US 11060867

I'll run targeted searches for this exact patent number, including any 2026 CAFC docket activity.

Let me check specifically for litigation/docket activity involving this patent.

US 11,060,867 B2 — rotation rate sensor

Search scope note (read first): I searched the open web for this exact number, including queries pairing "11060867" / "11,060,867" with Federal Circuit/2026 docket and PTAB/IPR terminology. I found no CAFC 2026 docket entry, district-court case, or PTAB proceeding naming this patent. The only substantive hits were patent-text pages for the patent itself (Google Patents, Justia). Caveat: I cannot query PACER, the CAFC's own docket system, or USPTO PTAB/PatentCenter directly, so this is an absence of evidence, not proof of no litigation. Everything below comes from the authoritative full text supplied in this thread.

Bibliographic data (from the patent text)

Assignment recorded 2018-11-14 (Reel/Frame 047496/0367). Maintenance fee, 4th year, paid 2024-12-19.

Abstract (verbatim)

"A rotation rate sensor includes a substrate and a drive structure that is movable relative to the substrate and is fastened to the substrate via a spring system that includes first and second spring components that each connects the drive structure and the substrate and that are joined by an intermediate piece, the drive structure being joined to the intermediate piece via the first portion, and the intermediate piece or a center area, which is at least partially situated between the first and second portions, being joined to the substrate via the second portion, the first and/or second portions having a respective varying base area in a respective main extension direction of the first and second portions, respectively."

One flag: the abstract describes a specific connection topology (first portion joins drive structure to intermediate piece; second portion joins intermediate piece/center area to the substrate), but granted claim 1 is broader in that respect — see below. Do not rely on the abstract as a claim-construction guide.

Plain-language overview of the sole independent claim (claim 1)

Claim 1 is an apparatus claim directed to a rotation rate sensor (a MEMS vibratory gyroscope). In plain terms, it requires:

1. A substrate and a drive structure movable relative to the substrate — the driven seismic mass of the gyroscope.
2. Fastening via a spring system that includes first and second spring components. Each spring component connects the drive structure to the substrate, and the two spring components are joined to each other via an intermediate piece (the "flying bar" of a double-folded beam suspension, DFBS).
3. The first spring component itself contains a first portion and a second portion, joined by a center area (i.e., the two arms of a U-spring, connected at a head).
4. Anchoring requirement: either the intermediate piece or the center area is joined to the substrate. (Note that this is broader than both the abstract and the description — the description states the first portion joins the drive structure to the intermediate piece and the second portion joins the intermediate piece/center area to the substrate. Claim 1 does not recite that specific routing.)
5. The point of novelty — a profiled ("varying base area") beam: at least one of (a) the first portion or (b) the second portion of the first spring component has a base area that varies along its main extension direction. "Base area" is defined in the specification as the cross-sectional surface perpendicular to the main extension direction — so the beam is stepped, tapered, or otherwise non-uniform in width and/or height along its length in the plane of the substrate. The claim is written in the alternative ("at least one of (a) … and (b) …"), so profiling either arm alone satisfies it.
6. Parallel-arm geometry: in the resting position of the sensor, the first and second portions are parallel to each other, with the same main extension direction — i.e., the classic U-spring configuration.

Technical purpose (from the specification, not the claim): varying the local cross-section reduces the mechanical nonlinearity of the drive oscillation of the DFBS (the spec reports a 45% reduction in drive-oscillation nonlinearity versus a uniform-beam comparator), while the local cross-section is adapted to hold the drive-oscillation frequency constant without changing the sensor core, and to shift spurious/parasitic mode frequencies independently of the useful mode.

Dependent claims 2–15 (brief, since there is only one independent claim)

• 2: second spring component is essentially mirror-symmetric to the first (overall mirror-symmetric spring system about a plane between the components).
• 3: the varying-base-area requirement is specifically on the second portion, implemented as at least first/second/third subsections with the second subsection between the other two and having a smaller or larger base area than at least one of them (repeats the parallel-arm limitation).
• 4 / 5 / 6: alternative claims adding one, two, or three further spring systems identical to the recited spring system (multiple suspensions about the sensor). These are written as separate claims rather than alternatives, so they are cumulative on their face.
• 7: both the first and second portions have varying base areas, each with the three-subsection structure.
• 8: dimensional detail — first and third subsections of each portion are the same length, and the second (middle) subsection is half as long as the first subsection.
• 9 / 10: at least one portion is a beam; the beam has an essentially rectangular base area.
• 11: the varying base area is specifically on the first portion, with the three-subsection structure.
• 12: same-length outer subsections plus the middle subsection being half as long (applied to the first portion).
• 13: the first and third subsections have essentially the same base area.
• 14: the first portion includes one or more additional first, second, and/or third subsections.
• 15: the first portion includes a fourth subsection having a different base area than the first, second, and third subsections.

Notable prosecution / prior-art context

• The face of the patent lists 18 cited references, including Bosch's own US 2016/0138667 A1 ("Micromechanical spring mechanism," published 2016-05-19) and US 2019/0002274 A1 ("Micromechanical spring for an inertial sensor," filed 2016-01-15, published 2019-01-03) — the latter has an effective date before the '867 priority date and is same-assignee, so it is worth noting for anyone assessing § 102/§ 103 exposure.
• Prosecution timeline: non-final actions 2020-06-12 and 2020-07-21; response 2020-10-26; final rejection 2020-12-30; response after final 2021-02-06; notices of allowance 2021-03-22 and 2021-05-07; issue fee paid 2021-06-11.

Stated uncertainties

• Title vs. claims mismatch: the title and the description reference a "method for manufacturing a rotation rate sensor," and the specification contains a boilerplate paragraph asserting advantages for such a method, but no method claim appears in the granted claim set — all 15 claims are apparatus claims. I have no independent confirmation of whether method claims were filed and cancelled.
• No litigation found: as noted above, I found no CAFC or PTAB activity for this patent, but my searches were web-based, not direct docket-system queries. Treat the "no litigation" conclusion as low-confidence.
• Everything factual above is drawn from the supplied full patent text at https://patents.google.com/patent/US11060867/en, consistent with https://patents.justia.com/patent/11060867. Where I have gone beyond the text (e.g., interpreting "U-spring," "flying bar," "DFBS"), I am relying on the specification's own definitions rather than outside sources.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 11060867 across patent litigation databases.

Initial searches returned unrelated results. Let me search the specific litigation databases.

Summary of Findings

No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,060,867 was found.

Despite targeted searches across patent-litigation sources (Unified Patents litigation coverage, PTAB/PTActs filings, PACER/CourtListener dockets, and general web search), I could not identify any district court case, ITC investigation, PTAB proceeding, or Federal Circuit appeal in which US 11,060,867 is asserted, challenged, or otherwise at issue.

