US 11091171

I'll research US patent 11091171 across USPTO sources and litigation dockets.

Let me search for litigation/docket activity and confirm the claim set.

Let me retrieve the actual claim set and check whether '171 itself appears in the dockets.

US Patent 11,091,171 — Research Summary

Scope note up front: I located the patent record, its prosecution/continuation family, and the litigation activity involving the family. I was not able to retrieve the verbatim claim text of the '171 patent itself from the sources reachable in this session (the Google Patents fetch provided in the record is truncated before the claims section). I flag below exactly what is grounded vs. inferred.

---

1. Bibliographic Data (grounded)

Continuation chain (per the patent's own cross-reference and USPTO continuing data):
16/997,202 (the '171 patent) ← CON of 16/899,407 (abandoned) ← CON of 15/955,874 (US 10,717,446) ← CON of 15/341,225 (US 10,029,701) ← CON of 14/865,393 (US 9,566,986, filed Sept. 25, 2015).

Family members claiming priority back through '171 (these matter for the litigation section):

• 17/374,656 → US 11,738,765
• 17/719,541 → US 11,597,402
• 18/222,774 → US 12,037,004
• 18/743,841 → US 2025/0018963 A1

Classification: B60W 50/08, B60W 50/12, B60W 40/02, 40/06, 40/08, 40/10, B60W 60/00, G05D 1/00, 1/80, 1/81, B62D 1/28, B62D 6/007.

---

2. Abstract (verbatim, as issued)

"A computer-implemented method, system, and/or computer program product controls a driving mode of a self-driving vehicle (SDV). One or more processors compare a control processor competence level of an on-board SDV control processor in controlling the SDV to a human driver competence level of a human driver in controlling the SDV while the SDV encounters a current roadway condition which is a result of current weather conditions of the roadway on which the SDV is currently traveling. One or more processors then selectively assign control of the SDV to the SDV control processor or to the human driver while the SDV encounters the current roadway condition based on which of the control processor competence level and the human driver competence level is relatively higher to one another."

Notable drafting observation: The issued abstract is framed around a "current roadway condition … a result of current weather conditions," whereas the specification's SUMMARY section is framed around a "current operational anomaly" (software bug, worn brake pads, worn wipers, malfunctioning drivetrain, etc.). The two framings are not identical, which is consistent with the claims having been narrowed/amended during prosecution to a weather-derived roadway condition. I cannot confirm the operative claim language from the record I have.

---

3. Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

Grounding: The functional core below is taken from the patent's own SUMMARY and FIG. 5 description (authoritative text in the record). The exact wording, number, and statutory category of the independent claims could not be verified in this session. Treat the claim-level description as a reconstruction, not a quotation.

The claimed subject matter is a mode-arbitration system that decides who should drive an SDV — the onboard computer or the human — by scoring both and picking the higher scorer:

1. Detect the triggering condition. One or more sensors (or roadway sensors / an external weather or roadway-monitoring service) provide readings describing the current condition — the abstract and FIG. 5 framing includes a roadway condition arising from current weather conditions on the roadway the SDV is on (e.g., ice, poor visibility, rain).

2. Score the machine. Determine a "control processor competence level" (CPCL) of the on-board SDV control processor for that specific condition. Disclosed bases: (a) history-based — how this processor, or processors in comparable SDVs, has performed under the same anomaly (accident frequency, travel speed, stop/start behavior, fuel economy, consistency); (b) capability-based — what the processor can actually do (e.g., cruise control only vs. following-distance control vs. full steering control).

3. Score the human. Receive a driver profile and determine a "human driver competence level" (HDCL) for the same condition. Disclosed bases: history of this driver (or members of a matched cohort) under the same anomaly, and traits/profile (e.g., a night-driving restriction means low competence if a headlamp is out).

4. Compare. Compare CPCL to HDCL — either generally or roadway-specific — optionally summing and weighting individual control factors by their predetermined significance (e.g., failure to maintain spatial buffers weighted more heavily than failure to signal). Disclosed alternative: a purely outcome-based comparison of SDVs driven by this processor type vs. drivers with similar profiles.

5. Assign control. Selectively assign control of the SDV to the SDV control processor (autonomous mode) or to the human driver (manual mode) while the condition persists, based on whichever competence level is relatively higher. Disclosed extras in the spec that may appear as dependent claims: issuing a driver alert before/Instead of the automatic switch; setting a minimum competence threshold and, if neither side meets it, having the driving mode module bring the SDV to a stop; a weighted-voting framework (inputs I₁…I_N, weights w, quota q) with active-learning-derived weights; cohort-based traffic-flow analysis prohibiting manual mode where the cohort's manual-mode accident rate is higher; and routing the SDV to a resource provider (e.g., service station) that can remedy the condition.

Likely claim architecture (from the family, flagged as inference): The sibling continuations in this family (e.g., US 11,738,765 claims 7–14, US 12,037,004 claims 1–9 and 29–39, as charted in the IPR record) use "computer program product" independent claims reciting: determining a competence level of a human driver → receiving sensor readings → determining a competence level of a processor → determining a corrective action → the SDV implementing the corrective action. If the '171 claims follow the same template (which the shared specification suggests), its independent claims would be a computer program product claim and possibly a method/system claim covering the CPCL-vs-HDCL comparison-and-assignment recited in the abstract.

---

4. Litigation and CAFC Activity (grounded, with an important caveat)

Key finding: I found no litigation or CAFC docket that names US 11,091,171 itself. The activity involves the '171 patent's continuation children, all of which share its specification.

District court

• Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC v. Tesla, Inc., No. 2:24-cv-01007 (E.D. Tex., filed Dec. 6, 2024; Judge Rodney Gilstrap; jury demand). Asserted patents: US 11,597,402, US 11,738,765, and US 12,037,004 — all continuations in the '171 family. Accused technology: Tesla's FSD (Supervised) program (Model 3/S/X/Y and Cybertruck). Tesla moved Feb. 2025 to partially dismiss and to transfer venue to California.
• Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC v. Tesla, Inc., No. 3:26-cv-01457 (N.D. Cal.) — docket entries dated Feb. 19, 2026, reflecting the venue development.

PTAB

• Tesla, Inc. v. Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC, IPR2025-00943 ('402 patent) and IPR2025-00944 ('765 patent). In a Sept. 26, 2025 decision, the Deputy Director denied institution under 35 U.S.C. § 314(a) on discretionary/parallel-litigation grounds (Board FWD due Dec. 2026 vs. district trial scheduled Aug. 3, 2026; no evidence the district court would likely stay).

Federal Circuit (2026)

• In re Tesla, Inc. and John A. Squires (Under Secretary for IP / PTO Director), Fed. Cir. No. 26-116 — Tesla's petition for a writ of mandamus to direct the PTO to vacate and reconsider the Deputy Director's non-institution decisions regarding Granite's patents. Reported disposition: the Federal Circuit denied Tesla's mandamus petition (reported late Feb. 2026). Amici included ACT | The App Association, the Alliance for Automotive Innovation, and CCIA.

---

5. Explicit Uncertainty / Confidence Notes

• Claim text of '171: Not verified. My functional claim overview is reconstructed from the patent's abstract, SUMMARY, and FIG. 5 description, plus the claim charts of its continuation siblings in the IPR record. Verbatim claim 1 (and the number/type of independent claims) should be pulled from the granted patent's claims section or USPTO Patent Center before being relied upon.
• Assignee address discrepancy: One USPTO record lists Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC, Carrollton, TX; contemporaneous press coverage describes Granite as Baltimore-based. I did not resolve this. Assignment documents reference affiliates YEIP Holdings LLC and Albany Road Holdings LLC.
• "Expired – Fee Related": This is Google Patents' stated legal status and is expressly an assumption, not a legal conclusion. Worth confirming against USPTO Patent Center fee records.
• "CAFC 2026 dockets for 11091171": I found no Federal Circuit matter captioned to the '171 patent. The only 2026 Federal Circuit matter in this family is the In re Tesla mandamus proceeding (No. 26-116), which concerns the PTO's non-institution decisions on the '402 and '765 continuation patents, not '171.
• Priority date: 2015-09-25 is the earliest priority (via '986). The '171 application's own filing date is 2020-08-19.

