US 10852212

I'll search for authoritative information on US patent 10852212, including any litigation activity.

US Patent 10,852,212 B2 — Verification Summary

Sources consulted: The full authoritative patent text (Google Patents, fetched 2026-09-24), the Unified Patents portal record for US-10852212-B2, and targeted searches of USPTO/PTAB petition materials and Federal Circuit 2026 case listings.

Bibliographic data

Note on date discrepancies: The Unified Patents portal lists the priority date as 2016-01-28, application date 2017-01-29, grant date 2020-11-30, and expiration 2037-08-17 — each exactly one day earlier than the values in the patent text and USPTO/Google Patents record. This is most likely a time-zone conversion artifact; I report the patent-text values as authoritative, but flag the discrepancy rather than silently harmonizing it.

Abstract (as issued)

The method covers leak detection on at least one flexible test piece in a film chamber: inserting the test piece, lowering the pressure in the film chamber outside the test piece, and detecting a leak by observing the spatial change of the film. The outer contour of the test piece is transferred to at least one section of the film by the pressure reduction. The contour of the film is recorded with an image recording system, and the recorded contour images are compared with reference images of that contour in the event of a tight test piece.

Plain-language overview of the independent claim

Claim 1 (the only independent claim) is a method claim with these steps:

1. Introduce at least one flexible (non-rigid) test piece into a film chamber.
2. Lower the pressure in the film chamber in the region outside the test piece (i.e., evacuate so the film is drawn down onto the product).
3. Detect a leak by monitoring the spatial change of the chamber film (the film's own movement/deformation, not a pressure or gas measurement).
4. Transfer the outer contour of the test piece onto at least one portion of the film as a consequence of the pressure reduction — the film clings to and takes the shape of the product.
5. Capture that film outer contour with an image capturing device (camera).
6. Compare the captured contour images to reference images of the contour as produced by tight test pieces (i.e., a known-good baseline).
7. Grid limitation: the captured portion of the film is provided with a grid, and the position of that grid is monitored and evaluated — grid distortion tracks the contour change.

Dependent claims add: (2) grid formed of intersecting lines or dots on the film surface; (3) grid projected onto the film surface (specification prefers laser-projected grid lines); (4) grid fixedly applied (printing, embossing, painting); (5) temporal course of the contour change evaluated as a measure of the leakage rate; (6) a plurality of flexible test pieces contained in the film chamber at the same time.

Practical effect: unlike the parent concept in DE 10 2012 200 063 A1 (incorporated by reference), which measured film position/volume change globally, this patent's imaging-plus-grid approach localizes the leak — the specification states it enables determining which of several simultaneously tested pieces is leaking, since the contour changes only in the region of the leaking piece. It also avoids the conventional reliance on test gas and reduces the influence of film-chamber tightness on the result.

Key prior art cited on the face of the patent

• US 6,955,076 B1 (Leybold Vakuum GmbH) — foil leak detection chamber
• US 6,732,571 B1 (Inficon GmbH) — film leak detector
• DE 10 2012 200 063 A1 / US 2014/0326051 A1 (Inficon GmbH) — leak detection on a non-rigid specimen; expressly incorporated by reference
• US 7,665,346 B1 (Packaging Technologies & Inspection) — blister-pack leak detection using vacuum and vision testing
• EP 1 333 267 A1 and WO 2011/098788 A1 (Sepha Limited) — leak detection for blister packs
• US 2008/0127716 A1 (Eliasson) — testing flexible packages for defects
• EP 2 584 334 A1 / US 2013/0141571 A1 (Nissan) — air-tightness testing of sealed batteries
• US 2010/0170326 A1 (Boeing) — leak detection in composite tools

Litigation / CAFC 2026 check

• No CAFC 2026 docket, appeal, or oral-argument listing referencing US 10,852,212 was found in the Federal Circuit scheduled-cases and opinion listings I searched (July 2026 scheduled cases; week-ending May 8, 2026 summary; 25-1306 Rule 36 judgment).
• No PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR) naming 10,852,212 appeared in the USPTO petition materials surfaced.
• The only forward citation identified is US 11,143,571 B2 ("Film chamber having double film," Inficon GmbH, granted 2021-10-12).
• Uncertainty note: absence of results is not affirmative proof of no litigation. My search was limited to web-indexed sources; a fully authoritative negative would require direct queries to PACER and the CAFC docket system, and no publicly reported infringement action asserting this particular patent was located.

Family (parallel foreign filings)

EP 3 408 636 B1 (active) · JP 2019-507337 A · CN 108700489 A · AU 2017213162 B2 · BR 112018014939 B1 · DE 10 2016 201 359 A1 (withdrawn) · WO 2017/129809 A1 (PCT, ceased).

Overall confidence: High on all bibliographic data, claims, and abstract — these are taken directly from the issued patent text. Low confidence on litigation activity, where I found no evidence but cannot certify a complete negative.

I'll research litigation involving US 10852212 across patent litigation databases and court records.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases and court records.

I'll verify the "no proceedings" baseline with targeted searches before writing the memo.

Let me run a few more targeted checks before concluding the "no proceedings" baseline holds.

PTAB / AIA Trial Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,852,212 B2

"Leak detection on a flexible test piece in a film chamber"
Patent Owner: Inficon GmbH (Köln, DE) · Granted 2020-12-01 · Priority 2016-01-29 · Adjusted expiration 2037-08-18

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal returned no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings for US 10,852,212 as of the most recent ingest, and my independent web searches (PTAB decisions, PTAB E2E-adjacent materials, Federal Circuit/CourtListener references, and third-party patent-analytics pages) surfaced no AIA trial petition, institution decision, final written decision, or appeal involving this patent. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block is therefore the operative fact: there is no PTAB activity to report — no active proceedings, no invalidated claims, no sustained claims, no settlements, and no institution denials.

That is not a null result; it is itself the strategic datum. This patent reached grant on 2020-12-01, is past its PGR window (which closed 2021-06-01, nine months post-grant), and has now been in force for roughly five and a half years without attracting a single AIA challenge. The bottom line for a defendant: the claims are entirely untested at the PTAB, all six claims stand unamended and un-adjudicated, and any IPR-based defense you mount would be a first-generation challenge with no prior panel findings — favorable or unfavorable — to build on or distinguish. Any demand letter asserting claims 1–6 asserts claims whose validity has never been litigated in a post-grant forum.

