US 10641696

I'll search for this specific patent number and check for any 2026 CAFC litigation.

Let me run additional targeted searches for any litigation or 2026 CAFC activity involving this patent.

Let me do a final check for any PTAB or district court activity specific to this patent.

US Patent 10,641,696 B2 — Analyst Summary

Source note: All bibliographic data below is drawn from the Google Patents record and the patent PDF (US010641696B2). I found no litigation, PTAB, or Federal Circuit activity involving this specific patent number, so the litigation search result is reported honestly as "none found" rather than omitted.

Bibliographic Data

Abstract (verbatim): "Impurities within a sample are detected by use of holographic video microscopy. The sample flows through the microscope and holographic images are generated. The holographic image is analyzed to identify regions associated with large impurities in the sample. The contribution of the particles of the sample to the holographic images is determined and the impurities are characterized."

Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

Claim 1 — Method of characterizing impurities in a slurry (the "diffuse-wave normalization" claim)

A method with these steps:

1. Flow the slurry (particles in a fluid) through the observation volume of a holographic microscope.
2. Capture a holographic image with a laser-based holographic video microscopy system at a given time.
3. Find regions of interest in that image that correspond to a particle of interest (i.e., an oversized impurity).
4. Normalize that region for the contribution of a diffuse wave — the random, multiply-scattered light produced when the laser interacts with the many slurry nanoparticles.
5. Fit the normalized region to a light-scattering theory (in practice, Lorenz–Mie theory).
6. Characterize one or more properties of the target particle from that fit.

Key limitation: the depth of the observation volume must be less than the attenuation depth of the laser in the slurry (i.e., the sample channel must be thin enough that the target particle's coherent hologram is not swamped by diffuse speckle). This is the core inventive constraint that makes holographic characterization work in an optically turbid CMP slurry.

Claim 7 — Method of characterizing particles of interest in a slurry (the "Lorenz–Mie + diffuse quantification" claim)

A related but separately-worded method:

1. Flow the slurry (slurry particles in a fluid, plus particles of interest) through a holographic microscope's observation volume.
2. Interact a laser beam with the sample and generate a holographic image that records both (a) a scattered wave from a particle of interest and (b) a diffuse wave generated when the laser and the scattered wave interact with the slurry particles.
3. Quantify the contribution of the diffuse wave to the holographic image.
4. Apply Lorenz–Mie analysis to the image.
5. Characterize the particle of interest based on that analysis.

Notably, claim 7 does not recite the "observation-volume depth < attenuation depth" limitation of claim 1; instead its distinguishing feature is the explicit recording and quantification of the diffuse wave component.

Representative Dependent Claims

• 2 & 8: slurry particles are 200 nm or smaller.
• 3 & 9: particle of interest is about 200 nm to about 20 µm.
• 4 & 10: peak flow is about 100 µm/s.
• 5 & 11: further comprising selecting a sample cell of depth D.
• 6 & 12: characterizing comprises determining radius and refractive index.
• 13: after quantifying, normalizing the region of interest for the diffuse-wave contribution (bridging claims 1 and 7).

Technical Substance (for context)

The specification's worked example uses a commercial CMP slurry (Dow Ultrasol 2EX: 70 nm silica nanoparticles in water at 30.9% volume fraction) seeded with 1.5 µm colloidal silica spheres. Key disclosed features:

• Light-transport model: the incident field is attenuated through the slurry with an effective penetration depth κ⁻¹ (Eq. 1); the diffuse field E_d(r,t) is treated as Gaussian-statistics speckle (Eq. 2b), and the measured hologram is modeled as attenuated illumination + Lorenz–Mie scattered field + additive diffuse intensity (Eq. 4b). Interference terms with the coherent field are assumed to time-average away.
• Why it works in turbid media: the slurry only reduces hologram contrast and adds Gaussian noise; it does not destroy the hologram's symmetries, so Lorenz–Mie fitting still recovers accurate particle properties.
• Feature detection: uses an image-analysis filter emphasizing rotational symmetry (the orientation-alignment transform, per PCT/US2015/015666, incorporated by reference).
• Results reported: fitted radius a_p = 0.749 ± 0.006 µm and refractive index n_p = 1.439 ± 0.002 in slurry, consistent with independent measurements; 875 single-particle measurements in 10 min; no detectable contaminants in the neat slurry (implying sub-ppb cleanliness), while freeze/thaw-destabilized slurry showed many µm-scale aggregates, a portion surviving 30 min sonication.
• Porosity/gas-bubble discrimination: measured refractive index (relative to bulk) lets one distinguish porous or gas-bubble inclusions from deleterious solid contaminants.

Litigation / CAFC Check (as requested)

• Search for "10641696" in CAFC 2026 dockets: No results found. I could not identify any Federal Circuit appeal, district court case, or PTAB proceeding in which US 10,641,696 is the patent at issue. Treat this as "nothing located," not as affirmative proof of no litigation.
• Caution against a common false positive: Searching NYU + Federal Circuit surfaces substantial 2024–2026 activity, but it concerns different patents entirely — the NYU v. ResMed dispute over sleep-apnea/CPAP patents (US 6,988,994; 9,108,009; 9,168,344; 9,427,539; 9,533,115; 9,867,955; 10,384,024), which went through IPR2022-00988 through -00994 and a Federal Circuit affirmance of invalidity (Case No. 24-1440). None of those patents is US 10,641,696, and none relates to holographic particle characterization. Do not conflate them.
• Search for "10641696" also returned one unrelated hit — an EPA CompTox assay dataset using "10641696" as an internal M4ID, not a patent. Flagging per the literal-interpretation rule.
• Blue/Google Patents records list maintenance-fee payment and assignment/reel events (e.g., Reel 065053/0951) but show no recorded litigation or post-grant challenge for this patent in the sources retrieved.

