US 10578435

I'll search for authoritative information on US 10578435, including any 2026 CAFC docket activity.

Let me check for any CAFC or district court litigation involving this patent, and confirm the USPTO record.

Let me do one more targeted check for any litigation or CAFC appeal specifically naming this patent.

US 10,578,435 B2 — Summary

Important caveat on scope of my search: I could not access USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR or CAFC dockets directly (they are not queryable through the tools available to me). I searched the open web, Google Patents/Justia, and general litigation-reporting sources. I found no district-court complaint, PTAB proceeding, or CAFC 2026 docket entry that names U.S. 10,578,435. One search returned an unrelated "’435 Patent" (the patent at issue in Sam's West Inc. v. BJ's Wholesale Club, M.D. Fla. 6:22-cv-00587, subject to IPRs affirmed by the Federal Circuit on April 13, 2026) — that is a different patent, not US 10,578,435. I report that only to note the potential false-positive; do not conflate the two.

Bibliographic data (authoritative, from the patent document)

Note on a conflicting search hit: one aggregator site ("patentleaderboard") lists this patent under a page titled "James Lin — 15 Patents at Integrated Device Technology." That page's heading appears to be a site mislabel; the patent document itself names Analog Devices, Inc. as both applicant and assignee, and the assignment record confirms Analog Devices. I treat Analog Devices as the assignee.

Abstract

Circuits and methods for compensating microelectromechanical system (MEMS) gyroscopes for quality factor variations are described. Quality factor variations arise when mechanical losses are introduced in the gyroscope's resonator, for example due to thermoelastic damping or squeeze-film damping, which may hinder the gyroscope's ability to accurately sense angular velocity. Quality factor compensation may be performed by generating a compensation signal having a time decay rate that depends on the quality factor of resonator. In this way, artifacts that may otherwise arise in gyroscope's output are limited. Additionally, or alternatively, quality factor compensation may be performed by controlling the force with which the gyroscope's resonator is driven. This may be achieved, for example, by controlling the average value of the drive signal.

Independent claims in plain language

Claim 1 — Method.
A method of compensating a MEMS gyroscope, comprising: (a) receiving a resonator signal from the gyroscope's resonator (the signal arises from resonator motion); (b) determining the resonator's quality factor (Q) from that resonator signal; (c) generating a compensation signal that has at least one "time characteristic" set as a function of the determined Q; (d) receiving a sense signal from the gyroscope's sensor (the sense signal arises from angular motion of the gyro, i.e., the Coriolis response); and (e) producing a compensated sense signal from the sense signal and the compensation signal. In short: measure Q, build a Q-dependent time-shaped correction, and apply it to the sense channel output.

Claim 9 — MEMS apparatus.
The apparatus counterpart of Claim 1: a gyroscope having a sensor and a resonator, plus control circuitry configured to perform the same sequence — receive the resonator signal, determine Q from it, generate a compensation signal having a time characteristic determined from Q, receive the sense signal responsive to angular motion, and generate the compensated sense signal from the sense signal and the compensation signal.

Claim 16 — MEMS apparatus (circuit-architecture focus).
A MEMS apparatus comprising: a gyroscope with a sensor and a resonator; a quality factor measuring circuit coupled to a motion detection electrode of the resonator; a compensation circuit whose input is coupled to the quality factor measuring circuit and which includes transient compensation circuitry (e.g., filtering to smooth abrupt transitions in the correction), with an output terminal; and signal combination circuitry coupled to the sensor and to the output terminal of the transient compensation circuitry. In short: it claims the specific hardware topology of sensing resonator motion, measuring Q, transient-compensating the correction signal, and combining that with the sense path.

Dependent-claim highlights

• Cl. 2 / Cl. 10: the "time characteristic" is specifically a time decay rate determined from Q.
• Cl. 3 / Cl. 11: detect resonant frequency and drive the resonator with a drive signal determined from both resonant frequency and Q (this is the "open-loop resonator path compensation").
• Cl. 4 / Cl. 12: vary the average of the drive signal based on Q.
• Cl. 5 / Cl. 13: vary the pulse density of the drive signal based on Q.
• Cl. 6 / Cl. 14: generate the compensated sense signal by multiplying the sense signal with the compensation signal.
• Cl. 7 / Cl. 15: hold the compensation signal substantially constant for a predefined time period (the "blanking" feature).
• Cl. 8: set the duration of that predefined period based on Q.
• Cl. 17: the transient compensation circuitry comprises a filter.
• Cl. 18: a pulse density modulator coupled to the transient compensation circuitry and the resonator.
• Cl. 19: the compensation circuit comprises a quality factor blanking circuit.
• Cl. 20: the sensor is a first mass and the resonator is a second mass elastically coupled to the first mass.

Key specification concepts (context for the claims)

• Q is defined as the ratio of resonant frequency f_R to bandwidth Δf; Q degrades when the resonator's spectral response broadens (e.g., from thermo-elastic or squeeze-film damping, or temperature increase).
• Two complementary techniques: open-loop resonator path compensation (coarse — adjust drive force via average/duty-cycle/pulse-density/amplitude) and sense signal path compensation (fine — multiply the sense signal by a Q-dependent compensation signal whose decay rate tracks Q, e.g., τ = 1/Δf).
• FIGS. 5A–5C show three compensation-circuit variants: LUT/multiplier/divider (5A); adding transient compensation circuitry to smooth the correction discontinuity (5B); adding a Q-blanking circuit to hold the correction constant during Q-measurement artifacts (5C). ¶-level support ties blanking durations to ranges of τ (e.g., τ–20τ).

Certainty assessment

• High confidence on title, inventors, assignee, application/filing/issue dates, abstract, claim text, and classifications — these come directly from the patent document and the issued claims.
• Medium/caveat: the "adjusted expiration 2038-08-17" and "217 days" term adjustment are taken from the Google Patents record (which depends on USPTO PTA/terminal-disclaimer data I could not independently verify in PatentCenter).
• No verified information on any 2026 CAFC appeal or PTAB proceeding involving this exact patent; absence in open search results is not proof of absence in the dockets themselves. If you need a definitive litigation/PTAB answer for US 10,578,435, it should be confirmed against USPTO PatentCenter, the PTAB API, and the CAFC docket (CM/ECF) directly rather than open web search.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10578435 across patent litigation databases.

