US 11085794

I'll verify current docket/litigation status before summarizing.

US 11,085,794 B2 — Summary

Caveat on the search mandate: I ran targeted searches for this exact number in connection with Federal Circuit / CAFC 2026 activity and litigation. No CAFC appeal, PTAB proceeding, or district-court litigation naming US 11,085,794 was surfaced. I did not have direct PACER/CM-ECF or USPTO PatentCenter docket access in this session, so absence of results is not affirmative proof that no proceeding exists — treat that finding as "no match found" rather than "confirmed clean." All bibliographic and claim data below come from the authoritative full text of the patent.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (verbatim)

A surveying device 3 configured to perform a survey by tracking, as a survey target, a prism 13 attached to a camera 11 of a movable imaging device 2, includes an electronic distance meter 33 configured to measure a distance to the survey target; a horizontal angle detector 41 and a vertical angle detector 42 each configured to measure an angle; a main body 3a supporting these members; a time obtainer 47 configured to obtain a GPS time from a GPS satellite; a tilt sensor 48 configured to detect a posture of the main body 3a; a calibrator 49 configured to calibrate the tilt sensor 48; and a survey controller 40 that causes the calibrator 49 to perform calibration during a period in which the time obtainer 47 obtains the GPS time, as an advance preparation to be performed before the measurement.

Independent claim 1 — plain-language overview

Claim 1 is the sole independent claim. It recites a surveying device comprising six elements:

1. A measurer capable of measuring at least one of (a) a distance to a survey target or (b) an angle of the survey target — in the specification this is realized by the EDM 33, horizontal angle detector 41, and vertical angle detector 42.
2. A main body supporting the measurer (main body 3a).
3. A time obtainer configured to obtain external time information (the GPS-time receiver 47).
4. A posture detector configured to detect a posture of the main body (the tilt sensor 48, e.g. bubble-in-circular-bubble-tube).
5. A calibrator configured to calibrate the posture detector (calibrator 49).
6. A controller that causes the calibrator to perform calibration during the period in which the time obtainer is obtaining the time information, as advance preparation before measurement by the measurer.

The point of novelty (plain language): the calibration of the tilt/posture sensor is time-overlapped with the GPS time-acquisition step, rather than performed as a separate sequential step. Two practical justifications appear in the specification: (i) the operator conventionally leaves the instrument undisturbed while GPS time is acquired, so that window is inherently stable and suitable for calibration; and (ii) running the two processes concurrently shortens total preparation time. Note that claim 1 itself does not require the calibration to occur in the latter half of preparation and does not require a guided flow — those are the dependent claims.

Dependent claims 2 and 3 — plain-language overview

• Claim 2: Adds that the controller causes the time obtainer to obtain the time information and causes the calibrator to perform the calibration in a latter half of the advance preparation. In the described embodiment the second calibration ("static tilt") sits in the step immediately before the device begins tracking the prism, so posture is very unlikely to change afterward — avoiding re-calibration.
• Claim 3: Adds that the controller provides guidance of each work in the advance preparation as a series of flow — i.e., a single application walks the operator through the preparation steps (FIGS. 3–6 screen transitions: tilt offset configuration S1–S2, leveling S3–S4, station installation S5/S10–S17 or backward intersection S20–S24, GPS time acquisition S30, second calibration S31, tracking start S32, recording S33–S34) instead of requiring separate application programs.

Embodiment context relevant to claim scope

• The overall system is a photogrammetry system: a UAV-mounted camera with a prism 13 and a GPS unit 14; the total station tracks the prism and surveys its position; an analyzing device correlates images P1…Pn to survey results R1…Rm by matching GPS timestamps, which is why the surveying device needs an accurate GPS time in the first place.
• The advance preparation sequence is: first calibration ("tilt offset," involving a 180° body inversion and averaging original/inverted readings) → leveling → station installation → GPS time acquisition (typically up to ~20 minutes, until signals from at least five satellites are received) → second calibration ("static tilt," no inversion) → tracking.
• The second calibration is started before transition to screen S31, i.e., while the GPS time is still being acquired; if it finishes early, screen S31 appears only briefly. This is the literal embodiment of claim 1's "during a period in which the time obtainer obtains the time information."
• Specified alternatives: the moving object need not be a UAV (could be an automobile or a person); the time source need not be GPS (could be GNSS or atomic-clock standard waves). These are described as alternatives but the claims as issued recite only "external time information," so the alternatives are consistent with the claim scope.

Uncertainty / confidence notes

• High confidence on all bibliographic fields, the abstract text, claim text, and the embodiment description — these come directly from the authoritative full patent text provided.
• Medium confidence on the family/legal-status table (EP, JP, CN, AU entries) — reproduced from the same source page and internally consistent, but I could not independently re-verify current statuses at the national offices in this session.
• Low confidence / unverified: litigation and appeal posture. No CAFC 2026 docket entry, IPR, or district court case involving this number appeared in my searches, and the two "Cited By" documents are later Topcon applications (US 2023/0272631 A1 and US 2023/0272632 A1, batter board placement/installation), not assertions against this patent. I cannot rule out proceedings that are not web-indexed.

I'll search patent-litigation sources for this specific patent number.

The results so far are noise (mostly a different '794 patent, Illumina's, and US 11,091,794 from PacBio). Let me run more targeted searches.

Litigation search: US Patent No. 11,085,794 (“Surveying device,” Topcon Corporation)

Bottom line: No litigation, PTAB proceeding, ITC investigation, or CAFC appeal involving US 11,085,794 was found. Every search returned either nothing on point or results for different patents that happen to share the digits “794.” Per your instruction, I am expressly excluding those near-miss results rather than reporting them as hits.

What I searched

• Generic litigation queries: 11085794 patent litigation, "11,085,794" patent lawsuit
• Unified Patents–oriented queries: "11085794" site:portal.unifiedpatents.com (returned zero results) and UNIFIED PATENTS litigation "11085794"
• PTAB/IPR-specific: "11,085,794" OR "11085794" IPR PTAB petition
• Assignee/docket sweep: Topcon patent litigation 2026 total station district court

I did not obtain direct PACER/CM-ECF, Unified Patents caselist, or PatentCenter query access in this session. Absence of results is therefore “no match found,” not affirmative proof of a clean docket.

Near-misses expressly excluded (do NOT conflate)

These surfaced in search and are not US 11,085,794:

Assessment

• US 11,085,794 is an active patent (4th-year maintenance fee paid 2024-12-18, anticipated expiration 2039-01-30) owned by Topcon Corporation, a large operating company — not an NPE. Its subject matter is a pre-survey calibration/startup workflow for a total station (time-overlapping tilt-sensor calibration with GPS time acquisition). This is the kind of internal-workflow improvement that is typically practiced only inside competitors’ total stations, making it a low-probability assertion candidate and consistent with the absence of any docket entries.
• The two “Cited By” records on the face of the patent (US 2023/0272631 A1 and US 2023/0272632 A1, both Topcon, batter-board placement) are later Topcon filings, not assertions against this patent.
• Foreign proceedings: I did not run country-specific docket searches for the family members (EP 3748292 B1, JP 7017422 B2, CN 111566442 B, AU 2022201415 B2). I cannot state whether any EPO opposition, CNIPA invalidation, or national-court action exists — that is an unverified gap, not a finding.

