US 11085793

I'll verify the patent's current status and check for any litigation or CAFC docket activity before summarizing.

US 11,085,793 B2 — Verified Summary

I searched for this specific number. All hits confirmed the patent; nothing in the results pertains to any other patent that I would confuse with it. Note one caution: a search hit mentioning an IPR petition with inertial-sensor prior art (Liberty, Joseph, Nasiri, etc.) relates to a different, unrelated patent, not to '793.

Bibliographic data (from the patent front page and Google Patents)

Abstract (verbatim)

"A an inertial measurement unit determines performance degradation of a linear axis and includes: an accelerometer that, when disposed on a motion member of the linear axis including the motion member and a base member: measures acceleration of the motion member; and provides a displacement of the motion member in response to movement of the motion member; and a rate gyroscope that: measures an angular rate of movement of the motion member; and provides a yield angle for the motion member in response to movement of the motion member, wherein the displacement and yield angle determine performance degradation of the linear axis based on an error in linear movement of the motion member along the base member."

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Independent claims — plain-language overview

Claim 1 — the IMU itself. An inertial measurement unit for determining performance degradation of a linear axis. It has (a) an accelerometer that, when placed on the linear axis's moving member (the member rides on a base member), measures the member's acceleration and yields a displacement of that member as it moves; and (b) a rate gyroscope that measures the member's angular rate of movement and yields a "yield angle." The displacement and the yield angle together determine degradation of the linear axis, framed as an error in the member's linear movement along the base. (Dependents: 2 = triaxial accelerometer; 3 = MEMS accel with 0 Hz/DC response; 4 = triaxial rate gyroscope; 5 = MEMS gyro with 0 Hz/DC response.)

Claim 6 — the diagnostic apparatus. A complete system: a linear axis (base member plus a motion member that moves substantially linearly along a first direction before degradation) and an IMU mounted on the motion member so it travels with it. The IMU contains the same accelerometer (measures acceleration → displacement) and rate gyroscope (measures angular rate → yield angle) combination, and those outputs determine degradation based on the error in linear movement along the base. (Dependents 7–14 add triaxial sensors, acceleration/angular-rate data and "inertial data," an analyzer producing straightness error from accelerometer data and angular error from gyroscope data, a movement controller, independence of the inertial data from the motion controller, fast/slow-speed operation giving low vs. high spatial frequency coverage, and a machine tool whose motion member carries a cutting tool.)

Claim 15 — the diagnostic process. A method of diagnosing geometric performance of the linear axis, comprising: providing the apparatus of claim 6; moving the motion member at a constant first speed along the first direction; generating acceleration data with the accelerometer and angular-rate data with the rate gyroscope; integrating the acceleration data to get translational displacement; filtering that to get filtered translational displacement as a function of travel length; integrating the angular-rate data to get angular displacement; and filtering that to yield filtered angular-displacement data that diagnoses the axis's geometric performance.

Claims 16–17. These are process claims dependent on claim 15; the Justia/Google excerpt I retrieved truncates before showing their verbatim text. From the specification, the follow-on subject matter is moving at a second, different constant speed and summing the filtered first- and second-speed results to produce straightness errors and angular errors. I do not have authoritative verbatim claim text for 16–17 and am flagging that as an uncertainty.

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Litigation / 2026 CAFC docket check

• I found no litigation, IPR/PGR, or Federal Circuit docket activity involving US 11,085,793. Targeted searches for the patent number plus "litigation," "lawsuit," "CAFC," and "docket" returned only the patent's own documents (Google Patents, Justia, FreePatentsOnline, NIST pages, uspto.report) and an unrelated VirnetX/CAFC item.
• This is consistent with the patent being U.S. Government–owned (Secretary of Commerce/NIST); such patents are typically handled through licensing/tech-transfer (NIST Technology Partnerships Office, NIST Docket 16-039US1) rather than infringement suits.
• Caveat: the tools I used do not give me a guaranteed complete read of the CAFC's 2026 docket or PACER/DocketNavigator. My conclusion is "no records surfaced," not a certified absence of any proceeding. If you need an authoritative negative, that requires a paid docket search (PACER, Docket Navigator) and the USPTO Patent Center's prosecution/PTAB record.

Source URLs

• https://patents.google.com/patent/US11085793/en
• https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/d9/4b/b8/d15bc6419f5b03/US11085793.pdf
• https://patents.justia.com/patent/[11085793](/patent/11085793)
• https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2018/0094946.html
• https://uspto.report/patent/app/20180094946
• https://www.nist.gov/patents (NIST patent listing for Gregory W. Vogl)
• https://content.govdelivery.com/accounts/USNIST/bulletins/31e46f5 (NIST TPO newsletter describing patent 11,085,793)

I'll research litigation involving US patent 11085793. Let me run several searches.

Let me try more targeted searches.

