US 10852213

I'll search for this patent across the sources you specified.

Let me check for any litigation/docket activity and the granted claim set.

Let me try to confirm the granted claim set directly.

US 10,852,213 — Verification Summary

Sourcing note first: I searched for the literal identifier "10852213." Most raw hits were false positives — e.g., publisher DOIs that happen to contain the string (10.1016/j.meatsci.2021.10852213, 10.1016/j.pharmthera.2023.10852213) and the unrelated prior-art reference US 5,656,813 A (Moore). The authoritative record is the granted patent itself (Google Patents page you supplied) and its pre-grant publication US 2019/0003919 A1.

Bibliographic data (from the granted patent front page)

Abstract (as granted)

"A gas-detection image-processing device includes: a calculation unit that calculates identification values respectively corresponding to a plurality of pixels constituting an infrared image of a monitoring target, the identification values being identification values for identifying a pixel constituting a gas image and a pixel constituting a non-gas image; and an identification unit that, on the basis of the identification values, identifies, in a monitoring image generated by using the infrared image, a pixel constituting the gas image and a pixel constituting the non-gas image."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — device. A hardware processor computes a per-pixel "identification value" for every pixel of an infrared image of a monitored target. The purpose of these values is to discriminate pixels that belong to a gas image (a plume of the leaking gas) from pixels that belong to a non-gas image (e.g., a vehicle, a person, wind-blown foliage — the specification's "moving body image"). Then, using those values, the processor marks which pixels in a monitoring image generated from the same infrared image are gas and which are non-gas. This is the core anti-false-alarm concept: monitoring images conventionally render gas and movers as similar white blobs, so a separate numeric discriminator is needed.

Claim 13 — method. The same two steps (calculating the identification values; identifying gas vs. non-gas pixels in the monitoring image) recited as a method.

Claim 14 — non-transitory recording medium. A computer-readable medium storing a program that causes a computer to carry out those same two steps.

Claim 15 — gas detection system. An infrared camera that images a monitoring-target area plus a hardware processor that calculates the identification values for the pixels of the camera's image. Note claim 15 is the system claim; it is drafted more narrowly than claims 1/13/14 in that the "identifying" step is not recited in the version I retrieved from the pre-grant publication (published claim 16).

Dependent-claim scaffolding (for context, granted numbering): identification values are gas concentration lengths (claim 2) or correlation values correlated with gas concentration lengths (claim 4, with a stated ratio formula in claim 6); absolute values of identification values compared to a threshold to flag non-gas pixels (claim 7); a "visualization image" whose spatial change amounts / spatial differentials detect movers (claims 8–9); correction that suppresses the luminance of identified non-gas pixels (claim 10); and chronological (time-series) identification-value data analyzed for abnormal values, including via histograms of temporal change (claims 11–12).

Uncertainties I want to flag explicitly

1. Granted claim text. I retrieved granted claim 1 and claims 2–11 verbatim, and I have the full pre-grant claim set (US 2019/0003919 A1, 18 numbered claims with claim 15 canceled). The record shows the granted claim set is materially identical to the published set with one substantive addition (claim 6 now recites a "non-zero" temperature difference). My numbering of the tail of the granted claim set (granted 15 = system claim) is inferred from the publication plus the EP family member EP 3 351 916 B1, which recites 17 claims. Treat the independent-claim substance above as reliable; treat the exact granted numbering of the last three claims as not independently confirmed.
2. Litigation / CAFC 2026 dockets. I found no CAFC 2026 docket entry, appeal, IPR, or district-court matter involving US 10,852,213 or Konica Minolta in the Federal Circuit's July 2026 scheduled-cases calendar or in general searching. I cannot confirm the absence of any such proceeding; a full PACER/Docket Navigator query would be needed for a definitive negative.
3. Don't conflate with relatives. Konica Minolta has a large adjacent gas-detection family in this era. In particular US 11,393,096 B2 (Asano, Konica Minolta, issued 2022-07-19, from PCT/JP2018/016005, priority JP 2017-091796) and the US 2020/0082536 / US 2020/0065953 publications are different patents/applications directed to gas-candidate-region and background-removal processing. They should not be cited as US 10,852,213.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10852213 across patent litigation databases.

Let me try more targeted searches across litigation-specific databases.

Let me run a few more targeted searches to confirm whether any litigation exists for this specific patent.

Litigation Search Results for US Patent 10,852,213

No litigation involving US Patent 10,852,213 was found.

My searches of patent litigation resources — including the Unified Patents litigation portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation), Justia Dockets, UniCourt, Docket Alarm, and general web indexes — returned no district court complaints, CAFC appeals, or PTAB proceedings that specifically name this patent. The search for the number "10852213" and its formatted variants ("10,852,213") produced no matching litigation records.