Consistency with the earlier-generated section

This is consistent with the prior summary’s footnote (“no CAFC appeal, PTAB proceeding, or district-court litigation naming US 11,085,794 was surfaced”). No contradiction to flag. The only correction-worthy point is methodological: the earlier section did not itemize the near-miss numbers, and those are exactly the records most likely to be mis-attributed to this patent downstream.

Recommended next steps if you need a definitive negative

1. Unified Patents caselist, filtered by patent number (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist).
2. USPTO PatentCenter / PTAB “Patent Trial Appeal Board” search by the patent number.
3. PACER/CM-ECF nationwide “patent number” search (via a Docket Navigator or Lex Machina subscription, which supports exact-patent docket search).
4. Parallel searches for EP 3748292 and CN 111566442 opposition/invalidation records at the EPO and CNIPA.

I do not know, with high confidence, that no proceeding exists — only that none is discoverable through the queries above.

I'll verify the structured data with targeted searches before writing.

PTAB / AIA Trial Proceedings — US 11,085,794 B2 ("Surveying device")

Verification note up front: The canonical list in the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal ingest) returns zero AIA trial proceedings for US 11,085,794 B2. I ran supplemental web checks for IPR/PGR/CBM petitions naming this patent number, the application number (16/964,188), the patent owner (Topcon / 株式会社トプコン), and the sole inventor (Motohiro MIYAJIMA). Nothing surfaced. As with the earlier docket check, this is a "no match found" finding, not affirmative proof of a clean sheet — ODP ingest lag and indexing gaps are real. The findings below are framed accordingly.

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trials on US 11,085,794 B2: 0. There is no IPR, no PGR, and no CBM. Consequently there is no cancellation outcome, no institution denial, no settlement, no FWD, and no Federal Circuit appeal of an FWD arising from this patent. For a defendant: the defensive posture is "the patent is a blank slate at the PTAB — nothing has been knocked out, but nothing has been tested either, so all three claims are fully live and un-narrowed by any adversarial record." That cuts both ways: you cannot rely on an existing invalidity judgment, but you also face no § 315(e)(2) estoppel, no adverse POPR/FWD claim construction, and no procedural history that the patent owner has already litigated once.

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No proceedings on file

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} to report. Rather than fabricate a template entry, here is what the absence means and what was checked:

• Statutory basis of the check: AIA trials = IPR (35 U.S.C. § 311), PGR (§ 321), CBM (§ 18 of the AIA; sunset for new petitions 2020-09-16). None is on file against this patent.
• Searched identifiers: patent number 11085794 / US11085794B2; application 16/964,188; pre-grant publication US2021/0033422A1; PCT PCT/JP2019/003085 / WO2019151292A1; assignee Topcon Corporation; inventor MIYAJIMA, MOTOHIRO.
• Outcome: no petition, no institution decision, no FWD, no termination, no PTAB appeal.
• Independent verification paths (the two canonical sources; I could not query them directly in this session, so treat these as the confirming step):
  • USPTO PTAB E2E / PTAB End-to-End: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/ — search by patent number or application number.
  • USPTO Patent Center, application 16/964,188 (shows trial/history tabs): https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/
  • CourtListener / CAFC docket search for appeals naming the patent: https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%2211085794%22

Practical consequences of the empty docket

• Every claim is untested. Claims 1, 2, and 3 stand exactly as issued on 2021-08-10 (see the "Claims" field in the underlying patent text: Claim 1 independent; Claims 2 and 3 dependent). No claim has been canceled, disclaimed, or held unpatentable in any AIA forum. Nothing in the prior "Patent summary" section — which describes claim 1's six recited elements and the dependent-claim additions — has been altered by adversary action.
• No § 315(e)(2) estoppel exists against anyone. Because no petitioner has ever run an IPR to FWD on this patent, no petitioner or privy is barred from raising § 102/§ 103 grounds it "raised or reasonably could have raised." A defendant today has the entire prior-art universe available, including the references cited on the face of the patent and all art cited in the underlying ISR (International Search Report and Written Opinion dated 2019-04-23, PCT/JP2019/003085).
• Forum availability has narrowed by statute, not by events. With the patent granted 2021-08-10, the PGR window closed 2022-05-10 (9 months post-grant, § 321(c)) — PGR is no longer available for the existing claims. CBM is ineligible on its face: the claimed subject matter is a surveying device with a distance/angle measurer, tilt sensor, and GPS time receiver (G01C classes), which is not a "financial product or service" under § 18(d)(1). IPR (§ 311) is the only realistic AIA vehicle today, available at any time subject to the § 315(b) one-year bar if and when a complaint is served.
• No trial-stage clock is running. There is no institution decision deadline, no 1-year statutory FWD deadline (§ 316(a)(11)), and no oral hearing to track. If a petition is filed, the milestones to watch are: filing → PO preliminary response (3 months) → institution decision (6 months from filing) → FWD (12 months from institution, extendable to 18 for good cause).
• Pattern signals: none to read. There is no repeat petitioner, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents, RPX, or similar) in the chain, and no history of the patent owner litigating an FWD up to the Federal Circuit. The only "Cited By" documents remain Topcon's own later filings (US 2023/0272631 A1 and US 2023/0272632 A1, batter-board placement/installation), which are later applications, not invalidity challenges.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all live, all untested. Tracing the three issued claims through AIA-trial channels: Claim 1 (independent) — LIVE / UNTESTED. Claim 2 — LIVE / UNTESTED. Claim 3 — LIVE / UNTESTED. There is no narrowing to report, no surviving-claim list to build, and no canceled-claim carve-out. Any infringement theory the patent owner builds on claims 1–3 is presently unencumbered by an adverse PTAB record. The counterweight is that the patent has never been stress-tested: the novelty hook is narrow and temporal — claim 1 is essentially defined by concurrency, i.e., the controller causing the calibrator to calibrate the posture detector during the same period in which the time obtainer obtains the external time information. That is a timing/architecture limitation, and timing limitations are the kind that § 103 challenges tend to reach with a secondary reference teaching concurrent background calibration. The dependent claims (claim 2's "latter half of the advance preparation"; claim 3's "guidance … as a series of flow") add further soft, workflow-type limitations that a petitioner would likely argue are design choices. Nothing in the prior-art citation list has been tested against these limitations, so the strength of the art is unknown, not established.

