US 10605665

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

Let me run a couple more targeted searches to check for any litigation or docket activity.

US Patent 10,605,665 — Verified Summary

Confidence: High for bibliographic data and claim content (grounded in the patent full text and Justia's patent record). Low/none for litigation — see the caveat at the end.

Bibliographic Data

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10605665B2](/patent/US10605665B2)/en ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/10605665

Abstract (verbatim)

"A method for measuring a temperature of a process area is provided. A simulation computation is performed to obtain a simulation temperature. A ratio-pyrometer with two one-color modes is used to measure the temperature of the process area, and a first emissivity value and a second emissivity value are acquired. An emissivity ratio is set to a ratio of the second emissivity value to the first emissivity value, and the ratio-pyrometer in the two-color mode is used to measure the temperature of the process area."

Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

Claim 1 — the core calibration method. This is a method of figuring out how to correctly configure a ratio-pyrometer (a two-color pyrometer) so it reports the true temperature of a small "process area" — in practice, a melt pool in a powder-bed fusion / SLM process — even though the pool is smaller than the pyrometer's measuring spot. Steps:

1. Provide a ratio-pyrometer with three measurement channels: a first and second one-color mode (narrow wavelength bands, e.g. ~1450–1650 nm and ~1650–1800 nm) plus a two-color mode that works off the ratio of the two emissivities.
2. Run a simulation of the process area to produce a simulated temperature field (simulated process-area temperatures).
3. Compute a "first simulation temperature" from that field using a first algorithm. This models what the pyrometer would report in one-color mode. Notably, the algorithm deliberately folds in the "background" region — nodes outside the melt pool but inside the spot are assigned the pyrometer's lowest settable temperature (e.g. 1273 K) — which is exactly the error source the invention is trying to model.
4. Take real measurements in the first one-color mode with a trial "first emissivity," and in the second one-color mode with a trial "second emissivity," collecting sets of first and second temperatures.
5. Lock in values by error matching: if the average error between measured first temperatures and the first simulation temperature is ≤ a "first default percentage," that trial emissivity becomes the first emissivity value; same test for the second. If the error is above the threshold, iterate/adjust the emissivity and re-measure until it passes.
6. Set the emissivity ratio to (second emissivity value ÷ first emissivity value) and use the ratio-pyrometer in two-color mode to measure the process area's temperature.

The inventive hook is that the two one-color emissivity values are established empirically against a simulation-derived ground truth, and their ratio is then reused as the two-color-mode calibration — replacing the conventional, inefficient and inaccurate "E-slope by experiment" approach.

Claim 9 — the simulation-computation detail for powder-bed fusion. This is the second independent claim and it substantially narrows the "simulation computation" of claim 1 into a specific four-stage numerical pipeline:

1. Provide powder-bed parameter data — powder size distribution, layer thickness, container size, and powder-bed material properties (melting point, boiling point, thermal conductivity, specific heat, density); powder bed = substrate + powder layer.
2. Powder-bed simulation (e.g. a sequential-addition model in MATLAB) → packing density, powder coordinate data, and thermal conductivity of the powder layer.
3. Laser parameter data — first set (wavelength, radius, incident angle) to look up refractive indices of powder and substrate; second set (power, radius, incident angle, scan speed) for the thermal model.
4. Ray-tracing simulation (e.g. Monte Carlo ray tracing in Zemax) using the powder coordinates and refractive indices → an absorptivity profile (average absorptivity vs. powder-layer thickness).
5. Heat-transfer simulation (finite element, e.g. COMSOL Multiphysics + MATLAB) using absorptivity, packing density, thermal conductivity, second laser parameters, and material properties → the simulation temperature field covering substrate, powder layer, and melt pool, where the melt pool is defined as powder-layer material above its melting point and/or substrate material above its melting point.

Claim 10 depends on claim 9 and simply specifies that the process area is the melting pool.

Dependent claims 2–8 add: the first default percentage "substantially between 0% and 5%" (claim 2); the specific parameters of the first algorithm — node counts for the simulated spot vs. simulated process area, simulated process-area temperatures, and the pyrometer setting temperature (claim 3); node-count ratio equals area ratio (claim 4); spot area modified by incident angle and focal length (claim 5); the optional two-color validation loop with a second simulation temperature, third measurements, and a second default percentage (claim 6, with claim 7 specifying 0%–15% and claim 8 specifying the second algorithm's parameters).

Practical / Commercial Notes

The specification's worked example uses a Sensortherm H322 ratio-pyrometer (1000–2500 °C range, 0.9–8.8 mm spot, 600 mm focal length, 45° incident angle) on stainless steel 316L with 15 W / 20 W laser power; the calibration yields a first emissivity of 0.64, a second of 0.70, and an emissivity ratio of 1.093, verified at ~1.14% and ~4.27% average error against simulation. A Tawianese family member is listed as TWI639817B ("Method for measuring temperature of process area," 2018-11-01), and a related NCKU filing US 11,383,450 B2 ("Additive manufacturing system and method and feature extraction method") appears in the citing-family list.

Litigation / CAFC Docket — No Results Found

I searched for PTAB, CAFC, and general litigation activity tied specifically to 10,605,665 and found no case, IPR/PGR number, or Federal Circuit docket naming this patent. Search hits containing "106" or "665" referred to entirely different patents (e.g. 8,931,106; 8,370,106; IPR2020-00665) and are not related to this patent — I flag them only so they are not mistaken for matches. The June 2026 CAFC oral-argument list I retrieved did not mention this patent number either.

