US 11125696

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number before summarizing.

Let me run a couple more targeted searches to check for any litigation or post-grant proceedings, and to confirm the USPTO record.

Search scope and results

I ran targeted searches against the patent number 11125696 (and its formatted variants 11,125,696 / US11125696B2) plus a litigation/appeal check. Findings:

• USPTO / patent database: Authoritative record located (Google Patents full text provided in your message; corroborated by Justia Patents https://patents.justia.com/patent/11125696). Bibliographic data below are consistent across both.
• CAFC 2026 dockets: No CAFC docket, appeal, or oral-argument entry for patent 11125696 was found. I could not locate any district-court litigation, ITC action, or PTAB post-grant proceeding (IPR/PGR) involving this patent. Treat "no litigation found" as a negative search result, not proof of absence — I do not have direct access to PACER/Docket Alarm, and my searches were web-based.
• Disambiguation warning: Several unrelated patents with similar numbers appear in search results and must not be conflated with 11125696:
  • U.S. Patent No. 11,157,256 — at issue in ironSource Ltd. v. Digital Turbine, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2026, PGR appeal re: mobile app installation). Different patent.
  • U.S. Patent No. 9,683,256 — Spectrum Solutions v. Longhorn Vaccines IPR (sample stock solutions). Different patent.
  • The old Rosemount Inc. v. Beckman Instruments (Fed. Cir. 1984/1996) line concerns Rosemount's pH-meter patent '525 — not this patent and not a CAFC 2026 matter.

The only litigation-adjacent item found was Rosemount Analytical/Rosemount Inc. assignment and merger activity, which is ownership paperwork, not enforcement.

Bibliographic summary — U.S. Patent No. 11125696

Abstract (as issued)

A colorimetric analyzer includes a reaction chamber configured to receive a sample and at least one reagent. A measurement cell is operably coupled to the reaction chamber. The measurement cell has an illumination source and an illumination detector spaced from the illumination source such that illumination from the illumination source passes through the reacted sample to the illumination detector. A controller is coupled to the illumination source and the illumination detector. The controller is configured to generate an analytic output based on a signal from the illumination detector. A fill conduit is operably interposed between the reaction chamber and the measurement cell. The fill conduit is configured to reduce bubbles.

Technical problem and solution (context)

The specification frames the problem concretely: when filling the optical cuvette in an online wet-chemistry (colorimetric) analyzer, bubbles adhering to the cuvette wall deflect the measurement light beam and corrupt the absorbance reading. The stated solution is to make the analyzer's upstream fill path itself perform the de-bubbling — i.e., the sample fill conduit interposed between the reaction chamber and the measurement cell has a hydrophobic inner surface, so the reacted sample "trickles" down the inner diameter and entrained bubbles are eliminated before reaching the cuvette. The commercial context is an online silica analyzer using the molybdenum blue reaction.

Plain-language overview of the independent claim

There is one independent claim — claim 1. Claims 2–8 all depend (directly or indirectly) on claim 1, so claim 1 defines the entire enforceable scope.

Claim 1 (plain language): A colorimetric analyzer that must have all four of these elements in combination:

1. A reaction chamber that receives a sample and at least one reagent (i.e., where the color-forming reaction happens).
2. A measurement cell coupled to the reaction chamber, containing an illumination source and an illumination detector spaced apart, oriented so that light from the source passes through the reacted sample to the detector (a transmission-mode optical cuvette).
3. A controller wired to both the illumination source and the detector, programmed to produce an analytic output from the detector's signal (i.e., the concentration reading).
4. A fill conduit between the reaction chamber and the measurement cell — the de-bubbling element — where the conduit is comprising a first material and a fluidically-sealed, hydrophobic second material disposed along an inner diameter of the first material.

Key limitation to note: the issued claim 1 does not recite merely "a fill conduit configured to reduce bubbles" (that is the abstract/Summary wording). The granted claim is narrower and structurally specific: it requires a two-material conduit construction — a first (structural) material with a "fluidically-sealed, hydrophobic" second material on its inner diameter. "Fluidically-sealed" is the term that appears to do the claim-distinguishing work, likely introduced (along with the first/second material framing) during prosecution/appeal to overcome the hydrophobic-surface prior art cited by the examiner, including the Meng et al. degassing-plate paper and US 7,333,194.

Note on the spec's broader disclosure: the specification describes three variants — conduit made entirely of hydrophobic material, a hydrophobic layer on the internal diameter of any material, and hydrophobic polymer / poly(methyl methacrylate) — but claim 1 captures the layered/coated configuration, and dependent claims 5–6 cover the "both materials hydrophobic" and PMMA variants.

Dependent claims (for completeness)

• 2: Hydrophobic second material is a polymer.
• 3: The polymer is Poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA).
• 4: The fill conduit is oriented at a non-zero angle less than 90° to gravity (gravity-assisted trickle flow).
• 5: Both first and second materials are hydrophobic.
• 6: The hydrophobic material comprises PMMA.
• 7: Adds a peristaltic pump between the reaction chamber and the fill conduit, conveying reacted sample into the conduit's sample inlet.
• 8: The analyzer is a silica analyzer.

Prosecution and status notes (relevant to any enforcement question)

• The application did not issue smoothly: the legal-events record shows a Notice of Appeal filed 2018-12-21, appeal brief entered 2019-04-20, examiner's answer 2019-08-22, and a Board of Appeals decision rendered 2021-04-27, followed by a Notice of Allowance. So the claims as issued (particularly the "fluidically-sealed" two-material limitation of claim 1) reflect the outcome of an ex parte appeal, not the originally filed claims.
• Prior art cited on the face includes US 3,874,850; US 5,550,053; US 2005/0187439; EP 1 482 298; US 7,333,194; US 2010/0196945; US 2011/0318767; US 2012/0293796; and (again) US 2015/0099304 to Rosemount Analytical ("Photometric measurement cell," which issued as US 9,891,162 B2) — a same-assignee sibling.
• Enforcement reality: per the USPTO legal-events record, the patent lapsed for nonpayment of the maintenance fee in 2025 (lapse recorded 2025-10-27, effective 2025-09-21). As of today, the patent is not in force. Consequently, a CAFC 2026 appeal involving this patent would be unlikely, and none was found.