Let me run more targeted searches on litigation-specific databases.

Litigation Search Results: US Patent No. 10,578,435

Summary: No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 10,578,435 has been identified.

Based on my searches of patent litigation resources (including the Unified Patents litigation portal, PTAB/TACTS filings, Federal Circuit and district court docket materials surfaced via web search, and the patent's own Google Patents/PAIR record), I found no case — in district court, the ITC, PTAB, or the Federal Circuit — in which U.S. Patent No. 10,578,435 ("Quality factor compensation in microelectromechanical system (MEMS) gyroscopes," Analog Devices, Inc.) is asserted or challenged.

What I verified

• Google Patents litigation record: The patent's "Cited By" and "Family Citing" sections list only later patent publications (e.g., US 10,921,124 to Invensense; US 12,081,222 to Panasonic; various CN/DE/WO filings). These are citations, not assertions — they do not indicate litigation.
• No PTAB proceedings: My searches surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition naming this patent. (The many IPR/PGR hits returned were directed to unrelated patents such as 8,767,824; 9,253,239; 11,122,274; 11,035,885; 9,032,039; etc.)
• No district court / ITC / CAFC cases: No docket entry, complaint, or appellate opinion referencing 10,578,435 was located.

Important caveats

1. Distinguish same-family/similar-number cases. Searches for Analog Devices MEMS-gyroscope litigation return other patents — e.g., the ITC investigation Certain MEMS Devices and Products Containing Same, Inv. No. 337-TA-700 (Analog Devices v. Knowles Electronics / Mouser), which involved U.S. Patent Nos. 7,220,614 and 7,364,942 — not the '435 patent. I have not conflated those.
2. Broader ADI MEMS enforcement. Analog Devices has historically asserted its MEMS patent portfolio (e.g., against InvenSense/SiTime and others). If the '435 patent were being asserted in such a campaign, I could not confirm it from the sources available to me.
3. Database coverage. Free public portals (Unified Patents, Google Patents, Justia, CourtListener mirrors) do not capture every sealed or very recent filing. Subscription databases (Docket Navigator, Lex Machina, PACER's full docket) would be needed to rule out a very recent or non-public assertion with certainty.

Bottom line

As of the search, no litigation is known involving U.S. Patent No. 10,578,435. The patent appears to be held and maintained by Analog Devices, Inc. without any publicly recorded assertion or validity challenge. I am stating this with the explicit caveat that I could not perform an exhaustive docket-level (PACER/Lex Machina) search, so if a brand-new or sealed case exists, it may not be reflected above.

Disclaimer: This is a research summary, not legal advice or a formal freedom-to-operate / litigation clearance opinion.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 10,578,435: 0. Per the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal (most recent ingest), there are no IPRs, PGRs, or CBM reviews — no instituted, denied, settled, or terminated proceedings. I ran targeted web searches to catch anything the ODP might not have indexed (patent number with IPR202x, PGR202x, petitioner/patent-owner combinations, Unified Patents, and district-court assertion activity) and found nothing. There is therefore no "claims invalidated" / "claims sustained" breakdown to report — the bottom-line defensive posture is not "hardened by two IPRs" and not "claims are dead." It is: all 20 claims remain untested at the PTAB, fully intact, and statutorily available for challenge. Note: any hypothetical framing elsewhere ("survived two IPRs," "claims 1–5 canceled") is exactly that — hypothetical. Nothing in the record supports either.

No proceedings to report

There is no proceeding number, petitioner, panel, ground, institution date, FWD, or appeal to catalogue for this patent. I will not invent proceeding numbers, docket numbers, or outcomes. Flagging explicitly so the absence isn't mistaken for an incomplete answer:

• No PTAB proceeding found in the ODP structured data. (Canonical list, used as the source of truth here.)
• No PTAB proceeding found via independent web search. Queries combining the patent number with IPR/PGR petition language, Analog Devices, and third-party challenger names returned no AIA trial for US 10,578,435. Search hits referencing a "'435 patent" in PTAB documents (e.g., GEA Process Engineering, Steuben Foods) concern unrelated patents — do not cross-contaminate those; they are not US 10,578,435.
• The one adjacent data point worth knowing about is not a PTAB matter: InvenSense's US 10,921,124 ("Method for open-loop compensation of a MEMS gyroscope," granted 2021-02-16) lists US 10,578,435 among its cited references. That is a citation/design-around signal in the same technology space (open-loop Q-factor compensation in MEMS gyros), not an invalidity challenge.

Strategic summary

Claim status. All 20 claims of US 10,578,435 stand UNTESTED at the PTAB — not canceled, not sustained-by-adjudication, just unadjudicated. The claim set includes independent claims 1 (method) and 9 and 16 (MEMS apparatus), with dependents 2–8, 10–15, and 17–20. Since no claim has been canceled by the Board and no FWD exists, no narrowing has occurred: the full claim set as granted is what a defendant faces, including the independent claims that carry the core "compensation signal having a time characteristic determined using the quality factor" and "transient compensation circuitry" limitations. There is no FWD to quote and no claim-level disposition to link.

Estoppel landscape. 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is not triggered by anything, because no IPR has been instituted and no FWD has issued. That cuts both ways for a defendant being asserted against today: (i) you are not blocked by any earlier petitioner's estoppel; but also (ii) you get zero benefit from a prior challenger's work — no record, no claim constructions, no institution decision to build on. Practically, the entire universe of prior art is still available to you, and you face the full § 315(b) one-year clock from service of a complaint if you want to file. The § 315(b) bar and the § 102/§ 103 art available run against the 2018-01-12 priority/filing date (no earlier priority claim appears on the face of the patent), so the prior-art window is the field of MEMS gyroscope drive/Q-compensation as of early 2018 — a crowded space, given the cited references (e.g., Aaltonen et al., "An analog drive loop for a capacitive MEMS gyroscope," 2010) and the dense Analog Devices / InvenSense / STMicroelectronics art overlap. PGR is no longer available (the 9-month post-grant PGR window closed on 2020-12-03; grant date 2020-03-03). IPR remains available at any time while the patent is enforceable — it is Active, with an adjusted expiration of 2038-08-17 (217 days of PTA). CBM is unavailable (not a covered business method; and the AIA CBM program has sunset).