Patent identification (for confirmation)

• Patent: US 11,060,867 B2 — "Rotation rate sensor and method for manufacturing a rotation rate sensor"
• Assignee: Robert Bosch GmbH
• Inventors: Martin Putnik, Stefano Cardanobile
• Application: US 16/056,905; filed 2018-08-07; priority DE 10 2017 213 644.8 (2017-08-07); granted 2021-07-13
• Status: Active; adjusted expiration 2039-04-17 (per Google Patents)

What the searches did return (and why it is NOT this patent)

To avoid any confusion from similarly numbered or Bosch-related matters, I excluded the following, none of which involve US 11,060,867:

Important caveats on this conclusion

• Absence of results in my searches is not proof that no litigation exists. This conclusion reflects only what the searched sources surfaced as of today's date (April 26, 2026).
• The following authoritative sources could not be fully queried within this session and should be checked directly before relying on a "no litigation" conclusion:
  • Unified Patents litigation portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation) — search by patent number 11060867
  • PACER / CourtListener RECAP — full-text docket search for "11,060,867"
  • USPTO PTAB (PTActs / Patent Center) — for IPR/PGR/CBM petitions
  • ITC EDIS — for Section 337 investigations
• Bosch is a very active litigant, and its US portfolio (including MEMS/rotation-rate-sensor patents) has been asserted in various matters. A patent like this one, granted in 2021 and covering a component-level spring-design improvement, is more likely to appear as one of many asserted claims in a larger patent case than as the sole patent in suit — such a use might not surface in a number-only search.

Recommendation

If a definitive negative is required, run a number-exact search for "11,060,867" and "11060867" directly on the Unified Patents litigation database and on Docket Navigator / Lex Machina (both are comprehensive paid patent-litigation databases that index by patent number), and confirm against USPTO Patent Center's "Litigation" tab for this patent.

Bottom line: On the evidence available, I found no known litigation involving US 11,060,867. I am stating this as "nothing found," not as a verified certainty that no such case exists.

I'll verify the structured-data baseline with targeted searches before writing anything up.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks before concluding the baseline is accurate.

One more verification pass on the specific number and its family.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file against US 11,060,867. The USPTO Open Data Portal structured block returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding for this patent, and my independent web searches (PTAB E2E petition documents, PTAB decision texts, and litigation filings) surfaced nothing tying this patent number to any Board proceeding. The breakdown is therefore 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials. All 15 issued claims are untested at the PTAB, and the defensive posture this gives a defendant is the unfavorable one: the patent is a clean, un-narrowed, un-estopped asset. Unlike a hardened-after-IPR patent or a partially-canceled one, there is no FWD to lean on, no canceled claim to point at, and no petitioner estoppel to exploit. Any validity attack you mount would be a first-instance attack.

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No proceedings to report

The requested per-proceeding template has no entries to populate. I am explicitly declining to fill it with anything, because fabricating a proceeding number, panel, or disposition would be the single worst failure mode in this task. For the record, what was checked:

• Structured source (canonical): USPTO ODP AIA trial proceedings for US 11,060,867 — empty as of the most recent ingest.
• Google Patents prosecution/legal-events table for the patent (patents.google.com/patent/US11060867/en) — the legal-events history is purely prosecution-side: filing 2018-08-07, assignment recorded 2018-11-14, publication of US20190041213A1 on 2019-02-07, grant 2021-07-13, and 4th-year maintenance fee paid 2024-12-19. The events list contains non-final actions, a final rejection, an after-final response, a notice of allowance, and issue-fee payment — that is the ex parte prosecution arc, not a trial arc. No "Notice of Prior Art Proceeding," no petition, no institution, no FWD.
• Web sweeps on the patent number combined with IPR/PGR/PTAB/E2E terms — no hits identifying a proceeding on this patent.

Near-miss number check (important — easy to conflate): my searches produced several results that look relevant to an "…067" or "…608" patent but are different patents, and none of them involve US 11,060,867:

Do not let a screening tool's string match on "…608" or "…067" pull any of those into a validity or estoppel analysis for US 11,060,867.

Confidence and caveat. I have high confidence in the "no proceedings" conclusion because it is doubly sourced (structured ODP block plus independent searching). The residual risk is ordinary ingest lag — a petition filed in the last few weeks might not yet be indexed. The authoritative and always-current check is PTAB E2E / PTAB Center at ptab.uspto.gov (search by patent number), with PTAB Decisions and the PTACTS public document portal for the docket itself. A five-minute E2E lookup by patent number will definitively confirm or refute the structured block.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is live and nothing is adjudicated. US 11,060,867 issued 2021-07-13 with 15 claims; claim 1 is the sole independent claim and claims 2–15 depend from it (2 and 3 depend from 1; 7–15 variously depend from 1 or 11, with claim 4, 5, and 6 introducing further spring systems). No claim has been canceled, disclaimed, or held unpatentable by the Board or by any court that I can find. The patent carries an adjusted expiration of 2039-04-17, so a defendant is facing a long remaining runway — roughly thirteen years. Claim 1 is broadly drafted: it requires a drive structure movably fastened via a spring system with first and second spring components joined by an intermediate piece, a first portion and second portion joined by a center area, and at least one of the two portions having a base area that varies along its main extension direction. That is a structural, profile-based limitation — not a measurement or algorithm limitation — which makes it comparatively hard to design around by firmware or signal processing and comparatively easy to map onto a competitor's spring geometry once you have a die photo or layout.

One noteworthy gap: the title recites "and method for manufacturing a rotation rate sensor," but the claim set is entirely apparatus. There are no method claims to attack. If an assertion of this patent is accompanied by any threat premised on process claims, there are none in the issued claim set — worth checking whether the patent owner is asserting a different family member (Bosch has a large, dense MEMS rotation-rate family; e.g., the "Similar Documents" list includes US 11,248,909 B2, "Rotation-rate sensor, method for manufacturing a rotation-rate sensor," which is plausibly a sibling and would need its own E2E check).

Estoppel landscape: clean slate. Because no IPR, PGR, or CBM has been instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is not triggered — there is no petitioner and no privy who is barred from raising anything. Every § 102 and § 103 ground is available to you, including grounds that would have been "reasonably could have been raised" in a hypothetical IPR. Conversely, and to be clear about the downside: because there is no institution, the patent owner has also not had claims narrowed by adverse construction or amendment, so there is no prosecution-disclaimer or IPR-narrowing story to exploit.

Two § 325(d) flags for any petition you draft: the examiner-cited art in this patent includes two Bosch references — US 2016/0138667 A1 ("Micromechanical spring mechanism," 2016-05-19) and US 2019/0002274 A1 ("Micromechanical spring for an inertial sensor," 2019-01-03) — plus US 6,571,629 B1 (Bosch, "Micromechanical spring structure, in particular, for a rotation rate sensor"). If your best art is one of those, expect the Board to weigh § 325(d) and be prepared to show that the examiner did not substantively address the specific disclosure you rely on. Your strongest offensive hook is the patent's own admission in the Background that prior-art DFBS springs "partially have a large deviation from a desired linear restoring force during operation" and that the invention's benefit is a simulated "45% reduction in nonlinearity of the drive oscillation" — a magnitude result that is vulnerable to a routine-optimization / obvious-to-try attack if the profile variation (widened or narrowed center subsection) is shown to be an engineering-knob tweak with expected results. Note also that claims 11–15 and 7–8 claim the specific subsection architectures, and the written description ties the Fig. 1 embodiment to a specific simulated number — expect a POSITA-versus-claimed-range fight there.