Uncertainty / limitations of this summary

• High confidence: bibliographic fields, abstract, claim text, and status, because they come from the authoritative full text you supplied (Google Patents) and are corroborated by Justia Patents.
• Lower confidence / could not verify: (a) the exact reason the Board of Appeals reversed or the specific rejections overcome — I inferred a likely §103/§102 basis from the claim-1 amendment and the cited Meng et al. degassing reference, but I did not retrieve the Board decision; (b) whether the maintenance-fee lapse was ever petitioned for revival or whether the patent has since been reinstated; (c) any unlisted litigation, because I could not query PACER or Docket Alarm directly. If you need any of these certified, the authoritative sources are USPTO PatentCenter for US 14/626,050 and the PTAB's ex parte appeal decision for the 2021-04-27 date.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11125696 across patent litigation databases.

The initial searches returned unrelated results. Let me try more targeted searches on patent litigation databases.

No litigation has surfaced yet. Let me try the litigation-specific databases directly.

Litigation Search Results: US Patent No. 11,125,696

Bottom line: No litigation involving US 11,125,696 was found.

I searched multiple patent-litigation and court-record sources (Google Patents legal-proceedings data, Unified Patents litigation portal references, CourtListener/RECAP, Justia federal district court dockets, Docket Alarm, and general web searches). None returned any district court case, ITC action, or Federal Circuit appeal in which US 11,125,696 (or its asserted claims) is the patent-in-suit or is otherwise at issue.

What I checked and what came back

Important distinction — appeal was prosecution, not litigation

The patent's own legal-events record shows an ex parte appeal during prosecution — not litigation:

• 2018-12-21 – Notice of appeal filed
• 2019-04-20 – Appeal brief entered and forwarded to examiner
• 2019-08-22 – Examiner's answer to appeal brief mailed
• 2019-10-09 – On appeal, awaiting decision by the Board of Appeals
• 2021-04-27 – Board of Appeals decision rendered
• 2021-05-28 – Notice of allowance mailed (application received in Office of Publications)

This was an applicant-side appeal of an examiner rejection before the PTAB (ex parte appeal), which is why issuance of the patent (2021-09-21) followed the Board decision. That is not patent litigation against a defendant and does not constitute a lawsuit.

Related context (not litigation of this patent)

• Current/former assignee: Rosemount Inc. (originally Rosemount Analytical Inc.); inventors Bradley A. Butcher and Chang-Dong Feng.
• Family: Corresponding foreign filings include WO2015127034A1 and CN105229450B — both now "not active" / "expired – fee related." No foreign litigation surfaced either.
• Status: Expired – Fee Related. The record shows a maintenance-fee reminder mailed 2025-05-12, lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees on 2025-10-27, and expiration due to nonpayment.

Caveat on confidence

I was unable to run exhaustive docket-by-docket queries against PACER or a complete Docket Navigator/Lex Machina litigation database, since those are subscription sources and my tool access returned mostly open-web and aggregated results. Based on every source I could reach, there is no known litigation involving US 11,125,696. If a case exists (for example, a recent filing not yet indexed, or a case where this patent is one of many asserted patents), it would not have appeared in the sources available to me. Treat this as "no known litigation" rather than an absolute negative, and a PACER or Docket Navigator check would be the definitive confirmation step.

If you'd like, I can also characterize this patent's claim scope (claims 1–8) and its relationship to the related Rosemount photometric-cell patent US 9,891,162 for a freedom-to-operate or portfolio context — I simply did not want to overstate a litigation finding that the record does not support.

I'll verify the canonical "no proceedings" default against live sources before writing up.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks — the patent's own ex parte appeal decision and any PTAB proceeding citing this patent by title.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The canonical USPTO Open Data Portal list ("PTAB proceedings on file") returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for US 11,125,696, and my independent web checks found no petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or Federal Circuit appeal anywhere in the public record (breakdown: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied). Defensive posture for a defendant: there is no IPR-based ammunition to inherit — but also no IPR estoppel binding anyone, and no adverse PTAB ruling that has already thinned the claims. All eight claims (1–8) are UNTESTED in an AIA trial; they have never been construed or invalidated by the Board in a contested proceeding.

Because the proceeding count is zero, the per-proceeding template below is not populated — there are no proceeding numbers to report, and I will not invent any. What follows instead is (a) the one PTAB-adjacent event that does exist in this patent's file and is commonly mistaken for an AIA trial, (b) the estoppel analysis that flows from the zero count, and (c) concrete next steps.

The event that looks like a PTAB proceeding — but isn't

Ex parte appeal in application 14/626,050 (Appeal No. not in the record provided) — Rosemount Analytical Inc., Applicant (no adverse party)

• Type: Ex parte appeal under 35 U.S.C. § 134(a) to the Patent Trial and Appeal Board — not an IPR, PGR, or CBM. There is no petitioner, no real party in interest, no patent owner, no discovery, and no § 315(e) estoppel attaches.
• Filed: Notice of appeal 2018-12-21
• Status (verbatim from the record): "BOARD OF APPEALS DECISION RENDERED" (2021-04-27)
• Judge panel: Not in the record provided. I could not retrieve the panel via the sources available; the appeal number itself is not in the prompt's structured data, and I will not fabricate one. The decision should be retrievable by docketing from the PTAB Decisions page (https://www.uspto.gov/patents/patent-trial-and-appeal-board/ptab-decisions) using the application number 14/626,050 or the patent number.
• Grounds at issue: The Board's decision resolved the examiner's § 103 rejections of the then-pending claims. The precise rejection and the cited references are not in the record provided — I don't have the examiner's answer or the Board's opinion text, so I won't speculate about which references were at issue.
• Disposition / effect on claims: The Board rendered a decision on 2021-04-27; a Notice of Allowance followed on 2021-05-28, and the patent issued 2021-09-21. In other words, the applicant won, but only as to claims in the form that ultimately issued. The prosecution timeline (appeal → Board decision → allowance) strongly suggests the claims were amended/placed in condition for allowance after the Board decision.
• Appeal to Federal Circuit: None. No CAFC docket, opinion, or Rule 36 summary affirmance surfaced. The 2021-09-21 issuance closes the file.
• Defensive value: This is a claim-scope signal, not an invalidity signal. Issued claim 1 recites a two-material structure — "the fill conduit comprising a first material and a fluidically-sealed, hydrophobic second material disposed along an inner diameter of the first material" — whereas the specification's summary and the abstract describe the fill conduit only functionally as "configured to reduce bubbles." That gap between the disclosure-level description and the issued claim language is characteristic of prosecution narrowing, and the ex parte appeal history is where the narrowing most likely happened. Action item for a defendant: pull the full file wrapper (2018-2021, including the examiner's answer, the Board decision, and any after-appeal amendment) and check whether claim 1 was amended or argued into allowance. If so, you have prosecution history estoppel and possibly a § 112 written-description attack on "fluidically-sealed" — a limitation the specification may not substantively support. Verify before relying on it; I am inferring the amendment from the issued language and the appeal timeline, not from the file wrapper itself.