Pattern signals. None. There is no repeat-petitioner pattern (no petitioner at all), no PTAB-appeal activity by the patent owner (there is nothing to appeal), and no evidence of a defensive aggregator such as Unified Patents having targeted this patent. The patent owner, Analog Devices, Inc., is a large operating company rather than a litigation-oriented NPE, which materially changes the risk profile: the absence of IPRs is more consistent with "widely deployed internal technology, not widely asserted" than with "patent so weak nobody bothered."

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant: there is no FWD to point to and no canceled claim to exploit. Do not represent to a court or an adversary that any claim of this patent has been invalidated at the PTAB — no AIA trial has ever been filed against it. Verify this yourself against PTAB E2E / the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board Decisions portal and the ODP before any filing, and re-check at 30-day intervals, since a recently filed petition may not appear in the ingest you rely on.
• Budget for a from-scratch IPR if you go that route. Because no institution has ever occurred, you carry the full § 312(a)(3) particularity burden with no prior panel guidance on how the Board reads the key limitations ("time characteristic determined using the quality factor," "transient compensation circuitry," "time decay rate"). Front-load claim-construction arguments on those terms. Watch the § 315(b) one-year bar from service of any complaint, and consider the March 26, 2025 Interim Process for Workload Management / Fintiv-type discretionary-denial dynamics if parallel litigation exists.
• Treat the technology-space adjacency as a lead, not a conclusion. The InvenSense US 10,921,124 citation shows competitors are working the same open-loop Q-compensation problem. That is a good starting point for a prior-art / state-of-the-art search, but a citation is not prior art and is not an invalidity theory.
• If you hold the patent (or are Analog Devices): the clean PTAB history is a positive for enforceability optics, but the total absence of Board testing means your claim constructions on the "quality factor"-driven compensation limitations are untested. Consider that a defendant's strongest move here is a § 112 or § 103 IPR built on the crowded pre-2018 MEMS drive-loop art.
• Nothing to link for opinions. There is no FWD, no institution decision, and no Federal Circuit docket to cite for this patent. Any link to an opinion purporting to be about US 10,578,435 should be treated with suspicion.

Confidence note: I could not find a PTAB proceeding in either the structured ODP data or via web search, and I state that as a finding rather than a guess. If the ODP ingest lags a very recent filing, a fresh petition could exist without appearing in either source; confirm against PTAB E2E before relying on the zero count in a filing.

I'll research the assignment record for US 10,578,435.

Inventors

All three named inventors are listed on the face of the issued patent as residing in the United States and, on the evidence available, were Analog Devices, Inc. personnel at the time of filing (2018-01-12):

Unusual-pattern check: Not present. There is no evidence of any inventor departing the assignee within 12 months of filing, and no evidence of a pre-filing "all-inventors-assign-then-leave" pattern. The opposite signature is present — the same inventive team (Kapusta) continues to file ADI MEMS/analog patents (e.g., US 10,309,782 in 2019, US 11,621,539 in 2023). This is a normal captive-R&D filing pattern, not a portfolio being readied for sale.

Caveat on a conflicting search hit: the aggregator page patentleaderboard.com hosts this patent under a heading titled "James Lin — 15 Patents at Integrated Device Technology." That heading is a site mislabel; the same page's own employer breakdown shows AD (Analog Devices) and AU (Analog Devices International Unlimited). I do not treat IDT as an employer of record. (This is the same mislabel already flagged in the earlier Patent-summary section — no new contradiction.)

Original assignee

Analog Devices, Inc., Norwood, Massachusetts (Applicant and Assignee of record on the issued patent; "(71) Applicant: Analog Devices, Inc., Norwood, MA (US)"; "(73) Assignee: Analog Devices, Inc.").

• Primary line of business: analog/mixed-signal semiconductors — data converters, amplifiers, power, RF, and MEMS inertial sensors. ADI is a publicly traded operating company (NASDAQ: ADI; S&P 500 constituent). Its MEMS gyroscope/accelerometer lines (the iMEMS family — ADXRS/ADIS-class parts) are directly downstream of the resonator-and-Coriolis-sense architecture described in this patent's FIG. 2.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? In practical terms, yes at the portfolio level: ADI is the archetypal merchant supplier of MEMS angular-rate sensors, and the techniques claimed (Q-dependent drive-force control and Q-dependent sense-path compensation) are the kind of signal-conditioning ADI implements in its gyro products. I could not verify from open sources a specific part number in which this claim set is practiced, so treat "ships products embodying the claims" as probable, not independently confirmed.
• Current status: Operating, solvent, publicly listed. No bankruptcy, dissolution, or acquisition of ADI. (Inverse caution: ADI has, in recent years, moved certain US patent rights into Analog Devices International Unlimited, an Irish affiliate, as an internal IP-holding reorganization. I found no assignment of this patent to that entity — see below.)

Assignment timeline

Finding: the USPTO assignment record for US 10,578,435 contains only the original inventor-to-ADI assignment. No post-issuance assignment, security agreement, merger, change-of-name, license, release, or correction has been recorded.

• 2018-01-12 (executed) / event recorded 2018-01-12 (per Google Patents legal events; the actual USPTO recordation date may be later than the execution date and I could not confirm it) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN: not verified
  • Conveyance: Assignment (assignment of assignors' interest)
  • Assignor: Lijun Gao; Ronald A. Kapusta, Jr.; James Lin — individually and jointly, as the entire inventive entity
  • Assignee: Analog Devices, Inc., Norwood, MA
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved. The patent's own prosecution correspondence of record points to Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, P.C. (Boston, MA), which is the attorney firm of record on the issued patent. I could not verify from an assignment-record source which correspondent filed the recordation cover sheet, so I am not asserting Wolf Greenfield as the assignment correspondent. No recurrence flag can be supported.
  • Context: Ordinary employment/obligation-to-assign transfer from captive inventors to their employer, executed concurrently with (or immediately after) the 2018-01-12 filing. This is the standard ADI pattern and is not an acquisition, fire-sale, reorg, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

Explicit caveat (do not over-read): I could not query assignmentcenter.uspto.gov or the legacy assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html index directly with the tools available; those portals are not web-indexed in a way my searches could reach. The single-event finding above is taken from the Google Patents legal-events record for US 10,578,435, which is itself derived from USPTO assignment data. I have not fabricated a reel/frame. If a definitive reel/frame, recording date, or correspondent is required, it must be read directly from the Assignment Center by patent number 10578435 (or application 15/869,163).