Uncertainty statement: I do not have authoritative, up-to-the-minute access to PACER, USPTO PatentCenter, or the Federal Circuit docket database, and my searches were web-based. If a 2026 case exists that has not been indexed, I would not have found it. To verify conclusively, confirm directly against PACER (Federal Circuit and district courts) and the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board docket using application number 15/759,502 as the cross-reference.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10641696 across patent litigation databases.

The first result appears to reference a different "'416 Patent" (a connector patent, unrelated). Let me search more specifically.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases and CourtListener for the specific patent.

Summary: Litigation involving US Patent No. 10,641,696

I found no litigation — no district court cases, ITC actions, PTAB proceedings, or Federal Circuit appeals — specifically asserting or challenging US Patent No. 10,641,696.

What I searched

I searched patent-litigation-oriented sources (Unified Patents litigation portal, CourtListener/PACER-style dockets, general litigation news) using the exact number 10,641,696 / US10641696B2 and the patent's subject matter (NYU, holographic video microscopy, CMP slurry particles).

Results and a critical caveat

• The only hit that literally contains "10641696" is a non-litigation page: a PatentLeaderboard profile listing the patent as one of David G. Grier's patents assigned to New York University (grant date 2020-05-05). No case information.
• Important warning about a false positive: My first search returned a PTAB petition (PTAB petitions download, Unified Patents) repeatedly referring to "the '416 Patent." That petition is about a connector patent and a "Confidential Settlement Agreement" / "Connector Version #1" — it is NOT US 10,641,696 (an NYU holographic-microscopy patent). The '416 shorthand there denotes a different patent number ending in 416. I flag this because the instruction was explicit not to conflate similar numbers; this is a different patent.
• All other returned cases (Pantech v. OnePlus, Harbour Antibodies v. Teneobio/Amgen, Dolby v. Unified Patents, GSK v. Pfizer/BioNTech UPC, etc.) involve unrelated patents and are not relevant.

Conclusion

As of the search results available (dated for the current period), there is no known litigation involving US Patent No. 10,641,696. The patent appears to be held by New York University (NYU), inventors David B. Ruffner, David G. Grier, and Laura Philips, granted May 5, 2020, with an anticipated expiration of September 15, 2036.

Confidence and limitations

• Does not constitute legal advice / not exhaustive. Absence of evidence in these searches is not proof that no suit exists. Docket databases (PACER, Docket Navigator, Lex Machina, Westlaw/Lexis) and the USPTO PTAB portal should be queried directly by exact patent number for a definitive answer, and this analysis relied on general web search rather than those primary litigation databases.
• If you want, I can focus a follow-up on (a) NYU's litigation history as plaintiff (NYU has historically asserted its holographic-microscopy portfolio, e.g., against companies in the particle-analysis space), or (b) PTAB petitions naming this patent — but based on what is currently retrievable, I have no case to report.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 10,641,696: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings, and independent web searches for the patent number across PTAB dockets, Google Patents' litigation/proceeding tabs, RPX Insight, and CourtListener surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal. Breakdown by status is therefore 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied. Defensive posture: there is no IPR-based invalidation of this patent to lean on — all 13 issued claims (independent claims 1 and 7, with dependents 2–6 and 8–13) remain live and completely untested at the PTAB. A defendant today has no administrative-road shortcut and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel already burned by a predecessor.

Note on the "canonical list" instruction: the structured block supplied in the prompt states the ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings as of the most recent ingest, and directed web search to surface anything the ODP hasn't indexed. I searched and found nothing to flag. No proceeding numbers are reported here because none exist — I will not fabricate one. (Do not confuse this patent with the unrelated US 8,696,096, which did attract an IPR2016-00839 by HP Inc./Memjet; that is a different patent entirely and irrelevant here.)

No proceedings to enumerate

There is no IPR/PGR/CBM to list, so the per-proceeding template is empty. For completeness, the factual record on the patent itself:

• Patent: US 10,641,696 B2 — "Holographic detection and characterization of large impurity particles in precision slurries"
• Inventors: David B. Ruffner, David G. Grier, Laura Philips
• Assignee: New York University (original and current)
• Priority: 2015-09-18 (US provisional 62/220,786) | PCT filed: 2016-09-15 (PCT/US2016/051946) | § 371 date: 2018-03-12 | Granted: 2020-05-05 | Anticipated expiration: 2036-09-15
• Status: Active; maintenance fees paid (confirming no adverse IPR outcome has disturbed the estate)
• Family (parallel national-phase members): JP6929560B2, KR102579248B1, CN108351288B (all active), TWI700481B (active), WO2017048960A1 (ceased/non-active). None of these has spawned a US AIA trial.
• Litigation: no assertion campaign by NYU against this patent surfaced in search. Co-assignee-adjacent activity (e.g., a related line of NYU holographic-characterization patents) did not reveal a party with both motive and privity to petition.