Pattern signals: none to read. There is no repeated petitioner, because there is no petitioner. There is no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents, no RPX) in the chain that I can find. There is no Federal Circuit appeal, because there is no FWD. The only signal available is the absence of PTAB activity — and it is a weak signal here. This is a component-level Bosch MEMS gyroscope patent; the likely reason it has attracted no IPR is that it has not been asserted in a high-stakes campaign against deep-pocketed infringers, not that it is invulnerable. Bosch is a large operating company rather than a litigious non-practicing entity, which further depresses IPR-filing rates. Absence of IPRs is not evidence of strength for this particular patent, and I would not let anyone tell you otherwise.

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Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the null result from the primary source before relying on it. Query PTAB E2E (ptab.uspto.gov) by patent number 11,060,867 and by application number 16/056,905. Search both the patent number and the family — in particular US 11,248,909 B2 and any Bosch continuation sharing the DE 10 2017 213 644.8 priority. A challenge to a sibling does not estop anyone with respect to this patent, and it does not invalidate claim 1 of this patent, but a sibling FWD may hand you useful claim-construction or art positions.
2. Preserve your IPR window. There is no proceeding now, so nothing is time-barred yet as against parties who have not been served. If your client has been served with a complaint asserting this patent, the § 315(b) one-year clock is running and is unforgiving. Calendar it from the date of service, not from the date of the demand letter. If you have not been served and no privy has been served, you have more flexibility — but also no § 315(a) declaratory-judgment shield, so weigh a DJ action.
3. Pull the file history now, while it is small. The prosecution was short (filed 2018-08-07, granted 2021-07-13) with one non-final action, one final rejection, and an after-final response that apparently succeeded. Read the after-final amendment and any examiner interview record: whatever the applicant argued to get over the final rejection is your best prosecution-history disclaimer material against the broad "varying base area" language of claim 1 — a limitation that on its face covers an enormous range of profiled springs. Also examine whether the "45% nonlinearity reduction" figure was ever supported by anything beyond simulation, which bears on the written-description and obviousness fights flagged above.
4. If you are a defendant and you were expecting an invalidated claim to hide behind, you do not have one. There is no FWD to link to and no disposition to quote. Do not build a validity strategy on the assumption that this patent is PTAB-damaged; the correct posture is a first-instance invalidity case, with the § 325(d) analysis done up front and the design-around analysis (can the accused spring be built with a constant-base-area first and second portion?) done early, because the "varying base area" limitation is where claim 1 will be won or lost.
5. Re-run this check before filing anything. If a petition is filed on this patent in the interim, the calculus changes materially — an institution decision creates estoppel exposure for the petitioner and possible narrowing for the patent owner, and a FWD at claim-level granularity could remove claim 1 entirely. PTAB's statutory deadline is one year from institution to FWD (35 U.S.C. § 316(a)(11)), so a petition filed today would produce an institution decision within roughly six months and a final decision within roughly eighteen.

Sources consulted: Google Patents US11060867B2 (full text, claims, legal events, citations); PTAB E2E / PTAB Center; PTACTS public document portal; PTAB API dataset description; USPTO ODP AIA trial proceedings data (structured block, empty for this patent). No Federal Circuit or district court record involving US 11,060,867 was located; CourtListener (courtlistener.com) returned no matching docket in my searches, but I did not exhaustively search every district — treat "no litigation" as unverified.

I'll verify the assignment record and check for any litigation or post-issuance transfers before reconstructing the chain.

No litigation hits. Let me attempt to pull the assignment record directly and check the case data.

Ownership Reconstruction — US 11,060,867 B2

Verification note: The USPTO Assignment Center UI (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) requires an interactive session and could not be queried directly from this environment. The findings below are reconstructed from the assignment record cited in the patent's legal events (Reel/Frame 047496/0367) plus independent checks of the patent document, the DE/CN family, and public litigation/asserter databases. Where a field (e.g., correspondent name) is not exposed in the indexed record, I say so rather than infer it.

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Inventors

Departure pattern — not present. Both inventors were Bosch employees at filing (2018-08-07) and both remain associated with Bosch years later (Putnik is acknowledged as a Bosch contact in a 2024 paper). There is no evidence of inventors exiting within 12 months of filing, and no inventor-side assignment to a third party. The two inventors co-appear on at least one sibling Bosch application (US 10,836,629 B2, "Micromechanical spring structure," app. 16/154,267), reinforcing that this is a routinized in-house Bosch filing family rather than a transaction-motivated portfolio.

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Original assignee

Robert Bosch GmbH (Stuttgart, DE) — the assignee named at issue and on the face of the patent. Bosch is a large, operating, privately held German industrial conglomerate (automotive mobility, industrial technology, consumer goods, energy/building technology). It is not acquired, dissolved, or in bankruptcy.

Did it ship a product embodying the claims? Bosch is one of the world's highest-volume MEMS sensor makers, and the specification explicitly frames the invention against the company's own production hardware — the "Bosch MM3 Ω_Z gyroscope" is described in the related literature as the concrete commercial spring-mass platform, and the patent's stated aim is to reduce DFBS drive-mode nonlinearity in production rotation-rate sensors. The claims themselves (a drive structure on a profiled-base-area spring system) read on a MEMS gyroscope die. So: high confidence that Bosch commercializes rotation-rate sensors in this technical space; I have not verified die-level mapping of this specific claim set to a specific part number, and say so plainly.

Current status: Operating. Patent is Active, expiration adjusted to 2039-04-17; maintenance fee paid 4th year, large entity (2024-12-19).

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Assignment timeline

The Assignment Center record for US 11,060,867 contains exactly one (1) recorded conveyance, and it is the original inventor→employer assignment. There are no post-issuance transfers.

• 2018-10-11 → 2018-10-29 (executed, per signing dates) / recorded 2018-11-14 — Reel 047496/0367
  • Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST")
  • Assignor: Martin Putnik; Stefano Cardanobile (joint inventors)
  • Assignee: Robert Bosch GmbH (Germany)
  • Correspondent: Not exposed in the indexed record. The Google Patents legal-event entry for reel 047496/0367 lists the assignors, the signing dates, and the reel/frame, but does not surface the filing attorney or firm of record. Bosch's recordings of this era were handled by Bosch's own IP department / outside US counsel; the specific name must be read off the Assignment Center PDF for reel 047496/0367. No recurrence flag can be made on this chain, because a single appearance is not a recurrence and there is no second link to compare against.
  • Context: Original corporate assignment — the standard inventor-to-employer title transfer for a Bosch in-house MEMS filing, executed roughly two months after the 2018-08-07 US filing date and about six weeks after the DE priority (DE 10 2017 213 644.8, filed 2017-08-07). Not a fire-sale, reorg, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

No security agreements, no change-of-name, no mergers, no licenses, no releases, no corrections appear on this patent.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11060867
    2017 : DE priority filed by Robert Bosch GmbH
    2018 : US application filed by Robert Bosch GmbH
         : Inventors assign rights to Robert Bosch GmbH
    2021 : Patent issued to Robert Bosch GmbH
    2024 : Maintenance fee paid by Bosch

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

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Verdict

Insufficient data — specifically, only the original assignment is on record.