Estoppel landscape: wide open. With zero IPRs, § 315(e)(2) bars no one. A defendant filing an IPR today preserves all grounds; a defendant not filing preserves everything in district court. Practically: there is no reason to fear waiver or IPR-estoppel traps, and no reason to expect the patent owner to have a claim-construction win baked into the record. The one caution is the reverse-direction risk — because the patent has never been construed by the PTAB or a district court, claim terms such as "posture detector," "calibrator," "external time information," and "in a latter half" carry their full specification-supported breadth, and the specification supplies a fairly specific embodiment (tilt sensor 48 as a bubble-in-circular-bubble-tube detector; calibrator 49 storing a "tilt offset" and a "static tilt"; time obtainer 47 receiving GPS time from at least five satellites over up to ~20 minutes). Whether claim 1 reads on non-GPS external time sources, or on multi-source GNSS or atomic-clock standard waves, is an open question the specification expressly contemplates but the claim language ("external time information," unqualified) arguably reaches. That is a § 112(b) / written-description attack surface you should evaluate before filing, and it is unclaimed territory — no FWD has touched it.

Pattern signals: absent, which is itself informative. US 11,085,794 issued 2021-08-10 and is now more than five years old with a 4th-year maintenance fee paid 2024-12-18 and an anticipated expiration of 2039-01-30. The family is broadly live (EP 3748292 B1; JP 7017422 B2; CN 111566442 B; AU 2022201415 B2 expired–fee-related; AU 2019214734 A1 abandoned), which shows the patent owner valued the subject matter across jurisdictions, yet no third party has filed an AIA petition in the US. That usually signals one of three things: (i) the patent is not being asserted in the US at a scale that provokes IPR filings; (ii) the patent owner is asserting it only against counterparties who prefer license/design-around to PTAB combat; or (iii) the art is genuinely difficult, and prospective petitioners have not found a compelling § 103 combination. I cannot distinguish among these from public sources, and I am not aware of any asserted US litigation naming this patent — so treat the "difficult art" hypothesis as unverified. On the foreign flank, EP 3748292 B1 granted 2023-08-30, which would have opened and closed a 9-month EPO opposition window on or about 2024-05-30; I cannot confirm from the available materials whether any opposition was filed, and that is worth checking with an EPO register lookup (https://register.epo.org/) if you have European exposure, since an EPO opposition revocation/amendment would give an invalidity-argument roadmap even though it has no US preclusive effect.

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Recommended next steps

Because there is no PTAB activity, there is no FWD to quote and no disposition to link. Do not let anyone represent otherwise. Instead:

1. Confirm the empty docket directly before relying on it. Pull PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/) and Patent Center for application 16/964,188 and screenshot the results. ODP ingest is not real-time; my searches were web-level only.
2. Given the empty record, an IPR is a viable first-strike option if you are already served — but watch the clock. § 315(b) bars a petition filed more than 1 year after service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent. If your exposure is live, calendar institution (~6 months from filing), PO preliminary response (3 months), and FWD (12 months from institution; 18 with good cause under § 316(a)(11)).
3. Attack the claim-1 timing limitation head-on. The strongest § 103 theories against a "calibrate concurrently with time acquisition" claim will involve a primary reference disclosing a total station with tilt-sensor calibration, combined with a secondary reference disclosing background/parallel execution of a GPS time-acquisition routine. Verify whether the § 102 art cited on the face of the patent, and the art cited in the 2019-04-23 ISR/Written Opinion for PCT/JP2019/003085, already positions you — those are the references the examiner and the ISA considered. US 2015/0220085 A1, US 2016/0010985 A1, US 2017/0226708 A1, and JP 2015-145784 (Patent Document 1) are among the face-of-patent citations and are Topcon-family art that may be § 102(a)(2) or § 102(b) depending on dates — check the priority dates carefully.
4. Evaluate the § 112 flank. Claim 1's "external time information" and "calibrator configured to calibrate the posture detector" are broad relative to the bubble-tube/GPS-time embodiment. If you can build a § 112(b) indefiniteness or written-description argument, that is a ground only a district court or the ITC can reach — the PTAB cannot invalidate for § 112 in an IPR (§ 311(b) limits IPR to § 102 and § 103). This is a real asymmetry in your favor and it is untouched by any proceeding.
5. Check the foreign flank for a free roadmap. If EP 3748292 B1 drew an EPO opposition, the opposition division's reasoning on the equivalent claims is a ready-made invalidity narrative with no US estoppel consequence. Confirm via EPO Register and Espacenet (https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search?q=EP3748292).
6. Treat "no IPRs" as a signal, not a defense. A five-year-old, family-wide, still-maintained patent that nobody has petitioned on is often one that nobody has yet needed to attack — it is not evidence of unassailable validity.

Caveat on scope: everything in this section about proceedings is grounded in the structured ODP list (empty) plus negative web search results. Everything about claim text, the specification's embodiment, the cited references, and the maintenance-fee/family data is grounded in the authoritative full patent text supplied. I have not verified any EPO opposition status or any district-court/ITC docket in this session.

I'll research the assignment record for US 11,085,794 before reconstructing the chain.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 11,085,794 B2 ("Surveying device")

Source limitations (read first). The authoritative full patent text supplied to me includes the CN/EP/JP/US family and the Google Patents "Legal Events" extract for this patent. That extract shows exactly one recorded assignment (reel/frame 053287/0940). I did not have live USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) session access in this run, so I could not pull the correspondent of record field or re-confirm that no second recording has been made since the data was fetched (2026-09-24). Where I state a fact, it is grounded in the supplied full text or in the search results below; where I could not verify, I say so.

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Inventors

• Miyajima is a confirmed Topcon inventor: Patent Leaderboard lists 7 US patents under his name, all assigned to Topcon (e.g., US 11,085,794; D946,014; US 11,808,571; US 12,140,428; US 12,253,601; US 12,352,575). His most recent grant dated 2025-07-08, i.e., he was still filing for Topcon roughly seven years after this application.
• No unusual pattern. There is no evidence of the "all inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months" precursor to a portfolio fire-sale: Miyajima's prosecution activity continues through 2025, all at Topcon. The design patent USD 946,014 (filed 2020-07-15, listing Miyajima, assignee Topcon) corroborates continuity of employment in the window right after this filing.

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Original assignee

Topcon Corporation (株式会社トプコン / Kabushiki Kaisha Topcon), 75-1 Hasunuma-cho, Itabashi-ku, Tokyo 174-8580, Japan.