Strategic summary

Claim status. Every claim is UNTESTED and SUSTAINED by default. No claim of US 10,641,696 has been CANCELED, and none has been favorably construed by the Board. Independent claim 1 recites a method requiring (a) flowing slurry through a holographic microscope observation volume, (b) generating a hologram via a holographic video microscopy system having a laser, (c) analyzing for regions of interest, (d) normalizing the ROI for a diffuse-wave contribution created by laser–slurry interaction, (e) fitting the normalized ROI to a light scattering theory, and (f) characterizing a property of the particle of interest — "wherein a depth of the observation volume is less than the attenuation depth of the laser in the slurry." Independent claim 7 is the Lorenz-Mie counterpart: it requires recording the light field from a scattered wave and a diffuse wave generated by interaction of the laser beam and the scattered wave with the slurry particles, quantifying a contribution of the diffuse wave, then applying Lorenz-Mie analysis and characterizing. Dependents 2–6 and 8–13 add size/flow/channel-depth and radius-and-refractive-index limitations. Those "diffuse wave" normalization/quantification limitations (claim 1 step d; claim 7's quantifying step) are the likely invalidity battleground — they are the point of novelty over the applicant's own earlier holographic-characterization work, and the claim-1 "wherein" clause (observation depth < attenuation depth) is an unusual, possibly vulnerable, functional limitation worth a written-description/intrinsic-evidence attack.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR/PGR has been instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is empty — there are no prior petitioners or privies to inherit estoppel from, and no printed-grounds that are off-limits to you. A first-filer defendant retains the full universe of prior-art grounds: all § 102/§ 103 art (including the inventor's own NYU publications on holographic video microscopy, e.g., Cheong & Grier, Optics Express 2010; Lee et al., Optics Express 2007; and the NYU family patents US 8,791,985 / US 2012/0135535 on holographic video microscopy, all cited on the face of this patent), plus § 112 written-description/enablement grounds. Note that if you file and the Board institutes, you then carry § 315(e)(2) estoppel into the district court case — a strong reason to put your best art in the petition, since you get one shot.

Pattern signals. No repeated petitioner; no NYU aggressive PTAB-appeal history tied to this patent (nothing to appeal); no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, etc.) in the chain — RPX Insight lists the patent but shows no challenge activity. The absence of IPRs is itself informative: this appears to be a research-organization portfolio asset that has not been asserted, so no defendant has yet had a reason to spend ~$400k on a petition. That changes the moment NYU licenses it to or asserts it through an operating-company or NPE vehicle.

Recommended next steps

1. No PTAB escape hatch exists today. If you have received a demand letter or been sued on US 10,641,696, do not bank on an existing adverse FWD — there is none. You must decide whether to file your own IPR (statutory 12-month filing bar under § 315(b) runs from service of a district-court complaint) or litigate validity in the forum you're already in.
2. For an invalidity-first defense, target the diffuse-wave limitations. The most promising § 103 combination pits NYU's own prior holographic-video-microscopy work (US 8,791,985; Lee 2007; Cheong & Grier 2010) plus a diffuse-light/turbid-media reference (e.g., Pine, Phys. Rev. Lett. 1988 on diffusing-wave spectroscopy; Ishimaru, Applied Optics 1989 on diffusion of light in turbid media — both cited in the patent's own IDS) against claim 1's "normalizing … for a contribution of a diffuse wave" and claim 7's "quantifying a contribution of the diffuse wave." The patent's specification essentially concedes these are known physics tools; the novelty question is the claimed combination with holographic fitting.
3. If you do file, calendar the statutory clock. PTAB trial milestones from institution: Patent Owner Preliminary Response at +3 months, institution decision by +6 months, and Final Written Decision within 12 months of institution (§ 316(a)(11; extendable to 15 months for good cause). No such clock is running now.
4. Verify before relying on this. I found no proceeding, but PTAB indexing can lag. Independently confirm via USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board E2E and CourtListener search on "10,641,696" — I'll flag explicitly that my conclusion rests on the structured ODP block plus search results that returned nothing, and I could not complete an exhaustive CourtListener docket pull within the search budget.

Bottom line for a defendant: no claims have been canceled, no FWD exists to cite, and no estoppel or hardened-validity narrative applies yet — the patent faces you with a clean slate of 13 live claims, and the burden and cost of the first validity challenge will be yours.

I'll reconstruct the assignment record for US 10,641,696, starting with the USPTO Assignment Center and cross-referencing sources.

Let me dig for the specific reel/frame and correspondent data.

Let me try to pin down the specific reel/frame and correspondent of record.

Assignment Record Reconstruction — US 10,641,696 B2

Methodological note / limitation up front: I could not retrieve the USPTO Assignment Center record page for this patent directly through web search, and the searches did not surface the reel/frame numbers, execution dates, or the recording correspondent for this specific patent. What follows is built from (a) the Google Patents Legal Events timeline for US 10,641,696 (which is populated from USPTO assignment data), and (b) the issued patent front page. Where I cannot cite a reel/frame, I say so rather than invent one. The one reel/frame figure carried over from the earlier section ("065053/0951") is flagged as unverified below, because it does not fit the chronology of USPTO reel numbering.

Inventors

Three named inventors, all tied to the Grier Lab, Department of Physics, New York University (NYU):

Unusual-pattern check:

• No inventor-departure anomaly detected. All three inventors remained affiliated with NYU through the 2015–2016 filing window and the 2018 assignment recording. There is no evidence of all inventors exiting the assignee within 12 months of filing.
• One relevant post-filing development (not an assignment): Philips and Ruffner are publicly associated with Spheryx, Inc., a holographic-particle-characterization company that commercializes the Grier Lab technology (Philips as co-founder/executive; Ruffner on the technical side). No assignment to Spheryx appears in the record for this patent, which means any Spheryx relationship would be a license — and non-exclusive/exclusive licenses, unlike assignments, are generally not recorded in the USPTO Assignment Center. Do not construe this as an assignment finding.
• Ruffner's PhD was awarded in 2015, the same year as the provisional filing, so his "employer" status at filing is best described as NYU graduate researcher/inventor under a university IP policy, not an arms-length employee.

Original assignee

New York University (NYU), New York, NY — the entity named on the issued patent (front page: "NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, New York, NY (US)"). NYU is the original assignee and, per every source I retrieved, the current assignee.

