent/attorney of record, and that no later assignment exists beyond the 2017-09-21 inventors→JASCO recording.

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Confidence & caveats

• High confidence that no assignment beyond inventors→JASCO is of record: Google Patents legal events for US 10,295,470 show only the filing, the 2017-09-21 assignment to JASCO, publication, and grant — nothing after.
• Explicit unknowns: reel/frame number and US correspondent of record were not retrievable; I did not fabricate them.
• Nothing in this chain resembles an NPE pattern; if you want the correspondent field positively confirmed (the one remaining "tell" worth capturing), a direct Assignment Center pull by patent number is the required next step.

I'll verify the citation record for US 10,295,470 directly and pull details on each reference of record.

The front-page reference list is confirmed. Now let me pull details on the individual references of record.

Prior‑Art Analysis — US 10,295,470 B2 ("Microspectroscope," JASCO Corporation)

0. Identification / verification note

Patent confirmed as US 10,295,470 B2 — Aizawa, Inoue & Usuki; JASCO Corporation; App. 15/560,256; priority JP 2015‑062307 (2015‑03‑25); filed 2016‑03‑22; granted 2019‑05‑21. The reference list below was confirmed against the patent's own front page (the USPTO face document reproduced at patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/.../US10295470.pdf), which is the authoritative citation record. I did not retrieve anything for US 10,259,470 (Mercedes‑Benz/Phelan, IPR2025‑00990) — that is a different patent and is excluded, per your rule.

Critical structural point about "the citations" for this patent: the references fall into two distinct buckets that carry very different weight:

⚠️ Flag (consistency with earlier sections): the previously generated summary listed the same US/foreign references I confirm here (Kalkbrenner, Soenksen, Raicu, WO 2009/093050, WO 2006/028439, JP 2012‑189891, etc.). No contradiction — the earlier list matches the face document. The earlier summary did not distinguish Bucket A from Bucket B; that distinction is drawn here.

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1. Bucket A — Applicant‑admitted prior art (cited in the specification body)

A‑1. JP H9‑72848A — "Patent Literature 1"

• Full citation: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. H9‑72848 (JP 09‑072848 A), Fig. 4.
• Publication date: March 1997 (Japanese "A" publication, Heisei 9). Exact day not independently verified.
• § 102 status: Pre‑2015 printed publication → § 102(a)(1) art (also § 102(b)‑type art if treated under the pre‑AIA framework).
• Description (from the patent's own characterization): a laser microspectroscope of the confocal type for point analysis; an objective lens + imaging lens + single aperture whose opening sits at the imaging position, blocking light not from the objective's focus; the passing light is spectrally separated and detected. This is the source of the "≈1 µm beam spot / high spatial resolution point analysis" background.
• Claims potentially anticipated under § 102: None fully. It discloses the admitted background optical train (objective lens / imaging lens / aperture‑at‑image‑plane) but no linear irradiation, no 2‑D array, no continuous scanning, and no per‑cycle average spectrum. At most it is a § 103 base reference for the claim 6 "focusing limit" (round‑spot diffraction‑limited focus) concept combined with a linear‑irradiation reference — but claim 6 depends from claim 1, so no § 102 anticipation is supported.

A‑2. JP 2007‑179002A — "Patent Literature 2"

• Full citation: Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2007‑179002 (JP 2007‑179002 A), Fig. 2.
• Publication date: 2007. Exact day not verified.
• § 102 status: § 102(a)(1) printed publication.
• Description (from the patent's characterization — this is the "conventional line mapping"): a line mapping in which a spot is deflected at high speed in the Y direction by a deflecting unit such as an acousto‑optic element; the spot image travels along the incident slit of a spectrometer; during the CCD exposure the spot is swept one or more times in Y so that a plurality of spectra for a plurality of points in the line region is read out in one frame; once a frame is imaged, the sample is shifted in X and the line irradiation is repeated.
• Claims potentially anticipated under § 102: This is the closest single reference of record, but it does not anticipate claim 1. The point of novelty in claim 1 is the element‑by‑element combination in which the continuous‑scanning control portion moves the linear irradiation region "without stopping" and the light‑detection control portion obtains "one average spectrum" of the moving range within one light‑detection cycle. JP 2007‑179002 teaches (i) Y‑sweep of the beam (not stage‑driven linear region movement orthogonal to the long axis), (ii) stepwise X shifting between frames, and (iii) per‑pixel/per‑point read‑out, not a binned average over the swept rectangle. So it is a § 103 primary reference (and a § 102 reference only if a claim were drawn narrowly to "line illumination + slit + dispersive spectrometer + 2‑D detector," which claim 1 is not).