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Proceedings detail

No proceedings to itemize. I will not manufacture proceeding numbers, panels, or dispositions. Because the enumerated fields (Petitioner, Type, Filed, Status, Judge panel, Grounds, Institution decision, FWD, Settlement, Appeal, Defensive value) can only be populated from real PTAB records, I am leaving the per-proceeding sections out rather than filling them with invented content. The value-add below is the analysis a defendant actually needs from the absence.

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Strategic summary

Claim status. No claim of US 10,852,212 has been canceled, amended, or held invalid by the Board. Claims 1–6 are all SUSTAINED and UNTESTED at the PTAB. Claim 1 is the sole independent claim — a method claim requiring (a) introducing a flexible test piece into a film chamber, (b) lowering pressure outside the test piece, (c) detecting a leak by monitoring spatial change of the film, (d) transferring the test piece's outer contour to the film via the pressure drop, (e) capturing that contour with an image capturing device, (f) comparing the captured images to reference images from tight test pieces, and (g) providing a grid on the captured portion of the film, the position of which is monitored and evaluated. Claims 2–6 depend from claim 1: claim 2 (grid as intersecting lines or dots), claim 3 (grid projected on the film surface), claim 4 (grid fixedly applied, e.g. printed/embossed/painted), claim 5 (temporal course of contour change as a leakage-rate measure), and claim 6 (a plurality of test pieces in the chamber at the same time). Because there is no IPR estoppel and no claim has been canceled, there is no "dead claim" to wave at a plaintiff and no narrowed claim set to design around on validity grounds.

Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel on this patent, because no petitioner has ever been a party to an instituted IPR of it. That is a two-edged sword. On the benefit side: a defendant is free to raise any printed-publication or patent prior-art ground under §§ 102/103 without worrying that a prior petitioner's reasonably-could-have-raised grounds were locked in. On the cost side: there is no prior petitioner work product, no Board-construed claim term to adopt, and no institution decision to mine for the panel's read on the claim limitations — you build the challenge from scratch. Note the reference set already of record was before the examiner: DE 10 2012 200 063 A1 and its US counterpart US 2014/0326051 A1 (granted as US 9,810,600) are listed on the face of the patent, as are US 6,732,571, US 6,955,076, EP 1 333 267 A1, US 2008/0127716 A1, US 7,665,346, US 2010/0170326 A1, WO 2011/098788 A1, US 2012/0307044 A1, EP 2 584 334 A1, US 2013/0141571 A1, and DE 10 2012 200 063 A1. Those references are prime § 325(d) bait — the Board has repeatedly exercised discretion to deny institution where the same art or substantially the same arguments were previously presented to the Office. A petitioner using only that set should expect a § 325(d) fight and should therefore prioritize non-cumulative art.

Pattern signals. There is no repeat petitioner, no serial IPR campaign, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents or similar) in the chain — the third-party analytics page for this patent shows only the patent owner's own portfolio data (CPC class G, Inficon as assignee) and no IPR/litigation event history. There is likewise no Federal Circuit appeal touching this patent, so the § 282 validity record is a blank slate. The only post-grant activity in the family is prosecution-side and patent-owner-driven: the "Cited By" list shows Inficon's own continuation US 11,143,571 B2 ("Film chamber having double film," priority 2017-01-23, granted 2021-10-12), and the family-citation list shows Inficon's own later filings (DE 10 2017 222 308 A1, DE 10 2024 102 184 A1) plus third-party follow-ons. In other words, this is a company-portfolio patent in a niche industrial instrumentation field (helium/vacuum leak detection), not a troll patent — it has been neither asserted in a high-volume campaign nor challenged.

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Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant today. Do not expect to find a ready-made invalidity shortcut: there is no FWD to cite and no canceled claim to quote. Your IPR options remain fully open, subject to two hard gates:

• § 315(b) time bar — an IPR petition must be filed within one year of service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent. If you have already been served, calendar the one-year date immediately; if you have not, the clock has not started. There is no § 315(a)(1) bar if you did not first file a DJ action of invalidity.
• PGR is foreclosed — the nine-month post-grant window under § 321(c) closed on 2021-06-01. PGR on §§ 112 and § 101 grounds is no longer available to you; IPR under § 311(b) is limited to §§ 102/103 on patents and printed publications.

2. Grounds to prioritize. Build on the admitted prior art cited in the specification: the patent expressly characterizes DE 10 2012 200 063 A1 as teaching pressure reduction in the chamber outside the test piece and leak detection via spatial change of the film, with positional change measured laser-optically, capacitively, or by contact — i.e., the patent itself concedes elements (a) through (c) and the contour-change mechanism. The likely battleground is the grid limitation of claim 1 (element (g)) and the reference-image comparison of element (f), plus claim 6's multi-test-piece attribution. Note that optical/grid-based deformation measurement and image-differencing are old and broad, so a § 103 combination pairing the admitted film-chamber art with a well-documented machine-vision/grid-projection reference is the natural attack line. Include art outside the face-of-the-patent set to blunt § 325(d).

3. If you are the patent owner (or advising one). The absence of IPRs is a genuine strength to raise in licensing and litigation: the claims have never been canceled, never narrowed, and never construed by the Board, and there is no petitioner estoppel constraining anyone. But do not over-read it — the absence also means the claim scope, particularly "grid, the position of which is monitored and evaluated" and "reference images of the outer contour of the film as produced by tight test pieces," has never been tested against the art. Consider whether a pre-emptive reissue or a broadening/narrowing continuation strategy is warranted before an assertion campaign invites the first IPR.

4. Caveats on completeness. My conclusion rests on (i) the structured ODP block stating no AIA trial proceedings are on file, and (ii) public web searches that returned no PTAB or CAFC records for this patent. A petition filed very recently may not yet be indexed by the ODP ingest or by third-party crawlers. Before relying on "zero PTAB activity" in a filing, confirm directly against PTAB Patent Trial and Appeal Board E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/) and the CourtListener / Federal Circuit docket for any 2025–2026 petition, and re-run the ODP query on the day you file.