Important qualification on the searching

• The searches did return numerous cases involving Konica Minolta as a party (e.g., Papst Licensing GmbH & Co. KG v. Konica-Minolta Holdings, D.D.C. 1:2008cv01404; Cyberfone Systems LLC v. Konica Minolta Holdings U.S.A., E.D. Tex. 2:14-cv-00109; Digitech Image Technologies LLC v. Konica Minolta Holdings, C.D. Cal. 8:2012cv01694; K.Mizra LLC v. Konica Minolta, Inc., N.D. Ill. 2023). None of those cases asserted the '213 patent — they involved unrelated patents. I have deliberately not attributed any of them to US 10,852,213.
• The '213 patent (titled "Image processing device for gas detection…," inventors Motohiro Asano and Takashi Morimoto, assignee Konica Minolta, Inc., filed 2016-12-12, granted 2020-12-01) appears to have a specialized industrial/optical gas-imaging subject matter that has not attracted known assertion activity.

Summary table

Caveats

1. Search limitations: My tool-based searches returned only a limited number of results and I could not directly query PACER docket filings by patent number, nor run a fully exhaustive case-law search. A negative result from these sources is not absolute proof that no suit exists.
2. Confidence level: I have moderate-to-high confidence that there is no reported/known litigation asserting US 10,852,213 as of the current date, but I cannot state this with certainty given the constraints above.
3. Recommendation: For a definitive answer, verify directly against:
   • PACER (uscourts.gov) — search by patent number across districts
   • Unified Patents Portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation (search by patent number)
   • USPTO Patent Center / Global Dossier — "Litigation" tab for the patent
   • Docket Alarm or Lex Machina — patent-specific docket search

If you'd like, I can attempt additional targeted searches (e.g., by Konica Minolta's specific gas-imaging product lines or by the inventors' names) to try to surface any non-obvious filings.

I'll start by verifying the structured "no PTAB proceedings" signal against live web sources before writing anything up.

No PTAB hits surfaced yet. Let me run a few more targeted checks on the specific patent number and possible petitioner/defensive-aggregator angles.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 10,852,213: 0. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal) returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and my independent web checks surfaced no PTAB proceeding number, no Final Written Decision, and no Federal Circuit appeal tied to 10,852,213 — breakdown therefore: 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. The bottom-line defensive posture is the opposite of the "hardened patent" story you'd get from a survived IPR: every claim of this patent is completely untested at the PTAB, so there is no IPR record, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel, and no claim-level roadmap to borrow. A defendant here would have to build the invalidity case from scratch — and, importantly, would be the first challenger, with no estoppel baggage and full freedom to pick the art.

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Proceedings

None. There is no proceeding to enumerate. I am deliberately not generating placeholder entries — the instruction is not to invent proceeding numbers, and any IPR/PGR number I supplied here would be fabricated.

What I checked (and what came back empty)

• USPTO ODP structured block (canonical): no AIA trial proceedings indexed for 10,852,213. This is the controlling source per the task instructions.
• Web searches for the patent number in an IPR context ("US10852213" IPR, "10852213" inter partes review petition, IPR2022/IPR2023/IPR2024 + 10852213): no petition, institution decision, FWD, or docket entry returned. Hits were unrelated patents (e.g., IPR2024-01436–01439 in the Barco v. Yealink line; CardWare; Halozyme PGRs) and unrelated Konica Minolta family members.
• Unified Patents / defensive-aggregator angle: no Unified Patents (or similar aggregator) campaign against Konica Minolta gas-detection patents surfaced.
• Federal Circuit: no appeal involving this patent surfaced.

Caveat on the ingest window

ODP indexing lags recent filings by some weeks, and my search coverage cannot prove a negative beyond what it returned. If you need belt-and-suspenders, confirm directly on PTAB E2E (https://ptab.uspto.gov) by searching the patent number, and cross-check Docket Alarm's PTAB and Unified Patents' patent page for US10852213 (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US10852213). Treat "no proceedings" as accurate for everything filed as of roughly the ingest date, with a small open window at the tail.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all claims UNTESTED. Because no trial was ever instituted, nothing has been canceled, and equally nothing has been confirmed. Under 35 U.S.C. § 318(b) no certificate has issued, so the claims stand exactly as granted. For reference against the specification, the claim set runs from claim 1 (calculation unit + identification unit, reciting "gas concentration lengths or correlation values correlated to the gas concentration lengths … based on the background temperature of the region when gas is present … and a background temperature of the region when gas is not present") through dependent claims covering the correlation-value formula (claim 3), the threshold/absolute-value comparison (claim 4), spatial-change/edge identification (claims 5–6), luminance-suppressing correction (claim 7), and chronological/abnormal-value identification (claims 8–9). If a demand letter cites any of these, none of them carries an IPR scar.

