US 11085796

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent number, including any litigation or CAFC activity.

Let me run a few more targeted searches for litigation and USPTO records.

Let me do a final check for PTAB proceedings and any 2026 activity.

US 11,085,796 B2 — Summary

Verification note up front: I could not query USPTO Patent Center or the CAFC docket system directly from this environment. What follows is grounded in the authoritative full text of the patent (Google Patents, fetched 2026-09-24) plus targeted web checks. My searches returned no CAFC 2026 docket activity, no PTAB/IPR proceeding, and no district court litigation naming US 11,085,796. That is a negative search result, not proof of absence — treat the "no litigation" finding as uncertain.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (as printed)

A sensor device includes an encoder element and at least two housing-affixed, magnetic field-sensitive sensors. The encoder element can be displaced in a direction of movement. The sensors are configured to determine a position and/or movement of the encoder element. The encoder element has a first magnet arrangement, which has differently aligned magnetic fields along the direction of movement of the encoder element, and a second magnet arrangement, which has differently aligned magnetic fields along the direction of movement of the encoder element.

Plain-language overview of the claims

There is one independent claim (claim 1); claims 2–15 all depend, directly or indirectly, from it (claim 10 depends on claim 2; claim 11 depends on claim 10; the rest depend on claim 1).

Claim 1 (independent) — the core invention. A sensor device with two main parts:

1. An encoder element that moves in one direction of travel and carries two separate magnet arrangements. Each arrangement produces magnetic fields whose alignment changes along the direction of movement (i.e., the field direction rotates/varies as you travel down the scale). This is the classic "magnetic scale" idea also seen in the background art (DE 199 37 206 C2, DE 10 2009 055 104 A1, EP 0 997 706 B1).
2. At least two magnetic-field-sensitive sensors fixed to the device housing, where each sensor is assigned to a different one of the two magnet arrangements and produces its own output signal. The two outputs are monitored and combined into a differential signal (sum/difference) used to determine the encoder's position and/or movement.

The claimed point of novelty versus the cited prior art is the second magnet arrangement paired with a second, separately-assigned sensor, with the outputs combined differentially. The stated technical benefit is unique position detection that is immune to an external homogeneous stray magnetic field, plus large measurement distances and a constant output in the "clamping range."

Dependent claims (plain language):

• 2 — The field orientations of the two arrangements differ from each other along the encoder.
• 3 — The two arrangements are magnetic tracks on the encoder.
• 4 — The two arrangements sit side by side on one side of the encoder.
• 5 — The two sensors sit next to each other viewed along the direction of movement.
• 6 — The field orientations change incrementally.
• 7 — Each magnet arrangement is made of multiple discrete magnetic elements.
• 8 — Each arrangement is a separately magnetized magnetic field body.
• 9 — Both arrangements are formed from a single magnetized magnetic field body (most compact variant).
• 10 — The first arrangement's orientations do not repeat along the encoder.
• 11 — The second arrangement's orientations also do not repeat.
• 12 — The two arrangements abut one another and are on one side of the encoder.
• 13 — The two sensors are offset from each other in the direction of movement.
• 14 — The two sensors sit at a specifiable angle to the measurement direction.
• 15 — The field orientations change continuously.

(Claims 10 and 11 are the "non-repeating/unambiguous absolute position" refinements; note they narrow the claim-2 embodiment rather than claim 1 directly.)

Prosecution and cited art (for context)

• Examiner-cited art includes DE 199 37 206 C2 (Siemens), EP 0 997 706 B1 (Philips), DE 10 2009 055 104 A1 and DE 10 2011 083 948 A1 (both Bosch), US 2011/0103173 A1 (May), US 2014/0197820 A1 (Micronas), US 2015/0354984 A1 (Micronas), US 2017/0191851 A1 (MTS Sensor Technologie), and CN 101416020 A.
• Per the file history in the record, examination proceeded to allowance after a non-final action (2020-11-19), a response (2021-02-09), and a notice of allowance (2021-04-19). The record shows no §102/§103 rejection entered against the claims in the listed events, though I have not inspected the office actions themselves.
• One later patent cites this family: US 10,620,014 B2 (Rockwell Automation Technologies, "Encoder system for position determination with varying scale," 2020-04-14).

Uncertainty / limitations

• No CAFC or litigation hits: searches for 11085796, US11085796, 10,857,796 + litigation/PTAB/CAFC returned only unrelated Bosch matters (e.g., Bosch v. SawStop IPRs, Bosch Automotive Service Solutions v. Matal, Bosch diesel-emissions RICO cases) and third-party Bosch patent portfolios. I found nothing tying this patent to a 2026 Federal Circuit docket. I cannot confirm that no such proceeding exists — only that my searches did not surface one.
• Claim-copy fidelity: the claim text above reflects the full-text render as fetched; I did not cross-check against the USPTO-issued XML/PDF. Minor typographical variances may exist between sources.
• Legal status: "Active" and the 2038-02-07 expiration are the source's assumptions, not a legal conclusion; they also ignore any terminal disclaimer or PTA that could shift the date.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11085796 across patent litigation databases.

Let me run more targeted searches, including litigation-specific databases, to confirm whether this patent has been asserted.

I'll verify the structured block's "no proceedings" default against the public record before drafting.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: zero. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding naming US 11,085,796 as of the most recent ingest, and my independent public-record searches surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, or Federal Circuit appeal involving this patent — so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied. Defensive posture: US 11,085,796 is a virgin, un-attacked patent. A defendant facing assertion today gets no free IPR-estoppel benefit, no canceled claims to point to, and no PTAB record to mine — but also faces no hardened, twice-vindicated patent, and all 15 claims remain open targets in a first-filed IPR.

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Proceedings

None

There are no proceedings to report. Per the operating rules, I will not manufacture a docket. What the record actually shows:

• Structured source (canonical): "The USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest." No proceeding numbers, no petitioner, no status rows.
• Cross-check (web): Searches for US11085796 / "10,857,796" combined with IPR, PTAB, petition, and Bosch returned no AIA trial filings. Results were dominated by (a) unrelated patents that happen to share the shorthand "796," and (b) Bosch's German-language sensor filings, none of which is a PTAB challenge to this patent.
• Known trap — do not conflate the "796" patents. Public reporting on Bosch v. Autel (IPR2014-00183, FWD 2015-05-05, claims 1, 4–15 and 20–22 of the "'796 patent" held unpatentable, motion to amend denied) concerns U.S. Patent No. 6,904,796 — a tire-pressure-monitoring tool patent. It is not US 11,085,796. Any defendant or vendor memo citing "the Bosch '796 IPR" as precedent against this patent is citing the wrong patent. Likewise, the Federal Circuit case SawStop Holding LLC v. Vidal, 48 F.4th 1355 (Fed. Cir. 2022), referencing a "'796 patent," concerns a SawStop patent — again unrelated.
• Patent is very much alive. Google Patents lists the legal status as Active, with the 4th-year maintenance fee paid 2025-01-27 and anticipated expiration 2038-02-07. The absence of PTAB activity therefore is not explained by the patent having lapsed.
• Plainly: there is no PTAB activity on file. The absence is the answer.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all 15 claims are UNTESTED at the PTAB. Neither independent claim 1, nor any of dependent claims 2–15, has ever been construed, instituted on, or adjudicated in an AIA trial. For a defendant, that cuts both ways. There is no canceled-claim shortcut — you cannot knock out a demand letter by pointing to a certificate under 35 U.S.C. § 318(b). But there is equally no SAS-style all-claims FWD, no Board claim construction to bind the patent owner, and no adverse estoppel running against you.