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I did not identify any proceeding number, judge panel, institution decision, final written decision, settlement, or Federal Circuit appeal to report, and I have deliberately not fabricated any. If a specific proceeding number is supplied to me, I will pull the claim-level disposition and panel reasoning and complete the per-proceeding sections above.

I'll verify the recorded assignment data and check for any downstream transfers or assertion activity.

Let me check for any downstream transfers and litigation/assertion activity involving Inficon.

Key new development surfaced. Let me verify whether the 2026 Contura divestiture produced a recorded assignment for this patent.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 10,852,212 B2

Note on a gap in the prior sections: the previously generated Litigation summary consists only of process chatter ("I'll research litigation… Let me search more targeted litigation databases…") with no findings. I treat that section as empty, not as a null result, and flag that no litigation record for this patent was actually established. My searches (below) likewise surfaced no infringement suit naming US 10,852,212 in any district court docket, and Unified Patents' patent page for US-10852212-B2 shows no litigation or PTAB challenge. This is a gap, not proof of absence.

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Inventors

Pattern check — no anomaly. There is no evidence of inventors departing the assignee near the filing date. To the contrary, all three are career INFICON personnel whose names recur on INFICON leak-detection filings filed years later (2021–2023). The "all inventors gone within 12 months" fire-sale precursor is not present. (Note: Unified Patents' mirror page renders the priority date as 2016-01-28 and the application date as 2017-01-29; the authoritative Google Patents record and the PCT/DE family data give 2016-01-29 priority and 2017-01-30 filing. This is a one-day indexing artifact, not a second priority claim.)

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Original assignee

INFICON GmbH, Köln, Germany (Google Patents renders the assignee as "Inficon GmbH Deutschland"; the issued US patent names INFICON GmbH). Registrant of record for US national-phase entry is INFICON GmbH, and a companion grant of the family (EP 3 408 636 B1) lists the same parent.

• Line of business: vacuum instrumentation and leak detection — mass-spectrometer leak detectors, refrigeration/HVAC leak detectors, vacuum gauges, and (relevant here) the Contura line of non-destructive packaging leak testers, which is the commercial embodiment family for the "flexible test piece in a film chamber" subject matter. INFICON GmbH is a subsidiary of INFICON Holding AG (SIX Swiss Exchange: IFCN).
• Product shipping the claims? Substantially yes as a commercial matter — the claims cover a method of leak detection on flexible packages in a film chamber, and INFICON sold the Contura packaging-inspection systems in that exact field. INFICON's own product-management statements confirm Contura as its packaging leak-testing line.
• Current status: operating. Actively filing (2021–2023 filings above), paying maintenance fees (4th-year fee paid 2024-05-23 per Google Patents legal events), and enforcing rights defensively through EPO oppositions (one opposition filed; two faced, per IP Verse's INFICON profile).

Material development — 2026 divestiture (see caveat): INFICON announced (2026-06-09) that effective 2026-07-01 it sold the Contura non-destructive packaging leak-testing product line — expressly including the associated patents — to WITT Gasetechnik GmbH & Co. KG, as part of INFICON's strategic withdrawal from the packaging-inspection market. This is the most likely home of US 10,852,212 today. Caveat: I could not verify that US 10,852,212 is inside that patent bundle, and I found no USPTO assignment record effecting it. Treat the WITT transfer as a lead to verify, not an established fact. If it does cover this patent, it is an operating-company-to-operating-company product-line sale (WITT is an industrial gas-technology manufacturer), which is an NPE-neutral, even NPE-negative, event.

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Assignment timeline

The USPTO assignment record for this patent is extremely thin: exactly one recorded assignment. There is no post-issuance chain, no security agreement, no merger, no corrective assignment, and no transfer-to-asserter link anywhere in Google Patents' legal events (which mirror the Assignment Center record).

• 2018-08-30 / 2018-08-31 (executed) / recorded 2018-10-03 — Reel 047048 / Frame 0380
  • Conveyance: Assignment (inventor-to-employer; original assignment)
  • Assignor: Daniel Wetzig; Silvio Decker; Jochen Puchalla-König (assignment executed on separate dates of 2018-08-30 to 2018-08-31)
  • Assignee: INFICON GMBH, Germany
  • Correspondent: not captured. The Google Patents legal-events record exposes the reel/frame, assignor list, and execution dates but not the recording correspondent. I was unable to open the Assignment Center detail page for reel 047048/0380 within this session, so I will not name a correspondent. For context only — not a recorded finding — INFICON's recurring German patent counsel across this family's DE/EP filings is von Kreisler Selting Werner, Partnerschaft von Patentanwälten und Rechtsanwälten mbB, Deichmannhaus am Dom, Bahnhofsvorplatz 1, 50667 Köln (appears as attorney/agent on DE 10 2014 218 399 and DE 10 2017 222 308, both INFICON). Whether that firm is the recording correspondent on reel 047048/0380 is unverified.
  • Context: ordinary internal acquisition — inventors assigning to their employer in connection with US national-phase entry (PCT/EP2017/051883 → US 16/072,308, entered 2018-07-24 per the FEPP event, with the assignment recorded ~10 weeks later). No third-party, no consideration structure indicative of a sale, no shell entity.

Other legal events that are not assignments (listed so they aren't mistaken for chain evidence): 2018-07-24 FEPP entity-status-to-undiscounted; 2018-10-31 / 2019-05-14 / 2020-04-15 / 2020-06-02 / 2020-08-18 / 2020-10-26 STPP prosecution events; 2020-11-11 STCF patent grant; 2024-05-23 MAFP 4th-year maintenance fee (large entity).