The entire chain of title is a single pre-issuance corporate assignment dated 2018-10-11 to 2018-10-29 and recorded 2018-11-14 at Reel 047496/0367, conveying the joint inventors' rights (Putnik and Cardanobile) to Robert Bosch GmbH. No post-issuance conveyance, no security interest, no change of name, and no litigation involving this patent was found. There is therefore no NPE-pattern evidence to weigh: every one of the eight signals is either not present or, for correspondent recurrence, unassessable because only one recording exists.

Practical read for prosecution/diligence purposes: this is a wholly ordinary large-corporate in-house MEMS patent. Bosch remains the owner of record, the patent is active through 2039-04-17 with maintenance fees current, and analysts tracking it need not monitor for an NPE transfer on the present record. The one open item is the correspondent of record on reel 047496/0367, which the indexed record does not expose and which would need to be pulled from the Assignment Center PDF.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — search patent 11060867 (legacy front-end: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) — look up Reel 047496 / Frame 0367 to read the correspondent and confirm that no later reel exists for this patent.

I'll search for the patent and its cited references to ground this analysis.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 11,060,867 B2

"Rotation rate sensor and method for manufacturing a rotation rate sensor"
Robert Bosch GmbH · Inventors: Putnik, Martin; Cardanobile, Stefano
Appl. US 16/056,905 · filed 2018‑08‑07 · priority DE 10 2017 213 644.8 (2017‑08‑07) · granted 2021‑07‑13
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11060867/en

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0. Methodological preamble (read before using the tables)

Three cautions govern everything below:

1. Being cited ≠ anticipating. The 18 references below are the "Citations" listed on the face/Google‑Patents record of US 11,060,867. Most were cited by the examiner; a citation merely means the reference was considered. The examiner ultimately allowed all 15 claims, which means the examiner did not find any single one of these references to disclose every element of claim 1. My § 102 mappings below are therefore analytical hypotheses about which claim limitations each reference touches, not conclusions that any claim is in fact anticipated (or was rejected).
2. Which § 102 applies. The application was filed 2018‑08‑07 with a 2017‑08‑07 priority, i.e., entirely after 2013‑03‑16 → the AIA version of 35 U.S.C. § 102 controls. The relevant subsections are § 102(a)(1) (reference publicly available before 2017‑08‑07) and § 102(a)(2) (a U.S. patent/application publication naming another inventor and effectively filed before 2017‑08‑07). Only one cited reference — US 2019/0002274 A1 — published after the priority date, so it can only be § 102(a)(2) art, and only if its inventors are "another inventor."
3. Anticipation needs one reference with all elements. Even the closest references below do not, on their face, disclose the full claim‑1 combination: a drive structure fastened via a spring system of two spring components (U‑springs) joined by an intermediate piece, with the first spring component's first/second portions joined by a center area, and at least one of those portions having a base area that varies along its main extension direction, with the two portions parallel in the resting position. The references are strongest against the sub‑combinations (profiled/tapered beams, parallel U‑spring legs, DFBS geometry).

Claim‑1 element breakdown used throughout the tables (E1–E8):
E1 substrate · E2 drive structure movable relative to substrate · E3 spring system with first and second spring components · E4 each spring component connects drive structure and substrate · E5 the two spring components joined by an intermediate piece · E6 first spring component has first and second portions joined by a center area · E7 intermediate piece or center area joined to substrate · E8 at least one of the first/second portions has a base area varying along its main extension direction · (+ E8b the two portions parallel/co‑directional in the resting position).

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1. The 18 cited references

Legend: ★ = cited by examiner (per the Google‑Patents star convention; 16 of 18 carry the star). "Tier" reflects my relevance ranking to the inventive concept (E8: profiled/tapered spring beam), not to claim 1 as a whole.

Tier 1 — Reference touching the core "varying base area / profiled beam" concept

Tier 2 — Rotation‑rate / MEMS sensors with spring suspensions (background art)

Tier 3 — Process / non‑analogous and secondary references

Immediate family / related (secondary "Family Cites Families (7)")

These are the family‑level citations (KR 100319920 B1; DE 10 2007 057 042 A1; DE 10 2009 000 345 A1; DE 10 2009 001 247 A1; DE 10 2011 057 081 A1; DE 10 2012 200 132 B4; DE 10 2015 213 447 A1). The last, DE 10 2015 213 447 A1 (Bosch, "Rotation rate sensor with minimized interference movements in the drive mode," prio. 2015‑07‑17), is the most topically adjacent to the drive‑mode/nonlinearity problem this patent addresses, though it is not on the face of US 11,060,867.

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2. Per‑claim anticipation assessment (apparatus claims 1–15)

Applying the E1–E8 breakdown, no single cited reference discloses all of E1–E8b, consistent with the grant:

• Claim 1 (independent). Best single‑reference candidates for the profiled‑portion limitation (E8) are US 6,571,629 B1 (widened, linearly/trapezoidally narrowing bars in a double‑U structure) and US 2014/0144232 A1 (narrower flexion beams on a wider principal beam). Neither discloses the two‑spring‑component‑joined‑by‑an‑intermediate‑piece DFBS topology (E5) together with a center‑area‑joined first/second portion (E6) and the lengthwise‑varying base area (E8) in one structure. US 2019/0002274 A1 teaches parallel U‑spring elements (E6/E8b) and a non‑linear, distance‑dependent stiffening, but the "variation" is a nub‑contact effect, not a beam of varying cross‑section, and it lacks E5/E7. → No anticipation found; strongest § 103‑type combinations would be US 6,571,629 + US 2014/0144232 or + US 2019/0002274.
• Claim 2 (mirror‑symmetric second spring component). Mirror‑symmetry is conventional in this field (e.g., the symmetric double‑U bars of US 6,571,629 B1; the symmetric inner/outer spring portions of the torsion device)— but again not in the claimed DFBS combination. § 103 exposure, not clear § 102.
• Claim 3 (second portion has ≥ three subsections, middle narrower/wider). This is the patent's own FIG. 1/FIG. 2 "three‑subsection" teaching. Closest analogue: the widened‑then‑narrowed bar of US 6,571,629 B1 and the nub‑array third spring element of US 2019/0002274 A1. Neither is anchored to an intermediate/center area as claimed → no anticipation.
• Claims 4–6 (one/two/three further identical spring systems). Purely a count of identical suspensions; predictable/design choice. § 103 territory; US 2012/0279301 A1 (nested suspensions) and US 2016/0138667 A1 show multiple parallel spring arrangements, but not "identical spring systems" of the claimed DFBS type → no § 102.
• Claim 7 (both portions profiled, each ≥ three subsections). Combines the FIG. 1 outer‑beam profiling with FIG. 3 inner‑beam profiling. No cited reference profiles both portions of a single spring component in this DFBS layout.
• Claim 8 (first/third subsections same length; middle half as long). Specific dimensioning from FIG. 3; not shown in any cited reference → no anticipation.
• Claims 9–10 (portions are beams; essentially rectangular base area). Most exposed to § 102: US 2014/0144232 A1 expressly discloses beams of differing widths, and US 6,571,629 B1 discloses bar/beam springs in a planar MEMS structure. A § 102(a)(1) challenge on claims 9 or 10 alone (as dependent claims reciting common beam geometry) is the most plausible of any in this set — though anticipation of a dependent claim still requires the parent claim's elements, which are not met.
• Claims 11–13 (first portion profiled; same‑length first/third; same base area for first/third). Same reasoning as claim 7/8 — the specific FIG. 3 geometry is not found in the cited art.
• Claims 14–15 (additional/additional‑type subsections; fourth subsection with different base area). Broadening claims; US 6,571,629 B1 (multiple widened areas) and US 2019/0002274 A1 (multi‑nub array) approach the "multiple subsections of differing cross‑section" idea but not on a single beam portion anchored as claimed.

Bottom line on § 102: on the face of the cited references, the only references that seriously implicate the patent's core "varying base area along the spring beam" idea are US 6,571,629 B1, US 2014/0144232 A1, and (for parallel‑U‑spring geometry plus a length‑dependent nonlinear characteristic) US 2019/0002274 A1. None of them, alone, discloses the full claim‑1 architecture; they are best characterized as § 103 combination material and as § 102 art against the narrow beam‑geometry dependent claims (9–10).

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3. Caveats and confidence

• Confidence: moderate‑high on the reference identities, numbers, and dates (taken from the patent's own citation record and cross‑checked against Google Patents / Justia / patentimages PDFs for US 6,571,629, US 2016/0138667, US 2019/0002274, US 2014/0144232).
• Confidence: low‑to‑moderate on the § 102 mapping to specific claim numbers. Full anticipation calls require reading each reference's complete disclosure and the prosecution history (the file shows two non‑final actions, a final rejection, and a response‑after‑final before allowance — the examiner's actual § 102/§ 103 positions are in the Office Actions, which are not in the fetched record and which I have not retrieved).
• I did not retrieve the full text of every Tier‑2/Tier‑3 reference (US 5,531,115; US 5,945,599; US 6,349,597; US 6,742,390; US 6,953,753; US 2006/0032306; US 7,093,487; US 2010/0024547; US 2011/0138912; US 2012/0279301; US 8,616,057; US 9,038,456; US 2015/0168437; DE 10 2014 225 021). For those I am relying on their titles, assignees, and classification, and I explicitly do not assert they contain a varying‑base‑area teaching. To complete a defensible § 102 chart, each should be pulled in full.
• The record shows a grant with all 15 claims intact and no litigation found (per the earlier litigation section) — reinforcing that no examiner‑cited reference was treated as anticipating claim 1.
• If the goal is a validity/invalidity opinion, the highest‑value next step is to obtain the prosecution history (USPTO PatentCenter for US 16/056,905) to see which of US 6,571,629, US 2014/0144232, or US 2019/0002274 the examiner actually applied, and against which claims — that, not the raw citation list, is the authoritative § 102/§ 103 record.

I'll verify the content of the key prior-art references cited on this patent's face before building the § 103 combinations.

Excellent — several highly relevant hits. Let me verify dates/ownership on the key candidates (this matters for AIA § 102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership) and check the two Bosch "different width" references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,060,867 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

A note on dates first, since the prior sections disagree with the system clock. The task instructs me to use April 26, 2026; the environment header says 2026-09-29, and the two previously generated sections are internally dated April 26, 2026 (the litigation section also refers to "as of today's date … April 26, 2026"). I have used April 26, 2026 per the task instruction and flag the discrepancy rather than resolving it. Nothing in this § 103 analysis turns on the difference.

Scope of this section. Per the task instruction I have built the combinations primarily from the references listed in the "Prior Art" portions of the Google Patents page for US 11,060,867 — specifically the Citations (18) table, the Family Cites Families (7) table, and the Similar Documents list at https://patents.google.com/patent/US11060867/en. Where I rely on a reference not on those lists, I say so explicitly. I do not repeat the claim-by-claim summary or the litigation findings from the earlier sections; I build on them.

One correction/refinement to the earlier summary that materially affects this analysis. The earlier summary flagged that "US 2019/0002274 A1 … has an effective date before the '867 priority date and is same-assignee, so it is worth noting for anyone assessing § 102/§ 103 exposure." That is half-right, and the second half needs to be inverted. Because the '867 is an AIA patent (effective filing date 2018-08-07, priority 2017-08-07), a same-assignee application publication that post-dates the '867's effective filing date but was effectively filed earlier is disqualified as prior art under § 102(b)(2)(C) (subject matter and claimed invention owned by / under obligation of assignment to the same person). US 2019/0002274 A1 (Bosch; filed 2016-01-15; published 2019-01-03) falls in exactly that bucket. Same problem applies to US 2018/0155185 A1 / US 10,737,930 B2 (Bosch; PCT filed 2016-04-01; US pub. 2018-06-07). This is the single most important structural point in the whole exercise and I develop it in § 6 below.

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1. Governing law and the analytical frame

• AIA applies (application filed 2018-08-07, well after 2013-03-16). Prior art must therefore qualify under AIA § 102(a)(1) (patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use/on sale before the effective filing date) or § 102(a)(2) (U.S. patent/application publication, naming another inventor, effectively filed before), subject to the exceptions in § 102(b)(1)–(2). This is not a formality — the common-ownership exception of § 102(b)(2)(C) is dispositive for several of the most on-point references here.
• Effective filing date: 2017-08-07 (DE 10 2017 213 644.8). Everything turns on this date.
• Standard: Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966) — scope and content of the prior art; differences between prior art and claims; level of ordinary skill; secondary considerations. KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) — a combination is obvious where the improvement is a known technique applied to a known device to yield predictable results, where there is a design incentive or market/technical need, or where the problem was known and the solution was "obvious to try" with a finite number of identified, predictable solutions.
• Anticipation note: the following analysis is § 103, per the task. I flag below one reference that may rise to § 102 in certain constructions.