Let me try a few more targeted searches, including the patent's title and assignee.

Findings: Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,085,793

Short answer: I found no known patent litigation — no district court case, no ITC investigation, and no Federal Circuit appeal — involving U.S. Patent No. 11,085,793.

Patent posture (why litigation is unlikely)

• Patent: US 11,085,793 B2, "Inertial measurement unit and diagnostic system," inventor Gregory Vogl, application 15/692,262, filed Aug. 31, 2017, granted Aug. 10, 2021, priority to provisional 62/403,416 (Oct. 3, 2016). Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11085793/en and the patent front page (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/d9/4b/b8/d15bc6419f5b03/US11085793.pdf).
• Assignee: Government of the United States of America, as represented by the Secretary of Commerce (NIST). Advertised NIST docket 16-039US1. Sources: https://www.nist.gov/people/gregory-w-vogl and https://patents.google.com/patent/US11085793/en.
• The invention is federally funded and government-owned, which is notable because a patent held by the U.S. Government is generally not asserted in the ordinary district-court way — takings-type infringement matters against the U.S. would proceed under 28 U.S.C. § 1498 in the Court of Federal Claims, and I found no such action either.

Searches performed and negative results

Important caveat on false positives

Search results surface many suits referencing "the '793 patent," but these are different patents and must not be confused with US 11,085,793:

• U.S. Pat. No. 10,716,793 — United Therapeutics Corp. v. Liquidia Technologies, Inc., D. Del. Case No. 1:20-cv-00755-RGA.
• U.S. Pat. No. 5,790,793 — Intellectual Ventures I/II v. T-Mobile, Sprint, et al., D. Del. (MMS patents).
• U.S. Pat. No. 9,593,066 / "793" references — SteadyMed-related patents in the UTC/Liquidia matter.
• U.S. Pat. No. 5,857,793-type "793" and various Golden Bridge Technology / Apple references — same trap.

None of these involve US 11,085,793.

Conclusion

To the best of my ability after searching patent-litigation aggregators (Unified Patents litigation portal, CourtListener/PACER-type sources, and general web searches) as of the current date, there is no known litigation — no plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome/status — involving US Patent 11,085,793.

Confidence and limitations: This is a negative finding, not a certification. I cannot guarantee that no litigation exists, particularly for (a) very recent filings not yet indexed, or (b) litigation where the patent is asserted only in a complaint exhibit or counterclaim. The absence of Unified Portal and PACER-style hits is strong evidence that no publicly docketed case exists, but a definitive check would require a direct PACER docket number search or the USPTO PatentCenter "Litigation" tab for US 11,085,793 as of April 26, 2026, which the available tools did not return.

I'll start by verifying the structured data against live sources.

The initial searches returned only unrelated patents. Let me run more targeted checks.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding for US 11,085,793 as of the most recent ingest, and my independent web searches surfaced no petition, institution decision, final written decision, or Federal Circuit appeal naming this patent — so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied. The defensive posture this gives a defendant is the opposite of an IPR-narrowed patent: every claim of US 11,085,793 remains presumptively valid and wholly untested at the Board, so there is no Petitioner-funded invalidity record, no claim-construction ruling, and no estoppel to exploit — you would be building an invalidity case from scratch.

No proceedings to report

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner} entry to populate, because none exists in the structured data and none surfaced in search. I am not going to invent a docket to fill the template.

What I can confirm about the patent itself (from the authoritative full text):

• Patent: US 11,085,793 B2, "Inertial measurement unit and diagnostic system"
• Application: 15/692,262; filed 2017-08-31; published as US20180094946A1 on 2018-04-05; granted 2021-08-10
• Priority: 2016-10-03 (provisional 62/403,416)
• Inventor: Gregory W. Vogl (assignment lists "VOGL, GREGORY W.")
• Assignee: United States Department of Commerce (NIST); federally sponsored research — NIST Docket 16-039US1
• Adjusted expiration: 2040-03-14
• Independent claim set (per the Google Patents "Definitions" extraction): (i) an IMU for determining performance degradation of a linear axis; (ii) a diagnostic apparatus comprising a linear axis + IMU; and (iii) a process for diagnosing geometric performance of a linear axis. I do not have the numbered claims or total claim count from the provided text and will not guess at them.

Search caveat: my web queries for "11085793" combined with IPR/PTAB/PGR/petition/lawsuit returned exclusively unrelated patents (e.g., Nintendo v. American GNC on US 6,671,648; Resonant Systems v. Samsung on US 9,941,830; Thales Visionix on US 6,474,159). I found no corroborating hit for this patent outside its own Google Patents page. I cannot rule out a very recently filed petition that neither ODP nor indexed search results have caught yet, but there is no affirmative evidence of one.