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10852212
    2016 : DE priority filed by Inficon
    2017 : PCT filed by INFICON GmbH
    2018 : Inventors assign to INFICON GmbH
         : Reel 047048 Frame 0380
         : US national phase entered
    2020 : US 10852212 B2 granted
    2024 : 4th year maintenance fee paid
    2026 : INFICON sells Contura line to WITT

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The only assignee on the record is INFICON GmbH, a large-entity operating manufacturer (entity status confirmed as LARGE ENTITY on the 2018-07-24 FEPP event and the 2024-05-23 MAFP fee event). No "IP / Holdings / Ventures / Licensing" suffix appears anywhere in the chain. There is no recorded entity to examine for a registered-agent address or single-member LLC structure.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Neither the inventor assignors nor INFICON GmbH appears on any public NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Spangenberg entities). Unified Patents' profile for this patent shows no adverse campaign; IP Verse's INFICON profile shows zero PTAB cases filed or faced, one opposition filed by INFICON, two faced. Repeat opponent activity with Pfeiffer Vacuum is competitor-vs-competitor, not NPE activity.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not assessable. A single-link chain cannot exhibit recurrence, and I did not obtain the correspondent of record for reel 047048/0380. This signal can only be resolved by pulling the reel/frame image in Assignment Center — flagged as the one open verification item on this file.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. One recorded assignment in the patent's ~10-year life; nothing chained, nothing within 24 months of anything else.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. No infringement suit naming this patent has been identified, so there is no litigation date to measure an assignment against. The 2018-08-30/31 execution is contemporaneous with national-phase entry, not with any assertion.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 for INFICON GmbH or INFICON Holding AG appears in the record; the 2024 maintenance-fee payment evidences a solvent, fee-paying owner. (The 2002 Unaxis/INFICON separation — the "intellectual property assignment and royalty-free license agreements with various Unaxis entities" disclosed in INFICON's SEC-registered Form 20-F/F-1 materials, with the notable carve-out that "Unaxis has agreed that it will not grant any further licenses under the leak detector patents" — is a 2002 corporate reorganization, roughly 14 years before this patent existed. It is context for how INFICON consolidated its leak-detector patent estate, not chain evidence here.)

7. Privateering — not present/weakly inverse. The only known outbound transfer is the 2026 Contura sale of a product line to WITT Gasetechnik, which is the opposite structure: the buyer takes on development, service, spare parts and product continuity. No SEC filing, Patent Progress, or EFF coverage links INFICON to an NPE asserting on its behalf.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain terminates at INFICON GmbH (operating company). No RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN involvement.

Net: 0 of 8 signals present, 1 unclear (correspondent recurrence, unmassessable in a one-link chain), 7 affirmatively not present.

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Verdict

Insufficient data — which here coincides with the practical answer of "no NPE pattern."

Justification: the Assignment Center record for US 10,852,212 contains only the original inventor-to-employer assignment — Daniel Wetzig, Silvio Decker and Jochen Puchalla-König to INFICON GMBH, executed 2018-08-30/31, recorded 2018-10-03 at Reel 047048 / Frame 0380. There is no downstream link to evaluate, and per the stated rubric "only the original assignment" falls in the Insufficient data bucket. Substantively, nothing in the record reads as NPE-shaped: the assignee is a large operating manufacturer (LARGE ENTITY status on both the 2018 FEPP and 2024 MAFP events), all three inventors remained INFICON employees and continued inventing for INFICON into the 2020s, and no suit naming this patent was located. The one live uncertainty is the unverified question of whether the 2026-07-01 Contura divestiture to WITT Gasetechnik (which on INFICON's and WITT's public statements "includes the associated patents") swept in this patent without my being able to locate a corresponding USPTO recording — a lead worth chasing, but an operating-company-to-operating-company product-line sale rather than an NPE event if confirmed.

Verify at:

• USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 10852212; pull Reel 047048 / Frame 0380 for the correspondent of record, and search assignee "WITT Gasetechnik" for any 2026 recording)
• Legacy assignment search — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Unified Patents patent page — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-10852212-B2
• Google Patents legal events — https://patents.google.com/patent/US10852212/en
• WITT/INFICON Contura divestiture announcement — https://www.wittgas.com/de/news-detail/witt-uebernimmt-contura-technologie-von-inficon/ and https://www.bindt.org/News/july-2026/witt-acquires-contura-technology-from-inficon/

Two things I am explicitly not asserting: (i) the identity of the recording correspondent on reel 047048/0380 — I did not retrieve it, and I will not infer it from German prosecution counsel; (ii) that US 10,852,212 was conveyed to WITT — the public statements are at the product-line level and I found no executed, recorded instrument.

I'll ground this analysis with targeted searches on the patent and its cited references.

I have the PCT International Search Report — valuable for the §102 analysis. Let me pull details on the key X-category references.

US 10,852,212 B2 — USPTO Record Verification & § 102 Prior-Art Analysis

Scope note. This is a technical/patentability analysis, not a legal opinion. Anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102 requires a single reference disclosing every element of a claim, arranged as claimed. Where the EPO's International Search Report (ISR) applied an "X" rating, that rating in EPO practice means the document "cannot be considered novel or cannot be considered to involve an inventive step when taken alone" — it is not a formal anticipation finding. I distinguish the two throughout.

Statutory framework. The application was filed 2017-01-30 with a 2016-01-29 priority date, i.e. entirely after the AIA's 2013-03-16 effective date. Therefore § 102(a)(1) (patented / described in a printed publication / public use / on sale before 2016-01-29) and § 102(a)(2) (US patents and published applications effectively filed before that date) govern. Pre-AIA § 102(b) does not apply.

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1. USPTO record for the exact number 10,852,212

The query was run against the specific number 10852212; the confirmed record below is taken from the authoritative full text (Google Patents, fetched 2026-09-24, USPTO-sourced) and cross-checked against the USPTO PatentCenter / Assignment and Unified Patents records linked in the text. No results for similarly-numbered patents (e.g. 10,852,211 / 10,852,213) were substituted.

Date discrepancy flagged (not harmonized): the Unified Patents portal lists priority 2016-01-28, application 2017-01-29, grant 2020-11-30, expiration 2037-08-17 — each exactly one day earlier than the patent text and USPTO/Google record. Same pattern recurs on US 7,665,346 (Unified: priority 2006-11-28, grant 2010-02-22 vs. Google: 2006-11-29 / 2010-02-23). This is consistent with a time-zone conversion artifact at the portal, but I report both rather than silently reconciling them.

