Invalidity dossier

US 11127130

Machine vision system and interactive graphical user interfaces related thereto

Current assignee: Samsara Inc.

Added 9/25/2026, 10:49:52 AM

At a glanceNo PTAB challenges2 lawsuits on fileasserted by Samsara Inc.Software Technology & Computing Systems (T)

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Patent summary

Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.

✓ Generated

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number and its litigation/appeal status.

The search surfaced significant litigation findings. Let me pin down the CAFC appeal docket and the actual claim text of the '130 patent.

Let me confirm the CAFC docket and locate the actual claim text of the '130 patent.

US Patent 11,127,130 — Summary

Important preliminary note: The authoritative full text you supplied is the Google Patents rendering of US 11,127,130 B1, and it is truncated before the claims section (it ends mid‑sentence in the boilerplate). I therefore do not have the verbatim claim language of the '130 patent in hand, and I will not fabricate it. What follows separates (a) verified bibliographic/abstract facts, (b) verified litigation findings about the claims, and (c) clearly-flagged inference.


1. Bibliographic data (verified from the authoritative text and USPTO-derived sources)

Field Value
Patent number US 11,127,130 B1
Title Machine vision system and interactive graphical user interfaces related thereto
Application no. 16/567,616
Filing date September 11, 2019
Priority date April 9, 2019
Issue/grant date September 21, 2021
Assignee Samsara Inc. (originally Samsara Networks Inc.; name changed to Samsara Inc. per reassignment recorded March 19, 2021)
Inventors (14) Anubhav Jain; John Bicket; Yu Kang Chen; Arthur Pohsiang Huang; Adam Eric Funkenbusch; Sanjit Zubin Biswas; Benjamin Arthur Calderon; Andrew William Deagon; William Waldman; Noah Paul Gonzales; Ruben Vardanyan; Somasundara Pandian; Ye-Sheng Kuo; Siri Amrit Ramos
Status / adjusted expiration Active; adjusted expiration listed as 2039-12-10
Classifications G06T 7/0002; G06T 1/0007; G06T 1/0014; G06K 9/4604; G06V 10/44; G06V 20/52; etc.
Family continuation US 17/445,805 → US 11,694,317 B1 (filed Aug. 24, 2021; issued Jul. 4, 2023)

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11127130/en

2. Abstract (verbatim from the patent)

"Machine vision devices may be configured to automatically connect to a remote management server (e.g., a 'cloud'-based management server), and may offload and/or communicate images and analyses to the remote management server via wired or wireless communications. The machine vision devices may further communicate with the management server, user computing devices, and/or human machine interface devices, e.g., to provide remote access to the machine vision device, provide real-time information from the machine vision device, receive configurations/updates, provide interactive graphical user interfaces, and/or the like."

Source: https://uspto.report/patent/grant/11,127,130

3. Overview of the independent claims

What is verifiable: Litigation records identify claims 1 and 5 as the asserted claims of the '130 patent (both were found not infringed, not anticipated/obvious, but patent-ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101 in the ITC's Final Initial Determination). That is consistent with two independent claims — and the written description confirms the patent is directed to a cloud/server-configured machine vision device with interactive GUIs. However, I do not have the verbatim text of either claim, so I am not restating them.

Closest authoritative proxy (clearly labeled): The '130 patent's continuation, US 11,694,317 B1, has independent claims 1 (computer system) and 11 (computer-implemented method). Justia reproduces its claim 1 as a computer system whose processor executes instructions to:

  • generate data useable for rendering a graphical user interface;
  • receive, via the GUI, a selection of a first feature and a second feature of a first image;
  • receive, via the GUI, a selection of a trigger;
  • determine configuration data based at least in part on the first feature and the trigger; and
  • provide the configuration data to a machine vision system for execution by the machine vision system.

Dependent claims add: the first image received from the (remote, secure) machine vision system; the second feature spatially located relative to the first; image adjustments; a tolerance threshold; processing additional images and displaying an evaluation; a live image feed; and aggregation/partitioning of images and analysis data.

Source: https://patents.justia.com/patent/[11694317](/patent/11694317)

Plain-language reading (inference, not verbatim): Claim 1 of the '130 is best characterized as a server/computer-system claim: a user, through a browser-based GUI, selects features in an image captured by a machine vision device and defines a trigger; the system compiles that into configuration data and pushes it to a remote machine vision device that then executes the inspection autonomously. Claim 5 is a second independent claim in the same family (system/method/CRM category), whose precise scope I cannot confirm without the claim text. Treat this paragraph as a reasonable gloss supported by the specification, not as claim language.


4. Litigation / CAFC 2026 docket status for this patent


5. Explicit uncertainty / caveats

  1. Claim text: I do not have the verbatim claims of US 11,127,130. My description of the independent claims is based on the specification plus the directly related continuation (US 11,694,317), and is labeled as such. Verify against the issued patent's claims before relying on it.
  2. Claim 5: I confirmed claim 5 was asserted and adjudicated, but I cannot confirm its statutory category (apparatus vs. method vs. CRM) or its precise limitations.
  3. CAFC 26-1630: Caption/filing date/court confirmed; scope of appeal not confirmed.
  4. Data artifact noted, not corrected: The Google Patents page lists an ITC case "337-TA-3722" alongside 337-TA-1393. I am reporting this literally as displayed; it is inconsistent with the ITC's own Federal Register notices, which identify only 337-TA-1393 for this patent family. I flag it rather than resolve it.
  5. Number discipline: Everything above concerns 11,127,130 only. I have not substituted results for similarly numbered patents (e.g., 11,694,317, 11,217,546, 12,117,546, 11,875,580), and where I cite them I identify them explicitly as separate documents.

Generated 9/25/2026, 12:48:09 PM

Cases on file (2)

Group view →

Specific litigation cases in our database that name US patent 11127130. The free-form analysis below may also discuss cases beyond this list.

Litigation summary

Past and pending lawsuits — plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, outcomes, and notable rulings.

✓ Generated

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11127130 specifically.

Let me dig into the specific case records: the ITC investigations, the Federal Circuit appeal, and the newer cases.

Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,127,130 (US 11127130 B1)

Bottom line: Yes — this patent has been litigated. It is one of three Samsara patents asserted against Motive Technologies (formerly KeepTruckin) in a parallel district-court / ITC campaign, and it was the sole one of the three to survive the ITC's anticipation/obviousness analysis (it was instead held patent-ineligible under § 101 by the ALJ). The ITC branch is now final and on appeal to the Federal Circuit.

Patent identification (literal): US 11,127,130 B1, titled "Machine vision system and interactive graphical user interfaces related thereto," Samsara Inc. assignee, priority date 2019-04-09, granted 2021-09-21. In the ITC and district court papers below it is referred to as "the '130 patent."


1. Samsara Inc. v. Motive Technologies, Inc. — D. Del. No. 1:24-cv-00084

Item Detail
Plaintiff Samsara Inc.
Defendant Motive Technologies, Inc.
Jurisdiction U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware
Case No. 1:24-cv-00084 (assigned to Judge Noreika)
Filing date January 24, 2024
Patents asserted U.S. 11,611,621 ('621); U.S. 11,127,130 ('130); U.S. 11,190,373 ('373) — plus Lanham Act false advertising, California fraud, CFAA, and UCL claims
Outcome / status Venue transferred. On August 14, 2024, Judge Noreika granted Motive's § 1404(a) motion and ordered the case transferred to the Northern District of California. No merits ruling on infringement or validity of the '130 patent was issued in Delaware.

Sources: CourtListener opinion, Samsara Inc. v. Motive Technologies Inc., 3:24-cv-06049; PatSnap case summary; Motive's Notice of Developments, N.D. Cal. 3:24-cv-00902, ECF 57.

2. Samsara Inc. v. Motive Technologies Inc. — N.D. Cal. No. 3:24-cv-06049-JD

Item Detail
Plaintiff Samsara Inc.
Defendant Motive Technologies, Inc.
Jurisdiction U.S. District Court for the Northern District of California (Judge James Donato)
Case No. 3:24-cv-06049-JD (transferee of D. Del. 1:24-cv-00084)
Filing date Originally filed Jan. 24, 2024 (D. Del.); docketed in N.D. Cal. following the Aug. 14, 2024 transfer
Patents asserted Same three Samsara patents, including the '130 patent
Outcome / status Pending / not resolved on the merits. The '130 infringement claims have not been adjudicated. Press reporting as of March 2026 indicates the remaining patent and trade-secret pieces were sitting in stayed proceedings with no trial date set, with preclusion arguments flowing from the parallel JAMS arbitration (Judge Ware, Ret.) Partial Final Award of Feb. 4, 2026.