• Primary line of business: private research university (higher education and research). NYU operates a technology-transfer function that patents and licenses faculty inventions; it does not manufacture or sell particle-characterization instruments.
• Product embodying the claims: No. NYU ships no commercial product. The technology in this patent is embodied in the Spheryx product line (holographic particle characterization / "Total Holographic Characterization"), which is a separate, unaffiliated-in-title company — again, no assignment linking Spheryx to this patent was found.
• Current status: Operating (active university; no bankruptcy, no acquisition, no dissolution). The patent itself is Active, with a 4th-year maintenance fee paid (large entity) and anticipated expiration 2036-09-15.

Cross-reference — SEC filings: NYU is a nonprofit university, not an SEC registrant, so there are no 10-K/8-K ownership disclosures to check. No public-company assignor or assignee appears anywhere in this chain.

Assignment timeline

The Google Patents legal-events feed for US 10,641,696 shows exactly one recorded assignment and no security agreements, mergers, name changes, licenses, or releases.

• 2018-06-14 (recorded) — Reel/Frame not verifiable from the sources retrieved (see caveat below)
  • Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS) — i.e., an inventor-to-assignee assignment, not a corporate transfer
  • Assignor: GRIER, David G.; PHILIPS, Laura; RUFFNER, David B. (three named inventors)
  • Assignee: NEW YORK UNIVERSITY, New York, NY
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved. The front-page attorney/agent of record for the patent is Foley & Lardner LLP, which is a strong candidate for the recording correspondent, but I could not confirm it from an assignment record and therefore do not assert it as the recorded correspondent.
  • Context: Internal assignment — the inventors perfected NYU's title to the invention upon/around U.S. national-phase entry (the §371 filing was 2016-09-15; publication was 2018-09-06). This is the routine university "inventor assigns to university" step, not an acquisition, fire-sale, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

There are no post-issuance assignments. No transfer to any LLC, trust, or third-party acquirer appears in the record.

⚠️ Contradiction flag (carried over from the earlier section): The earlier summary referenced a possible assignment/reel event "Reel 065053/0951." I could not corroborate that figure, and it is chronologically suspect: USPTO assignment reels in this period run in the ~045xxx–046xxx range for 2018 recordings (for comparison, unrelated reels 051238 and 051192 were recorded in Dec 2019, and 053654/055100–055101 in 2020–2021). A reel number of 065053 would be far later than 2018 and is unlikely to be the inventor→NYU assignment for this patent. Treat 065053/0951 as unverified and probably misattributed until confirmed at the Assignment Center.

Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 10641696 or application 15/759,502).

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10641696
    2015 : Provisional application filed by three inventors
    2016 : PCT application filed
    2018 : Inventors assign rights to New York University
    2020 : Patent issued to New York University

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Cross-reference note (avoid conflation): NYU has been an active patent litigant in other matters (the NYU v. ResMed sleep-apnea/CPAP cases and the IPR2022-00988–00994 series). None of that activity involves US 10,641,696, and it should not be read onto this patent's assignment history.

Verdict

Insufficient data — the chain contains only the original assignment.

Justification: The entire recorded chain consists of a single inventor→New York University assignment recorded 2018-06-14 (per Google Patents legal events; no post-issuance transfer, no security interest, no license, no release is recorded). That is precisely the "only the original assignment" case the rubric assigns to Insufficient data, and none of the eight NPE signals is present on the evidence. Substantively, NYU is a non-practicing university owner that licenses rather than manufactures, so the patent is held by a non-manufacturing entity by construction — but there is zero evidence of shell-LLC transfers, known asserters, cascading assignments, or pre-suit transfers that would support an "NPE/troll" verdict. To move off "insufficient data," the missing datum is the recording correspondent and reel/frame for the 2018-06-14 entry, which should be pulled directly from the USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/, search app. 15/759,502) using access I was unable to reach here.

I'll search for the specific patent number and its prior-art citations.

Let me verify the key patent citations with targeted searches.

Prior-Art Analysis — US Patent No. 10,641,696 B2

Method note / source. I queried for the exact number 10,641,696 and retrieved the USPTO grant document (US010641696B2 PDF, which reproduces the front-page "References Cited" under 37 CFR 1.97 / PTO-892/1449) plus the Google Patents record that mirrors and expands that citation set. I did not run a live PatFT/PatentCenter or Docket Navigator query, so the list below tracks the citation set as it appears on the front page and in the Google Patents "Citations" tables. Two housekeeping flags before the substance:

• ⚠️ Date contradiction (flagged, per instructions): the task header states the current date is April 26, 2026, while the working environment date is 2026‑09‑29. I proceed on the citation record itself, which is date-independent; nothing in the analysis turns on this discrepancy.
• ⚠️ Citation-list contamination (important): the Google Patents citation set for this patent contains a large block of MRI / magnetic-resonance-fingerprinting, NMR, Siemens/General-Hospital/Case-Western, PET‑MR, Theranos-type and even "mercuric iodide film" and "lipoic acid ligase" references. These have no plausible relationship to holographic video microscopy of slurries; they appear to be artifacts of Google aggregating citations across the Grier/NYU family (the same assignee also owns MRF patents, e.g. US 10,670,677, which appears elsewhere in the family record). They are not citable §102 art against claims 1–13 and I identify them rather than presenting them as prior art. The examiner-cited U.S. references that matter are the holography/particle-sizing ones.

Note also that the record lists "Citations (82)" and "Patent Citations (101)" — the two tables are inconsistent/overlapping; I reconcile by substance rather than by count.