• Primary business: precision optical / positioning instruments. Per Topcon's own FY2024 Annual Securities Report, the group sells total stations, 3D laser scanners, GNSS receivers, IT-construction and IT-agriculture systems, and laser products through its Positioning Business — the exact product class the claims read on. It is a direct, practicing manufacturer, not a holding or licensing vehicle.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, in practical terms: the patent describes a total station with automatic prism tracking, a GPS-time receiver, and a bubble-type tilt sensor, all standard features of Topcon's tracking total stations (the specification's total station is the product being described). Topcon's Positioning segment is built on these instruments.
• Current status: Operating. Listed on the Tokyo Stock Exchange, Prime Market, ticker 7732 (ISIN JP3630400004). FY ended March 2025: net sales ¥216.5bn, operating profit ¥11.2bn, profit attributable to owners ¥4.9bn. Not acquired, not dissolved, not in bankruptcy. (Historical note from its own filing: excluded from Toshiba affiliates in Sept. 2015; delisted from Osaka Securities Exchange in 2009 — no relevance to current solvency.)
• Public-company paper trail: as a TSE-listed issuer it files annual securities reports (有価証券報告書) and does not file SEC 10-K/8-K (it is not an SEC registrant), so the "SEC filings" cross-reference in the mandate maps onto the TSE/local-finance-bureau equivalent. I found no disclosure in those documents of any patent-sale, securitization, or privateering transaction involving this patent.

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Assignment timeline

One recorded assignment exists. Based on the Google Patents legal-events extract for US 11,085,794:

• 2020-07-01 (executed) / recorded 2020-07-22 — Reel 053287 / 0940
  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: MIYAJIMA, MOTOHIRO (sole)
  • Assignee: TOPCON CORPORATION, Japan
  • Correspondent: Not determinable from the sources available to me. The legal-events extract exposes only the free-format text ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST; ASSIGNOR: MIYAJIMA, MOTOHIRO; REEL/FRAME: 053287/0940"), the effective date, and the owner name — it does not reproduce the correspondent-of-record field. I could not retrieve the recording attorney/agent for reel 053287/0940 in this session. This is an explicit gap, not an inference.
  • Context: In-house / formal inventor-to-employer assignment, perfected in connection with the PCT national-stage entry (PCT/JP2019/003085 → US 16/964,188). Timing is routine: the US national stage was filed 2019-01-30 and the assignment was recorded ~9.5 months later, on the standard formal-assignment pipeline rather than as part of any commercial transfer.

No post-issuance assignments. There is no record of any assignment after grant (2021-08-10), no security agreement, no merger, no change of name, and no license recorded against this patent in the material I could retrieve. The chain begins and ends with Topcon Corporation.

If the Assignment Center shows additional recordings that I could not see, the analysis below would change. Verify directly: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search application 16/964,188 or patent 11,085,794), fallback mirror https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11085794
    2018 : Priority filing JP 2018-014494
    2019 : PCT filed
         : US national stage filed
    2020 : Miyajima assigns rights to Topcon
         : Assignment recorded reel 053287 0940
    2021 : Patent issued
    2024 : Maintenance fee paid year 4

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

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Verdict

Insufficient data — per the rubric's literal definition ("no records, or only the original assignment"). The assignment record for US 11,085,794 consists of a single recording, reel 053287/0940, executed 2020-07-01 and recorded 2020-07-22, conveying sole inventor Motohiro Miyajima's rights to Topcon Corporation. The absence of any further recordings is itself the finding: it means the original assignee still owns the patent.

Substantively, this is a clean, non-NPE chain. None of the eight signals is present, the owner is a listed, revenue-generating manufacturer of the very total stations the claims cover (TSE 7732, FY2025 sales ¥216.5bn), and the sole inventor remained with the assignee for years after filing. The only reason this is not labeled "Operating-company assertion" is that the rubric reserves that verdict for a current assignee suing actual competitors — and no assertion of US 11,085,794 by anyone was found. Verify the single-recording finding and retrieve the correspondent field at the USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 11,085,794 / application 16/964,188).

I'll verify the citation record against live sources before analyzing each reference.

Let me verify the remaining cited references I have less certainty about.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 11,085,794 B2

Identifier verification. The request was to search for patent number 11085794. That number resolves to US 11,085,794 B2, "Surveying device," Topcon Corporation, application 16/964,188, issued 2021-08-10. I have applied it literally and excluded same-digit near-misses (US 11,091,794; US 8,605,794; serial 11/085,794; etc.), consistent with the litigation section already generated.

Scope and sourcing. The reference set analyzed below is the citation record printed on the face of the patent itself, which is the authoritative full text supplied: "Patent Citations (19)", "Family Cites Families (8)", and "Non-Patent Citations (1)". I cross-checked several references against live sources (JP 2015-145784 A, US 2016/0010985 A1, US 2019/0004157 A1, US 2021/0123735 A1); where I could not obtain the underlying disclosure, I say so rather than characterizing it.

Date note (flag). The earlier-generated sections in this file are dated 2026-09-29 / "CAFC 2026"; this task states the current date as 2026-04-26. That inconsistency does not affect the analysis (all relevant dates are 1994–2022), but I am flagging it so downstream users do not treat the two sections as same-day work product.

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A. The §102 framework actually applicable here

The application is AIA-era: filed 2019-01-30 (§371 national stage of PCT/JP2019/003085), claiming foreign priority to JP 2018-014494, filed 2018-01-31. Under AIA §102(d)(2), the effective filing date is 2018-01-31. Therefore:

• §102(a)(1) art = anything patented, described in a printed publication, or in public use/on sale before 2018-01-31.
• §102(a)(2) art = US patents, US application publications, and WIPO publications effectively filed before 2018-01-31 (a foreign priority claim counts for the "effectively filed" date), even if published later — subject to the §102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership exception.
• Anything first filed and first published after 2018-01-31 is not §102 prior art at all, regardless of how on-point it looks.

This last point turns out to be dispositive for a meaningful subset of the cited list, and it is the single most important structural observation in this analysis.

Eligibility screen of the 19 "Patent Citations"

Two structural observations before the per-reference work:

1. The list is a union of US-PTO and EP-search-report citations, not a rejection record. The presence of CH 709874, DE 10 2015 110 684, CN 105277181 and multiple JP members alongside US publications is the signature of a family-level (EP 3748292 or JP 7017422) search report merged into the Google Patents "citations" table. Nothing here evidences that any reference was applied as a §102 rejection against the US claims.
2. Four of nineteen cited documents (items 16–19) sit at or after the critical date, and three of those (16, 17, 19) are either commonly owned or plainly post-date the invention. Items 18 and 19 cannot be §102 art under any theory on the printed dates. This is characteristic of an IDS/background citation set, not an anticipation set — and it is consistent with the patent having issued with only three claims and a single independent claim.

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B. Reference-by-reference analysis

For each entry: citation → dates → description → claim(s) it could potentially anticipate → element-level assessment (elements keyed to §A of my earlier claim overview: 1a measurer; 1b main body; 1c time obtainer for external time; 1d posture detector; 1e calibrator; 1f controller calibrating during the time-obtaining period).

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1. US 5,400,514 A — "Laser instrument for tracing reference lines and other geometric figures"

• Assignee: Economy Laser, Inc. | Filed 1994-02-22 | Issued 1995-03-28
• Description: A laser projection/alignment instrument that lays down visible reference lines and geometric figures (lines, squares, plumb lines) for layout work. It is leveling-plane art, not total-station art.
• Potential anticipation: None. Touches at most 1d (a level/plumb reference), and possibly 1e if the instrument self-compensates its level sensor — I have not verified its disclosure text, so treat the 1d/1e attribution as a title-and-classification inference only.
• Missing from claims 1–3: 1a, 1b (in the claimed sense of a main body supporting a distance/angle measurer), 1c, 1f, and the entirety of claims 2–3.