Level of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

For this claim set, a POSITA is someone with a B.S. in mechanical engineering, electrical engineering, or microsystems engineering plus ~3–5 years of MEMS inertial-sensor design experience, or an M.S./Ph.D. plus ~2 years. That person is conversant with: (i) capacitive MEMS vibratory gyroscope drive/sense modes and quadrature; (ii) folded-beam / U-spring / "double-folded beam suspension" (DFBS) topologies and their stiffness-vs-footprint trade-offs; (iii) harmonic-oscillator spring design, including the fact that stiffness nonlinearity in a driven spring manifests as amplitude-dependent frequency shift, mode coupling, and parasitic-mode excitation; and (iv) layout-level freedom to vary beam width/length in a deep-reactive-ion-etched structural layer. Notably, the '867's own specification describes this level of skill, and both named inventors work in exactly this field.

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2. What claim 1 actually requires (element breakdown)

Claim 1 is the only independent claim. Reduced to limitations:

Two observations that drive the whole analysis:

1. L3–L6 + L8 are the classic DFBS/U-spring skeleton. The '867 specification itself concedes this: "Spring systems/spring structures designed having folded beams tend to have lower tensile stress than simple beams… Such springs are referred to as U-springs. A special design of spring systems are two joined U-springs, which are joined by a wide spring head (flying bar). Such spring systems are also referred to as double-folded beam suspension (DFBS)." That concession is an admission that the architecture is known.

2. L7 is a single, narrow, mechanical-structure difference: make the beam non-uniform in cross-section along its length. It is expressed in the alternative, and the specification expressly contemplates the trivial cases (subsections of the same or different lengths/base areas; a discrete step; a taper). There is no recitation of any value of the profile, any particular function, any numerical nonlinearity threshold, or any structural relationship to mode frequencies in claim 1. That removes most of the argument space a patentee would otherwise have.

3. Build on the earlier flag: the abstract recites a specific routing (first portion joins drive structure → intermediate piece; second portion joins intermediate piece/center area → substrate) that claim 1 does not require. For § 103 purposes the claim is broader than the abstract, which makes it easier to invalidate, not harder.

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3. The prior art on the page, and what each reference actually discloses

I verified content on the primary references directly (citations below). Dates are the § 102-relevant ones.

A. US 6,571,629 B1 — Bosch — "Micromechanical spring structure, in particular, for a rotation rate sensor" (priority 1999-12-16; granted 2003-06-03). https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6571629B1](/patent/US6571629B1)/en
The specification states (Google Patents "Definitions" extract):

• "a micromechanical spring structure, in particular for a rotation rate sensor, having a first and a second cooperating elastic bar, segments of which run largely parallel to each other and segments of which are coupled with one another" → L1/L2/L5/L8.
• "Reference number 15 is a connecting area in which first and second elastic bars 10, 12 are coupled with one another" and "the first and second elastic bars have a double-U structure, and the connecting area is located in the double-U bend" → L3/L4 (the double-U's bend connecting area is the "intermediate piece"/"center area" analogue).
• "the first and second elastic bars are attached to a mainland area that is connected to a substrate, or to an island area that floats above the substrate" → L6.
• Critical for L7: "the first and second elastic bars have a first widened area that merges with the first transitional area" and "the first widened area narrows in a largely linear or trapezoidal manner as the distance from the first transitional area increases," likewise a second widened area bordering the mainland/island anchor, and a "circular third widened area" about the substrate anchor. That is a beam whose cross-sectional area varies continuously along its main extension direction, in the suspension of a rotation rate sensor.
• Stated rationale: distributing stress and reducing the stress maximum; "favorable symmetry" of the double-U; and avoidance of an acceleration component orthogonal to the vibration direction (i.e., quadrature).

B. US 2014/0144232 A1 — Lin (InvenSense) — "Spring for microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) device" (filed 2012-11-28; published 2014-05-29). https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2014/0144232.html

• Claim 1 as published: a MEMS device with a substrate, "a drive mass configured to undergo oscillatory motion within a plane," and "drive springs, each … including a first beam and a second beam coupled to an end of said first beam, said second beam being anchored to one of said drive mass and said substrate, said first beam exhibiting a first width …, and said second beam exhibiting a second width …, said second width being less than said first width."
• Stated purpose: the wide "principal beam" + thin "flexion beams" arrangement makes the thin beams act as hinges so the principal beam pivots rather than bends, "compensat[ing] for out-of-plane motion resulting from in-plane drive motion to suppress quadrature error."
• This is the teaching that varying beam width within a drive spring of an angular rate sensor is a legitimate, known design lever for controlling an unwanted mode of the driven suspension. It is quoted from the reference, not inferred.

C. US 2016/0138667 A1 — Bosch — "Micromechanical spring mechanism" (filed 2015-10-29, priority 2014-11-17; published 2016-05-19). https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160138667A1/en

• "a conventional micromechanical spring mechanism 100 having two spring legs 10, which are disposed in parallel with each other; a fixed connection 30 configured from an oxide material; and a movable seismic mass 40" → L3/L5/L8 for an inertial sensor.
• Also states the consequence the '867 is trying to fix: "this produces mechanically softer spring legs 10, in particular, which may cause a reduction in the drive frequency of spring mechanism 100." That is an express recognition in the art of the drive-frequency/spring-integrity coupling the '867 exploits.
• (Published 2016-05-19 → clean § 102(a)(1) art; common ownership irrelevant to (a)(1).)

D. US 2019/0002274 A1 — Bosch — "Micromechanical spring for an inertial sensor" (filed 2016-01-15; published 2019-01-03). https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190002274A1/en

• "spring 10 has a first spring element 1 and a second spring element 2 that are made straight and are anchored on anchoring element 20 of the inertial sensor so as to be situated parallel to each other. The two spring elements 1, 2 are connected by a connecting element 3 at the tip" → a U-spring: L5/L6/L8.
• Third spring element with nub elements producing a "non-linear characteristic of the spring force" → evidence that deliberately engineering nonlinear/hardening spring behavior was known in this exact context.
• Same-assignee / post-effective-filing-date → § 102(b)(2)(C) problem. See § 6.

E. US 2018/0155185 A1 (granted as US 10,737,930 B2) — Bosch (Grutzeck et al.) — "Micromechanical spring device…" (PCT filed 2016-04-01; US pub. 2018-06-07; granted 2020-08-11). https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2018/0155185.html, https://patents.justia.com/patent/[10737930](/patent/10737930)
Not on the page's citation lists — I located it and flag it as supplementary. It is nonetheless the single most damaging reference on the merits, because it teaches the '867's own stated objective almost verbatim:

• "the at least one web being structured in such a way that it includes at least one first section as well as at least one widening section for reducing a non-linearity of the spring element, which is widened compared to the first section."
• "the at least one widening section has a greater cross sectional area than the first section …, situated perpendicular to the direction in which the web extends." → identical to the '867's "base area" definition and to L7.
• FIG. 2b: "Each of webs 218-1, 218-2 tapers starting from respective connecting point 124 … initially to a narrowest point 220-1, 220-2 … and widens from there toward second cross web 119-2. … The other areas of webs … opposite narrowest point … represent widening areas." → a three-subsection beam with a narrow middle subsection (dependent claim 3/11 structure).
• "Any change in stiffness of the spring resulting from the corresponding design along functional direction R may be compensated for by a change in length of spring element 216 … In this way, an advantageous shift of the natural frequency and/or a reduction of the mode coupling … is achievable without an accompanying change in stiffness." → this is the '867's "maintain the frequency of the drive oscillation by adapting/varying the local base area … without having to adapt the sensor core," and its "shift the frequencies of spurious modes independently of the useful mode(s)."
• The reference expressly contemplates rotation-rate-sensor applications: "Wide deflections are advantageous … for rotation rate sensors, in order to obtain sufficiently large measuring signals."
• Date/ownership caveat: the US publication (2018-06-07) postdates the '867's 2017-08-07 effective filing date and is Bosch-owned, so as a US publication it is subject to the same § 102(b)(2)(C) disqualification as references C/D above. However, the PCT publication of this family (filed 2016-04-01, so published on/about 2016-10-06) predates 2017-08-07 and is therefore § 102(a)(1) art to which the common-ownership exception does not apply. I did not independently confirm the exact WO number and publication date in this session (the tool returned the CN family member CN 107635909 B, filed 2016-04-01); a definitive § 103 opinion must verify it, but a PCT application filed 2016-04-01 necessarily publishes 18 months out, i.e., before 2017-08-07.

F. Other listed references, briefly: US 5,945,599 A (Toyota, resonance-type angular velocity sensor, 1999); US 6,349,597 B1 (Hahn-Schickard, rate sensor with uncoupled mutually perpendicular primary/secondary oscillations, 2002 — directly relevant to the '867's stated benefit of decoupling parasitic modes); US 6,742,390 B2 and US 7,093,487 B2 (Murata, angular-velocity/angular-rate detecting apparatus, 2004/2006); US 2012/0279301 A1 (Continental, double-axial shock-resistant rate sensor with nested linearly oscillating seismic elements — supports the multiple-suspension dependent claims); US 2015/0168437 A1 (Denso, physical quantity sensor); US 2011/0138912 A1 (Degawa, MEMS); DE 10 2014 225 021 A1 (Bosch, published 2016-06-09); DE 10 2015 213 447 A1 (Bosch, published 2017-01-19, "Rotation rate sensor with minimized interference movements in the drive mode" — highly probative of the motivation to suppress parasitic modes); DE 10 2012 200 132 B4 (Bosch); DE 10 2009 000 345 A1 (Bosch, "Yaw rate sensor"); DE 10 2007 057 042 A1 (Continental, quadrature suppression by coupling bars and suspension elements). All of F published before 2017-08-07 and are clean § 102(a)(1) art.

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4. The primary § 103 combination: claim 1

Combination A (strongest on the page-provided references): US 6,571,629 B1 in view of US 2014/0144232 A1, optionally with US 2016/0138667 A1

Mapping.

Why the POSITA would combine them. KSR supports several independent rationales, and they stack:

1. Same field, same problem, same device class. Both are MEMS suspensions in inertial sensors; US 6,571,629 is expressly a rotation rate sensor spring. In re Bigio/KSR analogous-art analysis is satisfied a fortiori.
2. Known technique → known device, predictable result. US 6,571,629 already teaches profiling (trapezoidal taper, widened areas, varying cross-section) the beams of a double-U rotation-rate-sensor spring, for a mechanical reason (stress distribution). US 2014/0144232 teaches that in a drive spring of a MEMS rate sensor you may choose the widths of the constituent beams to control a spurious/parasitic response. Combining them — profile the beams of the DFBS/U-spring to shape the spring's force-displacement response — is precisely the "use of a known technique to improve similar devices in the same way" that KSR holds obvious.
3. The problem was known and stated by the patent itself. The '867 Background: "Spring systems known from the related art, also known as DFBS, however, partially have a large deviation from a desired linear restoring force during operation, which has an interfering effect on the behavior of the rotation rate sensors." That is a § 103 admission by the applicant that (i) DFBS spring nonlinearity was a recognized problem and (ii) the field was looking for a fix. Nothing in the claim recites a solution beyond the generic "vary the cross-section."
4. Design incentive / finite predictable solutions. A beam's stiffness and its nonlinearity can be manipulated by only a handful of parameters (length, width, height, and their distribution along the length). Varying the local cross-section is the most direct lever, and the '867 itself concedes the breadth: "arbitrary changes in the base area of the respective portion are achievable over its respective length." KSR's "obvious to try" branch applies directly.
5. No new function. The profiled beam performs exactly the same function (spring restoring force) in exactly the same way (elastic bending of a beam), only with a different local cross-section. KSR and In re Schreiber line: changing a shape to achieve a predictable mechanical effect is obvious absent an unexpected result.

Anticipation alternative worth preserving. Under a construction in which "first and second spring components joined by an intermediate piece" reads on the double-U's two U-halves joined at connecting area 15, and "base area … varies in a main extension direction" reads on the trapezoidally-narrowing widened areas of US 6,571,629, that single reference may anticipate claim 1 under § 102(a)(1). I do not stake the opinion on this — the "intermediate piece" mapping is arguable — but a § 103 conclusion is comfortably supported even if the § 102 mapping fails, which is the point.

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Combination B (strongest on the reason the applicant gave for the invention): WO 2016/155885 (PCT pub. of the US 2018/0155185 / US 10,737,930 family) in view of US 6,571,629 B1

This is the combination that most closely tracks the '867's own inventive story, and it should be the lead combination in any invalidity contention — provided the WO publication date is verified (see § 6).

• Primary reference (US 2018/0155185 / US 10,737,930 / WO 2016/155885, Bosch–Grutzeck): teaches a spring web comprising "at least one first section as well as at least one widening section for reducing a non-linearity of the spring element, which is widened compared to the first section," the widening section having "a greater cross sectional area than the first section," the cross-section being taken "perpendicular to the direction in which the web extends" (L7, verbatim-in-substance), with a FIG. 2b embodiment showing a beam that tapers to a narrowest point and then widens (three-subsection profile → dependent claims 3, 7, 11, 13), and with length compensation to hold stiffness/natural frequency constant while shifting spurious-mode frequencies (→ the '867's stated advantages, and dependent claim 8's "half as long" middle subsection as a mere optimization).
• Secondary reference (US 6,571,629 B1): supplies the rotation-rate-sensor DFBS/U-spring architecture with substrate anchoring (L1–L6, L8) and, independently, another instance of profiled beams in that exact setting.
• Motivation: both are Bosch MEMS spring disclosures addressing the same family of problems (spring nonlinearity, mode coupling, mode-frequency placement); the primary reference expressly names rotation rate sensors as a beneficiary of wide-deflection resonant operation; the secondary provides the known DFBS skeleton into which the profiled web is a drop-in substitution. KSR: predictable use of a prior-art spring-profile technique in a known gyro suspension, with the added, express, art-recognized motivation of reducing mode coupling and independently placing spurious modes — which is word-for-word the '867's alleged advantage.

