US 11060870

I'll search for litigation and docket information on this specific patent, then summarize.

Let me check for any PTAB/IPR or district court litigation, and verify against the USPTO record.

I have the claim set from the granted patent. Let me verify the exact wording of the independent claims (9, 11, 16) from an additional source.

US Patent 11,060,870 — Analyst Summary

Important framing note: I do not have direct, live query access to USPTO Patent Center/Patent Public Search or to the CAFC/PACER/PTAB docket systems in this session; my verification relied on the full patent text you supplied (fetched from patents.google.com) plus open web sources. I did not find any CAFC 2026 appeal, district court case, or PTAB proceeding tied to this patent number. That is a negative finding from open-web searching, not an authoritative docket clearance — treat "no litigation" as unconfirmed. I also found no results for any other patent numbered 11,060,870, so no confusion with a similar number arose.

---

Bibliographic data

Two minor data points worth flagging rather than silently correcting:

• The listed adjusted expiration of 2039-11-14 is later than a plain 20-year-from-filing date (2039-08-25), consistent with a patent term adjustment of ~81 days, but I cannot confirm the PTA detail from the sources I retrieved.
• The Google Patents concept index for this document includes a spurious tag for "9,10-anthraquinone" with zero relevance — this appears to be a Google Patents indexing artifact, not a substantive part of the disclosure. I report it because it appears in the record you supplied.

---

Abstract (as issued, quoted)

"A process and machine configured to predict and preempt an aerodynamic disturbance. The machine may include a BDE (Bhan-Donahue-Endres) adaptor configured to that comprises a specially programmed processor that has an adaptive learning control and rules to: modify a control augmentation system on an aerospace vehicle, to preclude an undesired state of the aerospace vehicle unaccounted for by control laws in current control augmentation systems; form a prediction for an airspeed of the aerospace vehicle that replaces an airspeed input from a sensor of the aerospace vehicle, in a phase of operation prone to instrumentation error, into the control augmentation system; generate an estimate, based upon the prediction, of an anticipated disturbance to a desired state of the aerospace vehicle; and generate, based upon the estimate, a command to a control element of the aerospace vehicle that preempts the undesired state of the aerospace vehicle."

(The abstract's "configured to that comprises" is verbatim from the record.)

---

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — Process (error correction in sensor inputs to a control augmentation system).
A method for fixing bad sensor data going into an aircraft's control augmentation system (CAS). The method uses an "adaptor" (a specially programmed processor) to compute a predicted airspeed and substitute it for the raw sensor signal feeding the CAS. Using that prediction, the adaptor estimates the onset and characteristics of an unwanted aircraft state, then computes a corrective command before that state occurs, and sends the command to a control element so the unwanted state is preempted rather than reacted to after the fact.

Claim 9 — Process (expanding an operating envelope via a "BDE adaptor").
A method of widening the operating envelope by "inserting a BDE adaptor onto" the CAS. The adaptor's processor: (a) replaces a sensor signal into the CAS with a predicted airspeed; (b) estimates onset/characteristics of an undesired state; (c) derives a pre-onset preemptive command; (d) issues it to a control element; and (e) — the claim's added hook — relaxes a constraint imposed on the control law because the adaptor is now preempting the onset of the undesired state. In other words, the safety margin built into the control law can be given back once prediction makes it unnecessary.

Claim 11 — System.
An apparatus claim: (i) a control element of an aerospace vehicle, plus (ii) a flight control system coupled to it, where the flight control system has (a) sensors measuring at least airspeed and (b) an adaptor with specially programmed code to replace the sensor-derived airspeed signal input to the CAS with a predicted airspeed, estimate onset/characteristics of an undesired state, derive a pre-onset command, issue it to the control element, and relax a control-law constraint based on that preemption. Functionally this tracks Claim 9's substance but is drafted as an installed system rather than a process of insertion.

Claim 16 — Machine (the BDE adaptor itself).
Directed to the adaptor as a machine: a BDE ("Bhan-Donahue-Endres") adaptor comprising a specially programmed processor with rules to (a) modify the CAS to preclude an undesired state that the CAS's control laws do not account for; (b) derive an airspeed prediction that replaces a sensor airspeed input "in a phase of operation prone to instrumentation error"; (c) generate a disturbance estimate for a desired state based on that prediction; and (d) generate a control-element command that preempts the undesired state. This is the broadest "software-as-machine" framing in the patent.

Dependents worth noting in a landscape analysis

• Claims 3–4: the predicted airspeed must lead the predicted occurrence by more than the command generation/execution latency, at least 0.5 seconds — a concrete numerical boundary of likely claim-construction significance.
• Claim 5: the undesired state is specifically transonic pitch disturbances.
• Claims 6–7 and the Claim 9 "relaxing" limitation: the asserted technical benefit is envelope expansion via relaxing control-law constraints — the patent's stated point of novelty over ordinary disturbance rejection.
• Claims 12–13: adaptor reduces required flight testing, and uses a "direct nonlinear multi-degree-of-freedom analysis rules" tool "in lieu of a trajectory optimization tool" (explicitly excluding NLP/collocation-based direct trajectory optimization and Riccati-equation linear models).
• Claim 14: Mach-dependent aerodynamic disturbance estimation, reducing need to update the CAS aerodynamic model.
• Claims 15, 17: CAS is a digital control system (e.g., fly-by-wire).

---

Substance in brief (from the specification, for context)

The disclosure targets the transonic "Mach cliff" — the rapid change in pitching-moment coefficient between about Mach 0.9 and 1.0 — combined with air-data Mach source error of as much as ~0.06 Mach at transonic speeds. Because the CAS gain schedule is indexed on an erroneous Mach, commands can aggravate rather than mitigate the disturbance, so fielded systems constrain command authority (the specification gives the example of limiting a pitch command to a 0.5 g unload when the structural limit is −2 g). The BDE adaptor's predictor is described as a complementary filter blending slow velocity V (low-pass) with fast Nx axial acceleration (high-pass) to produce a scalar predicted airspeed V P ~0.5 s ahead — matched to the ~0.5 s (≈40 control frames at 80 Hz) latency from input to actual surface deflection. A disturbance estimator E produces ŵ, scaled by an adaptive, learning-controlled gain ΔK to form δ BDE, added to the baseline δ cmd. Figure 6 shows a Mach-based ŵ representation requiring roughly 2 degrees of pitch-control-element adaptation.

Terminology caveat: the record is internally inconsistent on what "BDE" abbreviates — it appears variously as "Bhan-Donahue-Endres" (after the inventors), "Bill-Donahue-Endres", "Binary-Donahue-Endres", and "Bhan-Donahue-Endress". I report all four as they appear rather than harmonizing them.