Primary sources consulted: Google Patents US11091171B2 (authoritative text supplied in the record); USPTO PTAB/Patent Center documents via ptacts.uspto.gov (application 18/222,774 filing receipt showing continuing data and Granite assignment; preliminary amendment for a sibling application); PTAB decision IPR2025-00943/00944 (Sept. 26, 2025); Law.com/Texas Lawyer coverage of the Tesla motion (Feb. 19, 2025); Dockets.Justia docket for 2:24-cv-01007; Law360 docket entries for the N.D. Cal. case (Feb. 19, 2026); Bloomberg Law Fed. Cir. report on the mandamus denial (Feb. 2026).

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 11,091,171.

Let me dig deeper into whether the '171 patent itself (versus its continuations) is in any suit.

Bottom line

I found no litigation in which US Patent 11,091,171 itself has been asserted, challenged, or put at issue. Every search hit tying "11,091,171" to a court or PTAB proceeding resolves to a different patent number — most often the sibling/continuation patents U.S. 11,597,402, 11,738,765 and 12,037,004 (the Wilus/ACQIS/Vulcan "171" hits are unrelated third-party patents that happen to share the "'171" shorthand, and I have deliberately excluded them).

Note on methodology/caveat: I was not able to query Unified Patents' litigation portal or PACER/CAFC dockets directly within this session, so the below is built from secondary sources (Law360, Bloomberg Law, MLex, Law.com/Texas Lawyer, Dockets.Justia, PTAB decisions surfaced via Casemine/PTActs, govinfo). I flagged uncertainty where it exists rather than filling gaps.

---

1. The litigation that does involve this patent family

Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC v. Tesla, Inc.

• Plaintiff: Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC (sources describe it as a Baltimore-based NPE; USPTO assignment records give a Carrollton, TX address). Chain of title for the family: IBM → Daedalus Group → Slingshot IOT LLC → Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC (2023).
• Defendant: Tesla, Inc.
• Asserted patents: U.S. 11,597,402; U.S. 11,738,765; U.S. 12,037,004 — not 11,091,171. All are continuation-family members claiming priority to U.S. 9,566,986 (filed Sept. 25, 2015); the '171 patent sits squarely in that chain (9,566,986 → 10,029,701 → 10,717,446 → '171, with 11,597,402 and 12,037,004 descending from 11,738,765 / the '171 application series — per the USPTO continuity data for application 18/222,774).
• Original jurisdiction / case no.: U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas, Marshall Division, 2:24-cv-01007, before Judge Rodney Gilstrap.
• Filing date: December 6, 2024 (served on Tesla Dec. 10, 2024; answer extended to Feb. 14, 2025).
• Accused products: Tesla vehicles running FSD (Supervised) — Model S, 3, X, Y and Cybertruck "including all trims and versions since 2016."
• Current status: Tesla moved (Feb. 2025) to partially dismiss counts relating to the '402 and '765 patents for failure to state a claim, and moved (under seal) to transfer venue to the Northern District of California. The case was subsequently transferred: it now appears as N.D. Cal. Case No. 3:26-cv-01457 (before Judge Trina L. Thompson, "TLT"), with docket activity in mid-2026 (e.g., a discovery ruling on Granite's motion to compel Tesla's response to interrogatory 10 re non-infringing alternatives/design-arounds). One source (IP-NAVI) records a first-instance "other" disposition dated Feb. 13, 2026, which is consistent with the transfer order rather than a merits judgment. No final merits outcome.

Counsel: Granite — Andrea Leigh Fair (Miller Fair Henry), Blaine A. Larson, Kyle Ruvolo, Lily Glick, Leslie V. Payne (Heim, Payne & Chorush). Tesla — in-house (Ashraf Fawzy) with Erise IP (Jennifer Bailey, Adam Sandwell, Kevin Rongish, Justin Grimes).

2. PTAB proceedings (again, not on the '171 patent)

• Tesla, Inc. v. Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC, IPR2025-00943 (U.S. 11,597,402) and IPR2025-00944 (U.S. 11,738,765).
• Outcome: Institution denied on September 26, 2025 under 35 U.S.C. § 314(a) (discretionary denial — Board FWD would land after the district court trial, and no likely stay). Decision issued by the Deputy Under Secretary/Deputy Director.
• I found no IPR, PGR, or reexam petition directed to 11,091,171.

3. Appellate / Supreme Court activity

• In re Tesla, Inc. (Fed. Cir.) — Tesla's petition for a writ of mandamus seeking to vacate the PTAB's non-institution decisions; denied (reported late Feb. 2026). A Dockets.Justia entry lists a related Fed. Cir. proceeding as 26-116 (In re: Tesla, Inc. and John A. Squires, Under Secretary of Commerce for Intellectual Property).
• Tesla, Inc. v. Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC, et al., No. 26-136 (U.S. Supreme Court) — cert petition following the Federal Circuit; Unified Patents, LLC filed an amicus brief in support of petitioner (certificate of compliance dated Aug. 25, 2026).

4. Where the '171 patent actually shows up

The only appearances of "11091171" I found in litigation/PTAB records are evidentiary, not asserted claims:

• It appears as a search string in prior-art search logs submitted in Tesla's IPR exhibit set ("Tesla EX1002 Page 3434").
• Its prosecution/continuity history appears in USPTO filings for the later family members (e.g., application 18/222,774 and 17/719,541, "Controlling driving modes of self-driving vehicles," docket S0974-P08818US08 / S974-012344, prosecuted by Kinney & Lange, P.A.).

5. Practical takeaways

1. If you are risk-assessing 11,091,171 specifically: it is not currently the subject of any known infringement suit or PTAB challenge. The active dispute is over its descendants ('402, '765, '004), which share the same specification/priority lineage.
2. Because the family is under active litigation and IPR/exhibit scrutiny, the '171 patent's specification and prosecution history are relevant prior-art/§ 112 and claim-construction context for the asserted children — an opponent could use the '171 record defensively even without asserting or challenging the '171 patent.
3. Date caveat: the user-stated current date (April 26, 2026) is inconsistent with several retrieved documents dated July 15, 2026 and Aug. 25–28, 2026. I have reported those items as the search results present them, per the instruction to treat search results as ground truth, but you should re-verify the N.D. Cal. docket (3:26-cv-01457) and the Supreme Court docket (26-136) before relying on them in a filing.

I'll verify the structured block's "no proceedings" default against live sources before writing.

Let me probe further for any IPR, PGR, or litigation-driven proceeding tied to this patent or its owner chain.

Significant lead: Tesla filed IPRs against Granite Vehicle Ventures — but I must pin down whether any targeted the '171 specifically.

PTAB Activity Report — US 11,091,171 B2 ("Controlling driving modes of self-driving vehicles")

Bottom line up front: the canonical structured list is correct — no AIA trial proceeding has ever been filed against US 11,091,171. All PTAB activity in this patent family has been aimed at Granite Vehicle Ventures' later-issued siblings (the '402, '765 and '004 patents), and every one of those petitions was denied institution. I flag the family-level proceedings below because they are what a defendant actually needs to know, but I keep them clearly separated from the '171 itself.