Sources: CourtListener docket 3:24-cv-06049; CourtListener minute entry, ECF 108; FreightWaves.

3. Certain Vehicle Telematics, Fleet Management, and Video-Based Safety Systems, Devices, and Components Thereof — USITC Inv. No. 337-TA-1393

Item Detail
Complainant Samsara Inc. (San Francisco, CA)
Respondent Motive Technologies Inc. (San Francisco, CA); Office of Unfair Import Investigations (OUII) also a party
Jurisdiction U.S. International Trade Commission, Section 337 (19 U.S.C. § 1337)
Investigation No. 337-TA-1393
Complaint filed February 8/9, 2024
Instituted March 12, 2024 (Commission vote); notice published 89 FR 19356 (March 18, 2024)
Patents asserted U.S. 11,611,621; U.S. 11,127,130; U.S. 11,190,373
Outcome / status No violation; investigation terminated. Now on appeal.

Findings specific to the '130 patent (Final Initial Determination, ALJ, Sept. 8, 2025; the Commission's review notices variously cite Sept. 8 and Sept. 22, 2025):

  • Samsara did not prove infringement of claims 1 and 5.
  • Motive did not prove claims 1 and 5 anticipated or obvious.
  • Motive did prove claims 1 and 5 patent ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101.
  • Samsara failed the technical prong of the domestic industry requirement for the '130 patent.

Commission determination (Feb. 5, 2026; published 91 FR 5954 / FR Doc. 2026-02577, Feb. 10, 2026): the Commission reviewed in part, including the '130 patent § 101 finding, took no position on the issues under review, declined review of the remaining issues, affirmed no violation of Section 337, and terminated the investigation. The presiding judge's recommended determination had proposed a limited exclusion order, cease-and-desist order and 100% bond, but no remedial order issued because no violation was found.

Sources: Federal Register notice, 91 FR 5954; USITC notice 337_1393_notice02052026sgl.pdf; USITC notice 337_1393_notice01102025.pdf (partial termination of '621 claims 9, 15–19); lawyerfanzhang summary of the final determination.

4. Samsara Inc. v. International Trade Commission — Fed. Cir. No. 26-1630

Item Detail
Appellant Samsara Inc.
Appellee U.S. International Trade Commission (Motive Technologies, Inc. as intervenor/respondent in interest)
Jurisdiction U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
Appeal No. 26-1630
Filing date April 8, 2026
Outcome / status Pending. This is the direct appeal of the ITC's no-violation determination in Inv. No. 337-TA-1393, which necessarily puts the '130 patent's § 101/domestic-industry rulings at issue.

Sources: UniCourt, U.S. Courts of Appeals filings, 04/08/2026; Unified Patents litigation entry listed on the Google Patents page (CAFC case 26-1630).


Other docket entries that list this patent

  • NPE/Stanford litigation database lists exactly one case for patent 11127130: Samsara Inc. v. Motive Technologies Inc., Civil Action 3:24-cv-06049, venue N.D. Cal., asserter category "8 – Product company," alleged infringer Motive Technologies Inc. This is the same matter as items 1–2 above (the transferred Delaware case). Source
  • Google Patents' own "Family has litigation" field for US11127130B1 lists four litigation entries: N.D. Cal. 4:24-cv-06049, D. Del. 1:24-cv-00084, Fed. Cir. 26-1630, and an ITC case numbered 337-TA-1393 — consistent with the above.
  • Unverified: the same Google Patents page also displays a second ITC entry, "International Trade Commission case 337-TA-3722." I was unable to verify a 337-TA-3722 investigation connected to this patent (my search returned no matching ITC record), and the sequential ITC numbering makes it implausible as a companion to 337-TA-1393. I am reporting it literally as it appears on the patent page, and flagging it as an unverified/possibly erroneous database artifact rather than asserting it as a case.

Related but does NOT involve the '130 patent as an asserted patent (for completeness)

  • Motive Technologies, Inc. v. Samsara Inc., N.D. Cal. No. 3:24-cv-00902-JD (filed Feb. 15, 2024) — Motive's mirror suit asserting Motive's patents (e.g., U.S. 11,875,580; 12,0xx,xxx ('276); and the '243 patent), plus trade secret, defamation, Lanham Act and UCL claims. The '130 patent is not asserted by Motive here. CourtListener docket
  • Samsara Inc. v. Motive Technologies, Inc., W.D. Tex. No. 7:2026-cv-00225 — a newer § 100 patent-infringement suit listed as filed June 8, 2026. Note: that filing date postdates the "current date" you gave me (April 26, 2026), and I could not confirm from the docket snippet which patents are asserted. Treat as unconfirmed as to the '130 patent. Docket snippet
  • IPR2025-00574 (Samsara v. Motive, PTAB) challenges Motive's U.S. 11,875,580 — not the '130 patent. Source

Verification caveats

  • Docket-level details (current stay status, any pending dispositive motions in 3:24-cv-06049, current appellate briefing in 26-1630) are reported from secondary reporting and snippets rather than a live PACER/CourtListener pull performed in this session; confirm against PACER and the Federal Circuit docket before relying on them.
  • I found no litigation involving US 11,127,130 brought by any party other than Samsara Inc., and no assertion of this patent against any defendant other than Motive Technologies, Inc.
  • I did not find results for similar patent numbers being conflated here; the two unrelated "Samsara" hits (a Connecticut treadmill/Chapco case and a third-party infringement complaint against Samsara) do not involve patent 11,127,130 and are excluded.

Generated 9/25/2026, 12:48:09 PM

Proceedings on file (0)

All PTAB activity →

AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) filed at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board against this patent. Sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and refreshed every six hours; each proceeding number deep-links to the PTAB E2E docket.

Current assignee: Samsara Inc.

No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.

PTAB challenges

AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.

✓ Generated

I'll start by pulling the structured list (it says none) and then try to surface any PTAB proceedings via web search.

Let me search specifically for IPRs naming the '130 patent and check the Unified Patents portal entry.

Let me confirm whether any IPR was ever filed against the '130 patent itself (as opposed to Samsara's IPRs against Motive's patents).

Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings on file for US 11,127,130. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal) returns an empty set, and my independent searches surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition naming the '130 patent as the challenged patent — not by Motive, not by Unified Patents, not by anyone. Breakdown by status is therefore: active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0.

The defensively important consequence: no PTAB outcome has touched the '130, so no § 315(e)(2) estoppel has attached to anyone with respect to the '130's claims. A defendant today — or any defendant — retains the entire prior-art universe against claims 1–5. Note carefully, though, that the absence of PTAB activity does not mean the patent is healthy. The '130 patent's validity has been litigated hard in the ITC, where the ALJ found asserted claims 1 and 5 patent-ineligible under § 101 on 2025-09-08. That is a non-PTAB invalidity event and it is the most consequential data point for a defense, even though it carries no estoppel effect.

⚠️ Flag from web search: the PTAB activity swirling around this patent family is real but is on Motive's patents, with Samsara as petitioner (IPR2025-00574 on the '580; IPR2026-00034 on the '276; IPR2026-00108 on the '243). Those do not involve the '130. Details below so you can map the ecosystem and the estoppel/interplay risk.


No proceedings on US 11,127,130 — what the record actually shows

Because there is nothing to list proceeding-by-proceeding for the '130, the following is the adjacent PTAB record plus the validity events that actually bear on the '130. None of the entries below is an AIA trial on the '130 patent.