Strategic summary

Claim status. No claim of US 11,085,793 has been canceled, narrowed, or confirmed by the PTAB. There is no FWD to quote, no certificate of cancellation, and therefore no claim that is "dead." The three independent claims — the IMU claim, the diagnostic apparatus claim, and the diagnosis process claim — are all untested, not sustained. If you are a defendant, the entire claim set is live and your invalidity case must be built and won on your own dime.

Estoppel landscape. There is none to inherit. Because no IPR or PGR was ever instituted against this patent, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is empty — no petitioner or privy is barred from any ground, and by the same token you are not barred from anything either. The full universe of prior art, including § 102(a)(1) printed publications and systems, § 102(a)(2) applications, and § 112 written-description/enablement theories, remains available to you. (Note the constraint that IPR is limited to patents and printed publications under §§ 102/103 — a system-art or public-use theory would have to be run in district court, not at the Board.)

Pattern signals. No petitioner has filed even once, so there is no serial-filer pattern, no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) anywhere in the chain, and no patent-owner appeal history to the Federal Circuit. The assignee chain is instructive: this is a U.S. Government-owned patent (Department of Commerce / NIST), which differs materially from a classic troll profile. Government-owned patents are rarely asserted offensively in district court, and where the Government is the patentee, remedies against private parties typically travel through 28 U.S.C. § 1498 rather than a conventional infringement action for damages and an injunction. That said, NIST does license its technology portfolio, so a licensing-based assertion is conceivable.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant and have been contacted: treat this as a clean-slate matter. There is no PTAB record to hand to the plaintiff and no canceled claim to point to — no "claims 1–5 have been canceled" argument is available, because nothing has been canceled. Do not cite the FWD; there isn't one.
• Preserve your § 315(b) clock. If you (or a privy) are or become served with a complaint alleging infringement of this patent, the one-year IPR bar under § 315(b) starts running. Because no prior petitioner has burned any grounds, a well-constructed IPR remains a viable and uncontested avenue — but only if filed within the statutory window and only on patents/printed publications.
• Prior-art diligence is the whole game. With no institution decision or FWD to lean on, you need your own search and invalidity contentions. The patent's own prosecution history (US 15/692,262) and the NIST technical publications cited in its Examples are the natural starting point for § 102/§ 103 work, and the specification's heavy reliance on the "mechanically-simulated degradation" experiments may open § 112 written-description or enablement lines for the process claims.
• No trial-stage milestones to calendar. There is no institution deadline, no oral hearing, and no statutory 1-year FWD due date, because there is no trial. Do not plan around a PTAB timeline that does not exist.
• Monitor for late-filed petitions. The absence of PTAB activity is itself a signal: well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. If this patent starts appearing in demand letters or complaints, a petition is likely to follow within the § 315(b) year, and you should re-check ODP at that point given the ingest lag noted above.

Bottom line: No PTAB activity on file for US 11,085,793. Treat it as unlitigated and un-invalidated, verify the current claim set directly from the USPTO PatentCenter record (I cannot confirm claim numbering from the material provided), and build your own validity analysis rather than relying on any Board outcome.

I'll research the assignment record and ownership chain for US 11085793.

I have enough to reconstruct this chain. Note: the Assignment Center interface itself was not directly reachable in my tool set, so I verified via the Google Patents legal-events record and USPTO-indexed metadata; where a data point (reel/frame, correspondent) was not retrievable, I say so rather than invent it.

Inventors

Unusual patterns: None of the classic "inventor departure precedes fire-sale" flags. This is a single-inventor federal-laboratory patent. The inventor never held title for any meaningful period — under the federal employment regime the invention was assigned to the Government, not held personally. There is no evidence (and no reason to expect) of a post-filing departure cascade.

Original assignee

Government of the United States of America, as represented by the Secretary of Commerce, Gaithersburg, MD (i.e., NIST). NIST Docket No. 16-039US1. Research was federally funded and the patent carries the government-rights statement (NIST, U.S. Department of Commerce).

• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? No — and this is normal for this owner. The claims cover an inertial measurement unit / diagnostic apparatus and a diagnostic process for linear-axis degradation. NIST built and tested a physical "industrial IMU" prototype (~9 cm long, triaxial accelerometer + triaxial rate gyroscope) on horizontal and vertical milling machines, and published the verification/validation results (CIRP Annals; PHM Society conference papers; the examples in this patent). So there is a working reduction to practice, but not a commercial product.
• Primary line of business: Federal standards and measurement research laboratory (non-commercializing agency).
• Current status: Operating (active federal agency). The patent's adjusted expiration is 2040-03-14 and legal status is Active.
• Monetization channel if any: Federally owned inventions are licensed under 35 U.S.C. §209, which requires Federal Register notice for exclusive licenses (my search surfaced a NIST exclusive-license notice for an unrelated patent, showing the mechanism is used). I found no Federal Register exclusive-license notice, and no recorded license, for US 11085793 — do not assume a licensee exists.

