US 11060873

I'll verify the patent details against live sources and check for any litigation/docket activity.

US 11,060,873 B2 — Verification & Summary

Search scope / caveats first: Live searches of Google Patents, Espacenet, and FreePatentsOnline confirm the bibliographic data below. I searched for CAFC 2026 docket activity tied to 11060873 and found no Federal Circuit appeal, oral argument calendar entry, or appellate briefing referencing this patent. That is an absence of evidence, not proof of absence — I did not query PACER/Docket Alarm directly with a docket-number-level search, so treat "no litigation found" as unverified.

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Bibliographic data (confirmed)

Classification: G01C21/206 (indoor navigation), G01C21/343, G01C21/3638, B64C39/024, B64U10/14, G05D1/0055 (safety arrangements), G05D1/617, G05D1/654 (landing), G08B7/066 (evacuation path lighting strip), G06T17/05, B64U2101/30, B64U2201/10.

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Abstract (verbatim)

"Techniques are described for configuring a monitoring system to assist users during a detected emergency condition at a property. In some implementations, sensor data from one or more sensors that are located at the property are obtained by a monitoring system that is configured to monitor the property. A determination that there is an emergency condition at the property is made by the monitoring system based on the sensor data, determining. A location of a person inside the property is determined by the monitoring system based on the sensor data. A first path to the person and a second path to guide the person away from the emergency condition are determined by the monitoring system. The first path to the person and the second path to guide the person away from the emergency condition are navigated by a computing device of the monitoring system."

(Note: the abstract contains a drafting glitch — "based on the sensor data, determining." — reproduced as-is.)

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Independent claim — plain-language overview

⚠️ Uncertainty flag: The claims section itself did not render in the authoritative text I was given, and I will not reconstruct claim language I cannot quote. What follows is grounded in the Summary of the Invention, which tracks the claim 1 scope almost verbatim, plus the specification. The sibling patent US 10,655,968 B2 has 20 claims; I could not confirm the claim count or independent-claim count of the '873 patent. Treat the claim numbers below as claim-1-style characterization, not verbatim claim text.

Independent claim 1 (system — one or more computers + storage storing instructions):
A monitoring system that watches over a property:

1. Obtains sensor data from sensors located at the property.
2. Determines, from that sensor data, that an emergency condition exists at the property (e.g., fire, smoke, CO, intrusion).
3. In response to that determination, determines a location of a person inside the property using the sensor data.
4. Determines two paths — a first path to the person and a second path to guide the person away from the emergency condition — based on (a) the sensor data, (b) the person's location, and (c) characteristics of the property.
5. Navigates both paths using a computing device of the monitoring system — i.e., a drone device physically flies the route to the occupant, then leads them out along the escape route.

Key dependent/optional limitations disclosed (would correspond to dependent claims):

• The second path is selected by identifying multiple candidate exit paths from the physical environment during the emergency, computing path metrics for each, and picking one.
• Path metrics: distance, number of obstructions, estimated time to exit. The specification explicitly allows a longer path to be selected over a shorter one when it has fewer/less severe obstructions — e.g., path "C2" chosen over "C1" in FIG. 3.
• Multiple candidates may lead to the same exit (C1 and C2 both lead to back door 314) or to different exits (A → front door 316; B → back door 312).
• The first path need not be safe for the person — it may be a shortcut only the drone can fly (through small openings, over debris) to reach a distressed occupant fast; the second path must be safe for the person.
• Property characteristics derived from a 3-D spatial representation identifying at least door and window locations.
• The computing device is a drone device (quadcopter, roller-copter, ground vehicle, or fixed-wing).

Note also the specification's broader output/assist behaviors that may be captured in dependent claims: drone-mounted flashlight illumination, audible/visual directions, real-time path re-routing if the person struggles or a new obstruction appears, and voice/video calls to emergency contacts or first responders.

Independent claims in other statutory classes: The specification's "Implementations … may include hardware, a method or process … or a computer-readable storage medium encoded with executable instructions" boilerplate strongly suggests method and non-transitory computer-readable-medium independent claims mirroring the above steps — but I have not verified their presence or numbering in the '873 patent. Flagging as unconfirmed.

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Commercial / technical significance

• Part of Alarm.com's ~2017–2018 "wellness + drone" push (the file cites the CES 2017 coverage "At CES, flying drones are Alarm.com's home security moonshot" as a prior-art/background reference).
• The prosecution strategy is a continuation chain deliberately kept alive from the 2017 priority date through at least 2024 (five issued/pending U.S. family members), suggesting ongoing claim-drafting around the exit-path-selection and path-metric concepts.

Bottom line: Bibliographic data is confirmed and consistent across Google Patents, Espacenet, and FPO. The claim-set specifics (number of independent claims, verbatim claim language, claim count) are not confirmed by the material I retrieved, and I found no CAFC 2026 docket activity for this patent in accessible sources.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11060873.

Let me search more specifically for this patent number in litigation databases.

Let me check the Unified Patents portal and any litigation referencing this patent directly.

Findings: Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,060,873

No litigation specifically asserting or challenging U.S. Patent No. 11,060,873 ("Emergency drone guidance device") was found.

After searching patent-litigation sources (Unified Patents portal, CourtListener/RECAP, Docket Alarm, CAFC opinions, SEC filings, and general web sources), I found no district court case, ITC investigation, PTAB proceeding, or Federal Circuit appeal that names U.S. Patent No. 11,060,873 as an asserted or challenged patent.

I want to be explicit and careful here rather than pad the answer with near-matches. The searches returned a large volume of litigation involving the patent's owner (Alarm.com Incorporated, assignee of the '073 patent) and other Alarm.com patents, but none of those matters reference the '073 patent number itself. I did not find a case to report, so I am not going to present an unrelated case as if it involved this patent.

Why this is plausible

• The '073 patent issued relatively recently (July 13, 2021) from application 16/875,293 (filed May 15, 2020), a continuation of 15/867,175 (filed Jan. 10, 2018), claiming priority to provisional 62/444,421 (Jan. 10, 2017).
• Its subject matter — a drone that guides occupants out of a property during an emergency — is a narrow, product-specific feature, which reduces the likelihood it would be selected as an assertion patent compared with Alarm.com's broader home-security/automation portfolio.

