US 11231364

I'll search for this specific patent number across USPTO and CAFC docket sources.

Let me run two more targeted searches to confirm the litigation/docket status.

US 11,231,364 B2 — "Optical Turbulence Measurement"

Important scope note on what I could and could not verify: I searched for USPTO/PTAB records and CAFC 2026 dockets tied to this exact number. I found no litigation, IPR/PGR, or Federal Circuit appeal involving US 11,231,364. Searches for docket references returned only unrelated cases and other Johns Hopkins patents (e.g., the MSD pembrolizumab IPRs, IPR2024-00622/623/624/648, which cover entirely different JHU patents such as 10,934,356, 11,325,974, 11,325,975, 11,643,462). I cannot rule out a docket that is not indexed by the sources I searched, so treat "no known litigation" as a search-based finding, not a certified clearance statement.

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Bibliographic data (from the patent front page)

Abstract (as issued)

An optical turbulence measurement system may include a camera assembly, a first optics assembly, a second optics assembly, and processing circuitry. The first and second optics assemblies magnify and direct a portion of a source beam received by a respective aperture to the camera assembly as two portions of a received beam. The processing circuitry receives a data representation of a first received beam and a second received beam and determines a focal spot displacement variance based on motion of a first focal spot relative to a second focal spot, then measures optical turbulence along a path of the source beam based on that variance.

Disclosure in brief

The patent describes a laser-based differential image motion monitor (DIMM) in either a bistatic configuration (remote optical source aimed at the receiver, FIG. 1A) or a monostatic configuration (co-located laser plus a retroreflector at the far end, FIG. 1B). Two apertures feed separate optical paths to a camera assembly, either as two imagers (FIG. 3A) or as a single imager via an optical wedge that combines the beams into a composite image (FIG. 3B/3C). Turbulence is derived from uncorrelated motion of the two focal spots (common-mode vibration cancels because both apertures share one rigid support structure). The specification discusses a path-weighting function W(u) proportional to (1−u)^(5/3) (FIG. 7), a beam-divergence correction function, Cₙ² measurement, the Fried parameter r₀, and Fresnel-number/diffraction considerations at the retroreflector.

Independent claims — plain language

Claim 1 — Optical turbulence measurement system (apparatus)
A system with a support structure; a camera assembly, a first optics assembly, and a second optics assembly all coupled to that support structure. Each optics assembly magnifies the portion of a source beam entering its own aperture and sends it to the camera as a "received beam." Processing circuitry in communication with the camera (a) receives a data representation of both received beams, (b) computes a focal spot displacement variance from the relative motion of the first beam's focal spot versus the second beam's focal spot, and (c) measures optical turbulence along the beam path from that variance.

Claim 9 — Method
The method counterpart: receive a first and second portion of a source beam through two apertures as two received beams; magnify and direct each to a camera assembly; receive, in processing circuitry, a data representation of both beams; determine a focal spot displacement variance from the relative motion of the two focal spots; and measure optical turbulence along the beam path based on that variance.

Claim 17 — System (device + retroreflector)
A system comprising the optical turbulence measurement device of the claim 1 architecture plus an optical source coupled to the support structure and a retroreflector at a retroreflector distance that reflects the output beam back to both apertures as the source beam. The processing circuitry performs the same focal-spot-displacement-variance determination, but the turbulence measurement is expressly based on that variance and a path-weighting function that varies over the retroreflector distance.

Claim 20 concludes the claim set as a dependent system claim requiring separate first and second imagers with separate data representations. Dependent claims otherwise add: cornercube retroreflector (3, 11, 18); path-weighting function (4, 12); optical wedge / composite beam single-imager variant (5, 13); dual imager variant (6, 14, 20); ground-based optical path for the apertures (7, 15); and beam divergence correction function (8, 16, 19).

Caveats

• The third-party aggregator PatentLeaderboard lists an unverified figure of "$98,246,000" next to this patent on a Nicor profile page. That is a third-party portfolio estimate, not an official valuation, and I would not rely on it.
• OCR in one secondary source rendered "Cₙ²" as "C₀²"; the Google Patents/front-page text uses Cₙ², which I treat as authoritative.
• I found no CAFC 2026 docket entry, district court complaint, or PTAB proceeding naming this patent. If you need a litigation-negative clearance, that should be confirmed against Docket Navigator, PACER, and the CAFC docket directly.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11231364 across patent litigation sources.

The initial results include a "'112 patent" shorthand that appears to refer to a different patent (a Sandpiper CDN streaming patent), not US 11,231,364. Let me search more specifically for this Johns Hopkins patent.

Let me check patent litigation databases directly for this specific patent number.

Litigation Search Results for US Patent 11,231,364

Patent identified (literal match): US 11,231,364 B2 — "Optical Turbulence Measurement," Application No. 17/010,007, filed 2020-09-02, issued 2022-01-25. Assignee: The Johns Hopkins University. Inventors: David M. Brown, Randall T. Hanna, Kevin C. Baldwin, Andrea M. Brown. (Confirmed against the Google Patents text and the USPTO patent PDF.)

Finding: No litigation found involving US 11,231,364

Based on my searches of patent-litigation sources (PTAB/USPTO petition records, RPX/Insight, Unified Patents-style docket references, Justia, and general litigation coverage), I found no district court litigation, ITC action, or PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR) specifically asserting or challenging US 11,231,364. Consequently, I cannot provide plaintiff(s), defendant(s), jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome for any case — because no case tied to this patent number surfaced.

Important caution on false positives I encountered and excluded:

• Several search results refer to a "'112 patent" as shorthand, but these are different patents, not US 11,231,364:
  • A Google LLC IPR petition referencing "the '112 patent" in Sandpiper CDN, LLC v. Google LLC, No. 2:24-cv-03951 (C.D. Cal.) — that is a streaming/CDN patent (Sandpiper CDN), unrelated to Johns Hopkins.
  • Onyx Therapeutics v. Teva and Onyx v. Hetero (D. Del.) referencing "the '112 patent" — that is U.S. Patent No. 7,737,112 (carfilzomib/ANDA), a pharmaceutical patent.
• Searches for Johns Hopkins patent litigation instead surfaced entirely unrelated JHU patents: the '848 patent (JHU v. Alcon, ocular surgery) and the '393 patent series (Merck Sharp & Dohme v. The Johns Hopkins University, Keytruda/MSI-H IPRs and DJ actions). None of those involve 11,231,364.
• One aggregator page (patentleaderboard.com) lists 11,231,364 with a dollar figure (~$98,246,000). That appears to be a valuation/ranking estimate, not evidence of a litigation award or asserted case, and I would not treat it as litigation.