1. Legal frame

• Effective filing date: 2015‑09‑18 (provisional 62/220,786). This application is post‑AIA, so §102(a)(1) (publicly available before filing) and §102(a)(2) (U.S. patents/applications effectively filed before) govern. Pre‑2013 references are §102(a)(1) art.
• Anticipation standard: a single reference must disclose every element of a claim as arranged. Independent claim 1 requires (i) flow-through holographic microscope, (ii) laser-based holographic video image, (iii) region-of-interest analysis, (iv) normalizing for a diffuse wave created by interaction of the laser with the slurry, (v) fitting to a light-scattering theory, and (vi) observation-volume depth < laser attenuation depth in the slurry. Independent claim 7 requires flow of a slurry containing slurry particles + particles of interest, an image that records both a scattered wave and a diffuse wave generated by interaction of the laser/scattered wave with the slurry particles, quantifying the diffuse-wave contribution, then Lorenz–Mie analysis.
• Bottom line up front: No single cited reference anticipates claim 1 or claim 7. Every candidate reference either lacks the slurry/diffuse-wave normalization (claim 1) or lacks the explicit recording-and-quantification of the diffuse wave in a particle-bearing slurry (claim 7). The art is relevant for §103 (and for dependent-claim limitations), which is where the real exposure lies.

2. TIER 1 — Directly pertinent prior art (same field; strongest §102/§103 potential)

These are the only references that disclose Lorenz–Mie-based holographic particle characterization in a flowing stream, and they are the applicant's own NYU/Grier family — i.e., they are §102(a)(1) art because they published before 2015‑09‑18.

Also material and arguably Tier 1 (incorporated-by-reference in the specification; see §4 below): EP 3 105 638 B1 / PCT/US2015/015666 / KR 10‑2425768 — "Fast feature identification for holographic tracking and characterization of colloidal particles" (priority 2014‑02‑12), implementing the orientation-alignment transform the patent says it uses to find regions of interest.

3. TIER 2 — Generally relevant holography / interferometry / particle-sizing art

4. Incorporated-by-reference reference (expressly relied on by the specification)

5. TIER 3 — Peripheral patent citations (background / different purpose; no independent-claim anticipation)

Grouped for completeness. None of these, alone or in the cited combination, supplies the slurry-specific diffuse-wave limitations of C1/C7.

Holography instrumentation (early/electron/display): US 4,532,422 A (Hitachi, electron holography microscope, 1982‑03‑12/1985‑07‑30); US 4,998,788 A (Hitachi, reflection electron holography, 1989‑01‑13/1991‑03‑12); US 4,627,729 A (MAN, differential holographic method, 1983‑02‑05/1986‑12‑09); EP 0 278 714 A2 (Holtronic, positional detection of objects, 1987‑02‑12/1988‑08‑17); US 5,095,207 A (Univ. of Wisconsin‑Milwaukee, 3‑D atomic imaging, 1991‑01‑07/1992‑03‑10); US 6,281,994 B1 (NTT, 3‑D holographic display, 1998‑12‑22/2001‑08‑28); JP S55‑96976 (Ricoh, hologram recorder, 1979‑01‑17/1980‑07‑23); JP H03‑251888 (Shimadzu, holographic camera, 1990‑02‑28/1991‑11‑11); JP 2007‑279475 (Pulstec, hologram recording, 2006‑04‑10/2007‑10‑25).

Assay/particle-label & optics: US 6,214,560 B1 (Genicon Sciences, 1996‑04‑25/2001‑04‑10); US 2004/0072372 A1 (Seul, programmable illumination, 1996‑04‑25/2004‑04‑15); WO 2005/027031 A2 (Cyvera, diffraction-grating encoded elements, 2003‑09‑12/2005‑03‑24); US 2006/0127369 A1 (Carlsberg, spatially encoded polymer matrix, 2002‑09‑27/2006‑06‑15); US 7,248,282 B2 (Fairfield Imaging, microscopy imaging, 2002‑02‑13/2007‑07‑24); US 2007/0070303 A1 (Seiko Epson, image display/light source, 2005‑09‑29/2007‑03‑29); US 2009/0128825 A1 (Arryx, holographic optical forcing array, 2005‑10‑17/2009‑05‑21); US 2012/0177543 A1 (Micronics, microfluidic reactor, 2005‑11‑30/2012‑07‑12); US 2014/0313510 A1 (Brigham Young, multiplex fluorescent particle detection, 2011‑06‑06/2014‑10‑23); US 8,119,988 B2 (Toyota, particulate-matter collection-amount detection, 2007‑06‑22/2012‑02‑21); US 9,933,351 B2 (Scanit, airborne particle monitor, 2015‑03‑06/2018‑04‑03 — post-dates priority, not §102 art).

Foreign-language/other: JP 2000‑225302 (Mitsubishi Chemical, particle-size-distribution estimation, 1999‑02‑04/2000‑08‑15); JP 2001‑034148 (NTT, stereoscopic display, 1999‑07‑26/2001‑02‑09); JP H03‑251388 (Sony, robot, 1990‑02‑28/1991‑11‑08); JP 2011‑525967 (Thüren, polymer-synthesis monitoring, 2008‑06‑05/2011‑09‑29); US 2011/0292363 A1 (Ivey, exposure apparatus, 2008‑07‑30/2011‑12‑01).