IPR2025-00574 — Samsara, Inc. v. Motive Technologies, Inc. (⚠️ different patent: US 11,875,580)

  • Type: Inter Partes Review
  • Filed: 2025-02-14 (Samsara's own Notice of Pendency, N.D. Cal. Dkt. 81, states the petition to cancel claims 1–7 of the '580 patent was filed 2025-02-14 and docketed as IPR2025-00574)
  • Status: Instituted 2025-08 (per Motive's stay opposition); Final Written Decision reportedly issued 2026-07-29
  • Judge panel: Not confirmed from primary sources in my search set — do not rely on any panel attribution I cannot verify.
  • Petition grounds: § 103 obviousness of claims 1–7 over Choe (Ground 1); Choe in view of Khan/Ali (Ground 2); Choe in view of Workman (Ground 3); Choe in view of Westmacott (Ground 4); plus Grounds 5–6. Per Petitioner's Reply declaration (EX1085, 2026-02-11).
  • Institution decision: Granted Aug 2025 — the sole institution among the three Samsara IPRs (per Motive's opposition, ECF 148: "Of the three IPR petitions Samsara filed, only one has been instituted, and that institution occurred in August 2025.")
  • Final Written Decision: A single secondary news aggregator (Inoreader's IP news feed) reports the PTAB "said that challenged claims of Motive Technologies Inc.'s patent ... aren't obvious over prior art, in an inter partes review by Samsara Inc., Samsara Inc. v. Motive Technologies Inc., P.T.A.B., IPR 2025-00574, 7/29/26." Treat this as low-confidence and single-sourced — I could not verify it against the FWD text or the PTAB E2E docket. If accurate, the '580 claims survived on obviousness, which is a bad signal for Samsara's offensive posture in the parallel litigation but says nothing about the '130.
  • Appeal: Unknown / not surfaced.
  • Defensive value: Zero direct value against the '130. Indirectly useful only as a precedent bank on how the Board views "predictive model"-type machine-vision claim language if another party ever petitions on the '130's image-processing claims.

IPR2026-00034 (’276 patent) and IPR2026-00108 (’243 patent) — Samsara, Inc. v. Motive Technologies, Inc. (⚠️ different patents)

  • Type: Inter Partes Review
  • Filed: 2026-10-17 (’276) and 2026-11-14 (’243) — dates as recited in Samsara's stay motion; note these are after today's date (2026-09-25), which means the N.D. Cal. docket text I retrieved describes events on a schedule I cannot independently corroborate. Verify before relying on these dates.
  • Status: Petition stage; institution decisions not yet rendered per the retrieved docket text
  • Defensive value: None for the '130. These show Samsara as an aggressive PTAB petitioner against a competitor — a useful pattern signal about how this patent owner behaves on defense when its own patents are attacked.

Not a PTAB proceeding, but the decisive '130 validity event: ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-1393

  • Filed: complaint 2024-02-09; Commission instituted investigation 2024-03-18 (89 Fed. Reg. 19356)
  • Asserted: US 11,127,130 (claims 1 and 5), US 11,611,621, US 11,190,373
  • ALJ Final Initial Determination: 2025-09-08 — for the '130 patent: (1) Samsara did not show infringement of claims 1 and 5; (2) Motive did not show claims 1 and 5 invalid as anticipated or obvious; (3) Motive did show claims 1 and 5 patent-ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101; (4) Samsara failed the technical prong of the domestic industry requirement. Source: ALJ FID notice.
  • Commission review: 2026-02-05 — reviewed in part and affirmed a finding of no violation of section 337; investigation terminated. The Commission's review list included whether "claims 1 and 5 of the '130 patent [are] not compliant with 35 USC 101." Source: 89 FR notice, 2026-02577 (2026-02-10).
    • Caveat I will not paper over: my sources do not unambiguously state how the § 101 issue was disposed of on Commission review (affirmed, or reviewed-and-not-reached because the no-violation finding already ended the investigation). Confirm against the underlying Commission notice before quoting a disposition.
  • Defensive value (critical): An ITC § 101 finding is not a patent-invalidity judgment and has no collateral-estoppel effect on the district court. It is persuasive record evidence — an Article III court may find it useful, but Samsara is not barred from asserting claims 1 and 5 elsewhere. Parallel assertion continues in Samsara Inc. v. Motive Technologies, Inc., No. 3:24-cv-06049 (N.D. Cal.) (Stanford NPE database).

Data anomalies in the structured litigation block (not PTAB proceedings)

Two identifiers in the Google Patents litigation block do not match anything I could verify, and I am reporting them literally per instruction rather than normalizing them:

  • "International Trade Commission, 337-TA-3722" — the real Samsara/Motive ITC investigation is 337-TA-1393. The string "337-TA-3722" appears in Unified Patents' document-metadata captions for the pre-institution February 2024 ITC complaint filings. It is not an ITC investigation number consistent with the 2024 docket and is not a PTAB proceeding.
  • "Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, case 26-1630" — an unidentified CAFC appeal tied to this family. Given the 2026-02-05 ITC termination, an appeal of that determination is plausible, but I cannot confirm what 26-1630 challenges or whether the '130 is within its scope. Do not represent it as a '130 appeal without checking the docket.

Strategic summary

Claim status of the '130. Claims 1 and 5 are UNTESTED at the PTAB — they were never challenged in an AIA trial, so they remain statutorily alive at the USPTO. Federally, their validity has been adjudicated in the ITC only, where the ALJ found both patent-ineligible under § 101 (2025-09-08) after also finding no infringement and no domestic industry as to the '130. That is a strong posture for a defendant on the merits, but it is not the same thing as cancellation. Claims 2–4 and 6+ were never adjudicated anywhere in the material I reviewed — they are UNTESTED across the board.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR/PGR/CBM petition was ever filed against the '130, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a non-issue for this patent. No petitioner, and no privy of any petitioner, is barred from raising any § 102/§ 103 ground against claims 1–5 in district court. The entire prior-art field is open, subject only to the ordinary rules (Patent L.R. contentions, § 282 disclosure, and the district court's discretion). By contrast, Samsara's IPR2025-00574 on the '580 patent is the only Samsara IPR that reached institution, and any estoppel arising there attaches to Samsara as petitioner in the '580 litigation — not to the '130.

Pattern signals.

  • Same petitioner filing multiple IPRs? Yes, but inverted: it is Samsara, the '130's owner, filing three IPRs (IPR2025-00574, IPR2026-00034, IPR2026-00108) against Motive's '580/'276/'243 patents. Motive, notably, has never petitioned the PTAB against the '130 — it chose to run its '130 invalidity case through the ITC and the district court, including an extensive invalidity-contention program (Initial contentions 2024-05-30; Final contentions 2024-07-22; Exhibits A01–A15, B01–B17, C01–C21).
  • Defensive aggregator in the chain? No. Unified Patents appears in the record only as a litigation-data aggregator indexing this patent and its family; I found no Unified Patents (or any other aggregator) IPR petition on the '130.
  • Aggressive appeals? No PTAB appeal exists to be aggressive about on the '130. The only appellate thread is the unverified CAFC 26-1630 entry noted above.

Recommended next steps

  1. Do not represent that this patent has survived any IPR. It hasn't faced one. If opposing counsel suggests "the patent has been hardened by PTAB proceedings," that is false as to the '130.
  2. If you are a defendant and a demand letter cites claims 1–5 of the '130, the immediate leverage is the ITC § 101 finding. Quote it precisely from the ALJ FID: "Motive has shown that claims 1 and 5 are patent ineligible under 35 U.S.C. 101" (ALJ FID, 2025-09-08), and from the Commission's review notice terminating the investigation with a finding of no violation (2026-02577). Frame it as persuasive authority and § 101 record evidence — not collateral estoppel. The ITC has no power to invalidate a patent.
  3. An IPR on the '130 is still available to you and is not time-barred by anyone else's petition. There is no § 315(b) one-year bar inherited from a prior petitioner, and no § 325(d) "previously presented art" problem from a prior PTAB record. The main § 315(b) clock to watch is your own: one year from service of a complaint on you.
  4. Get primary-source confirmation on three open items before filing anything: (a) the FWD text and panel in IPR2025-00574 — I have only a single low-confidence news blurb for a 2026-07-29 decision on the '580; (b) how the Commission disposed of the '130 § 101 issue on partial review; (c) what CAFC No. 26-1630 actually is.
  5. Track the live litigation, because that is where the '130 risk is. Samsara Inc. v. Motive Technologies, Inc., No. 3:24-cv-06049 (N.D. Cal.), plus the counterclaim action Motive Techs., Inc. v. Samsara, Inc., No. 3:24-cv-00902-JD (N.D. Cal.), where the court has set claim construction for April 2026 and trial for 2027-08-30 (CourtListener docket). If the court rules on the § 101 challenges, that will be a far more important signal for you than anything at the PTAB — where, as of today, there is simply nothing on file.

Generated 9/25/2026, 12:48:24 PM

Ownership chain (2)

Asserters network →

Structured records extracted from the assignment-history narrative below. Each entity links to its full ownership-network profile.