Caveats on completeness

• These searches are not a definitive substitute for a full PACER/CourtListener docket sweep or a subscription litigation database (Docket Navigator, LexisNexis, Westlaw). Absence of results in my searches is not conclusive proof that no suit exists.
• Contextual point: this is a Jan-25-2022-issued, government-funded (DHS contract HSBP10-14-C-00005) university patent in a niche optical/atmospheric-metrology field. Such patents frequently are never asserted, which is consistent with the absence of any discovered litigation.

Bottom line: To the best of the available evidence, no litigation involving US Patent 11,231,364 is known. If you need certainty, I recommend a direct PACER docket query and a Docket Navigator/LexisNexis litigation search on the patent number "11,231,364" (and application no. 17/010,007) to confirm the negative result.

PTAB Proceedings on US 11,231,364 — No AIA Trial Activity on File

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) structured block returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 11,231,364 as of the most recent ingest. There are no active IPRs/PGRs, no claims canceled by the Board, no claims sustained by the Board, no settlements, and no institution denials to report — because no petition has ever been filed. The defensive posture this produces is unusual and needs to be read carefully: this is not a "hardened patent that survived two IPRs." It is an untested patent — the claims stand exactly as they issued, and the validity record is a blank slate.

Two consequences follow immediately for a defendant:

1. No estoppel cuts either way. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel against anyone, but there is also no free-riding on someone else's invalidity work product. You would be the first challenger, and you'd be litigating the merits from scratch.
2. "Untested ≠ strong." The absence of IPRs is a weak signal here, and the reason is structural, not merits-based — see the pattern discussion below. Do not treat the empty docket as evidence of validity.

Disambiguation note (important)

Search results surface several unrelated hits that a careless reader could mistake for proceedings against this patent. None of them are:

• U.S. 8,547,364 (Power2B) — IPR2022-00405, Samsung Elecs. Co., Ltd. v. Power2B Inc., FWD 2023-07-14, aff'd in part and rev'd in part, Power2B, Inc. v. Samsung Elecs. Co., Nos. 2023-2184, 2024-1399, 2024-1400 (Fed. Cir. 2025-05-19). Different patent, different owner, different technology (touch-sensing). Not this patent.
• "the '364 Patent" in the tapentadol-HCl polymorph IPR record — different patent entirely.
• Merck Sharp & Dohme LLC v. The Johns Hopkins University, IPR2024-00622/623/624/625/647/648/649/650 — these are IPRs against JHU-owned patents, but against the KEYTRUDA-related family (e.g., U.S. 10,934,356; 11,325,974; 11,325,975; 11,339,219; 11,629,187; 11,634,491; 11,643,462; 11,649,287). The '364 is not among them.

Per-proceeding detail

None to report. Per the operating instruction, the default is "no PTAB activity on file," and targeted searching (patent number + IPR/PGR petition; petitioner-side queries; JHU-as-patent-owner queries) surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal naming US 11,231,364. I am explicitly declining to construct a proceeding record from the near-miss hits above.

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Strategic summary

Claim status. All 20 claims of US 11,231,364 — as issued 2022-01-25 — are UNTESTED before the PTAB. Nothing is CANCELED; nothing is SUSTAINED-by-the-Board. The claim set (independent claim(s) plus dependents covering, e.g., the dual-imager embodiment, the optical-wedge/single-imager embodiment, and the beam-divergence-correction and path-weighting functionality) is intact and unamended. Note that the patent is AIA-era (filed 2020-09-02; provisional 62/968,432 filed 2020-01-31), so the PGR window closed nine months after grant — on or about 2022-10-25 — and is gone. IPR remains available, subject to § 315(b)'s one-year bar running from service of an infringement complaint.

Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel and no § 325(e) estoppel against any party, because no IPR/PGR has reached an FWD. For a defendant being asserted against today, every prior-art ground is available, including:

• The references of record on the face of the patent (the SPIE/lidar/scintillometer art listed on the cover page and in the "Other Publications" section — e.g., Gimmestad et al., "LIDAR system for monitoring turbulence profiles," Proc. SPIE 6267; Hammel et al., "Investigation of scintillometer designs for dynamic path measurement," Proc. SPIE 9224; Sarazin & Roddier, "The ESO differential image motion monitor," Astron. Astrophys. 227, 294-300 (1990); and Brown, Juarez & Brown, "Laser differential image-motion monitor for characterization of turbulence during free-space optical communication tests," Appl. Opt.).
• The small pre-AIA patent art cited: U.S. 5,303,024 (Thieman), U.S. 6,496,252 (Whiteley), U.S. 8,253,932 (Cole).
• Any art not before the Examiner.

That last point is the crux: the art of record is thin (three U.S. patents and a handful of SPIE/journal papers), and the Sarazin & Roddier DIMM paper is the acknowledged foundational reference for the differential-image-motion technique the patent claims. A defendant's obviousness theory built on DIMM + a conventional dual-aperture telescope + retroreflector folding is squarely on the table and has never been tested by the Board. Conversely, the patent's own framing concedes that scintillometers and DIMM are known, so § 103 with a strong secondary-reference combination is the natural attack vector — not § 102.

Pattern signals. Three observations on the ecosystem:

• Same petitioner, multiple IPRs? No — no petitioner has filed anything against this patent.
• Patent owner PTAB aggressiveness? JHU is a sophisticated, active patent owner, not a shell. It litigates (see Johns Hopkins Univ. v. Datascope Corp., Nos. 2007-1530/2008-1530 (Fed. Cir. 2008), where the infringement verdict was reversed on JMOL for insufficient evidence of the "expands to conform" limitation — a useful reminder that JHU does assert and has been beaten on claim-construction-driven infringement theories). JHU is also defending a large, coordinated IPR campaign from Merck covering its immuno-oncology portfolio (IPR2024-00622 through -00650). JHU's PTAB defense counsel there is Fish & Richardson.
• Defensive aggregator in the chain? None identified. Unified Patents is not in the chain on this patent. Given the subject matter (free-space optical communications, HEL/directed-energy targeting, atmospheric propagation sensing) and the Government interest (DHS contract HSBP10-14-C-00005, per the face of the patent), the more plausible future petitioner profile is a defense/aerospace prime or a competitor in free-space optical comms, not a subscription aggregator.

Why the empty docket is a weak signal: the patent issued only on 2022-01-25, has a 2040-09-02 anticipated expiration, and — as far as the record shows — has not been asserted in district court litigation. IPRs overwhelmingly follow infringement suits. No assertion → no § 315(b) clock → no petitioner incentive. The docket is empty because nobody has had a reason to shoot yet, not because the claims are unassailable.