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2. The controlling prior-art signal: the PCT International Search Report

The ISR for PCT/EP2017/051883 (EPO as ISA; search completed 2017-04-07, mailed 2017-04-18; officer Philipp Ridha) is reproduced in the national-phase documents (e.g. JP 2019-507337 A). This is the most probative available examiner-level relevance assessment, because US 10,852,212 issued essentially unamended from that international search:

⚠️ Critical caveat on applying the ISR to the granted claims

The ISR was written against the 7-claim published set (US 2019/0033163 A1), in which the grid limitation was in dependent claim 2. In the granted patent the grid limitation was moved into claim 1, and the set was renumbered:

Consequence: an X-rating against published claim 1 does not automatically carry over to granted claim 1, which now requires the grid. Conversely, US 7,665,346 was X-rated against published claims 1–7 including the grid claim — the single most damaging data point in the file.

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3. Reference-by-reference analysis

3.1 US 7,665,346 B1 — the most relevant single reference

Full citation: US 7,665,346 B1, Method and apparatus for detecting leaks in blister packs using vacuum and vision testing. Inventors: Anton Stauffer, Oliver Stauffer, Mikhail Knellar. Assignee: Packaging Technologies & Inspection, LLC. Filed 2007-11-27; granted 2010-02-23 (Unified: 2010-02-22); priority 2006-11-29.
URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7665346

Description: A rigid support tooling holds a blister package; an imperforate flexible bladder/diaphragm forms the flexible chamber wall over the package. A vacuum is drawn, the bladder conforms to the contour of the package and defective pouches collapse; a vision camera or other imaging device 30 observes the displacement of the bladder and the image "is used to provide a visual indication of the location of a failure in the blister package." Two-measurement detection: vacuum decay (transducers) + bladder displacement imaging, including a topographic/volumetric image of the flexible portion. FIGS. 3–5 are photographs of the bladder surface under test showing a failed seal for one pouch (FIG. 3) and showing no seal failures (FIG. 5) — i.e. a stored good-part reference image.

§ 102 mapping to the granted claims:

Assessment: US 7,665,346 anticipates no granted claim literally, because the grid element (now in claim 1) is entirely absent. It is, however, the strongest § 103 primary reference and the closest § 102 reference to the concept. The EPO's X-rating against published claims 1–7 appears to treat the grid as one of several interchangeable contour-sensing expedients — I would flag that position as vulnerable, because the grid limitation is precisely what distinguishes the granted claim from this reference, and it is the feature the specification describes as the enabling mechanism for localizing which piece leaks.

Notable cross-link: US 7,665,346 expressly incorporates US 5,111,684, US 5,513,516 and US 6,513,366 (all Stauffer/PTI). US 5,111,684 (col. 1) describes a "microprocessor… used to simultaneously examine the measured deflection of the walls or sides of sealed packages placed in a vacuum chamber" — additional § 102(a)(1) art in the same chain.

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3.2 WO 2011/098788 A1 — the most relevant single reference for the grid element

Full citation: WO 2011/098788 A1, Leak detection apparatus for blister packs. Applicant: Sepha Limited (GB); inventor: Charles Alban Barker. Published 2011-08-18; priority 2010-02-11. US counterpart: US 2012/0307044 A1, published 2012-12-06; GB 2490643 A.
URLs: https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2011098788 ; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2012/0307044.html

Description: A pack-receiving plate in a vacuum chamber; an illumination source provides "lattice illumination" — "a lattice or grid-like form or pattern on the top side of the blister packs." The change in the arrangement of the lattice is tracked as the pocket height changes with pressure. A camera takes "latticed pictures" at a first pressure and at one or more second pressures, and a processor compares the latticed pictures (with thresholding, intensity inversion, particle filtering, regions of interest) to detect deflection. A first latticed picture can serve as a "base" reference for subsequent comparison. The output identifies which pack/pocket is good (green) or defective (red).

§ 102 mapping:

The dispositive distinction: in WO 2011/098788 the lattice is projected on the test piece (the blister pocket's lid foil), whereas granted claim 1 requires the grid on "a portion of the film" of the film chamber — the chamber wall onto which the outer contour has been transferred. Under a literal reading of "a film of the film chamber," WO 2011/098788 does not anticipate granted claim 1.

Assessment: This is the single most dangerous reference because it supplies exactly the element US 7,665,346 lacks. The natural § 103 combination — US 7,665,346 (chamber-wall contour transfer + camera + reference/no-failure image) in view of WO 2011/098788 (lattice illumination on a flexible sheet + latticed images at two pressures + processor comparison) — covers every element of granted claim 1 and its dependents 2, 3 and 6. Both references are in the same field (vacuum leak detection by optical observation of a deflecting flexible membrane over packaged product) and both published years before the 2016 priority date.

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3.3 EP 1 333 267 A1 — Sepha; laser stripe / structured-light anticipation of claims 1 and 3

Full citation: EP 1 333 267 A1, Method of leak detection. Applicant: Sepha Limited (GB). Published 2003-08-06; priority 2002-01-25. Family: GB 2384554 A.
URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/EP1333267A1

Description: Method steps: (a) apply at least partial vacuum around the package to a first pressure; (b) optically monitor a dimension of the package at that pressure; (c) apply a step change in pressure to one or more second pressures while optically monitoring; (d) analyse the dimension change to determine presence/absence of a leak. Optical monitoring may use structured light — "a single beam of light in the form of spot, line, array, strip" — scanned across the package with triangulation; or a laser line illumination with CCD camera and beam splitter projecting "one or more illumination stripes onto the package," with the processor digitizing and analysing stripe positions to determine spatial positions. Critically: "the dimension can be analysed to compare it with a normal or 'expected' dimension for a secure/sealed/safe package." Gross leaks show no deflection.

§ 102 mapping:

Assessment: Anticipates no granted claim as a whole, but is a strong § 103 secondary reference for claims 3 and 5 and reinforces the projected-pattern concept.

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3.4 DE 10 2012 200 063 A1 / US 2014/0326051 A1 / US 9,810,600 B2 — the incorporated-by-reference parent concept

Full citation: DE 10 2012 200 063 A1, Verfahren zur Lecksuche an einem nicht-starren Prüfling. Applicant: Inficon GmbH. Published 2013-07-04; priority 2012-01-03. US counterpart: US 2014/0326051 A1, published 2014-11-06; granted as US 9,810,600 B2 on 2017-11-07; filed 2012-12-28; inventors Daniel Wetzig and Silvio Decker.
URL: https://patents.justia.com/patent/[9810600](/patent/9810600)

Description: Introduce a non-rigid test specimen into a film chamber; lower the pressure outside the specimen; the flexible chamber walls "cling to the test specimen" and support it; detect a leak from a spatial change in the film — by laser-optical measurement of film surface position (deflection of a laser), capacitance change of a metallized film surface, or contact/no-contact sensing. Leakage rate is computed from the measured spatial change; pressure reduced by ≥ 500 mbar, preferably ≥ 950 mbar.