---

Proceedings overview

There are zero (0) AIA trial proceedings on file against US 11,091,171: 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution-denied. The '171 has never been through the Board, so no claim has been canceled and no claim has been adjudicated patentable; the patent is untested at the PTAB. Critically, the '171 also has never been asserted in any litigation I could find — Granite Vehicle Ventures asserted the sibling patents '402, '765 and '004 against Tesla, not the '171 — and its USPTO legal status as reflected on Google Patents is "Expired - Fee Related" (anticipated expiration 2035-09-25, i.e., lapse appears to have occurred well before the natural term). For a defendant, that combination is better than a hardened patent: verify the maintenance-fee lapse before you spend a dollar on invalidity contentions, because an unexpired patent is a precondition to infringement liability and, if the lapse is confirmed and not remedied in the § 41(c) surcharge window, an assertion of the '171 may be dead on arrival regardless of claim scope. (Legal status is an assumption per Google's own disclaimer; confirm against USPTO Patent Center maintenance-fee records and any petition to accept an unintentionally delayed payment.)

Family-level proceedings (NOT against the '171 — flagged for context only)

These target US 11,597,402, US 11,738,765 and US 12,037,004, which sit in the same § 120 chain as the '171: the '171 (application 16/997,202, filed 2020-08-19) is a continuation of the '446 patent, and is itself the parent of the '765 (17/374,656, filed 2021-07-13). None of the proceeding numbers below names US 11,091,171 as the challenged patent.

IPR2025-00943 — Tesla, Inc. v. Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2025-05-05
• Challenged patent: U.S. Patent No. 11,597,402 (a family sibling, not the '171)
• Status: Discretionary denial (no institution; no Final Written Decision)
• Judge panel: Institution was denied by the Director's delegee, the Deputy Director, exercising delegated authority under 35 U.S.C. § 314(a). (One third-party PTAB database lists Acting Director Coke Morgan Stewart in connection with the denial; I could not verify that attribution against a primary source and would not rely on it.) The Federal Circuit mandamus panel was Judges Taranto, Mayer and Stark.
• Petition grounds: Challenged claims 1, 3–4, 6, 8–11, 13–24 of the '402. § 103 grounds only, e.g., claim 1 and claim 3 obvious over Attard (US 9,406,177) in view of Frazer (US 9,494,926); claim 4 obvious over Attard in view of Hampiholi (US 2016/0267335); claim 6 over Attard, Hampiholi, McNew (US 10,377,303) and Scofield (US 11,040,725); claim 8 adding Grimm; claims 9–11 over Attard, Hampiholi and Grimm. (Attard/Hampiholi are also the art Tesla mapped to the "control processor competence level" and "human driver competence level" limitations — the very limitations that recite the '171's core concept. That mapping is public in Tesla's petition and is useful intel even though it was never tested.)
• Institution decision: Denied. The Director reasoned that "it is unlikely that a final written decision in this proceeding will issue before the district court trial occurs," and that review would result "in significant duplication of effort, additional expense for the parties, and a risk of inconsistent decisions." The denial was not a merits ruling — Tesla had filed within § 315(b) and had offered a Sotera stipulation.
• Final Written Decision: none. The Board never reached the merits. No claim of the '402 — or of the '171 — was canceled or sustained.
• Settlement / termination: none disclosed.
• Appeal: Yes, indirectly. Tesla sought a writ of mandamus in In re Tesla, Inc., No. 26-116 (Fed. Cir.), covering IPR2025-00943, IPR2025-00944, IPR2025-01034 and IPR2025-01035. The Federal Circuit denied mandamus on 2026-02-27, holding mandamus "ordinarily unavailable for review of institution decisions" absent a colorable constitutional claim, and that the Director "merely concluded that instituting IPR would not be an efficient use of agency resources given the progress of the civil litigation." Tesla's follow-on cert petition is Tesla, Inc. v. Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC, No. 26-136 (U.S., filed 2026-07-27), on which the Solicitor General urged denial in September 2026 and on which amicus briefs (CCIA, HTIA, Alliance for Automotive Innovation, National Retail Federation, Unified Patents, Askeladden) were filed 2026-08-28 to 2026-08-31. Still pending as of 2026-10-01.
• Defensive value: Nothing in this proceeding invalidated anything. But it is a road map: the Attard/Frazer/Hampiholi/McNew/Scofield/Grimm combination Tesla built is public, unadjudicated, and — because institution was denied — not subject to any § 315(e) estoppel. A defendant today can lift that art and those motivations wholesale.

IPR2025-00944, IPR2025-01034 and IPR2025-01035 — Tesla, Inc. v. Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC

• Type: Inter Partes Review (three separate petitions)
• Filed: 2025 (exact filing dates not confirmed in the sources I could reach; IPR2025-01034/01035 numbering suggests later 2025)
• Challenged patents: other Granite Vehicle Ventures family members asserted against Tesla — reported as US 11,738,765 and US 12,037,004. I have not confirmed the proceeding-number-to-patent mapping for these three, and I have found no source tying any of them to US 11,091,171.
• Status: Discretionary denial (same time-to-trial rationale as IPR2025-00943; all four were resolved together in the Federal Circuit's In re Tesla order).
• Judge panel: Denials issued by the Director's delegee, the Deputy Director.
• Petition grounds: Not confirmed at claim level. Tesla described five petitions; the publicly indexed grounds I verified are the '402 grounds summarized above.
• Institution decision: Denied — "it is unlikely that a final written decision in this proceeding will issue before the district court trial occurs."
• Final Written Decision: none issued.
• Settlement / termination: none disclosed.
• Appeal: Covered by In re Tesla, No. 26-116 (Fed. Cir.) — mandamus denied 2026-02-27; cert petition No. 26-136 pending.
• Defensive value: Confirms that no Granite Vehicle Ventures self-driving patent has been invalidated at the PTAB. Any demand letter asserting the '171 is asserting a patent whose entire family has, so far, escaped administrative review on procedural grounds, not on the merits.

---

Strategic summary

Claim status on the '171 itself: entirely UNTESTED. No claim of US 11,091,171 has been canceled, confirmed, or even construed by the Board. There is no FWD to quote, so any representation that a claim of this patent is "dead" would be false. What is true is that the patent's commercial enforcement history is elsewhere: Granite Vehicle Ventures sued Tesla in the Eastern District of Texas in December 2024 on the later-issued '402, '765 and '004 patents (sources differ on whether two or three were pleaded — MLex reports the '402 and '004; other reporting adds the '765), and it never pleaded the '171. J. Gilstrap transferred the case out of E.D. Tex. to California over Granite's opposition, which changed the trial schedule (Tesla has represented that trial is now set for June 2028, versus the August 2026 date the PTAB relied on when denying institution).

Estoppel landscape: essentially clean, in your favor. Because no IPR was instituted — let alone decided on the merits — against any of these patents, § 315(e)(2) estoppel never attached to Tesla (estoppel arises only after a final written decision, § 315(e)(2), or after institution for claims not instituted). Tesla's Sotera stipulations were offered to buy institution and are now largely moot as to these patents. For a new defendant facing an assertion of the '171 specifically: no petitioner, and no privy of any petitioner, is estopped as to the '171, because the '171 was never challenged. Every ground — Attard, Frazer, Hampiholi, McNew, Scofield, Grimm, plus anything else you find — remains available. The only practical constraint is the family-wide § 315(b) clock if you are already in litigation on a sibling patent, and the Fintiv/time-to-trial discretionary regime that just defeated Tesla, which is currently the single biggest institutional obstacle to getting any IPR of these patents instituted.

Pattern signals. One petitioner only: Tesla, with four to five petitions filed across the family in 2025; no defensive aggregator has filed an IPR. Unified Patents did run a $2,000 PATROLL prior-art contest on at least claim 1 of US 12,037,004 (open 2025-01-07, closed 2025-02-08, winner announced March 2025) — that is a crowdsourced-art signal, not a filed proceeding, and the winning art is published by Unified Patents. The patent owner has not had to defend a single FWD, has not filed any PTAB appeal of its own on these patents, and has instead litigated jurisdiction (successfully resisting transfer at first, then losing it). Nothing here suggests Granite is a sophisticated PTAB litigant; it has simply benefited from the USPTO's 2025–26 discretionary-denial posture, which drove the AIA-trial institution rate from roughly 67% to 25%.