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2. Bucket B — Front‑page "References Cited" (US patent documents)

Dates as printed on the face document; descriptions are given only where I could verify or where the cited classification supports a characterization. Titles I could not verify in this session are marked "[title unverified]" rather than guessed.

Note on the asterisks: four US citations (US 9,588,328 B2; US 2014/0333755 A1; US 2015/0009361 A1; US 2016/0006918 A1) appear with an asterisk in the fetched face‑document text. The fetched text does not document the convention's meaning, so I flag it rather than rely on it as a relevance signal.

Bucket B — Foreign patent documents (face of patent)

Bucket B — "Other Publications" (face of patent)

• Extended European Search Report dated 2018‑11‑26 issued in the corresponding EP application. This is cited on the US face, meaning the examiner had the EPO search result in hand. Practical consequence: the X/Y references in that EESR are effectively part of the family's art landscape even if not individually listed on the US face. (I could not pull the EESR itself in this session — see § 6.)

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3. The most relevant reference on the merits — US 2012/0257037 A1 (Raicu et al.)

• Full citation: U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2012/0257037 A1, "High Speed Microscope With Two‑Stage Scanning For Detection Of Rarities In Samples," Raicu et al.; published 2012‑10‑11; priority 2011‑04‑07; assignee/record source: PubChem patent record US-2012257037-A1.
• Description: a high‑speed microscope using a multi‑beam point / single‑beam line / multi‑beam line scanning architecture; a dispersive element receives emitted energy and disperses it; the detector has a first axis along the length of the detection surface corresponding to a spatial dimension of the sample and a second axis corresponding to frequency; the controller/imaging module builds spectrally resolved images from a single scan; a two‑stage (wide scan → focused scan) control regime.
• Why it is the strongest candidate: claim 1(f) and 1(e) recite precisely a 2‑D detection surface with one axis = longitudinal direction of the line image and the other = dispersion direction, plus a dispersive unit orthogonal to the line axis — Raicu discloses that architecture for line scanning.
• § 102 verdict — does NOT anticipate claim 1. The scanning in Raicu is done by computer‑controlled x‑y galvanometer mirrors (and/or sample positioners) with descanned detection; there is no disclosure of a movable stage continuously moving the sample "without stopping" while a line region is swept, and no disclosure of the "one average spectrum of the moving range within one light‑detection cycle" (exposure + read‑out) that claim 1(g) requires. It is therefore a § 103 primary reference, not a § 102 reference.
• Corroboration signal (secondary source, flagged): PubChem's citation record for US‑2012257037‑A1 lists "EP‑3276336‑A4 (Y) (SEA)" under Cited By — i.e., EP 3276336 (the European family member of the patent at issue) reportedly cites Raicu as a "Y" (obviousness) reference in a supplementary European search report. If verified, this is the family's own examiner treating Raicu as the closest obviousness art. I could not open the EP3276336 A4 document itself in this session — treat this citation as reported‑not‑verified. (Note: the granted EP counterpart in the earlier section is EP3276336B1, granted 2022‑12‑07 — consistent.)
• Related Raicu family worth checking (not on the US face): US 2012/0257196 A1 ("High Speed Microscope With Spectral Resolution") and the two‑photon spectral microscope line (including US 8,094,304 B2 / US 2011/0134232 A1, whose "one axis = sample x, other axis = wavelength" passage is a direct architectural hit on claim 1(f)). Assignment of US 8,094,304 to the Raicu family is inferred from a secondary citation listing and is [flag: unverified].

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4. Consolidated § 102 anticipation verdict (claim‑level)

Bottom line: No reference of record anticipates any claim of US 10,295,470 under 35 U.S.C. § 102. The claim‑1 combination that no single reference discloses is the triad of: (i) linear irradiation region on the sample, (ii) continuous, non‑stopping translation of that region orthogonal to its long axis, while (iii) the detector runs an exposure‑then‑read‑out cycle yielding one average spectrum per cycle that is stored as the mapping element. The conventional line mapping (JP 2007‑179002A) and the Raicu line/multi‑beam scanning microscope (US 2012/0257037 A1) together cover much of the surrounding architecture — which is exactly why this patent's likely vulnerability is § 103, not § 102.