2. JP H09-5080 A — "Surveying instrument" (旭光学工業 / Asahi Optical Co., Ltd.)

• Filed 1995-06-19 | Published 1997-01-10
• Description: A Japanese unexamined application to a surveying instrument. I could not retrieve the disclosure in this session. Based on title and era it is presumably theodolite/total-station mechanics or tilt/leveling compensation; I am not asserting more than that.
• Potential anticipation: None. At most 1a/1b/1d as generic surveying-instrument disclosure.
• Caveat: this is a Japanese-language reference; if it were ever relied on for §102, an authenticated translation would be required. My content confidence here is low and I flag it as unverified rather than characterizing it.

3. US 2010/0283840 A1 — "Miniature celestial direction detection system"

• Assignee: Trex Enterprises Corp. | Filed 2006-11-24 | Published 2010-11-11 | (examiner-cited on the face)
• Description: A miniature star/ celestial-body-based direction and attitude determination system — an absolute-orientation sensor for platforms.
• Potential anticipation: None. Touches 1d (attitude determination) and the general idea of referencing an external absolute source. It does not disclose a surveying distance/angle measurer (1a), an external time receiver as claimed (1c — celestial direction ≠ time information), a calibrator (1e) in the claimed sense, or any overlap of calibration with a time-acquisition window (1f).
• Why it was cited: plausibly as general evidence of externally-referenced attitude determination.

4. US 2015/0220085 A1 — "Measuring System"

• Assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Topcon | Filed 2014-01-31 | Published 2015-08-06
• Description: US publication in the Topcon measurement-system family. The family (see #5) discloses a flight device carrying a GPS device and a measuring instrument, a position measurement device able to perform distance measurement, angle measurement and tracking, a retroreflector on the flight device, and a control device that derives the absolute/GPS coordinates of the position measurement device's set-up point from GPS coordinates acquired at ≥2 flight points plus the distance/angle measurements.
• Potential anticipation: None. Touches 1a (distance/angle measurer), 1b, and the tracking-a-moving-object preamble. Uses GPS as a position reference; nothing about acquiring external time information as the claim recites, nothing about a posture detector/calibrator, nothing about 1f.

5. JP 2015-145784 A — "Measurement system" (測定システム) — this is "Patent Document 1" of the '794 specification

• Assignee: 株式会社トプコン (Topcon) | Filed 2014-01-31 | Published 2015-08-13
• Description (verified via Google Patents and a Japanese-language record): A measurement system (測定システム) comprising: a remotely operable flight device 2 carrying a GPS device 8 and a measuring instrument; a position measurement device 3 capable of distance measurement, angle measurement and tracking; a ground station 4 controlling flight; a remote controller 5; and a control device. The flight device has a retroreflective element 9; the position measurement device tracks element 9 and performs distance/angle measurement; the flight device acquires GPS coordinates at at least two points; and the control device computes the absolute or GPS coordinates of the position measurement device's installation point from those two GPS coordinate sets plus the measured distance/angle. Dependent claims cover photogrammetry using a camera on the flight device and using the measured results.
• Potential anticipation: None. This is the background/problem statement reference for the '794 patent, and the '794 specification says so expressly ("the position information of the UAV is surveyed by using a GPS or a surveying device … such as a total station"). It supplies 1a (distance/angle measurement), 1b, and the tracking preamble, and the concept of GPS as an external absolute reference — but it is directed to deriving the station's own coordinates, not to advance preparation, does not recite a posture detector or calibrator, and has no calibration-during-time-acquisition step.

6. US 2016/0049081 A1 — "Measuring System"

• Assignee: Kabushiki Kaisha Topcon | Filed 2014-01-31 | Published 2016-02-18
• Description: US publication in the same Topcon measurement-system family as #4/#5 (same 2014-01-31 priority). Substantively the same disclosure.
• Potential anticipation: None, for the same reasons as #4/#5.

7–11. Topcon "Surveying Instrument / Surveying device" family — priority 2014-07-09

• Description (verified in part for #11): A total station with a leveling unit 2, a telescope unit 5, an operation input unit 7, a wide-angle camera 9, and a control device 21, used for true-north surveying by imaging the sun. The disclosure expressly notes that "in a case where the surveying instrument 1 is provided with a GPS, an installation coordinate of the surveying instrument 1 is obtained from the GPS and the time moment of measurement may be obtained from the GPS." The items 7–10 are the CN/CH/DE/JP members of the same family.
• Potential anticipation: None. #11 is the most textually relevant of the five because it touches 1c (obtaining the time moment from GPS) in optional language, and touches 1a/1b and leveling (1d, arguably 1e via the leveling unit). But it discloses no calibration of a posture detector, and certainly no controller that causes calibration during the period in which the time information is being obtained (1f). It is a true-north/absolute-azimuth disclosure, not an advance-preparation workflow disclosure.
• Note: the "may be obtained from the GPS" phrasing is permissive/optional, which is weaker than the claim's "configured to obtain external time information."

12. US 2017/0226708 A1 — "Surveying instrument, surveying instrument usage method, and construction machine control system"

• Assignee: Topcon Corporation | Filed 2016-02-09 | Published 2017-08-10
• Description: Total-station-type surveying instrument, its method of use, and a control system for a construction machine (machine-control application). Illustrative of Topcon's motorized total-station platform with angle/distance measurement and attitude handling.
• Potential anticipation: None. Touches 1a/1b and possibly 1d. Shares no teaching of 1c, 1e, or 1f.

13. JP 2017-142111 A — "Surveying device, using method of surveying device, and control system of construction machine" (測量装置、測量装置の使用方法、及び建設機械の制御システム)

• Assignee: 株式会社トプコン | Priority 2016-02-09 | Published 2017-08-17
• Description: Japanese member of the #12 family.
• Potential anticipation: None, for the same reasons as #12.

14. JP 2017-151008 A — "Flying object tracking method, flying object image acquisition method, flying object display method, and flying object guidance system"

• Assignee: 株式会社トプコン | Filed 2016-02-26 | Published 2017-08-31
• Description: Tracking of a flying object (UAV), acquisition of images by a camera on the flying object, display of the flying object, and a guidance system — i.e., the operational layer that the '794 device serves (the '794 preamble is "survey by tracking, as a survey target, a prism 13 attached to a camera 11 of a movable imaging device 2").
• Potential anticipation: None. Supplies the tracking/UAV-photogrammetry context (1a, 1b, preamble) but nothing on 1c, 1e or 1f.