Estoppel landscape: essentially empty, in both directions. Because no IPR was ever instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to nobody — there is no petitioner or privy barred from re-litigating grounds in district court, and no prior petitioner whose art you could free-ride on. Conversely, the patent owner has no PTAB win to hide behind and no § 315(e)(2) shield against your new petition. Your real constraints are statutory:

• PGR is unavailable. Post-grant review must be requested within 9 months of grant. The patent issued 2021-08-10; that window closed in May 2022. No § 112 or § 101 challenges via PGR.
• IPR remains fully available, subject only to the § 315(b) one-year bar running from service of a complaint alleging infringement — and to the discretionary-denial overlay (Fintiv factors, now shaped by the Director's post-Fintiv guidance and the interim processes described in current Board briefing practice).

Pattern signals: none available. No petitioner has filed even one petition here, let alone a serial or follow-on challenge; the patent owner has no PTAB appeal history on this patent; and there is no sign of a defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) in the chain. The only third-party activity in the file is a citation relationship — Rockwell Automation's US 10,620,014 B2 ("Encoder system for position determination with varying scale") cites this family — which is a prior-art/industry signal, not a validity attack. Foreign flank: the patent has active counterparts in EP (EP3583388B1, granted 2023-05-24), CN (CN110291364B), and JP (JP6882530B2), so the EPO opposition/national nullity route is the live validity-challenge forum outside the U.S. — I did not confirm the existence or outcome of any EP opposition and will not assert one.

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Recommended next steps

1. Treat the PTAB field as blank and budget a first petition. With no FWD to cite and no estoppel to leverage, your invalidity case lives or dies on your own art. The strongest structural attack on the claim set is on the differential/sum-signal limitation of claim 1 ("monitored and combined to form a differential signal") — the specification itself concedes that DE 199 37 206 C2, DE 10 2009 055 104 A1, and EP 0 997 706 B1 already teach sum/difference evaluation of two magnet-sensitive sensors. That concession in the "Background" is a ready-made obviousness hook.
2. Watch the § 315(b) clock. If a complaint alleging infringement of US 11,085,796 has been served on you, your IPR petition is due within one year of service. If no complaint has issued, you have no deadline — and filing before being sued can make you a "prior petitioner" and, depending on posture, create an estoppel that runs in your favor downstream. Confirm service dates before anything else.
3. Run a real prior-art search now, not later. Because the patent is un-attacked, no petitioner has already curated the art for you. The cited-art list in the file (JPH0688702A; JPH1061664A; US 2002/0079888 A1; EP0997706B1; DE19937206C2; CN101416020A; DE102009055104A1; DE102011083948A1; US 2015/0354984 A1; US 2017/0191851 A1, and others) is the examiner's list, not a petitioner's knockout list — mine it, but don't stop there.
4. Do not cite the Bosch "796" IPR or SawStop. Call out and correct any internal deck that references "the '796 patent IPR" — those authorities concern different patents (6,904,796 and a SawStop patent, respectively) and citing them against US 11,085,796 would be a factual error in a brief.
5. Availability of the FWD/opinion links: not applicable here — there is no USPTO PTAB E2E docket sheet or CourtListener opinion to link for US 11,085,796, because no proceeding exists. The patent's own record is available at https://patents.google.com/patent/US11085796/en, and PTAB filings generally at https://ptab.uspto.gov.

Confidence note: I have high confidence in the "no PTAB activity" conclusion for the structured ODP data and reached no contrary result in public search. I could not rule out a very recently filed petition that post-dates ODP ingest and has not yet been indexed publicly; if that matters for a filing deadline, verify directly against the PTAB E2E search for the patent number before relying on this memo.

I'll research the assignment record for US 11,085,796, starting with targeted searches.

Let me dig deeper into the assignment record and correspondent details.

Let me try to reach the USPTO assignment data directly.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 11,085,796 B2

Data-access caveat up front. The USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) and the legacy Assignments on the Web interface are interactive/JS-gated; I could not query them directly from this environment. My patent-number and reel/frame searches ("11085796", "051546", assignor-name queries) returned no independent hit on the reel/frame record. The single recorded conveyance below is taken from the Google Patents legal-events block for US 16/482,841 (fetched 2026-09-24), which mirrors the USPTO assignment data but does not expose the correspondent field. I therefore flag the correspondent as a genuine gap rather than guessing at it. This is a limitation of my retrieval, not evidence of a missing record.

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Inventors

All three are listed as employees of Robert Bosch GmbH for this family, and all three departed as assignors to Bosch on the single recorded assignment (see below). This is the standard German employee-invention pattern (Arbeitnehmererfindergesetz): the employer files, then perfects the written assignment later in prosecution. It is not a departure/fire-sale signal.

Two data-quality flags — do not treat these as findings:

1. PatentLeaderboard also carries a "Wolfgang Welsch — 35 Patents at Siemens Aktiengesellschaft" profile that includes US 11,085,796. "Welsch" is a common German surname and this appears to be a name-collision / entity-attribution artifact in an aggregator's data, not evidence that a Siemens employee co-owns this patent. The patent's own front page names Robert Bosch GmbH as assignee.
2. No evidence that any inventor left Bosch within 12 months of filing. I found no such record, and the assignment was executed by all three to Bosch nearly three years after the DE priority filing — the opposite of a departing-inventor pattern.

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Original assignee

Robert Bosch GmbH (Robert-Bosch-Platz 1 / Postfach 30 02 20, 70442 Stuttgart, Germany). Assignment to Bosch recorded 2020-01-17, Reel 051546 / Frame 0828; the 2020-01-17 record in the file identifies "ROBERT BOSCH GMBH, GERMANY" as owner.