Claim‑element map for the closest art (for a chart):

(✓ = disclosed; ~ = arguably disclosed/approximated; ✗ = not disclosed)

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5. Confidence & uncertainty flags (explicit)

1. Titles for several US/foreign references could not be verified in this session — US 2013/0050782 A1 (Heng), US 2014/0002819 A1 (Kobayashi), US 2007/0132994 A1 (Kobayashi), US 9,588,328 B2 (Kalkbrenner), JP 2012‑189891 A, JP 2014‑048088 A, JP 2014‑507662 A, WO 2006/028439 A1, WO 2009/093050 A1. I have not fabricated their subject matter; I state only their printed dates, classifications, and the claim‑level read that follows from the face document.
2. US 9,588,328 B2 and US 2016/0006918 A1 have unverified effective filing dates. US 9,588,328's grant date (3/2017) is after the priority date, so its § 102(a)(2) status turns on its effective filing date. US 2016/0006918 A1 published after the 2015‑03‑25 priority date, so it is not § 102(a)(1) art; it is art only if it was effectively filed before 2015‑03‑25. Verify both against USPTO Patent Center before using either.
3. The EP3276336 "Y" citation of Raicu is from PubChem's secondary citation data, not from the EP document itself. High‑value if confirmed; treat as reported‑not‑verified until the EP3276336 A4 supplementary search report is pulled.
4. The 2018‑11‑26 EESR cited on the US face could not be retrieved, so the EPO's X/Y references for the family are not yet enumerated here. This is the single highest‑value document to pull next.
5. US 10,259,470 ≠ US 10,295,470. Excluded deliberately.

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6. Additional art not of record for this patent (flagged separately — do not chart as of record)

While searching, an unrelated application's search report (EP 19 20 3315 / EP 3614111, not this family) surfaced a body of line‑scan Raman art that a searcher should evaluate independently, because it goes to the same claim‑1 elements: Bowden et al., "Line‑scanned micro Raman spectroscopy using a cooled CCD imaging detector," J. Raman Spectrosc. 21(1):37–41 (1990); WO 95/32408 A1 (Renishaw); WO 2008/090350 A1 (Renishaw, Bennett); JP 2007‑093414 A (Photon Design); DE 10 2006 047913 A1 (Zeiss); WO 89/00280 A1 (Beckman RIIC). ⚠️ These were not cited on US 10,295,470's face and are not of record — I list them only as candidate art for an invalidity search, and I expressly did not import them into the § 102 verdict above. The Bowden 1990 paper in particular predates everything of record and is a natural § 102/103 starting point for the "line‑scanned Raman with cooled CCD" concept.

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Recommended next retrieval (to close the gaps above)

1. USPTO Patent Center → pull the IDS / PTO‑1449 and the actual front‑page citation sheet for 15/560,256 to confirm which references were examiner‑cited vs. applicant‑cited.
2. EP3276336 A4 supplementary search report → enumerate the X/Y references for the family (this is where the Raicu "Y" citation should be confirmed).
3. USPTO Patent Center / Global Dossier → verify the effective filing dates of US 9,588,328 B2 and US 2016/0006918 A1 to settle their prior‑art status.

I'll analyze obviousness under § 103, but first I need to ground the prior-art references. Let me pull details on the key cited art and the granted claim set.

Let me pull specifics on the key cited references, especially US 9,588,328 (Kalkbrenner) and the Japanese line-mapping art.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,295,470 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Note on the "Prior Art section of this page": Per your instruction, I analyzed the references the patent itself identifies. The patent's specification set has only two numbered Patent Literatures — JPH9‑72848A ("Patent Literature 1," confocal point‑analysis microspectroscope) and JP2007‑179002A ("Patent Literature 2," the AOD‑deflected "conventional line mapping") — which I treat as the closest art. The remainder of the Grounds below rests on the admitted state of the art in the '470 Background/Definitions section and on corroborating references I could verify in this session. I was cut off before I could pull the full front‑page "References Cited" list, so art in the earlier sections (US 9,588,328; US 2014/0313313; US 2012/0257037; WO 2009/093050; WO 2006/028439; and the US 2013/0050782 / US 2014/0002819 / JP 2012‑189891 entries) is used only where I could independently corroborate it — see the verification table at the end.

⚠️ Date discrepancy flagged: this task states "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while the session header says 2026‑09‑29. All "as‑of" statements below are true as of either date; nothing in the analysis turns on the ~5‑month gap.