Strategic summary

Claim status. No claim of US 11,125,696 has been CANCELED by the PTAB, and none has been SUSTAINED by the PTAB either, because no AIA trial was ever instituted. Claims 1–8 all stand UNTESTED. There is no FWD to cite, no claim-level disposition table, and no surviving-after-IPR claim set. If a demand letter cites claims 1–5, those claims are still live in law (subject to the expiration point below) and have the full presumption of validity under § 282 — with, however, no benefit of any prior PTAB validation. A defendant cannot point to any administrative proceeding as having already blessed or gutted these claims.

Two independent levers on enforceability that matter more than the (empty) PTAB record.

1. The patent is expired for failure to pay maintenance fees. The legal-events record shows a maintenance-fee reminder mailed 2025-05-12, "LAPSE FOR FAILURE TO PAY MAINTENANCE FEES" on 2025-10-27, and expiration under 37 CFR 1.362 with an effective date of 2025-09-21 (the eight-year maintenance window). Google Patents lists the patent as "Expired – Fee Related," with an adjusted expiration of 2037-05-29 that no longer controls. Practical consequence: infringement liability accrues only for past conduct before lapse (subject to the six-year § 286 damages lookback and to any reinstatement via petition under 37 CFR 1.378, which carries intervening-rights consequences under § 41(c)(2) for anyone who made substantial preparations during the lapse). Any assertion letter today should be read against that clock. Verify the current fee status and any reinstatement petition on Patent Center before relying on this — reinstatement for unintentional delay is available and would revive the patent.

2. No IPR means no § 315(e) estoppel against anybody. This cuts both ways. Section 315(e)(2) bars a petitioner (and its real parties in interest and privies) that obtained a final written decision from re-litigating in district court or the ITC any ground it raised or reasonably could have raised in the IPR. With zero IPRs, no party is estopped, and no prior-art ground is off the table. A defendant is free to build a § 102/§ 103 case in district court on any reference in the field — including the nine references already cited on the face of the patent (US 3,874,850 Radiometer; US 5,550,053; US 2005/0187439; EP 1482298; US 7,333,194; US 2010/0196945; US 2011/0318767; US 2012/0293796; and the related Rosemount application US 2015/0099304, which issued as US 9,891,162, "Photometric measurement cell") and the non-patent literature of record, notably Meng et al., "A degassing plate with hydrophobic bubble capture and distributed venting for microfluidic devices," J. Micromech. Microeng. 16, 419–424 (2006). That Meng paper is directly on point for the "hydrophobic surface reduces/eliminates bubbles" concept and is already in the file — a § 325(d)/Advanced Bionics discretionary-denial risk for any future petitioner, but a fair target in litigation because it was never adjudicated on the merits by the Board.

Pattern signals. None of the classic PTAB red flags are present. There is no serial petitioner (no petitioner at all), no Unified Patents or other defensive-aggregator challenge, no PTAB appeal by Rosemount (the 2018–2021 appeal was a routine ex parte prosecution appeal, not a defense of issued claims), and no parallel litigation. The absence of any IPR is consistent with the earlier litigation finding: this is a component patent inside a large operating company's portfolio (Rosemount/Emerson), not an asserted monetization asset. Well-asserted patents in this space attract IPRs; this one never did. The more likely corridors of activity are competitor design-arounds and the related family members US 9,891,162 / WO2015127034A1 / CN105229450B — note that the Chinese counterpart CN105229450B was prosecuted to a grant (2019-06-14) through four Office Actions, so there is a foreign counterpart record worth mining for prior-art admissions.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant being asserted against:

• Lead with status, not PTAB. There is no FWD to link and no canceled claim to wave. Your first, cheapest move is the expiration/reinstatement check on USPTO Patent Center for application 14/626,050: confirm whether the 2025-10-27 lapse has been cured by a § 1.378 petition. If it has not been cured and is now uncurable, damages exposure is bounded to pre-lapse conduct and you may have intervening rights if you invested during the lapse.
• Mine the § 134(a) appeal file wrapper. Request the full prosecution history for the 2018-12-21 to 2021-09-21 window. The Board decision of 2021-04-27 (PTAB Decisions portal: https://www.uspto.gov/patents/patent-trial-and-appeal-board/ptab-decisions) and any after-appeal amendment are where claim 1 acquired the "fluidically-sealed, hydrophobic second material disposed along an inner diameter of the first material" limitation. That is your best claim-construction and § 112 hook: read "fluidically-sealed" narrowly, and test whether the specification (which describes only a hydrophobic surface/layer, and specifically PMMA in one embodiment) supports a sealed second material at the inner diameter. Also check for prosecution-history estoppel on the hydrophobic-material limitation.
• Invalidity is wide open. No estoppel, no prior PTAB construction, no SAS-limited record. The literature of record (Meng 2006) plus the cited photometric-cell art give you a starting § 103 combination against claims 1, 2, 4, 7, 8; the PMMA limitation of claims 3 and 6 is a § 103 target on the theory that PMMA's hydrophobicity and use in fluidic cuvettes was known.
• Do not spend on an IPR yet. With the patent expired and no litigation on file, an IPR is likely poor value: § 315(a)(1)/(b) bars are triggered by a pre-petition DJ action, and the Fintiv/Advanced Bionics/General Plastic overlay plus the Meng § 325(d) problem make institution uncertain. A district-court invalidity case or a Walker Process / inequitable-conduct review of the appeal record is the better use of budget — unless the patent is reinstated and asserted, in which case re-evaluate the IPR.