Relevant context (owner's other litigation — NOT involving the '073 patent)

To be clear that these are separate matters on different patents, the following Alarm.com disputes surfaced in the search and are sometimes confused with this patent:

Caveats and confidence

• Confidence level: moderate-to-high that no litigation naming the '073 patent existed as of my search. However, I could not complete a fully exhaustive docket-by-docket check (e.g., all Alarm.com complaints' exhibit lists), and I was cut off before confirming the specific patent list in the 2023 E.D. Tex. complaint.
• Recommendation for verification: run a direct docket search (Lex Machina, Docket Alarm, or PACER) for "11,060,873" and check the Unified Patents portal patent page for US11060873, plus Alarm.com's quarterly 10-Q/10-K litigation notes. Those are the sources most likely to reveal any recently-filed case that post-dates my search.

If you'd like, I can focus a follow-up search specifically on the exhibit lists of the Alarm.com v. Vivint (E.D. Tex. 2023) complaint and any post-2023 Alarm.com filings to double-confirm whether the '073 patent appears.

I'll verify the structured-data default against public sources before drafting.

Let me run additional targeted checks before concluding.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file for US 11,060,873. The USPTO Open Data Portal structured block returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and my independent web checks (Google Patents family/prosecution data, PTAB petition PDFs surfaced on ptacts.uspto.gov, Docket Alarm PTAB case pages, and Alarm.com's own SEC litigation disclosures) turned up no petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal touching this patent or its three family members (US 10,655,968; US 11,698,260; US 12,066,292). The defensive posture is therefore "untested, not hardened" — no claims have been canceled, but also no claim has ever survived a PTAB challenge, so there is no adjudicated validity finding for a plaintiff to hide behind and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel binding anyone.

Proceeding-by-proceeding detail

There are no proceedings to report. I am not going to manufacture case numbers to fill the template below, and I am not going to map third-party case law or other Alarm.com patents (e.g., the Alarm.com v. Vivint petitions on U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,462,654, 6,535,123, 6,924,727, or the Ubiquitous Connectivity / CSG line referenced in Alarm.com's 10-K) onto this patent — those involve different patents and different owners-of-record postures.

If the ODP ingest is stale, the most likely candidates to appear would be an IPR filed by a competitor in the home-security/home-automation space (Vivint, ADT, Ring/Amazon, Google/Nest, Resideo) or by a defensive aggregator. I found no evidence of any such filing.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: entirely UNTESTED. No claim of US 11,060,873 has been canceled, confirmed, or even construed by the Board. Nothing in the file supports a statement like "claims 1–5 are dead." Conversely, nothing supports "the patent has survived two IPRs and is hardened." The claim set is the original issued set; the only claim-scope history is ordinary prosecution. Note also that the '073 patent is a continuation of application 15/867,175 (which issued as US 10,655,968) under the same 2017-01-10 priority claim, and that Alarm.com has continued the family further (US 11,698,260, US 12,066,292, and pending US 2024/0361129 A1). That means a challenger faces a patent thicket, not a single patent: invalidating the '073 claims does nothing to the sibling continuations with overlapping disclosure, and each sibling has its own separate IPR clock and its own § 315(b) dates.

Estoppel landscape: no estoppel exists yet, so the full prior-art universe is available. Because no IPR was ever instituted against this patent, § 315(e)(2) is not triggered for anyone, and no petitioner is barred from raising grounds it "raised or reasonably could have raised." A defendant today can file an IPR on § 102/§ 103 grounds built on patents and printed publications, free of prior-petitioner estoppel. Two timing rules govern: (1) PGR is time-barred — the nine-month post-grant window closed on roughly 2022-04-13 (patent granted 2021-07-13), so § 112, § 101, and public-use/on-sale grounds are no longer available at the PTAB and must be litigated in district court; (2) CBM is unavailable — the transitional program sunset for new petitions on 2020-09-16, and this patent is a technological invention in any event. The live constraint is § 315(b): a defendant served with an infringement complaint has one year from service to petition, and the clock is personal to each defendant.

Pattern signals: none, but the owner is sophisticated. I found no repeat petitioner, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents filing), and no PTAB appeal history for this patent family. What the record does show is that the owner, Alarm.com, is a sophisticated and aggressive PTAB user in both directions — it filed roughly 18 IPRs against Vivint's portfolio (per Vivint's patent-owner arguments in the '654 proceeding) and has indemnified service providers in PTAB-heavy litigation (the Ubiquitous Connectivity / CSG matter, where the Federal Circuit affirmed the Board on 2023-08-08 but four claims survived). Translate that for a defendant: this is not a passive troll and not an unsophisticated patent owner. Expect a well-funded defense of validity, competent claim-construction positions, and a willingness to litigate rather than settle cheaply.

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Recommended next steps

Because there is no PTAB record, do not rely on it for anything dispositive. Treat this as a clean-slate validity challenge, and verify the absence before you file.

1. Confirm the null result on the primary sources yourself before spending money. The ODP block is canonical and web search corroborates it, but I could not query PTAB E2E or a full docketing service directly. Check the Board's public endpoint at https://ptacts.uspto.gov and search the patent number, and cross-check the family members (US 10,655,968; US 11,698,260; US 12,066,292) rather than only the '073. Google Patents shows no "Related Proceedings" entries for the '073 patent — see https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11060873B2](/patent/US11060873B2)/en.

2. Calendar the § 315(b) one-year bar from the date your client is served. That is the only hard deadline in play, since the PGR window (closed ~2022-04-13) and CBM (sunset 2020-09-16) are both off the table. If your client has already been served more than a year ago, IPR is unavailable to it and you are litigating validity in court.

3. Build the IPR record from the ground up on § 102/§ 103. With no institution decision, no POPR, and no Board claim construction to work from, you are not bound by any prior record. Start from the issued claims (not summarized in the materials I was given — pull the claim set from the patent's claims section, which was truncated in my source) and from the prosecution history of the parent, application 15/867,175.

4. Flag one specific prior-art lead for verification. A Google Patents citation listing for the related US 10,655,968 points to a pre-priority-date news article: "At CES, flying drones are Alarm.com's home security moonshot," Ry Crist, CNET, 2017-01-03 — seven days before the 2017-01-10 priority date. I have not verified this citation independently (it came from a search snippet of the patent's citation listing, and I could not confirm whether it was listed as a reference against or merely cited by the applicant/Examiner). If it is a genuine applicant-cited printed publication, its proximity to the priority date makes it a candidate § 102(a)(1) reference worth pulling and dating rigorously, because any public disclosure by the patent owner in that window could also feed a § 102(b)(1)(A)/(B) analysis.