Family corroboration (non-US, for completeness only): the same priority date (2018-01-12) is shared by DE 102019100423 B4 and JP 6785891 B2, both filed in January 2019 by ADI. No foreign assignment chain was examined.

Negative finding on later transfers: Google Patents lists the patent as Active, adjusted expiration 2038-08-17, with the "Cited By"/"Family Citing" entries (e.g., US 10,921,124 to InvenSense; US 12,081,222 to Panasonic; various CN/DE/WO filings) being citations, not conveyances. Those are not assignment events and I have not treated them as such.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10578435
    2018 : Application filed by Analog Devices Inc
         : Inventors assign to Analog Devices Inc
    2019 : Pre-grant publication US 20190219394 A1
    2020 : Patent issued as US 10578435 B2
    2020 : Still held by Analog Devices Inc
    2038 : Adjusted expiration if no transfer

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only recorded assignee is Analog Devices, Inc., a large publicly traded operating company with a Norwood, MA headquarters address. No "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" successor appears in the chain. There is no single-purpose Delaware/Texas LLC and no registered-agent service address anywhere in the record.
2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. No assignee or assignor matches any of the listed asserters (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities, etc.). Searches of the Unified Patents and RPX-facing portals surfaced no such entity in connection with US 10,578,435.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear (no data). The chain has a single link, so "recurrence" is structurally impossible to establish here. The patent's attorney of record is Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks, P.C., but I could not confirm the assignment-recording correspondent from an assignment-record source, and a single appearance would not be a finding in any event.
4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Zero chained transfers; no two-assignee sequence exists, let alone multiple links inside 24 months.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No infringement suit naming US 10,578,435 has been identified (consistent with the earlier Litigation-summary section). With no suit and no transfer there is nothing to date against a complaint.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. ADI has not filed Chapter 7/11; no bankruptcy-sale conveyance of this patent exists in the record.
7. Privateering — Not present. There is no ADI → NPE transfer, and no evidence of ADI using a proxy asserter against competitors on this patent.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. (Note the inverse of the usual reading: the absence of a defensive-aggregator terminal is neutral here, because the chain never left the operating company in the first place.)

Verdict

Insufficient data — with the affirmative subsidiary finding that no NPE pattern is evidenced.

Justification: the entire recorded chain consists of one link — the inventors' employment assignment to Analog Devices, Inc., tied to the 2018-01-12 filing of application 15/869,163 — and Google Patents shows no subsequent assignment event through at least its last-indexed status of Active / 2038-08-17. All eight NPE signals are either not present (shell-entity transfer, known asserter, cascading transfers, pre-litigation transfer, bankruptcy fire-sale, privateering, defensive aggregator) or unclear for lack of a second chain link (repeat correspondent). "Insufficient data" is driven by the inability to retrieve reel/frame and correspondent fields directly from the Assignment Center, not by any evidence of an asserter; the substantive evidence points squarely to ordinary operating-company ownership by a solvent, product-shipping semiconductor manufacturer with no assertion history on this patent.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — search patent 10578435 (legacy mirror: assignment.uspto.gov); cross-check Google Patents legal events for US 10,578,435 B2.

Caveat: I could not perform an exhaustive docket-level (PACER/Lex Machina/Docket Navigator) or direct Assignment-Center query. No assignment is asserted here that is not supported by the record cited above; conversely, absence of a recorded later transfer in the sources I could reach is not proof that none exists.

I'll research the cited prior art references for US 10,578,435. Let me start with targeted searches on the USPTO record and the most likely anticipatory references.

Let me research the other key cited references that are most likely relevant to the anticipation analysis.

Let me get the complete citation list and check the Kionix and a few remaining key references.

I've reached the research limit, so I'll now synthesize the analysis from the authoritative patent document (including its own citation list) and the reference details I retrieved. Before the substance, one housekeeping flag and two honesty caveats.

Contradiction flagged (per operating rules): The task header says "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while the system prompt says "Today's date is 2026-09-29" and the previously generated sections were timestamped 2026-09-24. I cannot resolve which is authoritative; I flag it rather than silently pick one. None of the prior-art analysis below turns on this date.

Caveat 1: I could not query USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR or TACTS directly with the available tools. The record for US 10,578,435 B2 below is taken from the issued patent document (OCR'd) and its Google Patents mirror, which reproduce the USPTO front page and the "References Cited" list. I did not retrieve the full text of every one of the 74/80 cited references; where I describe a reference's content, it is based on the retrieved abstract/description for that reference, and I say so.

Caveat 2 — legal standard: § 102 anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every element of a claim, arranged as claimed. Being "cited" is not the same as "anticipatory." Most of the 74 references below are background/technical-support citations; I identify which are genuinely close and, where a reference discloses some but not all elements, I say the ground is really § 103 (obviousness) rather than § 102.

1. The patent under analysis (confirmed to the specific number)

All cited prior art pre-dates the 2018-01-12 priority date, so each reference is facially available as prior art under § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) (AIA). What follows maps them to the claims of the '435 patent.

2. The claim elements to be anticipated

To avoid repeating the earlier section, I compress the claims to the elements that matter for prior-art mapping:

• C1 / C9: (a) receive resonator signal; (b) determine Q from the resonator signal; (c) generate a compensation signal having ≥1 time characteristic determined using Q; (d) receive sense signal; (e) generate compensated sense signal from (sense signal + compensation signal).
• C2 / C10: the time characteristic is a time decay rate.
• C3 / C11: detect resonant frequency; drive the resonator with a drive signal determined using both the resonant frequency and Q.
• C4 / C12: vary the average of the drive signal based on Q.
• C5 / C13: vary the pulse density of the drive signal based on Q.
• C6 / C14: the combination in C1(e) is a multiplication.
• C7 / C15: hold the compensation signal substantially constant for a predefined period (blanking).
• C8: set that period's duration based on Q.
• C16: apparatus topology — Q measuring circuit coupled to a motion detection electrode of the resonator; a compensation circuit including transient compensation circuitry; signal combination circuitry coupled to the sensor and to the transient-compensation output.
• C17: transient compensation circuitry comprises a filter. C18: a pulse density modulator coupled to the transient compensation circuitry and the resonator. C19: the compensation circuit comprises a Q blanking circuit. C20: sensor = first mass; resonator = second mass elastically coupled to the first.