Assignment timeline

Only one recorded conveyance exists in the chain, and it is the initial inventor-to-employer transfer:

• executed 2017–2018 (exact execution date not retrieved) / recorded 2018-02-09 — Reel/Frame not retrieved (the Assignment Center record was not directly accessible to me; the Google Patents legal-events entry confirms the event but does not expose the reel/frame)
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest (Assignment)
  • Assignor: VOGL, GREGORY W.
  • Assignee: THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AS REPRESENTED BY THE SECRETARY OF COMMERCE
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved. (I will not guess an attorney name — fabricating a correspondent would defeat the purpose of this exercise. To be verified manually in Assignment Center.)
  • Context: Institutional/employer assignment of inventor rights to the federal government — the standard initial title transfer for a NIST-owned patent, not an arm's-length acquisition.

Supporting chronology from the same record:

• 2016-10-03 — priority date (provisional 62/403,416)
• 2017-08-31 — application 15/692,262 filed; applicant named as U.S. Department of Commerce
• 2018-02-09 — assignment recorded (above)
• 2018-04-05 — published as US20180094946A1
• 2021-08-10 — patent granted as US11085793B2

If Assignment Center shows nothing beyond this single record, that is the finding: the Government of the United States (Secretary of Commerce / NIST) is still the owner of record. There is no post-issuance assignment, no security interest, no license, and no transfer to any private entity. I found no record of a security agreement, merger, change of name, or release on this patent.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11085793
    2016 : Provisional filed Oct 3
    2017 : Nonprovisional filed Aug 31
         : Applicant named Secretary of Commerce
    2018 : Inventor assignment recorded Feb 9
         : Application published Apr 5
    2021 : Patent granted Aug 10

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No assignee with an "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix appears anywhere in the chain. The sole assignee is a named federal agency ("The United States of America, as represented by the Secretary of Commerce"), recorded 2018-02-09. No LLC, no registered-agent address, no single-member Delaware/Texas entity.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Chain contains zero private assignees. No match to Acacia, Marathon Patent Group, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or any Spangenberg entity. No Unified Patents / RPX high-frequency-plaintiff match.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present / unclear. Only one recording exists, so recurrence is structurally impossible. The correspondent of record was not retrievable by me — flagged as unclear only because of missing data, not because of any adverse indication. A manual Assignment Center pull would settle it in one click.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. One recorded event. Nothing chained, nothing within 24 months of anything else.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. No infringement suit naming this patent surfaced, and there is no transfer at all, let alone one within six months of a filing.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. A U.S. federal agency cannot be a Chapter 7/11 debtor in the Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid sense, and no sale-in-bankruptcy record appears.

7. Privateering — not present. A federal agency transferring to an NPE to assert on its behalf against competitors would be extraordinary (and would run into sovereign-immunity and §209 licensing constraints). No such transfer exists on this record.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at the U.S. Department of Commerce — a government owner, which is non-asserting in the NPE sense but is not a defensive aggregator.

Verdict

Insufficient data — selected strictly because the record contains only the original (inventor → U.S. Government) assignment (VOGL, GREGORY W. → THE UNITED STATES OF AMERICA, AS REPRESENTED BY THE SECRETARY OF COMMERCE, recorded 2018-02-09). To be clear, this is not uncertainty about NPE status: all eight NPE/privateering signals are affirmatively absent, because the chain contains no private assignee whatsoever, and the current owner is a federal agency holding a patent it does not commercialize. Per this rubric, a chain consisting of only the initial assignment maps to "Insufficient data," but the substantive conclusion is the stronger one: federally owned, non-asserting, and no troll-pattern footprint.

Two data points should be closed out by a manual pull at the USPTO Assignment Center: (a) the reel/frame of the 2018-02-09 recording, and (b) the correspondent of record on that recording. Neither affects the verdict.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 11085793)
• Legacy assignment search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events / ownership: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11085793/en

I'll research the specific prior-art citations for US 11,085,793 B2. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me try more targeted searches for the specific citation lists.

The generic searches aren't surfacing the citation table. Let me target the specific patent pages and citation databases directly.

I hit the step limit, but the first search block returned the critical verified data — the actual "(56) References Cited" section of the '793 front page. Here is what I can state with grounding, plus explicit flags on what I could not retrieve.

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Prior-Art Analysis — US 11,085,793 B2

Patent: US 11,085,793 B2, "Inertial Measurement Unit and Diagnostic System," inventor Gregory Vogl, assignee U.S. Secretary of Commerce (NIST). App. 15/692,262; filed Aug. 31, 2017; priority to provisional 62/403,416 (Oct. 3, 2016); granted Aug. 10, 2021.
Source of citations: the granted patent's own front page, verified at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/d9/4b/b8/d15bc6419f5b03/US11085793.pdf — the "(56) References Cited / U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS" block plus the "Other Publications" (non-patent literature) block.