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1. Governing framework

• AIA applies. The '470 has an effective filing date of 2015‑03‑25 (JP 2015‑062307) / PCT filing 2016‑03‑22. Prior art is assessed under AIA §§ 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) and 103.
• Standard: KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) ("a court must ask whether the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions"); Graham v. John Deere; In re Kahn; In re Aller (optimization of a result‑effective variable). Rationales available: (A) combination of known elements per known methods; (B) simple substitution; (C) use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way; (D) application of a known technique to a known device ready for improvement; (E) obvious design choice / routine optimization.
• Person of ordinary skill (POSITA): a spectroscopist/optical‑instrument designer with ~3–5 years' experience in confocal Raman microspectroscopy and CCD‑based detection, familiar with line‑scan imaging, pushbroom spectrographs, and CCD binning/readout modes. (The '470 specifies no PHOSITA level; this is my proposed characterization.)

The single most important fact for this analysis: the '470 specification admits and defines the entire inventive gap itself. Its "Definitions" block states that in the conventional line mapping "the sample is shifted in the X direction to repeat the same line irradiation," and its Background states the problem is that "the sample needs to be scanned stepwise for the X direction," so "the repeated acceleration and deceleration, the setting time and the like of the stage become bottlenecks." It then expressly characterizes its own contribution as eliminating stepwise movement and performing the light‑detection cycle once per coarse grid instead of once per 1 µm point. Admissions in the specification are prior art for § 103 purposes (In re Nomiya; MPEP 2129). That framing is what makes this patent vulnerable.

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2. What Claim 1 actually requires, element by element

Claim 1 (sole independent claim) requires, in substance:

A + B + C + D + E + F are each disclosed, in the same combination, by the patent's own Patent Literature 1 and Patent Literature 2 (see § 3). The dispute, if any, collapses onto G.

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3. Ground 1 (primary): JP2007‑179002A + the admitted line‑scan/continuous‑acquisition art + routine CCD binning

3.1 What JP2007‑179002A discloses (from the '470's own characterization)

Per the '470 Background (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10295470B2](/patent/US10295470B2)):

• Irradiation light is put on the sample in a spot shape, and a deflector (acousto‑optic element) moves the spot in Y at high speed so that "the sample is linearly irradiated" — i.e., a linear irradiation region is formed on the sample, which reads directly on limitation A.
• "the spot image moves along a slit in an incident slit of a spectrometer" → limitation D (slit parallel to the line's long axis).
• "within one frame of the CCD detector, a plurality of spectra in the linear irradiation region is obtained collectively" → limitations E and F.
• "Once imaging of one frame is finished, the sample is shifted in the X direction to repeat the same line irradiation" → limitation B (movable stage) and the stepwise X‑scan the '470 criticizes.
• Sample is held stationary during exposure ("the light detection cycle (exposure and read‑out) of the CCD detector is performed while the sample is stopped" — '470's FIG. 5 discussion of the conventional line mapping).

Critical point: the '470's own argument that it is patentable over JP2007‑179002A rests not on any apparatus difference but on the acquisition protocol — no stop‑and‑go X motion, and one averaged reading per coarse grid. That is a method‑of‑use / duty‑cycle distinction, not a structural one.

3.2 Where G(i)–G(iii) come from

3.3 Motivation to combine (the KSR rationales, expressly)

1. Known problem, known solution. The '470 Background documents that the field recognized the stepwise X‑scan as the bottleneck ("repeated acceleration and deceleration, the setting time… become bottlenecks for shortening the measurement time"). Where the prior art itself identifies the deficiency the invention addresses, the motivation is supplied (In re Rinehart; SightSound Techs. v. Apple). A POSITA reading JP2007‑179002A would immediately see that eliminating stage stops removes the accel/decel/settle overhead — a direct, predictable throughput win.
2. Predictable result of a known technique (KSR rationale C). Continuous relative motion + detector integration was the standard answer whenever a line‑scan field had to cover a large area (line‑scan slide imaging, pushbroom Earth‑observation spectrometers, TDI cameras). Applying it to a line‑mapping microspectroscope is "use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way."
3. Trade‑off, not a leap (KSR rationale E; In re Aller). The claimed benefit is explicitly a deliberate sacrifice of spatial resolution: "the line macro mapping of the present embodiment can be regarded as one which has sacrificed the spatial resolution, but the spatial resolution is enough for a wide range mapping measurement." Grid size (and hence velocity and cycle period) is the classic result‑effective variable; choosing a 100 µm grid instead of a 1 µm grid is "adjusting" a parameter the art already exposed (the '470 claims at 2, 4, 7, 9 let the user set exactly that). A skilled artisan optimizing measurement time against resolution would arrive at continuous scanning over a coarse grid as a matter of routine optimization.
4. S/N argument cuts against the patentee. The '470 asserts its approach improves S/N because integrating over the whole grid gives exposure T rather than √n‑limited averaging of n² short exposures — but that is simply the arithmetic of photon counting; the inventor's "aha" is a predicted consequence of trading spatial resolution for integration time.
5. No functional change in the apparatus. Every element of Claim 1 (A–F) is unchanged from the conventional line mapping; the modification is a firmware/control‑logic change (don't stop the stage; don't re‑trigger; let the CCD clock off the encoder/pulses). That is the paradigm of an obvious combination where the elements "operate as expected."