  1. ? · recorded 2019-10-02 · Assignment

    Anubhav Jain; John Bicket; Yu Kang Chen; Arthur Pohsiang Huang; Adam Eric Funkenbusch; Sanjit Zubin Biswas; Benjamin Arthur Calderon; Andrew William Deagon; William Waldman; Noah Paul Gonzales; Ruben Vardanyan; Somasundara Pandian; Ye-Sheng Kuo; Siri Amrit RamosSAMSARA NETWORKS INC.

    acquisition

  2. ? · recorded 2021-03-19 · Change of Name

    SAMSARA NETWORKS INC.SAMSARA INC.

    change of name only

Assignment history

Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.

✓ Generated

I'll research the assignment chain for US 11,127,130, starting with the Patent Assignment Search records and cross-referencing Samsara's corporate history.

Key finding on corporate status. Let me hunt for the actual reel/frame records and any other assignments.

Let me try to pull the actual reel/frame records and check for any security interests or later transfers.

Note on sourcing: I was unable to complete a live pull of the USPTO Assignment Center's per-record detail pages (reel/frame, correspondent) before my search budget was exhausted. The assignment facts below are taken from (a) the USPTO-derived legal-events data in the authoritative text you supplied, (b) Samsara's SEC filings, and (c) Samsara's own ITC complaint describing the recorded assignments as exhibits. Anything I could not verify is explicitly marked not retrieved rather than guessed.


Inventors

All fourteen named inventors were, at the time of filing (2019-09-11), personnel of Samsara Networks Inc. — the U.S. patent's applicant of record — and all fourteen assigned their rights to that entity by the recorded instrument of 2019-10-02 (see timeline). The ITC complaint confirms this: "Copies of the assignments from the named inventors to Samsara Networks, Inc. … are attached as Exhibits 5 and 6" (Samsara ITC brief, '130 patent discussion).

# Inventor Employer at filing Notes
1 Anubhav Jain Samsara Networks Inc. —
2 John Bicket Samsara Networks Inc. Co-founder of Samsara (named "Founder" in Samsara's Amended & Restated Certificate of Incorporation)
3 Yu Kang Chen Samsara Networks Inc. —
4 Arthur Pohsiang Huang Samsara Networks Inc. —
5 Adam Eric Funkenbusch Samsara Networks Inc. —
6 Sanjit Zubin Biswas Samsara Networks Inc. Co-founder of Samsara; the other named "Founder"
7 Benjamin Arthur Calderon Samsara Networks Inc. —
8 Andrew William Deagon Samsara Networks Inc. —
9 William Waldman Samsara Networks Inc. —
10 Noah Paul Gonzales Samsara Networks Inc. —
11 Ruben Vardanyan Samsara Networks Inc. —
12 Somasundara Pandian Samsara Networks Inc. —
13 Ye-Sheng Kuo Samsara Networks Inc. —
14 Siri Amrit Ramos Samsara Networks Inc. —

Unusual-pattern check — no adverse finding. The signal you flagged (all inventors departing the original assignee within 12 months of filing, often preceding a portfolio fire-sale) is not present: thirteen of the fourteen are still tied to Samsara's contemporaneous filings (Gonzales, Kuo, Chen, Ramos and others recur as inventors on later Samsara applications, e.g. US 11,451,611 and US 11,157,723), and founders Biswas and Bicket remain Samsara's CEO and CTO respectively. I could not independently confirm title/role for every inventor, so the "employer at filing" column rests on the assignment record rather than on an HR confirmation.


Original assignee

Entity named on the issued patent: Samsara Inc., San Francisco, CA (NYSE: IOT) — but note the patent issued September 21, 2021, i.e. after the February 2021 name change, so the face of the patent reflects the post-rename name while the underlying application was filed by Samsara Networks Inc. The original applicant was Samsara Networks Inc.

  • Primary line of business: Samsara describes itself as "the pioneers of the Connected Operations Cloud" — IoT hardware/software for physical operations: fleet telematics, vehicle gateways, AI dash cams and video-based safety, asset tracking. The '130 patent's subject matter (industrial machine vision with camera + controller modules, cloud-configured inspection) sits outside the fleet-telematics core that generated most of its litigation portfolio.
  • Does it ship a product embodying the claims? This is the one genuinely contested fact, and the answer is negative as adjudicated: the ITC's Final Initial Determination (Sept. 2025) found Samsara failed the "technical prong" of the domestic-industry requirement for the '130 patent, i.e. it did not prove that a domestic industry product practices the '130 claims. That is a concrete, record-based data point that cuts against "ships a product embodying the claims" for this specific patent — even though Samsara as a company plainly ships hardware (gateways, dash cams).
  • Current status: Operating and public. Delaware corporation from 2015 (as Samsara Networks Inc.); renamed Samsara Inc. February 2021; IPO'd on the NYSE under "IOT" in December 2021; converted to a Nevada corporation effective June 1, 2026. Not acquired, not dissolved, no bankruptcy of which I am aware.

Sources: Samsara 10-K "Description of Business"; Samsara Amended & Restated Certificate of Incorporation (Founder definition); Samsara quarterly filing noting the June 1 2026 Nevada conversion.


Assignment timeline

Two (2) recorded instruments exist for US 11,127,130. Reel/frame numbers and correspondents were not retrievable in this session and are marked as such — I will not invent them.

  • Executed date: not captured / recorded 2019-10-02 — Reel not retrieved/not retrieved

    • Conveyance: Assignment — "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)"
    • Assignor: All fourteen named inventors (Jain; Bicket; Chen; Huang; Funkenbusch; Biswas; Calderon; Deagon; Waldman; Gonzales; Vardanyan; Pandian; Kuo; Ramos)
    • Assignee: SAMSARA NETWORKS INC. (Delaware)
    • Correspondent: not retrieved — cannot confirm whether this attorney also handled the 2021 recording
    • Context: ordinary initial acquisition — employment/inventor assignment of right, title and interest to the applicant-owner; recorded ~3 weeks after the 2019-09-11 filing.
  • Executed date: not captured / recorded 2021-03-19 — Reel not retrieved/not retrieved

    • Conveyance: Change of Name — "CHANGE OF NAME (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)"
    • Assignor: SAMSARA NETWORKS INC.
    • Assignee: SAMSARA INC.
    • Correspondent: not retrieved
    • Context: change of name only — a purely re-naming record-ation to align the patent register with the February 2021 Delaware certificate amendment; no change in beneficial ownership and no monetary consideration.

No other records. I found no post-issuance assignment, no security agreement / grant of security interest recorded against this patent, no merger record, no release, and no transfer to any third party or licensing entity. Absence of a security agreement is notable and consistent with Samsara being an over-capitalized public company (raised at IPO) rather than a debt-financed patent holder.

Verification link: the record set is queryable by patent number at the USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (older index: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html).


Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11127130
    2015 : Samsara incorporated in Delaware
    2019 : Application filed by Samsara Networks Inc
         : Inventors assign rights to Samsara Networks Inc
    2021 : Name change recorded to Samsara Inc
         : Patent issued
    2024 : Samsara asserts patent against Motive
    2026 : Samsara converts to a Nevada corporation

NPE / troll-pattern signals

  1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only ownership movement is inventors → Samsara Networks Inc. (2019-10-02) and a change of name to Samsara Inc. (2021-03-19). No "IP/Holdings/Licensing/Ventures" suffix, no single-purpose LLC, no registered-agent address, no consideration-based transfer.

  2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither Samsara Networks Inc. nor Samsara Inc. appears on any public NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, Spangenberg entities, etc.). The Stanford NPE Litigation Database classifies the sole asserter of this patent as "8 – Product company." Sources: Stanford NPE DB, patent 11127130.

  3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / not retrieved. The two recordings would almost certainly have been filed by the same patents-docketing channel (Samsara's IP counsel), and the "recurrence" test would be satisfied — but I could not pull the correspondent-of-record names from either reel, so I will not assert this. Not a finding without the names.

  4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Two records across ~17 months of the patent's life, one of which is a non-transactional name change; effectively a single substantive transfer (inventors → company) in the patent's ~4.5-year history.

  5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. The last ownership record on the register is the 2021-03-19 name change; the first infringement suit naming this patent was filed 2024-01-24 (D. Del. 1:24-cv-00084, later transferred to N.D. Cal. 3:24-cv-06049) — i.e. ~34 months after the last assignment, far outside the 6-month pre-litigation window. No clean-standing or venue-setting assignment was created to enable assertion.

  6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No Chapter 7/11 by any assignor/assignee; Samsara is a publicly traded, going-concern operator.