• Primary line of business: diversified industrial/automotive supplier — mobility (automotive components and systems), industrial technology, consumer goods, energy/building technology. Position sensors and encoders are a core Bosch Mobility product line, which is the direct commercial home for this subject matter.
• Current status: Operating. Robert Bosch GmbH is a privately held, multi-billion-euro going concern; it is not in bankruptcy, was not acquired, and has not dissolved. The 4th-year maintenance fee was paid 2025-01-27 (M1551, large entity), and the patent is listed Active with anticipated expiration 2038-02-07.
• Did Bosch ship a product embodying the claims? Unverified at claim level. The claims cover a moving encoder element with two adjacent magnet arrangements of varying field alignment detected by two housing-fixed magnetic-field-sensitive sensors whose outputs are combined differentially — i.e., a magnetically encoded linear/rotary position sensor. Bosch sells linear and rotational position sensors and encoder components in this space. I did not, however, locate a specific Bosch part number or datasheet mapping to claims 1–15, so I will not assert embodiment.
• Foreign equivalents all remain Bosch-held: EP 3583388 B1 (granted 2023-05-24), CN 110291364 B (granted 2022-08-12), JP 6882530 B2 (granted 2021-06-02) — every granted family member is titled to Bosch. DE 10 2017 202 365 A1 was withdrawn and WO 2018/149712 A1 ceased, both normal for Bosch's DE-home-office + PCT→national-stage strategy.

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Assignment timeline

Only one assignment is on record.

• Executed 2020-01-07 to 2020-01-13 / recorded 2020-01-17 — Reel 051546 / Frame 0828
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (see document for details) — original inventor-to-employer assignment
  • Assignors: Wolfgang Welsch; Michael Kleinknecht; Sina Fella (signing dates 2020-01-07 to 2020-01-13)
  • Assignee: Robert Bosch GmbH (Germany)
  • Correspondent: NOT RETRIEVABLE from the sources I could reach. The correspondent of record is populated in the Assignment Center entry for reel 051546/0828 and on the recorded document PDF, but the Google Patents mirror of the assignment event omits that field and my searches did not surface it. I will not name a firm I cannot cite. Flag for verification: pull the reel 051546/0828 document PDF at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ to capture the correspondent — this is the one field of your requested schema I could not fill.
  • Context: Routine inventor-to-employer perfection under German employee-invention practice. Executed ~5 months after the US §371 national-stage entry date (FEPP 2019-08-01) and ~2 months after the US pre-grant publication (2019-11-14); recorded ~2 months before the case was docketed for examination (2020-03-23) and ~10 months before the first non-final action (2020-11-19). No consideration transfer to a third party.

No post-issuance assignments. No security agreements, no mergers, no change-of-name records, no licenses, no releases, no corrections. The absence of any recorded transfer is itself the finding: Robert Bosch GmbH has been the sole owner from recordation to today.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11085796
    2017 : DE priority application filed
    2018 : PCT application filed
         : Bosch named as applicant
    2019 : US national stage entered
         : US pre-grant publication
    2020 : Inventors execute assignment to Bosch
         : Recorded reel 051546 frame 0828
         : No further assignments recorded
    2021 : US patent issued 2021-08-10
    2025 : 4th year maintenance fee paid

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The only recorded assignee is Robert Bosch GmbH, an operating industrial parent, not an "IP / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" vehicle. There is no LLC, no registered-agent-service address, and no single-purpose entity anywhere in the chain (Reel 051546/0828, recorded 2020-01-17).

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. Neither the current nor any prior assignee matches the Acacia / Marathon / IV / IPNav / Wi-LAN / Mosaid-Conversant / Vringo / Pendrell / Round Rock / Spangenberg NPE sets, and Bosch does not appear as a high-frequency NPE plaintiff on Unified Patents or RPX asserter directories in connection with this patent. Bosch does assert its automotive patents directly against competitors (e.g., the Autel tire-pressure litigation) — but direct assertion by an operating supplier is not NPE activity, and in any event no suit naming this patent was found.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (data not retrievable). With exactly one recorded conveyance, there is by construction no recurrence within this chain to detect — recurrence requires ≥2 links, and there is one. I mark this unclear solely because I could not read the correspondent field, not because anything suspicious appeared. The recurrence that would matter here is cross-patent (a single attorney recording for many Bosch entities), and that is not an NPE tell when the assignee is an operating parent company. Action item: capture the correspondent from reel 051546/0828 to close this field.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Zero consecutive assignments, let alone chained LLCs inside 24 months. Chain length = 1.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. The sole assignment predates issuance by ~19 months and is an inventor→employer perfection, not a transfer to an asserter. No litigation naming this patent was surfaced in the earlier litigation/PTAB sections of this analysis, so there is no pre-suit assignment to measure against. (Also note the assignment precedes any conceivable suit by years.)

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. Robert Bosch GmbH is a solvent operating concern; no Chapter 7/11 proceeding, no §363 sale, no portfolio auction. Contrast the Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid pattern, which is entirely absent here.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No operating-company-to-NPE transfer exists in the record, so there is no vehicle through which Bosch could be asserting-by-proxy. Any Bosch assertion activity against competitors would be direct, not privateered, and none is tied to US 11,085,796. (I did not verify any Bosch membership in defensive- or licensing-aggregation programs, and I make no claim either way.)

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at Robert Bosch GmbH. This patent has not been neutralized by defensive aggregation — it remains in the hands of a litigious-capable operating supplier with active EP/CN/JP counterparts under the same ownership.

Signal tally: 0 present / 7 not present / 1 unclear (retrieval gap only).

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Verdict

Insufficient data — in the specific sense your rubric defines it (only the original assignment is on record).

Justification. The entire recorded chain of title is a single conveyance: executed 2020-01-07 to 2020-01-13, recorded 2020-01-17, Reel 051546 / Frame 0828, assigning from inventors Welsch, Kleinknecht and Fella to Robert Bosch GmbH. There is no post-issuance transfer, no NPE in the chain, no asserter correspondent to trace, and no litigation or PTAB activity (per the earlier sections of this analysis) to date against which a pre-suit transfer could be measured — so there is simply not enough transactional record to run a full NPE pattern analysis. To be explicit about the substantive reading: every affirmative datum points to a clean, operating-company-owned asset — Bosch is the sole assignee, has paid the 4th-year maintenance fee (2025-01-27), and holds all granted family members — while not one of the eight NPE signals is affirmatively present. If forced to characterize rather than merely classify, this is an operating-company-owned, non-asserted patent, and the "Insufficient data" label reflects record thinness, not doubt about who owns it.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 11085796, or reel 051546 frame 0828) — pull the recorded document to capture the correspondent, which is the one schema field I could not fill.

Confidence note: high confidence that Robert Bosch GmbH is the sole recorded owner and that no post-issuance transfer exists in the indexed record; moderate confidence that this reflects the complete USPTO assignment record, because I could not query the Assignment Center directly and had to rely on the mirrored legal-events data. If a very recent recording has not propagated to the mirrors, this memo would miss it.

I'll verify the patent record and the cited prior-art references against live sources before drafting.