5. Do not over-read the absence of IPRs as a validity signal in the patent owner's favor. Well-asserted patents attract IPRs; this patent apparently has not been asserted broadly enough yet to draw one. That cuts both ways: it means the claims are fragile in the sense of being untested, but it also means you will be paying to build the first full invalidity record, with no roadmap from a prior petitioner.

Caveat on sources. The specific proceeding-level fields requested (judge panels, institution reasoning, FWD dispositions, settlements, appeals) are empty because no proceeding exists — I did not invent any. Where I cited Alarm.com's IPR activity against other parties' patents and the Ubiquitous Connectivity appeal, those come from Alarm.com's SEC filings and a Vivint patent-owner response surfaced in search, not from this patent's file, and I have labeled them as context rather than as proceedings on the '073.

I'll research the assignment record for US 11060873. Let me start with targeted searches.

Let me dig into the specific assignment record and the corporate/parent context.

Let me search for the specific 2020-06-03 assignment record and related family data.

Ownership Record — US 11,060,873 B2 ("Emergency drone guidance device")

Scope note / data limitation. I could not directly load the USPTO Assignment Center record for this patent (no direct-session access to assignmentcenter.uspto.gov; the mirrored text I retrieved does not expose a reel/frame for the 2020 recording). The one post-filing assignment event below is therefore reported from the Google Patents legal-events feed, and I have not invented a reel/frame number for it. Every reel/frame I do cite is one I verified via PlainSite/Google Patents records, and I label which property each belongs to.

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Inventors

Pattern notes:

• No inventor-departure pattern. Rezvani is a long-tenured Alarm.com inventor: he appears as assignor on Alarm.com recordings executed 2017-01-19 (reel 41855/814), 2017-01-19 (reel 48602/451), 2020-01-16 (reel 51951/158), and 2021-07-31 (reel 57082/504), and he is still listed as an Alarm.com inventor on applications filed in 2023–2024 in this same continuation family. There is no signal of an inventor exodus preceding a portfolio sale.
• The provisional 62/444,421("Emergency drone guidance device," filed 2017-01-10) was filed the same day as Rezvani's other Alarm.com drone application (Ser. 15/402,312, "Drone Control Device"), which is the ordinary footprint of a single company R&D program, not a lone-inventor fire-sale candidate.

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Original assignee

Alarm.com Incorporated (assignment recorded to "ALARM.COM INCORPORATED"; also styled "Alarm.com Inc." at 1861 International Drive, McLean, VA 22102).

• Line of business: publicly traded connected-property / home-security platform (NASDAQ: ALRM). Core business is an interactive security, video, and home-automation platform for dealers and subscribers — not a licensing entity.
• Product embodiment: Alarm.com publicly demonstrated a home-security drone (CES coverage: "At CES, flying drones are Alarm.com's home security moonshot," Ry Crist, Jan. 2017), which is the commercial context for this family. Whether the specific claim set of US 11,060,873 has been reduced to a shipped product is not determinable from the record — treat the CES demo as evidence of an R&D/product program, not proof of an on-sale embodiment.
• Status: operating, publicly traded, active assignee/licensor. It has itself been an asserting plaintiff in the home-security space (e.g., Alarm.com, Inc. and ICN Acquisition, LLC v. SecureNet Technologies LLC, D. Del. C.A. No. 15-807), and is a party to cross-license/settlement agreements with Honeywell and iControl Networks — i.e., a practicing-company patent posture.
• Encumbrance note (non-assignment): Alarm.com's patent portfolio was previously pledged to Silicon Valley Bank under a Patent Security Agreement recorded 2014-05-09 at Reel 032860/0969, which was terminated and released (release executed 2014-08-29; related release recorded at Reel 032860/0976). That encumbrance pre-dates this application (filed 2018/2020) and was already released, so it does not touch the chain of title here.

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Assignment timeline

The chain contains exactly one recorded link, and it is the original inventor-to-company assignment. There are no post-issuance transfers, no IP-holding subsidiaries, no security agreements, and no NPE/aggregator assignments on record for this patent.

• Not dated on the sources retrieved (Google Patents legal event dated 2020-06-03) — recorded 2020-06-03 — Reel not exposed in the sources retrieved (reel/frame to be confirmed on Assignment Center)
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest (see document for details)
  • Assignor: Rezvani, Babak
  • Assignee: ALARM.COM INCORPORATED (1861 International Drive, McLean, VA 22102)
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable for this specific reel. Alarm.com's parallel drone/monitoring recordings from the same period list Ryan Chowdhury, Fish & Richardson, P.C., P.O. Box 1022, Minneapolis, MN 55440-1022 as correspondent (confirmed on reels 41855/814, 48602/451, 51951/158). Flag: the same correspondent recurs across Alarm.com's filings, but Fish & Richardson is a large general-practice IP firm representing the operating company assignee — this is ordinary outside-counsel recordation, not an NPE correspondent pattern.
  • Context: Ordinary inventor-to-employer assignment, recorded shortly after the 2020-05-15 filing of this continuation (Ser. 16/875,293) — a routine per-application recordation by a practicing company, not an acquisition or transfer.

Related, same-family recordings (context only — these reels cover other Alarm.com applications, not US 11,060,873):

If the chain has no records: it does not have none — but it also has nothing beyond the founding assignment, which is the operative finding.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11060873
    2017 : Provisional filed by Babak Rezvani
    2018 : Parent application filed by Alarm.com
    2020 : Continuation filed 15 May 2020
         : Assignment recorded to Alarm.com Inc
         : Publication of US20200278209A1
    2021 : US11060873B2 issued
         : Continuation 17369208 filed
    2023 : Continuation 18325571 filed
    2024 : Continuation 18768324 filed

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The sole recorded assignee is ALARM.COM INCORPORATED, the operating parent at its corporate HQ (1861 International Drive, McLean, VA 22102), not a suffix-flagged "IP / Holdings / Licensing" vehicle, and no single-purpose Delaware/Texas LLC appears anywhere in the chain (assignment recorded 2020-06-03).

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No assignee matches Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Pendrell, Round Rock, or any Unified Patents/RPX high-frequency plaintiff list. The only assignee is a NASDAQ-listed operating company (reel not exposed; event dated 2020-06-03).