Result: Claim 1 is, on this record, obvious under § 103 over JP2007‑179002A in view of the admitted continuous‑scan/line‑scan art and routine CCD binning. Claim 3 (full binning) falls with it.

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4. Ground 2 (alternative): JPH9‑72848A + JP2007‑179002A

Use this where a tribunal wants both references from the same field and the same applicant‑adjacent context.

• JPH9‑72848A (Patent Literature 1; FIG. 4) discloses the confocal point microspectroscope: objective lens + imaging lens + single aperture at the imaging position + spectrometer + detector, giving point analysis with high spatial resolution. It supplies limitations B, C, E, F, the confocal slit/aperture architecture, and the mapping‑control/data‑configuration concept at the point level.
• JP2007‑179002A supplies A (line formation) and D (line‑oriented slit in the spectrometer).
• Motivation: both are microspectroscopy mapping instruments addressing the same problem‑space ("mapping measurement… for each point of a plurality of measurement points… cannot meet the needs sufficiently from the viewpoint of the measurement time"). Substituting a line irradiation field for a point irradiation field to collect many spectra per CCD frame is the express teaching of JP2007‑179002A and is the ordinary substitution of one known illumination geometry for another with predictable benefits (KSR, substitution rationale; In re ICON Health & Fitness).
• Continuous scanning + per‑cycle averaging is then supplied by the same rationale set as Ground 1.

This is the cleaner ground if the tribunal frames the invention as "confocal point mapping made faster by line illumination and continuous travel," because it avoids needing JP2007‑179002A to supply the slit orientation (which the '470 Background already attributes to it anyway).

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5. Claim 6 (and Claims 7–10): the "switching unit / 2–500× dimension" limitation

Claim 6 adds (a) a switching unit to move the beam‑shaping element on/off the optical axis so the instrument can also form a round spot, and (b) the dimensional limitation that the line region has a width "corresponding to the focusing limit" and a length 2 to 500× the width.

Obviousness assessment — mixed, with a real (if modest) foothold for the patentee:

• The switch/dual‑mode aspect is plainly obvious. The '470 spec describes it as a convenience: "If such switching unit 26B is provided, a smooth shift from the line mapping measurement to the point mapping measurement would be possible." Combining (i) the point‑mode microspectroscope of JPH9‑72848A and (ii) the line‑mode instrument of JP2007‑179002A into a single instrument with a selectable beam‑shaping optic is the combination of two known devices for their known functions, with the motivation stated in the specification itself. Claims 7–10 should be expected to fall on this basis combined with the Ground 1/2 rationale (again, I flag that the claimed dependency structure — 7 from 2, 8 from 3, 9 from 4, 10 from 5, each carrying the Claim 6 subject matter — is as reported in the earlier section and should be confirmed against the printed claims).
• The 2–500× range is a closer question. Narrow numerical ranges are obvious when the art discloses the range or renders it obvious, or when the range is a result‑effective variable optimized by routine experimentation (In re Aller; In re Best). Here the upper bound 500 is expressly tied to detector size: "the numbers of pixels of exemplary CCD detectors are 200, 255, 400 and 512 channels, and, taking this into consideration, the length dimension of the linear irradiation region IS is set from 2 times to 500 times of the width dimension." Selecting the line length to match the available detector pixels is exactly the kind of engineering constraint a POSITA would optimize, and the spec presents no criticality, no data showing a 500×/501× or 1×/2× discontinuity, and no unexpected result. Expect an obviousness holding here. Caveat: if JASCO produced evidence of a surprising failure mode above 500× (e.g., slit‑image/detector mismatch causing measurable sensitivity loss), a secondary‑considerations argument could be raised — I found no such evidence in the specification, and the specification's own reasoning is mechanical, not empirical.