Good detail on the Bosch reference. Now let me verify the other examiner-cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 11,085,796 B2 ("Sensor device," Robert Bosch GmbH)

0. Verification of the target patent

I searched for the number literally (11085796) and did not substitute similar numbers. The record I retrieved matches the authoritative full text already in this file:

Critical date for § 102 = 2017-02-15. Because this is an AIA patent, the governing provisions are § 102(a)(1) (publicly available before the effective filing date) and § 102(a)(2) (US patents/application publications effectively filed before that date). Two of the cited documents published after 2017-02-15 and are therefore relied on under § 102(a)(2), not (a)(1) — flagged below.

Anticipation target — the full element set of claim 1. § 102 requires a single reference disclosing every element, arranged as claimed:

1. Encoder element displaceable in a direction of movement;
2. First magnet arrangement with differently aligned magnetic fields along the direction of movement;
3. Second magnet arrangement with differently aligned magnetic fields along the direction of movement;
4. ≥2 magnetic-field-sensitive sensors affixed to a housing;
5. First sensor assigned to the first arrangement → first output signal;
6. Second sensor assigned to the second arrangement → second output signal;
7. Outputs monitored and combined to form a differential signal used to determine position and/or movement.

The likely point of novelty is elements 3 + 6 + 7 in combination (a second track with its own dedicated sensor feeding a differential). That is the element set the prior art below most often fails to meet completely.

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1. The citation universe (as printed on the patent)

Google Patents lists the references in two overlapping tables ("Citations (15)" and "Patent Citations (18)"), plus a separate "Family Cites Families (4)" table, plus one non-patent citation. All 15+3 examiner/front-page citations are set out below. Important caveat: presence in this list means the reference was cited (on the face of the patent/in an IDS/ISR), not that it is an anticipating reference — examiner citation is not a § 102 finding.

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2. Reference-by-reference § 102 assessment

GROUP A — Single-reference § 102 candidates (all claim-1 elements arguable)

A1. DE 199 37 206 C2 (Siemens AG) — the single most relevant reference

• Full citation: DE 199 37 206 C2, "Position determination device and use of a position determination device and method for producing a scale for such a device," Siemens AG.
• Dates: filed 1999-06-11; published 2003-05-08. (Prior art as to 2017-02-15.)
• Description: Discloses a magnet arrangement (scale) made of a plurality of magnets whose north and south poles are aligned differently, so that differently oriented magnetic fields arise along the arrangement. Two magnet-sensitive sensors detect the fields, and the ratio of the sensors' output signals is combined to give a sum and/or difference signal, from which position of the arrangement relative to the sensors is determined.
• § 102 potential: Claim 1 — this is the only cited reference that teaches elements (1), (2), (4), (5), (7), and arguably (6) in a single document. The differential/sum evaluation (element 7) is expressly disclosed.
• Anticipation gap: It describes one magnet arrangement with two sensors, not a first and second magnet arrangement each with its own assigned sensor (elements 3 + 6 as claimed). A petitioner would argue the multi-magnet scale can be characterized as two "arrangements"; the patent owner distinguishes on the two-track/two-sensor-assignment structure. Do not treat this as a clean § 102 hit — it is a strong § 103 primary reference.

A2. EP 0 997 706 B1 (Philips Corporate Intellectual Property GmbH)

• Full citation: EP 0 997 706 B1, "Arrangement for determining a relative linear position," Philips Corporate IP GmbH. (WO 99/57706 A equivalent; the ISR in JP 2006510942A cites the WO counterpart against claims 1–7.)
• Dates: filed 1998-10-28; granted/published 2002-08-07.
• Description: The classic magnetic linear-scale arrangement — a magnetic body whose field lines lie at a varying angle to the direction of movement along the length of the body, so position is derived from the local field direction. This is the reference the '796 specification names as known background.
• § 102 potential: Claim 1 in part; squarely meets element (2) ("differently aligned magnetic fields along the direction of movement"). Also relevant to claims 6 and 15 (incremental/continuous change of orientation).
• Anticipation gap: Single arrangement, no second arranged track, no two-sensor differential. Not a full § 102 reference to claim 1; strong § 103 partner.

A3. DE 102009 055 104 A1 (Robert Bosch GmbH)

• Full citation: DE 10 2009 055 104 A1, "Magnetic field sensor arrangement for path detection on moving components," Robert Bosch GmbH.
• Dates: filed 2009-12-21; published 2011-06-22. (Also names EP 0 997 706 B1 and DE 199 37 206 C2 as background.)
• Description (verified against the German full text): Spatial components of the magnetic field of a magnetic element/system on a moving part change direction over the path to be detected, so the part's position relative to a stationary field-direction-sensitive sensor is detectable. The field is oriented at an angle between 0° and <90° (preferably ~45°) to the direction of movement; the detectable field-direction range can be up to 200°. Sensors are XMR or Hall.
• § 102 potential: Claims 1 (element 2), 5 (sensor type/placement), 14 (specifiable angle to the measurement direction) — the 45° orientation teaching is directly on point for claim 14.
• Anticipation gap: One magnet system + one (or at most a measurement-array of) stationary sensor(s); no second magnet arrangement with a dedicated second sensor, no differential combination. § 102 fails on elements 3, 6, 7 → § 103 reference.

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GROUP B — § 102 as to sub-combinations; § 103 as to claim 1

B1. CN 101 416 020 A / JP 2009-528530 A (Moving Magnet Technologies)

• Full citation: CN 101 416 020 A, "Position sensor with variable magnetization direction and method for manufacturing the same," Moving Magnet Technologies (移动磁体技术公司); JP 2009-528530 A is the Japanese family member.
• Dates: filed 2006-03-02; CN published 2009-04-22; JP published 2009-08-06.
• Description: Position sensor using a magnet whose magnetization direction varies (along its length) and a field-direction-sensing element; directed to manufacture of such a variable-magnetization scale.
• § 102 potential: Claims 1 (element 2), 6 (incremental), 15 (continuous), and 8 (magnetized field body) — a "differently magnetized magnetic field body" whose orientation changes along its longitudinal extension is precisely claim 8's language.
• Anticipation gap: Single magnet body; no second arrangement/dedicated second sensor/differential → § 103.

B2. US 2011/0103173 A1 (Lutz May) — "Position sensor"

• Full citation: US 2011/0103173 A1, "Position sensor," inventor Lutz May.
• Dates: priority 2003-12-30; published 2011-05-05.
• Description: Position sensor in the May family, using multiple magnetic-field sensing elements and evaluation of field direction/components to obtain a position signal (typically arctan-style evaluation of directional components).
• § 102 potential: Claim 1 (elements 2, 4) — multiple field-sensitive sensors reading a variable field direction to yield position. Relevant to claims 5 and 13 (sensors side-by-side / offset).
• Anticipation gap: Does not disclose two co-extensive magnet arrangements each with a uniquely assigned sensor feeding a differential signal → § 103.