Uncertainty disclosure

• Claim wording: the verbatim independent-claim text I retrieved (claims 1, 9, 11, 16) comes from the pre-grant publication US 2021/0055111 A1 as indexed by Justia. Granted-claim wording can differ from the published application; the Google Patents full text you supplied presents the same claim language as "Clauses," so they appear consistent, but I did not verify the granted claims against the USPTO Patent Center text.
• Litigation: I found no CAFC, PTAB, or district court activity for this patent, but I could not query the dockets authoritatively. If a 2026 CAFC docket exists, I did not locate it and cannot rule it out.
• Examiner/art unit: I did not obtain a reliable examiner or art unit assignment for US 11,060,870 from the sources retrieved; one search hit showing "Bernarr E. Gregory" and a July 6, 2021 date was associated with a different patent and I am not attributing it here.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11060870 across patent litigation sources.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me run a few more targeted checks, including docket databases and PTAB records.

Litigation Report — U.S. Patent No. 11,060,870

Patent identified literally as: U.S. Patent No. 11,060,870 B2 — "Process and machine to predict and preempt an aerodynamic disturbance," assigned to The Boeing Company (application 16/550,246, filed 2019-08-25, granted 2021-07-13). Inventors: Sankalp K. Bhan, Daniel Garrett Donahue, Ryan Grey Endres.

Findings

No litigation is known involving U.S. Patent No. 11,060,870.

Based on searches across patent-litigation-focused sources (Unified Patents litigation case list, CourtListener/RECAP, Justia dockets, and general litigation news), I could not identify any civil action — in district court, the Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, or an ITC Section 337 investigation — in which U.S. Patent No. 11,060,870 was asserted as a patent-in-suit, challenged, or otherwise placed at issue.

Important caveats

1. Precision matters here. Several search hits contained the digit string "11060870," but none related to this patent. Examples that must not be conflated with this patent:

   • A Brazilian state commercial-registry notice for a company identified as "CANAA S OLUCOES AMBIENTAIS...", docket/registration no. 11060870 (jucisrs.rs.gov.br) — unrelated administrative registry entry.
   • A New York (Watertown) county tax-bill account number 11060870 — unrelated.
   • An SEC EDGAR "关联标识"/accession-style identifier 11060870 associated with Nordion Inc. — unrelated.
   • Numerous court opinions referencing a "'608 patent" (e.g., the Netlist v. Samsung family, Tex. ED) and "Rule 608(b)" evidentiary citations — these are different patents/authorities and do not involve U.S. 11,060,870.

2. Adjacent Boeing litigation exists but does not concern this patent. My searches surfaced Boeing patent/IP disputes involving other patents, including the Zunum Aero, Inc. v. The Boeing Co. trade-secret and patent-inventorship litigation (W.D. Wash., No. C21-0896JLR; 9th Cir. Nos. 24-5212, 24-5751), Seymour Levine v. The Boeing Company (N.D. Ill., asserting U.S. Reissue Patent RE39,618), and LST / laser-bond-inspection and Wilson copyright matters. None of these involve U.S. 11,060,870, and I am not reporting them as results for this patent.

3. Scope limitations. I was unable to complete additional targeted lookups (e.g., a direct Unified Patents case-list query, PTAB/PTAB-style proceedings search, and a full PACER docket sweep) before reaching my search-step limit. PACER district-court dockets and the ITC's EDIS are not fully indexed by general web search, so a small number of low-visibility or very recent filings cannot be entirely excluded by this report. If you need highest assurance, I recommend a paid docket search (Lex Machina, Docket Navigator, or PACER/EDIS) keyed to Patent No. 11,060,870.

Conclusion: To the best of the information available, there is no known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,060,870. This is stated as a negative finding based on available sources, not as a certified absence of any filing.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" baseline against public PTAB/CAFC sources before finalizing.

Let me run a couple of final targeted checks on PTAB/reexam and any Federal Circuit docket activity.

PTAB Report — U.S. Patent No. 11,060,870

Patent: U.S. 11,060,870 B2 — "Process and machine to predict and preempt an aerodynamic disturbance"
Owner (current assignee): The Boeing Company · App. No. 16/550,246 · Filed/granted: 2019-08-25 / 2021-07-13
Inventors: Sankalp K. Bhan, Daniel Garrett Donahue, Ryan Grey Endres · Adjusted expiration: 2039-11-14

---

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0 (zero). Breakdown by status: 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denied. The canonical source for this report — the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block drawn from the USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) — returns an empty set for this patent, and my independent web checks (PTAB/E2E-style queries, litigation/PTAB aggregator results, and Federal Circuit docket surfacing) found no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming U.S. 11,060,870. Bottom-line defensive posture for a defendant: there is no PTAB record to lean on. The patent has not been narrowed, cancelled, or judicially construed by the Board; every claim stands as issued and untested at the PTAB. That cuts both ways — Boeing cannot point to a Board win to strengthen the patent, but you also cannot point to a Board loss to weaken it. An invalidity defense here is a clean sheet: you (or a defensive aggregator) would need to build the challenge from scratch, and you would face the 2025–26 institution regime described in the caveats below.

There are no proceedings to enumerate. The requested per-proceeding template (### {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner}) is intentionally not populated, because fabricating a proceeding number would violate the no-fabrication constraint and the instruction to source the list from the structured block.

Why the count is zero — verification trail

Precision warnings — digit strings that must NOT be conflated with this patent

Several search hits contain the string "11060870," "6108704," or "608" but are different rights. Do not cite these as proceedings on U.S. 11,060,870:

• US 6,108,704 (Straight Path IP Group) — subject of IPR2015-00209, Verizon Services Corp. et al. v. Straight Path IP Group Inc. (petitioner-side, LG Electronics exhibits; FWD appealed). This is a different patent number (6,108,704 vs. 11,060,870) and a different owner. Its proceeding number must not be imported into this report.
• Brazilian state commercial-registry entry (jucisrs.rs.gov.br) and a Watertown, NY tax account, both bearing "11060870" — administrative identifiers, not PTAB cases.
• The Netlist v. Samsung "'608 patent" family and Rule 608(b) evidentiary citations — different patents/authorities.

---

Strategic summary

Claim status across proceedings: nothing is canceled, nothing is sustained, everything is untested. Because zero AIA trials were filed or instituted, the full claim set — independent claim 1 (the process), claim 9 (the "BDE adaptor" envelope-expansion process), claim 11 (system), and claim 16 (machine, with dependent claims 17–20) — remains exactly as issued and unreviewed by the Board. There is no FWD to link to, no claim-level disposition to quote, and therefore no canceled claim a demand letter could be exploiting. If a patent owner asserts this patent, it is asserting a never-challenged, fully-intact claim set.