Caveat on completeness: I cannot treat an absence of search hits as proof that no proceeding exists. USPTO PatentCenter/PTAB APIs and the CAFC's docket system are not fully indexed by general web search, and filings can be docketed under a different patent number (e.g. the Taiwanese counterpart TWI639817B) or under the application number 15/800,045. If a definitive litigation check matters, the authoritative sources are the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End (PTAB E2E) system, USPTO PatentCenter for the '665 patent and application 15/800,045, and the CAFC CM/ECF docket (searchable by patent number). The Google Patents record (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10605665B2/en) shows no "Litigation" or "PTAB" section for this patent, which is consistent with, though not conclusive of, there being no such proceedings.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10605665 across litigation-tracking sources.

Let me search litigation-specific databases and the patent's litigation records.

Let me check patent-specific litigation databases and PTAB records.

Findings: No Known Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 10,605,665

Based on the searches I was able to run before hitting my tool-call limit, I found no litigation — no district court complaints, no CAFC appeals, no ITC Section 337 investigations, and no PTAB (IPR/PGR) proceedings — involving U.S. Patent No. 10,605,665.

What I searched and what I found

• Patent number searches ("10605665", "10,605,665", plus litigation terms) returned only the patent's own bibliographic/prosecution record (Google Patents, Justia) — no docket entries, complaints, or case captions.
• Assignee-based searches (National Cheng Kung University, National Chung Shan Institute of Science and Technology) surfaced only unrelated NCKU enforcement campaigns — notably the 2012–2013 Siri/voice-recognition and FaceTime video-compression suits against Apple in the E.D. Tex. (e.g., NCKU v. Apple, NCKU v. Qualcomm, NCKU v. Maxim). None of those involved the '665 patent, which did not issue until March 31, 2020.
• PTAB/IPR searches returned no petition challenging the '665 patent.

Supporting context from the patent record itself

• The Google Patents page for US10605665B2 lists only "Citations" and "Families Citing this family" sections — it has no litigation or PTAB section, consistent with there being no known proceedings.
• The patent is a university/research-institute method patent (temperature measurement of a melt pool during selective laser melting), not a product or licensing vehicle typically used in enforcement.
• Critically, the patent expired for failure to pay maintenance fees, effective March 31, 2024 (lapse recorded 2024-05-06). An expired, fee-lapsed patent is an unlikely target for or subject of infringement litigation.

Case table

Caveats

• I could not directly query the Unified Patents litigation portal, PACER/ CourtListener docket search, or the Stanford NPE Litigation Database for this specific patent number within my available steps. My conclusion is based on targeted web searches and the authoritative patent record provided, and I did not find any contradicting litigation evidence.
• Because U.S. patent numbers are easily conflated, I note explicitly that any suits by NCKU against Apple, Qualcomm, or Maxim concern different patents and must not be attributed to 10,605,665.
• If you need a definitive"no litigation" confirmation, the decisive next step would be a direct docket search on PACER/CourtListener and the Unified Patents litigation portal for "10,605,665" and for both assignees as plaintiffs.

If you'd like, I can attempt additional targeted queries (e.g., specific court docket databases or the Unified Patents caselist) in a follow-up.

I'll verify the canonical "no PTAB activity on file" result against public sources before writing up, since the ODP ingest can lag recent filings.

No hits tied to this patent. Let me run a couple more targeted checks before concluding, including the patent owner's name and a PTAB E2E-style query.

Proceedings overview

Zero (0) AIA trial proceedings on file. The USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) structured block is the canonical source here and returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming US 10,605,665 — no petitions, no institution decisions, no Final Written Decisions, no terminations, no appeals. My independent web searches (patent number, application number 15/800,045, patent owner names, and the Taiwanese family member) surfaced no proceeding the ODP may have failed to ingest; every "665"-adjacent hit was an unrelated patent (e.g., IPR2020-00665 concerns U.S. 8,931,106; IPR2013-00170 concerns U.S. 6,581,065; IPR2013-00172 concerns U.S. 6,092,074). Bottom-line defensive posture: there is no IPR-driven claim cancellation to lean on — but there is also no hardened patent to fear, because the patent is expired. The real defensive asset here is not a PTAB record; it is the fee lapse. The Google Patents record states legal status "Expired - Fee Related" with the patent expiring 2024-03-31 and lapse recorded 2024-05-06 (nonpayment under 37 CFR 1.362). A defendant is therefore litigating, at most, a past-damages question inside the 35 U.S.C. § 286 six-year lookback — not an injunction risk.

(No per-proceeding sections are included below because there are no proceedings to describe. I will not fabricate IPR/PGR numbers to fill the template — the absence is the finding.)

Strategic summary

Claim status: 10 unadjudicated claims, 0 canceled, 0 sustained, 10 untested at the PTAB. All ten claims of 10,605,665 — independent claims 1 and 9, and dependent claims 2–8 and 10 — remain as issued on 2020-03-31. No AIA tribunal has ever construed a term, evaluated a ground, or issued an adverse judgment. That cuts both ways: there is no FWD to cite for the proposition that claim 1 is invalid, and equally no FWD confirming that claim 1 is valid and hardened. Any patentability position you take must be built from scratch in district court or in a de novo filing.

Estoppel landscape: no § 315(e)(2) estoppel exists, because no petitioner exists. Estoppel is claim-and-ground specific and attaches only to a petitioner (and its real parties in interest and privies) that obtained a Final Written Decision. With zero FWDs, there is no party anywhere carrying an estoppel burden, and no prior-art ground has been "used up." Practically, this means the entire prior-art universe remains nominally available to a challenger — subject only to the ordinary constraints, not to PTAB estoppel. Note the timing consequence, however: PGR is unavailable (the 9-month post-grant window under § 321(c) closed around 2020-12-31), and CBM is doubly unavailable (the patent is not a covered business method patent and the CBM program sunset on 2020-09-16). IPR remains the only AIA vehicle, and the § 315(b) one-year bar would run from service of any complaint.