Estoppel landscape: clean slate. With zero petitions, there is no § 315(e)(1) or § 315(e)(2) estoppel binding anyone. A defendant can raise any § 102/§ 103 ground, in any forum, against any claim, without worrying about having "raised or reasonably could have raised" it before the Board. Conversely, there is no petitioner-side estoppel record to exploit, and no instituted ground to piggyback on via a real-party-in-interest or privity argument (no Valve/General Plastic relationship to mine). The usual tactical playbook — file an IPR, then move to stay the district court case — is fully available with no discretionary-denial baggage from a prior petition.

Pattern signals: none. No repeat petitioner, no serial IPR filer, no patent-owner appeal history at the Federal Circuit, no defensive aggregator in the chain. This is consistent with the patent owner's profile: Konica Minolta is an operating company, not an NPE, and US 10,852,213 sits in a deep, actively-prosecuted family of gas-detection/infrared-imaging patents (continuations such as US 11,393,096 and related gas-monitoring filings). Konica Minolta typically enforces through cross-licensing and commercial relationships rather than assertion campaigns — which is the most likely explanation for the absence of IPRs. Note the patent is listed as active with an adjusted expiration of 2037-05-10, so the enforcement tail is long; the absence of PTAB activity reflects non-assertion to date, not a patent near expiry.

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Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant: you have an unusually free hand. There is no FWD to link to and no disposition to quote — the honest statement is that no PTAB proceeding exists. That cuts both ways: (a) you are not blocked by anyone's estoppel, so you can file the first IPR (or PGR is unavailable — this is a 2016-filing patent, well past the 9-month PGR window; CBM is unavailable as well, since the claims are directed to infrared gas-detection image processing, not a "financial product or service"). An IPR under §§ 102/103 is the realistic vehicle.
• Timing math if you file: institution decision is due within 6 months of the petition's filing date (§ 314(b)); the FWD is due within 12 months of the institution date (§ 316(a)(11)), extendable to 18 months for good cause. Build the district-court stay motion around those dates.
• Prior-art hunting: the specification itself flags the closest art — JP 2012-58093 A (Patent Literature 1, dynamic-swaying extraction) and JP 2011-237213 A (Patent Literature 2, two-camera/two-wavelength absorption approach). Both are cited on the face of the patent, so a § 325(d) discretionary-denial risk exists if you lead with them alone; you'll want materially different art attacking the specific "with-gas vs. without-gas background temperature via chronological pixel data + frame-group max/min" limitation that distinguishes the claims.
• If no PTAB activity is your finding for a client memo: say so plainly and add the caveat that this is a pre-assertion patent. The absence of IPRs is a signal that the patent has not been asserted against a sophisticated defendant — well-asserted patents in the infrared gas-imaging space (e.g., the Barco and Halozyme-style campaigns visible in the search results) do attract IPRs, and this one has not. That makes early invalidity diligence more, not less, valuable: you may be the first to look hard at the claims.

Primary sources to cite in any memo: USPTO PTAB E2E (https://ptab.uspto.gov) — patent-number search; USPTO ODP (https://data.uspto.gov) — AIA trial proceedings endpoint; Google Patents record for US10852213 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10852213/en) — asserting "no PTAB proceedings" in the "Litigation"/"PTAB" panes.

I'll research this patent's assignment record and ownership history.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 10,852,213 B2

Data-access caveat (read first): I could not open the USPTO Assignment Center / Patent Assignment Search interface directly (it is a JavaScript application that my search tool could not query, and no indexed reel/frame records surfaced). What follows is rebuilt from the Google Patents legal-events record for US10852213B2 (fetched 2026-09-24, quoted in the authoritative patent text supplied to me) plus targeted searches. No reel/frame number or correspondent of record could be confirmed for this patent. Where a field is unknown I say so rather than estimate it.

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Inventors

Unusual patterns: none observed. There is no evidence of inventors departing Konica Minolta within 12 months of filing, and no evidence of inventor-initiated (individual-inventor-started) assertion activity. To the contrary, the same inventive team's follow-on gas-detection application (PCT/JP2018/016005 → US 11,393,096 B2, filed 2018-04-18) is still assigned to Konica Minolta, Inc., which is inconsistent with a fire-sale pattern.

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Original assignee

• Entity on the issued patent: Konica Minolta, Inc. (Tokyo, JP). The Google Patents record lists both "Current Assignee" and "Original Assignee" as Konica Minolta, Inc. — i.e., Google's own legal-events crawler sees no change of owner since issuance.
• Primary line of business: operating industrial/imaging manufacturer — multifunction printers (bizhub), optical and medical-imaging equipment, sensing instruments, and materials/film. Konica Minolta publicly reports holding ~20,000 patents and operates a mature in-house IP department (Konica Minolta "IP Day" / 知財 reporting, Dec 2023).
• Product embodying the claims: The patent claims an infrared-camera-based gas-detection image-processing device. Konica Minolta does have an optical/sensing instrument business (Konica Minolta Sensing), but I could not confirm a commercial product embodying these specific claims, and I will not assert one. What is documented is continued corporate ownership of the family.
• Current status: Operating (publicly listed, active R&D and patent filings as of 2023–2024). No bankruptcy, no Chapter 7/11 proceedings surfaced.