Estoppel landscape — § 315(e)(2) is irrelevant today, and that is the practical point. Estoppel only attaches after a final written decision. With no trial ever instituted, no petitioner and no privy is estopped on any ground against this patent. Two consequences follow. First, all prior-art grounds are available to anyone wishing to challenge the claims — there is no exhausted art, no "raised or reasonably could have raised" bar. Second, your district-court invalidity case is unconstrained by PTAB outcomes; there is no IPR record to narrow the claims and no IPR estoppel to worry about if you later file your own petition. Practically, this also means the patent has never been through the Office's adversarial second look — which is where a patent like this one, heavy on functional/apparatus claims (e.g., an "adaptor" that "replaces a signal… with a predicted airspeed" and "estimates… an onset and characteristics of an undesired state"), might be vulnerable to § 112 or § 103 attack in a forum that permits those grounds. Recognizing that § 311(b) limits IPR to patents and printed publications, an IPR could not reach a § 112 written-description/enablement theory against these highly functional claims; a PGR would, but the PGR window (nine months from grant) closed long ago — the patent granted 2021-07-13, so PGR is time-barred, and CBM is inapplicable (this is an aerospace flight-control patent, not a financial-services claim). Any administrative challenge today would have to be an IPR on § 102/§ 103 art, or an ex parte reexamination (which any third party may request without the IPR time bars).

Pattern signals. None of the usual PTAB markers are present: no repeat petitioner, no multiple IPRs, no Federal Circuit appeal from a Board decision, and no defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) in the chain. Combined with the empty litigation record from the prior section — no district-court or ITC assertion of this patent — the profile is consistent with a portfolio/large-entity patent that has never been litigated or asserted, not with a patent under sustained attack. That is a meaningful signal in itself: well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The absence of any PTAB activity, alongside the absence of any litigation, strongly suggests this patent has not yet been put in play.

---

Recommended next steps

1. State it plainly: no PTAB activity exists on U.S. 11,060,870. There is no FWD to link to and no disposition to quote — and I will not manufacture one. The absence is the finding.

2. Treat the claim set as pristine and plan the challenge from zero. Because no IPR was ever filed, there is no § 315(e) estoppel and no exhausted art. Prior-art searching should start fresh against the claims as issued (independent claim 1 and claims 9, 11, 16, plus dependents), focusing on § 102/§ 103 art in flight-control-augmentation, air-data/Mach sensing, and adaptive/learning disturbance-rejection systems predating the 2019-08-25 filing date.

3. Sequence your fora correctly given the new institution regime. If you contemplate an IPR, note the material 2025–26 changes flagged in my searches: the Office's bifurcated institution process (Director resolves discretionary factors first), the revival of Fintiv-style discretionary denial with Sotera stipulations downgraded from dispositive to merely "highly relevant," and the "settled expectations" factor (heightened denial risk for patents in force more than ~6 years — this patent, granted 2021-07-13, is roughly five years in force and approaching that threshold). Institution rates have dropped sharply under Director-level control of institution decisions. A Sotera stipulation in any parallel litigation remains the best hedge, but is no longer a safe harbor. (These regime descriptions are drawn from secondary practitioner analyses surfaced in search — treat them as directional, not as cited Office policy; verify against the current PTAB Consolidated Trial Practice Guide and Director memoranda before filing.)

4. Consider ex parte reexamination as the § 112-capable fallback. Because IPR cannot reach § 112 and the PGR window is closed, if your best theory is a functional-claiming / written-description or enablement attack on the "adaptor configured to…" limitations, ex parte reexamination is the only administrative vehicle — and it carries no § 315 time bar and no estoppel.

5. Highest-assurance confirmation. ODP was the canonical source and returned empty; I could not run a direct PTAB E2E docket query, a PACER sweep, or a full CAFC docket check before reaching my search-step limit. A very recent filing (post-ODP-ingest) cannot be categorically excluded by this report. For litigation-grade certainty, confirm via PTAB E2E / USPTO PatentCenter for U.S. 11,060,870 and a paid docket search (Lex Machina, Docket Navigator) keyed to both the patent number and application 16/550,246.

Conclusion: As of the sources available, there are no AIA trial proceedings involving U.S. Patent No. 11,060,870. This is a negative finding based on the structured ODP block plus public searches, not a certified absence of any filing. It should be read together with the prior Litigation section, which likewise found no litigation — the composite picture is a never-asserted, never-challenged patent with a fully intact claim set.

I'll search for the assignment records and any ownership-transfer evidence for this patent.

Let me check the USPTO assignment database and related sources directly.

Let me try to locate the recorded assignment reel/frame and the inventors' affiliations.

I've reached my search-step limit. Below is the ownership reconstruction based on what I could verify, with explicit flags where a field could not be confirmed.

Inventors

All three are listed as assignors to The Boeing Company on the sole recorded assignment (Google Patents legal events, 2019-08-25, "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST... Assignors: BHAN, SANKALP K., DONAHUE, DANIEL GARRETT, ENDRES, RYAN GREY").

Unusual patterns: None detected. There is no evidence of any inventor departing Boeing within 12 months of filing, and no fire-sale precursor. The naming convention in the patent's own specification — "BDE (Bhan-Donahue-Endres) adaptor" — ties the inventors directly to Boeing's internal F-15 flight-controls program, consistent with employed-inventor assignment rather than an outside/independent filing. Note the specification inconsistently expands "BDE" in places as "Bill-Donahue-Endres" and "Binary-Donahue-Endres"; that is a drafting/OCR artifact, not an ownership fact.

Original assignee

The Boeing Company — a Delaware corporation, business address 100 N. Riverside Plaza, Chicago, Illinois 60606-1596 (form of the Boeing assignment block, e.g. reel 050912/0226). Google Patents lists Boeing as both current and original assignee; the patent is Active, with an adjusted expiration of 2039-11-14 (indicating a term adjustment/terminal disclaimer event, not an ownership event).

• Primary line of business: global aerospace manufacturer and defense contractor.
• Ship-product question: The claimed subject matter (a "BDE adaptor" for a control augmentation system that predicts and preempts transonic pitch disturbance, validated in advanced flight simulators per the specification) is an internal flight-control law/software modification, not a separately sold article. Boeing's F-15 program (the disclosed example vehicle, including F-15 stabilators) is the natural carrier. The specification describes the adaptor as patchable onto an existing control augmentation system "in post manufacturing operations," i.e., a retrofit/upgrade capability. I cannot confirm, from public sources, that any specific fielded Boeing product embodies the claims.
• Current status: Operating; not acquired, dissolved, or in bankruptcy.

Assignment timeline

Critical limitation: I could not retrieve the reel/frame, correspondent-of-record, or the executed/recorded dates for this patent's assignment from the Assignment Center. The step budget expired before I could open the record at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ or https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html filtered on patent 11,060,870 / application 16/550,246. I will not fabricate a reel/frame number. What follows is what is actually of record:

• 2019-08-25 (executed) / recorded date not retrieved — Reel NOT RETRIEVED/Frame NOT RETRIEVED
  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (per Google Patents legal events, "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: Bhan, Sankalp K.; Donahue, Daniel Garrett; Endres, Ryan Grey (individually)
  • Assignee: The Boeing Company (Delaware corporation, 100 N. Riverside Plaza, Chicago, IL 60606-1596)
  • Correspondent: Not confirmed for this reel/frame. For context, the recurring Boeing correspondent visible in adjacent, unrelated Boeing records is Miller, Matthias & Hull LLP / The Boeing, One North Franklin Street, Suite 2350, Chicago, IL 60606, contact cramirez@millermatthiashull.com, submitter signature "/brent e. matthias/" (see reel 050912/0226, recorded 2019-11-01, application 16/672,133 — a different Boeing application). Because that correspondent block attaches to a different property, I flag it only as the probable Boeing house correspondent, not as this patent's record.
  • Context: initial employment assignment (inventors → employer). This is the only recorded assignment of title.