Important scoping caveats (read first)

1. This is a partial retrieval. The front page shows the list continuing ("(Continued)") and, in typical USPTO formatting, there is often a separate "FOREIGN PATENT DOCUMENTS" block. I retrieved the U.S. patent documents and the NPL list shown below, but I cannot certify the list is complete — additional U.S. entries and foreign documents may exist that I did not capture before hitting the tool-call limit.
2. The front page does not state the examiner's grounds. A § (56) citation list records what was cited, not whether the citation was applied under 35 U.S.C. § 102 (anticipation) or § 103 (obviousness). Rejections and their statutory basis appear in the prosecution history (file wrapper / PatentCenter), which I did not retrieve. So the "which claim it potentially anticipates under § 102" analysis below is my analyst judgment, not the examiner's record.
3. I did not open the full text of each reference (step limit). Where I describe a reference's subject matter, I mark it as inferred from the number, inventor, date, and any CPC/US-class data captured; where I have no reliable basis, I say so rather than guess.

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A. Cited U.S. Patent Documents

(†) Issue-date equivalents from the front page; the publication dates I show for the A1 publications are as listed. Full citation = the number, inventor, and title as I could verify; titles were not retrievable for refs. 1–5, 7, 11.

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B. Cited Non-Patent Literature ("Other Publications")

These are the references actually listed on the '793 front page:

1. Uhlmann, E., et al., "Monitoring of slowly progressing deterioration of computer numerical control machine axes," Proc. Inst. Mech. Eng., Part B: J. Eng. Manufacture, 2008, 222(10):1213–1219.
2. Liao, L., et al., "A novel method for machine performance degradation assessment based on fixed cycle features test," J. Sound and Vibration, 2009, 326(3–5):894–908.
3. Verl, A., Helsel, U., et al., "Sensorless automated condition monitoring for the control of the predictive maintenance of machine tools," CIRP Annals – Manufacturing Technology, 2009, 58(1):375–378.
4. Zhou, Z., et al., "Integrated condition monitoring and fault diagnosis for modern manufacturing systems," CIRP Annals – Manufacturing Technology, 2000, 49(1):387–390.
5. Feng, G.-H., et al., "Investigation of ball screw preload variation based on dynamic modeling of a preload adjustable feed-drive system and spectrum analysis of ball-nuts sensed vibration signals," Int. J. Machine Tools and Manufacture, 2012, 52(1):85–96.
6. Spiewak, S., et al., "High accuracy, low-invasive displacement sensor (HALIDS)," ASME IMECE 2013, Nov. 15–21, 2013, San Diego, CA.
7. Liao, L., et al., "Machine tool feed axis health monitoring using plug-and-prognose technology," Proc. 2012 Conf. Society for Machinery Failure Prevention Technology, 2012.
8. Huang, B., et al., "Life prediction of CNC linear rolling guide based on DFNN performance degradation model," 2010 7th Int. Conf. on Fuzzy Systems and Knowledge Discovery, IEEE, 2010, pp. 1310–1314.
9. Sato, R., et al., "Motion trajectory measurements of NC machine tools using accelerometers," Int. J. Automation Technology, 2011, 5(3):387–394.

§ 102 relevance: None of these NPL items, on its face, appears to disclose the complete combination claimed — an IMU (accelerometer yielding displacement and rate gyroscope yielding a yield angle) mounted on a linear-axis motion member, fused across multiple constant speeds via spatial-frequency filtering, to output straightness and angular errors. Sato et al. (B-9), Uhlmann (B-1), and Verl (B-3) are the closest, and they read as § 103 obviousness/background art (axis condition monitoring / accelerometer-based machine motion), not § 102 anticipatory art.

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C. Bottom-line determination on § 102 anticipation

Based strictly on the citations I verified on the '793 front page:

• No single cited reference appears to fully anticipate independent claim 1, claim 6, or claim 15. Anticipation requires one reference disclosing every element as arranged; the cited art fractionates the elements (some show accelerometer-based machine-tool motion measurement — Sato; some show machine condition monitoring/diagnostics — Grant, Uhlmann, Verl; some show displacement/straightness metrology — Seewig, Spiewak). That pattern is the signature of § 103 obviousness citations, not § 102.
• Independent claims 1 and 6 require the specific "accelerometer → displacement" and "rate gyroscope → yield angle" pair used to determine degradation from an error in linear movement. I found nothing in the retrieved list teaching that pair.
• Independent claim 15 (constant-speed run; integrate acceleration → translational displacement → filter to travel-length; integrate angular rate → angular displacement → filter) is a method step combination even further from the cited art.
• Dependent claims 2–5, 7–14, 16–17 (triaxial accelerometer/gyro; MEMS/DC-response sensors; analyzer producing straightness error from accel data and angular error from gyro data; two-speed summing) would be anticipated only if a single reference disclosed them in combination — none surfaced.
• Date qualification: only references published before Oct. 3, 2016 are § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) art on their face. US 2017/0231114 A1 (Butscher) publishes Aug. 17, 2017 and can qualify only as § 102(a)(2) art if its effective filing date predates Oct. 3, 2016.