15. US 2017/0248948 A1 — "Flying Vehicle Tracking Method, Flying Vehicle Image Acquiring Method, Flying Vehicle Displaying Method and Flying Vehicle Guiding System"

• Assignee: Topcon Corporation | Filed 2016-02-26 | Published 2017-08-31
• Description: US counterpart of #14.
• Potential anticipation: None, as #14.

16. US 2019/0004157 A1 — "Communication management system of surveying instrument"

• Assignee: Topcon Corporation | Filed 2017-06-28 | Published 2019-01-03 | (examiner-cited on the face)
• Description (verified): A system having a surveying instrument (total station) with a survey unit 13, a temperature sensor 15, a control unit 17, a communication unit 18, a display unit 19 and a rotary drive unit 20, plus a management server and remote terminal. One aspect expressly recites a surveying instrument including "a survey unit that surveys a target, a GPS device that measures coordinates, a system timer that acquires a current time, a control unit that controls the survey unit, the GPS device, and the system timer, and a communication unit…". The invention is a remote temperature/position/time-based specification-guarantee and usage management system (warn/lock the instrument when used outside a usable temperature range).
• Potential anticipation: None of claims 1–3, but this is the cited reference that comes closest on element 1c: it discloses a total station with a surveying measurer (1a), a main body (1b), and both a GPS device and a system timer that acquires a current time (1c). It has no posture detector, no calibrator, and no calibration-during-time-acquisition (1d–1f absent), and it is about remote fleet management, not advance preparation.
• Critical §102 point: it published 2019-01-03 — after the 2018-01-31 effective filing date — so it can only be §102(a)(2) art. Because it and the '794 patent were both owned by Topcon Corporation at the relevant time, the §102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership exception would, on its face, remove it from the prior art entirely. It is therefore not usable as §102 art against claim 1.

17. US 2019/0086206 A1 — "Survey system"

• Assignee: Topcon Corporation | Filed 2017-09-20 | Published 2019-03-21 | (examiner-cited on the face)
• Description: A Topcon "survey system" application with a 2017-09-20 filing date (Japanese-family counterpart appears to be JP 6994879 B2, 測量システム). I did not obtain the disclosure text in this session, so I am not characterizing its substance beyond the title.
• Potential anticipation: None as to claims 1–3 on the record available to me. It cannot be §102(a)(1) art (published 2019-03-21) and, as a Topcon-owned US application publication with a pre-EFD effective filing date (2017-09-20), it falls squarely within the §102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership exception and would not be prior art.
• Confidence: low on disclosure content; high on the §102(a)(2)/§102(b)(2)(C) disqualification logic.

18. US 2019/0302273 A1 — "GNSS device"

• Assignee: Topcon Corporation | Filed 2018-03-30 | Published 2019-10-03 | (examiner-cited on the face)
• Description: A Topcon GNSS device application. On the printed dates it was both filed (2018-03-30) and published (2019-10-03) after the '794 effective filing date of 2018-01-31.
• Potential anticipation: None — ineligible as §102 art. Subject matter notwithstanding, a document first filed after the critical date cannot be §102(a)(2) art, and one first published after it cannot be §102(a)(1) art.
• Caveat / verification flag: the only way this becomes art is if it properly claims benefit of an application effectively filed before 2018-01-31 (e.g., an unshown JP priority). The face of the record I have does not show such a claim; if one exists, this entry must be re-analyzed. I flag this as a genuine open item rather than asserting ineligibility as final.

19. US 2021/0123735 A1 — "Online leveling calibration of a geodetic instrument"

• Assignee: Hexagon Technology Center GmbH | Filed 2019-10-23 | Published 2021-04-29 | EP counterpart: EP 3812701 B1, granted 2022-08-24 | (examiner-cited on the face)
• Description (verified): A method for deriving a calibrated leveling of a geodetic instrument (theodolite, total station, laser scanner) using a small accelerometer, in particular a MEMS accelerometer, mounted at a known offset from the instrument's rotation axis. The instrument is dynamically moved about a rotation axis, the movement profile is captured with the rotational position encoder while the accelerometer reads acceleration due to the motion, and the leveling is calibrated from the encoder/accelerometer data. The stated objectives are to reduce dependence on expensive oil-pot/level sensors, tolerate a wider tilted set-up, and be "automated and/or integrated in the hardware configuration and usage procedures of a regular state of the art instrument."
• Potential anticipation: None — and it is legally incapable of being §102 art here. It was filed 2019-10-23 and published 2021-04-29, both long after the '794 effective filing date of 2018-01-31.
• Why it matters anyway (this is the most useful analytical takeaway in the citation list): substantively, this is the single closest subject-matter neighbor to the '794 patent's "posture detector + calibrator" concept — leveling/level-sensor calibration of a geodetic instrument. It is nonetheless distinguishable in three ways: (i) dynamic calibration via encoder-monitored rotation, versus the '794's static "static tilt" measurement taken after the bubble settles; (ii) no external time-information acquisition at all, hence no 1c and no 1f; (iii) a hardware/sensor-reduction motivation versus the '794's workflow-efficiency motivation. Its presence in the citation list is best explained as the examiner or applicant noting the nearest concept in the art — not as §102 art.
• Downstream relevance: if the '794 claims are ever challenged, US 2021/0123735 / EP 3812701 cannot be used in an IPR or as §102/§103 art because of its date. It is usable only as §101/§112 context or as evidence of the state of the field.

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C. "Family Cites Families (8)" — family-level citation set

These eight are family-level citations (the signature of the JP or EP prosecution/IDS record, not the US examiner's PTO-892). All are dated before the critical date unless noted, so all are potentially §102(a)(1) printed-publication art — but as shown, none reaches claim 1's point of novelty.

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D. Non-Patent Citation (1)

"International Search Report and Written Opinion dated Apr. 23, 2019, in connection with International Patent Application No. PCT/JP2019/003085, filed Jan. 30, 2019, 8 pgs (with translation)."

This is the ISR/WO for the '794 application's own PCT, cited on the US face as a matter of record. It is not prior art to anything — it is the search opinion for this very family. Its practical significance is that it is the document that maps the international search results onto the claims and would identify any reference the ISA considered relevant to novelty/inventive step. I did not retrieve its contents (the "8 pgs (with translation)" is the citation string on the patent face); a reviewer wanting the ISA's own citation categories ("X"/"Y"/"A") should pull WO 2019/151292 A1's search report directly.

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E. Consolidated §102 element/claim mapping

Legend: ● = element/claim text arguably present; ○ = arguably present but in permissive/optional or different-context language; — = absent.