§ 102 mapping:

Assessment: Anticipates no granted claim, but is the closest conceptual prior art and the statutory springboard for the invention — the patent text itself concedes the gap at [0006] ("it is not possible… to determine which of the test pieces is leaking"). Note two subtleties:

• § 102(a)(1): the 2014-11-06 publication of US 2014/0326051 A1 (and the 2013-07-04 DE publication) are printed publications predating the 2016-01-29 priority date — so despite the express incorporation by reference in the US 10,852,212 specification, this art remains § 102(a)(1) prior art. Incorporation by reference does not neutralize prior-art status.
• § 102(a)(2) exception: US 9,810,600 B2's grant date (2017-11-07) postdates the priority date, but its effective filing date (2012-12-28 / 2012-01-03) precedes it, so it is a § 102(a)(2) candidate. However, its inventors (Wetzig, Decker) overlap with US 10,852,212's inventors and both are commonly owned by Inficon, so the § 102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership exception would likely remove it from § 102(a)(2). The § 102(a)(1) printed-publication route via the 2014-11-06 publication remains available. This is a nuance worth flagging rather than collapsing.

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3.5 US 6,955,076 B1 — film-chamber structure only

Full citation: US 6,955,076 B1, Foil leak detection chamber. Assignee: Leybold Vakuum GmbH. Granted 2005-10-18; priority 1999-07-27. Inventors: Widt et al.
URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6955076

Description: A foil leak detection chamber with two hinged frames, foils clamped thereon forming a test chamber between them, a seal between the frames, and bore holes connectable to a vacuum pump. The invention is an evacuable edge zone (14) independent of the test chamber (8) formed between a double seal (12, 13) or between a sealing lip (18) and the foil contact line, allowing the chamber to be closed and held rapidly while remaining tight. Test gas detection via the connected leak-detection instrument.

§ 102 mapping: Discloses the chamber architecture (film chamber, sealing, evacuation) — i.e. the apparatus context of claim 1's preamble. Discloses no imaging of a film contour, no reference-image comparison, no grid, and detection is by test gas, which the patent under analysis expressly moves away from. Anticipates no granted claim. Relevant only as a § 103 secondary reference for the film-chamber environment, and as the source of the specification's own Background discussion at [0004].

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3.6 US 6,732,571 B1 — conventional film leak detector

Full citation: US 6,732,571 B1, Film leak detector. Assignee: Inficon GmbH. Granted 2004-05-11; priority 1998-10-10. Inventor: Flosbach.

Description: A film-type leak detector (conventional test-gas architecture in a film chamber). Same-applicant art establishing the applicant's own pre-existing film-chamber leak-detection line. Discloses no optical contour imaging, no reference images, no grid. Anticipates no granted claim. § 103 secondary reference only.

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3.7 US 2008/0127716 A1 — testing flexible packages for defects

Full citation: US 2008/0127716 A1, Apparatus and Method for Testing Flexible Packages for Defects. Inventor: Matts Eliasson. Published 2008-06-05; priority 2004-06-07.

Description (limited confidence — full text not retrieved in this session): Cited on the face of both US 10,852,212 and its parent US 9,810,600; appears in the FPO reference list for US 2019/0033163 A1. It concerns apparatus/methods for testing flexible packages for defects. I did not independently verify its disclosure, so I decline to assign it claim-level § 102 effect. Given the field, it is best characterised as a § 103 environment reference at most.

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3.8 EP 2 584 334 A1 (Nissan) / US 2013/0141571 A1 — air-tightness test for sealed batteries

Full citation: EP 2 584 334 A1, Air tightness test method and air tightness test device for sealed batteries. Applicant: Nissan Motor Co., Ltd. Published 2013-04-24; priority 2010-06-17. Family: US 2013/0141571 A1 (published 2013-06-06); WO 2011/158878 A1; JP 5875516 B2; CN 103026197 A; KR 2013-0028962 A; RU 2013102078 A.

Description (limited confidence — full text not retrieved): The EPO rated this X against published claim 1. Based on the title, family and field, it concerns applying a pressure change to a sealed battery in a test chamber and determining airtightness from the resulting deformation/behaviour of the (flexible-cased) cell. I flag that I did not verify the specification text in this session, so I do not assert which granted claim elements it discloses. It is materially outside the film-chamber line of art and appears to have been cited as a generic "vacuum chamber + observe dimensional change of a flexible-walled article" reference.

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3.9 US 2010/0170326 A1 — leak detection in composite tools

Full citation: US 2010/0170326 A1, Leak detection in composite tools. Assignee: The Boeing Company. Published 2010-07-08; priority 2006-12-22. Inventor: Miller, Finley B.

Description (limited confidence): Appears in the ISR continuation as a further cited document (category not legible in the OCR of the search report). Concerns leak detection in composite tooling — a different application domain. Not a serious § 102/§ 103 reference for the granted claims; it reaches the film-chamber art at most as a generic vacuum leak-detection teaching.

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4. Summary § 102 / § 103 matrix against the granted claims

Legend: ✅ disclosed · ⚠️ partial/arguable · ❌ absent.

Bottom line on anticipation: No reference cited on the face of US 10,852,212 anticipates any granted claim under § 102. Granted claim 1 requires the conjunctive combination of (i) outer-contour transfer onto the chamber film, (ii) image capture of that contour, (iii) comparison against reference images produced by tight test pieces, and (iv) a grid on the captured film portion whose position is monitored and evaluated. Element (iv) is absent from every cited reference, and elements (i)–(iii) are not jointly disclosed by any single one. The real exposure is § 103, with the US 7,665,346 + WO 2011/098788 combination being the strongest — it supplies every claim-1 element across two references in the same technical field, both published well before the 2016-01-29 priority date, and the EPO had already flagged both as X-category.