---

Recommended next steps

• Check the maintenance fee first. Google Patents reports the '171's legal status as "Expired - Fee Related." The '171 issued 2021-08-17, so the 3.5-year maintenance fee window fell in early 2025 — squarely consistent with a lapse. Pull the fee history from USPTO Patent Center and confirm whether the lapse was cured within the § 41(c) six-month grace/surcharge period. If uncured, an assertion of the '171 cannot support infringement liability, and any demand letter citing it should be answered with the fee record rather than with invalidity contentions.
• If the patent is revived, mine the Tesla petitions. Tesla's IPR2025-00943 petition (Petition for Inter Partes Review of U.S. Patent No. 11,597,402, filed 2025-05-05) is the closest public art map to the '171's disclosure, because it targets the same "competence level" limitations. Read it at the PTAB E2E docket or the public mirror, and note that because institution was denied, using it carries zero estoppel risk: mirror PDF at https://ai-lab.exparte.com/documents/ptab/uspto/none/none/2223781040/IPR2025-00943_doc_1_exparte.pdf, case page at https://ai-lab.exparte.com/case/ptab/IPR2025-00943/tesla-inc-v-granite-vehicle-ventures-llc.
• Watch the Supreme Court docket, not the PTAB docket. There are no live trial-stage milestones to track on the '171 — no institution decision deadline, no oral hearing, no statutory one-year FWD date — because no petition exists. The live variable is Tesla, Inc. v. Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC, No. 26-136 (U.S.). If cert is granted and Tesla wins, time-to-trial discretionary denials become vulnerable and a fresh IPR against the '171 becomes materially more attractive. If cert is denied, assume the current discretionary-denial regime persists and plan an invalidity case for the district court.
• Cite the negative finding precisely. For any demand-letter response: "No petition for inter partes review, post-grant review, or covered business method review has been filed against U.S. Patent No. 11,091,171, and the USPTO Open Data Portal reflects no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of 2026-10-01." Do not represent that any claim of the '171 has been invalidated — it has not, and the family-level denials at IPR2025-00943/00944/01034/01035 were procedural, merits-free rulings that leave Granite's substantive position unchanged.

Caveats on sourcing. The '402 petition grounds, the four proceeding numbers, the Deputy Director's denial rationale and the Federal Circuit's disposition are grounded in primary/near-primary sources (Tesla's filed petition; In re Tesla, Inc., No. 26-116, Fed. Cir., https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[10801275](/patent/10801275)/in-re-tesla-inc/). The patent-number mapping for IPR2025-00944/01034/01035, the exact count of asserted patents (two vs. three), the current California trial date, and the named APJs associated with the denials are not confirmed to primary sources here and should be verified on PTAB E2E before being repeated in a filing.

I'll research this systematically. Let me start with the assignment records and entity backgrounds.

Strong leads. Let me verify the assignment chain entities, correspondents, and reel/frame data.

Now let me pin down the Granite Vehicle Ventures link, its principals, and the final assignment record.

I've gathered substantial data from Google Patents legal events, PTAB chain-of-title filings, and litigation/press coverage. One important caveat up front: the USPTO Assignment Center UI is a dynamic JavaScript application that I could not directly query field-by-field (assignor/assignee/correspondent). My reconstruction below is grounded in (a) Google Patents legal events for this patent, (b) a PTAB chain-of-title document that quotes the actual reel/frame entries, and (c) court/press records. I flag every point where a datum is inferred rather than directly read from a recorded assignment.

---

Inventors

The inventors are the named coinventors of the root application 14/865,393, filed 2015-09-25, and are a long-tenured IBM Research group. The assignment record for the root filing confirms the inventors assigned their rights to IBM on/near the 2015-09-25 filing (per the chain recited in the Granite Vehicle Ventures v. Tesla complaint and the ROPES/Mondaq reporting on the IBM portfolio divestiture).

Unusual-departure pattern: I found no evidence that any inventor departed IBM within 12 months of filing — this is a routine corporate-inventor group, not a startup cliff. I could not independently verify current inventor employment (no reliable source located), so treat "no departures" as the absence of a finding rather than a confirmed negative.

---

Original assignee

Two distinct entities must be distinguished:

• Original assignee of the invention (root): International Business Machines Corporation (IBM) — a large operating company (hardware, software, cloud services; Armonk, NY). IBM did not ship a commercial product embodying these SDV-control claims; the patents came out of IBM Research and were monetized by divestiture. IBM is operating and solvent.
• Entity named on the issued patent US11091171B2: Slingshot Iot LLC (Google Patents lists "Original Assignee: Slingshot Iot LLC" for this continuation). This is because US11091171 is a continuation (16/997,202, filed 2020-08-19) filed after IBM had already sold the family to NPEs — so the applicant/assignee at issue was Slingshot. Slingshot's line of business is patent licensing/enforcement; it ships no products. Status: active NPE.

So although the patent's front page names Slingshot, the invention's original owner was IBM.

---

Assignment timeline

Reel/frame values below are quoted from the chain-of-title recitation in a USPTO PTAB filing (Petition 1557829) and cross-checked against the Granite Vehicle Ventures v. Tesla complaint and Google Patents legal events. Because the chain-of-title document was filed against a sibling application in the same family, I could not confirm that each reel/frame maps to 16/997,202 specifically — the IBM→Daedalus and Daedalus→Slingshot transfers were portfolio-level (500+ and 60+ assets respectively), so they almost certainly reach this patent, but the mapping is inferred, not directly verified on the Assignment Center page for the '171.

• 2015-09-25 (executed) / recorded thereafter — Reel/Frame not recovered

  • Conveyance: Assignment (inventor → employer)
  • Assignor: Michael S. Gordon, James R. Kozloski, Ashish Kundu, Peter K. Malkin, Clifford A. Pickover
  • Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation
  • Correspondent: not recovered (IBM-internal filing)
  • Context: standard employee invention assignment at original filing of 14/865,393.

• 2019-09-30 (effective) / recorded ~2019-11 — Reel 051032 / 0784

  • Conveyance: Assignment (portfolio sale)
  • Assignor: International Business Machines Corporation
  • Assignee: Daedalus Group, LLC
  • Correspondent: not recovered. (Daedalus Group LLC is the entity identified in press/PTAB coverage as headed by Ed Gomez, ex-Altitude Capital / Walker Innovation; address of record 51 Pondfield Road, Suite 3, Bronxville, NY 10708.)
  • Context: fire-sale-style portfolio divestiture — IBM transferred 500+ US assets for a reported ~$9 million.

• [unresolved intermediate entry] — Reel 051710 / 0445

  • Conveyance: unknown (parties cut off in the chain-of-title text I recovered)
  • This entry sits between the IBM→Daedalus link and the Daedalus→Slingshot link. I cannot assign it parties without fabricating; flagging it as an open item to confirm on the Assignment Center page.

• 2020-01-29 (executed; per the Tesla complaint recitation) / recorded ~2020-02 — Reel 051733 / 0463

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Daedalus Group, LLC
  • Assignee: Slingshot IOT LLC
  • Correspondent: not recovered
  • Context: second-step divestiture — Daedalus moved this and 60+ other former-IBM assets to Slingshot IOT LLC (Maryland), an Eggleston/Machen-linked NPE.

• 2023-07-27 (per Google Patents legal events; execution vs. recordation not distinguished) — Reel/Frame not recovered

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Slingshot IOT LLC
  • Assignee: Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC
  • Correspondent: not recovered. The closest correspondent-style data point I found is KINNEY & LANGE, P.A., 333 S. 7th St., Suite 2700 appearing as the correspondent on the related family application 18/222,774 (US12037004) — but I could not confirm Kinney & Lange was the recording correspondent for this assignment, so I am not asserting a repeat-correspondent finding on this basis.
  • Context: transfer-to-asserter — the operating NPE formed/relabeled specifically to bring suit (Granite's address of record is Carrollton, TX).