No post-issuance assignments are of record. Google Patents' legal-events list for US11060870B2 shows only: (1) application filed / priority to 16/550,246 (2019-08-25); (2) inventors assigned to The Boeing Company (2019-08-25); (3) publication of US20210055111A1 (2021-02-25); (4) grant of US11060870B2 (2021-07-13); (5) active status with adjusted expiration 2039-11-14. No security agreement, no merger, no change of name, no license recordation, no transfer-to-asserter. The absence of any post-issuance conveyance is itself the finding: Boeing still owns the patent.

Adjacent corroboration sought: USPTO PEDS/ODP, SEC 10-K/8-K filings, and the RPX/Unified asserter directories — no notice of a Boeing patent transfer for this property surfaced (and this aligns with the prior litigation section, which found no assertion activity at all).

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11060870
    2019 : Application filed by inventors
         : Inventors assign to The Boeing Company
    2021 : Patent granted to Boeing
         : No further recorded assignments

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data (per the rubric's own definition: "no records, or only the original assignment").

Justification: the entirety of the recorded chain of title is a single inventor-to-employer assignment dated 2019-08-25, naming Bhan, Donahue, and Endres as assignors and The Boeing Company as assignee, with the grant issuing to Boeing on 2021-07-13 and no post-issuance conveyance of any kind on Google Patents' legal events. Because there is only one link, none of the eight NPE signals can be affirmatively established; substantively, every signal that is testable reads not present, and the current assignee is a large operating aerospace company that ships products (F-15 and related platforms) rather than a licensing vehicle. Note the residual caveat: I could not open the Assignment Center record itself, so the reel/frame and the correspondent of record for this specific assignment remain unverified — hence "insufficient data" rather than "defensive / non-asserting."

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 11,060,870 or application 16/550,246) and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

---

Two cross-reference notes for the final report:

1. The prior litigation section's negative finding (no suits) and this section's finding (no post-issuance transfers) are mutually consistent and reinforce each other — no contradiction.
2. Open item requiring a paid docket/assignment pull: the reel/frame and correspondent for the 2019-08-25 Boeing assignment. Everything else points the same direction, but that single record is the one field I could not verify and should not be asserted without it.

I'll research the prior art cited on the face of US 11,060,870 and related references.

Let me look for the specific citation lists (front-page references and forward citations).

Let me pull the citation tables from other patent databases.

Prior-Art Review — U.S. Patent No. 11,060,870 B2

Patent under review: U.S. 11,060,870 B2, "Process and machine to predict and preempt an aerodynamic disturbance," App. No. 16/550,246, filed 2019-08-25, granted 2021-07-13, The Boeing Company. Inventors Bhan, Donahue, Endres. (Identifiers interpreted literally; not auto-corrected.)

---

1. Critical limitation on this report — read first

I was unable to retrieve the authoritative front-page "References Cited" table for U.S. 11,060,870. Two things caused this:

• The Google Patents full text supplied in this session does not contain the "Patent Citations" / "Cited By" / "Family Cites" tables — they are absent from the fetched document (the fetch captured the bibliographic block, classifications, description, claims, and a concept-index and "Landscapes" list, but no citation tables).
• My searches for the citation tables from secondary databases (Justia, FPO, Patents-Review, EPO/Google Patents family pages) hit the tool-step limit before returning the table. The one relevant hit I did get — a Google Patents page for EP 1 028 890 A1 — shows a "Family Cites Families (9)" block containing US 11,060,870 B2 (Boeing, 2019-08-25 / 2021-07-13), which indicates Google Patents records roughly nine citing-family documents for this patent, but that page is a forward-citation list, not the patent's own "References Cited."

Consequence: I cannot, in good conscience, present a list of "each patent citation for 11060870" with 102(b)/(a) dates attached. Doing so would require fabricating citations. Below I give (A) what the record actually establishes about this patent's citation posture, (B) the confirmed forward-citation set, and (C) a clearly labeled set of candidate references in the identical art that I encountered while searching — each flagged as not verified as appearing on the face of the patent. Section D gives the § 102 claim-mapping analysis for those candidates so the work is usable, but the verification gap must be closed before any of it is filed or relied on.

---

2. Where the cited art almost certainly lives (from the patent's own CPC)

The granted classifications are informative about what the examiner searched:

• G05D 1/0607, G05D 1/0615 — "Rate of change of altitude or depth ... specially adapted for aircraft to counteract a perturbation, e.g. gust of wind"
• G05D 1/0623 — the same, "by acting on the pitch"
• G01C 21/16 (inertial navigation), G01C 21/20, B64G 1/24, B64G 2700/24

G05D 1/0615 and 1/0623 are the gust-load-alleviation / feedforward-pitch-disturbance-rejection classes. This is a strong, independent signal that the art cited against (and cited by) this patent is the feedforward gust/perturbation pitch-control art — precisely the references I encountered in searches (items C2–C5 below). It also means the "relaxing a constraint imposed on a control law" limitation (claims 9 and 11) was examined against art that normally imposes load-limiting constraints — a useful line for the analysis in Section D.

---

3. Confirmed forward citations (post-2019 — not § 102 prior art)

These cite this patent or its publication, so they cannot anticipate it. Listed for landscape completeness:

Note the significance of US 11,535,364's lineage statement: Boeing's own gust-load-alleviation family (US 8,774,987 and US 9,639,089) is the closest Boeing-internal antecedent for the "preempt a disturbance" concept, even though those documents predate the 2019 filing and are therefore potential prior art rather than forward citations.

---

4. Candidate references in the same art — citation status unverified

Each entry below states plainly whether I could confirm it appears on the face of U.S. 11,060,870. None did — I could not verify any. They are offered as the highest-probability cited/considered art and as the art an invalidity or EOU analysis should start from.

C1. US 2017/0144748 A1 — "preemptive mitigation of turbulence in an air vehicle."

• Date: published 2017 (date inferred from the US 2017/0144748 A1 series numbering, ~2017-05-25; not verified for this document). Pre-dates the 2019-08-25 filing, so it is § 102(b)/(a)(1) art if relied on.
• Substance (from the published text I retrieved): controller 120 determines whether air mass 110 will disturb smooth flight; an air mass sensor 122 measures the air mass ahead of the airplane; the controller "calculates an expected time and an expected velocity of airplane 100 at an expected entry of airplane 100 into air mass 110" — noting "when airplane 100 is accelerating or turning, the expected velocity at the expected entry will not be the same as a current velocity" — then computes a difference between the expected airplane velocity and the air-mass velocity and commands flight control surfaces preemptively, within deviation limits imposed by the flight management system.
• Why it matters: this is the closest thing I saw to a predicted future airspeed feeding a pre-onset control command in the pre-2019 literature. It is the single highest-value reference for anticipation of the "predicted airspeed" concept.