3. Most relevant prior art (Tier 1 — closest to the claims)

3.1 US 2016/0298965 A1 → U.S. Pat. No. 9,709,400 B2 — Analog Devices (Kapusta)

• Full citation: U.S. Patent Application Publication 2016/0298965 A1, "System, Apparatus, and Method for Resonator and Coriolis Axis Control in Vibratory Gyroscopes," Kapusta; published 2016-10-13; filed 2015-04-07 (App. 14/680,776); granted as US 9,709,400 B2 on 2017-07-18.
• Description (verified): A gyroscope control circuit with an open-loop resonator signal path (RSP) and a closed-loop Coriolis signal path (CSP). It expressly discloses a Q compensation circuit that compensates for sensitivity variation "based on variations in resonator signal path Q while the gyroscope is operating," including (i) a Q measurement circuit to measure RSP Q and (ii) either a multiplier that combines the measured RSP Q and the Coriolis output rate signal to produce a compensated Coriolis output rate signal, or a feedback loop from the Q measurement circuit to the open-loop RSP control circuit to adjust a resonator drive signal based on the measured Q. It derives the result that sensitivity varies directly with RSP Q.
• Claims it potentially implicates:
  • C1 / C9 — strong, because it discloses (a) sensing resonator motion, (b) deriving Q from that, (d) a Coriolis rate signal, and (e) a compensated output. But the '965 reference feeds measured Q itself into the multiplier; it does not plainly recite a "compensation signal having a time characteristic." That gap means C1/C9 is better characterized as a § 103 ground than a clean § 102 anticipation.
  • C6 / C14 — closest § 102 candidate: the "multiplier that combines the measured RSP Q and the Coriolis output rate signal" reads directly onto "generate the compensated sense signal by multiplying the sense signal with the compensation signal."
  • C3 / C11, C4 / C12 — the feedback-loop embodiment "adjust a resonator drive signal based on the measured Q" reads onto driving the resonator with a drive signal determined using Q (average/amplitude variation).
  • C16 — discloses a Q measurement circuit and signal combination, but not the "transient compensation circuitry" limitation → § 103, not § 102.

3.2 US 2016/0298963 A1 → U.S. Pat. No. 10,309,782 B2 — Analog Devices

• Full citation: U.S. Patent Application Publication 2016/0298963 A1, "Quality Factor Estimation for Resonators," published 2016-10-13; filed 2015-04-07 (provisional 62/144,126 of 2015-04-07); granted as US 10,309,782 B2. (Same attorney firm — Wolf, Greenfield & Sacks.)
• Description (verified): A method/apparatus for estimating the Q of a resonator by driving it between alternating ramp-up and ring-down phases, making first and second measurements of a resonance parameter, and producing a Q estimate. Includes a quality factor measurement circuit and a driver circuit configured to adjust a drive signal based on the Q estimate. Embodiment is a MEMS gyroscope with resonator, driver, Q measurement circuit, and gyroscope output circuit.
• Claims it potentially implicates:
  • C1(b) / C9(b) and C16 — the "determine a quality factor of the resonator using the resonator signal" and the "quality factor measuring circuit" elements are squarely disclosed. § 102 plausible for the Q-measurement sub-combination, though the reference's claim 1 is drawn to the Q-estimation method, not to generating/applying a compensation signal, so it does not anticipate C1/C9/C16 as a whole.
  • C3 / C11, C4 / C12, C5 / C13 — adjusting the drive based on the Q estimate implicates drive-signal-based Q compensation.

3.3 US 2017/0307374 A1 → U.S. Pat. No. 10,302,432 B2 — InvenSense

• Full citation: U.S. Patent Application Publication 2017/0307374 A1, "Compensating circuit for a microelectromechanical (MEMS) resonator," InvenSense, published 2017-10-26; filed 2016-04-20; granted as US 10,302,432 B2 on 2019-05-28.
• Description (verified): Receives a digitized drive-voltage amplitude of a MEMS gyroscope; determines a percentage change in quality factor (from the drive amplitude and a stored trim value); and compensates for the effect of the Q change — including adding an offset magnitude to the sense path and adjusting a demodulator phase. Notes that pressure/outgassing changes Q, which shifts zero-rate offset.
• Claims it potentially implicates:
  • C1 / C9 — same purpose (compensate the sense path for Q change), and it uses the sense path as the compensation site. But it computes a percentage change in Q / offset magnitude, not a "compensation signal having a time characteristic determined using Q." → § 103 for C1/C9; a § 102 reading is possible only under an unreasonably broad construction of "compensation signal."
  • C6 / C14 — the additive-offset sense-path compensation is not a multiplication → does not anticipate C6/C14.

3.4 U.S. Pat. No. 9,176,165 B2 — Thales

• Full citation: U.S. Pat. No. 9,176,165 B2, "Vibrating micro-system with automatic gain control loop, with integrated control of the quality factor," Thales; from US 2013/0008226 A1; granted 2015-11-03; priority 2011-07-08.
• Description (verified): Measures a resonator's Q during a cutoff phase of the AGC servo-loop; the oscillation amplitude decays as an exponential envelope whose time constant is proportional to the quality factor, and Q is derived from that decay. Directed to monitoring Q while operational (avionics).
• Claims it potentially implicates:
  • C2 / C10 — this is the strongest § 102-type disclosure of the "time decay rate determined using Q" concept, because it explicitly ties the decay time constant to Q. As a standalone teaching, it squarely supports the proposition that a time-decay characteristic is set by Q.
  • C1(b) / C9(b) — determining Q from the resonator signal is disclosed.
  • C1(c)–(e) / C9(c)–(e) — not disclosed: the Thales device monitors Q for a timebase/pressure/accel micro-sensor and does not generate a correction signal applied to a gyroscope sense (Coriolis) signal. So it does not anticipate C1/C9 as a whole → § 103.