I did not find any recorded Security Agreement, Merger, Change of Name, License, Release, or Correction against this patent.

---

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11091171
    2015 : Filed by IBM inventors
         : Assigned to IBM
    2019 : IBM assigned to Daedalus Group
    2020 : Daedalus assigned to Slingshot IOT
         : Continuation filed by Slingshot
    2021 : Patent issued
    2023 : Slingshot assigned to Granite Vehicle Ventures
    2024 : Granite sues Tesla over family patents

---

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT.
IBM (operating) → Daedalus Group LLC (Reel 051032/0784) → Slingshot IOT LLC (Reel 051733/0463) → Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC. Three consecutive hops into licensing/enforcement entities. Daedalus Group LLC and Slingshot IOT LLC are both documented NPEs with no products; "Granite" (a rock) matches the "slingshot-and-stones" naming theme of the Eggleston/Machen web (RPX and Mondaq both identify Slingshot entities as Eggleston/Machen vehicles).

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT.
Slingshot IOT LLC is tied by RPX and IAM (Docket Navigator) to York Eggleston IV and Keith Machen, whose "stone/slingshot"-named NPEs "have filed at least 36 lawsuits against 23 defendants" (IAM, Feb 2022), and to IP Commercialization Labs, LLC. Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC is the plaintiff in Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC v. Tesla, Inc., No. 2:24-cv-01007-JRG (E.D. Tex., filed 2024-12-06), asserting family siblings US 11,597,402; 11,738,765; and 12,037,004 — a classic high-frequency-assertion posture. (Note: US11091171 itself was not among the three patents asserted in that complaint; it is a parent of the asserted continuations.)

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR.
I recovered no assignor/assignee correspondent fields for the individual recordings, and the single correspondent data point I have (Kinney & Lange, P.A. on the sibling application 18/222,774) cannot be confirmed as recurring across the chain. Not a finding on the current evidence. (Litigation counsel of record for Granite — Heim, Payne & Chorush LLP and Miller Fair Henry PLLC — are plaintiff's trial counsel, not assignment correspondents, and should not be conflated with this signal.)

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT.
IBM→Daedalus (effective 2019-09-30) → Daedalus→Slingshot (executed 2020-01-29) is two consecutive transfers of the same asset within ~4 months. The later Slingshot→Granite hop (2023-07-27) is a third transfer in the chain. Rapid multi-LLC sequencing is exactly the pattern described.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT (for the Tesla suit).
The final ownership hop to Granite is dated 2023-07-27 (Google Patents legal events); the Tesla complaint was filed 2024-12-06 — ~16 months later, outside the 6-month window. The transfer still precedes assertion, so the pattern is directionally consistent, but it does not meet the 6-month trigger as stated.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
IBM's transfer to Daedalus was a strategic 500-patent portfolio divestiture ($9M reported), not a Chapter 7/11 sale. No bankruptcy is in this chain.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR / not established.
The ultimate target is a competitor (Tesla) of no party in the chain; IBM sold the assets outright and there is no evidence IBM is directing or funding the assertion on its own behalf. The evidence supports "NPE monetization of divested IBM assets," which is consistent with privateering but not proof of it. Marking unclear.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
The chain terminates at Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC, an active litigating NPE. Nothing in the chain touches RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN.

---

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two or more strong signals are documented: (i) shell-entity / cascading transfers — IBM → Daedalus Group LLC (effective 2019-09-30, Reel 051032/0784) → Slingshot IOT LLC (executed 2020-01-29, Reel 051733/0463) → Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC (2023-07-27), i.e. three hops out of an operating company into licensing-only entities within the space of a few years; and (ii) known asserter — Slingshot IOT LLC is tied by RPX and IAM to the Eggleston/Machen NPE web, and Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC is actively asserting sibling patents (US 11,597,402 / 11,738,765 / 12,037,004) against Tesla in Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC v. Tesla, Inc., No. 2:24-cv-01007-JRG (E.D. Tex., filed 2024-12-06; since transferred to N.D. Cal., No. 3:26-cv-01457).

Verification link (Assignment Center, search by patent number): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — enter 11091171; also indexed at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

---

Items I could not verify (and did not fabricate): the reel/frame for the inventor→IBM and Slingshot→Granite assignments; the parties and conveyance type for the Reel 051710/0445 entry; and the recording correspondent for each link. If you can pull the Assignment Center detail pages for patent 11091171, the three open fields (051710/0445 parties, the Granite transfer reel/frame, and the recording correspondent) are the highest-value confirmations — the correspondent in particular would let us test signal #3 (repeat correspondent), which is currently the only "unclear" that could add a third strong indicator.

I'll research US Patent 11091171 and its cited prior art references.

I have substantial data. Let me verify the specific "References Cited" (prior art) on the face of US11091171 and cross-check the citation list.

Let me try to retrieve the exact front-page "(56) References Cited" list from the granted US11091171B2 document itself.

Prior-Art Analysis — US Patent 11,091,171 B2

1. Target document (interpreted literally)

Priority chain (from the patent's own Cross-Reference section): continuation of US 10,717,446 (filed Apr 18, 2018) → continuation of US 10,029,701 (filed Nov 2, 2016) → continuation of US 9,566,986 (filed Sep 25, 2015). Applications 16/899,407 (Jun 11, 2020), 15/955,874, 15/341,225 and 14/865,393 are the same chain.

Claims at issue (as granted, claims 1–30). The independent claims are claim 1 (computer program product: receive sensor inputs forming operational state → determine operational state → determine a vehicle fault → determine corrective action using a fault-remediation table → SDV implements it → issue alert), claim 19 (control-processor competence level where the roadway condition comprises a current weather condition → determine corrective action → implement → alert), and claim 30 (determine control-processor competence level → determine if below a minimum competence level → selectively assign control to the human driver). Dependent claims 2–18 and 20–29 add narrowing: reroute (2), transfer to manual/"take over immediately" (3, 20), disable autonomous steering (4, 21), disable autonomous speed (7, 26), stop (13), GPS/radar inputs (5, 6, 8, 9, 11, 12, 14, 22–25), weighted voting (15, 28), active learning from other SDVs (16), mechanical fault (17), weather fault (18), processor cohort (27), cloud (29).

---

2. Important methodological caveat (please read before relying on § 102 statements)

Two things must be stated plainly:

1. US 11,091,171 B2 was granted, and none of the references on its face were applied by the examiner as an anticipatory § 102 rejection that survived. The § 102 mappings below are my own analyst assessment of the closest references of record, not findings by the USPTO.
2. The publicly crawled "References Cited" blocks for this patent are contaminated by merged data. The Google Patents / uspto.report listings present a single "References Cited [Referenced By]" block that mixes (a) prior art cited in the patent via IDS, (b) later patents citing US 11,091,171 (the "Cited By" set), and (c) the applicant's own family members. I was able to retrieve the patent's full description and claims, the NPL list, and the merged US/foreign lists, but not a clean, USPTO-authorized extraction of only the front-page (56) "References Cited" block. Entries below are therefore labeled by provenance where I can determine it, and I flag uncertainty rather than invent a citation that may not exist. I did not return results for nearby but different numbers.

---

3. U.S. patent references — the most substantively relevant ones

These are the cited U.S. patents whose subject matter most directly bears on the claims of US 11,091,171 B2. Dates are grant dates as they appear in the cited list.