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5. Forward citations (NOT prior art — listed to avoid confusion)

These post-date the priority date and cannot be § 102/§ 103 art against US 10,852,212; they are cited only for family/landscape context:

• US 11,143,571 B2, Film chamber having double film, Inficon GmbH, 2021-10-12 — the only forward citation identified.
• Family citing documents: DE 10 2017 222 308 A1 (Inficon, 2019-06-13); DE 10 2021 113 754 A1 (mb bergmann GmbH, 2022-12-01); JP 7823421 B2 (2026-03-04); US 12,571,699 B2 (Zaxis, Inc., 2026-03-10); DE 10 2024 102 184 A1 (Inficon, 2025-07-31); CN 119901415 A (2025-04-29).
• Family cites (clearly immaterial): JP H05-346365 A (1993, water/oil gathering detection); US 7,890,180 B2 (Cardiac Pacemakers, secure remote access).

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6. Uncertainties and explicit non-assertions

1. US 2008/0127716 A1 (Eliasson) and EP 2 584 334 A1 (Nissan): full specifications not retrieved in this session; I rely on the ISR X-rating for the Nissan reference and make no independent claim-level anticipation assertion for either.
2. US 2010/0170326 A1 (Boeing): the ISR category was not legible in the retrieved OCR; I do not assert it was X-rated.
3. "Reference images" construction: whether a stored expected dimension/baseline (EP 1 333 267) or a no-failure photograph (US 7,665,346 FIG. 5) satisfies "reference images of the outer contour of the film as produced by tight test pieces" is a claim-construction question that materially changes the § 102 outcome for claims 1 and 5. I have flagged it rather than resolved it.
4. "Film of the film chamber" construction: whether a projected-on-the-package lattice (WO 2011/098788) or a conforming chamber-wall bladder (US 7,665,346) constitutes the claimed "film of the film chamber" is likewise dispositive and unresolved here.
5. This analysis reflects published bibliographic records and the ISR; it is not a substitute for the actual prosecution-file rejections, the examiner's cited-art listing in the US Notice of Allowance, or a formal invalidity opinion.

I'll ground this obviousness analysis by pulling details on the key prior-art references before building the combinations.

This is highly probative. Let me pull the Sepha reference's structure and check a couple of remaining references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,852,212 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Building on the bibliographic, claim-construction, and PTAB sections above. This section does not repeat them; where I rely on them I cross-reference. One item to flag up front: the prior-art retrieval for this analysis surfaced a JPO search report in the JP family member (JP 2019-507337 A) that categorizes WO 2011/098788 A1 (Sepha Limited) as an "X" reference against claim 1 of the Japanese counterpart — an independent examiner's conclusion that the closest claim of this family was not inventive over Sepha. That is a material new datum and it materially raises the § 103 exposure discussed below.

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1. Governing framework

Because the application was filed 2017-01-30 with a 2016-01-29 priority date, the AIA version of §§ 102/103 governs. Obviousness is assessed under the Graham v. John Deere factors — scope and content of the prior art, differences between the prior art and the claims, level of ordinary skill, and objective indicia — with KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), controlling on the motivation question: a combination need not be taught by the references themselves; it may rest on a "known technique" applied to a "known problem," on "design incentives" and "market demand," or simply on "common sense." MPEP § 2143 supplies the catalogue of acceptable rationales (A) through (L).

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

A POSITA here is an engineer or physicist with a bachelor's degree in mechanical, vacuum, or packaging engineering (or equivalent) and 2–4 years' experience in vacuum-based leak detection of flexible packaging, including familiarity with (i) film/foil chamber test fixtures, (ii) vacuum/pressure instrumentation, and (iii) industrial machine-vision metrology (camera-based dimensional inspection, structured-light/grid projection). This is a mature, cross-disciplinary niche — the references themselves are authored by exactly such artisans, and the art is one of predictable mechanical/optical combination, not unpredictable chemistry or biology. KSR therefore applies with full force and the "teaching, suggestion, motivation" test is a permissible route, not the exclusive one.

3. Prior-art qualification (all pre-date 2016-01-29)

Note that the Inficon-family reference (DE 10 2012 200 063 A1 / US 2014/0326051 A1) cannot be disqualified by common ownership: the § 102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership exception reaches only § 102(a)(2) art, whereas these publications are more than one year before the critical date and are therefore § 102(a)(1) prior art.

4. Claim 1 — element-by-element mapping

Claim 1 breaks into seven limitations. Here is the mapping against the three strongest reference sets:

The single genuine gap in the closest single reference (Sepha) is the "film of the film chamber" limitation — Sepha projects its lattice onto the product's own lidding, and its chamber is essentially rigid. That gap is filled verbatim by the admitted prior art DE 10 2012 200 063 A1 (the reference the patent itself incorporates by reference). The converse gap is symmetrical: DE 063 supplies the film-chamber/clinging-contour genus but has no grid, no camera, and no image comparison — the very deficiencies the patent's own Background identifies.

5. Recommended § 103 combinations and motivations

Combination A (primary): Sepha WO 2011/098788 / US 2012/0307044 + DE 10 2012 200 063 A1 / US 9,810,600 → claim 1

Motivation (KSR rationales (A), (B), (C), (F)):

1. Same field, same problem, same mechanism. Both references address non-destructive leak detection on non-rigid packages via vacuum-induced deformation of a flexible membrane — the identical problem the '212 patent addresses.
2. The combination corrects an admitted, articulated deficiency in one reference using the express teaching of the other. The '212 patent's own Background states that with DE 063 "it is not possible, in particular with a plurality of test pieces contained in the film chamber at the same time, to determine which of the test pieces is leaking," and that "the measuring accuracy depends on the variance of the volume from test piece to test piece." Sepha's lattice-projection + camera + picture-comparison scheme teaches precisely the area-resolved, per-pocket localization and the non-contact, variance-insensitive measurement that cures that defect. Under KSR, an express teaching in the art that a known technique solves a recognized problem is the paradigm case of motivation.
3. Known technique applied to a known structure. Projecting a grid/lattice onto a deforming surface and monitoring grid-line displacement is a classical structured-light topography technique (moiré/fringe projection), acknowledged by both Sepha references and by EP 1 333 267 A1 (laser stripes + camera + processor analysing "spatial positions of the stripes"). Applying that routine metrology to DE 063's film chamber is a predictable use of a known technique for its known purpose.
4. No teaching away, no unexpected result. Nothing in either reference discourages combining them; the references are not physically incompatible (a transparent/portable film chamber wall with an interior camera is explicitly contemplated by DE 063's own laser-optical variant, and Sepha's FIG. 3b places the camera outside the chamber with apertures).
5. Design incentive / market demand. Food- and pharma-packaging QC demands "which unit failed," not merely "something failed" — Sepha states the goal of flagging the defective pocket on screen; DE 063's operator must instead re-test units individually. Combining yields the predictable, expected improvement.