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Recommended next steps

If you're a defendant and no PTAB record exists, the correct posture is "first mover," not "free rider."

1. Do not rely on any FWD — there is none. There is nothing to link to and nothing to quote. Any argument that claims are "already canceled" would be false and sanctionable.
2. Map the § 315(b) clock. If you have been served with a complaint asserting US 11,231,364, your one-year IPR window runs from service. If you have not been served, the window has not opened — and conferring with the patent owner can itself start an estoppel-creating clock (§ 315(a)(1) bars IPR if you filed a DJ action of invalidity first; a counterclaim does not count, per § 315(a)(3)).
3. Build the § 103 case now. The highest-value work is identifying prior art outside the thin record: terrestrial DIMM deployments predating 2020-01-31, atmospheric-propagation literature (the patent itself cites its own authors' SPIE/lidar work), and commercial dual-aperture turbulence-measurement instruments. The independent claims' core — "magnify and direct" two aperture-sampled beams to a camera and compute a focal spot displacement variance from relative motion of two focal spots — is the obviousness target. Focus on the relative/differential limitation, since that is where the patent asserts novelty over single-aperture DIMM and scintillometry.
4. Consider § 112 as a secondary hook. The specification's heavy reliance on "may" language and the functional framing of the "path-weighting function" and "beam-divergence correction function" invite written-description/enablement attacks on the claims that recite those limitations, and indefiniteness attacks on "focal spot displacement variance" as applied to the optical-wedge/single-imager composite-beam embodiment.
5. Timeline if you file. Under 35 U.S.C. § 314(b), the Director's institution decision is due within 6 months of the petition's filing-date-accorded notice; under § 316(a)(11) the FWD is due within 1 year of institution, extendable up to 6 months for good cause. Note the Office's current bifurcated discretionary-denial process (the March 2025 "Interim Processes for PTAB Workload Management" memo, successor to the rescinded Fintiv guidance): if the patent owner files a discretionary-denial brief, the Director rules on discretion first, and the merits panel then gets roughly two months to issue the institution decision. Budget for that sequencing.
6. Set a docket monitor. Given the empty PTAB record, the highest-value watch item is a first-filed IPR — that would be the trigger to re-run this analysis, since an instituted IPR on this patent would create § 315(e)(2) estoppel against the petitioner and its privies, but would also generate the first public validity record for the claims.

Bottom line: No PTAB proceedings exist against US 11,231,364. The patent is unasserted, unamended, and fully untested as to validity — all 20 claims live, no estoppel, all prior-art grounds available. The absence of IPR activity is explained by the absence of litigation, not by claim strength, and the state of the art of record is thin enough that a well-constructed § 103 petition is a credible path.

I'll research the assignment record for US 11,231,364, starting with the USPTO Assignment Center and cross-referencing sources.

Let me dig deeper into the assignment record specifics.

Let me try to locate the specific assignment cover sheet and reel/frame record.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 11,231,364 B2

Verification note up front: The USPTO Assignment Center / Patent Assignment Search index was not directly machine-retrievable in the searches I was able to run, and I could not confirm the specific reel/frame number for the single recorded assignment in this chain. What I can confirm is the recorded assignment event (date, parties) via the Google Patents "Legal Events" feed for this patent, and the identity of the prosecution/agent-of-record. I flag the reel/frame as unconfirmed rather than guessed — I will not fabricate a reel/frame.

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Inventors

Basis for the employer attribution (not naming alone): the same four inventors co-authored the JHU/APL line of work that this patent claims — e.g., "Measuring atmospheric turbulence along folded paths using a laser-illuminated differential image motion monitor," Applied Optics 61(32), 9646–9653 (2022); "Measuring optical turbulence using a laser DIMM in support of characterization of imaging system performance," Proc. SPIE 11001 (2019); "Initial test of MITA/DIMM with an operational CBP system," Proc. SPIE 10625 (2018). The pre-grant publication additionally lists the "Attorney, Agent, or Firm" as The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Lab, confirming APL is the filing shop.

Departure pattern: None observed. All four inventors are still publishing under the JHU/APL banner as late as the 2022 Applied Optics paper — i.e., they were still at APL after the 2022-01-25 grant. There is no evidence of a coordinated inventor exodus within 12 months of filing, which is the classic precursor to a portfolio fire-sale. This is a stable institutional-inventor set.

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Original assignee

The Johns Hopkins University (JHU), 3400 N. Charles Street, Baltimore, MD 21218. A private, non-profit research university. The underlying R&D was performed at its Applied Physics Laboratory (APL), a University Affiliated Research Center (UARC) in Laurel, MD.

• Primary line of business: higher education and sponsored research. JHU does not manufacture or sell the claimed apparatus; it is not a commercial vendor of DIMM instruments.
• Product embodying the claims: No. The disclosed device is a research/instrument prototype developed under the DHS-funded MITA program. JHU monetizes inventions through patenting and licensing (via Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures), not by shipping product. I found no evidence of a commercial product offering by JHU for a laser-illuminated DIMM.
• Government interest: made with Government support under DHS contract HSBP10-14-C-00005 (stated on the face of the patent), meaning the U.S. Government holds certain rights — relevant to any downstream transfer, since a university cannot freely assign away government-funded rights without accounting for the funding agency's license.
• Current status: operating — no bankruptcy, no dissolution, no acquisition. JHU is an active and sophisticated patent owner (it litigates and defends IPR campaigns; see the previously generated sections). It has not been acquired.

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Assignment timeline

One recorded assignment link found. The chain terminates at the original assignee.

• Recorded 2020-12-11 — Reel/Frame not confirmed (record event corroborated via Google Patents "Legal Events"; specific reel/frame not verified)
  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor(s): BROWN, DAVID M.; BALDWIN, KEVIN C.; BROWN, ANDREA M.; HANNA, RANDALL T. (all four named inventors)
  • Assignee: THE JOHNS HOPKINS UNIVERSITY
  • Execution date: prior to the 2020-12-11 recordation (exact execution date not confirmed from the sources available)
  • Correspondent: Unconfirmed. The prosecution/agent of record for this patent is Todd R. Farnsworth (per the issued front page) and the pre-grant publication lists the firm as The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory. Note that JHU's corporate assignment practice elsewhere routes through Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures (e.g., Reel 051223/0656, correspondent "Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures / Cheryl Oliver," for a JHU/Kennedy Krieger case). I could not confirm which correspondent signed this particular cover sheet, and I will not assert one. This is the single most useful datum still missing from the chain.
  • Context: Standard inventor-to-institution employment assignment. Filed ~3 months after the 2020-09-02 non-provisional filing, executed as an obligation under university employment/IP policy. Routine, not a transfer-to-asserter or fire-sale event.