Remaining U.S. references of record (bulleted; largely background and, on their face, weaker § 102 candidates than those above): US 6,201,318 (Guillory, 2001); US 6,326,903 (Gross, 2001); US 6,393,362 (Burns, 2002); US 6,502,035 (Levine, 2002); US 6,587,043 (Kramer, 2003); US 6,622,082 (Schmidt, 2003); US 6,731,202 (Klaus, 2004); US 7,580,782 (Breed, 2009); US 7,769,544 (Blesener, 2010); US 7,979,173 (Breed, 2011); US 8,031,062 (Smith, 2011); US 8,045,455 (Agronow, 2011); US 8,139,109 (Schmiedel, 2012); US 8,146,703 (Baumann, 2012); US 8,152,325 (McDermott, 2012); US 8,190,322 (Nakae, 2012); US 8,346,480 (Trepagnier, 2013); US 8,352,112 / US 8,466,807 (Mudalige, 2013–2014); US 8,442,854 (Lawton, 2013); US 8,489,434 (Otis, 2013); US 8,583,365 (Jang, 2013); US 8,676,466 (Mudalige, 2014); US 8,678,701 (Aldasem, 2014); US 8,786,461 (Daudelin, 2014); US 8,810,392 (Teller, 2014); US 8,948,955 (Zhu, 2015); US 8,958,943 (Bertosa, 2015); US 8,970,362 (Morley, 2015); US 8,996,224 (Herbach, 2015); US 9,024,787 (Alshinnawi, 2015); US 9,090,260 / US 9,145,116 / US 9,150,220 / US 9,156,473 / US 9,233,688 / US 9,393,998 / US 9,415,777 / US 9,452,754 (Clarke et al., 2015–2016); US 9,123,049 (Hyde, 2015); US 9,170,327 (Choe, 2015); US 9,189,897 (Stenneth, 2015); US 9,194,168 (Lu); US 9,195,895 (Kapach); US 9,205,835 (Stein); US 9,216,745 (Beardsley); US 9,248,832 (Huberman); US 9,272,709 (Ben Shalom); US 9,286,520 (Lo); US 9,297,641 (Stein); US 9,317,033 (Ibanez-Guzman); US 9,342,074 (Dolgov); US 9,365,214 (Ben Shalom); US 9,381,915 (Crombez); US 9,390,451 (Slusar); US 9,399,472 (Minoiu-Enache); US 9,443,163 (Springer); US 9,446,765 (Ben Shalom); US 9,454,152 (Kopetz); US 9,463,805 (Kirsch); plus the 2002–2018 U.S. application publications in the same block (e.g., 2002/0026841 Svendsen; 2003/0065572 McNee; 2011/0137699 Ben-Ari; 2014/0129073 Ferguson; 2014/0136045 Zhu; 2016/0063761 Sisbot; 2017/0168689 Goldman-Shenhar, etc.).

---

4. Applicant's own family members appearing in the same citation block (NOT § 102 prior art)

These carry the same inventive entity and the same 2015 priority, so they are related/continuation documents rather than citable prior art against US 11,091,171 B2:

• US 9,566,986 B2 (Gordon et al., Feb 14, 2017) — the priority patent
• US 10,029,701 B2 (Gordon et al., Jul 24, 2018) — parent
• US 10,717,446 B2 (Gordon et al., Jul 21, 2020) — immediate parent
• US 9,785,145 B2 (Gordon et al., Oct 10, 2017), filed Aug 7, 2015
• US 9,834,224 B2 (Gordon et al., Dec 5, 2017), filed Oct 15, 2015
• US 9,944,291 B2 (Gordon et al., Apr 17, 2018)
• US 10,543,844 B2 (Gordon et al., Jan 28, 2020)
• Later continuations: US 11,597,402 B2, US 11,738,765 B2, US 12,037,004 B2, and pub. US 2025/0018963 A1.

⚠️ Note on US 9,785,145 (filed Aug 7, 2015 — before the Sep 25, 2015 priority date of the instant patent): because it names the same inventive entity, it is generally excepted from being § 102(a)(2) art (AIA § 102(b)(2)(A)); I mention it because a careless citation analysis would wrongly treat it as anticipatory art.

---

5. Foreign patent documents cited

The cited foreign set includes CN 1135063 (Nov 1996); CN 2349068 Y (Nov 1999); CN 201004265; CN 202012052; CN 202038228; CN 102650882; CN 202772924; CN 104900018; CN 106030609; CN 106462727; CN 107111742; CA 2392578; CA 2392652; EP 1727089; EP 2605185; EP 3100206; EP 3108264; EP 3146506; EP 3514032; EP 3640890; EP 3680818; and WO 2014/058263; WO 2014/066721; WO 2014/147361; WO 2014/148975; WO 2014/148976; WO 2015/024616; WO 2015/056105; WO 2015/083009; WO 2015/125022; WO 2015/156146; WO 2015/186002; WO 2015/189847; WO 2016/027270.

⚠️ Caution: EP 3100206 and EP 3108264 are family members of this patent (their EP counterparts), not third-party art, and the WO 2014/066721 entry appears twice — a hallmark of the merged crawl described in § 2. The WO 2014/14xxxx and WO 2015/08–15 publications (2014–2015) are the foreign references with the best chance of being genuine § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) art for autonomous-vehicle mode control; I could not verify the subject matter of each individually within budget.

---

6. Non-patent literature cited

Verified from the patent's own "Other References" (§56) list:

• Tesla Model "S" Manual and Overview, 2015.
• Nelson, G., "Tesla beams down 'autopilot' mode to Model S," Automotive News, Oct. 14, 2015.
• Lawler, R., "Riding shotgun in Tesla's fastest car ever," Engadget, Oct. 9, 2015.
• P. Mell et al., "The NIST Definition of Cloud Computing," NIST, Sep. 2011.
• X. Jardin, "Terrifying dashcam video captures distracted teen drivers…," Boing Boing, Mar. 26, 2015.
• M. Fox, "Self-driving cars safer than those driven by humans: Bob Lutz," CNBC, Sep. 8, 2014.
• A. Abkowitz, "Do Self-Driving Cars Spell Doom for Auto Insurers?", Bloomberg, Sep. 10, 2014.
• Anonymous, "Self-Driving Cars and Insurance," Insurance Information Institute, Feb. 2015.
• Gomes, "Google's Self-Driving Cars Still Face Many Obstacles," MIT Technology Review, Aug. 28, 2014.
• Smith, M., "Innovations: Emerging Trends in the Wheelchair Market," New Mobility, Aug. 1, 2014.
• Crothers, B., "Google Now Reporting Self-Driving Car Accidents: Hey, It's Not the Car's Fault," Forbes, Jun. 8, 2015.
• Anonymous, "Car Built-In Mechanism to Enforce Mandatory Self-Driving Mode," ip.com No. 000234916, Feb. 14, 2014.
• Anonymous, "Diagnostics Mechanism for Self-Driving Cars to Validate Self-Driving Capabilities," ip.com, Jun. 6, 2014.
• T. Horberry et al., "Driver Distraction…," Accident Analysis and Prevention 38, 2006, pp. 185–191.
• J. Miller, "Self-Driving Car Technology's Benefits, Potential Risks, and Solutions," The Energy Collective, Aug. 19, 2014.
• J. O'Callaghan, "Inside the Mercedes Self-Guiding Car…," Daily Mail, Jan. 6, 2015.
• J. Wei et al., "Towards a Viable Autonomous Driving Research Platform," IEEE IV Symposium, 2013.
• J. Farrier, "Airlines Infuse Their Planes With Smells…," Neatorama, Mar. 29, 2015.
• T. Vanderbilt, "Let the Robot Drive: The Autonomous Car of the Future is Here," Wired, Jan. 20, 2012.
• Chen, S. et al., "A Crash Risk Assessment Model for Road Curves," 20th ESV Conf., 2007, Lyon.
• E. Lehrer, "The Insurance Implications of Google's Self-Driving Car," Insurance Journal, May 28, 2014.
• Brownell, "Shared Autonomous Taxi Networks…," Dissertation, Princeton, 2013.
• Sessa et al., "Blueprint of Alternative City Cyber-Mobility Take-U Scenarios," FP7 Grant No. 314190, 2013.
• Lutin et al., "The Revolutionary Development of Self-Driving Vehicles…," ITE Journal 83.7, 2013.
• A. Hars, "Self-Driving Cars: The Digital Transformation of Mobility," Springer, 2015.
• Jimenez et al., "Autonomous collision avoidance system based on accurate knowledge of the vehicle surroundings," IET ITS, vol. 9, No. 1, 2015.
• Anonymous, "Avoiding Crashes With Self-Driving Cars," Consumer Reports, Feb. 2014.
• Anonymous, "Google Files Patent for Second-Gen Autonomous Vehicle Without a Steering Wheel, Brake Pedal & More," patentlymobile.com, Nov. 27, 2015.
• C. Berger et al., "COTS-Architecture With a Real-Time OS for a Self-Driving Miniature Vehicle," SAFECOMP 2013 Workshop, Toulouse.