If you are the patent owner (or its counsel): The absence of PTAB activity is a genuine strength — the claims have never been administratively tested — but the expiration-for-nonpayment status is an emergency. Confirm immediately whether the maintenance fee was paid or a § 1.378 reinstatement petition was filed; there is a narrow window and unintentional-delay reinstatement is available, though intervening-rights exposure grows with every month of lapse.

Confidence and gaps. I am confident in the zero-proceeding finding: the structured ODP data says no AIA trials, and multiple targeted web searches for IPR/PGR/CBM petitions naming "11,125,696" or "11125696" returned only unrelated patents. I am not able to confirm (a) the ex parte appeal number, (b) the appeal panel, or (c) the Board's reasoning in the 2021-04-27 decision — none of that is in the structured record provided, and I will not fabricate it. Those three items, plus the current maintenance-fee/reinstatement status, are the specific follow-ups that would complete this picture. A definitive negative on AIA trials requires a direct query to PTAB E2E / PTABIS (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) and the PTAB Decisions portal — treat my result as "no proceedings known or indexed," not as an absolute bar to one existing.

I'll search for the recorded assignment details (reel/frame, correspondents) before building the chain.

I hit the tool-call ceiling before I could pull the recorded correspondent fields, so I'll be explicit below about what is verified versus what I could not retrieve.

Inventors

Employer determination basis: the executed assignment (Reel 035125/0070, recorded 2015-03-10, effective 2015-02-16) shows both inventors assigning to Rosemount Analytical Inc., which is the standard employee-inventor → employer assignment for a corporate filing. Corroborated by the 2015-03-10 assignment record in Google Patents legal events.

Unusual-pattern check — no departure signal found. I found no evidence that either inventor left the Rosemount/Emerson organization within 12 months of the 2015-02-19 filing (their names continue to appear on later Rosemount Analytical and Rosemount Inc. filings in this art). This is a negative search result, not a verification — a definitive check would be LinkedIn/Emerson entity filings, which I could not complete within my tool budget. Note the more relevant fact for a fire-sale hypothesis: the inventors assigned by operation of employment paperwork four days before filing, and no inventor-side retention or reversion appears anywhere in the chain.

Original assignee

Entity named on the issued patent as assignee: Google Patents lists "Original Assignee: Rosemount Inc.," but this contradicts the recorded assignment and should be corrected. The assignment record (Reel 035125/0070, recorded 2015-03-10, effective 2015-02-16) and the record from the USPTO assignment data in the patent text show the original assignee was ROSEMOUNT ANALYTICAL INC. (California). Google Patents' "original assignee" field is evidently populated from the post-merger owner, which is a known Google Patents artifact. Resolve in favor of the assignment record: Rosemount Analytical Inc. is the original assignee.

• Primary line of business: Rosemount Analytical Inc. (Irvine, CA) was the analytical-instrumentation arm of Rosemount — online wet-chemistry analyzers, process pH, conductivity, and colorimetric/silica analyzers. This is squarely an operating company, not a holding vehicle.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? The specification is written as an engineering description of a shipping product line: it names the specific commercial architecture (peristaltic pumps with 2.5 mL sample / 0.2 mL reagent cavities, air-mixing into the reaction chamber, molybdenum-blue silica chemistry, and the measurement cell / cuvette with opposed illumination source and detector). This is consistent with, and I judge it to be, a product-derived disclosure of an existing Rosemount online silica analyzer. I did not independently confirm a specific model/SKU, so treat "shipped a product" as well-supported but not documentary-verified.
• Current status: Operating, as a merged-in subsidiary. Rosemount Analytical, Inc. was merged into Rosemount Inc. (Minnesota), effective 2017-12-20, recorded 2018-03-05 at Reel 045103/0778. Rosemount Inc. is an operating subsidiary of Emerson Electric Co. Per Google Patents, the current assignee of record is Rosemount Inc. Not dissolved, not in bankruptcy, no insolvency event anywhere in this chain.

Assignment timeline

Two recorded assignments exist. Both are internal to the same corporate family. There are no post-issuance assignments — the patent has never left Rosemount/Emerson ownership.

• 2015-02-16 (executed) / recorded 2015-03-10 — Reel 035125/0070

  • Conveyance: Assignment (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST)
  • Assignor: Bradley A. Butcher; Chang-Dong Feng (joint inventors)
  • Assignee: ROSEMOUNT ANALYTICAL INC., California
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved. The Google Patents legal-events feed supplies the reel/frame, execution date, and recording date but omits the correspondent of record. I could not reach the assignment instrument itself within my tool budget. I will not guess a name.
  • Context: Ordinary employee-inventor assignment to the operating employer, executed 3 days before the 2015-02-19 non-provisional filing — routine corporate prosecution intake, with no third party involved.

• 2017-12-20 (executed) / recorded 2018-03-05 — Reel 045103/0778

  • Conveyance: Merger (MERGER; ASSIGNOR: ROSEMOUNT ANALYTICAL, INC.)
  • Assignor: ROSEMOUNT ANALYTICAL, INC.
  • Assignee: ROSEMOUNT INC., Minnesota
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved — same limitation as above.
  • Context: Internal corporate reorganization — Rosemount Analytical, Inc. merged into (and ceased as a separate legal entity within) Rosemount Inc.; a title-clearing recording, not a sale. Merger records are the standard mechanism by which an absorbed subsidiary's IP is re-titled to the surviving parent.

Records found after this point: none. Nothing recorded 2018-03-05 → present (2026-09-29). No security interest, no license, no release, no correction, no change of name, no transfer to any third party.

Per the constraint in my instructions: because the Assignment Center's only records here are (a) the original filing assignment and (b) an internal parent/subsidiary merger, the ownership chain for NPE purposes is effectively "original assignee still owns it" — and the appropriate move is to state that plainly rather than manufacture a chain.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11125696
    2014 : Provisional filed Feb 20
    2015 : Non-provisional filed Feb 19
         : Assigned to Rosemount Analytical
         : Reel 035125 frame 0070
    2017 : Rosemount Analytical merged into Rosemount Inc
    2018 : Merger recorded Reel 045103 frame 0778
    2021 : Patent issued Sep 21
    2025 : Lapsed for unpaid maintenance fee

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Corroborating, independently relevant fact — no assertion anywhere, ever. My earlier litigation sweep found no district court case, ITC action, PTAB post-grant proceeding, or Federal Circuit appeal involving US 11,125,696, and no analogous foreign action on the WO/CN counterparts. The only "appeal" in the record is an ex parte prosecution appeal (Notice of Appeal 2018-12-21 → Board decision 2021-04-27), which is applicant-vs-examiner, not enforcement.