Pattern signals: none to read. There is no repeat petitioner (no petitioner at all), no PTAB appeal history, and no defensive aggregator — Unified Patents or otherwise — in the chain. The patent sits with two institutional owners, National Cheng Kung University and National Chung-Shan Institute of Science & Technology, which is consistent with a research-institute method patent rather than an enforcement vehicle. The most relevant "signal" is negative: an asserted, valuable patent almost always attracts an IPR, and this one attracted none across ~four years of enforceability (2020-03-31 to 2024-03-31) before lapsing.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant and the demand letter cites claims 1–10, there is no FWD to quote. I cannot point you to an invalidating disposition, because none exists. The strongest dispositive point is not invalidity but expiry: the patent lapsed for nonpayment of maintenance fees, effective 2024-03-31. Press opposing counsel to identify accused conduct occurring on or before 2024-03-31; anything after that date cannot infringe. Confirm the lapse directly at USPTO PatentCenter (application 15/800,045) rather than relying on aggregator pages.
• Confirm the zero count at the authoritative source before relying on it. The decisive checks are the PTAB End-to-End system (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/), USPTO PatentCenter for both the patent and application 15/800,045, and the CAFC CM/ECF docket. Because the ODP ingest can lag, also spot-check the Taiwanese counterpart TWI639817B and the related NCKU filing US 11,383,450 B2 in case a challenge was docketed under a family member.
• If any proceeding does surface that my searches missed, flag it and I will pull the institution decision, the panel, the grounds, and the claim-level FWD disposition. Report any such hit with its proceeding number rather than treating this "no PTAB activity" finding as final.
• Because no PTAB activity exists, there are no trial-stage milestones to track — no institution deadline, no oral hearing date, and no statutory one-year FWD due date under 35 U.S.C. § 316(a)(11). If a defendant elects to file, note that under the current Director-led institution regime (2025–2026) discretionary denials have spiked and institution rates have fallen sharply, and that an expired patent presents an unusual (and generally poor) discretionary-institution posture.

Sources cited: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10605665B2](/patent/US10605665B2)/en (legal status "Expired - Fee Related"; expiration 2024-03-31; lapse recorded 2024-05-06); https://patents.justia.com/patent/10605665 ; USPTO PTAB E2E — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ ; Google Patents shows no "Litigation" or "PTAB" section for this patent, which is consistent with — though not conclusive of — the absence of such proceedings.

I'll reconstruct the assignment record for US 10,605,665, starting with the USPTO assignment data and cross-referencing.

I was able to pull the assignment data from the patent's legal-events record (Google Patents, which mirrors the USPTO Assignment Center data) before hitting my search-step limit. The correspondent-of-record details are a gap I flag explicitly below.

Inventors

Pattern note: No unusual-pattern flags. The inventors assigned to the two institutions seven weeks after filing (executed 2017-12-19), which is the ordinary inventor-to-institution pipeline. There is no evidence of inventors departing the assignee, no re-assignment away from the institutions, and no personal-inventor retention of rights. This is a normal university/government-lab joint-ownership fact pattern, not a pre-fire-sale arrangement.

Original assignee

Two joint original assignees, named on the issued patent:

• National Cheng Kung University (NCKU) — Tainan, Taiwan. Public research university; operates its own technology-transfer function. Operating / active. NCKU is not a product company; it does not ship a commercial SLM machine embodying the claims. (Note: NCKU has been a plaintiff in unrelated patent suits in earlier years — e.g. the 2012–2013 Siri/voice and video-compression actions against Apple — but those concern different patents and predate this patent's 2020 issuance. They must not be attributed to 10,605,665.)
• National Chung-Shan Institute of Science and Technology (NCSIST) — Taoyuan, Taiwan. Taiwan's state-owned military R&D institute (a government administrative corporation since 2014). Operating / active, but again not a commercial vendor of the claimed method; it is a research-and-development institution.

Neither assignee ships a product embodying the claims in the ordinary commercial sense; the patent protects a measurement/calibration method (melt-pool temperature via ratio-pyrometer). No bankruptcy, dissolution, or acquisition of either assignee is recorded.

Current status of the patent: Legal status is Expired — Fee Related. Maintenance-fee lapse recorded 2024-05-06, effective 2024-03-31 (nonpayment under 37 CFR 1.362). Adjusted nominal expiration is listed as 2038-11-23, but the patent lapsed over a decade early. Both assignees remain the owners of record up to lapsed status.

Assignment timeline

The USPTO assignment record contains one recorded conveyance — the original inventor-to-institutions assignment. There are no post-issuance assignments:

• 2017-12-19 (executed) / recorded 2018-01-08 — Reel 044566 / Frame 0249
  • Conveyance: Assignment (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST — see document for details)
  • Assignor: Lo, Yu-Lung; Ren, Chi-Guang (the two named inventors, jointly)
  • Assignee: National Cheng Kung University and National Chung-Shan Institute of Science & Technology (joint assignees)
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable from the sources available to me. The Google Patents legal-events abstract for reel 044566/0249 does not surface the recording attorney/agent, and I could not complete a direct Assignment Center record pull before exhausting my search steps. This is a data gap, not a negative finding — I am not inferring the absence of a correspondent.
  • Context: Original inventor-to-institution assignment; no third party, no consideration structure suggesting a sale (single link, both assignees are the collaborating research hosts).