B3. US 2015/0354984 A1 (Micronas GmbH) — "Magnetic field measuring device" — key for element 7

• Full citation: US 2015/0354984 A1, "Magnetic field measuring device," Micronas GmbH.
• Dates: filed 2014-06-10; published 2015-12-10.
• Description (verified): A semiconductor body with three magnetic field sensors arranged along a line; signals are processed by differential analysis, expressly "to suppress interfering DC magnetic fields that … are not generated by the magnet of the measuring arrangement." The device computes differences/differential signals fr(α), fl(α) (and a quotient W(α) = [fr − fl]/[fr + fl]) to isolate the wanted field and reject homogeneous offset.
• § 102 potential: Claim 1, element 7 — "output signals … monitored and combined to form a differential signal," and it is directed to the very advantage the '796 specification asserts ("independently of an external homogeneous stray magnetic field").
• Anticipation gap: No encoder element with two magnet arrangements and assigned sensors. Nonetheless this is the most dangerous § 103 secondary reference because it supplies the differential/stray-field-rejection motivation.

B4. US 2014/0197820 A1 (Micronas GmbH) — "Measuring system"

• Full citation: US 2014/0197820 A1, "Measuring system," Micronas GmbH (DE 10 2013 007 902 B4 counterpart, "Messsystem").
• Dates: priority/filed 2013-01-14; published 2014-07-17.
• Description (verified via DE counterpart): A magnet device with at least two main poles and at least two auxiliary poles generating superimposed fields, with a magnetic field sensor fixed relative to the magnet device measuring a flux-density component.
• § 102 potential: Claim 1 (element 4) — housing/board-fixed field sensor; general magnetics architecture.
• Anticipation gap: Not a displacement encoder with two tracks; no differential encoder signal → § 103 / background.

B5. DE 10 2011 083 948 A1 (Robert Bosch GmbH) — "Sensor arrangement"

• Full citation: DE 10 2011 083 948 A1, "Sensorarrangement/sensor arrangement," Robert Bosch GmbH.
• Dates: filed 2011-10-04; published 2013-04-04. Same assignee as the patent.
• Description: Bosch magnetic position/motion sensor arrangement (same technical line as DE 10 2009 055 104 A1 and the '796 family).
• § 102 potential: Claim 1 (elements 1–2, 4) as background/context.
• Anticipation gap: No two-track + two-assigned-sensor + differential disclosure → § 103.

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GROUP C — Secondary / structural / background references

C1. JP H06-88702 A and US 5,313,182 A (SNR Roulements / The Torrington Company)

• Full citation: JP H0688702 A, "Magnet structure for displacement sensor," SNR Roulements (JP pub. 1994-03-29); US 5,313,182 A, same title, The Torrington Company (pub. 1994-05-17). Both filed/priority 1992-02-28.
• Description: Magnet structure for a displacement sensor — a scale of alternately/differently magnetized poles for magnetic position sensing.
• § 102 potential: Claim 1 (element 2) only — a differently-magnetized scale for displacement sensing.
• Anticipation gap: No second arrangement, no differential sensor pair. Background.

C2. JP H10-61664 A (Nippon Thompson Co., Ltd.)

• Full citation: JP H1061664 A, "Linear motion rolling guide unit," Nippon Thompson Co., Ltd.
• Dates: filed 1996-08-15; published 1998-03-06.
• Description: Linear-motion rolling guide with position detection (a linear guide/encoder combination).
• § 102 potential: Claim 1 (element 1) — displaceable element with a detection track. Background only.

C3. US 2002/0079888 A1 / JP 2004-516799 A (Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V.)

• Full citation: US 2002/0079888 A1, "Displacement device," Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. (pub. 2002-06-27); JP 2004-516799 A, "Two-part moving device with mutual position detection means" (pub. 2004-06-03). Filed 2000-12-27.
• Description: A two-part device that detects the mutual position of the parts (magnet + sensor).
• § 102 potential: Claim 1 (elements 1, 4) — moving part and housing-fixed sensing. Background.

C4. JP 2003-516534 A and US 2003/0145663 A1 (Robert Bosch GmbH; David Heisenberg)

• Full citation: JP 2003516534 A and US 2003/0145663 A1, "Device for measuring the angle and/or angular velocity of a rotatable body and/or the torque acting upon said body" (JP assignee: Robert Bosch GmbH; US inventor: David Heisenberg).
• Dates: filed 1999-12-06; JP pub. 2003-05-13; US pub. 2003-08-07.
• Description: Rotational-body sensor using magnetized tracks/regions and multiple field sensors to derive angle/angular-velocity/torque — i.e., a multi-track, multi-sensor magnetic arrangement.
• § 102 potential: Claim 1 (elements 2–6) — multi-track magnetization with dedicated sensors is closely analogous to the claimed two-track/two-sensor structure; relevant to claims 3, 5, 13.
• Anticipation gap: Torque/angle application rather than a linear displacement encoder with a differential position signal; the tracks are typically used for a torque-difference rather than position. Rule it in as a § 103 reference on the two-track + two-sensor architecture.

C5. US 2012/0153946 A1 (Van Veldhoven, R.H.M.)

• Full citation: US 2012/0153946 A1, "Magnetic Field Sensor."
• Dates: priority 2010-12-15; published 2012-06-21.
• Description: Magnetic field sensor, apparently with differential field sensing to reject common-mode/stray fields (the classic differential-sensor principle).
• § 102 potential: Claim 1 (element 7) — differential magnetic field sensing. Relevant to claims 5 / 13 (sensor placement/offset).
• Anticipation gap: No encoder with two magnet arrangements. § 103 add-on.

C6. US 2017/0191851 A1 (MTS Sensor Technologie GmbH & Co. KG) — "Position sensing system"

• Full citation: US 2017/0191851 A1, "Position sensing system," MTS Sensor Technologie GmbH & Co. KG (WO 2017/103853 A1; CN 108700431 A family member).
• Dates: priority 2015-12-15; published 2017-07-06 — after the 2017-02-15 critical date. Available only as § 102(a)(2) art (US application publication effectively filed 2015-12-15, i.e., before the critical date).
• Description (verified): Detects different field components of a position-encoding magnet with a set of sensing elements; generates a multicomponent-based signal (arctan calculation), aggregates and linearizes it to determine position; expressly motivated because single-field-component methods are "susceptible to temperature and magnet degradation."
• § 102 potential: Claim 1 (elements 2, 4–7) — a position-encoding magnet with multiple sensing elements and signal combination; relevant to claims 13 / 14 (sensor arrangement/angle).
• Anticipation gap: One encoding magnet, not two co-extensive arrangements with dedicated sensors; combination is a multicomponent aggregation, not a two-sensor differential. § 103 reference (§ 102(a)(2)).

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3. "Family Cites Families" — references cited by the family, not against this patent

These four appear in the family's citation trail (typically other family members' IDS). They are not front-page references facing US 11,085,796, and I would not lead with them:

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4. Non-patent citation

• International Search Report for PCT/EP2018/053060, dated 2018-03-16 (German and English, 7 pages). This is the ISR for the instant application itself; it is not prior art, but it is the document that identifies which cited references the ISA considered most pertinent and under which categories (X/Y/A). If you need a reliable indication of examiner-perceived relevance, the ISR categories are the single best source and I have not been able to inspect the category letters from the material in this file. That is a genuine gap in this analysis.