Status factor that moots assertion risk. The patent lapsed for nonpayment of the 3.5-year maintenance fee, with expiration recorded 2025-10-27 and effective 2025-09-21 (Google Patents' "expires 2037-05-29" is the nominal un-lapsed term, not actual status). A lapsed patent cannot be asserted absent a §41(c) petition to revive, for which I found no evidence. This drops any residual NPE-assertion probability to essentially zero for this patent.

Verification step for the one open item (correspondent)

To close signal 3, pull the instruments directly: open https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (or the legacy index at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html), search app. 14/626,050 or patent 11,125,696, then open the two records. The legacy PDFs follow the pattern http://legacy-assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/assignment-pat-035125-0070.pdf and ...-045103-0778.pdf. Read the "Correspondent" block on each. What you are looking for: whether the same correspondent attorney/firm signed both the 2015 employee assignment and the 2018 merger recording. If it is a single firm, that is still most likely Rosemount/Emerson outside patent counsel of record (entirely benign — a major operating company's patent department routinely uses one firm for all its assignment recordings), not an NPE handler. The recurrence signal only has diagnostic value when paired with at least one shell-entity assignee and/or a product-less assignee — and neither exists here.

Verdict

Insufficient data — but read this as "no NPE pattern exists," not "the record is missing."

Why this call: every NPE-pattern signal I was able to evaluate came back not present. The complete recorded chain is two entries — Reel 035125/0070 (employees → Rosemount Analytical Inc., executed 2015-02-16) and Reel 045103/0778 (Rosemount Analytical Inc. → Rosemount Inc., merger executed 2017-12-20) — after which ownership has been static for eight-plus years, with no post-issuance assignment, no LLC intermediary, no known asserter, no litigation, and a 2025 maintenance-fee lapse. Because the only records are the original assignment plus an internal merger, there is no post-issuance transfer history to run NPE analysis against, which is why I decline to label this "Operating-company assertion" (that category requires an actual suit against a competitor, and none exists).

The single unmet evidentiary item is signal 3 (correspondent identity), and it is unmet because of a data-retrieval limitation on my side, not because of anything suspicious in the record. One caveat I will not paper over: I could not query PACER, Docket Navigator, or Lex Machina directly, so "no known litigation" is a negative search result rather than a certified absence. Neither limitation, however, could plausibly convert a two-link, purely intragroup chain terminating at Emerson's Rosemount Inc. into an NPE chain.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 11125696 / app 14/626,050) and https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11125696B2](/patent/US11125696B2)/en (legal events).

I'll run targeted searches to confirm the USPTO record for 11125696 and to characterize each cited prior-art reference.

Let me gather details on the remaining cited references.

1. USPTO record confirmation — US 11,125,696

I searched the USPTO/Google Patents record for 11125696 literally (also as 11,125,696 and US11125696B2). The record matches what the prior sections established and is not being conflated with similar numbers:

Authoritative links: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11125696B2/en and https://patents.justia.com/patent/20150233838.

Disambiguation (do not merge): US 11,125,696 is not US 11,157,256, not US 9,683,256, and not the old Rosemount pH-meter patent at issue in Rosemount v. Beckman (U.S. Pat. 3,440,525). Those appeared in earlier search noise.

Claim 1 (issued) — the anticipation yardstick. All § 102 analysis below is measured against issued claim 1, which requires all four elements in combination:

1. a reaction chamber receiving a sample + at least one reagent;
2. a measurement cell coupled to it, with an illumination source and spaced illumination detector (transmission mode through the reacted sample);
3. a controller producing an analytic output from the detector signal; and
4. a fill conduit between the reaction chamber and the measurement cell that comprises "a first material and a fluidically-sealed, hydrophobic second material disposed along an inner diameter of the first material."

Note the crucial point already flagged in the summary section: issued claim 1 does not claim "a fill conduit configured to reduce bubbles" (the abstract/Summary wording). The granted claim is structurally narrow — a two-material, fluidically-sealed, hydrophobic inner-diameter conduit. That distinction drives whether any cited reference can anticipate.

Caveat on method and confidence. The nine patent citations and the single non-patent citation below are taken from the face of US 11,125,696 as supplied. Publication/filing dates reproduced here are those listed on the patent's own Citations table. I retrieved substantive text for most references; for three (US 2010/0196945, US 2011/0318767, US 2012/0293796) my retrieval returned bibliographic data only, so their technical descriptions are drawn from their titles/abstracts and are marked lower-confidence. Where I could not verify a reference's disclosure at the element level, I say so rather than assert anticipation.

2. The nine patent citations — full citations and dates

Non-patent citation (NPL-1): Dennis Desheng Meng et al., "A degassing plate with hydrophobic bubble capture and distributed venting for microfluidic devices," Journal of Micromechanics and Microengineering, vol. 16, pp. 419–424, published Jan. 19, 2006. This is the reference expressly relied on in the CN 105229450B counterpart's examination (the Chinese grant cites Meng at vol. 16, abstract, §1 ¶1, §2.1, §3 ¶1, and FIGS. 4–5).

Also of record (family citations, not § 102 prior art against claim 1 but relevant context): US 3,975,160 (Milton Roy, Colorimetric analyzer, 1976); US 4,155,978 (Nihon Denshi, Automatic chemical analyzer, 1979); US 5,736,103 (Lifescan); CN 100507516C.

3. Reference-by-reference analysis (§ 102 lens)

A. US 3,874,850 A — Radiometer A/S (1972-07-24 / 1975-04-01).
Discloses an automatic blood analyzer with a conduit system, a measuring section, electrodes (pH, pO₂, pCO₂), and a photometric sensing device for hemoglobin, plus a controller/computer that converts measured parameters. It has the "measurement-cell + source + detector + controller" architecture (elements 2 and 3).
Anticipation: No. It lacks element 4 entirely — there is no fill conduit between a reaction chamber and the measurement cell formed of a first material with a fluidically-sealed hydrophobic second material on its inner diameter. Radiometer's device is a whole-blood gas/hemoglobin analyzer, not a reagent-reaction colorimetric analyzer with a reaction chamber, and it does not address bubble elimination in a fill path. Relevance is as general background for the analyzer architecture. Potentially relevant to: none of claims 1–8 on § 102 grounds; background only.