  7. Privateering — Not present. The operative entity on both the register and the complaint is the same: Samsara Inc. sues Motive Technologies Inc., a direct competitor in fleet telematics/video safety, asserting patents it owns outright. There is no operating company renting an NPE to sue on its behalf.

  8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents or OIN; title remains with the operating company.


Verdict

Operating-company assertion

The entire chain is two records and stays in-house: inventors → Samsara Networks Inc. (recorded 2019-10-02), then a bare change of name to Samsara Inc. (recorded 2021-03-19), with no shell entity, no security interest, no NPE on the register, and no transfer inside the 6-month pre-suit window before the January 2024 suits. Samsara is a public operating company (NYSE: IOT) asserting the patent against a direct competitor, Motive Technologies; the Stanford NPE database categorizes it as a "Product company," and none of the eight NPE signals is present. The one cautionary overlay is enforceability, not ownership: the ITC found claims 1 and 5 §101-ineligible and found Samsara failed the technical prong of domestic industry for the '130 patent — but a validity/domestic-industry loss does not convert a genuine operating-company owner into an NPE.

Caveats to carry forward: (i) reel/frame numbers and correspondents of record were not retrieved, so signal #3 is unverified rather than negative; verify at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ before citing this chain formally; (ii) the June 1, 2026 Delaware→Nevada conversion is a corporate event that may later generate a change-of-name or merger-type patent recordation — confirm whether one has been filed on or after that date.

Generated 9/25/2026, 12:48:48 PM

Prior art

Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.

✓ Generated

I'll search the USPTO and patent databases for the specific prior-art citations of US 11,127,130.

Let me target the patent's front-page citation lists directly.

I found the front-page citation list. Let me retrieve the complete list, including the truncated portion and any non-patent literature.

Prior-art citations of US 11,127,130 B1 — what I could and could not retrieve

Method note (important): I could not run a live USPTO Patent Center / PAIR or USPTO full-text query with the tools available in this session. What follows is drawn from the printed front page of the patent as rendered by Justia's patent database (patents.justia.com/patent/11127130), which reproduces the "References Cited" section. I have not auto-corrected any number, name, or date. Where the source list was truncated in retrieval, I say so rather than fill the gap.

Retrieval gap you must know about: the "Referenced Cited" list I obtained ends mid-entry at the publication number 202003422…. I could not retrieve (a) the remainder of that U.S. publication list, (b) any Foreign Patent Documents cited on the face of the '130, or (c) any Other Publications / non-patent literature cited on the face of the '130. I am not guessing at those.


1. Framing: two different prior-art populations exist for this patent

Population What it is Status in my session
A. Face-of-patent citations The references printed under "References Cited" on the '130 (examiner citations + applicant IDS). This is what "patent citations for 11127130" most literally means. Partially retrieved (U.S. patent documents only; list truncated at the end).
B. Litigation invalidity art The references Motive Technologies actually relied on in its invalidity contentions for the '130 in ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-1393 (Exhibits A01–A15, B01–B17, C01–C16, and "Exhibit AAA"). Not enumerated — I confirmed these exhibits exist and are docketed, but could not retrieve their contents.

Population A is not the same set as Population B. Reporting A as if it were the asserted invalidating art would be wrong, so I keep them separate.

Sources re Population B: Unified Patents portal, US-12179629-B1 litigation entries ; Justia, patent 12179629 litigation documents list ; Justia, patent 12289181 litigation documents list.


2. U.S. patent documents cited on the face of the '130 (as retrieved)

Order/format as displayed at patents.justia.com/patent/11127130 ("Referenced Cited — U.S. Patent Documents"). Dates are the dates printed in that list (grant dates for patents, publication dates for publications).

# Number Date Inventor as listed Description (see confidence key)
1 6,157,864 Dec. 5, 2000 Schwenke et al. Machine-vision / vision-control system — not verified
2 6,801,920 Oct. 5, 2004 Wischinski not verified
3 7,596,417 Sep. 29, 2009 Fister et al. not verified
4 7,957,936 Jun. 7, 2011 Eryurek et al. Web-services-based communications for process control systems — moderate confidence
5 9,230,250 Jan. 5, 2016 Parker et al. not verified
6 9,445,270 Sep. 13, 2016 Bicket et al. Samsara-family wireless/gateway subject matter — moderate confidence
7 10,033,706 Jul. 24, 2018 Bicket et al. as above — moderate confidence
8 10,085,149 Sep. 25, 2018 Bicket et al. as above — moderate confidence
9 10,102,495 Oct. 16, 2018 Zhang et al. not verified
10 10,173,486 Jan. 8, 2019 Lee et al. not verified
11 10,196,071 Feb. 5, 2019 Rowson et al. not verified
12 10,206,107 Feb. 12, 2019 Bicket et al. Samsara-family — moderate confidence
13 10,388,075 Aug. 20, 2019 Schmirler et al. not verified
14 10,390,227 Aug. 20, 2019 Bicket et al. Samsara-family — moderate confidence
15 10,444,949 Oct. 15, 2019 Scott et al. not verified
16 10,579,123 Mar. 3, 2020 Tuan et al. not verified
17 10,609,114 Mar. 31, 2020 Bicket et al. Samsara-family — moderate confidence
18 10,827,324 Nov. 3, 2020 Hajimiri et al. not verified
19 10,843,659 Nov. 24, 2020 Innocenzi et al. not verified
20 2002/0169850 Nov. 14, 2002 Batke et al. not verified
21 2013/0211559 Aug. 15, 2013 Lawson et al. not verified
22 2014/0328517 Nov. 6, 2014 Gluncic not verified
23 2014/0337429 Nov. 13, 2014 Asenjo et al. "Industrial data analytics in a cloud platform" — moderate-to-high confidence
24 2017/0060726 Mar. 2, 2017 Glistvain not verified
25 2017/0123397 May 4, 2017 Billi et al. not verified
26 2017/0195265 Jul. 6, 2017 Billi et al. not verified
27 2017/0278004 Sep. 28, 2017 McElhinney et al. not verified
28 2018/0234514 Aug. 16, 2018 Rajiv et al. not verified
29 2018/0356800 Dec. 13, 2018 Chao et al. not verified
30 2018/0364686 Dec. 20, 2018 Naidoo et al. not verified
31 2019/0327613 Oct. 24, 2019 Bicket et al. Samsara-family — moderate confidence
32 2020/0150739 May 14, 2020 Tuan et al. not verified
33 2020/03422… (truncated) (truncated) not retrieved

Confidence key. I have high confidence in the number/date/inventor columns because they are transcribed from the printed list. I have low confidence in most "description" entries — I am explicitly declining to characterize references I cannot verify rather than inventing plausible-sounding titles. This is the honest state of the record, not an omission.


3. § 102 eligibility screen against the April 9, 2019 priority date

This is the step that matters for your § 102 question, because the '130 has a priority date of 2019-04-09 (per the authoritative text you supplied). A reference cannot anticipate under § 102 unless it qualifies as prior art.

Category References Why it matters
Clearly § 102(a)(1) prior art (published/granted more than a year before the critical date, or at least before it) Items 1–12, 20–23, 24–30 (all dated on or before Feb. 12, 2019, plus 2018/0364686 dated Dec. 20, 2018) These are the only face-of-patent references capable of being § 102(a)(1) art outright.
Dated after the Apr. 9, 2019 priority date 10,388,075; 10,390,227; 10,444,949; 10,579,123; 10,609,114; 10,827,324; 10,843,659; 2019/0327613; 2020/0150739; and the truncated 2020/03422… These cannot be § 102(a)(1) art on their face dates. They could only be § 102(a)(2) art (U.S. patent/publication effectively filed before the critical date but published after) — which requires checking each one's filing date, which I have not done. Treat all of these as "potentially § 102(a)(2) only, filing date unverified."

Flag: Items 6–8, 12, 14, 17, 31 are Bicket et al. references — Bicket is a named co-inventor of the '130 itself. Before treating any of those as § 102 art one would need to confirm they are not (i) commonly owned and (ii) within any § 102(b)(2)(C) exception, and that the inventive entities differ. I have not performed that analysis.


4. Which claims could these references potentially anticipate?

Two hard constraints on answering this:

  1. I do not have the verbatim claim text. The authoritative full text you supplied is truncated before the claims, and my searches did not surface the issued claim language of the '130. I will not fabricate it.
  2. The adjudicated record already answers much of this. In the ITC's Final Initial Determination (ALJ, Sept. 8, 2025) for Inv. No. 337-TA-1393, claims 1 and 5 of the '130 were found NOT anticipated and NOT obvious, and instead patent-ineligible under 35 U.S.C. § 101. So as of the current record, no reference has been judicially found to anticipate claims 1 or 5.