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present. A correspondent does recur in Alarm.com's adjacent recordings (Ryan Chowdhury, Fish & Richardson, P.C., on reels 41855/814, 48602/451, 51951/158), but this is a single large IP firm acting for the operating-company assignee on the assignee side of routine recordations. There is no NPE-side correspondent running a chain of shell assignees, and a single-firm recurrence for an operating company is expressly not a finding.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. One link only, and no chained LLCs — nothing to cascade. No common-principal addresses, no multi-hop sequence within 24 months.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. No infringement suit naming US 11,060,873 was found in the sources reviewed, so there is no assignment timed within six months of a complaint.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. Alarm.com is an operating, publicly traded company; the only portfolio encumbrance on record (SVB security interest at Reel 032860/0969) was released in 2014, years before this application existed.

7. Privateering — not present. No transfer from Alarm.com to an NPE asserting on its behalf; Alarm.com asserts its own patents in its own name (e.g., Alarm.com v. SecureNet Technologies LLC, D. Del. 15-807).

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain terminates at the original operating assignee; it does not end at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN.

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion — chosen to denote ordinary operating-company ownership rather than a documented assertion campaign; no NPE signals are present on any of the eight tests, and the chain's only link is the founding inventor-to-company assignment recorded 2020-06-03 (Rezvani → ALARM.COM INCORPORATED) covering continuation Ser. 16/875,293, filed 2020-05-15 off the 2018-01-10 parent (Ser. 15/867,175) and the 2017-01-10 provisional (62/444,421). The assignee is the publicly traded Alarm.com platform at its McLean, VA headquarters, and Alarm.com's related-family recordings (reels 41855/814, 48602/451, 51951/158) show routine per-application recordation through outside counsel Fish & Richardson — the opposite of a shell-chain signature. Caveat: strictly applied, the rubric's "Insufficient data (only the original assignment)" label also fits, because no assertion of this patent is on record; I prefer the operating-company label because the ownership posture is affirmatively established, not merely unknown.

Verify (Assignment Center; reel/frame for the 2020-06-03 recording should be read off there):

• https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 11060873)
• https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11060873/en#legalEvents

Foreign family (for completeness, consistent with a practicing-company filer, not a licensing program): EP 3568842 A1 and AU 2018208596 A1 counterparts of the same "Emergency drone guidance device" family.

I'll research US Patent 11060873 and its cited prior art references.

Let me gather more detail on the specific prior art references cited in this patent.

Let me look up several of the specific cited references to describe them accurately.

Prior‑Art Analysis — US 11,060,873 B2

A. Identification of the patent (read literally)

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11060873/en ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/99/17/8c/c9025c3de6da2e/US11060873.pdf ; https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/062782773/publication/[US11060873B2](/patent/US11060873B2)

Critical consequence of the priority chain: because this patent is a continuation claiming benefit back to 2017‑01‑10, the effective prior‑art cutoff is 10 January 2017. That cutoff governs my § 102 analysis below — references published after that date are generally not § 102(a)(1) art.

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B. Methodology and honest caveats

• I did not obtain a live USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR "References Cited" export. What I could retrieve is the front page of the patent itself as reproduced by Google Patents, which is the authoritative reproduction of the examiner's/attorney's "References Cited" section. That list is reproduced in Section C.
• For most of the secondary references I could confirm only number, date, inventor surname, and (for some) the examiner‑annotated CPC class. I could not retrieve full text/abstracts for every item, so the § 102 mapping in Section D is based on citation context and subject matter, and should be verified against the full documents before being relied upon.
• I will not fabricate titles. Where I could not confirm a title I say so explicitly.
• The full patent text supplied contains the SUMMARY characterization of the claims (a system claim plus optional features) but not a separately captioned "Claims" section. My claim mapping therefore references "the system claim (claim 1 as characterized in the Summary) and its dependent features."
• Two references in the family appear with inconsistent digits across sources (see the 9,559,448 / 9,589,448 note and the 2015/0010933 / 2015/0109338 note). Per the strict "interpret literally / do not auto‑correct" rule, I flag these rather than silently normalizing them.

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C. References cited on the face of US 11,060,873 B2

U.S. patent documents

Note on US 9,589,448: one secondary rendering of the reference list shows "9,559,448 B1"; the patent’s own front page and the granted document both read 9,589,448 B1. I treat 9,589,448 as the literal identifier listed.

U.S. patent application publications

Foreign patent documents

Other publications (non‑patent literature)

• Ry Crist, "At CES, flying drones are Alarm.com's home security moonshot," CNET, Jan. 3, 2017 (Alarm.com’s own CES announcement).
• PCT International Preliminary Report on Patentability, PCT/US2018/013146, dated Jul. 25, 2019, 6 pages.
• John Toon, "In Emergencies, Should You Trust a Robot?", Georgia Tech, Feb. 29, 2016 (XP055646153).
• Robinette et al., "Overtrust of Robots in Emergency Evacuation Scenarios," Human‑Robot Interaction, IEEE Press, Mar. 7, 2016, pp. 101–108 (XP058081766).
• Measure–Red Cross (citation truncated in the source).

Source for the list: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/99/17/8c/c9025c3de6da2e/US11060873.pdf and https://patents.google.com/patent/US11060873/en

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D. Most relevant prior art and § 102 analysis

Because the effective date is 10 Jan 2017, I separate the references into (D1) those that are facially available as § 102 art and (D2) those that are not on their face available for the Jan‑2017 priority date.

D1 — References facially available as § 102 prior art

1. US 9,589,448 B1 — Schneider et al. (granted 2017‑03‑07; filed 2015‑12‑08) — strongest candidate

• § 102 basis: § 102(a)(2) — a U.S. patent naming another inventor, effectively filed (2015‑12‑08) before the 2017‑01‑10 effective filing date. (It is a "B1," so there is no pre‑grant publication, i.e., no § 102(a)(1) publication pathway.)
• Disclosure (confirmed): a self‑contained aerial safety/security device on a UAV that tracks the position of a user and moves to stay in proximity with the user (a "follow me" function); transmits signals to a user's cellular phone informing that assistance is required; includes an optical sensor to detect a person's proximity; and includes a light controllable by the cellular phone and movable to illuminate a person/assailant.
• Overlap with the patent: the "determine the user's location → navigate to the user → move with/guide the user" core, plus the illumination/communication assistance features the patent describes (flashlight, audible/visual directions).
• Claim mapping: most relevant to the system claim's operations of determining a location of a person and navigating to that person, and to the dependent/description features of providing illumination and communication assistance to the occupant.
• Limitation: Schneider is directed at personal safety/self‑defense, and I found no confirmed disclosure of the patent's distinctive "second path away from an emergency condition" computed from candidate exit paths and path metrics (distance / obstruction count / estimated exit time). So on its face Schneider is a § 103 combination reference rather than a clean § 102 anticipation of the full claim.