Result: every limitation of claim 1 is disclosed, and the combination is obvious. Strength: high.

Combination B: US 7,665,346 (PTI) + Sepha WO 2011/098788 (or EP 1 333 267 A1) → claim 1

PTI already teaches a flexible imperforate bladder/diaphragm — functionally the "film" — that conforms to the package surface under vacuum, a camera that images it, and that the "configuration of the surface of the bladder after a test will provide a location of a seal defect as well as a verification of a leak." Add Sepha's lattice-grid projection and picture comparison (or EP 1 333 267's "expected dimension for a secure package"), and claim 1 falls. Motivation: PTI's bladder-imaging system lacks quantitative, area-resolved deformation data; the grid supplies exactly that, and grid projection onto a membrane imaged by a camera is a known, predictable improvement. Strength: high (and, being a second independent route to the same result, it forecloses the patent owner's ability to distinguish on the "film of the film chamber" point if PTI's bladder is construed as that film).

Combination C: DE 10 2012 200 063 A1 + EP 1 333 267 A1 → claim 1

EP 1 333 267 A1 (Sepha) already uses structured light (spot, line, array, strip — hence a grid pattern), a camera, and a processor to "analyse the progression of the spot … at each pressure stage," and expressly says the dimension "can be analysed to compare it with a normal or 'expected' dimension for a secure/sealed/safe package" — i.e., a tight-part reference — and that "one or more packages simultaneously, as long as each package is monitorable," may be analysed. Combined with DE 063's film chamber, claim 1 is obvious. Strength: high.

Combination D (fallback): DE 10 2012 200 063 A1 + US 2008/0127716 A1 (Eliasson) + Sepha

Eliasson supplies a vacuum chamber, a flexible diaphragm that stretches over the package, and an optical (laser) dimensional measurement compared at t₀ and t₀+Δt (temporal comparison), plus batch testing. Add Sepha's grid to reach limitation (g). Strength: moderate-high.

6. Dependent claims 2–6

Claims 2–5 add little independent weight. Only claim 4 has even a colorable argument, and it fails on the patent's own "as an alternative" characterization.

7. The patent owner's best arguments — and why they likely fail

1. "Sepha's grid is on the product, not on a film of the film chamber." Correct as a literal reading, but irrelevant to § 103: DE 10 2012 200 063 A1 supplies the film-chamber limitation verbatim, and the motivation to combine is supplied by the patent's own admitted deficiency. This is the single most important vulnerability of the patent.
2. "Sepha compares two images of the same package at different pressures, not to reference images from tight test pieces." This is the best nonobviousness argument, and it is substantial — the "as produced by tight test pieces" language is a claim limitation, not mere intended use. It weakens if the patent owner also asserts a doctrine-of-equivalents infringement theory (which would estop the argument), and it is defeated by EP 1 333 267 A1's express comparison to "a normal or 'expected' dimension for a secure/sealed/safe package," plus US 7,665,346's pass-configuration output. A POSITA would also regard a stored known-good reference library as a routine machine-vision implementation choice. Expect this to be the battleground.
3. "The examiner already had Sepha and DE 063 of record and allowed the claim." True — both Sepha references and DE 10 2012 200 063 A1 appear on the face of the patent. But allowance over individually considered references does not foreclose a combination rationale never articulated by the examiner — and the JPO's X-categorization of WO 2011/098788 against claim 1 in the parallel family shows a second examiner drew the opposite conclusion on essentially this art. This argument now cuts against the patent owner's credibility.
4. Secondary considerations (§ 716). I found no evidence — no litigation, no licensing campaign, no industry praise, no copying allegation, and no long-felt-need narrative in the record (consistent with the litigation and PTAB sections above). Absent a nexus to an unexpected result, objective indicia cannot rescue the claims. The claimed benefit (localizing the leaking unit) was already achieved by Sepha and by US 7,665,346, which undermines rather than supports a nexus.

8. Practical conclusions

• Claim 1 is invalid under § 103 on at least three independent two-reference combinations, with Combination A (Sepha + DE 10 2012 200 063 A1) the strongest and cleanest. Claims 2, 3, 5 and 6 fall with equal or greater ease; claim 4 is the only limitation with plausible argumentative space.
• District court vs. PTAB split. Because the entire primary combination is within the face-of-patent set, it is analytically devastating in a § 282 district-court setting (the record shows the examiner never articulated the combination). At the PTAB, the same combination invites a § 325(d) discretionary-denial fight — consistent with the PTAB section above. A petitioner should therefore lead with a non-cumulative primary reference, or with Sepha-plus-EP 1 333 267 A1 in a configuration and with a rationale the examiner never addressed, and should plead the KSR rationales expressly (rationale (C) — solving the admitted localization deficiency — being the most defensible).
• Verification item. The "X" citation of WO 2011/098788 A1 against claim 1 appears in the JPO search report reproduced in the JP family document at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/1e/a2/d5/7d5e2ef20a5be4/JP2019507337A.pdf — I have read this from the retrieved text of that document and recommend confirming it against the JPO's own file inspection (J-PlatPat) before relying on it in a filing. I have not verified any U.S. prosecution record of the same rationale.

Overall confidence: High that claim 1 is obvious over Sepha + DE 10 2012 200 063 A1 (Combination A) as a matter of § 103 law and claim-mapping. Moderate on the "reference images … from tight test pieces" sub-limitation of element (f), which is the patent's most defensible term and requires either EP 1 333 267 A1 or an assertion that a stored good-part baseline is a routine design choice.