No further recorded assignments exist. In particular there is no assignment to any licensing LLC, IP holding entity, aggregator, or NPE; no security agreement; no merger; no change-of-name; and no release. The Google Patents legal-events feed for this patent shows only: the filing (2017-10-31), the assignment event above, publication (2019-05-02), grant (2020-03-31), and the fee-lapse events (2023-11-20 reminder; 2024-05-06 lapse; 2024-05-28 confirmation).

Caveat on the record set: Assignment Center recordation for these two government/university assignees is typically handled in-house or by a Taiwanese patent firm, but I could not confirm the correspondent of record. If a definitive correspondent check matters (e.g., to test signal #3 below), the authoritative step is a direct lookup at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ by patent number 10605665 and/or application 15/800,045 against reel 044566/0249. I flag that I could not complete it.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10605665
    2017 : Filed by NCKU and NCSIST
         : Inventors execute assignment
    2018 : Recorded at reel 044566 frame 0249
    2020 : Patent issued
    2024 : Expired for unpaid maintenance fee

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. No assignment to any entity bearing "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures"; assignees are the original university and government R&D institute. No LLC, no registered-agent address, no single-purpose entity appears in the chain (reel 044566/0249).

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither NCKU nor NCSIST matches any public NPE/asserter list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, etc.). There is no second link in the chain at all, so no asserter could occupy it.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / not assessable. The chain has a single link, so the "recurrence" test cannot be met on this patent regardless. I could not retrieve the correspondent of record for reel 044566/0249, so I also cannot test whether that attorney recurs on other NCKU/NCSIST recordings. Marked unclear rather than "not present" to avoid manufacturing a negative from a data gap.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Zero post-issuance transfers; no chained LLCs, no shared correspondent addresses, no paired-principal pattern.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. There is no litigation naming this patent (per the prior litigation section) and no assignment at all after the original 2018 recording, let alone within six months of a suit.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No bankruptcy of either assignee is recorded; the patent's termination was a maintenance-fee lapse by the owners (recorded 2024-05-06, effective 2024-03-31), not an asset sale in insolvency.

7. Privateering — Not present. No operating-company-to-NPE transfer; the operating/research assignees never parted with the patent and never enlisted an NPE to assert it.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at the original government/university owners. (There is a separate, adjacent defensive-adjacent fact: the patent is dead — expired for non-payment — which neutralizes it practically, but that is not the same as a defensive-aggregator transfer.)

Verdict

Insufficient data — only the original assignment exists.

The assignment record for US 10,605,665 consists of a single link: the inventors' original assignment to the two research hosts (NCKU and NCSIST), executed 2017-12-19 and recorded 2018-01-08 at reel 044566 / frame 0249. There is no subsequent conveyance to any LLC, aggregator, or asserter, so none of the NPE indicators can be satisfied — and the original assignees, a public university and Taiwan's state military R&D institute, are non-asserting, product-less research entities rather than shell vehicles. The patent then lapsed for unpaid maintenance fees (effective 2024-03-31, recorded 2024-05-06), which further forecloses any assertion scenario. The only gap that prevents a fully closed finding is the unretrieved correspondent of record for reel 044566/0249 (signal #3, marked unclear); I did not fabricate a name for it.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 10,605,665 or application 15/800,045; retrieve reel 044566 / frame 0249 for the correspondent details), mirrored at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

Cross-reference / contradiction check

• The patent full text and the previously generated bibliographic section both list the two assignees as NCKU and NCSIST, and the Google Patents legal-events feed shows exactly one assignment event — my timeline is consistent with that record.
• No contradiction with the earlier litigation section: that section found no litigation, and this assignment analysis finds no transfer that would have enabled assertion. The two findings are mutually reinforcing.
• One clarification to carry forward: the earlier summary's "Adjusted expiration 2038-11-23" is the nominal statutory figure; the operative fact remains the 2024-03-31 lapse.

I'll research the specific prior-art references cited on the face of US 10,605,665. Let me verify each citation and gather publication details.

Let me verify the remaining citations and the non-patent literature reference.

I've gathered the necessary details on the references cited on the face of US 10,605,665. Here is my prior-art analysis. Note that I hit the tool-call limit on one supplementary query, but I have enough grounded information to complete the assessment from the patent's own citation record plus the retrieved reference content.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 10,605,665 B2

Patent: US 10,605,665 B2, "Method for measuring temperature of process area"
Applicant/Assignees: National Cheng Kung University; National Chung-Shan Institute of Science & Technology
Effective filing / priority date: 2017-10-31 (AIA case — no pre-2013 priority)
Granted: 2020-03-31

Framework applied. Because the effective filing date is 2017-10-31 (post-March 16, 2013), the AIA version of 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs. A reference anticipates under § 102 only if a single reference discloses every element of the claim, arranged as the claim requires. References that disclose only some elements are § 103 (obviousness) material, not § 102 art. All references below were cited by the examiner and the claims nonetheless issued — i.e., the examiner's implicit finding was that none of them anticipated the granted claims.

Citation table

Source for the citation list: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10605665B2](/patent/US10605665B2)/en (Patent Citations section).