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D. What I could not verify (stated plainly)

• I did not retrieve the complete "(56)" list — the "(Continued)" notation and the likely "FOREIGN PATENT DOCUMENTS" block mean additional citations may exist. I will not invent them.
• I did not retrieve titles/abstracts for US 4,748,554; 6,853,951; 7,027,953; 8,356,207; 8,410,691; 2004/0039478; or 2017/0231114, so their descriptions above are placeholders, not findings.
• I did not retrieve the prosecution history, so I cannot tell you which of these the examiner actually applied under § 102 versus § 103, nor whether any claim was allowed over a specific reference.
• For an authoritative, complete citation list and the examiner's statutory grounds, the controlling sources are the USPTO PatentCenter file wrapper for application 15/692,262 and the granted patent's front page (Form PTO-892 / PTO-1449 lists) — not a Google Patents extraction.

If you want, I can run a fresh, narrower pass aimed specifically at pulling the complete PTO-892/1449 reference list and the foreign-document block, or at opening each of the seven unidentified U.S. references to supply its real title and a § 102/§ 103 assessment.

I'll research prior art relevant to the claims of US 11,085,793 before building the § 103 analysis. Note: the conversation provided me only the patent summary and litigation summary — no "Prior Art section" with reference listings was actually included, so I need to surface and verify prior-art candidates myself.

Strong leads found. Let me verify the key references' dates and details, and pull the patent's own cited prior art.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,085,793 B2 (35 U.S.C. § 103)

0. Preliminary caveats (read first)

Three things materially limit this analysis, and I want them on the record rather than papered over:

1. The "Prior Art section" the task refers to was not actually included in this conversation. The prior sections I was given were a patent summary and a litigation summary. Neither contains a reference listing. I therefore surfaced and verified prior-art candidates myself via search, and I cite them below.
2. I could not retrieve the '793 front-page "References Cited" list or the prosecution history. My targeted search for the examiner's cited art returned unrelated results (unrelated patents, an unrelated WO search report). So I cannot state what art was of record before Examiner Suglo, what art was applied in rejections, or the examiner's stated reason for allowance. A real § 103 opinion needs that file history.
3. Verbatim text of dependent claims 2–14 and 16–17 was not fully retrieved; I am analyzing them from the paraphrase in the prior section and the specification. Claim 1/6/15 substance is well grounded.

With those limits stated, the substance below is grounded in references I actually found and can cite.

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1. Legal framework applied

• Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966): (a) scope and content of the prior art; (b) differences between prior art and claims; (c) level of ordinary skill; (d) secondary considerations.
• KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007): a combination of known elements is obvious where each element performs its known function and the combination yields predictable results; "obvious to try" applies where there is a finite number of identified, predictable solutions; a known technique that improves one device in the same way improves analogous devices.
• MPEP § 2143.01: motivation to combine may be explicit in the references, implicit in the problem to be solved, from the nature of the art, or from common knowledge/design incentives.

Level of ordinary skill (proposed): a person with a bachelor's or master's degree in mechanical or electrical engineering (or equivalent) and 2–4 years of experience in precision machine-tool metrology and/or inertial measurement, familiar with CNC controls, laser interferometer/ballbar calibration, and MEMS inertial sensors.

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2. Scope and content of the prior art identified

Level-of-skill-relevant common knowledge: MEMS inertial sensors with DC (0 Hz) response were commodity parts before 2016 (the inventor's own NIST paper cites the InvenSense MPU-6050 six-axis gyro+accelerometer, "InvenSense Incorporated (2016)"). See https://tsapps.nist.gov/publication/get_pdf.cfm?pub_id=[923274](/patent/923274)

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3. Claim-by-claim analysis

3.1 Claim 1 (the IMU) and claims 2–5

Conclusion: Claim 1 is prima facie obvious over DE 10 2009 040 021 alone, and a fortiori over DE '021 in view of US 5,834,623. I would not be surprised if DE '021 alone also squarely anticipates (though the task is § 103). The only element one might argue is missing is the preamble's "performance degradation" framing — but the body recites only that displacement+yield angle "determine performance degradation … based on an error in linear movement," which the relative-path-vs-nominal measurement of DE '021 provides.

Claims 2 and 4 (triaxial accelerometer / triaxial rate gyroscope): DE '021 literally teaches a "triplex acceleration sensor and a triplex rotation rate sensor." Obvious.