2. US 2016/0088286 A1 — Forsythe et al. (published 2016‑03‑24)

• § 102 basis: § 102(a)(1) printed publication before the priority date.
• Description: not confirmed by me beyond the number/date; likely a navigation/positioning disclosure given its presence in a route‑guidance art group.
• Claim mapping: potentially relevant to the "determining a first path … based on characteristics of the property" and/or the 3D spatial representation of the property dependent feature. Verify before relying.

3. US 2016/0063642 A1 — Luciani et al. (published 2016‑03‑03)

• § 102 basis: § 102(a)(1).
• Claim mapping: potential relevance to path/route determination and navigation to a target location. Description unverified.

4. US 2015/0339912 A1 — Farrand et al. (published 2015‑11‑26)

• § 102 basis: § 102(a)(1). Potential relevance to navigation/route guidance features. Unverified.

5. US 2015/0127480 A1 and US 2015/0127486 A1 — Advani (published 2015‑05‑07)

• § 102 basis: § 102(a)(1). Two related filings by the same inventor; potential relevance to autonomous vehicle/route planning. Unverified.

6. US 2015/0010933 A1 and US 2015/0109338 A1 — McKinnon et al. (listed 04/2015)

• § 102 basis: § 102(a)(1). Flag: the number/date pairing is internally inconsistent across sources (a "2015/0010933" publication would normally publish in January, not April). Do not auto‑correct; treat with caution. Description unverified.

7. US 2014/0172727 A1 — Abhyanker et al. (published 2014‑06‑19)

• § 102 basis: § 102(a)(1). Potential relevance to unmanned/semi‑autonomous vehicle routing and user‑guided movement. Unverified.

8. US 2014/0118140 A1 — Amis (published 2014‑05‑01)

• § 102 basis: § 102(a)(1). Unverified.

9. US 2011/0112660 A1 — Bergmann (published 2011‑05‑12; examiner class G08B 17/00, "fire alarms")

• § 102 basis: § 102(a)(1). The G08B 17/00 class signals a fire‑detection/fire‑alarm disclosure, i.e., directly in the art of the patent's "emergency condition" (fire) detection step. Potential § 102 relevance to the "determining that there is an emergency condition at the property based on sensor data" operation. Unverified as to path/navigation content.

10. US 2004/0073368 A1 — Gonzalez‑Banos (published 2004‑04‑15; examiner class G05D 1/12, 701/301 — "obstacle avoidance / collision")

• § 102 basis: § 102(a)(1). Class G05D 1/12 / 701/301 indicates autonomous‑vehicle path planning with obstacle/collision avoidance — directly in the art of the patent's "identify obstructions … determine exit paths that avoid the identified obstructions." Strong § 103 reference; possible § 102 element‑level relevance. Unverified as to full content.

11. US 9,464,907 B1 — Hoareau et al. (granted 2016‑10‑11)

• § 102 basis: § 102(a)(1) (patent granted before the priority date; not the inventor's own disclosure, so no § 102(b)(1) exception).
• Description: title not confirmed by me. Treat as an unverified § 102(a)(1) reference pending full‑text review.

12. WO 2016/180796 A2 / A3 (published 2016‑11‑17)

• § 102 basis: § 102(a)(1) printed publication (WIPO publication in English).
• Description: not confirmed. Because it is cited with both A2 and A3 (search‑report) designations, it was evidently treated as a "particularly relevant" document by the examiner. High‑priority verification item.

13. KR 101653125 (2016‑09)

• § 102 basis: § 102(a)(1) foreign patent document. Note: if the Korean document is not in English, its § 102(a)(1) use would ordinarily require an English translation/affidavit. Unverified.

14. Non‑patent literature — robot guidance in emergencies (Toon 2016‑02‑29; Robinette et al. 2016‑03‑07)

• § 102 basis: § 102(a)(1) printed publications, both published before the priority date.
• Description (confirmed by topic): "In Emergencies, Should You Trust a Robot?" (Georgia Tech) and "Overtrust of Robots in Emergency Evacuation Scenarios" (IEEE) address whether/how people follow robots guiding them out of an emergency — i.e., the exact human‑factors premise of the patent's "guide the person away from the emergency condition" step.
• Claim mapping: these are not apparatus/method anticipation references; they are best characterized as § 102(a)(1) printed publications bearing on the motivation/context, and in practice would be used under § 103 (or to show the state of the art), not to anticipate the claimed navigation steps. I could not confirm they disclose the claimed path‑metric selection, so no § 102 anticipation of the system claim.

15. CNET article, Ry Crist, 2017‑01‑03 (Alarm.com CES drone announcement)

• § 102 basis analysis: This is a printed publication dated seven days before the 2017‑01‑10 priority date, so it is within the one‑year grace period. Because it is the applicant's own disclosure describing Alarm.com's drone, it is excepted under § 102(b)(1)(A) and is not prior art against this patent. It is nonetheless noteworthy: it is the clearest evidence of what the applicant itself had already publicly disclosed as of Jan 3, 2017.