3.5 US 2016/0334213 A1 — Kionix

• Full citation: U.S. Patent Application Publication 2016/0334213 A1, "Phase-based Measurement and control of a Gyroscope," Kionix, Inc.; published 2016-11-17.
• Description: (verification limited) A phase-based scheme for measuring and controlling a MEMS gyroscope; typically used to derive/control resonator parameters (including Q-related dynamics) from phase relationships.
• Claims it potentially implicates: I could not retrieve the full text of this reference within the tool budget, so I decline to map it to specific claims. Flagged as a reference to review in full because it is a directly on-point gyro control/Q measurement citation. Do not treat this as a § 102 assertion.

4. Tier 2 — relevant to isolated elements (mostly § 103 support)

(Reference 2005/0257596 is the Fell publication; US 7,219,529 is the corresponding BAE grant — both appear in the record.)

5. Tier 3 — cumulative/structural citations (list from the patent's own "References Cited")

These are the remaining U.S. citations from the front page; they are not close on the compensation-signal limitations and appear to be cited for gyro structure, PLLs, capacitive sensing, or general MEMS fabrication. I list them with their dates as recorded on the '435 front page (I did not independently pull full text for each, so I do not assert anticipatory content):

US 5,218,867 (1993-06-15); US 5,540,094 (1996-07-30); US 5,866,816 (1999-02-02); US 5,889,193 (1999-03-30); US 5,969,225 (1999-10-19); US 5,987,984 (1999-11-23); US 5,992,233 (1999-11-30); US 6,018,996 (2000-02-01); US 6,198,355 (2001-03-06); US 2001/0029784 (2001-10-18); WO 2001/079862 (2001-10-25); US 6,510,737 (2003-01-28); US 2003/0101814 (2003-06-05); US 6,598,455 (2003-07-29); US 6,768,358 (2004-07-27); US 6,934,665 (2005-08-23); US 2005/0183502 (2005-08-25); US 7,123,111 (2006-10-17); US 2007/0163345 (2007-07-19); US 7,253,615 (2007-08-07); US 2007/0256495 (2007-11-08); US 2008/0170742 (2008-07-17); US 2009/0083011 (2009-03-26); US 2009/0249875 (2009-10-08); US 2009/0272189 (2009-11-05); US 2009/0282916 (2009-11-19); US 7,640,803 (2010-01-05); EP 2211458 (2010-07-28); US 2010/0212424 (2010-08-26); US 2010/0271067 (2010-10-28); US 7,980,133 (2011-07-19); US 2012/0006114 (2012-01-12); US 2012/0024057 (2012-02-02); US 8,151,641 (2012-04-10); US 8,375,789 (2013-02-19); US 8,401,140 (2013-03-19); US 8,446,222 (2013-05-21); JP 2013-521486 (2013-06-10); US 8,497,746 (2013-07-30); US 2014/0000365 (2014-01-02); US 2014/0000366 (2014-01-02); US 8,624,679 (2014-01-07); US 8,661,898 (2014-03-04); US 8,689,631 (2014-04-08); US 9,103,845 (2015-08-11); US 2015/0226557 (2015-08-13); US 2015/0247877 (2015-09-03); US 2015/0285658 (2015-10-08); US 2015/0341041 (2015-11-26); US 9,278,847 (2016-03-08); US 9,410,806 (2016-08-09); US 9,459,100 (2016-10-04); US 9,506,757 (2016-11-29); US 9,634,678 (2017-04-25); US 2017/0135600 (2017-05-18); US 2017/0214407 (2017-07-27).

Non-patent literature cited: Aaltonen et al., "An analog drive loop for a capacitive MEMS gyroscope," Analog Integr. Circ. Sig. Process. 2010;63:465–76 — relevant to the open-loop resonator drive-loop architecture (C3/C11 background).

6. Bottom-line assessment

1. Strongest single reference: US 2016/0298965 A1 (US 9,709,400 B2, Analog Devices/Kapusta). It is the only cited reference that discloses, in one document, the full trio of (i) measuring resonator-path Q, (ii) a multiplier that combines the measured Q with the Coriolis output rate signal to yield a compensated rate signal, and (iii) a Q-feedback path that adjusts the resonator drive signal. It is a genuine § 102 candidate for claim 6/14 (multiply) and a § 103 linchpin for claims 1/9, 3/11, 4/12.

2. Its companion, US 2016/0298963 A1 (US 10,309,782 B2, Analog Devices), supplies the Q-estimation half (claims 1(b)/9(b) and the "Q measuring circuit" of claim 16).

3. The InvenSense US 2017/0307374 A1 (US 10,302,432 B2) and Thales US 9,176,165 B2 are the two most on-point third-party references: InvenSense for sense-path compensation based on Q variation (C1/C9, § 103), and Thales for the Q-proportional exponential decay time constant (C2/C10).

4. No single reference appears to anticipate independent claim 1, 9, or 16 as a whole. The distinguishing limitation that none of the Tier-1 references plainly discloses is "a compensation signal having at least one time characteristic determined using the quality factor" combined with applying it to the sense signal — the transient compensation (C16) and blanking (C7/C15/C19) features are, on the record I could retrieve, novel over all cited art. The cited art appears to have been assembled for an obviousness posture, not clean anticipation.

5. Verification gaps I will not paper over: I did not obtain full text for US 2016/0334213 A1 (Kionix) or for every Tier-3 citation; those are flagged as "review in full." For a defensible § 102/§ 103 opinion, the top five references (3.1–3.5) must be pulled from USPTO PatentCenter/Public-Examiner or Espacenet and read against the '435 claims element-by-element, and the actual prosecution history (the office actions for App. 15/869,163) should be reviewed to see how the examiner actually applied each reference — I could not access it.

This is a technical research summary, not a legal opinion on validity or infringement.

I'll research the key prior-art references cited on the patent's own Google Patents page (the "Citations" section) to ground the §103 analysis.