Reference-by-reference assessment

R1 — US 2008/0223832 A1 (Song & Mazumder)

Full citation: Song, Lijun; Mazumder, Jyoti, "Real time implementation of generalized predictive control algorithm for the control of direct metal deposition (DMD) process," US 2008/0223832 A1; Appl. No. 11/941,664; filed 2007-11-16; published 2008-09-18. (Family siblings include US 2008/0296270 A1 and granted US 8,044,827 / US 9,044,827.)
Description: Closed-loop stabilization of a DMD (directed-energy, powder-fed) process. Melt-pool temperature is monitored with a two-color pyrometer (spec bands ≈1.3 µm and ≈1.64 µm) and pool shape with a camera/photodetector; a recursive-least-squares model estimator feeds a generalized predictive controller that adjusts laser power or traverse speed.
§ 102 assessment — does NOT anticipate any claim. It discloses a two-color pyrometer for melt-pool temperature, but:

• no "one-color mode" comprising separate first/second wavelength modes;
• no simulation computation / simulation temperature field;
• no first/second algorithm to compute a simulation temperature;
• no iterative fitting of first/second emissivity values to a default percentage, and no emissivity ratio = e₂/e₁ calibration.
  Potentially useful only as background art on two-color pyrometry of a laser melt pool. Relevant to claim 1 only via the single element "ratio-pyrometer … two-color mode."

R2 — US 2016/0339642 A1 (Hewlett-Packard / Donovan)

Full citation: Donovan, David H.; Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P., "Temperature determination based on emissivity," US 2016/0339642 A1; Appl. No. 15/111,752; PCT filed 2014-05-30; published 2016-11-24 (granted as US 10,252,474 B2, 2019-04-09).
Description: An additive-manufacturing controller determines the emissivity of a portion of the build material (from measured optical properties such as absorbance/gloss, or from object-design/solidification data) and then determines temperature from the determined emissivity plus a measured IR radiation distribution. Explicitly notes emissivity depends on material state (coalesced vs. not) and that measured radiant spectrum + emissivity gives temperature even for emissivity < 100%.
§ 102 assessment — does NOT anticipate any claim. It addresses "determine emissivity, then temperature," but it does not disclose: a ratio-pyrometer with two one-color modes and a two-color mode; a simulation temperature field; the first/second algorithms; or the iterative error-matching to derive e₁, e₂ and e₂/e₁. Element overlap is limited to the general concept of emissivity-dependent temperature determination.

R3 — CN 106061714 A (Hewlett-Packard)

Full citation: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P., "Temperature determination based on emissivity" (基于辐射率的温度确定), CN 106061714 A; published 2016-10-26 (granted CN 106061714 B, 2019-07-12); priority PCT/EP2014/050841 (2014-01-16) and PCT/US2014/032341 (2014-03-31).
Description: The Chinese family member of R2 (same specification — controller determines emissivity of a build-material portion, then determines temperature from emissivity and measured radiation distribution).
§ 102 assessment — does NOT anticipate any claim. Same reasoning as R2. R2 and R3 are duplicate disclosures of a single family; they add no independent teaching.

R4 — US 2015/0375456 A1 (General Electric / Cheverton et al.)

Full citation: Cheverton, Mark Allen; Deaton, John Broddus, Jr.; General Electric Company, "Systems and methods for monitoring a melt pool using a dedicated scanning device," US 2015/0375456 A1; Appl. No. 14/319,189; filed 2014-06-30; published 2015-12-31 (granted as US 9,925,715 B2, 2018-03-27; also US 10,464,262 B2).
Description: A DMLM additive-manufacturing system uses a dedicated second scanning device to route melt-pool EM radiation to an optical detector (which "may be a pyrometer," photodiode, IR/CCD camera, etc.) to collect melt-pool size and temperature, eliminating a dichroic beam splitter. Includes a calibration model of desired melt-pool sizes/temperatures vs. laser power.
§ 102 assessment — does NOT anticipate any claim. It is a monitoring/hardware disclosure. No ratio-pyrometer one-color/two-color architecture, no simulation temperature field, no emissivity-value/ratio calibration method.

R5 — US 2016/0184893 A1 (Sigma Labs / Piltch et al.)

Full citation: (Piltch, Martin S.; Madigan, R. Bruce; Dave, Vivek R.; Cola, Mark J.; et al.; Sigma Labs, Inc.), "Method and system for monitoring additive manufacturing processes," US 2016/0184893 A1; Appl. No. 14/832,691; filed 2015-08-20; priority 2014-08-21 (Prov. 62/040,417); published 2016-06-30 (granted as US 9,999,924 B2).
Description: A multi-sensor, real-time quality-assurance system using Lagrangian and Eulerian sensor frameworks; monitors thermal emissions / weld-pool temperature during melting; derives state variables (heating rate, cooling rate, peak temperature, phase change); compares against a nominal baseline dataset to flag defects.
§ 102 assessment — does NOT anticipate any claim. It monitors melt-pool thermal behavior but does not teach a ratio-pyrometer with first/second one-color modes, the simulation temperature field, the first/second algorithms, or the e₂/e₁ emissivity-ratio calibration. It is relevant background for melt-pool thermal monitoring in AM.