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5. Bottom line

Under § 102, no cited reference appears to disclose the complete claim-1 combination. The closest is DE 199 37 206 C2 (Siemens), which alone teaches the differently-aligned multi-magnet scale, two field-sensitive sensors, and the sum/difference evaluation — but discloses a single magnet arrangement, so its anticipation of claim 1 depends entirely on whether the multi-magnet scale can be read as the claimed "first and second magnet arrangement." Expect a patent owner to distinguish exactly there. EP 0 997 706 B1 and DE 10 2009 055 104 A1 are strong § 102 references only against isolated dependent limitations (claims 6, 14, 15), not claim 1.

Under § 103, the strongest combination is:

1. DE 199 37 206 C2 (or EP 0 997 706 B1 / DE 10 2009 055 104 A1) as the primary — magnet arrangement(s) with field direction varying along the path + sum/difference evaluation + housing-fixed field sensors;
2. US 2015/0354984 A1 (Micronas) as the secondary — differential signal processing expressly to suppress interfering/DC stray fields, i.e., the '796 patent's asserted advantage; and/or
3. JP 2003-516534 A / US 2003/0145663 A1 (Bosch/Heisenberg) or CN 101 375 131 B (Timken) to supply the two-track / multiple-magnetized-track teaching that bridges the single-arrangement gap.

The honest framing of the novelty story: this patent's claim 1 is a combination claim whose distinguishing feature is the pairing of two magnet arrangements with two dedicated sensors and a differential output. That combination is exactly where each single reference is deficient — which is why it was allowed, and why the attack is an obviousness attack, not a single-reference anticipation attack.

Contract:

• § 102 possible: DE 199 37 206 C2 (claim 1, with the single-vs-two-arrangement caveat); DE 10 2009 055 104 A1 as to claim 14; EP 0 997 706 B1 / CN 101 416 020 A as to claims 6/15; US 7,932,684 B2 as to claims 10/11.
• § 103 likely required for: claim 1 as a whole, and all dependent claims 2–15.

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6. Uncertainty / limitations (please read before relying on this)

1. I could not retrieve the full text of every cited reference in this session (I verified DE 10 2009 055 104 A1, EP 0 997 706 B1's context, US 2015/0354984 A1, US 2014/0197820 A1/DE 10 2013 007 902 B4, US 2017/0191851 A1/WO 2017/103853, and the FR/EP sensor art). For the remaining JP/CN/US references I relied on their titles, dates, and assignees as printed in the citation tables. A genuine element-by-element § 102 chart requires the full text of each reference — this memo is a relevance map, not a claim chart.
2. Citation ≠ anticipation. Several documents (DE 199 37 206 C2, EP 0 997 706 B1, DE 10 2009 055 104 A1) are cited by the applicant in the Background section as known art the invention improves upon. That helps a § 103 case (applicant admissions) but does not make them per se anticipatory.
3. Two cited documents post-date the 2017-02-15 critical date (US 2017/0191851 A1, pub. 2017-07-06; and the WO 2017/103853 / CN 108700431 A family). They are usable only as § 102(a)(2) art through their 2015-12-15 priority. Do not cite their publication dates as the operative prior-art date.
4. The ISR category letters (X/Y/A) were not available to me. The PCT ISR dated 2018-03-16 is the authoritative record of what the ISA considered most pertinent; consult it and, ideally, the 2020-11-19 non-final office action (whose grounds are not reproduced in the record I have) before finalizing any invalidity position.
5. No auto-correction applied: I have treated "11085796" / "US11085796B2" literally and did not fold in results for other "796" patents or similarly numbered Bosch documents.

I'll ground the obviousness analysis by pulling technical detail on the key references cited on the patent's face, then map them claim-by-claim.

Good grounding on the core references. Let me pin down three more that are central to the stray-field/differential-evaluation theory.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,085,796 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Building on the earlier bibliographic, claim-construction, PTAB, and litigation sections. This section does not repeat the claim chart or the docket findings; it assumes them. Date note flagged in §11.

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1. Framework and the level of ordinary skill

Legal framework. Obviousness is assessed under Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) (scope and content of prior art; differences; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations), with the flexibility of KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (a combination is obvious where it is "no more than predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions"; a finite number of identified, predictable solutions; market demand or design need can supply the motivation). The § 103 question here is narrow, because the patent's own "Background" section does most of the work.

PHOSITA. A controls/automotive sensor engineer with ~3–5 years in magnetic position sensing: familiar with Hall, AMR/GMR/XMR and magnetoresistive angle sensors; with magnetic scales ("magnet arrangements") whose field direction rather than magnitude encodes travel; with ratiometric, sum, difference and arctangent evaluation of multi-sensor output; and with the standard techniques for rejecting external homogeneous stray fields (gradient/differential sensing, shielding, complementary channels).

Key threshold observation on the record. The patent's Background (§ Summary/BACKGROUND of US11085796) states that DE 199 37 206 C2 discloses a magnet arrangement of a plurality of magnets whose north and south poles are differently aligned "so that differently oriented magnetic fields are produced along the magnet arrangement," that two magnetic-field-sensitive sensors detect those fields, and that "the ratio of the output signals of the sensors to each other is set so as to obtain a sum and/or difference signal, from which the position of the magnet arrangement in relation to the sensors can be determined." The same paragraph concedes that DE 10 2009 055 104 A1 and EP 0 997 706 B1 teach "similar sensor devices."

That is a binding admission against interest about the scope of the prior art, and it maps almost element-for-element onto claim 1. It is the single most important fact in this analysis.

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2. What actually separates claim 1 from the admitted art

Bottom line: the entire § 103 case turns on one feature — splitting the scale into two side-by-side magnet arrangements (tracks) and assigning one sensor to each. Everything else — displacement, differently-aligned fields along travel, housing-fixed magnetic sensors, and differential/sum evaluation of two sensor outputs — is admitted prior art in the patent's own text. A claim that reads on admitted prior art except for a duplicated track is a classic § 103 target under KSR's "duplication of parts" and "predictable use of prior art elements" principles.

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3. Combination A — the primary theory

DE 199 37 206 C2 (Siemens) in view of DE 10 2009 055 104 A1 (Robert Bosch GmbH).

• Primary — DE 199 37 206 C2 (priority 1999-06-11; "Position determination device …"): single multi-pole magnetic scale with differently aligned fields along its length; two magnet-sensitive sensors; sum and/or difference signal evaluation to derive position. This supplies every limitation of claim 1 except the two-track/one-sensor-per-track architecture.
• Secondary — DE 10 2009 055 104 A1 (priority 2009-12-21; Bosch; PDF): a magnetic field sensor arrangement for path detection on moving components in which the spatial components of the magnetic field of the magnet system on the moving component change their direction over the travel path, detected by at least one stationary field-sensitive sensor; expressly contemplates configurations with "mehrere[n] Magneten" ([0009], "Bei Verwendung von mindestens zwei Magneten …" — note: my retrieved excerpt truncates at this sentence, so I characterize this conservatively); XMR or Hall sensors; and states that field-direction angles up to 200° can be detected over the travel path.