No post-issuance assignments are recorded. There is no evidence of any assignment after the 2022-01-25 grant. No security agreement, merger, change of name, release, or license recordation surfaced. JHU remains the record owner.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11231364
    2020 : Provisional filed Jan 31
         : Non-provisional filed Sep 2
         : Inventors assign to Johns Hopkins Dec 11
    2021 : Pre-grant publication Dec 30
    2022 : Patent issued Jan 25
    2040 : Anticipated expiration Sep 2

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No transfer to a licensing-only LLC. The only recorded assignee is The Johns Hopkins University — a chartered Maryland non-profit university with a physical campus, not a registered-agent address or a single-purpose Delaware/Texas LLC. No "IP / Holdings / Ventures" assignee appears.
2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No assignee matches any of Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, etc. The chain begins and ends at JHU. (Confirmed consistent with the previously generated sections: no litigation and no PTAB record.)
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not present as a signal. There is only one assignment link, so "recurrence" cannot arise within this chain. Correspondent identity is unconfirmed (see timeline). A single appearance by any attorney on a single link is expressly not a finding under the stated rule.
4. Cascading transfers — not present. Zero chained LLC transfers; no consecutive assignments at all, let alone within 24 months.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. No infringement suit naming this patent has been identified (per the previously generated litigation section), so there is no transfer window to evaluate. The 2020-12-11 assignment predates grant and is employment-driven, not assertion-driven.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. JHU has no bankruptcy history; it is a solvent, operating institution.
7. Privateering — not present. No evidence JHU transferred the patent to an NPE to assert on its behalf. No SEC filing, EFF/Patent Progress coverage, or assignment record supports this.
8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent has not been neutralized by defensive aggregation; it simply remains with the university.

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Verdict

Insufficient data (chain consists of only the original assignment — the bucket the framework assigns when no records exist beyond the initial transfer), with the affirmative finding that there are zero NPE/troll indicators.

This is a non-asserting university-owned, government-funded research patent, not an NPE asset. The sole recorded link is the routine 2020-12-11 inventor → The Johns Hopkins University assignment (Google Patents Legal Events; reel/frame unconfirmed), executed under employment policy ~3 months after the 2020-09-02 filing. No post-issuance transfer, no shell entity, no known asserter, no cascading LLCs, no privateering, and no defensive-aggregator neutralization appear anywhere in the record — which is exactly what the previously generated litigation and PTAB sections found (no suits, no IPRs). The only material gap is the correspondent and reel/frame, which should be confirmed directly.

Verify at: USPTO Patent Assignment Search — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search patent number 11231364 or application 17/010,007), and the newer Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/. Cross-check the correspondent field there, and confirm via USPTO Patent Center that no license or security-interest recordation has been filed since grant.

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Caveat on completeness: I could not retrieve the machine-readable Assignment Center record, so the absence of additional assignments is based on the Google Patents Legal Events feed and the Patent Center/PEDS-adjacent sources I reached — not on a direct reel/frame-level dump of the Assignment Center. Because the correspondent identity and reel/frame remain unverified, I recommend a direct query on the two USPTO links above before treating this chain as final.

I'll research the specific patent and its cited prior art. Let me run targeted searches.

I have the patent's reference list. Let me confirm the remaining US patent citations and get the full NPL list.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 11,231,364 B2 ("Optical Turbulence Measurement")

Important process note up front: I exhausted my tool-call budget partway through verification. I obtained the patent text, the full "References Cited" list, and confirmed the disclosure of two of the three U.S. patent references. I was unable to independently confirm the bibliographic details (title, dates, assignee) of US 6,496,252 ("Whiteley") in this session — I flag that explicitly below rather than fill the gap from memory. Everything else below is grounded in the fetched sources.

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1. Patent identified (literal match)

• US 11,231,364 B2 — "Optical Turbulence Measurement"
• App. No. 17/010,007; filed 2020-09-02; provisional 62/968,432 filed 2020-01-31; granted 2022-01-25
• Assignee: The Johns Hopkins University; Inventors: David M. Brown, Randall T. Hanna, Kevin C. Baldwin, Andrea M. Brown
• Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11231364B2](/patent/US11231364B2)/en ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/[11231364](/patent/11231364)

Do not confuse with near-numbers (explicitly excluded per your instruction): US 8,547,364 (Power2B, touch-sensing — subject of IPR2022-00405) is a different patent; likewise the "364" of the tapentadol-HCl IPRs. Only 11,231,364 is analyzed here.

AIA status: Effective filing date (for prior-art purposes) is 2020-01-31 (provisional). Any reference dated before 2020-01-31 is available as § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) art.

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2. The citation record actually on the patent

This is the key framing point: the U.S.-patent record is thin (three references); the bulk of the cited art is non-patent literature (NPL). All three U.S. patents — US 5,303,024, US 6,496,252, US 8,253,932 — predate the 2020 effective filing date by years and are therefore § 102 prior art. The NPL is the substantive § 102/§ 103 battlefield.

2.1 U.S. patent references (as listed on the front page)

2.2 Non-patent literature (cited by applicant)

Confirmed from the patent PDF's reference list (source: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/62/2d/82/92db2651b9ee70/US11231364.pdf):

[1] Philbrick, "Raman lidar measurements of atmospheric properties," Proc. SPIE 2222 (1994)
[2] Gimmestad et al., "LIDAR system for monitoring turbulence profiles," Proc. SPIE 6267, 62671V (2006)
[3] Martin, Brown, Thomas, Strong, Lohr, "FTIR characterization of atmospheric fluctuations along slant paths," Proc. SPIE 9071, 907117 (2014)
[4] Hammel, Wayne, Reinhardt, "Investigation of scintillometer designs for dynamic path measurement," Proc. SPIE 9224, 922405 (2014)
[5] Sarazin & Roddier, "The ESO differential image motion monitor," Astron. Astrophys. 227, 294–300 (1990)
[6] Brown, Juarez & Brown, "Laser differential image-motion monitor for characterization of turbulence during free-space optical communication tests," Appl. Opt. 52(34), 8402–8410 (2013)
[7] Juarez et al., "Laserecomm system development for high-bandwidth terrestrial communications," Proc. SPIE 9833 (2016)
[8] Tokovinin, "From differential image motion to seeing," PASP 114, 1156–1166 (2002)
[9] Juarez, Brown, Young, "Strehl ratio simulation results under strong turbulence…," Proc. SPIE 8722 (2013)
[10] Andrews & Phillips, "Monostatic propagation channel enhanced backscatter effects…," Proc. SPIE 2828 (1996)
[11] Eaton et al., "Comparison Of Two Techniques For Determining Atmospheric Seeing," Proc. SPIE 0926 (1988)
[12] Baldwin, Hanna, Brown, Brown, Moyer, Hixson, "Initial test of MITADIMM with an operational CBP system," Proc. SPIE 10625, 106250J (2018)
[13] Lee & Harp, "Weak Scattering in Random Media, with Applications to Remote Probing," Proc. IEEE 57(4) (1969)
(Reference list continues past [13] in the PDF; items [14]+ were truncated in the fetched excerpt.)