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F. Bottom line

1. No cited reference anticipates claim 1, and a fortiori none anticipates claims 2 or 3. The point of novelty — a controller that causes the calibrator to calibrate the posture detector during the period in which the time obtainer obtains the external time information (element 1f) — is absent from every one of the 19 face citations and all 8 family-level citations. The cited art reaches, at most, individual elements: a total station with distance/angle measurement and a main body (1a/1b — pervasive), a GPS receiver or GPS-derived time on a surveying instrument (US 2016/0010985 optionally; US 2019/0004157 explicitly), and a tilt/posture sensing and leveling function (US 2016/0010985 family; US 2017/0226708 family).
2. The two references that come closest are both legally unusable as §102 art. US 2019/0004157 A1 supplies the total station + GPS device + timer combination (near-1c) but published after the critical date and is Topcon-owned, hence §102(b)(2)(C)-excepted from §102(a)(2). US 2021/0123735 A1 is the nearest concept (leveling calibration of a geodetic instrument) but is filed and published after 2018-01-31 and therefore cannot be art at all — in an IPR or a §102/§103 challenge it is simply off the table.
3. Two cited references (US 2019/0302273 A1; US 2021/0123735 A1) are post-critical-date on the face of the record, and two more (US 2019/0004157, US 2019/0086206) are pre-critical-date-filed but post-critical-date-published and commonly owned. That four of nineteen citations are non-art is the clearest evidence that this is an IDS/background citation set, not a rejection record — consistent with issuance on 2021-08-10 without visible §102 rejection of claim 1.
4. The realistic invalidity theory, if any, is §103, not §102 — and it would require combining a Topcon total station tilt/calibration teaching (US 2016/0010985 or US 2017/0226708 families) with independent GPS-time-acquisition art, plus a reason to overlap the two steps. The common-ownership exception removes the most convenient Topcon (a)(2) candidates from the combination. I have not performed that full §103 combination analysis here, and I am not asserting that such a combination succeeds.

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G. Confidence and verification gaps (stated explicitly)

• High confidence: the identity of the patent; all claim text; the citation list's composition and dates as printed; the §102 framework and the eligibility screen in §A; the disqualification of items 16–19 (mode of the §102(a)(2)/(b)(2)(C) and date analysis).
• High confidence, verified against live sources: JP 2015-145784 A (#5); US 2021/0123735 A1 (#19); US 2019/0004157 A1 (#16); partial verification of US 2016/0010985 A1 (#11).
• Medium confidence: US 2019/0086206 A1 (#17) — title/date/ownership only, disclosure not retrieved.
• Low confidence (title-level characterization only, disclosure not verified in this session): US 5,400,514; JP H09-5080; US 2010/0283840; CN 105277181; CH 709874; DE 10 2015 110 684; JP 2016-017875; JP 2017-142111; JP 2017-151008; US 2017/0248948; all eight family-level citations. For these I have identified the reference, its dates, its assignee, and its field, but I have not independently read the disclosure and I have marked the element attributions with "?" accordingly. A definitive §102/§103 opinion on these requires retrieving and reading the full documents (and, for the JP/CN/DE/CH references, certified translations).
• Open verification item: whether US 2019/0302273 A1 claims benefit of an application effectively filed before 2018-01-31. If it does, its eligibility changes and it must be re-analyzed.
• Not addressed here: the ISA's citation categories in WO 2019/151292 A1, and any EP 3748292 / JP 7017422 / CN 111566442 prosecution use of these same references. Consistent with the litigation section already generated, I found no assertion proceeding involving US 11,085,794; nothing in this prior-art review changes that.

I'll ground this analysis in the specific prior-art references listed on the patent page. Let me verify the content of the key references before building the § 103 combinations.

Let me verify a few more of the specific cited references to ground the combination analysis.

Let me verify the remaining key cited references on which the combination would rest.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,085,794 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Built on the prior sections: This section assumes the claim charts, bibliographic data, and embodiment mapping already produced. It does not repeat the abstract, claim text, or claim-by-claim embodiment mapping, except where needed to anchor an element. It is sourced from the Prior Art section of the patent page itself (the "Citations (11)," "Patent Citations (19)," "Family Cites Families (8)," and the Non-Patent Citation), as instructed.

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0. Threshold: effective filing date and the critical-date screen

The § 371 national stage claims priority to JP 2018-014494, filed 2018-01-31. Every reference in a § 103 combination must therefore qualify as prior art as of 2018-01-31 (AIA § 102(a)(1)–(a)(2)). Screening the cited art against that date produces one important, non-obvious finding:

Flag (contradiction to watch): Two references carried on the page's citation list — US 2019/0302273 A1 and US 2021/0123735 A1 — post-date the claimed invention and therefore cannot be used in any § 103 combination against this patent. This matters because the Hexagon reference is, by its title, the closest art-of-record for "leveling calibration of a geodetic instrument," and a careless downstream analyst would build a rejection around it. I could not retrieve the USPTO file wrapper in this session, so I cannot verify why it was cited (background/IDS vs. substantive application); what I can say with high confidence is that its 2019-10-23 date disqualifies it as § 102 prior art against a 2018-01-31 priority. (Verified via search: Hexagon's US 2021/0123735 A1 / EP 3812701 B1 carry an effective date of 2019-10-23.)

Net usable prior art for the analysis: the Topcon total-station and UAV-photogrammetry families, plus the two older Japanese/US instrument references and the "family cited" references (JP 2002-243444 A, EP 1 944 572 B1 (Trimble Jena), JP 5150310 B2, CN 102155955 A, EP 2 620 745 A1 (Hexagon), JP 6539501 B2, JP 6691721 B2, CN 107421460 A).

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

A POSITA here is a worker with a B.S. in surveying/geodesy, electrical, or mechanical engineering and 2–5 years of experience operating and programming geodetic instruments (total stations/tachymeters), including gyro/tilt compensation, leveling, target-tracking, and GNSS/GPS time synchronization for photogrammetry. The prior art is small and concentrated in one field (§ 103 "analogous art" question is essentially a non-issue — all references are geodetic surveying, UAV photogrammetry, or instrument calibration).

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2. Claim-1 feature chart against the art of record

Conclusion of the chart: claim 1 reduces, substantively, to (i) known TS hardware + (ii) known GPS time acquisition + (iii) known tilt-sensor calibration + (iv) a scheduling rule that runs (ii) and (iii) concurrently. Only (iv) supplies any arguable invention.

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3. The central § 103 question and the strongest combination

3.A The applicant's own admissions supply the motivation

The most powerful § 103 evidence on this record is the Background Art of US 11,085,794 itself, which admits each constituent fact:

1. Advance preparation "includes installation of the surveying device to a predetermined position, leveling work ... and calibration of a tilt sensor."
2. Photogrammetry "requires that the timing of taking an image ... be synchronized with the timing of surveying," achieved by "obtain[ing] time information from a GPS satellite."
3. "Particularly, in the step of obtaining time information from the GPS satellite and the step of calibrating the tilt sensor, the surveying device needs to be left still for a certain period of time. If the surveying device is moved after the tilt sensor is calibrated, the calibration needs to be done again, which leads to a lower work efficiency."
4. Using "different application programs ... for executing leveling, calibration of the tilt sensor, obtaining of time information from the GPS satellite ... the work to be done in advance will become complicated."