C2. US 8,774,987 B2 (Boeing) and C3. US 9,639,089 B2 (Boeing) — gust load alleviation.

• Dates: not verified in this session (both pre-date the 2019 filing; US 9,639,089 issued in 2017 per the statement of US 11,535,364, which is itself a secondary source). If either pre-dates 2019-08-25, it is § 102(b) art.
• Substance: feedforward gust load alleviation — a gust indicator feeds a feedforward control law that commands control surfaces before the gust loads the wing.
• Why they matter: they establish that Boeing (the assignee) was already practicing feedforward, pre-onset control-surface commanding years before this filing.

C4. EP 1 854 717 A1 / US 2008/0265104 A1 — gust load alleviation with an α_wind estimator.

• Date: not verified (EP 1 854 717 A1 is cited in the EADS document ES 2543633 T3 as explaining how α_wind may be computed from an alpha-probe measurement; US 2008/0265104 is cross-referenced there).
• Substance: derives a wind-induced angle of attack α_wind by high-pass filtering to strip the static angle of attack α0, so the gust load alleviation (GLAS) feedforward law gets a disturbance signal separated from steady-state air data — conceptually parallel to this patent's claim that the predictor "removes source error influences as it constructs an estimated disturbance," and to claim 10's complementary filter.
• Why it matters: attacks the "removing source error / complementary filtering" concept directly.

C5. ES 2543633 T3 (translation of an EADS/EP gust-load-alleviation case) — feedforward control law (H), feedback control law (K), exogenous disturbance inputs (w), regulated outputs (z).

• Date: not verified; the document appeared in searches alongside the EP 1 854 717 discussion.
• Why it matters: it explicitly frames the exogenous-disturbance/feedforward/feedback architecture (H feedforward + K feedback, optimized by convex optimization) that claims 1/9/11/16 assume as the substrate for the "adaptor."

C6. US 10,545,511 B2 (Boeing, Beauftree) — "Process and machine for increasing a pitch authority of an aircraft."

• Date: App. No. 15/331,717, filed 2016-10-21, issued 2020-01-28 (prior publication US 2018/0086431 A1, 2018-03-29); continuation-in-part of 15/279,414 filed 2016-09-28. The 2016/2018 dates pre-date the 2019 filing.
• Substance: expanding the airworthy CG range and pitch authority via an allevatoron mixer. Different problem, but same Boeing drafting idiom ("process and machine for improving a performance of ... an aircraft," augmenting a moment, expanding a range/authority).
• Why it matters: low § 102 value (different mechanism), moderate value as evidence of the assignee's own "expand-the-envelope-by-augmentation" prior art — relevant background for the claim 6/7 "expanding an operating envelope" language.

C7. US 11,535,364 (Boeing) — gust load alleviation.

• Date: issued 2022 — post-dates the 2019 filing, therefore not § 102 prior art. Listed only because its background section is the best secondary description of the pre-2019 Boeing gust-load-alleviation state of the art (delay/instability of filtering, inability to discriminate which gusts require action).

C8. Background/admitted prior art in the patent itself. The specification admits as known: (i) the F-15 "Bitburg roll" and the inability of existing CAS to avoid it; (ii) load limiters that "constrain[] the control laws," the specification's own example being a transonic pitch command capped at a 0.5 g unload when the structural limit is −2 g; (iii) the transonic "Mach cliff" in pitching-moment coefficient (Fig. 2, ~0.6 ΔC_m between Mach 0.9 and 1.0, ≈ a 6° stabilator equivalent) and the corresponding ~Mach-0.9-to-1.0 stabilator deflection discontinuity (Fig. 3, plots 302 and 304); (iv) air-data Mach source error of up to ~0.06 Mach at transonic speeds; (v) PI/2nd-order reaugmentation CAS architectures (Fig. 4, K/M/O/C/A) and Kalman-type observers. Items (i)–(iv) are the inventor's own characterizations of the art and are usable as admissions, but are generic; they are not, standing alone, anticipating references.

---

5. § 102 anticipation assessment, claim by claim

Framework: independent claims 1, 9, 11, 16; dependents 3–4 (0.5 s lead), 5 (transonic pitch), 6–7 (envelope expansion / relaxing constraints), 12–13 (reduced flight test; "direct nonlinear multi-degree-of-freedom analysis rules in lieu of a trajectory optimization tool," expressly excluding NLP/collocation direct trajectory optimization and Riccati linear models), 14 (Mach-dependent disturbance estimate), 15/17 (digital CAS).

For § 102 the reference must disclose every element, arranged as claimed, in a single document — 35 U.S.C. § 102; Net MoneyIN v. VeriSign; no picking and choosing from separate references.

Net § 102 conclusion (subject to the verification gap): On the evidence actually retrieved, no single reference discloses all elements of any of claims 1, 9, 11, or 16. The two limitations that consistently defeat anticipation across the whole candidate set are:

1. "replacing the signals being input to the control augmentation system with the predicted airspeed" — i.e., substitution of a predicted airspeed for the sensor airspeed signal within the CAS, as opposed to a separate feedforward channel added alongside it; and
2. "relaxing, based upon the [adaptor] preempting the onset of the undesired state, a constraint imposed on a control law" (claims 9 and 11).

Limitation (2) is the analytically distinctive one: the entire located prior-art set moves in the opposite direction (load limiters, FMS deviation limits, GLAS engagement thresholds — all imposing constraints). That inversion is the patent's clearest point of novelty over the art I found.

On claim 3/4's "0.5 seconds": no candidate reference discloses a numerical lead-time limitation at all, so the ~0.5 s floor (clauses 3–4) is not anticipated by anything located. Note the specification's own derivation: 80 Hz processing, ≈0.5 s ≈ 40 frames for signal-to-actual-deflection latency — a design-matched number rather than an independently inventive one, which will matter more for § 103 than § 102.

On claims 12–13: the express negative limitation ("in lieu of a trajectory optimization tool ... eliminates a duplication requirement for aerodynamic models from simulation optimization programs that derive direct trajectory optimization based upon nonlinear programs and collocation, or linear models that solve Riccati equations") is unusual and, because it excludes rather than adds, is not anticipated by any reference located — but it also raises a § 112(a)/(b) definiteness and written-description question worth separate analysis.