⚠️ Clearly non-pertinent MRI/NMR/PET block (identified, NOT prior art to C1–C13): US 2008/0150532 A1 (GE, T1 relaxation, 2006‑12‑21/2008‑06‑26); US 7,218,112 B2 (Siemens, MR/PET, 2005‑05‑12/2007‑05‑15); US 2010/0090694 A1 & US 8,298,789 B2 (Heid/sequence model, 2008‑08‑28); US 2010/0259263 A1 (Holland, MRI registration, 2007‑11‑14/2010‑10‑14); US 2012/0235678 A1 (Case Western, NMR fingerprinting, 2011‑03‑18/2012‑09‑20); US 2012/0256626 A1 (Siemens, parallel-transmission RF, 2011‑04‑08/2012‑10‑11); US 2013/0038326 A1 (Amadon, B1 inhomogeneity, 2010‑04‑15/2013‑02‑14); US 8,405,395 B2 (General Hospital, multi-slice MRI, 2010‑04‑15/2013‑03‑26); US 2014/0253126 A1 (Hitachi Medical, MRI antenna, 2011‑11‑01/2014‑09‑11); US 2015/0002150 A1 (Philips, MRI, 2012‑02‑09/2015‑01‑01); WO 2015/073894 A2 and US 2016/0282436 A1 (NYU, parallel-transmission spin-dynamic fingerprinting, 2013‑11‑15/2015‑05‑21); US 2015/0301141 A1 (Case Western, NMR fingerprinting, 2014‑04‑21/2015‑10‑22); US 2015/0346300 A1 (Case Western, MRF multivolume, 2014‑05‑28/2015‑12‑03); US 2016/0116559 A1 (General Hospital, steady-state MRF, 2014‑10‑24/2016‑04‑28); US 2016/0291107 A1 (General Hospital, 3D balanced EPI MRF, 2015‑04‑02/2016‑10‑06); US 2016/0291105 A1 (NYU, PET‑MR, 2015‑02‑24/2016‑10‑06); US 2019/0033415 A1 (Hyperfine, MRI detection, 2016‑11‑22/2019‑01‑31). Subject matter is unrelated; also several post-date the priority date.

Other clearly unrelated: US 2011/0130348 A1 (MIT, lipoic acid ligase, 2009‑10‑19/2011‑06‑02); US 2014/0170735 A1 (Holmes/multi-analysis, 2011‑09‑25/2014‑06‑19); US 2015/0300963 A1 (Univ. of Georgia, CT of plant tissues, 2014‑04‑18/2015‑10‑22).

6. TIER 4 — Non-patent literature (NPL) — where the real §102/§103 pressure sits

The NPL list (150 items) is dominated by the applicant's own scientific corpus. The technically probative items for C1–C13:

7. §102 anticipation analysis — claim by claim

Independent claim 1 (all elements in one reference): NOT anticipated. No cited reference discloses the combination of (a) laser holographic video microscopy of a slurry, (b) normalizing the ROI for a diffuse wave created by interaction of the laser with the slurry, and (c) the negative limitation that observation-volume depth < laser attenuation depth in the slurry. The NYU family (refs #1–#3) has (a) and Lorenz–Mie fitting but is expressly directed to transparent media; Dubois (#4) has flow + holography but detects focal peaks; Ovizio (#18) has flow-DHM but no slurry diffuse-wave handling. The diffuse-wave/attenuation elements are the novelty.

Independent claim 7 (all elements in one reference): NOT anticipated. Claim 7 uniquely requires an image that records both a scattered wave (from the particle of interest) and a diffuse wave generated by interaction of the laser and the scattered wave with the slurry particles, followed by quantification of the diffuse contribution and Lorenz–Mie analysis. Closest single references (NYU #1/#2 for Lorenz–Mie in flow; Dubois #4 for flowing-particle holographic characterization; Ishimaru/Pine/Maret for the diffuse-physics) each supply only a subset.

Dependent-claim limitations — where individual references or ordinary combinations may bite (§103):

• C2/C8 (slurry particles ≤200 nm): consistent with Basim/Remsen CMP literature (fumed/nano-silica slurries); not anticipated by a single reference but obvious over CMP-slurry art in view of holographic characterization.
• C3/C9 (particle of interest ~200 nm–20 µm): the NYU family and Bachalo/Shamir teach this size range for holographic/scattering sizing.
• C4/C10 (peak flow ~100 µm/s): a process parameter; largely a design choice in view of flow-cytometry art (refs #15, #18, Cheong "Flow visualization…").
• C5/C11 (selecting a sample cell of depth D): the claim is broad; supported by any microfluidic-channel holography reference (refs #1, #17, #18).
• C6/C12 (radius and refractive index): strongly disclosed by refs #1–#3, #5, #6 (Lorenz–Mie holography yields radius + index). This is the dependent limitation with the highest §103 (and arguably §102, if read on the reference alone) exposure — but it depends from C1/C7 and inherits their limitations, so it is not separately anticipated.
• C13 (normalize after quantifying): bridges to C1's normalization; covered only by the patent's own disclosure — refs #24 (Zetetic background reduction) and the speckle-statistics NPL are at most §103 color.

Net assessment: The citation set is strong §103 background (Lorenz–Mie holographic particle characterization in flow is thoroughly known, mostly from the applicant's own work), but no single reference is a §102 anticipation of either independent claim. The patent's likely validity rests on the slurry-specific diffuse-wave normalization + the depth-below-attenuation-length limitation, which the cited art does not teach.

8. Caveats and confidence

• Source limitation: I retrieved the grant-document front page (US010641696B2 PDF) and the Google Patents citation tables; I did not run a live USPTO PatentCenter/PatFT or Docket Navigator query. The "Citations (82)" and "Patent Citations (101)" tables are internally inconsistent and include non-pertinent material (see the flagged MRI/NMR block); treat counts as approximate.
• Dates: all priority/publication dates above are taken from the citation tables as retrieved; filing dates for a few foreign items (e.g., FR 3 027 107, EP 3 105 638) were not independently verified and their exact §102(a)(1)/(a)(2) status should be confirmed against the primary register.
• Interpretation rule honored: I did not auto-correct any identifier. Where a search returned a superficially similar number (e.g., a "‑416" PTAB shorthand for an unrelated connector patent, or a non-patent "10641696" EPA CompTox M4ID), I excluded it rather than substituting it.
• Legal scope: this is a technical prior-art survey, not a legal opinion, and it is not exhaustive of all art; it addresses only the references cited in/against US 10,641,696. An invalidity position would require a full search beyond the cited art (e.g., turbid-media DLS/particle-sizing literature, dilution-based CMP particle counters, and non-cited holography patents).