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3. Reference-by-reference § 102 analysis

Claims at issue: Claim 1 (system: support structure + camera assembly + two optics assemblies, each magnifying/directing an aperture-sampled beam to the camera; processing circuitry computing a focal spot displacement variance from motion of one focal spot relative to the other, and measuring turbulence from it). Claim 9 (method counterpart). Claim 17 (device + co-located source + retroreflector + path-weighting function). Dependents add cornercube (3, 11, 18), path-weighting function (4, 12), optical-wedge/single-imager (5, 13), dual-imager (6, 14, 20), ground-based path (7, 15), beam-divergence correction (8, 16, 19).

A. US 5,303,024 — Thierman (scintillometer)

• Full citation: U.S. Patent No. 5,303,024, "Scintillometer for the measurement of the structure function constant and the inner scale of atmospheric refractive index fluctuations." Inventor: Volkert Thierman(n). Issued 1994-04-12 (DE priority 1992-04-07).
• Source: https://companyprofiles.justatic.com/patent/5303024 ; also cited on the face of US 7,667,832.
• Disclosure: A birefringent (calcite) crystal in the transmitter splits one laser diode's output into two orthogonally polarized, spatially displaced beams; at the receiver a polarizing beam splitter directs each polarization to its own photodiode, spaced to match the transmitter displacement. It measures intensity (irradiance) fluctuations of the two beams to derive Cn² and the inner scale l₀. It explicitly notes "the invention utilizes the fact that depolarization … by turbulent refractive index fluctuations is negligible."
• Claims potentially affected under § 102: None anticipated. It discloses a dual-beam/dual-detector differential architecture (relevant to the concept of spatially separated sampling), but it defeats the point of claim 1 by measuring intensity, not focal-spot position — no magnifying optics, no camera assembly, no focal spots, no "focal spot displacement variance," and no relative focal-spot motion. It is at most a § 103 secondary reference showing that two spatially separated channels fed from one source with a differential measurement is known.
• Anticipation value: LOW.

B. US 6,496,252 — Whiteley ⚠️ (unverified)

• Full citation: U.S. Patent No. 6,496,252 B1, inventor Whiteley; granted ~2002-12-17. I could not confirm the exact title, filing date, assignee, or disclosure in this session (search budget exhausted). It appears on the patent's front page as cited art.
• What can be said reliably: Given its citation alongside a scintillometer patent (5,303,024) and a laser/corner-cube Cn² patent (8,253,932), and given that this patent's own background frames the field around scintillometers and DIMM seeing monitors, the reference is presumably directed to atmospheric-turbulence/seeing measurement. I will not assert its disclosure.
• Claims potentially affected under § 102: Cannot be assessed without the document. If — and this is a hypothesis I cannot verify — US 6,496,252 discloses a differential-image-motion/two-aperture seeing monitor computing a variance of relative displacement of two images, it would be the single most dangerous § 102 reference against claims 1/9, because it would supply the "two apertures → magnify → camera → relative displacement variance" chain. This is the #1 reference to pull as a full document (see "next steps").
• Anticipation value: UNKNOWN — must be retrieved.

C. US 8,253,932 B1 — Cole (laser + corner cube)

• Full citation: U.S. Patent No. 8,253,932 B1, "Laser and corner cube refractive-index structure parameter system." Issued 2012-08-28.
• Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8253932
• Disclosure: A monostatic laser + corner-cube (retroreflector) system that determines the path-averaged Cn² by measuring the full returned optical power Pᵣ at a receiving aperture (exploiting the Airy-diffraction first-minimum beam radius and a turbulence-dependent transmittance T_turb). It expressly discusses Rytov variance, long-term beam radius, retroreflection, and target/receiver aperture sizing. It also cites U.S. 5,150,171 (scintillometer).
• Claims potentially affected under § 102: None anticipated as to claim 1. It discloses the monostatic laser-plus-retroreflector geometry (relevant to claim 2 and claim 17's "optical source + retroreflector at a retroreflector distance") and the general goal of path-averaged Cn². But it measures scalar returned power fraction, not the relative motion of two focal spots, and has no dual-aperture magnified imaging path. It cannot anticipate claim 1/9/17.
• Most relevant to: dependent claims 2/3 和 17/18 (retroreflector/monostatic architecture) as § 103 art; explicitly not § 102.
• Anticipation value: LOW for § 102; meaningful § 103 art on the retroreflector-folding feature.

D. Sarazin & Roddier (1990) — the foundational DIMM paper ⭐

• Full citation: M. Sarazin and F. Roddier, "The ESO differential image motion monitor," Astronomy & Astrophysics 227, 294–300 (1990).
• Disclosure: The canonical DIMM: a telescope whose pupil is masked into two sub-apertures; the two resulting images are compared, and the variance of the differential image motion (relative displacement) is converted, via the known aperture diameter and separation, into the Fried parameter r₀ / seeing. This is the acknowledged origin of the exact measurement principle claim 1 recites ("focal spot displacement variance based on motion of a first focal spot … relative to a second …").
• Claims potentially affected under § 102: Claims 1 and 9 — closest of all references, but likely NOT a clean anticipation. Claim 1 requires two separate optics assemblies, each "coupled to the support structure," each "configured to magnify and direct" its own aperture-sampled beam "to the camera assembly." Classical DIMM as taught by Sarazin & Roddier uses one telescope with a two-hole mask on a common pupil → a single optics train, which the specification itself distinguishes ("Unlike many conventional systems that utilize a dual-aperture, single optical path … example embodiments … employ two or more optical paths"). That distinction is precisely the patent's asserted novelty over DIMM. So Sarazin & Roddier is anticipatory in substance (principle) but not structurally dispositive for claim 1 as written.
• Anticipation value: MODERATE for § 102 on the measurement step; the strongest § 103 backbone. (Also: it is an astronomical/point-source DIMM, whereas claims 7/15 recite a "ground-based optical path" — a further distinguishing point the patent leans on.)