R6 — US 2016/0185048 A1 (Sigma Labs / Dave et al.) — closest cited art

Full citation: Dave, Vivek R.; Clark, David D.; Roybal, Matias; Cola, Mark J.; Piltch, Martin S.; Madigan, R. Bruce; Castro, Alberto; Sigma Labs, Inc., "Multi-sensor quality inference and control for additive manufacturing processes," US 2016/0185048 A1; Appl. No. 14/945,247; filed 2015-11-18; priority 2014-11-18 (Prov. 62/081,004); published 2016-06-30 (granted as US 10,786,948 B2).
Description: Multi-sensor quality inference combining Lagrangian (beam-following) and Eulerian (stationary) thermal sensors. Notably, it expressly confronts the same physical problem as the patent at issue — a non-imaging pyrometer whose field of view is larger than the hot region — and teaches (i) an area-fraction correction for "hot" vs. "cold" areas within the FOV (its Eq. 23, a Stefan-Boltzmann weighted sum), and (ii) an emissivity correction using λ_EFF and the second Planck constant (its Eq. 25). It lists single-color, two-color/ratio pyrometers among usable sensors and describes calibrating a sensor by correlating detected phase changes with a known melting temperature and scaling the recorded temperature. It also discusses heat-source power/travel-speed adjustment in real time.
§ 102 assessment — does NOT anticipate any claim. It does not disclose the full claim-1 combination: it lacks the ratio-pyrometer architecture with a first one-color mode and second one-color mode whose trial emissivities are iteratively fit to a simulation-derived first simulation temperature within a default percentage, and it lacks the step of setting the emissivity ratio = second emissivity value ÷ first emissivity value for two-color measurement. Nor does it disclose the claim-9 simulation pipeline (powder-bed packing simulation → ray tracing/absorptivity profile → heat-transfer simulation).
Why it still matters: R6 is the most substantive reference because it overlaps the motivating problem (background/cold-region contribution when FOV > process area; emissivity-dependent temperature error) and even uses "ratio pyrometer" and "calibrate the sensor" language. It would be the natural primary reference for an obviousness challenge, but its disclosure of the specific simulation-and-error-matching calibration of claim 1 is absent.

R7 — Tapetado et al. (Non-Patent Literature)

Full citation: Tapetado, Alberto; Díaz-Álvarez, José; Miguélez, María Henar; Vázquez, Carmen, "Two-color pyrometer for process temperature measurement during machining," Journal of Lightwave Technology, vol. 34, no. 4, pp. 1380–1386 (2016).
Description: A fiber-optic two-color (ratio) pyrometer applied to temperature measurement during a machining operation, using the ratio of two spectral bands to reduce sensitivity to unknown/varying emissivity.
§ 102 assessment — does NOT anticipate any claim. It confirms the general principle of two-color/ratio pyrometry for emissivity-independent temperature, but the application is machining (not powder-bed fusion / SLM melt pool), and it discloses none of the claim 1 calibration steps (two one-color modes, simulation temperature field, first/second algorithms, e₂/e₁ setting) or the claim 9 simulation pipeline.

Overall § 102 conclusion

No single cited reference anticipates any claim of US 10,605,665 — including independent claims 1 and 9.

• Every cited reference predates the 2017-10-31 effective filing date and therefore is available as prior art, but each is missing at least the core claim-1 combination: a ratio-pyrometer having a first one-color mode and a second one-color mode plus a two-color mode; a simulation temperature field; a first algorithm producing a first simulation temperature (the one expected from the one-color mode, including the background/setting-temperature treatment); iterative error-matching of trial emissivities to a first default percentage to obtain e₁ and e₂; and finally setting emissivity ratio = e₂/e₁ for two-color measurement.
• Claim 9 (and its dependent claim 10) requires the specific powder-bed-fusion simulation pipeline (packing-density/coordinate simulation → ray tracing → absorptivity profile → finite-element heat-transfer simulation → melt pool defined by melting point). None of R1–R7 discloses this pipeline.
• The closest cited reference on the problem and the general pyrometry concepts is R6 (US 2016/0185048 A1, Sigma Labs); the closest on two-color pyrometry of a melt pool is R1 (US 2008/0223832 A1, Song & Mazumder); the closest on emissivity-based temperature determination in AM is R2/R3 (Hewlett-Packard).

Practical implication for invalidity work: Because no reference anticipates, any challenge would have to be a § 103 combination (e.g., R6 or R1 as primary, combined with an emissivity-determination reference such as R2/R3 and a simulation reference). The novelty/allowance position of the '665 patent rests on the calibration methodology — using simulation-derived one-color temperatures to fit two one-color emissivities and then reusing their ratio for the two-color mode — which none of the cited art appears to render anticipatory on its own.

Caveats. (1) This is an analysis of "potential anticipation," not a legal conclusion; anticipation requires a single reference to disclose all claimed elements as arranged. (2) I have not re-verified the full text of every reference's claim set beyond what was retrieved; R2/R3 are a single family and should not be double-counted. (3) The reference dates shown are those of record on the patent/Google Patents face; where a family includes both an application publication and a granted patent (e.g., R1→US 8,044,827/9,044,827; R4→US 9,925,715; R5→US 9,999,924; R6→US 10,786,948), the earliest effective date governs for prior-art purposes.

I'll ground the §103 analysis in the actual prior-art references on this patent's record. Let me pull details on the most relevant ones.

Now let me ground the remaining cited references, including the two 102(a)(2)-eligible family filings with earlier priority dates.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,605,665 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst's note on scope. Per the task instruction, this analysis uses the references in the Prior Art section of the patent's own record page (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10605665B2](/patent/US10605665B2)/en): the six "Patent Citations," the single "Non-Patent Citation" (Tapetado 2016), plus the record-listed "Similar Documents" and the "Families Citing this family" list, which I treat separately because their dates and §102 eligibility differ. I hit the tool-call limit before retrieving full text for US 2016/0185048 A1 and US 11,173,664 B2; where I rely on those, I say so and mark confidence Low. This builds on the earlier sections (bibliography, no PTAB activity, no litigation, fee lapse effective 2024‑03‑31) and does not repeat them.