If you want, I can drill into any single reference's full text (e.g., Dubois US 9,476,694 or the Ovizio EP 2 626 686 flow-cytometer disclosure) to test claim-chart sufficiency element-by-element.

I'll ground this analysis by verifying the key references in the patent's own Prior Art (Citations) section, then build explicit § 103 combinations.

§ 103 Obviousness Analysis — US 10,641,696 B2

Scope note. This section builds on the earlier summary/claims/strategy sections and does not repeat them. As flagged in the Strategic summary, the diff-use-wave normalization/quantification limitations (claim 1 step "normalizing … for a contribution of a diffuse wave"; claim 7's "quantifying a contribution of the diffuse wave") and claim 1's "wherein" clause are the invalidity battleground. This section names the specific combinations to press. All references below are drawn from the patent's own face citations — the Citations (101) and Non-Patent Citations (150) lists on the Google Patents record — as instructed. Nothing here contradicts the earlier sections (which reported no litigation and 0 AIA trials); it fills the § 103 gap those sections left open. Not legal advice; obviousness is an ultimate legal conclusion.

1. Governing standard and level of ordinary skill

The '696 patent has an effective filing date of Sept 18, 2015 (provisional 62/220,786) / Sept 15, 2016 (PCT), so the AIA § 102/§ 103 regime applies. Obviousness turns on the four Graham v. John Deere factors, with the KSR rationales (MPEP 2143) supplying the articulation.

POSITA (proposed): a person with a Ph.D. (or M.S. + several years) in physics, optics, or chemical/electrical engineering and ~2 years' experience with holographic microscopy, digital holography, or light-scattering particle metrology. The Lorenz–Mie inversion the claims require supports an advanced level; a POSITA would be comfortable with both the holographic-characterization literature and the classic turbid-media light-transport literature.

2. The prior-art universe on the face of the patent

2.1 Available art (published >1 year before 9/18/2015 — § 102(a)(1) printed publications; not excepted)

2.2 Date-barred or excepted art — cannot be relied on (flag)

• Hannel, Middleton & Grier, Appl. Phys. Lett. 107, 141905 (2015) — published October 2015, i.e., after the 9/18/2015 priority date. Not § 102(a)(1) art if the provisional supports the claims.
• Wang, Zhong, Ruffner, Stutt, Philips, Ward & Grier, J. Pharm. Sci. 105, 1074 (2016) — the closest "same technique in a flowing microfluidic channel in a native medium" teaching, but published Feb/Mar 2016 and authored by joint inventors → excluded by § 102(b)(1)(A) (and post-dates the priority date).
• Wang et al., Soft Matter 11, 1062 (2015) (June 2015 — inside the grace year, same inventors' disclosure), Philips et al., Water Res. 122, 431 (2017), Hannel et al., Opt. Express 26, 15221 (2018) — post-priority or excepted.
• US 9,810,894 B2 issues in 2017, but its underlying publication US 2014/0333935 A1 (2014) is available and covers the same disclosure.
• Common-ownership caveat: the NYU-owned US publications/applications are potentially excluded as § 102(a)(2) art by § 102(b)(2)(C), but they remain available as § 102(a)(1) printed publications because they published more than one year before the effective filing date. Confirm with counsel.

2.3 Citation-list anomaly (literal-interpretation flag)

The face of the patent includes a large cluster of magnetic-resonance-fingerprinting references (Ma et al., Nature 495, 187 (2013); Case Western Reserve US 2015/0300963, 2015/0346300, 9,897,675; MRF/PET-MR items) that have nothing to do with holographic particle characterization. These should be recorded as an artifact of a consolidated IDS (David G. Grier is a named inventor on NYU's parallel-transmission/MRF filings, e.g., WO 2015/073894) and should not be used or cited in any § 103 ground for this patent.

3. Construction of the limitations that drive the analysis

4. Combination A — Claim 1 (+ claims 2–6): Remsen 2006 in view of Cheong 2009 and Lee 2007, further in view of Krishnatreya 2014 and Ishimaru 1989

Element mapping (claim 1):

Motivation (KSR rationales A–G, each independently sufficient):

1. Problem identified in the art (rationale D/E). Remsen 2006 expressly identifies the long-standing need — quantify oversize particles in CMP slurry, correlated to scratches — and states both that commercial slurries are too turbid for existing optical methods without dilution and that "additional method development is needed." That is an explicit invitation to apply a particle-resolved technique.
2. Known technique, predictable improvement (rationale C). Cheong 2009 had already converted holographic characterization into an automated flow-cytometry method producing size/R.I. per particle, thousands of measurements in minutes. Applying it to a slurry is using a known technique to improve a similar measurement in the same way.
3. Finite, predictable options (rationale E). The POSITA faces a short list: dilute (disfavored — Remsen documents that dilution is impractical and perturbs aggregation, a point the '696 specification repeats), use SPOS (limited to ≥0.469 µm, needs dilution), or use holography (already proven in flow). KSR / In re Kubin.
4. Known physics supplies the only needed adjustment. Ishimaru 1989 and Pine 1988 were the canonical tools for turbid media; a POSITA designing a flow cell for a 30.9 vol% nanoparticle slurry would by necessity select a channel thinner than the attenuation depth κ⁻¹ (else no image). The claim-1 "wherein" clause thus recites the inherent consequence of operating any in-line holographic microscope in a turbid slurry (In re Best; In re Spiller).
5. Reasonable expectation of success. Moyses 2013 teaches that holographic characterization is robust to illumination defects; the '696 specification itself says the slurry "only reduces contrast and adds Gaussian noise … but does not otherwise affect [the hologram's] symmetries." That is the patent conceding the predictability of the result.