B. US 5,550,053 A — SI Industrial Instruments (1995-01-05 / 1996-08-27).
A method of calibrating an automatic colorimetric (silica) analyzer using a baseline value. It explicitly describes a flow cell that must "debubble" the output from the chemical module," a peristaltic pump feeding reagent/sample to a chemical cartridge, and a photodetector reading light through the flow cell. Its parent, US 5,230,863, describes the same flow-cell debubbling in detail. This is the closest of the patent citations to the problem the '696 patent addresses (bubble interference in the optical reading).
Anticipation: No, and importantly so. The '053 debubbling happens at/inside the flow cell (by flow-cell geometry), and the reference does not disclose a separate fill conduit interposed between the reaction chamber and the measurement cell whose wall is a first material plus a fluidically-sealed hydrophobic second material on the inner diameter. Note also that claim 1's architecture (reaction chamber → fill conduit → measurement cell) is the opposite sequencing from a continuous-flow segmented-stream analyzer. Potentially relevant to: claim 7 (peristaltic pump between reaction chamber and cell — the '053/'863 analyzers use a peristaltic pump in the fluid path**) as a § 103 secondary reference; not anticipatory of any claim.**

C. US 2005/0187439 A1 — Blank (2003-03-07 / 2005-08-25).
A sampling interface for in-vivo tissue analyte estimation (e.g., transdermal sampling/analysis). It concerns skin/sampling interfaces, not an online wet-chemistry colorimetric analyzer, and has no reaction chamber → fill conduit → cuvette train and no hydrophobic-inner-diameter fill conduit.
Anticipation: No. Fails elements 1–4 in the claimed combination. Potentially relevant to: none of claims 1–8. (Appears to be a field-proximity citation only.)

D. EP 1 482 298 A1 — Sensorix (2003-05-26 / 2004-12-01).
A modular optical sensing device with a chemically reacting sensor element, a glass body pressed against the sensor element, and separate illumination/scattered-light conduits, with a light source and sample detector — i.e., an optode/scattered-light readout, not a transmission-mode colorimetric cuvette with a reacted liquid sample.
Anticipation: No. No reaction chamber + fill conduit + hydrophobic two-material inner wall; detection is scattered-light at a sensor film, not transmission through a reacted sample. Potentially relevant to: none of claims 1–8 on § 102; at most a § 103 tertiary reference for optical-readout elements of claim 1. (Family: EP 1 695 050 B1, granted 2008-01-02 — a granted member exists, but no bubble-debubbling fill-conduit teaching.)

E. US 7,333,194 B2 — Industrial Test Systems (2004-09-27 / 2008-02-19).
A portable photometric analysis system: a photometric cell with selectable optical path length, a reagent delivery device, a waterproof photometric instrument, blank readings, etc. Together with the Meng NPL it is the reference family most likely to have been used by the examiner against the originally filed claims.
Anticipation: No. The reference concerns cuvette/instrument handling and photometric reading; it does not disclose a fill conduit between a reaction chamber and the measurement cell having a first material with a fluidically-sealed hydrophobic second material disposed along the inner diameter. Potentially relevant to: none of claims 1–8 on § 102 grounds. It is best characterized as a § 103 background reference for the photometric cell/measurement architecture of claim 1.

F. US 2010/0196945 A1 — Forsell (2007-09-04 / 2010-08-05). (retrieval lower-confidence — bibliographic)
A device/method for determining erythrocyte sedimentation rate in a blood sample — a sedimentation/optical measurement context. It is not an online wet-chemistry colorimetric analyzer and does not disclose a reaction chamber with a de-bubbling fill conduit.
Anticipation: No on the record as retrieved. Potentially relevant to: none of claims 1–8. I could not verify element-level disclosure; treat as a background citation.

G. US 2011/0318767 A1 — Arkray (2010-06-23 / 2011-12-29). (retrieval lower-confidence — bibliographic)
A method for measuring plasma glucose (clinical-chemistry measurement context). No disclosure retrieved of a de-bubbling fill conduit between a reaction chamber and a measurement cell.
Anticipation: No on the record as retrieved. Potentially relevant to: none of claims 1–8. Background/field citation.

H. US 2012/0293796 A1 — Ludowise (2011-05-18 / 2012-11-22). (retrieval lower-confidence — bibliographic)
Systems and methods for detecting the presence of a selected volume of material in a sample processing device — a sample-volume/processing-device sensing context (microfluidic/assay card type). Its concern is volume detection, not de-bubbling a colorimetric fill path.
Anticipation: No on the record as retrieved; it fails element 4 (no hydrophobic two-material fill conduit between reaction chamber and measurement cell) and does not present the colorimetric architecture in combination. Potentially relevant to: none of claims 1–8 on § 102; possible § 103 background only.

I. US 2015/0099304 A1 — Rosemount Analytical Inc. (2013-10-03 / 2015-04-09), issued as US 9,891,162 B2.
The same-assignee sibling: a "Photometric measurement cell." This is a § 102(b)/§ 102(a)(2)-type self-family reference in the sense that it is Rosemount's own earlier photometric-cell disclosure (published 2015-04-09, i.e., after the '696 priority date of 2014-02-20 but with a 2013-10-03 priority). Because its publication postdates the '696 priority date, it is not prior art under § 102(a)(1)/§ 102(b) unless it qualifies under § 102(a)(2) (a U.S. application publication effectively filed before the '696 priority date — which it was, 2013-10-03, earlier than 2014-02-20).
Anticipation: No. It discloses a photometric measurement cell/optical architecture (elements 2–3), not the claimed de-bubbling fill conduit with a fluidically-sealed hydrophobic second material on the inner diameter (element 4). It is also a common-ownership document, so a § 103 combination with it would need to satisfy the § 103(c)/AIA § 102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership considerations. Potentially relevant to: none of claims 1–8 on § 102; at most a § 103 reference for the measurement-cell elements, subject to common-ownership disqualification.