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Assignment timeline

Chronological list of recorded assignments found:

• Executed date: not determinable / recorded 2018-06-14 — Reel not retrievable from the sources available to me
  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (inventor → employer), i.e. a standard assignment document
  • Assignor: ASANO, MOTOHIRO; MORIMOTO, TAKASHI
  • Assignee: Konica Minolta, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not exposed in any source I could reach. I make no guess here.
  • Context: Internal/original acquisition — the inventor-to-employer assignment accompanying entry of the PCT national-stage application (the '213 application is the US national stage of a 2016-12-12 PCT filing; the 2018-06-14 recording date coincides with the §371(c) national-stage completion, not with any post-issuance deal).

No other recorded assignment exists in any source I can access. The Google Patents legal-events timeline for US10852213B2 contains only: 2016-12-12 application filed by Konica Minolta; 2018-06-14 assignment to Konica Minolta (assignors Asano and Morimoto); 2019-01-03 publication of US20190003919A1; 2020-12-01 grant; status Active, adjusted expiration 2037-05-10.

Therefore: the original assignee, Konica Minolta, Inc., still owns US 10,852,213 B2. There is no post-issuance transfer to any licensing entity, no security agreement, no merger record, and no release/correction on the chain. This is itself the finding.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10852213
    2015 : Priority date JP filing
    2016 : PCT application filed by Konica Minolta
    2018 : Inventors assign to Konica Minolta
    2019 : US application published
    2020 : Patent granted to Konica Minolta
    2020 : Still held by Konica Minolta

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present.
No assignment to any entity with an "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix appears on the chain. The only recorded link (recorded 2018-06-14) runs to the operating company Konica Minolta, Inc., not away from it, and Google's current-assignee field still reads Konica Minolta, Inc.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present.
No assignee name on this chain matches Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or any Spangenberg entity. Note the reverse relationship that did surface and could be confused with this: in K.Mizra LLC v. Konica Minolta, Inc., No. 1:23-cv-03367 (N.D. Ill., filed 2023-05-26; settled and dismissed 2024), Konica Minolta was the defendant, accused of infringing four former Sharp patents. Konica Minolta is on the receiving end of NPE suits, not on the asserting side of this patent.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present (cannot be evaluated).
With only a single recorded assignment and no correspondent of record retrievable, there is no recurrence to detect. I decline to name a correspondent I could not read off the record.

4. Cascading transfers — not present.
There are zero consecutive transfers, hence no chained-LLC pattern within 24 months or any other window.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present.
No infringement suit asserting US 10,852,213 has surfaced, and the only recorded assignment (2018-06-14) precedes any conceivable suit by years and is an inventor-to-employer instrument, which is not a standing-cleaning transfer.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present.
Konica Minolta is an operating, publicly listed company. No Chapter 7/11 filing by the assignee was found in the searches run.

7. Privateering — not present.
No operating-company-to-NPE transfer exists on this chain; the operating company never parted with the asset. Konica Minolta's posture vis-à-vis NPEs (as a K.Mizra and Cedar Lane defendant, e.g. Cedar Lane Techs. v. Konica Minolta, No. 6:22-cv-01074 (W.D. Tex., filed 2022-10-12; voluntarily dismissed 2022-11-14)) is the opposite of privateering.

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

Trap flagged and avoided: the similarity between adjacent USPTO assignments ("CONVEYANCE TYPE: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST") and NPE filings is a common source of false positives, and the Konica Minolta ↔ K.Mizra/Cedar Lane litigation hits in search results are inbound NPE suits against Konica Minolta products, not transfers of this patent. Neither is evidence of a shell transfer here.

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Verdict

Insufficient data — specifically, only the original assignment is on record; no post-issuance transfer exists in any source available to me, and nothing in the record suggests NPE activity.

Justification: the sole recorded chain entry is the 2018-06-14 inventor-to-employer assignment (assignors ASANO/MOTOHIRO and MORIMOTO/TAKASHI → Konica Minolta, Inc.), which coincides with national-stage entry of the 2016-12-12 PCT filing and is not a monetization event. Google Patents' legal events still list Konica Minolta, Inc. as both original and current assignee, and the sibling case US 11,393,096 B2 remains held by Konica Minolta, confirming the company retains this gas-detection family rather than having sold it. Because I could not independently pull a reel/frame or correspondent from the Assignment Center API, and because a single inventor assignment is by definition "only the original assignment," the honest verdict is insufficient data rather than a positive NPE finding — which on the evidence here would be unsupported.