D2 — References that are not facially available for the 2017‑01‑10 priority date

These were listed on the face of the continuation, but their publication dates fall after the effective filing date. They can only be § 102 art if they independently carry an earlier effective filing date (making them § 102(a)(2) art) — which must be checked document‑by‑document:

• US 9,836,885 B1 (granted 2017‑12‑05, Eraker et al.) — post‑priority grant; check its filing date/either § 102(a)(2).
• US 10,042,086 B1 (granted 2018‑08‑07, Smalley) — post‑priority grant; check filing date.
• US 2017/0011477 A1 (Murphey, 2017‑01‑12) — published two days after the priority date; only potentially § 102(a)(2) if effectively filed earlier.
• US 2017/0341746 A1 (Erickson, 2017‑11‑30), US 2018/0005143 A1 (Camargo, 2018‑01), US 2018/0137728 A1 (Hahn, 2018‑05), US 2018/0178781 A1 (Funk, 2018‑06), US 2019/0012887 A1 (Troesch, 2019‑01), US 2019/0217131 A1 (Zechlin, 2019‑07) — all published after the priority date; on their face not § 102(a)(1) prior art. They would only matter under § 102(a)(2) (if effectively filed before 2017‑01‑10) or as evidence of the later state of the art.
• US 10,655,968 B2 (Rezvani, 2020‑05‑19) — this is the parent patent in the same family (the continuation’s own parent), not prior art. Its appearance in the reference list is a printing/listing artifact rather than an adverse citation.
• The PCT IPRP for PCT/US2018/013146 (2019‑07‑25) is the prosecution document for this family, not prior art.
• Measure–Red Cross — citation truncated; date/availability unverified.

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E. Bottom line

1. The reference set cited on the face of US 11,060,873 B2 is reproduced in Section C. Source: the patent’s own front page (Google Patents / patentimages PDF).
2. The single most relevant § 102 reference is US 9,589,448 B1 (Schneider et al.) — it discloses a UAV that tracks a user’s position, "follows" the user, signals the user’s phone, and carries a phone‑controlled light, which overlaps the patent’s core "locate the person → navigate to the person → move with/assist the person" operations. On the record available to me it does not disclose the patent’s distinctive candidate‑exit‑path + path‑metric selection step, so it is more likely a § 103 reference than a clean § 102 anticipation.
3. The strongest § 102(a)(1) art for the path‑planning/obstacle‑avoidance limitations appears to be US 2004/0073368 A1 (Gonzalez‑Banos) and US 2011/0112660 A1 (Bergmann) for the fire/emergency‑detection limitation — again subject to full‑text verification.
4. The academic "overtrust/emergency evacuation" papers (Toon; Robinette) are relevant background under § 102(a)(1)/§ 103 but do not appear to anticipate the claimed structure.
5. Nearly half the listed references (all 2017‑2019 publications plus US 9,836,885 and US 10,042,086) post‑date the 2017‑01‑10 priority date and are therefore not § 102(a)(1) art on their face; and US 10,655,968 B2 is the family parent, not prior art.

Verification gaps I want to be explicit about

• I could not retrieve full text for: Hoareau (9,464,907), Eraker (9,836,885), Smalley (10,042,086), Amis, Abhyanker, McKinnon, Advani, Farrand, Luciani, Forsythe, Murphey, Camargo, Hahn, Funk, Troesch, Zechlin, WO 2016/180796, and KR 101653125. Titles/abstracts for these should be pulled from USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR or Espacenet before any § 102 statement is relied on.
• The exact granted claim set of US 11,060,873 was not present in the material supplied (only the Summary’s characterization of the system claim and its optional features). A precise claim‑by‑claim § 102 chart requires the granted claims text.

Primary sources:

• https://patents.google.com/patent/US11060873/en
• https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/99/17/8c/c9025c3de6da2e/US11060873.pdf
• https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/96/58/85/efcc722674e650/US9589448.pdf
• https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search/family/062782773/publication/US11060873B2

I'll gather the actual cited prior art for this patent before analyzing.

Now let me confirm the issued claims and characterize the key cited references.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,060,873 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope caveats up front (read these first):

1. Contradiction flag with the previously generated section. The earlier "Patent summary" characterized independent claim 1 as ending in "navigating, by a computing device of the monitoring system, the first path to the person and the second path…" That text is the Summary of the Invention paragraph from the '873 specification — not necessarily the claim. The claim set actually published for the same application (16/875,293) as US2020/0278209A1 is materially different (see §1 below). This is exactly the kind of propagate-the-error problem the prior section warned about; I treat the published claim text as the better evidence of claim scope and will re-flag the residual uncertainty.
2. "Prior Art section" used. I used the Referenced Cited / Citations list on the patent's own page (retrieved via Justia's mirror of US11060873: https://patents.justia.com/patent/[11060873](/patent/11060873)), plus the "Cited By"/family data on Google Patents. I could not open the specifications of most listed references within this session. Where I state what a reference discloses, I mark it [V] (verified from a retrieved source) or [U] (unverified — inferred from number/title/assignee only, or not confirmed at all). I have deliberately not fabricated reference disclosures.
3. Patent identifiers are reproduced literally; none have been auto-corrected.

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1. The claim under analysis

Verbatim, from the claims published for application 16/875,293 (Justia, https://patents.justia.com/patent/20200278209#4 ; corroborated by Google Patents for US2020/0278209A1, https://patents.google.com/patent/US20200278209A1/en):

1. A method comprising:
– identifying a set of candidate exit paths within a property based on a location of a user within a property during an emergency condition;
– determining a number of obstructions detected along each candidate exit path included in the set of candidate exit paths;
– selecting an exit path from the set of candidate exit paths based at least on the number of obstructions detected along each of the set of candidate exit paths, wherein the exit path is selected to guide the user away from the emergency condition; and
– providing, for output, an indication to guide the user according to the exit path.

Dependents (as published): 2 — candidates lead to a same exit; 3 — plus distance of each candidate; 4 — selected path has lowest number of obstructions; 5 — plus estimated time to exit; 6 — the indication is output by a drone device; 7 — candidates identified from a three-dimensional spatial representation identifying doors and windows. 8 = system claim mirroring 1; 15 = non-transitory CRM claim mirroring 1; 20 claims total.

⚠️ Residual uncertainty: I did not verify that the issued claims of US11060873B2 are identical to the published claims of the same application. Claim amendments between the 2020-09-03 publication and the 2021-07-13 grant are common. If the issued claim 1 instead recites the "first path / second path … navigating" language from the Summary, the analysis below must be re-run against that text — note that such a claim would be broader in one respect (it drops the obstruction-counting limitation) and narrower in another (it requires physical navigation by a drone).

Where the novelty pressure sits. Under the published claim text, the only limitations that are not plainly routine are: (i) quantifying "a number of obstructions detected along each candidate exit path," and (ii) selecting among candidates based at least on that count. Everything else (identify candidate exit paths from user location during an emergency; output a guidance indication) is old.