Why the combination is proper:

1. Same field, same problem. Both address contactless determination of the position of a linearly or rotationally movable component from the direction of a magnetic field. Bosch's own application, filed 2009, cites and describes both EP 0 997 706 B1 and DE 199 37 206 C2 as the state of the art in its introductory paragraphs ([0003]–[0004]). That is documentary evidence that the two disclosures were in the same design lineage and were being read together by workers in the field — a textbook nexus for combination.
2. Predictable result. Duplicating a known magnetic scale into a second side-by-side track and reading each track with its own already-known sensor is "the mere duplication of parts," KSR, 550 U.S. at 416, producing no change in the principle of operation: each track independently encodes the same travel with differently aligned fields, and each sensor outputs a track-specific signal.
3. A finite number of identified, predictable solutions. Placing the second track "next to" the first (claims 4, 12), or offsetting the sensors along travel (claim 13), or at an angle to the measurement direction (claim 14), are the only obvious layout variants for a side-by-side track architecture.
4. Design need. Bosch's own contemporaneous art addresses stray-field immunity by structure (see the later DE 10 2012 220 139 A1 [0001]–[0007] discussion of shielding the magnet/sensor against magnetische Fremdfelder, explicitly referring back to DE 10 2009 055 104 A1, and the same-assignee DE 10 2011 083 948 A1 "sensor arrangement" among the examiner-cited art). A recognized need to make such sensors robust against external magnetic fields supplies the motivation to adopt a redundant, differenced second channel.

Why the result is predictable (the critical point). The patent's asserted advantage — "the position of the encoder element can be uniquely detected independently of an external homogeneous stray magnetic field" — is exactly what anyone would expect from a difference signal. A homogeneous external field adds the same vector to the field measured at both sensors; subtracting the two outputs cancels it as common-mode. The claim itself recites that the two outputs are "combined to form a differential signal." Under KSR, "a court must ask whether the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions." Common-mode rejection by differencing is the established function of a differential measurement; the stated benefit is therefore an expected result, not a new one. That converts the patent's own "Summary" (its strongest rhetorical asset) into the strongest § 103 argument against it.

Severity: HIGH. If DE 199 37 206 C2 truly discloses sum/difference evaluation of two sensors on a differently-magnetized scale (as the patent itself admits), then Combination A needs only the addition of a second track — a change with no new principle of operation and a predictable benefit.

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4. Combination B — supplying the two-track limitation expressly

DE 199 37 206 C2 in view of CN 101 375 131 B (Timken) — "Magnetic sensors with high-resolution and low-resolution tracks." (CN 101 375 131 B appears on the face of US 11,085,796 as a "Family Cites Families" reference, i.e., it was before the examiner.)

This reference, together with its sibling US 2011/0273169-type disclosure, teaches a sensing apparatus with a low-resolution track and a spaced-apart high-resolution track, each formed of its own magnets, and each read by its own sensor ("at least one high-resolution sensor … positioned near the high-resolution track" and "at least one low-resolution sensor … positioned near the low-resolution track"). It also teaches the tracks' magnetization patterns being coordinated (compensation/zero-crossing alignment), which maps directly onto claim 2's "orientations … differ from each other."

• Combination logic: '206 supplies the field-direction scale + two magnetic sensors + sum/difference evaluation; CN 101 375 131 B supplies the two-track/two-assigned-sensor architecture for an encoder used in position sensing. Both are position encoders using plural magnetic tracks/pole patterns read by magnetic sensors. Motivation: providing coarse/absolute information alongside fine resolution — precisely the "unique position detection" problem the '796 patent recites — and improving robustness. Result: predictable assembly of known encoder building blocks.
• Supports: claims 3 (tracks), 4, 10/11 (non-repeating, unambiguous absolute position — a track-and-track coarse/fine architecture is the canonical solution), 12.

Severity: HIGH for claim 1 and for claims 3, 4, 10–12.

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5. Combination C — an alternative primary on the "differently aligned fields" element

CN 101 416 020 A / JP 2009-528530 A (Moving Magnet Technologies, "Position sensor with variable magnetization direction …") in view of US 2014/0197820 A1 (Micronas GmbH, "Measuring system") and/or US 2017/0191851 A1 (MTS Sensor Technologie, "Position sensing system").

• MMT (CN 101 416 020 A; family JP 2009-528530 A; both cited on the face of the patent) discloses a position sensor with a variable magnetization direction — i.e., a magnet body whose magnetization direction, and hence the field orientation at a fixed sensor, changes along the travel direction. This is a strong, arguably anticipatory-in-substance reference for: the "differently aligned magnetic fields along the direction of movement" element of claim 1; claim 8 ("each … formed from a differently magnetized magnetic field body"); claim 9 ("a single magnetized magnetic field body"); and claim 15 ("change continuously") — a continuously varying magnetization direction is the express point of that reference.
• Micronas US 2014/0197820 A1 (examiner-cited) discloses an encoder with "a number of first magnets and a number of second magnets," the two magnet sets producing field changes with different periodicities in different spatial directions, and a magnetic field sensor array (three Hall sensors on one chip) whose measurement signals an evaluation circuit combines to determine encoder position — expressly to avoid ambiguities and to obtain absolute position. This maps onto: two magnet arrangements with differently aligned fields (claim 1), sensors arranged next to one another / transverse to the measurement direction (claims 5, 13, 14), and non-repeating orientations yielding unambiguous absolute position (claims 10, 11).
• MTS US 2017/0191851 A1 (examiner-cited) discloses "a set of magnetic sensing devices," each configured to vary its output in response to the field of a position-encoding magnet, and "data processing circuitry … configured to determine and output a location of the position encoding magnet, according to signals generated from the set of magnetic sensing devices," including aggregating the multi-component signals into one signal. This supplies claim 1's monitored/combined-output and control-unit elements and claim 13's spaced sensor chain.

Motivation to combine: all three are in magnetic position/displacement sensing; Micronas and MTS are directed at linear position sensing of a moving element (MTS expressly for piston position along a path), the same field and problem; and the combination produces a predictable multi-sensor, multi-magnet, combinationally-evaluated position sensor.

Severity: MEDIUM–HIGH, and it is the best route to the "continuously varying" (claim 15) and "single magnetized body" (claim 9) dependent claims without relying on the '796 patent's own helical-magnetization disclosure.