Sources: Federal Register notice 2026-02577, 91 FR 5954 (Feb. 10, 2026) ; lawyerfanzhang summary of the Commission determination ; USITC notice 337_1393_notice02052026sgl.pdf.

A usable (but secondary) proxy for claim 1's limitations. A litigation-analysis page reproducing Samsara's infringement mapping sets out claim 1 of the '130 element-by-element: an image sensor; a computer readable storage medium having program instructions including at least a web server; acquire an image via the image sensor; process the image to identify one or more features; determine an evaluation of the image based at least in part on the features; locally store the image and the evaluation; transmit the image and evaluation for remote storage; and execute the web server to provide secure remote access to the image and evaluation.

Source: Ex Parte AI Lab case analysis, N.D. Cal. 3:24-cv-06049, Doc. 23 (Amended Complaint). This is a secondary paraphrase, not claim language. It is consistent with the specification you supplied (which corroborates the "on-device web server + local store + offload to cloud" architecture at col. 3 and Figs. 3–4), but do not treat it as verbatim.

Against that proxy, only three face-of-patent references are even categorically positioned to be single-reference § 102 art:

  • US 2014/0337429 A1 (Asenjo et al.), Nov. 13, 2014 — "Industrial data analytics in a cloud platform." This is the reference whose subject matter most directly overlaps the '130's cloud-management-server-aggregates-and-analyzes-device-data concept. If its disclosure includes remote configuration of edge industrial devices from a cloud platform, it is the strongest candidate for a § 102 attack on the server-side / configuration-delivery concepts of the '130. Potentially relevant to: claim 1 (and by extension claim 5, whose statutory category I could not confirm). Caveat: it is an industrial-analytics disclosure, and it almost certainly lacks the machine-vision image-acquisition-trigger-web-server-on-camera combination, so a § 102 anticipation reading is doubtful and a § 103 combination reading is more realistic.
  • US 7,957,936 (Eryurek et al.), Jun. 7, 2011 — web-services-based communications for process control systems. Analogous reasoning: relevant to the "web server / remote access to device data" limitation, not to the imaging pipeline. Potentially relevant to: claim 1's web-server/remote-access element only.
  • US 6,157,864 (Schwenke et al.), Dec. 5, 2000 and US 9,230,250 (Parker et al.), Jan. 5, 2016 — if these are machine-vision inspection/control art as their citations suggest, they would be relevant to the image acquisition / feature identification / evaluation limitations. I could not verify their disclosures, so I will not state they anticipate anything. Potentially relevant to: the imaging-pipeline elements of claim 1.

For the Bicket et al. references, the subject matter is Samsara's own connectivity/gateway work; they are relevant to the transmit-for-remote-storage and web server elements, not to the vision pipeline.

Bottom line on § 102: On the face-of-patent record I can retrieve, no single reference appears to disclose all elements of claim 1, which is consistent with (and independently supports) the ITC's finding that claims 1 and 5 were not shown to be anticipated. The realistic § 102 candidates to develop are Asenjo et al. 2014/0337429 for the server-side concepts and, if verified, Schwenke 6,157,864 or Parker 9,230,250 for the vision concepts — each against only part of claim 1, which is a § 103 posture, not § 102.


5. The prior art that was actually litigated (Population B) — partial

Because your question is about anticipation risk, note that the operative invalidity art for the '130 came from Motive's contentions in 337-TA-1393, not from the face-of-patent list. I confirmed the existence of those exhibits (initial contentions May 30, 2024; final contentions Jul. 22, 2024) but could not retrieve their cited references. One third-party reference is visible in the docket text fragments: "Netradyne, Driver Card 1, 2018."

Sources: Unified Patents portal, US-12179629-B1 (Motive's Initial and Final Invalidity Contentions for the '130, '373, '621) ; Justia, patent 12289181 litigation document list.

If you want a true anticipation-risk analysis, Exhibit AAA and Exhibits A14/A15 and C01–C16 from the 337-TA-1393 contentions are the documents to pull — that is where the asserted § 102 references live.


6. Explicit uncertainties (do not treat these as resolved)

  1. Claim text: I still do not have verbatim claims 1 or 5 of the '130. All claim mapping above rests on the secondary complaint-derived element list and is labeled as such.
  2. Truncated citation list: the U.S. publication list ends at 202003422…; foreign patent documents and non-patent literature cited on the face of the '130 were not retrieved at all.
  3. Descriptions: most reference descriptions are marked not verified; I declined to supply titles I cannot substantiate.
  4. Filing dates for the post-Apr.-2019 references (items 13–19, 31–33) were not checked; their § 102(a)(2) status is therefore open.
  5. Number discipline: everything above concerns 11,127,130 only. I have not substituted results for the continuation 11,694,317, or for 11,190,373, 11,611,621, 11,875,580, 12,136,276, or 12,179,629 — those appear here only where a source explicitly ties them to the '130 litigation, and they are separate documents.
  6. Data artifact, reported literally, not corrected: the Google Patents page for this patent lists an ITC case numbered 337-TA-3722 in addition to 337-TA-1393. As flagged in the earlier sections, the ITC's own Federal Register notices identify only 337-TA-1393 for this family; I report 337-TA-3722 as displayed and do not vouch for it.

If you can supply the issued claim text (or the 337-TA-1393 Exhibit AAA / A-series contentions), I can convert Section 4 from a categorical screen into a true element-by-element § 102 anticipation chart.

Generated 9/25/2026, 12:48:58 PM

Obviousness

Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.

✓ Generated

I'll gather the prior-art record for the '130 patent before analyzing § 103. Note: the full text supplied to me is truncated before the claims, and no discrete "Prior Art section" was included in this message — let me try to reconstruct it from the patent's own citation record and the ITC invalidity record.

Good — I now have the '130's own "References Cited" list and the claim-element map from the ITC pleadings. Let me pull the specific prior-art references Motive actually relied on and the standard machine-vision art in this field.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,127,130 (35 U.S.C. § 103)

0. Scope and record note (read first)

Two limitations on this analysis, stated up front because they bound its reliability:

  1. No discrete "Prior Art" section was transmitted with this task. The task instructs me to use "the results from the Prior Art section of this page," but the message I received contains only the previously generated summary/litigation/PTAB sections and the truncated Google Patents text. I therefore treated the following as the operative prior-art record: (a) the specification's own admitted background (the paragraphs beginning "Machine vision systems may be used for a variety of manufacturing and inspection processes…"), (b) the "References Cited" list on the patent's face, and (c) additional art I independently retrieved (explicitly labeled as such in §4). If the intended Prior Art section contained different references, this analysis should be re-run against it.

  2. I still do not have the verbatim claims of the '130. The full text supplied remains truncated mid-boilerplate. Every element in §2 below is drawn from the element-by-element mapping of independent claim 1 in Samsara's own infringement claim chart (reproduced via a secondary litigation-reproduction site), which quotes the claim limitations and cites patent columns. It is a robust reconstruction but is not the issued claim text. Claim 5 remains uncharacterized.


1. The prior-art record actually available

A. Admitted prior art inside the specification (the strongest, most under-appreciated record).

The '130 background admits, in the patentee's own words:

  • Machine vision systems with CCD/CMOS cameras, used for symbology decoding (barcodes, QR, data matrices), defect detection, missing-article detection, and article-characteristic/position detection;
  • Triggering "based upon a trigger signal, provided by another opto-electric presence sensor or break beam, or based upon the timing of the moving line, which is signaled by… an encoder";
  • Outputs causing alarms, stopping a conveyor line, and actuating a rejection device (a "part kicker");
  • The problems: "configuration of machine vision systems can be time consuming, and unfriendly or impossible for non-technical users"; "configuration of individual machine vision devices may require manual interaction with the individual devices, updating firmware (e.g., by inserting memory devices or wired computer interfaces at the individual machine vision devices)"; and "gathering data from individual machine vision devices can be time-consuming and laborious, rendering impossible any real-time or near real-time analyses of such data, including any analyses of data from multiple machine vision devices."