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2. Effective filing date and §102 qualification of the cited art

• Effective filing date: 10 January 2017 — provisional 62/444,421; carried forward to 15/867,175 (filed 2018-01-10 → US 10,655,968 B2) and to the '873 as a continuation. App. 16/875,293 was filed 2020-05-15 and grants the 2017-01-10 priority date on its face ("Prior art date 2017-01-10"; anticipated expiration 2038-01-10).
• The patent is AIA-governed, so §102(a)(1) catches anything publicly available before 2017-01-10, and §102(a)(2) catches U.S. patents/application publications "effectively filed" before that date even if they published or issued later.

Two practical consequences. First, the §102(a)(1) cluster (2004–2016 publications plus the 2016-11-xx WO and the 2017-01-03 CNET piece) is clean, unassailable art. Second, the post-priority publications (Murphey, Erickson, Camargo, Hahn, Funk, Troesch, Zechlin, and the three later-issuing patents) are only available if their own effective filing dates precede 2017-01-10 — that must be checked file-by-file before any of them is used in an office action or an IPR petition. A reference whose earliest effective filing date is, say, mid-2017 is worthless against this patent.

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

Based on the field and the cited art, a POSITA would be a person with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, computer science, mechanical engineering, or a comparable discipline, and two to three years of experience with at least two of: (a) residential/commercial alarm and life-safety monitoring systems (monitor control units, sensor fusion, central-station signalling); (b) indoor localization and floor-plan/3-D building models; (c) robotic or UAV path planning and obstacle avoidance; (d) emergency egress/evacuation guidance (NFPA-style exit signage, egress routing). A POSITA need not be a drone flight-control specialist — the '873 claims are pitched at the system/software routing level, not at flight dynamics. That is important for the §103 analysis, because it broadens the universe of combinable art.

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4. What the cited art already occupies (element-level mapping)

I separate what is safe to assert from what is not.

4a. Category A — Sensor-informed, dynamic emergency egress routing and guidance output

This is the core of claim elements 1(a) and 1(d). The patent's own classification list confirms the field: G08B7/066 — "guiding along a path, e.g. evacuation path lighting strip" and G08B7/06 — audible and visible signalling through sound and light sources. The cited foreign art in the life-safety egress space (WO 2016/180796; CA 2979408; KR 101653125) sits in that category [U — content not verified]. The general state of this art is well established: sensor networks in a building detect the hazard, compute egress routes avoiding the hazard location, and drive distributed signalling devices (signage, strip lighting, projected arrows, audible cues) to steer occupants. I retrieved [V] a closely related egress-advisement disclosure in this same art cluster — US 2021/0158670, which claims a central monitoring system receiving presence information, building a floormap, and "determin[ing] … one or more egress plans … wherein the egress plans avoid the locations within the building that may have the emergency," then transmitting signalling instructions to distributed projectors/sound generators (https://patents.justia.com/patent/20210158670). Its priority date is 2019/2020, so it is not available as art against the '873 — I cite it only as evidence of how conventional this architecture is. The pre-2017 instantiations of the same architecture are what matter here (§4b).

4b. Category B — Drone/UAV dispatched into a monitored property, navigating autonomously to a target

This supplies claim elements 1(a)'s "location of a user … during an emergency condition" and 1(d)'s "drone device" output (dependent claim 6). The patent itself cites the CNET piece of 2017-01-03 [V as to date and existence] documenting Alarm.com's public CES 2017 demonstration of home-security drones. That publication, standing alone, is §102(a)(1) art for the proposition that placing an autonomously navigating drone inside a residential security system was known and publicly disclosed one week before the priority date.

4c. Category C — Obstacle-aware and multi-candidate path computation with cost metrics

This supplies the obstruction-counting and selection limitations. The cited list contains several path-planning/multi-route-computation references (US 2004/0073368 Gonzalez-Banos; US 2011/0112660 Bergmann; US 2014/0118140 Amis; US 2015/0127480 and 2015/0127486 Advani; US 2017/0011477 Murphey; US 2019/0012887 Troesch) [all U — I could not verify any of their disclosures]. What I can say with confidence as general knowledge in the art (and therefore usable in a §103 rationale, KSR / In re Karp): graph-search route planners that (i) enumerate multiple candidate paths between an origin and destination and (ii) rank them by a cost function whose terms include the number of obstacles or obstacle-occupied grid cells along the path (Dijkstra/A* with occupancy-grid edge weights, potential fields, RRT cost-to-go) were textbook material well before 2017. If any of the Category C references teaches counting or weighting obstacles per candidate route, claim element 1(b) and 1(c) fall.

4d. Non-analogous-art attack on the patentee's likely defense

The patentee's strongest non-obviousness position is that Category A (building egress signage), Category B (home-security drones), and Category C (robot path planning) are separate fields. Under KSR and In re ICON Health & Fitness, that argument fails where the references are reasonably pertinent to the problem the inventor faced. They are: all three address "move a person or machine through a building to a safe destination without hitting something." The Federal Circuit has repeatedly held that the "field of endeavor" is defined by the problem, not by the industry label.

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5. The combinations

Combination 1 (primary): Category A + Category C

A sensor-informed emergency-egress router (Category A) in view of a multi-candidate path planner that scores routes by obstacle count (Category C).

Element map: 1(a) candidate exit paths from user location during emergency ← A (dynamic egress plan computed from hazard location + floormap). 1(b) number of obstructions per candidate ← C (obstacle-weighted cost function over multiple enumerated routes). 1(c) select on that count ← C. 1(d) output a guidance indication ← A (this is literally the raison d'être of egress signalling).

Motivation: Egress systems of the Category A type compute a single "best" route whose cost metric is typically distance/path-length or hazard proximity; a designer who wants to avoid routing a panicking occupant along a corridor blocked by collapsed debris or a fallen bookshelf has an obvious reason to add a third cost term: obstruction count. The re-arrangement is the textbook KSR "known technique (obstacle-weighted route planning) used to improve a similar device (an egress router) in the same way," with a predictable result — fewer obstructions on the recommended path.

Combination 2: Combination 1 + Category B (the drone)

Add: a drone dispatched by the monitoring system that carries the output device.

Element map: adds dependent claim 6 ("indication … provided for output by a drone device"), and — if the issued claim 1 is the broader "navigate the first path and second path" version — the "computing device"/navigation element too.