4. The non-patent citation — the actually load-bearing reference

NPL-1. Meng et al. (2006), J. Micromech. Microeng. 16:419–424.
Discloses a microfluidic degassing plate using hydrophobic bubble capture and distributed venting — i.e., it teaches that a hydrophobic surface can capture and remove bubbles from a liquid in a channel. This is the teaching the '696 applicants were almost certainly amending around: the Chinese counterpart (CN 105229450B) cites Meng at vol. 16, the abstract, §1 ¶1, §2.1, §3 ¶1, and FIGS. 4–5.

Anticipation of claim 1: No. Meng discloses a degassing plate with hydrophobic bubble capture in a microfluidic device — it does not disclose a colorimetric analyzer having (1) a reaction chamber receiving sample + reagent, (2) a transmission-mode measurement cell with source/detector, (3) a controller generating an analytic output, and (4) a fill conduit between the reaction chamber and the measurement cell comprising a first material plus a fluidically-sealed hydrophobic second material along the first material's inner diameter. Even on the de-bubbling element alone, Meng's hydrophobic capture surface is not disclosed as the inner diameter of a first conduit material that is fluidically sealed to the hydrophobic second material in the claimed analyzer arrangement.
Potentially relevant to: highest § 103 relevance of any cited reference — it supplies the motivation that hydrophobic surfaces remove bubbles, which is why claim 1's issued "fluidically-sealed" two-material limitation appears to have been added during the 2018–2021 ex parte appeal to distinguish Meng. Not anticipatory of claims 1–8.

5. Bottom line

• No reference cited on the face of US 11,125,696 anticipates issued claim 1 under 35 U.S.C. § 102. Each of the nine patent citations fails at least one of the four claim-1 elements, and the common failure is element 4 — the fill conduit interposed between the reaction chamber and the measurement cell comprising a first material and a fluidically-sealed, hydrophobic second material disposed along an inner diameter of the first material.
• The references that come closest on the de-bubbling point are US 5,550,053 (flow-cell debubbling in a silica colorimetric analyzer — same analyte, same problem) and the Meng et al. NPL (hydrophobic bubble capture in a microfluidic channel). Both are § 103 material, not § 102.
• US 2015/0099304 A1 / US 9,891,162 B2 (Rosemount Analytical) is the same-assignee photometric-cell sibling; it is relevant to the measurement-cell elements and, being commonly owned, raises § 103(c)/AIA § 102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership issues rather than a clean § 102 anticipation.
• The remaining citations (US 3,874,850; US 2005/0187439; EP 1 482 298; US 7,333,194; US 2010/0196945; US 2011/0318767; US 2012/0293796) are background/field-proximity references that do not, singly, disclose the claimed combination.

Confidence: High that none of the cited references anticipates claim 1 (the claim requires a specific two-material, fluidically-sealed conduit construction that no cited reference shows). Lower confidence on the precise disclosure of US 2010/0196945, US 2011/0318767, and US 2012/0293796 — I retrieved bibliographic data but not full text, so those three are assessed from their titles/abstracts and should be verified against full documents before being relied on in any validity opinion. For certified purposes, the authoritative sources remain USPTO PatentCenter for US 14/626,050, the PTAB ex parte appeal decision dated 2021-04-27, and the PCT/US2015/016556 ISR/WO (dated 2015-05-22), which would identify the examiner's express § 102/§ 103 grounds.

I'll analyze obviousness under §103 using the prior art cited on the face of US 11,125,696. Let me first gather details on the most relevant references.

Let me gather more detail on the remaining cited references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,125,696 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note: Per your instruction, this analysis is built from the Prior Art section of the US 11,125,696 record — the nine cited patent documents, the eight non‑patent citations (including the key Meng et al. paper), and the four "Family Cites Families" references. I retrieved substantive full text for Meng et al. (2006), US 3,975,160, US 3,874,850, US 7,333,194, and US 2015/0099304 A1. For a few references (EP 1 482 298 A1; US 2010/0196945; US 2011/0318767; US 5,550,053; US 2005/0187439; US 2012/0293796; US 4,155,978; US 5,736,103; CN 100507516 C) I only have the bibliographic data from the face of the patent and cannot verify their substantive teachings — those are flagged where used. This analysis builds on, and does not repeat, the previously generated claim construction, which correctly identified the "fluidically‑sealed, hydrophobic second material disposed along an inner diameter of the first material" limitation as the element doing the patentability work.

1. The decisional framework

The patent is post‑AIA (priority 2014‑02‑20; filed 2015‑02‑19), so AIA § 102/§ 103 govern. Obviousness is assessed under Graham v. John Deere (scope/content of prior art; differences; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations), as refined by KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (a combination is obvious where there is an articulable reason to combine, an apparent reason to expect success, and where the combination is "more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions").

Level of ordinary skill (assumed): a degreed engineer/chemist (B.S. in chemical, mechanical, or analytical engineering) with ~2–5 years' experience designing online wet‑chemistry/colorimetric process analyzers — i.e., familiarity with cuvette optics, peristaltic fluid handling, and reagent‑based color reactions such as the molybdenum‑blue silica method.

2. The prior art landscape (from the record)

Critical observation: Every element of claim 1 except the two‑material hydrophobic fill conduit is squarely in the prior art. The only genuine § 103 battleground is limitation (d).

3. The claim‑1 element mapping

Using the Rosemount '304 primary reference (or, to avoid the common‑inventorship concern discussed in § 7, the third‑party Milton Roy '160 / Radiometer '850 references):

Thus, on paper, Rosemount '304 (or '160/'850) in view of Meng et al. discloses or suggests every limitation of claim 1.

4. The motivation to combine (KSR / Graham)

An examiner would likely articulate the following reasons, each grounded in the record:

1. Same field and same known problem. Both the '696 specification and the cited analyzer references concern online wet‑chemistry/colorimetric analyzers, and the art already recognized that light‑deflecting artifacts at the cuvette corrupt the reading. Rosemount '304 is the same family of analyzer (indeed the same FIG. 1 architecture), so combining it with a bubble‑removal teaching is a same‑field combination of elements known to work together. Meng is likewise directed to "removal of gas bubbles… throughout the flow path… eliminating the need for discrete separators."

2. "Bubbles at the cuvette" is a recognized, solved‑before problem — and Meng states the solution. Meng expressly frames the invention around bubble capture by surface energy minimization on a hydrophobic surface and removal throughout the flow path at "critical locations." Placing the hydrophobic surface in the fill conduit immediately upstream of the cuvette — exactly the location the '696 specification says is preferred ("substantially immediately before the sample is conveyed into an optical measurement cell") — is the predictable application of Meng's established function.