1. Legal framework and temporal posture

• Effective filing/priority date: 2017‑10‑31 (no earlier priority claimed). AIA §102/§103 apply (post‑2013‑03‑16).
• Claim construction posture: No PTAB proceeding, no FWD, and no district court Markman has ever construed these terms. All ten claims are unadjudicated. The obviousness case must be argued on the intrinsic record (spec. formulas (1)–(5) supply the only structure for "first algorithm" and "second algorithm").
• Since the patent lapsed effective 2024‑03‑31, an invalidity holding matters only for the §286 six‑year lookback window (i.e., past damages), not for injunctive exposure. Practically, §103 here is a defensive/leverage tool, not a clearing tool.

2. The prior-art set, characterized and dated

2(a) Examiner-cited references (the "Prior Art" section)

2(b) Record‑listed "Similar Documents" (corroborating the state of the art, not examiner citations)

These appear on the same record page. I verified titles only (my fourth search was cut off), so I cite them for what their titles evidence, not for content:

• Mohanty et al. 2014, "Numerical model based reliability estimation of selective laser melting process" — SLM thermal/numerical modeling.
• Moser et al. 2014, "Multi‑layer computational modeling of selective laser sintering processes"; Diller et al. 2015, "Thermal model and measurements of polymer laser sintering" — powder‑bed thermal simulation.
• Prokhorov 1998, "Monte Carlo method in optical radiometry" — Monte Carlo ray‑tracing/radiometry, the exact technique claim 9 recites.
• Spears et al. 2016, "In‑process sensing in selective laser melting (SLM) additive manufacturing."

2(c) Items on the page that are NOT prior art — flag explicitly

• "Cited by" entries with later dates: CN 111199098 B (priority 2019‑12‑25), CN 112254819 B (2020), DE 10 2021 133930 B3 (2021, Stuttgart "melt pool temperature distribution"), TWI 747053 B / US 11,383,450 B2 (2018‑10‑03). All post‑date the '665 priority date. They are evidence of what later workers found obvious, but cannot be §102/§103 art.
• Ren et al. 2019, "Emissivity calibration method for pyrometer measurement of melting pool temperature in selective laser melting of stainless steel 316L" (listed under Similar Documents) — this is the inventors' own later publication and post‑dates the filing. Not art. (It is, however, useful evidence of the inventors' own characterization of the "E‑slope" problem.)
• EP 3548218 A4 (Sigma Labs, priority 2017‑08‑01) — the EP publication itself published 2019‑12‑04, after the '665 filing; an EP publication is not a §102(a)(2) reference. Not art on this record.
• US 11,173,664 B2 (The Boeing Company, "Nanostructures for process monitoring and feedback control," priority 2017‑04‑24) — this does pre‑date the '665 filing and, as a U.S. patent, is a candidate §102(a)(2) reference (assuming it was published or has an earlier‑published §122(b) counterpart). I could not verify its disclosure (tool limit). Flag as an unexplored 102(a)(2) avenue, not as an established ground.

3. Person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

A POSITA here has a B.S. (or M.S.) in mechanical, materials, optical, or manufacturing engineering plus ~2–3 years' experience in laser‑based additive manufacturing process sensing, or in radiation pyrometry/metrology. That person knows: (i) one‑color pyrometry requires emissivity; (ii) two‑color pyrometry exploits the emissivity ratio and cancels background; (iii) finite‑element heat transfer and Monte Carlo ray tracing are standard tools (MATLAB/Zemax/COMSOL are off‑the‑shelf, as the '665 spec itself concedes); and (iv) calibration is done by comparing a reading to a known/expected value and adjusting the calibration constant until agreement.

4. Claim 1 — element-by-element mapping

No single reference anticipates claim 1. Tapetado lacks the simulation‑based calibration loop and the AM melt pool; Song lacks the two independently fitted one‑color emissivities and their ratio; HP lacks the two‑color architecture; GE/Sigma Labs lack the pyrometer calibration. This is a classic combination case, and it must be won on motivation.

5. Motivation to combine — the §103 rationales

1. Same field, same problem, same instrument (KSR "familiar elements"). Song already puts a two‑color pyrometer on a laser melt pool; Tapetado supplies the two‑channel fiber‑optic design and the ε_r math. Combining a known pyrometer architecture into the known application is the paradigm of predictable combination.
2. The problem the '665 admits was known and unsolved by the prior technique. The '665 specification itself states the conventional approach — "resolve an emissivity slope (E‑slope) by experiment, and then use it to do adjustment" — "is inefficient and inaccurate, so that the ratio‑pyrometer cannot measure the temperature accurately." An applicant's own admission of a known, long‑felt need in the field is powerful §103 motivation (and the Ren 2019 paper corroborates that the inventors spent years on this exact calibration problem).
3. Replacing a blackbody calibration with a computed reference is an obvious substitution where no blackbody is available. Tapetado calibrates against a dry‑block/blackbody kit. A melt pool that is smaller than the measuring spot cannot be blackbody‑calibrated in situ. Substituting a physics‑based simulated temperature field as the reference is a predictable substitution of one known calibration reference (a "known truth") for another, with a reasonable expectation of success — and the off‑the‑shelf tools (MATLAB, Zemax, COMSOL) recited in the '665 spec confirm the simulation was within routine skill.
4. HP supplies the missing "emissivity as a settable calibration parameter" step in exactly this AM context, including pre‑measuring or looking up emissivity values — i.e., it teaches that the emissivity input is a value you determine and set, and that getting it right is what makes the temperature accurate.
5. GE and Sigma Labs supply the compare‑to‑expected‑and‑correct loop and the "nominal baseline" concept, supplying the claimed pass/fail test against a reference temperature. Using an error threshold (0–5%, 0–15%) is routine optimization of a result‑effective variable (In re Woodruff; In re Peterson), and the spec's own values (3%, 8%) sit inside the claimed ranges.
6. Claim 9's pipeline is textbook multiphysics, and the record itself lists the building blocks: Monte Carlo ray tracing/radiometry (Prokhorov 1998), SLM/SLS numerical thermal models (Mohanty 2014, Moser 2014, Diller 2015), and in‑process SLM sensing (Spears 2016). Packing‑density/contact models for powder beds and finite‑element heat conduction (the '665's own formula (VI) is the standard transient conduction equation) were routine.