I have strong material on the two Analog Devices references. Let me now research the cited references most relevant to the dependent claims (blanking, pulse-density drive, coupled-mass architecture, smoothing filters).

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,578,435 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent: Quality factor compensation in microelectromechanical system (MEMS) gyroscopes
Assignee: Analog Devices, Inc. | Effective filing/priority: Jan. 12, 2018 | Issued: Mar. 3, 2020

Scope of this analysis: I use the prior art listed in the Citations section of the patent's own Google Patents record (the "Prior Art" data on the page). I could not obtain the complete text of every cited reference; where I rely on an abstract or claim snippet rather than the full specification, I say so. This is a technical obviousness analysis, not a legal opinion.

I. Governing framework and level of ordinary skill

Under Graham v. John Deere and KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, the inquiry is: (1) scope/content of the prior art; (2) differences between the prior art and the claims; (3) the level of ordinary skill; and (4) secondary considerations. KSR further permits combining references where an element is a "known technique," a "predictable variation," or where there is a "design incentive" or "market pressure" to solve the problem, and it warns against an over-rigid "teaching, suggestion, or motivation" test.

PHOSITA here is an engineer with a graduate degree (or equivalent experience) in electrical/mechanical engineering and 3–5 years designing MEMS inertial-sensor signal-conditioning ASICs — familiar with Coriolis vibratory gyroscopes, resonator drive loops (AGC/PLL), quadrature/Coriolis feedback, capacitance-to-voltage sensing, and mixed-signal demodulation. That person would know as a matter of course that a resonator's ring-down envelope decays exponentially with a time constant proportional to Q (τ = Q/ω₀ = Q/(πf₀)).

II. The prior art of record and its § 102 status

All references below appear in the "Citations (74)/(80)" list on the patent's page. The dates are the references' own publication/issue dates.

Important § 102 nuance (flagging a potential applicant argument): US 2016/0298965 and US 2016/0298963 (and their granted counterparts) are commonly owned by Analog Devices, and inventors Kapusta and Lin overlap with the '435 inventors. That overlap does not remove them as prior art, because both published on Oct. 13, 2016 — more than one year before the Jan. 12, 2018 filing date — and therefore qualify under § 102(a)(1) ("otherwise available to the public"). The common-ownership exception in § 102(b)(2)(C) applies only to § 102(a)(2) art, and the § 102(b)(1) grace period does not reach disclosures more than one year old. (If the analysis were forced to rest on the granted patents, US 9,709,400 issued 7/18/2017 — inside the one-year window and commonly owned — and would be exposed to the § 102(b)(2)(C) exception. The safe path is the publication, not the patent.)

III. The critical reference: US 2016/0298965 A1

This single reference maps onto most of the '435 disclosure. Per its published text and Fig. 4:

• An open-loop resonator signal path driving the resonator mass, and a closed-loop Coriolis signal path (the "accelerometer") producing a Coriolis output rate signal;
• a "Q compensation circuit … to compensate for variations in gyroscope sensitivity based on variations in resonator signal path Q while the gyroscope is operating";
• a Q measurement circuit 430 that measures resonator-axis Q on an ongoing basis;
• a multiplier 440 that combines the measured Q with the Coriolis output signal … to produce the output rate signal 450; or, in the alternative, a feedback loop from the Q measurement circuit to the open-loop RSP control circuit to adjust a resonator drive signal based on measured Q; and
• the concept that "sensitivity of the gyroscope varies directly with resonator signal path quality factor (Q)."

That is, in substance, the '435's two compensation pathways — sense-path compensation (multiply the sense output by a Q-based correction) and open-loop resonator-path compensation (adjust the drive based on Q). US 2016/0298965 is plainly anticipatory of the general architecture and is at minimum the strongest § 103 primary reference.

The one genuine point of departure of claim 1/9 is the "time characteristic" limitation — i.e., that the compensation signal has a time characteristic (claim 2: a time decay rate) determined from Q. US 2016/0298965 expresses its correction as an algebraic function of measured Q, not as a time-shaped waveform. Everything else in claim 1 is disclosed.

IV. Claim-by-claim obviousness

Independent claim 1 (and apparatus claim 9)

Combination and motivation. A PHOSITA seeking to implement the '965 Q-compensation in a real, continuously operating gyroscope faces an immediate, well-understood problem: Q does not change in a step, and the resonator's own response to any drive change is a first-order (exponential) transient whose time constant is the resonator decay constant. Thales '165 states expressly that the resonator's envelope "decreases following a decreasing exponential envelope, whose time constant is proportional to the quality factor," and US 2016/0298963 shows how to extract Q from that decay. It is a predictable design choice (KSR) to shape the compensation signal with the same time constant as the physical quantity it is correcting — i.e., a decay rate determined by Q — so that the correction tracks the mechanics rather than fighting them. The reasonable expectation of success is high: both references come from the same technical field (MEMS resonator Q control), and both Analog Devices references describe the very same gyroscope signal paths.

Alternative single-reference theory: If "time characteristic" is construed broadly (any property of the correction that varies with time as Q varies), US 2016/0298965 alone anticipates. If construed narrowly (decay rate), the '965 + '165 combination renders it obvious. Either way, claim 1 is vulnerable.