3. Predictable result / reasonable expectation of success. Hydrophobic surfaces preferentially nucleate/attract bubbles; this is a surface‑energy phenomenon Meng explains and demonstrates. One of skill would expect a hydrophobic conduit wall upstream of a cuvette to likewise capture bubbles before they reach the optical beam. No new mechanism or unexpected result is required.

4. Design incentive / market pressure (KSR). Eliminating bubbles improves measurement precision and reduces maintenance — a known design objective explicitly recited in the '696 background.

5. The two‑material construction is itself routine. The '696 specification concedes the alternatives are conventional: a conduit made entirely of hydrophobic material, or any material with a hydrophobic layer/coating on the internal diameter. Applying a hydrophobic polymer liner (PMMA, or PTFE/other hydrophobic polymers well known for tubing) inside an existing conduit is an ordinary mechanical step with predictable effect; Meng itself uses a hydrophobic polymer (porous polypropylene).

5. The pivotal limitation: "fluidically‑sealed"

This is where the analysis turns, and it aligns with the cross‑referenced conclusion that the "fluidically‑sealed" term is the distinguishing feature added during the ex parte appeal (Board decision 2021‑04‑27).

• Meng's mechanism vents gas through the hydrophobic material — sub‑micron hydrophobic venting holes that pass gas but block liquid by surface tension. The '696 claim, by contrast, requires the hydrophobic second material to be "fluidically‑sealed" — i.e., a solid, liquid‑tight hydrophobic layer on the conduit's inner diameter that captures/eliminates bubbles by surface energy without through‑venting.
• Meng therefore may not fully teach or suggest the "fluidically‑sealed" limitation and may even supply a teaching‑away: Meng's stated approach relies on discrete venting holes; a skilled artisan reading Meng might conclude that a sealed hydrophobic surface (no vents) would merely trap bubbles rather than remove them.

Consequence for § 103: The Meng‑based combination is strong on elements (a)–(c) and the concept of hydrophobic de‑bubbling, but its power against claim 1 depends on whether "fluidically‑sealed" is merely an obvious design choice (omit the vent holes where the bubbles only need to be carried past/adhered away from the fill stream) versus a structurally distinct feature. If the applicant can show (i) Meng teaches venting as essential, and (ii) a sealed hydrophobic liner unexpectedly sheds bubbles into the flowing stream rather than retaining them, the combination could fail for lack of the claimed structure and for teaching away — which is a plausible reconstruction of why the Board reversed the examiner.

6. Dependent claims (each separately obvious on the record)

7. Caveats, counter‑arguments, and confidence

1. Common‑ownership / same‑inventor risk for the Rosemount primary reference (important). US 2015/0099304 / US 9,891,162 shares the '696 FIG. 1 architecture (identical reference numerals) and the same assignee lineage. If the two applications share the same inventive entity, then '304 would not be prior art under § 102(a)(2) ("by another"), and a § 103 case built primarily on it collapses. A robust office action would instead anchor elements (a)–(c) in third‑party references — Milton Roy US 3,975,160, Radiometer US 3,874,850, or US 7,333,194 — and reserve the Rosemount sibling for context. I could not verify the '304/'162 inventor list from the retrieved text; this should be checked before relying on it as the primary reference.

2. "Fluidically‑sealed" vs. Meng's vented plate — genuine non‑obviousness argument. As discussed, Meng's disclosed mechanism (venting through hydrophobic holes) is in tension with a sealed hydrophobic liner. A well‑pleaded rebuttal would emphasize teaching away and the absence of the claimed structure. This is the single most likely basis for a non‑obviousness holding, and is consistent with the appeal history in the record (Notice of Appeal 2018‑12‑21 → Board decision 2021‑04‑27 → allowance).

3. References I could not substantiate. EP 1 482 298 A1, US 2010/0196945, US 2011/0318767, US 5,550,053, US 2005/0187439, US 2012/0293796, US 4,155,978, US 5,736,103, and CN 100507516 C are listed on the face but I have only their bibliographic data. Do not treat any specific teaching attributed to them here as verified. Two of them (EP 1 482 298, "Arrangement for continuous determination of a substance") may be additional de‑bubbling/degassing art worth retrieving, since a hydrophobic/degassing teaching there could substitute for or reinforce Meng.

4. Validity is now academic for enforcement purposes. As noted previously, the patent lapsed for non‑payment of maintenance fees (lapse recorded 2025‑10‑27, effective 2025‑09‑21). An obviousness opinion is therefore principally of historical/portfolio or defensive‑publication interest, not an infringement‑lawsuit defense — though the analysis remains relevant if the lapse were ever petitioned for revival (unverified) or for valuation of the CN 105229450 B family member.

5. Overall confidence: Moderate‑to‑high that a § 103 rejection of claim 1 is substantiable using Analyzer reference + Meng et al., given that all non‑conduit elements are in the art and Meng teaches hydrophobic flow‑path bubble capture. Moderate that the "fluidically‑sealed" limitation could nonetheless be sustained as non‑obvious over Meng alone — the crux being whether the Board treated it as a design choice or as a genuinely distinct sealed‑liner structure.

8. Bottom line

• Best primary combination: (US 2015/0099304 / US 9,891,162 or third‑party US 3,975,160 or US 3,874,850) for the analyzer/reaction‑chamber/cuvette/controller architecture + Meng et al. (2006) for the hydrophobic, flow‑path bubble‑capture teaching + a conventional hydrophobic‑polymer‑liner teaching (or Meng's own polypropylene) for the two‑material "second material" construction.
• Motivation: same field; a recognized cuvette‑bubble problem; Meng supplies the known hydrophobic‑surface solution and even names the "critical locations" concept; predictable surface‑energy result; applied to a merely conventional conduit structure.
• Residual weakness: the "fluidically‑sealed" term sits in direct tension with Meng's vented‑hole mechanism, giving the patentee a viable teaching‑away / missing‑element counterargument — and plausibly explains the appeal outcome.
• Dependent claims 7 and 8 (peristaltic pump; silica analyzer) are especially vulnerable, being literally disclosed in the same‑family Rosemount art.