Claims 3 and 5 (MEMS, 0 Hz/DC response): Routine selection. A POSITA needing quasi-static spatial-frequency content would select a DC-capable MEMS inertial sensor; commercial six-axis MEMS IMUs (e.g., MPU-6050, cited in the field's own literature) were known. Under KSR, substituting a known MEMS sensor for a macro-scale inertial sensor is a predictable design choice. Counter-argument: the spec itself notes MEMS trade-offs (noise ↑, bandwidth ↓), which is an argument for the specific selection being a design choice, not an invention.

3.2 Claim 6 (diagnostic apparatus) and claims 7–14

Conclusion: obvious over DE '021, or DE '021 + US 5,834,623.

Dependents:

• 7–8 (triaxial): as claim 2/4.
• 9 (acceleration data + angular-rate data = "inertial data"): inherent outputs of the sensors.
• 10 (analyzer → straightness error from accelerometer data; angular error from gyroscope data): US 5,834,623's processor already computes angular errors from gyro data and characterizes motion from accelerometer data; the translation channel (straightness) is the same integration principle DE '021 applies to the accelerometers.
• 11 (movement controller): a CNC/machine controller is inherent to a machine tool axis (and US 5,834,623 uses position sensors + processing for compensation).
• 12 (inertial data produced independently of the motion controller): inherent in an autonomous IMU measurement system; DE '021 explicitly describes an autonomous measuring device embedded in the machine.
• 13 (fast speed → low spatial frequency; slow speed → high spatial frequency): This is the claim most worth contesting. No single reference I found recites this frequency-domain allocation verbatim. The obviousness case rests on: (i) it is a known property of any motion-measurement system that spatial frequency maps to temporal frequency via feed rate (f = v/λ), so high spatial frequencies exceed sensor temporal bandwidth at high speed and low spatial frequencies are buried in drift/noise at low speed; (ii) multi-speed traverse testing is standard in machine-tool calibration practice; (iii) KSR "obvious to try" — a finite, predictable set of test speeds trading SNR/drift against spatial resolution. I assess this as obvious but not airtight; it is the best candidate for a non-obviousness argument if applicant's file history shows the examiner did not have a multi-speed reference.
• 14 (machine tool; motion member carries a cutting tool/workpiece): expressly contemplated by the spec and inherent to a machine tool; obvious.

3.3 Claim 15 (process) and claims 16–17

Claim 15 steps: provide the apparatus → move at a constant first speed → produce acceleration data and angular-rate data → integrate acceleration → translational displacement → filter → filtered translational displacement vs. travel length → integrate angular rate → angular displacement → filter → filtered angular displacement to diagnose geometric performance.

Conclusion: obvious over DE '021 in view of US 5,834,623, with routine signal processing.

Claims 16–17 (second, different constant speed; summing the two filtered results to produce straightness errors and angular errors):

• If CN 108362493 qualifies as prior art, claims 15–17 become very strongly obvious: it teaches (i) an accelerometer+gyro box on a CNC linear axis, (ii) measurements at three speeds, (iii) integration/processing and filtering of the angular subsets, and (iv) adding/fusing the multi-speed results to yield the error. ⚠️ But its apparent 2018 date likely disqualifies it (§5.3).
• Absent that reference, the combination case is DE '021 + US 5,834,623 + the KSR motivation to fuse multi-speed measurements (same rationale as claim 13). I rate claims 16–17 as the weakest § 103 case of the set if no pre-2016 multi-speed machine-tool inertial reference is of record.

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4. Motivation to combine (why a POSITA would combine these)

This is where the § 103 case is strongest, because the motivations are explicit in the references and in the field:

1. Same field, same problem. US 5,834,623, DE '021, and the '793 patent all address measuring machine-tool linear-axis motion errors to enable calibration/compensation. In re GPAC/KSR: references in the same field for the same purpose are combinable.
2. DE '021 supplies the explicit teaching missing from the older art. DE '021 criticizes laser/DBB systems (assembly effort, skilled operation, axis limits) and states that accelerometers/gyros had not previously been applied to relative path measurement — i.e., it is a deliberate teaching to use inertial sensors (triaxial accel + triaxial rate gyro) with integrators and superposition on a movable machine part, installed in-machine. Combining this with US 5,834,623's movable-member sensor assembly and position-referenced error computation is a textbook "known technique applied to a known device in the same way."
3. Each element performs its known function with predictable results. Accelerometer→displacement, gyro→angle, integrator, filter, position reference: all known; the combination yields the expected result (position-referenced error motion). KSR predictable-combination rationale.
4. Design incentive / market pressure (implicit motivation). Both the '793 specification and DE '021 recite the economic driver: conventional metrology is time- and cost-prohibitive; manufacturers need periodic, low-disruption, on-machine diagnosis. A POSITA optimizing for cost and setup-free operation would be led to an in-machine IMU.
5. "Obvious to try" for the multi-speed feature. The spatial-frequency/feed-rate relationship (f = v/λ) is a finite, predictable design space: run fast for low-spatial-frequency SNR/drift advantage, slow for high-spatial-frequency capture, then fuse. This is a design optimization, not an unpredictable result.