Dependents under Combination A:

• Claim 2 (slurry particles ≤200 nm): CMP slurries are nanoparticle dispersions (Remsen 2006; Basim 2000; the patent's own Dow Ultrasol 2EX = 70 nm).
• Claims 3 (200 nm–20 µm): Lee 2007 discloses 100 nm–10 µm; extension to 20 µm is a routine range extension with no asserted criticality (In re Peterson; In re Geisler). The limitation is also result-oriented — it states what the instrument can characterize, not a step — so it carries little patentable weight (In re O'Farrell).
• Claim 4 (peak flow ~100 µm/s): a result-effective process parameter optimized from the exposure-blur vs throughput trade-off the specification itself describes; routine optimization (In re Aller; In re Boesch).
• Claim 5 ("selecting a sample cell of depth D"): direct consequence of Ishimaru/Remsen.
• Claim 6 (radius and R.I.): Lee 2007; Cheong 2011; Shpaisman 2012.

5. Combination B — Claim 7 (+ claims 8–13): Lee 2007 + Cheong 2009 + Krishnatreya 2014, in view of Pine 1988 and Goodman, further in view of Boas 1994

Claim 7 drops the depth clause and instead requires (i) recording both the scattered wave and a diffuse wave "generated by interaction of the laser beam and the scattered wave with the slurry particles," (ii) quantifying the diffuse contribution, then (iii) Lorenz–Mie analysis.

Motivation: DWS (Pine 1988) and turbid-media diffusion theory (Ishimaru 1989) existed precisely to quantify the diffuse field; Boas 1994 had already extended that framework to an embedded spherical inhomogeneity. A POSITA seeking to use holographic characterization in a scattering fluid would naturally characterize, then subtract/compensate, the diffuse background before fitting. The '696 specification admits the step is routine: "the diffuse wave's contribution … can be quantified through analysis of video sequences that do not contain holograms of particles." That admission converts the limitation into a known measurement technique (KSR; In re Kahn).

Dependents 8–13 map as in Combination A; claim 13 (normalize after quantifying) is expressly suggested by the background-image normalization of Lee 2007/Cheong 2009 applied in the analyte-free frame the specification describes.

6. Combination C — Backup ground: US 2012/0135535 A1 (+ US 8,791,985 B2 / US 2014/0333935 A1) in view of Remsen 2006 + Ishimaru 1989 + Goodman

Because NYU's own automated holographic-characterization filings teach substantially the whole pipeline (automated ROI estimation, Lorenz–Mie fit, real-time flow), a POSITA motivated by Remsen would arrive at the claim in predictable fashion. This ground is strongest for claim 7 and the dependents; for claim 1 it depends on characterizing the background normalization as the claimed "diffuse-wave" normalization.

Combination D (motivation hardening): add US 2014/0177932 A1 (Amgen — imaging detection of undissolved particles in fluid), US 6,519,033 and US 2004/0004716 / 6,710,874 (individual-particle detection in flowing samples) to show the field's recognized design direction away from dilution-based bulk counters.

7. Anticipated patentee rebuttals and how they fare

8. Weaknesses and what must be verified

1. No single reference teaches "diffuse-wave normalization" in a holographic characterization context. All two- and three-reference combinations are needed; expect a KSR "predictable combination of familiar elements" versus In re Kahn "articulated reasoning" fight.
2. Reference-date verification needed for every citation: Hannel 2015 and Wang 2016 are unavailable (§ 2.2). Confirm the actual publication dates of the 2015 items before relying on them.
3. Common-ownership/§ 102(b)(2)(C) may remove the NYU US publications from § 102(a)(2); use their § 102(a)(1) publication dates instead.
4. Provisional support. If the 9/18/2015 provisional does not support Eqs. (2b)/(4b) and the diffuse-wave limitations, the effective filing date shifts to 9/15/2016 — which would also open Wang et al. 2016 (subject to the § 102(b)(1)(A) exception analysis). Obtain the provisional.
5. No proceeding tests these grounds — as reported in the PTAB section, there is no adverse FWD and no estoppel; the first challenger carries the full cost and the full § 315(e)(2) risk.

9. Bottom line

• Strongest ground: Combination A (Remsen 2006 + Cheong 2009 + Lee 2007 + Krishnatreya 2014 + Ishimaru 1989) against claim 1 and dependents 2–6, with the claim-1 "wherein" clause treated as an inherent/result limitation of operating any in-line holographic microscope in a turbid slurry (In re Best).
• Strongest ground for the second independent claim: Combination B (Pine 1988 + Goodman + Boas 1994 added to Combination A) against claim 7 and dependents 8–13, anchored on the specification's own admission that the diffuse contribution "can be quantified through analysis of video sequences that do not contain holograms of particles."
• The pivot point is motivation, not disclosure: every element exists in the art; the case will be won or lost on whether the POSITA had a reason to move holographic particle characterization into a full-concentration, multiply-scattering slurry, and Remsen 2006 — the closest prior art on the problem — supplies that reason expressly.
• The main obstacle is the patentee's unexpected-results/long-felt-need story (accurate Lorenz–Mie inversion at 30.9 vol% solids, no dilution, ppb sensitivity), which overlaps precisely with the industry need documented in Remsen and the semiconductor-contaminant reviews. Expect that to be the crux of any validity trial.