These admissions establish both the problem (two idle-time processes, redundant recalibration) and the design landscape. Under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), where the elements are known and each performs its known function, "the combination [is] obvious ... if a person of ordinary skill can implement a predictable variation." Concurrency of two known, mutually compatible, both-stationary steps is precisely such a predictable variation.

3.B Combination A (primary rejection)

US 2016/0010985 A1 (Topcon, "Surveying Instrument") as primary + US 2019/0086206 A1 (Topcon, "Survey system") and/or US 2015/0220085 A1 / JP 2015-145784 A as secondary references.

• Primary supplies the TS architecture, the tilt/attitude detecting unit, leveling/calibration functionality, the control-arithmetic unit + display, and the GPS-derived time moment.
• Secondary supplies the specific GPS-time function (US 2019/0086206 A1: GPS "acquires a UTC") and the UAV/TS photogrammetry context in which the survey side and the UAV side must be placed on a common clock (US 2015/0220085 A1; JP 2015-145784 A — the spec's Patent Document 1).
• Motivation: (1) same field, same assignee (Topcon) — both references are directed to the same geodetic instrument family and are combinable by design (KSR; In re Kahn); (2) the applicant's own admission that both steps require the instrument to be left still creates the "design incentive" and "market demand" rationales; (3) predictable result — no change in the function of either element.

3.C Combination B (workflow-guidance rejection, aimed at claim 3)

US 2016/0010985 A1 + JP 2015-145784 A / US 2015/0220085 A1 + US 2017/0226708 A1 / JP 2017-151008 A / US 2017/0248948 A1 (flight/tracking workflow and shutter-timing synchronization).

• These collectively disclose instrument control sequences ("sequence program"), displays for operator guidance, target/prism tracking, and shutter-timing/time-synchronization for photogrammetry.
• Motivation: consolidating several preparation steps into a single guided sequence is an admitted-desirable software-design choice (spec's own complaint about "different application programs"), and is a routine, predictable re-arrangement of known display/control steps. This is the KSR "predictable use of prior-art elements according to their known functions" rationale.

3.D Combination C (using family-cited art)

EP 1 944 572 B1 (Trimble Jena) — "Surveying instrument and method of providing survey data" — combined with US 2015/0220085 A1 and US 2016/0010985 A1, supports the leveling/tilt/error-determination + survey-data workflow elements. JP 2002-243444 A (aerial photogrammetry) and CN 107 421 460 A (robot-measurement + close-range photogrammetry) support the image-position ↔ survey-data association context.

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4. Dependent claims

• Claim 2 ("latter half of the advance preparation"): If the concurrency of claim 1 is deemed obvious, claim 2 is a fortiori obvious: an ordinarily skilled designer, having decided to overlap, would place the disturbance-sensitive calibration last to minimize the risk that a subsequent step (leveling, station set-up) displaces the posture. The specification itself states the rationale ("very unlikely that the surveying device 3 changes its posture after the calibration"). Ordering a calibration after the steps that move the instrument is a design choice within ordinary skill.
• Claim 3 ("guidance ... as a series of flow"): The weakest claim against art. The art of record (US 2016/0010985 A1's control/display unit; US 2015/0220085 A1; US 2017/0248948 A1) shows instrument-driven step sequencing and operator displays. Implementing a wizard-style flow is a predictable software-design variation.

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5. The honest counter-case (why a § 103 rejection may fail)

1. No reference of record teaches or suggests the temporal overlap. Every candidate reference is silent on running tilt calibration during GPS time acquisition. That absence is the novelty. The § 103 argument therefore rests substantially on the applicant's own admissions and on KSR's "obvious to try"/"design choice" rationales rather than on an explicit teaching — a weaker footing that an examiner or court may reject, because recognizing a problem does not, without more, render the solution obvious (KSR acknowledges this limit; In re Cyclobenzaprine).
2. Granted in three jurisdictions. The page shows active grants at the EPO (EP 3 748 292 B1, 2023-08-30), Japan (JP 7017422 B2), and China (CN 111566442 B). Each of those offices had overlapping prior-art families available (Topcon's own earlier filings) and still found the overlap allowable — a meaningful, though not dispositive, secondary signal.
3. Objective indicia. The specification articulates a long-felt need (reduced advance-preparation time and elimination of redundant recalibration). I found no evidence of commercial success, copying, or industry praise specific to this feature; the "Cited By" documents are later Topcon batter-board applications, not praise or copying. So the secondary-considerations record is essentially empty, which cuts against non-obviousness rather than for it.
4. Claim-construction lever. The term "during a period in which the time obtainer obtains the time information" is the gate. The reference teaches the period can be up to ~20 minutes (until ≥5 satellites). A POSITA would recognize that ~20 idle minutes is ample time to perform a no-inversion "static tilt" calibration, so the physical compatibility is plain — but "the window is long enough" is an efficiency observation, not a teaching of the claimed scheduling.

Assessment: A prima facie § 103 case exists and is strongest when framed as "implementation of an admitted, recognized need to consolidate two idle-time steps" rather than as an explicit-teaching rejection. My estimate of a rejection's persuasiveness is moderate to low on the art of record alone, rising if the examiner combines an explicit workflow-teaching reference (e.g., US 2017/0248948 A1's timing/synchronization disclosure) with the applicant's own Background Art admissions. I cannot verify whether the examiner made such an argument; I lack the file wrapper.

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6. Bottom line

• Only claim 1 element that is not met by the art of record: the controller timing that overlaps posture-detector calibration with external-time acquisition. Everything else is squarely in the cited Topcon/JE/JPH art.
• Best combination: US 2016/0010985 A1 + US 2015/0220085 A1 (and/or JP 2015-145784 A) + US 2019/0086206 A1, motivated by common field/assignee and the specification's own admitted problem statement. US 2017/0248948 A1 / JP 2017-151008 A sweeps in claims 2–3.
• Excluded by critical date: US 2019/0302273 A1 and US 2021/0123735 A1 — both post-date the 2018-01-31 priority and cannot support a § 103 rejection. (This is the single most important correction to carry forward.)

Confidence

• High on the critical-date screening, the feature chart, and the identification of the temporal-overlap element as the sole novelty.
• High that Hexagon's US 2021/0123735 A1 (2019-10-23) is not § 102 prior art against this patent.
• Medium on my characterizations of the JP/CN/DE/CH family members and the "family-cited" references: I verified full text/abstract for US 2015/0220085 A1, US 2016/0010985 A1 (partial), US 2019/0086206 A1, and JP 2015-145784 A, but I relied on titles and family relationships for CN 105277181 A, CH 709874 A2, DE 10 2015 110 684 A1, JP 2016-017875 A, JP 2017-142111 A, JP 2017-151008 A, and the eight family-cited references. Treat those specific mappings as provisional until the full texts are pulled.
• Low / unverified: whether the examiner substantively applied the two post-dated references, and the complete prosecution history — both require the file wrapper, which I could not access here.