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5. Rebuttal / counter-considerations (secondary considerations and open issues)

Per Graham factor (d), the following cut against obviousness and should be weighed:

1. Long-felt, unmet need / failure of others. The spec states manufacturers "typically do not know the condition of the linear axes" and that prior condition monitoring via vibration metrics of accelerometer signals "had limited success." A long-felt need with prior failed approaches is classic secondary-consideration evidence — provided the need and the failure are tied to the claimed subject matter (nexus).
2. Unexpected result: detecting micrometer-level translational and microradian-level angular degradation with a small, low-cost MEMS IMU (spec reports differences vs. a laser reference of ~8 µrad, ~2.3–11 µm). If applicant can show this exceeded expectations, it supports non-obviousness.
3. Commercial/technical uptake: NIST advertises ~15 minutes vs. ~8 hours for conventional practice — a potential commercial-success/efficiency argument (nexus still required).
4. Applicant's own publications are not § 102 prior art. The Vogl NIST papers ("Identification of machine tool geometric performance using on-machine inertial measurements," VMPT 2017; "Diagnostics for geometric performance of machine tool linear axes," PHM) and NIST SP 1239‑1 are the inventor's own disclosures and, being filed within the one-year window (priority Oct. 3, 2016; filed Aug. 31, 2017), fall within the § 102(b)(1)(A) grace-period exception and cannot be used as prior art. Any obviousness case must therefore rest on third-party art (as above).
5. Claim breadth cuts both ways. The spec describes sophisticated data fusion ("matching of spatial cutoff frequencies," exclusion of modal excitations, inclination-term removal via Eqs. 1a–1c), but claim 15 as summarized recites a simpler integrate→filter sequence. Broader claims are more vulnerable to § 103; the narrow fusion details live in the specification, not the claims. A claim-construction-inclusive analysis would be needed to confirm.

5.1 Unresolved uncertainties (explicit)

• Prosecution history and cited art are unknown to me, so I cannot reconcile my view with the examiner's reason for allowance.
• Claim 13 and claims 16–17 are the strongest non-obviousness candidates absent a pre-2016 multi-speed reference.
• No verified reference was found that expressly recites the "low spatial frequency at fast speed / high spatial frequency at slow speed" limitation; that limitation's § 103 outcome turns on whether the examiner treats the f = v/λ tradeoff as common knowledge.

5.2 False-positive warning (identifiers taken literally)

Many "793" hits belong to different patents (e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 10,716,793 in United Therapeutics v. Liquidia; U.S. Pat. No. 5,790,793 in Intellectual Ventures v. T-Mobile). None of these is US 11,085,793 and none is used here.

5.3 Explicit date warning on CN 108362493

CN 108362493 A/B is the closest reference on its face to claims 15–17 (linear axis, multi-speed, filtering, summing/fusion). However, its publication/application appears to be 2018, i.e., after the Oct. 3, 2016 priority date, so it likely cannot be prior art. I flag this rather than relying on it. This date should be confirmed before it is used or disregarded in any opinion.

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6. Overall conclusion

• Claims 1–12 and 14 appear obvious over DE 10 2009 040 021 A1 alone or in view of US 5,834,623, with routine sensor selection (MEMS/DC response) and routine signal processing. DE '021 is a strong primary reference: triaxial accelerometer + triaxial rotation-rate sensor on a movable CNC part, integrators and "superposition" (summing) to obtain position, in an autonomous in-machine device.
• Claim 13 and claims 15–17 are probably obvious under KSR ("obvious to try," predictable multi-speed optimization), but represent the best non-obviousness arguments if the record lacks a pre-2016 multi-speed machine-tool inertial reference.
• Secondary considerations (long-felt need, prior-method failure, unexpected micro-scale accuracy from a low-cost MEMS IMU) may rebut, if a nexus to the claims is established.
• Confidence: moderate. The reference-based combination is solidly grounded; the outcome for claims 13/16/17 is contingent on (a) the actual file history and (b) the date verification of CN 108362493 — neither of which I could retrieve.

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7. Sources

Bottom line: The strongest § 103 combination is DE 10 2009 040 021 A1 as primary, in view of US 5,834,623, and (for the process claims) routine signal-processing knowledge — motivated by a shared problem, a same-field teaching, explicit criticism of laser/ballbar metrology, and predictable element functions. Claims 1–12 and 14 are readily obvious on this record; claims 13 and 16–17 are the vulnerable-to-challenge points, and my conclusion there is expressly contingent on the missing prosecution history and the unverified dating of CN 108362493.