Legally, this is significant. Specification admissions about the prior art are binding on the patentee for purposes of the obviousness inquiry (Koninklijke Philips N.V. v. Google LLC, 948 F.3d 1330, 1339 (Fed. Cir. 2020); PharmaStem Therapeutics v. ViaCell, 491 F.3d 1342, 1362 (Fed. Cir. 2007)). The '130 thus supplies its own motivation to combine: every element the patent adds (remote configuration, remote data gathering, multi-device aggregation) is framed in the specification as the known-but-unmet need. See also the PTAB's articulation of the same rule, USPTO Appeal Decision fd2019005590.

B. "References Cited" on the patent's face (per Justia, patent/11127130): US 6,157,864 (Schwenke); 6,801,920 (Wischinski); 7,596,417 (Fister); 7,957,936 (Eryurek); 9,230,250 (Parker); 9,445,270; 10,033,706; 10,085,149; 10,206,107; 10,390,227; 10,609,114 (all Bicket et al., Samsara's own founder-family); 10,102,495 (Zhang); 10,173,486 (Lee); 10,196,071 (Rowson); 10,388,075 (Schmirler); 10,444,949 (Scott); 10,579,123 (Tuan); 10,827,324 (Hajimiri); 10,843,659 (Innocenzi); and publications including 2002/0169850 (Batke), 2013/0211559 (Lawson), 2014/0328517 (Gluncic), 2014/0337429 (Asenjo), 2017/0060726 (Glistvain), 2017/0123397 and 2017/0195265 (Billi), 2017/0278004 (McElhinney), 2018/0234514 (Rajiv), 2018/0356800 (Chao), 2018/0364686 (Naidoo), 2019/0327613 (Bicket), 2020/0150739 (Tuan).

⚠️ Anomaly I will not paper over: several of these (10,444,949; 10,579,123; 10,609,114; 10,827,324; 10,843,659; 2019/0327613; 2020/0150739) have grant/publication dates after the '130's 2019-09-11 filing date. They can be prior art only under § 102(a)(2) as of an earlier effective filing date. This is consistent with the list aggregating the Samsara "vehicle gateway" family (which claims priority back to c. 2014–2015) and/or with references from the continuation US 11,694,317 rather than solely the '130's face. Verify each reference's actual § 102 date before relying on it.

C. Art not of record (my own retrieval; label these separately from A and B): the Cognex and National Instruments materials in §4. The Justia list contains no Cognex or NI reference — a meaningful gap in the examiner's record that an IPR petitioner can exploit.


2. Element decomposition of independent claim 1 (from Samsara's claim chart)

# Limitation (as charted by Samsara, citing col.:line) Nature
1 an image sensor structural
2 a computer readable storage medium having program instructions, including at least a web server structural/architectural
3 acquire an image via the image sensor functional
4 process the image to identify one or more features in the image functional
5 determine an evaluation of the image based at least in part on the one or more features functional
6 locally store the image and the evaluation functional
7 transmit the image and evaluation for remote storage functional
8 execute the web server to provide secure remote access to the image and evaluation functional

Source: Samsara's amended complaint in Samsara v. Motive, No. 3:24-cv-06049 (N.D. Cal.), count for the '130, reproduced at ai-lab.exparte.com (chart cites Compl. ¶¶158–166 and '130 cols. 1:35–1:53, 2:45–49, 3:41–44).

The crux is the combination of (2)+(6)+(7)+(8): a machine vision device itself that (i) runs a web server, (ii) stores image+evaluation locally, and (iii) pushes both to remote storage. Elements 1, 3, 4, 5 are squarely admitted prior art in the specification. Claim 5 is a second independent claim (category unconfirmed).


3. Person of ordinary skill in the art (POHSTA)

Proposed definition (mine, not from the record — the ITC claim-construction record, including the Staff's Opening Claim Construction Brief, may bear on this and I could not retrieve the constructions): a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, computer science, or mechanical engineering (or equivalent experience), plus about two to three years of experience with industrial machine vision/inspection systems or industrial automation — including vision-sensor configuration software, region-of-interest/tool configuration, industrial networking (TCP/IP, EtherNet/IP), PLC integration, and browser- or HMI-based operator interfaces. This skill level matters because a programmer of ordinary skill is precisely the archetype to whom KSR attributes "common sense" in combining predictable, off-the-shelf elements.


4. Reference catalog (what each actually teaches)

R1 — Cognex Corp., U.S. 8,056,009 B2 — "System for initiating communication between a user interface and a vision processor." Teaches a machine vision system with multiple networked vision processors and a UI that can select and connect to any VP; "the link function enables local dynamic display of a remote VP on the UI, and a dynamic connection that provides a continually updated display representing a current state of the VP connected to the UI. An operator may observe results and alter parameters on any of the VPs in the system."

R2 — Cognex Corp., U.S. 9,292,187 B2 — "System, method and graphical user interface for displaying and controlling vision system operating parameters." Teaches a GUI in which the user selects an image from "a window… containing a plurality of captured images," applies an automated region-of-interest graphic by a single click at a discrete region of the selected image, and the system automatically generates an operating parameter in response, with a contour graphic demonstrating whether the feature of interest is present/positioned in the ROI.

R3 — Cognex, WO 2013/096282 A1 — Vision system trigger/inspection architecture. Teaches: the user enters trigger-configuration mode via a GUI, selects a vision tool from a menu, "defines locations of expected edges in a runtime image of the object," configures tool parameters, adds the tool to a tool list applied to each acquired image; tools operate on ROIs; the trigger fires and the image is passed to the main inspection process. This is feature selection on an image + configurable trigger, on a metal.

R4 — Cognex In-Sight product family documentation (In-Sight Explorer / EasyBuilder; In-Sight sensor product guide). Teaches: wizard/GUI-driven configuration with toggle buttons, checkboxes, pass/fail LEDs pieced together into operator interface screens; built-in Ethernet; Vision Area Network grouping multiple sensors "managed by a host," uplinkable to plant/enterprise networks so that "any workstation with TCP/IP capability can display vision results, images, statistical data"; and the explicit commercial objective to "Manage vision activity remotely and share applications with other plant sites." (Cognex In-Sight Vision Sensors Product Guide).

R5 — Cognex VisionView Web UI — a browser-based HMI for vision devices: device discovery, "WebHMI URLs," credentials override, admin password gating access between Setup and Run modes, tiles for multiple devices simultaneously, and "Run mode displays a live feed from the web user interface of the devices." (Cognex VisionView Web manual); the VisionView operator manual adds image archiving to USB or a network/FTP location with credentials (Cognex VisionView manual).

R6 — National Instruments, Vision Builder for Automated Inspection (VBAI) + Smart Camera documentation. The single richest reference against this claim:

  • Inspection steps from a palette; user draws an ROI directly on the acquired image to define a pattern-matching template ("Draw an ROI around the conductor… This region becomes the pattern matching template");
  • Step-to-step spatial referencing: "Set the Region of Interest control to Match Conductor 1" — one step's region defined relative to another's (the "fixture" concept);
  • Limits/thresholds driving PASS/FAIL ("Minimum Number of Matches… set the value to 1"; "Minimum Distance… 150… Maximum Distance… 160");
  • Triggered acquisition with Trigger Polarity, Exposure Delay, and Trigger Timeout on the acquisition step;
  • Results/statistics: a Results panel listing each step, its type, PASS/FAIL, measurement and a comment explaining a FAIL; and an Inspection Statistics panel with yield (PASS/FAIL ratio), active vs. idle time, and processing time;
  • Remote deployment to the device: the Remote Target Configuration Wizard installs software and sets IP/password on an NI Smart Camera over Ethernet; "If you want to prevent other users from configuring the smart camera, select Enable Password";
  • State-diagram transitions based on measurement results or variable values, with a fail state that "reject[s] the part using some digital I/O";
  • File transfer to the target's flash via FTP (e.g., put "C:\inspect\diag.llb" "/c/inspect/line7/diag.llb") and a web admin console on the target.
    Sources: NI 17xx Smart Camera/VBAI configuration; VBAI/EVS-1463 user manual; NI VBAI Smart Camera acquisition tutorial.

R7 — Uber Technologies, US 2016/0227193 A1 — cited in a PCT search report against "Group I, claims 1–2… drawn to a machine vision system" (WO/JP search report, PCT/US2021/048903). I have only the search-report characterization, not the reference text; treat as a lead.

R8 — the Samsara "vehicle gateway" family on the '130's face (US 10,206,107; 10,033,706; 10,085,149; 9,445,270 — Bicket et al.). Grounded only by their identity as of-record references in the same assignee's cloud/store-and-forward device-management family. I did not retrieve their texts in this session; if they claim priority to c. 2014–2015 they are § 102(a)(2) art for remote storage + remote access to device data.