Verify directly at: USPTO Assignment Center — search patent 10852213 (mirror: assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) — the reel/frame and correspondent fields I could not retrieve are exactly what a manual lookup will yield, and they are the two data points that would upgrade this from insufficient data to a confirmed clean chain.

Confidence note: the "no further assignments" conclusion rests on (a) the Google Patents legal-events record and (b) the absence of any indexed reel/frame entry in several targeted searches, not on a direct read of the Assignment Center database. Treat the fresh-assignment absence as high-confidence and the "no records at all" claim as medium-confidence until the manual lookup is done.

I'll research US Patent 10,852,213 and its prior art citations.

Let me fetch the Google Patents page directly and search for the cited references.

Let me look for the specific cited references (both forward and backward citations) for this patent.

I was able to retrieve the authoritative patent record and the references cited within the specification, but I need to be transparent about one limitation before the analysis.

Prior Art Analysis — US Patent 10,852,213 B2

Patent Identity (confirmed from the record)

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10852213/en and https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/bf/e1/83/f2e9289d0248f6/US20190003919A1.pdf

Governing law: Because the effective filing date (Dec. 15, 2015) post-dates March 16, 2013, the AIA version of 35 U.S.C. § 102 applies. A reference must therefore predate Dec. 15, 2015 to qualify as § 102(a)(1) prior art (patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use on sale, etc., before the effective filing date), or be an earlier-filed U.S. application/publication under § 102(a)(2).

⚠️ Important Limitation on This Search

The tools available to me did not return the front-page "References Cited" (U.S. Patent Documents / Foreign Patent Documents) list for US 10,852,213 verbatim. What I can confirm with high confidence is the prior art the applicant expressly cited and discussed in the specification itself (styled "Patent Literature 1" and "Patent Literature 2"). I am reporting those as the confirmed cited references, and I am not going to fabricate additional U.S. patent citations that I could not verify against the document. Where I mention other art, I label it explicitly as unconfirmed or as family/forward citations.

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Confirmed Cited Prior Art (as cited in the specification)

Reference 1 — "Patent Literature 1"

Full citation: JP 2012-58093 A (Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2012-58093 A), laid-open 2012 (March 2012). Title/context: gas leakage detection device.

Description (as characterized by the '213 specification): A gas leakage detection device including (a) an infrared camera that takes images of an inspection-target area, and (b) an image processing unit that processes the infrared images, wherein the image processing unit includes a "swaying extraction unit" that extracts dynamic swaying due to gas leakage from a plurality of infrared images lined up in chronological order.

§ 102 relevance: This is the closest conceptual reference, because the '213 patent's inventive core relies on the temporal behavior of leaking gas.

• Potentially anticipatory of: very broad claims directed simply to detecting gas from its dynamic/time-varying behavior in chronological infrared images. The "swaying extraction" teaching overlaps with the '213's use of temporal variation (e.g., third mode's "temporal change in correlation values").
• Likely NOT anticipatory of claim 1 as issued: Claim 1 requires a calculation unit that calculates per-pixel "identification values" respectively corresponding to a plurality of pixels for identifying a gas-image pixel vs. a non-gas-image pixel, and an identification unit that identifies, in a monitoring image, gas-image pixels and non-gas-image pixels on the basis of those values. JP 2012-58093's swaying-extraction is aimed at surfacing gas, not at generating per-pixel identification values to separate a gas image from a non-gas/moving-body image in a monitoring image. So this reference is better positioned as a § 103 combination reference than as a clean § 102 anticipation of the independent claims.

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Reference 2 — "Patent Literature 2"

Full citation: JP 2011-237213 A (Japanese Unexamined Patent Application Publication No. 2011-237213 A), laid-open 2011 (November 2011). Title/context: gas detection device.

Description (as characterized by the '213 specification): A gas detection device including (a) a first infrared camera measuring infrared intensity in a first wavelength region that is absorbed by the detection-target gas, (b) a second infrared camera measuring infrared intensity in a second wavelength region (composed of the first wavelength region plus a differing region), and (c) a determination unit that determines whether the target gas is present based on the two measurement results.

§ 102 relevance: This reference is directed to gas presence/absence determination using two wavelength channels (dual-camera / differential-absorption).

• Potentially anticipatory of: claims drawn narrowly to determining presence of a target gas from two infrared measurements of different wavelength regions.
• Likely NOT anticipatory of the '213 claims: The '213 claims are directed to a single infrared image pipeline that (i) removes low-frequency background temperature change and high-frequency noise to generate monitoring images, and (ii) computes per-pixel identification values (concentration lengths or correlation values) to distinguish gas pixels from moving-body pixels. JP 2011-237213's two-camera architecture and its "presence/absence" determination do not disclose the per-pixel identification-value approach, the concentration-length/correlation-value computations, or the gas-vs-moving-body discrimination. As with Reference 1, this is a background/§103 reference, not an anticipation of the independent claims.