NPL assessment under § 102: the most relevant NPL are the two ip.com defensive publications — "Car Built-In Mechanism to Enforce Mandatory Self-Driving Mode" (Feb 14, 2014) and "Diagnostics Mechanism for Self-Driving Cars to Validate Self-Driving Capabilities" (Jun 6, 2014). Both are § 102(a)(1) "printed publication" candidates and are directly on-point for claims 1, 17 and 30 (mandatory mode enforcement + self-diagnosis of driving capability). The Tesla manual/autopilot articles (2015) are borderline on date and are § 102(a)(1) candidates only for the autonomous/manual hand-off concepts of claims 1, 3 and 20.

---

7. Bottom line

• The single most dangerous § 102 reference on the face of US 11,091,171 B2 is US 8,874,305 B2 (Dolgov et al., Google, Oct 28, 2014) — "transitioning between autonomous and manual driving modes" — aimed at claims 1, 3, 20 and 30. It does not appear to disclose the fault-remediation table (claim 1) or the weather-condition-based competence comparison (claim 19), which is likely why the claims issued.
• Secondary § 102(a)(1)/102(e) candidates: US 8,078,349 B1 (Prada Gomez), US 8,923,890/US 8,924,150 (driver-behavior determination), US 7,894,951 (Norris), and — for the driver-scoring element of claims 19/30 — the McMillian 6,064,970 and Bauer/Ling family.
• The strongest non-patent anticipation candidates are the two ip.com defensive publications from Feb 14, 2014 and Jun 6, 2014.
• Every § 102 mapping above is my analysis, not an examiner determination. US 11,091,171 B2 issued over this art; the examiner did not maintain an anticipation rejection of these claims against any of these references.
• For a file-history-grade answer, you should pull the actual USPTO PatentCenter file wrapper for application 16/997,202 (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov) and the front-page (56) block of the granted PDF rather than relying on the merged Google/uspto.report citation tables, which as shown in § 2 conflate cited art, citing art, and family members.

I'll first try to recover the actual prior-art references cited on the '171 patent's page, since the fetched text in the record contains only the "Prior art keywords" line and not a References Cited table.

I now have the issued claim set and a candidate prior-art list. Let me pin down the front-page "References Cited" for the '171 patent and verify titles/teachings of the most useful references.

I have the issued claims. Now let me firm up the front-page prior-art list for this family and verify two cited references I want to rely on.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,091,171 (35 U.S.C. § 103)

Analyst note on scope: This section deliberately does not repeat the bibliographic, litigation, or family-chain material from the two earlier sections. Two items from those sections must be corrected/updated, and I flag them immediately below because the § 103 analysis depends on them.

---

0. Corrections and updates to the previously generated sections (read first)

(a) The claim text of the '171 patent is no longer "unverified." The earlier Patent Summary stated that the verbatim claims could not be retrieved and inferred that the independent claims would follow the sibling template ("determine a human-driver competence level → receive sensor readings → determine a processor competence level → determine a corrective action"). A third-party grant record for application 16/997,202 now supplies a full 30-claim set:

• https://uspto.report/patent/grant/11,091,171

Contradiction to flag explicitly: the issued '171 claims do not contain the CPCL-vs-HDCL comparison-and-select-the-higher architecture that the '171 abstract and the specification's SUMMARY recite. That comparison architecture lives in the parent U.S. 9,566,986 (whose abstract recites "compare a control processor competence level … to a human driver competence level," per https://uspto.report/patent/grant/9566986). The '171 claims split into three unlinked statutory groupings:

• Claim 1 (computer program product) — operational state → vehicle fault → corrective action via a fault-remediation table → SDV implements it → alert.
• Claim 19 (computer program product) — control processor competence level where the roadway condition "comprises a current weather condition" → sensor inputs → corrective action → implement → alert.
• Claim 30 (system) — CPCL (weather-condition-based) → is CPCL below a minimum competence level → assign control to the human driver.

(b) The "Prior Art section" of the Google Patents page is not in the record supplied, and what I recovered is imperfect. The fetch in the record truncates immediately after the "Prior art keywords" line (sdv / program product / computer program / control processor / control) and the "Prior art date: 2015-09-25," omitting the (56) References Cited and Cited By tables. I therefore recovered the family's front-page citation list from the identical-specification IBM Gordon et al. siblings (US 9,834,224 and US 9,981,669 front pages, e.g. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/e7/ea/45/65f3423ffcc47c/US9834224.pdf), plus a merged citations listing at https://uspto.report/patent/grant/11,091,171. That merged listing is unreliable as to which references sit on the '171 face, because it interleaves the family's "Cited By" entries (including post-2015 documents such as US 10,101,742 Prokhorov and US 10,318,823 Shashua) with true (56) art. I mark confidence per reference below.

(c) Priority-date discrepancy, noted literally: Google Patents states the prior-art/priority date as 2015-09-25; the Unified Patents portal records the '171 priority date as 2015-09-24 (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-[9390451](/patent/9390451)-B1). I apply the conservative test — art must predate 2015-09-24.

---

1. Level of ordinary skill and the legal frame

Because the '171 application (16/997,202, filed 2020-08-19) claims § 120 benefit back to a 2015 filing, the AIA §§ 102/103 framework governs, with an effective filing date of 2015-09-24/25.

PHOSITA = a team-level artisan with (i) a B.S. in mechanical/electrical engineering or computer science and 3–5 years of autonomous-vehicle or automotive control-system experience, or (ii) a graduate degree plus 2 years, and familiarity with OBD-II/SAE J2012 diagnostic trouble codes and fault-to-remedy lookup tables, automotive sensor suites (GPS, RADAR, LIDAR, camera, tire/Wear sensors), and mode-arbitration/ HMI design for automated driving.

Important art-eligibility constraint: the '171's own ancestors (US 9,566,986 → US 10,029,701 → US 10,717,446) and the later family members (US 11,597,402, US 11,738,765, US 12,037,004) are not available as prior art — same inventive entity/common ownership, and the later ones post-date the priority date. Any § 103 attack must be built from outside the family.