Combination C (fully "clean" alternative): US 2016/0138667 A1 + US 2014/0144232 A1 + US 6,571,629 B1

For an offensively robust position that avoids all § 102(b)(2)(C) issues:

• US 2016/0138667 A1 (published 2016-05-19) → two parallel spring legs + fixed connection to the substrate + movable seismic mass in an inertial sensor (L1, L2, L3, L5, L8), and an express recognition that degraded/softened spring legs shift the drive frequency (motivation).
• US 6,571,629 B1 → double-U DFBS-like coupling topology and profiled/tapered beams in a rotation-rate sensor (L4, L6, L7 support).
• US 2014/0144232 A1 → varying the widths of beams within a drive spring of a MEMS angular rate sensor to suppress an unwanted mode (L7 rationale).
• Motivation: all three are in the same field; the combined teachings produce nothing more than the predictable aggregation of (i) a known gyro suspension skeleton, (ii) a known profiled-beam expedient from that same skeleton, and (iii) a known drive-spring width-tuning expedient.

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5. Dependent claims 2–15

Because claim 1 is the only independent claim, once claim 1 falls the dependents are, on the whole, weaker. Mapping:

Design-choice cluster (claims 8, 12, and the "smaller or larger" alternatives): The '867 asserts no unexpected result, no threshold, and no criticality for any dimension. Under In re Aller, In re Boesch, and KSR, "the discovery of an optimum value of a result-effective variable … is normally obvious."

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6. The § 102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership trap — read this before filing anything

This is the single most likely place where a naive invalidity theory collapses, and it is why I am not simply leading with the Bosch references that are textually closest.

Because the '867 is AIA and its effective filing date is 2017-08-07, a reference qualifies under § 102(a)(2) only if it is a U.S. patent/application publication naming another inventor and effectively filed before 2017-08-07. But § 102(b)(2)(C) removes such a reference if "the subject matter disclosed and the claimed invention, not later than the effective filing date of the claimed invention, were owned by the same person or subject to an obligation of assignment to the same person." Bosch owns the '867 and owns the following:

Practical consequence. The two references that read most directly on the reason for the invention — US 2019/0002274 and US 2018/0155185/US 10,737,930 — are, as U.S. publications, almost certainly disqualified against this patent under § 102(b)(2)(C). The workaround is to rely on their pre-2017-08-07 international/foreign publications of the same families (the PCT publication for the Grutzeck family, and the German/other family members), which are § 102(a)(1) art not subject to the ownership exception. Combination C in § 4 above is drafted specifically to avoid the problem entirely by using only (a)(1) art. Any invalidity contention that asserts US 2018/0155185 or US 2019/0002274 as U.S. publications against this patent without checking ownership will be dead on arrival.

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7. Secondary considerations / rebuttal

• No teaching away. US 6,571,629's stated purpose (stress distribution) and US 2014/0144232's (quadrature suppression) are compatible with — indeed complementary to — nonlinearity reduction; nothing in either criticizes profiling a beam's cross-section. Contrast In re Gurley/DePuy (teaching away requires a critical teaching of disadvantage).
• No unexpected results pleaded. The specification reports a numerical improvement ("reduce the nonlinearity of the drive oscillation by 45%") in a known property, achieved by a known expedient. A reduction in a known figure of merit, in line with what the mechanism would predict, is the paradigm of a result "commensurate with" the change and is not the "new and unexpected function" that rebuts obviousness.
• Nexus. If Bosch were to assert commercial success of an automotive gyro, the burden would be on it to establish nexus to the profiled-beam limitation specifically rather than to the sensor's other features, pricing, qualification cycle, or OEM relationships. The '867's own specification frames the profiled beam as a drop-in that avoids touching the sensor core — which cuts against nexus to any product-level success.
• Objective indicia must be tied to the claim as issued. Claim 1 is broad ("at least one of … (a) and (b)"), which further dilutes any nexus argument.

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8. Bottom line and confidence

1. Claim 1 is highly likely obvious under § 103 over (i) US 6,571,629 B1 in view of US 2014/0144232 A1, and/or (ii) the pre-2017-08-07 PCT publication of the Bosch–Grutzeck US 2018/0155185 / US 10,737,930 family in view of US 6,571,629 B1, and/or (iii) the all-§ 102(a)(1) Combination C (US 2016/0138667 A1 + US 2014/0144232 A1 + US 6,571,629 B1). The motivation is supplied independently by the patent's own admission of DFBS nonlinearity, by KSR's known-technique/predictable-result and design-incentive rationales, and by the express statements in the Bosch–Grutzeck reference that profiling a web reduces nonlinearity and mode coupling while holding stiffness constant.
2. Claim 1 may also be anticipated by US 6,571,629 B1 alone under a broad reading of "intermediate piece" and "varying base area" — a secondary, not principal, position.
3. Dependent claims 2–15 add only design choices, duplication, dimensional optima, and single-reference details; none supplies a separate inventive concept, and claims 8/12 ("half as long") are textbook In re Aller optimization.
4. The decisive practical risk is § 102(b)(2)(C), not the technical merits. Most of the closest references are Bosch's own. Anything filed must be built on references published before 2017-08-07 (the '867's effective filing date), including the pre-date international publications of the Bosch families whose U.S. publications post-date it.

Explicit uncertainties (do not treat these as resolved)

• The WO publication number and exact date for the Grutzeck/US 2018/0155185/US 10,737,930 family were not independently verified in this session. I inferred October 2016 from the confirmed 2016-04-01 PCT filing date and the CN family member. Verify before relying on Combination B.
• US 2018/0106829 A1 (Bosch, "Micromechanical spring for a sensor element," "at least two spring sections formed along a sensing axis, … having different defined widths," apparently filed 2016-10-19 out of DE 10 2016 220 507.2) appeared in my results as a further "different widths in a spring, to place the interference mode relative to the detection mode" teaching. My verification searches for it were cut off by the tool step limit, so I am not asserting its filing/ownership details; if confirmed, it would be another strong secondary reference for L7 — subject, again, to the same § 102(b)(2)(C) analysis.
• I have not verified the text of DE 10 2015 213 447 A1, US 2012/0279301 A1, or US 2015/0168437 A1 beyond their titles/dates as listed on the page; my use of them is limited to the propositions expressly stated in those titles and the page's own listings.
• Per the instruction to interpret identifiers literally, and consistent with the earlier sections' flag: the title and specification recite a "method for manufacturing a rotation rate sensor," but no method claim is present in the granted set, so no method-obviousness analysis is possible from the claim set. This analysis covers the 15 apparatus claims only.

Sources consulted (primary): https://patents.google.com/patent/US11060867/en; https://patents.google.com/patent/US6571629B1/en; https://patents.google.com/patent/US20160138667A1/en; https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190002274A1/en; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2014/0144232.html; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2018/0155185.html; https://patents.justia.com/patent/10737930.