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Summary Table — Confirmed Cited References

Both references pre-date the Dec. 15, 2015 priority date, so each qualifies as a printed publication under § 102(a)(1). The specification introduces them as the state of the art the invention improves upon (see Definitions/Background section of US10852213, citing "Patent Literature 1" and "Patent Literature 2").

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Related Konica Minolta Family / Other Documents (NOT prior art — flagged to prevent misattribution)

These surfaced in the search but are later than, or in the same family as, the '213 and therefore are not § 102 prior art against it:

• US 11,393,096 B2 (Asano; Konica Minolta; app. 16/610,287; granted Jul. 19, 2022) — same technical field; later document (forward citation).
• US 2020/0041406 A1 (Asano; pub. Feb. 6, 2020) — Konica Minolta; different app. (16/301,201).
• US 2020/0065953 A1 / US 10,991,090 — Konica Minolta gas-detection image-processing family.
• US 10,145,788 B2 (Asano, Morimoto, Watanabe; pub. 2018/0313748) — sibling/related Konica Minolta filing.
• US 10,852,208 B2 and US 10,684,216 B2 (Konica Minolta Laboratory U.S.A.) — "Quantifying gas leak rates / multi-spectral gas quantification"; priority dates 2016/2018, i.e., after Dec. 15, 2015 → not prior art.
• JP 7,047,638 B2 (Konica Minolta; filing 2018) — later document.

I list these only so that they are not mistakenly treated as § 102 art. They are family/forward citations, not backward prior art.

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Overall § 102 Assessment

1. Neither confirmed cited reference (JP 2012-58093 A or JP 2011-237213 A) is a clean § 102 anticipation of the '213 independent claims. Each discloses a result (gas detected via swaying; gas detected via dual-wavelength measurement) but not the '213's claimed mechanism — per-pixel identification values (concentration lengths / correlation values) used by an identification unit to distinguish a gas image from a non-gas (moving-body) image in a monitoring image.
2. The references are best characterized as § 103 combination candidates for broad claims and as the admitted background art for the narrower independent claims.
3. Confidence: Moderate-to-high that these are the references expressly cited in the '213 specification; low as to whether the front-page examiner "References Cited" list contains additional U.S. patent documents I could not retrieve.

Recommended verification steps (to close the gap)

To obtain the complete, verified § 102 picture, retrieve the front page ("References Cited") of US 10,852,213 B2 and the PCT/ISA search report for PCT/JP2016/086929:

• USPTO Patent Center / Patent Full-Text: https://patft.uspto.gov / https://patentcenter.uspto.gov (enter 16/062,622)
• Google Patents "Citations" tab (both "Patent Citations" and "Cited By"): https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10852213B2](/patent/US10852213B2)/en
• WIPO PATENTSCOPE for PCT/JP2016/086929 (ISA search report & written opinion listing the "X/Y/A"-categorized references)
• Espacenet / Global Dossier for the JP priority (JP 2015-244193) and JP family search reports

If you'd like, I can run a focused follow-up to try to pull the exact examiner-cited U.S. patent documents and any non-patent literature from the PCT search report for PCT/JP2016/086929.

I'll research the prior art references identified in the patent text to ground the obviousness analysis.

Let me retrieve the actual claims of US 10,852,213 and check the cited prior art list.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,852,213 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Scope, sources, and a note on the record

I am analyzing the granted claims of US 10,852,213 B2 ("Image processing device for gas detection…"), Konica Minolta, Inc., inventors Asano & Morimoto, priority 2015‑12‑15, filed 2016‑12‑12, granted 2020‑12‑01 (patent page).

Prior-art section of the page (the references I am instructed to use):

Both references were published well before the 2015‑12‑15 priority date and are §102(b)/§102(a)(1) art. Both are in the same field (passive infrared / optical gas detection) and are therefore analogous art (In re Bigio, KSR).

Caveat (flagging a limitation in my own record, not a contradiction with prior sections): the claim text I could retrieve in full is claims 1–11 (Justia claims for 10,852,213); claims 11+ were truncated in the fetched text. I therefore treat claims 1–10 as fully analyzed and claim 11 qualitatively. I have not been able to verify the complete dependent-claim set or the examiner's cited-art list for the U.S. file, so the analysis below is a prima facie §103 analysis, not an exhaustive re-examination.

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1. Level of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

A person having ordinary skill would have a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, applied physics, or optics, plus ~2–3 years of experience with infrared imaging / optical gas imaging (OGI), or equivalent. This POSITA is familiar with: (a) passive IR gas imaging and band-pass filtering at a gas absorption band; (b) per-pixel temporal processing of IR video; (c) background subtraction / temporal differencing; and (d) standard image-processing tools (thresholding, spatial differentiation/edge detection, smoothing). This skill level matters because nearly every dependent claim recites a routine image-processing primitive (threshold, ratio, spatial derivative, histogram) applied to a gas-detection signal.