5. Combinations that would render the claims obvious

Combination 1 (primary): R2 + R3 + R6, optionally + R1 or R5

Covers the configuration-and-execution subject matter of the '130's independent claims (per the continuation proxy in the previous section) and elements 1, 3, 4, 5 of claim 1.

  • R3 supplies selecting a feature on an image via a GUI and configuring a trigger;
  • R2 supplies click-to-select a discrete region of a selected captured image and automatic generation of an operating parameter (the "master image + fixture + inspection step" architecture, without the label);
  • R6 supplies inspection steps, ROIs drawn on the image, step-to-step ROI referencing (fixture), thresholds, PASS/FAIL evaluation, triggered acquisition, and deployment of the configured inspection to a remote camera target.

Motivation: all three are the same field (industrial machine vision setup); both R2 and R6 expressly address the patent's own admitted problem — making vision-system configuration usable by non-programmers (R6's wizard-driven EasyBuilder; R2's single-click ROI). The specification's admission that "configuration of machine vision systems can be time consuming, and unfriendly or impossible for non-technical users" is a binding motivation. KSR: "the combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results."

Combination 2: R1 (or R5) + R6 + R8

Attacks the architectural crux (elements 2, 6, 7, 8): local storage + off-device transmission + web-server-based secure remote access.

  • R1: remote UI access to the current state of a networked vision processor, with the operator able to "observe results and alter parameters";
  • R5: the access mechanism is specifically a web/browser interface with password-gated configure vs. run modes and a live feed, plus network-location image archiving (= remote storage of images);
  • R6: on-target FTP/flash storage of inspection data, target web admin, and push of configured programs to a remote camera over Ethernet;
  • R8: store-and-forward of device data to a remote/cloud management server (if its § 102(a)(2) priority date is early enough).

Motivation: R4/R1's own marketing supplies it — "manage vision activity remotely," "share applications with other plant sites," "any workstation with TCP/IP capability can display vision results, images, statistical data." That is a published, articulated incentive to move from a PC-hosted UI to remote/browser-based access, and to centralize data. KSR's "market demand" and "design incentive" rationales apply directly.

Combination 3 (secondary, for dependence-style limitations)

  • Fixture / features defined relative to a fixture: R6 ("Region of Interest control to Match Conductor 1") + R2 (automated ROI on a selected image).
  • Multiple inspection steps relative to one another: R6 (palette/state diagram) + R3 (tool list applied per image, ROIs).
  • Trigger thresholds on counts of rejects/no-reads causing an output: the specification's admitted "part kicker"/conveyor-stop practice + R6's measurement-driven state transitions and "reject the part using some digital I/O."
  • Differential retention of pass vs. reject images: R6's display/archiving options ("view only images that fail"; archive to USB/network) + R5's archiving — trivially obvious as a storage-management choice.
  • Livestream on a separate path (UDP/WebRTC): R5's live feed over a web UI; streaming over UDP/RTP was a well-known technique by 2019.
  • Aggregation across devices on a line + line-level statistics (FIGS. 9A–9C): R6's Inspection Statistics (yield ratio) + R4's Vision Area Network with a host and "any workstation" access + R5's multi-device tiles.

6. Why a POHSTA would combine — the four rationales, stated so they can be put in a petition

  1. Same field, same problem. Every reference is machine vision configuration, triggering, inspection, and result-display. No field-crossing argument is available.
  2. Motivation supplied by the patentee. The '130's own background identifies the problems (slow per-device configuration; no real-time analysis across devices) that the combinations are designed to solve. Under Philips v. Google, that admission is binding.
  3. Articulated industry incentive, in print, pre-2019. Cognex marketed exactly this outcome ("manage vision activity remotely," "share applications with other plant sites," workstation-level access to results/images/statistics over TCP/IP), and NI documented remote target configuration of a smart camera over Ethernet. Predictable improvement of a known device by a known technique = obvious (§ 103; KSR).
  4. Ordinary-skill implementation. Combining a browser-served UI with a device that already runs an embedded OS, an FTP client and a web admin console (R5, R6) is a matter of routine engineering — exactly the "common sense" layer KSR permits.

7. Countervailing evidence the patent owner will marshal (and it is strong)

  • The ITC already rejected this theory. In Inv. No. 337-TA-1393, the ALJ's Final Initial Determination (Sept. 8, 2025) found that "Motive has not shown that claims 1 and 5 are invalid as anticipated or obvious" while simultaneously finding them § 101-ineligible. The Commission reviewed in part and took no position on the issues under review, declining review of the remainder (91 FR 5954 / FR Doc. 2026-02577). Motive lost the § 103 fight; the Staff called it "a close call" in a "crowded field of art."
  • Motive's own expert evidence was contested. The record includes Samsara's motion in limine to exclude "Improper Anticipation and Obviousness Opinions of Dr. Robert Stevenson," and a Samsara motion to strike "Certain Obviousness Combinations" as untimely — both of which signal that the § 103 case was procedurally wounded before it was substantively decided.
  • No secondary considerations, per the Staff. The Staff's pretrial position was that "the evidence is expected to show that secondary considerations do not support a finding of non-obviousness" (Motive's Notice of Developments, N.D. Cal. ECF 75). This helps an obviousness challenger — it removes the classic rebuttal.
  • The likely doctrinal sticking point: no single reference in my set discloses a machine vision device with an on-board web server that provides secure remote access to both the image and the evaluation. R5 and R6 come close (device-served web UI; target web admin) but the mapping is not airtight on the current record, and the dates of the In-Sight "WebHMI" feature are not verified in this session. A petition or invalidity contention must nail that element down with a reference whose pre-April-2019 disclosure date is provable.

8. Bottom line

  • Elements 1, 3, 4 and 5 of claim 1 are effectively conceded prior art by the '130's own specification and are independently met by Cognex (R2, R3) and NI VBAI (R6).
  • Elements 2, 6, 7 and 8 — the on-device web server, local storage, and remote-storage transmission — are the whole ballgame. Combinations 2 (R1/R5 + R6 + R8) and the R4/R5 line of Cognex documentation make a credible, motivation-rich § 103 case using art not of record before the examiner (the '130's face cites no Cognex or NI reference).
  • Realistically: this is a genuinely close case, and the only adjudicated § 103 record on claims 1 and 5 came out against the challenger. A defensible obviousness position requires (i) a verified pre-2019 disclosure of a vision device serving its own web interface, (ii) a verified § 102 date for every cited reference (see the date anomaly in §1B), and (iii) an expert declaration tying each limitation to specific passages — R3's trigger-configuration GUI, R2's single-click ROI, and R6's ROI-on-image + Limits + Remote Target Configuration Wizard give the best raw material.
  • Dependent claims and the continuation's claim set are the soft underbelly: fixture-relative feature definition, threshold triggers, multi-step inspection, differential image retention, and multi-device aggregation are each independently taught or suggested by VBAI and the Cognex In-Sight/VisionView documentation. Those are where an obviousness case is most likely to succeed, even if claims 1 and 5 hold.

9. Caveats (do not rely on these points without primary-source verification)

  1. Claim text is reconstructed, not verbatim. §2 is from a secondary reproduction of Samsara's complaint. Obtain the printed claims of US 11,127,130.
  2. Reference dates. Several of-record references have post-filing grant dates; confirm § 102(a)(2) applicability. Publication dates for the Cognex (R1–R5) and NI (R6) documents cited here were not verified in this session and must be established as pre-April-9-2019 printed publications or public uses, with evidence of public accessibility.
  3. Motive's actual contentions were not retrieved. Final Invalidity Contentions were served 2024-07-22 with Exhibits A01–A15, B01–B17 and C01–C21; the reference identities inside those exhibits are exactly what this analysis needs and what I could not obtain. Obtaining them is the highest-value next step, since they are the art a well-resourced, adverse party actually staked its § 103 case on — and lost.
  4. Claim constructions unknown. The ITC had Staff and party claim-construction briefs (June–July 2024); constructions of "web server," "evaluation," "feature," and "secure remote access" could materially change the § 103 mapping.
  5. No PTAB estoppel. As established in the PTAB section, no AIA trial has ever been filed on the '130, so § 315(e)(2) bars nothing and § 325(d) poses no obstacle to an IPR raising any of the art discussed here.

Generated 9/25/2026, 12:49:52 PM

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