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6. Claims 2, 4, 5, 9 — the velocity/cycle‑period and n‑division limitations

• Claim 2 (swept range = square with side = line length) and Claim 4 (swept range = rectangle, long side n× short side): these are pure control‑law / design‑choice limitations. Claim 2's square corresponds to the default case where the grid side equals the line length — the '470 says only that "it is preferable to make the dimension of one side of the grid correspond to the dimension in the longitudinal direction of the linear irradiation region IS." A POSITA setting up a swept‑grid measurement would pick the square as the natural, symmetric choice; nothing is reinvented.
• Claim 5 (divide the line‑direction pixels into n groups, read each group collectively → n average spectra per cycle): this is ordinary/partial binning, which the '470 describes as the pre‑existing baseline ("In an ordinary binning process… several elements are regarded as an element group of one section, and the electric charges of the elements in the section are read out collectively"). The claim recites the known process and merely applies it in the n‑track configuration that the geometry dictates. Obvious — the number of tracks n is dictated by how many grids the line spans (the '470 states the relation itself).

These dependent claims add essentially no escape hatch: each is a routine optimization or a known process applied to the claim‑1 structure.

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7. Other reference‑of‑record candidates and their proper use

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8. Secondary considerations / what could save the claims

An obviousness holding must consider objective evidence; on this record I found essentially none, which is itself a signal.

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9. Bottom line

Claim 1 is more likely than not invalid under § 103(AIA) on the following primary ground:

JP2007‑179002A (linear irradiation region formed on the sample; slit of the spectrometer's incident slit over which the spot image is scanned; multiple spectra collected in one CCD frame; stepwise X‑shift between frames) in view of the admitted/known continuous line‑scan + detector‑integration technique (evidenced by line‑scan/TDI imaging practice and, secondarily, US 9,588,328 B2's translation‑and‑accumulate teaching) and in view of routine CCD binning (evidenced by the '470's own description of "ordinary binning" and by EPO T 990/022's account of CCD binning/line‑dispersed detection regions in Raman art).

The motivation is supplied by the prior art's own recognition that stepwise stage motion is the throughput bottleneck, and the modification is the predictable use of a known acquisition technique (don't stop; integrate; bin; average) on a known device, with the only "cost" being a spatial‑resolution trade‑off the specification admits.

• Claims 2, 3, 4, 5 (and 7–10's parent features): obvious — design choice, routine optimization of a result‑effective variable (grid size/velocity/cycle period), and known CCD readout modes (full vs ordinary binning).
• Claim 6 / 7–10 switch‑and‑dual‑mode feature: obvious as a combination of the point‑mode instrument of JPH9‑72848A with the line‑mode instrument of JP2007‑179002A, with the motivation stated in the specification itself ("smooth shift from the line mapping measurement to the point mapping measurement").
• Claim 6 / 7–10 "2 to 500×" numerical range: the most contestable limitation. Expect an obviousness finding via routine optimization and the spec's own mechanical justification (matching line length to detector pixel count); a patentee relying on criticality would need evidence of unexpected behavior at the boundaries, which the specification does not supply.

Practical caveats for anyone using this analysis:

1. Nothing here has been adjudicated. Per the earlier sections, there are zero IPRs/PGRs on this patent — no claim has ever been construed or tested. Any § 103 ground you build is a first‑instance challenge with no Board precedent to lean on and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel risk from a predecessor.
2. Verify every reference date and passage before filing. I could fully verify only JP H9‑72848A and JP 2007‑179002A (via the '470's own text), US 9,588,328 B2, and the EP 1 467 235 A1 / T 990/022 excerpts. The Raicu, Soenksen‑content, Heng, Kobayashi, WO's, and JP 2012‑189891 characterizations carried over from the earlier sections are unverified in this session and must be pulled before they appear in a chart.
3. Prosecution history matters. The '470's US file wrapper and the EP family (EP3276336B1; the EESR of 2018‑11‑26 referenced earlier) may show the examiner's treatment of these references; art actually before the examiner during prosecution is a higher bar to use as an IPR ground, and any applicant argument on record could bear on claim construction.
4. Do not rely on the transposition trap. Earlier sections flagged US 10,259,470 (IPR2025‑00990, Mercedes‑Benz v. Phelan Group) — a different patent. It is not prior art to, or a proceeding on, US 10,295,470, and must not be imported into a chart.