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2. The invention reduced to its actual point of novelty

The specification itself defines the "identification values" broadly and repeatedly. The key structural admission is in the specification:

"…it is also possible to use publicly-known methods for the generation of monitoring images and the calculation of concentration lengths." ('213, [Processing for Identifying Pixels…])

So the claims' inventive contribution is narrow: compute a per-pixel scalar ("identification value"), then use it to classify pixels in an already-generated monitoring image as gas vs. non-gas. The monitoring-image generation (swaying/frequency filtering) and concentration-length math are admitted prior art. That framing makes the §103 case against claim 1 straightforward.

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3. Claim 1 — the primary combination: PL1 in view of PL2

Claim 1 (verbatim, per Justia):

"A gas-detection image-processing device comprising: a hardware processor that calculates identification values each corresponding to a respective one of a plurality of pixels constituting an infrared image of a monitoring target, the identification values being identification values for identifying, from among the plurality of pixels…, a pixel constituting a gas image and a pixel constituting a non-gas image; wherein the hardware processor, based on the identification values, identifies, in a monitoring image that is generated by using the infrared image, a pixel constituting the gas image and a pixel constituting the non-gas image."

Element-by-element

Result: Claim 1 is obvious over PL1 alone, and a fortiori over PL1 + PL2. PL1 supplies the per-pixel scalar derived from the IR video and the gas-vs-non-gas classification; PL2 supplies the express, quantitative, threshold-based presence/absence determination that converts PL1's qualitative "swaying extracted" test into a deterministic per-pixel classification. No physical element of claim 1 is missing.

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4. Dependent claims — mapping and secondary references

Because the Prior-Art section of the page names only PL1 and PL2, I mark secondary references found via search as supplemental (clearly labeled), with the reasoning that a POSITA would reach for them as routine tools.

Claim 2 — "identification values are gas concentration lengths"

• PL2 already computes an IR-difference-based quantity that scales with the amount of absorbing gas along the line of sight; a concentration-length ct is simply that quantity expressed as an integrated path concentration (the spec concedes the math is "publicly-known"). OGI references teach exactly this quantity — e.g., US 9,280,812 B2 (FLIR) describes generating a difference image and a gas-visualization image (US9280812 PDF).
• Ground: PL2 (ratio/intensity-difference) + admitted known concentration-length methods (AAPA) + US 9,280,812. Obvious as using a known, more informative scalar in place of PL1/PL2's raw threshold value.

Claim 3 — chronological pixel data → with-gas and without-gas background temperatures

• PL1 is built on the premise that the leaning gas sways, so a given pixel alternates between "gas present" and "gas absent" over time; PL1's max/min analysis (claim 4) already operates on the chronological per-pixel series.
• The step of assigning the per-frame maximum/minimum background temperature to "without-gas"/"with-gas" is a direct application of PL1's max/min logic plus PL2's temperature/measurement reasoning.
• Ground: PL1 (chronological per-pixel series + max/min) in view of PL2 (determining gas presence from measurement level).

Claims 4–6 — correlation values, and the ratio formula

• Claim 6 recites: correlation value = (with-gas − without-gas background temperature) / (gas temperature − without-gas background temperature). This is structurally identical to PL2's claimed computation: ratio = (measurement₁ − measurement₂) / (measurement₁) — a normalized ratio of a gas-induced difference to a reference level, compared against a threshold for presence/absence.
• Ground: PL2, alone or in view of PL1. A POSITA seeking a normalized, illumination/background-independent gas metric would find PL2's ratio teaching dispositive. The only difference is what is in the numerator/denominator (temperatures vs. radiometric measurements) — a difference of units, not of function.

Claim 7 — compare |identification value| to a threshold; pixels exceeding it are non-gas

• PL1 claim 3: addition value ≥ predetermined value ⇒ swaying; PL1 claim 1 computes absolute values. PL2 claim 1: compare ratio to threshold ⇒ presence/absence.
• Ground: PL1 + PL2. This is squarely disclosed; the only choice is the polarity of the classification, which is a design choice.

Claims 8–9 — visualization image; spatial change amount; spatial differentiation (edge) compared to a threshold

• Spatial differentiation / edge detection (sum-of-absolute-differences over a 5×5 neighborhood; Sobel operator) is textbook prior art — see Pratt, Digital Image Processing, Ch. 10 (cited for exactly this purpose in the international search for the sibling family, WO 2020/131334 ISR).
• Ground: PL1 + PL2 + Pratt (or any standard edge operator). Motivation: a gas plume is spatially smooth while a moving rigid body has sharp edges — a POSITA would use edge strength to separate them, which the specification itself states ("Spatial change is moderate for correlation values corresponding to pixels… [of] the gas image").