Motivation (strongest single rationale): the problem with fixed egress signage is that signs cannot move and cannot see. A hallway sign always points the same way regardless of where the fire has spread. A mobile, sensor-carrying platform solves precisely that deficiency, and the patent's own cited CNET reference shows the industry was already putting autonomous drones in residential security systems as of 2017-01-03. KSR rationales: (i) substitution of a known movable output element (drone with speaker/projector/light — the '873 itself concedes drones with these output devices were known) for a known fixed output element (wall signage); (ii) market-force / design-incentive rationale — the home-security and life-safety industries' 2015–2017 convergence on drones; (iii) the references supply the functions in a finite, predictable number of ways.

Combination 3: Combination 2 + the 3-D spatial model (dependent claim 7)

Add: a 3-D spatial representation identifying doors and windows. The '873 specification itself treats this as an ordinary input ("the drone device may store a floorplan and/or a three-dimensional model of the property"). The cited 2016 foreign art and the door/window-identification feature in the retrieved US 2021/0158670 (claim 6: "a location of one or more doors … and … windows") show this was a conventional way to seed an egress router [V as to the 2021 document; the pre-2017 equivalents are [U]]. Dependent claim 7 should be very difficult to defend.

Combination 4 (claim-1-as-issued variant, if it tracks the Summary)

If the issued claim 1 recites the "first path to the person / second path to guide the person away" pair, then the combination is: Category A (dynamic egress route) + Category B (drone dispatched into a property in response to an alarm) + Category C (path planning to a location and from a location). The "first path need not be safe for the person" limitation is, on the specification's own words, a functional consequence of using an aerial platform ("navigate … through small openings") rather than a technical insight — the drone flies over the debris that blocks the human path. That is a design choice dictated by the platform's known physical capabilities, which KSR treats as obvious ("a change … in shape … merely to obtain a predictable result"). Recommendation: IPR ground should combine A + B + C on the "paired path" variant and A + C on the "obstruction count" variant, with B added for claim 6.

Independent supplementary reference (not on the patent's cited list)

I retrieved [V] the abstract of US 9,899,456 B2, "Dynamically establishing a temporary safe route via a network of unmanned aerial vehicles" (issued 2018-02-20; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/c0/dc/87/0225fae933f7c0/[US9897456](/patent/US9897456).pdf), which discloses: "temporary safe evacuation route … determined based on real-time information regarding the unsafe situation. A network of unmanned vehicles are deployed and positioned at determined points along the safe evacuation route. Guidance is provided … by the unmanned vehicle to aid people in evacuating … Based on the information received, the safe evacuation route may be adjusted."

That is squarely the '873's concept — UAVs in an evacuation route, real-time adaptation — and it is a standalone obviousness/anticipation candidate against a claim reciting "providing, for output, an indication to guide the user according to the exit path" by a drone. I could not retrieve US 9,899,456's effective filing date or its claim set in this session. Action item: pull US 9,899,456's front page immediately. If its effective filing date precedes 2017-01-10, it is likely the single most dangerous piece of art against this family, and its absence from the '873's cited list would be a §102/§103 exposure the patentee's own examiner never considered.

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6. KSR motivation summary (usable rationales, in order of strength)

1. Use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way. Obstacle-count-weighted route ranking (known) applied to a dynamic emergency-egress router (known) to keep the occupant away from obstructions (KSR, 550 U.S. at 417).
2. Substitution of one known element for another to obtain a predictable result. Movable drone-borne audiovisual output substituted for fixed egress signage.
3. Market forces / design incentives / demonstrated industry direction. The 2017-01-03 CNET publication and the cited drone/security references evidence the convergence the inventor exploited.
4. "Obvious to try." Where the prior art discloses a finite number of identified, predictable solutions (fixed signage vs. mobile platform; single route vs. candidate set), KSR permits a finding of obviousness.
5. Teaching/description in the references themselves. Category A references expressly state the object of guiding occupants away from the hazard; Category B references expressly state autonomous in-building navigation to a located target.
6. Predictability / reasonable expectation of success. Multi-candidate route enumeration with a cost metric is deterministic graph search — no unpredictable technology to be discovered.

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7. Where the patentee will fight, and the counterarguments

Do not overlook: this is a continuation. The '873's claims were carved out of the '968 while the '968 was pending, and further continuations followed (17/369,208 → US 11,698,260 B2; 18/325,571 → US 12,066,292 B2 per Google Patents family data). Any invalidity challenge should be run against the whole family's claim sets simultaneously, because the applicant retains the ability to retreat to whichever claim scope survives.

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8. Bottom line and confidence

• Most likely to be obvious (§103, high confidence if the art checks out): dependent claims 2, 3, 5, 6, 7 and the corresponding system/CRM dependents, over Category A (dynamic egress routing/guidance) + Category C (multi-candidate, obstacle-weighted route ranking), with Category B (drones in a monitored property, evidenced by the 2017-01-03 CNET publication) for the drone limitation.
• The real battleground (claim 1 / independent claims): whether "determining a number of obstructions detected along each candidate exit path" and "selecting … based at least on [that count]" is a patentable cost-function choice. My assessment is that it is a close but ultimately obvious limitation given the ubiquity of occupancy-grid cost metrics in contemporaneous path planning — but this conclusion is provisional because I could not verify the specific obstacle-handling disclosures of US 2004/0073368, US 2011/0112660, US 2014/0118140, US 2015/0127480, US 2015/0127486, US 2017/0011477, or US 2019/0012887.
• Highest-value unverified lead: US 9,899,456 B2, which on its face discloses UAVs positioned along a dynamically established safe evacuation route with real-time adjustment — i.e., the '873's core concept, and not on the '873's cited list.

Explicitly unresolved / must be verified before this analysis is relied on:

1. The verbatim issued claim text of US11060873B2 (I used the published claims of the same application; a contradiction with the earlier-generated summary section is flagged in §1).
2. The effective filing dates of every post-2017-01-10 publication in the cited list (Murphey, Erickson, Camargo, Hahn, Funk, Troesch, Zechlin; US 9,589,448; US 9,836,885; US 10,042,086) — without a pre-2017-01-10 effective filing date, none is available under §102(a)(2).
3. The actual disclosures of the Category A/C references. I marked these [U] rather than guessing. A real §103 ground cannot be written from numbers and titles.
4. Whether any listed reference is commonly owned by Alarm.com or names the same inventive entity, which would trigger the §102(b)(2)(C) exception and remove it from the prior art entirely.