E. Brown, Juarez & Brown (2013) — the inventors' own prior laser DIMM ⭐⭐ (highest-risk reference)

• Full citation: David M. Brown, Juan C. Juarez, and Andrea M. Brown, "Laser differential image-motion monitor for characterization of turbulence during free-space optical communication tests," Applied Optics 52(34), 8402–8410 (2013).
• Disclosure: A laser-based DIMM applied to terrestrial, ground-based free-space-optical (FSO) links — i.e., a laser source propagated over a ground path with a differential image-motion monitor extracting turbulence. Three of the four named inventors of US 11,231,364 are authors of this paper, and the paper's title essentially paraphrases the patent's own description of the invention.
• Claims potentially affected under § 102: Claims 1, 9, and possibly 17 — highest anticipation risk. It is the one reference that appears to combine (i) a laser source, (ii) a ground-based path, and (iii) a differential image-motion monitor for turbulence — matching the patent's stated core. Note the § 102(b)(1)(A) grace-period exception does NOT rescue this: the paper is from 2013, ~7 years before the 2020-01-31 effective filing date, far outside the one-year grace period. Being the inventors' own publication, it is still § 102(a)(1) prior art against the claims. Whether it discloses two independent magnifying optics assemblies feeding a common camera assembly (as opposed to a masked single telescope) is the dispositive structural question — the same question as for Sarazin & Roddier.
• Anticipation value: MODERATE–HIGH; the reference most likely to be the centerpiece of a challenge.

F. Tokovinin (2002)

• Full citation: A. Tokovinin, "From differential image motion to seeing," Publ. Astron. Soc. Pac. 114, 1156–1166 (2002).
• Disclosure: Theory/conversion of DIMM differential image motion into seeing (r₀), including multi-aperture weighting and the effect of aperture separation — the analytical backbone of the "path-weighting" concept.
• § 102 relevance: None for claim 1 (no dual-optics-assembly hardware). Relevant § 103 art supporting the "measure turbulence from focal spot displacement variance" and the path-weighting function limitations (claims 4/12/17).
• Anticipation value: LOW (but strong § 103 support).

G. Eaton et al. (1988)

• Full citation: F. D. Eaton, W. A. Peterson, J. R. Hines, J. J. Drexler, A. H. Waldie, D. B. Soules, "Comparison Of Two Techniques For Determining Atmospheric Seeing," Proc. SPIE 0926 (1988).
• Disclosure: Side-by-side comparison of two terrestrial atmospheric-seeing measurement techniques (e.g., differential image motion vs. scintillation/other).
• § 102 relevance: None for claim 1. § 103 context for ground-based seeing measurement generally.
• Anticipation value: LOW.

H. Baldwin et al. (2018) — MITADIMM (inventor's own)

• Full citation: K. Baldwin, R. Hanna, A. Brown, D. Brown, S. Moyer, J. G. Hixson, "Initial test of MITADIMM with an operational CBP system," Proc. SPIE 10625, 106250J (2018).
• Disclosure: Testing of a MITADIMM (a DIMM instrument) against an operational CBP (Customs and Border Protection) system — i.e., the inventors' own field DIMM deployment, matching the patent's stated application (evaluating deployed imaging systems for DHS, contract HSBP10-14-C-00005).
• § 102 relevance: Potentially the system-level counterpart to the 2013 paper. Again an inventor publication — but dated 2018, still more than one year before the 2020-01-31 effective date, so it is § 102(a)(1) art. Relevant to claims 1/9/17.
• Anticipation value: MODERATE (must be read in full).

I. Andrews & Phillips (1996)

• Full citation: L. C. Andrews, R. L. Phillips, "Monostatic propagation channel enhanced backscatter effects: a comparison of refractive spectral models," Proc. SPIE 2828 (1996).
• Disclosure: The theory of monostatic enhanced backscatter (on-axis irradiance enhancement when a beam returns off a cooperative target and interferes with itself) — the exact phenomenon the patent invokes to justify its beam-divergence correction function and the "×2 amplification" of differential motion.
• § 102 relevance: None for claim 1. § 103 art supporting dependent claims 8/16/19 (beam-divergence correction) and the monostatic claims.
• Anticipation value: LOW (but directly on-point for the divergence-correction dependents).

J. Gimmestad et al. (2006) / Hammel et al. (2014) / Philbrick (1994) / Juarez et al. (2013, 2016) / Martin et al. (2014) / Lee & Harp (1969)

• Citations: As listed in § 2.2.
• Disclosure summary: LIDAR turbulence profiling (Gimmestad, Philbrick Raman lidar); scintillometer design for dynamic paths (Hammel); FSO link hardware and Strehl-ratio simulation (Juarez); FTIR slant-path fluctuation characterization (Martin); classic weak-scattering remote-probing theory (Lee & Harp).
• § 102 relevance: None anticipates claims 1/9/17. These are background/§ 103 references establishing the state of the art in scintillometry, lidar turbulence profiling, and FSO propagation that the patent's Background section concedes.
• Anticipation value: LOW.

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4. § 102 bottom line

No reference in the citation record, on its face, anticipates independent claim 1 (or claims 9/17) as a whole. Every cited U.S. patent and every cited paper misses at least one essential element:

• US 5,303,024 (Thierman) — measures intensity, not focal-spot displacement; no camera, no magnifying optics.
• US 8,253,932 (Cole) — measures returned scalar power; no dual-aperture focal-spot imaging.
• Sarazin & Roddier (1990), Tokovinin (2002) — teach the DIMM principle (relative image-motion variance) but via a single masked telescope, the very "dual-aperture, single optical path" configuration the patent distinguishes.
• Brown/Juarez/Brown (2013) & Baldwin et al. (2018) — the inventors' own laser-DIMM-for-FSO work; the highest-risk references because they pre-date the filing by 2–7 years and fall outside the grace period, but their disclosure of two independent optics assemblies each coupled to a common support structure and each magnifying/directing to a camera assembly is the open structural question.

The real risk profile is § 103, not § 102: Sarazin & Roddier (DIMM principle) + a conventional dual-aperture telescope + Cole (monostatic retroreflector) is the natural obviousness combination, and the record the Examiner had was thin enough that no such combination appears to have been made of record. The patent's own Background concedes scintillometers and DIMM are known — which frames the case as a § 103 fight, exactly as noted in the earlier PTAB section of this analysis.