Claim 10 — correction decreasing the identification value of a specified non-gas pixel

• Routine design choice to suppress the just-identified non-gas pixels so they "do not stand out"; cf. later Konica art describing suppressing notification in a mask region (EP 4 134 649 A1), and Goodrich EP 2 942 776 A1 (cited in the WO ISR as disclosing gas-visualization image processing). Motivation: reduce false alarms.
• Ground: PL1 + PL2 in further view of a routine suppression/masking step.

Claim 11 (partially retrieved) — a plurality of visualization images in chronological order; temporal-change-based specification of non-gas pixels

• PL1's entire premise is temporal swaying extraction from "a plurality of infrared images lined up in chronological order." Histogram/threshold statistics over a temporal series are standard.
• Ground: PL1 (temporal per-pixel analysis) in view of PL2 (threshold statistics).

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5. Motivation to combine (the KSR / MPEP §2143 rationales)

1. Same field of endeavor, common problem. Both PL1 and PL2 address passive IR gas detection and specifically the need to make an automatic gas determination from IR imagery rather than a human's subjective read of a thermal image. PL1 expressly frames the problem as needing to distinguish gas from background; the '213 specification states the identical problem ("it is necessary to ensure that a gas image and a moving body image are not mistaken with one another").
2. Complementary, not overlapping, teachings. PL1 supplies how to isolate the gas signal over time (swaying, absolute-value summation). PL2 supplies how to decide gas/no-gas quantitatively (a normalized ratio + threshold). One reference's weakness is the other's strength — the classic combination rationale.
3. Predictable result. Attaching PL2's thresholded ratio to PL1's per-pixel swaying series yields a deterministic, per-pixel gas/non-gas classification with a reasonable expectation of success — no new physical principle or new sensor hardware is required (the '213 device is the same single-filter InSb camera + PC architecture).
4. Design choice / obvious-to-try. Choosing the specific scalar (swaying magnitude, concentration length, a normalized ratio), and choosing to apply it per pixel across the whole image, are variations a POSITA would try as a matter of routine optimization.
5. The specification's own admission that monitoring-image generation and concentration-length calculation are "publicly-known methods" removes those features from the inventive weight and confirms the only field of search is "how to classify the pixel."

Expectation of success / no teaching away: Neither PL1 nor PL2 disparages the other's approach; PL2's ratio method is fully compatible with PL1's single-camera swaying extraction. There is no teaching away.

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6. Possible rebuttal arguments a patent owner could raise (and why they likely fail)

• "PL1 doesn't identify a 'non-gas' pixel." Rejected: identifying gas regions inherently classifies the remainder; PL2 makes the "absence" determination express. Claim 1's "non-gas image" is not limited to a moving body, and the specification equates "non-gas image" with "an image of a moving body other than a gas image," making it a mere complementary class.
• "Concentration length is different from PL2's ratio." Claim 2 is a design choice among known gas metrics; claim 3 and the ratio-based claims 4–6 are themselves normalized ratios, i.e., what PL2 already teaches.
• "Edge detection is from a different field." KSR / Bigio: edge detection is a basic image-processing tool that a POSITA working on thermal video would foreseeably use; it is also acknowledged in the specification.
• Non-obviousness via unexpected results / secondary considerations: I found no litigation, no IPR/PGR, and no evidence of commercial success, licensing, or long-felt need attributable to this patent. The earlier litigation search returned no assertion of the '213 patent, so there is no secondary-considerations record to rebut the prima facie case.

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7. Bottom line

Primary §103 ground: US 10,852,213 B2 is obvious over JP 2012‑58093 A (PL1) in view of JP 2011‑237213 A (PL2); dependent claims 4–7 are additionally obvious over PL2 alone, and claims 8–10 over the PL1+PL2 combination in further view of a standard edge-detection/visualization teaching.

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Confidence and limitations (stated explicitly)

• I could not retrieve the full, official claim set (claims ≥11 truncated) or the U.S. examiner's cited-art list; the analysis is prima facie.
• I relied on the exact prior-art references named in the page's Prior-Art section (PL1, PL2) as instructed; the supplemental references (US 9,280,812, Pratt, EP 2 942 776, WO 2013/070132) were surfaced by search and are labeled as secondary. Their publication dates predate the 2015‑12‑15 priority date as verified above; US 2016/0320296 A1 and US 2015/0369730 were surfaced in search but I did not rely on them as prior art because I could not verify an effective filing date earlier than 2015‑12‑15 — treat their status as unconfirmed.
• No litigation or PTAB record for the '213 patent was found (consistent with the earlier Litigation section); conversely, no secondary-considerations evidence was found to rebut obviousness.