---

2. The reference set relied on

Tier 1 — references cited on the face of the '171/'986 family (Tier-1 = "within the patent's own Prior Art section")

Tier 2 — prior art not on the face of the patent, verified to predate 2015-09-24 (used only as secondary support, clearly labelled)

---

3. Claim-group obviousness analysis

3.1 Group A — Claims 1–18 (fault → fault-remediation table → corrective action → alert)

Claim 1, element by element:

Dependent claims 2–18: claim 2 (reroute to a location to address the fault) is squarely taught by Dolgov '305 (drive-the-vehicle-to-remedy behavior; the '305 family expressly contemplates routing to repair). Claims 3, 20–26 (transfer controls to manual + "take over immediately" alert; disable autonomous steering; disable autonomous speed) map onto Dolgov '827 ¶0080 (per-system transition and durations — "which respective systems") and its emergency/handback messaging. Claims 5–6, 9, 11–12, 14, 22–25 (GPS/radar inputs) are disclosed by '827 ¶0024 (GPS, IMU, RADAR, LIDAR, camera). Claims 10 (internal + roadway sensors) are met by the family's own roadway-sensor teaching combined with the cited roadway-infrastructure references. Claim 13 (stop the SDV) is a routine fail-safe maneuver. Claims 15 (weighted voting), 16 (active learning across other SDVs), 17 (mechanical fault), 18 (weather condition) are addressable with the Tier-1 telematics/fleet references and the cited insurance/driver-monitoring literature, though claims 15 and 16 are the weakest links (see § 5).

Motivation to combine (KSR): All references are in the same field (autonomous-vehicle self-monitoring and mode management) and address the same problem — what to do when the automated platform's capability is degraded while the vehicle is moving. Dolgov '305 already supplies the complete fault→remedy→execute loop but leaves the remedy ad hoc; substituting a lookup table (a known technique, in the same way, for the same purpose, per KSR) for ad-hoc rule generation is a predictable improvement with no change in principle. The ip.com diagnostics paper fills the SDV-specific "validate self-driving capability" predicate, and '827 supplies the known HMI practice of alerting the driver to the action. Expected benefits (safety, avoiding continued operation with a faulty component, predictable maintainability) are exactly the benefits the '171 specification claims — i.e., the combination is the product of ordinary design incentive rather than invention.

---

3.2 Group B — Claims 19–29 (weather-derived roadway condition → processor competence level → corrective action → alert)

Claim 19, element by element:

Motivation to combine: '827's own express statements supply the problem statement the '171 claim addresses — automation must be curtailed and control returned or split when weather (rain, snow) or degraded sensors make the autonomous system unreliable, and the driver must be told why. A PHOSITA asked to implement "curtail autonomous control when weather degrades machine capability, then tell the driver" would (i) start from '827's weather/sensor-health gating, (ii) use its existing per-subsystem transfer mechanism as the corrective action, and (iii) reuse its existing alerting channel. This is a "known technique improving a similar device in the same way" rationale, not a new architecture. Adding the ip.com mandatory-self-driving paper supplies the complementary rule (the mirror-image policy) and reinforces that mode policy in the SDV arts is rule/threshold driven.

---

3.3 Group C — Claim 30 (CPCL below a minimum competence level → assign to the human driver)

Motivation to combine: This is the cleanest § 103 case in the patent. '827 and Rosenbaum are both in the automated-driving mode-arbitration field, address the identical safety problem (who should be driving right now), and are complementary rather than redundant: '827 tells you when the machine must not yield and when it is unsafe to yield; Rosenbaum tells you when to hand over because the human can do it. Combining them to allocate control between machine and human according to which is competent in the current weather therefore represents, at most, the predictable arrangement of known elements (KSR). Claim 30 adds nothing beyond a threshold comparison, which '827 itself supplies. I would rate claim 30 as the most vulnerable claim in the patent.

---

4. Consolidated combination table

---

5. Where the § 103 case is weakest (be honest about it)

1. Claim 27 (cohort of SDV control processors, traffic-pattern data, accident/event records as the basis for CPCL). This is the most specific claim and the hardest to meet. It requires art that aggregates event records across a cohort of controllers — closer to the fleet-telematics art than to '827. I have not verified that Ling '358 or Bauer '598 teach a machine-controller cohort (they address human driver cohorts), so the mapping for claim 27 is currently an analogy, not a disclosure. A § 103 challenge to claim 27 would need a fleet-learning/telematics reference (or the ip.com "active learning"–type disclosures, which I located as citations only).
2. Claim 16 (receiving active learning data including information from other SDVs). Similarly fleet-dependent; needs a multi-vehicle learning reference. The insurance-telematics literature cited on the face of the family (Abkowitz/Bloomberg 2014; Self-Driving Cars and Insurance, Feb. 2015; Miller 2014) provides only general motivation, not the mechanism.
3. Claim 15 (weighted voting). The '171 specification's own weighted-voting framework (inputs I₁…I_N, weights w, quota q) is described as a conventional approach; I relied on that self-description plus Chen et al. (crash-risk modelling) rather than a single-art disclosure.
4. Tier-1 reference titles I could not verify (US 8,078,349; US 8,090,598; US 8,140,358; US 8,660,734; US 8,442,854) should not be quoted as holdings until pulled. My Tier-1 table flags them.
5. Verification dependency: the entire claim taxonomy above rests on the aggregator page at uspto.report. If that page's 30-claim set belongs to a sibling rather than to 16/997,202, the claim-by-claim mapping in § 3 changes (though the Tier-1/Tier-2 reference analysis would be largely unaffected because the family shares one specification). Confirm against the granted PDF / USPTO Patent Center before filing anything.

---

6. Objective indicia / secondary considerations

No evidence of nexus-bearing objective indicia surfaced. The commercial embodiment context (the family's asserted patents are the continuations '402, '765 and '004 in Granite Vehicle Ventures LLC v. Tesla — per the earlier Litigation Summary — and Tesla's IPR2025-00943/'00944 were denied institution, not decided on the merits) supplies at most a weak "industry attention" argument, and the '171 patent itself has not been asserted or challenged. Conversely, the family's heavy re-citation by later insurance/telematics art (e.g., the State Farm and Allstate families appearing in the "Cited By" landscape) is at least some evidence of the field's crowdedness, which favors obviousness. Note also that a sibling in this chain, US 9,981,669, carries a terminal disclaimer — evidence that the examiner or applicant already treated some of these claims as obvious variants of one another (that is an obviousness-type double patenting posture, not § 103, but it is relevant colour).

---

7. Bottom line

• Claim 30 — obvious over US 2014/0303827 A1 (Dolgov) in view of US 2012/0140076 A1 (Rosenbaum): weather/sensor-health-conditioned autonomy plus capability-based hand-back to the human. Strong case.
• Claims 19–26, 28, 29 — obvious over US 2014/0303827 A1 in view of the ip.com Mandatory Self-Driving Mode paper (and, for claim 29, the cited NIST reference). Strong case, because '827 literally discloses per-subsystem transfer, weather-based refusal, and on-screen alerts.
• Claims 1–14, 17, 18 — obvious over US 8,874,305 B2 (Dolgov, Diagnosis and repair for autonomous vehicles) in view of the ip.com Diagnostics Mechanism for SDVs paper, with the fault-remediation table supplied by the well-known OBD-II DTC→remedy lookup-table architecture and the alert supplied by US 2014/0303827 A1.
• Claims 15, 16, 27 — the residual exposure; each requires fleet/cohort-aggregation art that I have identified only by citation, not by content, in this session.

Sources consulted for this section: the record's authoritative Google Patents text for US11091171B2; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/11,091,171 (claim set + merged citations); https://uspto.report/patent/grant/9566986; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/e7/ea/45/65f3423ffcc47c/US9834224.pdf and …/US9981669.pdf (family (56) lists); https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/dc/75/3b/96038966ad490b/US8874305.pdf (Dolgov '305 full text); https://www.freepatentsonline.com/y2014/0303827.html and https://uspto.report/patent/app/20140303827 (Dolgov '827 full text); https://patents.justia.com/patent/10471963 (Rosenbaum title/date listing); https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-9390451-B1 (priority-date and Cited-By landscape).

Confidence: high on the claim set (subject to the single-source caveat in § 5.5); high on Dolgov '305 and '827; medium on Rosenbaum; title-level only on the two ip.com papers and the unverified Tier-1 US patents. I have not fabricated reference disclosures — where I could not read a document, I have said so.