---

6. What would change this analysis

1. The authoritative citation table. If US 11,060,870's Form PTO-892 cites US 2017/0144748 A1, US 8,774,987, or the EP 1 854 717 family, then the examiner considered and distinguished exactly the art identified above, and the file-wrapper remarks (rather than the mere citations) become the operative record on § 102/§ 103. If it cites art I have not located, my candidate set is incomplete.
2. Any air-data / complementary-filter art co-pending in Art Unit G05D 1/06. The predictor's V/Nx complementary-filter claim (claim 10) is the most vulnerable limitation to a § 103 combination of (GLA feedforward art) + (air-data complementary-filter art). I did not locate or verify a specific such reference; that search should be run to closure.
3. Litigation posture — unchanged from the prior section: still no U.S. 11,060,870 litigation identified, so no invalidity contentions exist to mine.

---

7. Recommended next steps to close the gap (I could not complete these)

• Pull the front page / "References Cited" and "Cited By" tables directly from USPTO Patent Center or Patent Public Search, or from the granted-PDF front page, which lists the U.S. patent documents, foreign patent documents, and non-patent literature considered.
• Pull the PTO-892 / PTO-1449 and any IDS from the file wrapper in Patent Center (these give the examiner's actual citations and the applicant's IDS, with dates).
• Query Google Patents → US11060870B2 → "Patent Citations" / "Cited By" / "Similar Documents" directly (the fetch in this session dropped those tables; a direct page read should restore them).
• Run Espacenet "Also published as" / INPADOC for the family and its citation links.

---

8. Flags against the earlier sections of this analysis

1. Examiner — possible correction (low confidence, unresolved). The prior "Patent summary" section declined to attribute "Bernarr E. Gregory" as examiner, treating that hit as belonging to a different patent. However, one search result here is a Justia page titled "Patents Examined by Bernarr E. Gregory" (page 30) whose content includes this patent's abstract (BDE adaptor / Bhan-Donahue-Endres). That is evidence the earliest section may have been too conservative, but the adjacent dates on that page ("Filed: December 27, 2018; Date of Patent: July 6, 2021") appear to belong to a different entry, so the attribution is still unconfirmed. Flagging rather than resolving.
2. No contradiction with the prior litigation section: my prior-art searches surfaced no U.S. 11,060,870 litigation, consistent with the "no known litigation" negative finding (a Title II–style forward-citation page listing, not a case).
3. Consistent with the prior section's terminology caveat: the record still uses "BDE" inconsistently (Bhan-Donahue-Endres / Bill-Donahue-Endres / Binary-Donahue-Endres / Bhan-Donahue-Endress). Nothing in the prior art affects that.

Bottom line: The substance most likely to be cited against this patent is the feedforward gust/perturbation pitch-control art (Boeing's own 8,774,987 / 9,639,089 lineage, the EP 1 854 717 alpha-wind family, and US 2017/0144748 A1's predicted-entry-velocity scheme), and none of the references I located anticipates any independent claim — the "predicted airspeed substituted for the CAS sensor input" and "relaxing a control-law constraint" limitations are the distinguishing features. But I could not verify the actual citation list, and no reference in this report should be represented as appearing on the face of U.S. 11,060,870 until the front-page and file-wrapper citation tables are pulled.

I'll start by noting what "Prior Art section" material is actually available in the supplied page text, then search for real references I can ground the analysis in.

Let me pull the actual cited-references list for this patent and a few more targeted references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,060,870 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent: Process and machine to predict and preempt an aerodynamic disturbance · App. 16/550,246 · Filed 2019-08-25 · Granted 2021-07-13 · Assignee The Boeing Company · Inventors Bhan, Donahue, Endres.

---

0. Scope note on the "Prior Art section" — read this first

The page text supplied for this task does not contain a prior-art citation list. What the supplied Google Patents page actually provides as "prior art" content is limited to:

• "Prior art keywords": aerospace vehicle, control, adaptor, onset, state
• A Google Patents concept/CPC index (a bag-of-words relevance ranking, e.g. "method 238000000034", "augmentation 230000003416", plus the spurious "9,10-anthraquinone" artifact already flagged in the Patent Summary section, and the CPC schedule G01C21/16, B64G1/24, G05D1/0607, G05D1/0623).
• No "References Cited," no "Citations," no "Cited By," and no examiner/art-unit listing.

I attempted to retrieve the actual front-page citation list and the examiner's cited art for US 11,060,870. I did not obtain a verified "References Cited" block before reaching the tool-call limit. I am therefore not going to present a fabricated citation list. Instead, this analysis uses two legitimate and disclosable sources of prior art:

1. Applicant-admitted prior art (AAPA) inside the specification itself — the specification expressly describes the fielded CAS architecture (FIG. 4), Mach source-error, the transonic "Mach cliff," the F-15 Bitburg roll, gain scheduling, Kalman/observer-based state estimation, and the constrained-command practice. These admissions are usable art/background under § 103.
2. Real references surfaced by open-web searching, identified literally and dated below. Three of the hits I retrieved are not prior art and I flag them so they are not misused (see §2a).

The "prior art keywords" list is itself analytically useful: it confirms the Office/Google art vectors were aerospace vehicle control, an adaptor, and onset/state estimation — i.e., the Examiner was looking at flight-control-adaptation art, not at a specific anticipatory reference. That is consistent with the outcome suggested below.

---

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

A POSITA here is an aerospace/controls engineer with at least a bachelor's (typically master's) in aeronautical/electrical engineering and ~3–5 years of flight-control-law design experience on fly-by-wire/control-augmentation aircraft, including: gain scheduling on Mach/airspeed; air-data systems and their error sources; classical feedback design plus at least one modern/adaptive technique (MRAC, LQR/LQG, neural/dynamic-inversion adaptive control); and state estimation (Kalman/complementary filters). That skill level matters because every functional limitation in the claims is within the routine design capability of this person given the references below.

---

2. The claim set to be tested (granted text, verbatim)

Claim 1 (process): correcting for errors in signals from sensors being input to a CAS, via:

• (a) deriving a predicted airspeed "in an adaptor comprising a processor comprising code specially programmed for replacing the signals being input to the control augmentation system with the predicted airspeed";
• (b) estimating, using the adaptor and the predicted airspeed, an onset and characteristics of an undesired state;
• (c) deriving … a command prior to the onset of the undesired state and precluding the onset; and
• (d) issuing the command to a control element to preempt the undesired state.

Claim 9 (process): inserting an adaptor onto the CAS, the adaptor performing (a)–(d) plus "relaxing, based upon the adaptor preempting the onset of the undesired state, a constraint imposed on a control law for the aerospace vehicle."

Claim 11 (system): control element + flight control system with sensors measuring at least airspeed + adaptor performing (a)–(d) + the relaxing step.

Claim 16 (machine): a "BDE adaptor" processor with rules to modify a CAS to preclude an undesired state unaccounted for by the CAS control laws; derive an airspeed prediction that replaces a sensor airspeed input "in a phase of operation prone to instrumentation error"; generate a disturbance estimate from the prediction; generate a command that preempts the undesired state.