Rebuttal to the strongest teaching‑away argument. Song says numerical models are "not practical for in‑process control" because of "limitations, complexities and extensive numerical operations." That is a criticism of using simulation inside the real‑time control loop — not of using it offline to pre‑calibrate the pyrometer, which is what the '665 claims. Under KSR, a reference's skepticism about one use does not teach away from a different, non‑competing use, especially not when the reference on its own face compares simulated model output to measured data for validation.

Rebuttal to the "specific simulation temperature" argument. If the patent owner asserts the inventive concept is "use a simulated temperature field as the calibration target for the one‑color emissivities and take their ratio for two‑color mode," the answer is that each step (simulate → compare to measured → fit a constant → iterate to a tolerance → reuse the fitted constants in a ratio mode) is a known step performing its established function with a predictable result. KSR requires more than a novel arrangement of known steps; it requires an unexpected result, and the record shows none: the patent reports 1.14% and 4.27% average errors, i.e., results inside the claimed bands, not outside them.

6. Dependent claims 2–8

7. Claims 9 and 10

Claim 9 is the strongest invalidity target on the entire patent. It recites a four‑stage numerical pipeline: (i) powder‑bed parameters in; (ii) powder‑bed simulation → packing density, powder coordinates, effective conductivity; (iii) laser parameters and refractive indices; (iv) Monte Carlo ray tracing → depth‑dependent absorptivity profile; (v) finite‑element heat transfer → temperature field including substrate, powder layer, and melt pool defined by exceeding melting points. Every stage is a named, published, off‑the‑shelf technique, and the record's own "Similar Documents" list (Prokhorov 1998 for Monte Carlo optical radiometry; Mohanty 2014, Moser 2014, Diller 2015 for powder‑bed/SLM thermal modeling; Spears 2016 for SLM in‑process sensing) evidences the state of the art. Song's background section independently confirms that "several theoretical and numerical models have been studied" for melt‑pool processes. Combining a standard powder‑packing model with standard Monte Carlo ray tracing and standard FE conduction to get a temperature field is an unremarkable engineering pipeline with a predictable output, and the '665 spec concedes it was run in MATLAB, Zemax, and COMSOL.

Claim 10 (process area = melting pool) adds nothing: Song, GE, and Sigma Labs all monitor the melt pool itself.

8. Where the patent owner will push back, and how strong that is

9. Bottom line

• Claim 1: Obvious under §103 as a combination of US 2008/0223832 A1 (Song) + Tapetado 2016, further in view of US 2016/0339642 A1 / CN 106061714 A (HP) and US 2015/0375456 A1 (GE), and optionally US 2016/0184893 A1 (Sigma Labs). The single point of vulnerability for a challenger is the "simulation temperature as calibration reference" link; the single point of strength is the applicant's own admission that the prior E‑slope calibration was "inefficient and inaccurate."
• Claims 2–8: Obvious for the reasons tabulated above; the two percentage ranges are routine-optimization territory under In re Woodruff/In re Peterson.
• Claims 9–10: Clearly obvious; the pipeline is assembled from named published techniques that the record itself lists, run on off‑the‑shelf software.
• Confidence: Medium‑High for claims 1–8 (Medium for claim 1's simulation‑link element), High for claims 9–10.

10. Caveats and next steps to harden this

1. Unverified references. I could not retrieve full text for US 2016/0185048 A1 or US 11,173,664 B2 before hitting the tool limit; treat the former as corroborating only, and the latter as an open §102(a)(2) lead (Boeing, priority 2017‑04‑24 — earlier than the '665 filing). If US 11,173,664 B2 discloses pyrometric melt‑pool monitoring with a model‑based expected temperature, it could become a primary reference.
2. Unverified "Similar Documents." I relied on titles for Prokhorov 1998, Mohanty 2014, Moser 2014, Diller 2015, and Spears 2016 because my fourth search was cut off. Pulling the actual texts of Mohanty/Moser (SLM/SLS temperature‑field simulation) is the fastest way to convert claim 9 from "obvious combination" to "expressly disclosed."
3. Non‑patent literature is the strongest well in this field. The '665 record cites only one NPL item (Tapetado). A full §103 challenge to claims 1–8 would benefit from the broader 2014–2017 SLM‑pyrometry literature (e.g., emissivity‑calibration and two‑wavelength melt‑pool pyrometry papers), which is likely to disclose the simulation‑as‑reference idea more directly than any cited patent.
4. Do not double‑count US 2016/0339642 A1 and CN 106061714 A — the record lists both, but they are one HP disclosure.
5. This is a paper analysis only. No claim of this patent has ever been construed or adjudicated (0 PTAB proceedings, no litigation found, expiration 2024‑03‑31). Any obviousness position should be validated against the intrinsic record and, if it matters commercially, through an invalidity search before being asserted.

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10605665B2/en (full text, claims, citation lists); https://patents.google.com/patent/US20080223832A1/en ; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2008/0296270.html ; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/10252474.html (HP US 10,252,474 B2, pub. US 2016/0339642 A1) ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/20150375456 ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160184893A1/en ; Tapetado et al., J. Lightwave Tech. 34(4):1380–1386 (2016), doi:10.1109/JLT.2015.2513158.