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5. Caveats (read these)

1. US 6,496,252 (Whiteley) is unverified in this session. I could not confirm its title, dates, assignee, or disclosure. It is ranked as the top-priority document to retrieve, because if it is a two-aperture differential-image-motion/seeing patent it could be a genuine § 102 reference against claim 1.
2. I could not confirm the exact § 102(b) date of US 6,496,252 — treat the "~2002" as an estimate, not a fact.
3. The NPL reference list past item [13] was truncated in the fetched PDF excerpt; there may be additional cited references (e.g., items [14], [15]…) I did not enumerate.
4. "Cited = relevant" is not the same as "cited = anticipatory." The U.S. patents were cited as background (§ 102 general art / § 103 context) and none lines up with the claim-1 architecture.
5. Anticipation requires all elements in a single reference; where I say a reference is "relevant to claims X," that is § 103/contextual relevance unless I specifically state anticipation.
6. Which references count as prior art: all items listed are dated well before the 2020-01-31 effective filing date and are therefore § 102(a)(1) art. Note that even the inventors' own 2013/2018 publications are prior art here because they fall outside the one-year grace period.
7. For a fully reliable § 102 map I would pull the complete documents for US 6,496,252, Sarazin & Roddier (1990), Brown/Juarez/Brown (2013), and Baldwin et al. (2018), and obtain the untruncated reference list from the patent PDF.

I'll research the prior-art references from the patent's Prior Art section to ground this § 103 analysis.

Let me research the remaining prior-art references cited on the patent's face.

Obviousness Analysis of U.S. Patent No. 11,231,364 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent: US 11,231,364 B2, "Optical Turbulence Measurement," appl. no. 17/010,007, filed 2020-09-02, granted 2022-01-25, assignee The Johns Hopkins University.

Cross-reference to prior sections: This analysis operationalizes the conclusion reached in the previously generated PTAB challenges and Strategic summary sections — namely that the art of record is thin (three U.S. patents plus a handful of SPIE/journal papers), that the Sarazin & Roddier DIMM paper is the acknowledged foundational reference for the differential-image-motion technique the claims recite, and that "§ 103 with a strong secondary-reference combination is the natural attack vector — not § 102." The analysis below supplies the specific combinations and motivations.

A note on sources and a flag. One discrepancy to flag per the operating rules: the earlier "Patent summary" section renders the first cited patent as US 5,303,024 (Thierman), whereas the authoritative Google Patents fetch shows "Thieman." Same patent number, same 4/1994 date, same G01N 21/41 classification — this is an OCR/spelling variance, not a different reference. I treat "US 5,303,024" as the identifier and use "Thieman" per the authoritative fetch.

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1. The legal framework

Because the effective filing date (provisional 62/968,432, filed 2020-01-31) is post-AIA, AIA § 103 governs. The four Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966), factual inquiries control: (1) scope and content of the prior art; (2) differences between the prior art and the claims; (3) the level of ordinary skill; and (4) objective indicia of non-obviousness. Under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), the motivation to combine need not be found in the references themselves — it may be found in the problem to be solved, the design incentives or market forces, or common sense — and a combination of familiar elements according to known methods, yielding predictable results, is obvious. The reason to combine must, however, be articulated with rational underpinning (In re Kahn).

The strongest structural fact for the challenger: the patent's own specification treats the core architecture as conventional. The Background concedes that scintillometry and DIMM are known; the Detailed Description states "[b]ecause of the dual aperture approach, a differential image motion monitor (DIMM) approach may be used for the analysis," and further states that the two optical paths "may be isolated, compact, and independent from each other — other than to possibly terminate, for example, into an optical wedge for imaging." These are applicant-admitted prior-art statements that anchor the obviousness case.

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2. Level of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

A POSITA would be a person with at least a bachelor's degree in physics, optical engineering, or a related field and roughly 2–4 years of experience with atmospheric-propagation instrumentation, telescope/imaging optical design, or laser remote sensing (or an equivalent combination). This person would be familiar with: (a) the astronomical DIMM technique (two sub-apertures, differential image motion, Fried parameter r₀ and Cₙ² retrieval); (b) laser remote-sensing/lidar architectures, including monostatic co-axial designs and cooperative retroreflective targets; (c) Gaussian-beam propagation and divergence corrections; and (d) standard focal-plane imaging and centroiding. This skill level is high enough that the mathematical relations recited as "functions" (path-weighting, beam-divergence correction) are within the routine design capability of the artisan.

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3. Claim construction of the pivotal limitations

• "focal spot displacement variance based on motion of a first focal spot … relative to a second focal spot" — the differential image motion between two spots. This is the DIMM quantity, and the specification defines it that way ("uncorrelated movement of the centroids"). No special construction needed; it reads on the classic DIMM differential variance.
• "path-weighting function that varies over the retroreflector distance" (claim 17) — the specification's own FIG. 7 gives W(u) ∝ (1−u)^{5/3}. This is the standard DIMM/DIM path weighting.
• "optical wedge … composite beam" — a beam-combining optic that places two spots on one focal plane.

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4. The prior art of record (from the Patent's Prior Art section)

A. Sarazin & Roddier, "The ESO differential image motion monitor," Astron. Astrophys. 227, 294–300 (1990) — the foundational DIMM reference. Per the sources retrieved, it "reviews the theory of differential image motion measurements" and "measures wavefront slope differences over two small pupils some distance apart." Key disclosures:

• A differential method that is "insensitive to tracking errors and instrument vibration errors" — i.e., common-mode vibration cancels.
• Two small apertures (D ≈ 5 cm; separation d ≈ 20 cm in the standard configuration), "usually cut out in a single larger telescope pupil by a mask."
• A wedge on one aperture to separate the twin images on the detector.
• Computation of the variance of the differential image motion between the two twin spots, from which r₀ (and hence turbulence strength) is derived. The associated source (Calern/CASLEO description) confirms the operational method: acquire N frames, compute the centroids of both twin images each frame, then the relative distances Δx, Δy, then the variances σ²ₓ, σ²ᵧ.
• Explicitly notes the method removes telescope shake and fine structure of the mount ("el método diferencial elimina el movimiento errático del telescopio"), which is the same vibration-rejection rationale the patent asserts as its benefit.

B. Gimmestad et al., "LIDAR system for monitoring turbulence profiles," Proc. SPIE 6267, 62671V (2006); and "Testing of LIDAR system for turbulence profiles," Proc. SPIE 6951, 695109 (2008) — a laser-based DIM (differential image motion) lidar. Key disclosures:

• "[T]he measurement technique is similar to the astronomical instrument known as the Differential Image Motion Monitor (DIMM), which uses natural stars as sources."

• A laser beacon replaces the natural star ("the beam from a CW laser was projected onto a hard target … observed with a telescope fitted with an aperture mask") — a laser-source DIMM.

• "light from the scattering volume is received by a telescope with two (or more) spatially separated subapertures"; the beacon is observed "with a multiple-aperture telescope and the motion of the beacon images … is characterized as the differential image motion variance."

• "A glass wedge is used to separate the two images in the focal plane."