Dependent claims

• Claim 2 / 10 (decay rate determined from Q): Directly taught by US 9,176,165 ("time constant proportional to the quality factor") and US 2016/0298963 (Q from ring-down slope). Obvious — indeed the claim largely reads on '165.
• Claim 3 / 11 (detect resonant frequency; drive using f_R and Q): US 2016/0298965 (feedback loop adjusts RSP drive based on Q) + a PLL/resonant-frequency detector. ADI's own US 8,624,679 ("Method and apparatus for MEMS phase locked loop") and US 8,464,571 (determining resonant frequency and Q) supply the frequency-detection element. Motivation: the AC drive of a resonant gyro must be at resonance; controlling the force applied at that frequency is the natural way to hold sensitivity constant.
• Claim 4 / 12 (vary the average of the drive signal based on Q): Taught by US 2016/0298965 (adjust resonator drive based on Q) and by InvenSense US 2017/0307374/US 10,302,432 (compensating the sense path for Q change; drive-voltage-based Q determination). Averaging/duty-cycle control of the drive force is elementary drive-loop practice.
• Claim 5 / 13 (vary pulse density of the drive signal): Pulse-density/duty-cycle modulation is a known technique for setting an average electrostatic force without changing supply voltage. US 2016/0298963 teaches alternating drive amplitudes for controlled durations (a pulse-density-like drive), and US 9,450,910 (Bosch stepped sinusoidal drive) and US 9,506,757 (InvenSense duty-cycled gyro) confirm that modulated drive is conventional in this field. KSR "known technique" rationale applies; the motivation is that PDM lets the loop raise the average force (hence resonator amplitude) as Q drops.
• Claim 6 / 14 (multiply sense signal by compensation signal): Expressly disclosed by US 2016/0298965 (multiplier 440). Anticipated.
• Claim 7 / 15 (hold the compensation signal substantially constant for a predefined time period — "blanking"): US 2010/0271067 (STMicroelectronics) teaches a masking circuit that holds an output at its present value for a set period to suppress noise switchings — the same concept, in a gyro-adjacent signal-processing context. Thales US 9,176,165 likewise teaches a sequencing circuit that limits the Q-measurement interval to a fixed duration Td. Motivation: the '435 specification itself states that blanking is used to suppress the "unwanted feature" (triangular peak) that appears in the Q estimate when the drive changes; a PHOSITA would recognize that freezing the correction during a known measurement artifact is a straightforward, predictable fix.
• Claim 8 (set blanking duration based on Q): US 9,176,165 sets Td as a function of the Q-dependent attenuation factor k. Obvious.

Independent claim 16 and its dependents

Motivation: '965's step-wise Q correction creates a discontinuity when the drive is re-tuned (the same artifact the '435 describes in FIG. 6B). A first-order low-pass (transient) filter placed in the correction path to round off that step is the most natural remedial measure, and '963 already discloses filtering in the gyroscope output path. The combination is a predictable use of a known element (a filter) for its known function (smoothing a step).

• Claim 17 (transient compensation circuitry is a filter): Elementary; supported by '963/'165.
• Claim 18 (pulse density modulator coupled to the transient compensation circuitry and the resonator): As with claim 5 — PDM is conventional; '963's alternating-drive scheme and '910/'757 show modulated drive circuits.
• Claim 19 (compensation circuit comprises a Q blanking circuit): '965 (compensation circuit) + '067/'165 (hold-for-set-period masking/sequencing) → obvious.
• Claim 20 (sensor is a first mass; resonator is a second mass elastically coupled): Plainly conventional. The '435's own FIG. 2 shows exactly this coupled-proof-mass topology, and it is the standard architecture of the field: US 7,827,864 and US 9,278,847 (STMicroelectronics "first mass … second mass constrained/coupled"), US 5,992,233 (UC Berkeley micromachined rate gyroscope), Murata US 2014/0000365/66, and Halliburton US 2005/0183502 ("motion-responsive coupled masses"). Anticipated/obvious.

V. Secondary considerations and counter-arguments

• Secondary considerations. The record shows no known secondary-indication evidence (no unexpected results, long-felt need, or industry praise tied to the "time-characteristic" limitation). The problem — Q variation degrading gyro sensitivity — was well known and actively addressed by several companies (ADI, Thales, InvenSense, Bosch, STMicroelectronics) before 2018, which cuts against non-obviousness.
• Possible applicant rebuttals. (i) Non-analogous art — unlikely to succeed; Thales, Bosch, and ST are all in the same MEMS inertial-sensor field. (ii) "Teaching away" — Thales '165 emphasizes Q measurement during a loop cutoff and warns that certain measurement schemes drop the loop; but that does not teach away from using the Q-dependent decay constant as the correction's time constant. (iii) Common ownership of the ADI references — as explained above, this does not disqualify them because they published more than one year before filing and thus are § 102(a)(1) art.
• Weakest link for the patentee. Claim 1/9 are broad; their sole point of novelty over US 2016/0298965 is the "time characteristic" wording. The '965 reference, read together with the universally known resonator ring-down relationship (τ ∝ Q), makes claims 1–2, 6, 9–10, and 14–15 the most vulnerable. Claims 7–8 and 15/19 (blanking) rest on a somewhat thinner combination ('067/'165), but the combination is still defensible given the specification's own admission that blanking only suppresses a known measurement artifact.

VI. Bottom line

1. US 2016/0298965 A1 (Analog Devices) is the primary reference. It discloses the resonator+accelerometer architecture, the Q measurement circuit coupled to resonator motion, the Q compensation circuit, multiplication of the sense signal by a Q-based correction, and the alternative of adjusting the drive based on Q.
2. The only material gap is the "time characteristic"/"time decay rate" of the compensation signal and the associated transient filtering/blanking. Those gaps are filled by US 9,176,165 (Thales) (exponential decay with time constant ∝ Q), US 2016/0298963 (Analog Devices) (Q from the decay slope; output filtering), US 2010/0271067 (STMicroelectronics) and Thales '165's sequencing circuit (hold-for-a-set-period masking), and, for the drive-modulation claims, US 9,450,910 (Bosch) / US 9,506,757 (InvenSense) / InvenSense US 2017/0307374.
3. Motivation to combine is strong throughout: all references are in the same field and address the same known problem (Q-driven sensitivity variation), and the asserted differences amount to applying a known technique to a known structure to achieve a predictable result — the KSR standard. The coupled-mass limitation of claim 20 is squarely conventional.

Overall assessment: claims 1–2, 6, 9–10, 14–15, 17, and 20 are the most likely to be held obvious (claims 6/14 and 20 border on anticipated); claims 3–5, 7–8, 11–13, 15–16, 18–19 are obvious but somewhat more combination-dependent, with claims 7/15/19 (blanking) the most arguable.

Caveats. (a) I relied on the citation list in the patent's Google Patents record plus abstracts/claim text for the cited references; I did not verify the full specification of each. (b) Where a reference's full disclosure could not be confirmed, I labeled the inference. (c) This is a technical analysis for research purposes, not a legal opinion or a validity determination, and any formal conclusion should be confirmed against the complete text of each reference as cited on the patent's face (Form PTO-892/IDS) and in USPTO PatentCenter.