Dependents of note: 3–4 (prediction lead time > command latency; at least ~0.5 s), 5 (transonic pitch disturbance), 6–7 (envelope expansion by relaxing control-law constraints), 10 (complementary filter to "eliminate propagating dynamics of states other than airspeed … forward in time"), 12 (reduce required flight test), 13 ("direct nonlinear multi-degree-of-freedom analysis rules, in lieu of a trajectory optimization tool … eliminates a duplication requirement for aerodynamic models from … nonlinear programs and collocation, or linear models that solve Riccati equations"), 14 (Mach-dependent disturbance estimate), 15/17 (digital control system), 18 (pitch disturbance), 19 (transonic flight).

The cleanest way to attack this claim set is to decompose it into four functional buckets and show each bucket is separately taught, then supply the KSR motivation to combine:

---

2a. Reference table (literal identifiers, dates, and status)

Not prior art — do not cite against this patent

• US 2025/0237672 A1 (Rockwell Collins, Method for derivation of synthetic air data based on machine learning…), filed 2024-01-18 — post-dates US 11,060,870's 2019-08-25 filing. It cannot be prior art; at most it is background evidence of the field.
• US 11,733,715 B2 (Caltech, airflow-sensing adaptive nonlinear flight control), filed 2020-10-08 — post-dates; not §102(a)(2) art.
• EP 3 677 505 A1 as noted (use its 2016 WO/US family instead).

---

3. Grounds of obviousness

Ground A — Claim 1 obvious over R1 + R2 in view of R3/R4 and the AAPA

B1 is met. R1 discloses a complementary filter that low-pass filters a sensed airspeed and adds inertial forward acceleration × τ to output a predicted airspeed — precisely the structure the specification later recites for predictor P (slow V low-pass + fast Nx high-pass → scalar V_P). The only difference from claim 1 is the destination: R1 puts the predicted airspeed on a cockpit display; claim 1 puts it into the CAS in place of the raw sensor signal.

B2–B4 are met by R2. R2's longitudinal control processor receives predicted Mach/airspeed and effects a control-parameter changeover before the actual parameter value is reached, "to prevent overshoot." That is the essence of "deriving a command prior to the onset of the undesired state." R2 is already a flight-control-computer application — not a display — which closes the gap R1 leaves: R2 teaches feeding an airspeed/Mach prediction into a longitudinal control processor that commands the elevator.

Why a POSITA would substitute R1's predicted airspeed for the raw sensor signal in a CAS (the KSR motivations):

1. Identified, known problem with a known solution. The specification itself concedes the problem (AAPA): "Mach source-error" of "as much as 0.06 Mach" at transonic speeds, and the known transonic "Mach cliff." R1 and R2 both address exactly the delay/error of the air-data/Mach signal path. It is a simple substitution of one known element (a predicted airspeed signal) for another (a raw sensed airspeed signal) to obtain the predictable result of removing the known lag/source error. KSR, 550 U.S. at 416.
2. Same field, same function, predictable result. R1, R2, R3, R4, R5 are all aircraft speed/Mach signal conditioning for control or display. Combining them "according to known methods" is the KSR "combination of familiar elements" rationale.
3. The lead-time limitation (claims 3–4) is routine. R2 explicitly frames prediction around the known flight-path-acceleration time constant (≈6 s) and the known lag of the response to a command; R1 frames prediction around the known delay between measurement and display. Substituting "prediction lead time ≥ the command-generation-plus-execution latency, ≈0.5 s" is a result-effective optimization of a known parameter, and the specification itself states the CAS runs at 80 Hz with a ~0.5 s (≈40-frame) input-to-deflection latency — i.e., the number is dictated by the existing hardware, not by invention.

Ground A bottom line: Claim 1 is obvious over R1 + R2, optionally in view of R3 (Mach-signal filtering into a pitch/thrust control loop) and R4/R5/R6 (validating/substituting a derived airspeed for an unreliable air-data source).

---

Ground B — Claim 9 (and claim 11) obvious over Ground A + R9–R11 (adaptive disturbance estimator) + the "relax the constraint" step

Claim 9 adds two things beyond claim 1: (i) the "BDE adaptor" the disturbance-estimation/inner-loop framing, and (ii) "relaxing … a constraint imposed on a control law."

(i) The disturbance estimator / adaptive gain. R9–R11 (NASA/McDonnell F-15 IFCS) teach a self-designing / self-learning adaptive controller that identifies aircraft stability and control properties in flight and redesigns the feedback gains on-line to hold "continuous optimum flight response … throughout large flight envelopes." R11 specifically discloses an online-learning neural network plus real-time parameter identification that estimates aerodynamic derivative increments to a baseline model, and reports that injecting flight-identified increments improved pitch handling qualities. An "increments to the baseline aerodynamic model" architecture is functionally the ŵ → ΔK adaptive-gain disturbance estimator of the patent. R12 shows the IFCS computed those real-time gains "with a Ricatti Solver."

(ii) "Relaxing a constraint imposed on a control law." This is where the combination is strongest, and it is largely an admission-plus-obvious-result:

• The AAPA is explicit that fielded systems constrain command authority — the specification's own example is that a pitch command through the transonic region is limited to a 0.5 g unload although "the structural limit (and operator's desired command) [is] −2 g." A constraint imposed for the very reason that the CAS cannot predict the disturbance is by definition redundant once the disturbance is predicted and preempted. Removing a safety limiter that exists solely to guard against an un-modeled disturbance, after the disturbance is modeled and preempted, is the predictable and intended result of the Ground-A/B change — i.e., "discrete design incentives" and "market demand" (KSR).
• R10 supplies the direct motivation: the IFCS program's stated purpose included flight-envelope expansion into the transonic region (cleared for 1 g and maneuvering to 4 g, accelerating through the transonic pressure-altitude variation to Mach 1.2). One of ordinary skill would use the on-line adaptive controller for the known purpose of opening the envelope — which is precisely claim 9's stated benefit.

Claim 11 is the same substance in apparatus form (control element + sensors + adaptor). Under § 103, apparatus claims covering the same functional combination are obvious for the same reasons; the recitation of "a control element" and "sensors configured to measure at least airspeed" merely names the conventional flight-control hardware that R2/R9–R11 already assume.

---

Ground C — Claim 16 (the "machine"/adaptor) obvious over R1/R2 + R5/R6 + R9–R11

Claim 16 requires: (a) modify the CAS to preclude an undesired state "unaccounted for by" the CAS control laws; (b) an airspeed prediction that replaces a sensor airspeed input "in a phase of operation prone to instrumentation error"; (c) a disturbance estimate from the prediction; (d) a preemptive command.

• (b) is met by R1 + R2 as in Ground A, and independently by R5 (synthetic air data "output to a consuming system … when a pneumatic-based air data output value is determined to be unreliable") and R6 (synthetic air mass state; "determining whether to use" the synthetic value to control the aircraft). R5/R6 supply the "phase of operation prone to instrumentation error" trigger, because unreliable/rejected pneumatic air data is the instrument-error phase.
• (a) and (c) are met by R9–R11: modifying the control system to handle un-modeled/damaged/unaccounted-for conditions is the entire premise of the IFCS self-designing controller; the NN/parameter-ID disturbance/derivative estimate is (c).
• (d) is met by the ordinary output of any of these controllers to a control surface.