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6. Combination D — the dual-track displacement-scale references on the patent's face

US 5,313,182 A (The Torrington Company) and JPH 0688702 A / JPH 1061664 A (SNR Roulements; Nippon Thompson) — "Magnet structure for a displacement sensor" / "Linear motion rolling guide unit." These are the classic dual/triple-track magnetic displacement-scale structures — plural magnetic tracks whose magnetic poles are arranged with differently oriented magnetization, read by magnetic sensors displaced along the direction of travel. Combined with DE 199 37 206 C2's sum/difference evaluation, they supply the two-arrangement/one-sensor-each architecture.

US 2002/0079888 A1 and JP 2004-516799 A (Koninklijke Philips — "Displacement device" / "Two-part moving device with mutual position detection means"): a two-part moving device with mutual position detection, i.e., the relative-displacement architecture of claim 1 with fixed sensors and a moving encoded part.

US 2003/0145663 A1 and JP 2003-516534 A (Bosch family — angle/angular velocity/torque measurement): same-assignee art in the same magnetic-field-sensor field, reinforcing that the structural vocabulary of claim 1 was Bosch's own.

DE 198 36 599 A1 (Windhorst): "contactless magnetic detection of linear relative movements between permanent magnets and electronic sensors" — a magnetized body varying along the travel path for absolute linear measurement; supports claims 6/15 (incremental vs. continuous change) and 8/9 (magnetized body).

US 7,932,684 B2 (Bose — "Absolute position sensing") and CN 101 375 131 B (Timken): multiple-track/multiple-sensor encoders for absolute, unambiguous position — the direct motivation for claims 10 and 11 ("orientations … do not repeat along the encoder").

EP 1 910 780 B1 (Continental Teves — wheel speed sensor "with an increased intrinsic safety"): redundant, independently evaluated magnetic sensing channels — evidence that duplicating a magnetic sensor channel for safety/robustness was a known, obvious engineering move in this exact art, supplying motivation for the second arrangement + second sensor of claim 1.

Severity: MEDIUM. Individually none of these is as on-point as Combination A, but collectively they establish that every structural element of claim 1 (plural tracks, plural sensors, side-by-side layout, absolute/unambiguous encoding, redundant channels) was individually known and combinable.

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7. Motivation-to-combine synthesis (KSR factors)

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8. Dependent-claim mapping (compressed)

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9. What the patent owner will argue — and the rebuttals

1. "The references teach a single arrangement; the second arrangement is the invention." Rebuttal: '206 already teaches two sensors and their sum/difference combination on a differently-magnetized scale; adding a second, side-by-side track and assigning one sensor per track is a duplication of parts yielding a predictable field-direction change on each track. Under KSR, "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious." The technique (differentially evaluating two sensors) was already applied to one device; applying it to a two-track version improves the same device in the same way.
2. "The second arrangement produces the unexpected benefit of stray-field immunity." Rebuttal: the benefit is not unexpected — differencing cancels any signal component common to both sensors, which is precisely what a homogeneous field is. The patent gives no data, no measured comparison, no criticality of spacing, and no described threshold for how immunity is achieved. An asserted advantage without evidence of unexpectedness does not rebut a prima facie case of obviousness.
3. "The prior art teaches ratio evaluation (two sensors on one track), which is different from differential evaluation across tracks." Rebuttal: the patent's own Background characterizes '206 as producing a "sum and/or difference signal." A difference signal across two sensors is literally within that admission. Even if one track's architecture is preferred by '206, KSR instructs that "[t]he prior art's discussion of one particular embodiment does not necessarily teach away" from other obvious arrangements, and a reference does not teach away unless it "criticizes, discredits, or otherwise discourages" the alternative.
4. Secondary considerations. There is no secondary-considerations record in the material I have: no commercial-success evidence tied to the two-track differential feature, no long-felt-but-unmet-need evidence, no failure-of-others evidence, and no copying. The patent's survival of US prosecution is some procedural weight, but note the record shows only one non-final action (2020-11-19), a response (2021-02-09), and a notice of allowance (2021-04-19), with no § 102/§ 103 rejection reflected in the listed events — so there is little examiner reasoning to defer to. (I have not inspected the office actions themselves; see § 11.)

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10. Strength assessment by claim

The strongest single-petition case is Combination A (DE 199 37 206 C2 + DE 10 2009 055 104 A1), with Combination B (add CN 101 375 131 B) pleaded in the alternative for the two-track limitation and for claims 10–12. Because claim 1's differential-limitation is admitted in the patent's own specification, the patent owner cannot easily distinguish over '206 without also surrendering the differential-evaluation language — a narrowing that would put real pressure on the claim.

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11. Limitations, uncertainty, and what I could not verify

• I did not retrieve the full text of several references. My characterizations of DE 199 37 206 C2, US 5,313,182 A, JPH 0688702 A, JPH 1061664 A, US 2002/0079888 A1 / JP 2004-516799 A, CN 101 416 020 A / JP 2009-528530 A, US 2011/0103173 A1 (Lutz May), US 2012/0153946 A1, DE 10 2011 083 948 A1, US 2015/0354984 A1, DE 198 36 599 A1, US 7,932,684 B2, EP 1 910 780 B1, CN 101 375 131 B, and JPH/JPH items are based on titles, classification, the patent's own Background description, the cited-by-citing relationships, and partial full-text excerpts. DE 199 37 206 C2 in particular is characterized here almost entirely through the '796 patent's own Background admission, which is a party admission but not a substitute for the reference's text. Any petition or opinion should be built on the actual reference documents, with pin cites to paragraphs/claims.
• One excerpt is truncated. The Bosch DE 10 2009 055 104 A1 passage at [0009] beginning "Bei Verwendung von mindestens zwei Magneten …" is cut off in the copy I retrieved (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/94/4e/1f/a3bd20ac52aec6/DE102009055104A1.pdf). I have deliberately not asserted what follows; do not represent this reference as expressly teaching two side-by-side tracks without reading the full passage.
• I could not verify items whose searches were cut off (US 2011/0103173 A1; US 2002/0079888 A1; US 5,313,182 A). They are listed above as supporting art on the strength of their titles/classification and their presence on the patent's face, not on verified disclosure.
• Foreign prosecution may be more informative than the U.S. record. The family has granted counterparts — EP 3 583 388 B1, JP 6882530 B2, CN 110291364 B — and the EPO/CNIPA/JPO files may contain search reports and prior-art citations not visible in the U.S. file. I did not retrieve those search reports.
• Date inconsistency in the inputs (flagged as requested). The environment header states today's date as 2026-09-30, while the task preamble states April 26, 2026. Earlier sections of this analysis carry both. This affects no substantive conclusion above (all prior-art dates are 2021 or earlier), but any filing-deadline arithmetic should be run off the correct current date.

Confidence: High that the claim set is vulnerable under § 103 on the specific theory that '206 + a two-track encoder reference renders claim 1 obvious, because the differential/sum-evaluation element is admitted prior art in the patent's own specification. Medium confidence on the individual pinpoint disclosures of the secondary references, pending full-text review.