"Machine" framing does not help. A specially programmed processor that outputs control-surface commands is software implemented on known hardware; under Alice/Mayo‑era practice that is not a § 103 saving, and the "machine" is a general-purpose flight-control computer performing the same functional steps as claims 1/9/11. No new structure is recited.

---

Ground D — Dependent claims

---

4. Motivation to combine — the KSR rationales, stated expressly

For each combination above, at least one KSR/MPEP 2143 rationale applies:

1. Combination of familiar elements according to known methods, yielding predictable results (MPEP 2143(A)). Predicted-airspeed generation (R1), flight-control use of a predicted Mach/airspeed (R2), and on-line adaptive envelope-expansion control (R9–R11) are familiar elements combined in a known way.
2. Simple substitution of one known element for another (2143(B)). Replacing the raw sensed airspeed into the CAS with a predicted airspeed is a substitution with the predictable result of removing a known, documented lag/source error.
3. Use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way (2143(C)). Complementary filtering of airspeed (R1, R13–R15) used in a flight-control loop (R14, R2) improves the same device (a flight-control law) in the same way it improved the display/velocity estimate.
4. Applying a known technique to a known device ready for improvement (2143(D)). The CAS was ready for improvement — the applicant's own spec identifies the deficiency ("control augmentation systems have been unable to predict, from measurements available from real-time air data sensors, future velocity states"). R9–R11 were known solutions to exactly that class of deficiency, validated on the F-15.
5. "Obvious to try" (2143(F)). With a finite number of identified, predictable solutions (predict via complementary filter, Kalman/EKF, or synthetic-air-data estimate; adapt via MRAC or NN), a POSITA would pursue these with a reasonable expectation of success — R11 reports actual improved pitch handling qualities.
6. Design incentives / market pressure (2143(G); KSR). Envelope expansion is the explicit, known design objective (R10); expanding the usable envelope by removing a limiter that guards against a now-preempted disturbance is a direct design incentive — the very "relaxing a constraint" step the patent claims.
7. Teaching away / criticality — absent. None of R1–R15 teaches away from putting a predicted airspeed into a control augmentation system. To the contrary, R2 does it.

---

5. Where the patent may push back (counterarguments and residual non-obviousness risk)

An honest § 103 analysis must record the counterarguments Boeing would raise:

• **"The references act after onset; the claims require pre-onset preclusion." Boeing will argue that R1/R2 predict a display/changeover parameter, not a disturbance onset, and that no reference estimates the onset and characteristics of an undesired aerodynamic state and commands before it. Rebuttal: R2 expressly acts before the projected value to prevent overshoot — that is pre-onset action against an anticipated condition; and R9–R11 estimate un-modeled aerodynamic effects on-line. The combination of "predict airspeed (R1/R2)" + "estimate aerodynamic disturbance (R9–R11)" arguably yields the claim as a matter of routine combination, but this is the patent's strongest non-obviousness argument and a genuine ground of dispute.
• Claim 13's negative limitations. The express disavowal of Riccati-equation linear models and NLP/collocation trajectory optimization is a deliberate attempt to carve out the IFCS approach (R12 used a Riccati solver). Boeing will argue this shows the inventor selected away from the prior art. Counter: negative limitations and "in lieu of" framing generally lack patentable weight unless tied to an unexpected technical result, and the intrinsic record frames the benefit only as reduced duplication/test effort. This is a § 112(b)/(a) vulnerability as much as a § 103 one.
• Functional/apparatus claiming. Claim 16 ("rules to modify a control augmentation system …") and claim 11 ("adaptor … configured to …") are highly functional; an IPR cannot reach § 112 (limited to § 102/§ 103 by § 311(b)), and the PGR window closed long ago (granted 2021-07-13), as already noted in the PTAB section. So the § 112 angle is only reachable via ex parte reexamination or district court.
• Secondary considerations (Graham factor 4). The patent asserts envelope expansion and reduced flight test as benefits. If Boeing can show those results are unexpected (e.g., a materially larger envelope than the combined references would predict), that cuts against obviousness. As drafted, however, both benefits read as the expected consequence of removing a constraint premised on an un-modeled disturbance and of on-line estimation — which is exactly what KSR calls a predictable result, not an unexpected one. No nexus evidence appears in the intrinsic record as supplied.

---

6. Composite conclusion

Overall: The independent claims (1, 9, 11, 16) are strongly vulnerable to a § 103 challenge built from EP 0 827 055 A1 + EP 0 444 541 A1 in view of the NASA/McDonnell F-15 IFCS art, with US 2018/0052006 / US 10,723,479 / US 8,761,970 as secondary references for the synthetic/replacement airspeed limitation and R13/R14/R15 for the complementary-filter dependent claim. The patent's own specification supplies much of the necessary motivation (Mach source-error, the Mach cliff, the 0.5 g constraint) as applicant-admitted prior art. The residual non-obviousness case rests on (i) the "estimate the onset and characteristics of the undesired state and command before onset" framing and (ii) claim 13's negative limitations — and the latter is as much a validity defect as a defense.

---

7. Uncertainty disclosure

1. No verified prior-art citation list. The supplied page had no "References Cited" block; the only "prior art" content was the keyword list and the CPC/concept index. I could not retrieve US 11,060,870's actual front-page citations before hitting the search-step limit. Every reference above is identified literally from open-web search, not from the patent's face. Verify R1–R16 against the patent's "References Cited" and the examiner's Notice of Allowance before relying on this in a filing.
2. Date-based exclusions applied. US 2025/0237672 A1 and US 11,733,715 B2 are post-filing and are not prior art; EP 3 677 505 A1 as such is post-filing — use its 2016 WO/US family. EP 3 663 773 A1's US § 102(a)(2) status depends on a pre-2019-08-25 US/WO counterpart, which I did not confirm.
3. Secondary literature dates. R14 (thesis) and R15 (1988 NASA report) appear pre-2019 but I did not confirm their exact public-availability dates; confirm before asserting them as printed publications under § 102(a)(1).
4. No prosecution-history review. I did not obtain the 16/550,246 file wrapper (Office Actions, applicant remarks, examiner's reasons for allowance). If the examiner allowed these claims over a specific anticipatory reference on a stated rationale, this analysis should be re-run against that record — it could either strengthen (if the examiner never saw R2/R9–R11) or weaken (if a KSR-style rejection was traversed on the record) the grounds above.
5. Claim construction caveat. "Relaxing a constraint imposed on a control law" (claims 9, 11) and "in lieu of a trajectory optimization tool" (claim 13) are functional/negative recitations whose scope is uncertain; the obviousness analysis of those limitations should be revisited under whatever construction is adopted.
6. This is an analytical opinion, not a legal conclusion. It does not constitute a validity opinion under § 282, and no combination above has been run against an actual claim chart or an examiner's consideration.