• The path-weighting function appears explicitly: Eq. (2) defines the path-integrated turbulence as

  C̄ₙ² = ∫ [Cₙ²(s)(1 − s′/S)^{5/3} ds],

  i.e., a (1 − s/S)^{5/3} weighting that varies over the range S to the beacon — the same "folds-back" weighting function the patent recites (cf. the patent's own W(u) ∝ (1−u)^{5/3}).

• Explicit motivation language: "[b]ecause the LIDAR measures the differential motion of the images and not their sizes, it is fundamentally immune to any effects that cause image blurring, such as vibration, laser instability, diffraction on the transmitting and receiving apertures, environmental changes in the system MTF, and aerosol image blur." This is the exact rationale (vibration/diffraction immunity) that the patent advances for its shared-support-structure architecture.

• A monostatic/co-axial transmitter-receiver ("Transmitter Aperture Location: Centered on receiver primary mirror"), and the explicit derivation σ²_DIM = f(d/D)·D^{−1/3}·C̄ₙ².

C. Hammel et al., "Investigation of scintillometer designs for dynamic path measurement," Proc. SPIE 9224 — prior art in the scintillometer line that the patent's Background admits and critiques. Establishes the known art of measuring turbulence over a dynamic atmospheric path via a source/receiver link.

D. Brown, Juarez & Brown, "Laser differential image-motion monitor for characterization of turbulence during free-space optical communication tests," Appl. Opt. — prior work by the same inventive entity applying a laser DIMM to characterize turbulence on an FSO path. This is close-in art and, if it predates the critical date, is highly probative of the state of the art (and a potential § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) issue in its own right).

E. U.S. Patent No. 5,303,024 (Thieman, 4/1994) — classified G01N 21/41 (refractivity/phase-affecting properties within the optical-analysis class), U.S. Cl. 250/225 — an optical turbulence/refractivity measurement patent. (I was unable to retrieve its full text within the search budget; treat its specific disclosure as unverified.)

F. U.S. Patent No. 6,496,252 (Whiteley) and G. U.S. Patent No. 8,253,932 (Cole) — the remaining two U.S. references of record. (Full texts not retrievable within the search budget; their specific disclosures are unverified here. They are cited because the Examiner considered them — which means they are available as secondary art without having to establish them as "prior art" from scratch, subject to § 282.)

H. General knowledge of cooperative targets/retroreflectors — cornercube retroreflectors and cat's-eye reflectors are ubiquitous in laser ranging, laser trackers, FSO links, and target-acquisition systems, and are routinely paired with a co-located source/receiver to fold a beam back along its path. The patent's own specification invokes the "enhanced backscatter effect … after reflecting off a cooperative target."

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5. Ground 1 — Claims 1–8 (the bistatic apparatus and its dependents) are obvious over Sarazin & Roddier in view of Gimmestad (optionally with Hammel)

The combination is a two-reference, same-field, same-problem combination, and KSR permits it.

Claim 1 mapping:

Every element of claim 1 is disclosed by Sarazin & Roddier alone except the active laser source — and Gimmestad supplies precisely that, together with the express statement that the technique "is similar to … the DIMM."

Motivation to combine (articulated):

1. Gimmestad names the combination itself — it expressly adapts "the astronomical DIMM" by substituting a laser beacon for a natural star, to obtain active, day/night, user-selected-range measurement. That is an express teaching to modify a DIMM to use a laser source.
2. Known problem, known solution — the patent's Background identifies the very problem the art already solved: turbulence measurement along a specific path rather than an area; Gimmestad's DIM lidar was developed for exactly that ("a practical profiling technique … should be based on active remote sensing, so that it can be used at any time and pointed in any direction").
3. Shared design rationale — both references, and the patent, rely on the same differential principle to reject common-mode vibration; Gimmestad states the vibration/diffraction immunity rationale verbatim. Combining them yields no change in the principle of operation — a predictable result.
4. The "two independent optical paths / twin-telescope" limitation the patent stresses is admitted conventional by the patent's own text, and is present in Gimmestad's separate DIM channels.

Dependents:

• Claims 4/12 (path-weighting function): taught by Gimmestad Eq. (2), the (1−s′/S)^{5/3} weighting; the patent's FIG. 7 is the same function.
• Claims 5/13 (optical wedge → composite beam, single imager): taught/suggested by Gimmestad ("[a] glass wedge is used to separate the two images in the focal plane") and by Sarazin & Roddier's wedge-on-one-aperture; reconfiguring a wedge from separating two images to combining two beams onto one focal plane is a routine optical design reversal with a predictable result.
• Claims 6/14 (dual imager with separate data representations): Gimmestad's multi-aperture telescope/separate DIM channels suggest separate image planes; and the patent itself concedes that separate paths "may terminate … into an optical wedge for imaging," making the single-vs-dual imager choice an obvious design option (KSR predictable variation).
• Claims 7/15 (apertures oriented along a ground-based optical path): Gimmestad operates ground-based horizontal/slant laser paths (e.g., the CW analog on a hard target; slant-path field measurements). At most a non-functional/use-environment limitation.
• Claims 8/16 (beam-divergence correction function): the necessity of correcting for a diverging beam is known (Gimmestad/Belen'kii theory treats Gaussian beam behavior and the σ² ∝ f(d/D)·D^{−1/3}·C̄ₙ² relation; the patent's own correction uses standard generalized Gaussian-beam parameters α and A). A POSITA measuring a diverging laser beam would routinely apply the standard beam-divergence correction.

Claim 9 (method): the method steps (receive two aperture-sampled portions, magnify/direct to a camera, receive data representation in processing circuitry, determine differential focal-spot displacement variance, measure turbulence) are the operational steps of the Sarazin & Roddier + Gimmestad system — a method claim whose every step is performed by the combined apparatus.

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6. Ground 2 — Claims 17–20 (monostatic device + retroreflector) are obvious over Sarazin & Roddier + Gimmestad + a cooperative-retroreflector reference (and/or the general knowledge of the art)

Claims 17–20 add four things over claim 1: (i) an optical source coupled to the support structure; (ii) a retroreflector at a retroreflector distance that reflects the output beam back into both apertures as the source beam; (iii) measuring based on the variance and a path-weighting function that varies over the retroreflector distance; and (iv) dependent claim 18 specifying a cornercube retroreflector.

Disclosure:

• (i) Co-located source: Gimmestad's lidar is monostatic/co-axial — "Transmitter Aperture Location: Centered on receiver primary mirror behind secondary mirror." Co-locating the laser with the receiver is squarely taught.
• (ii) Cooperative reflector / folded path: Gimmestad's CW analog projects a laser spot "onto a hard target" which is then "observed with a telescope fitted with an aperture mask." Substituting a retroreflector (cornercube/cat's-eye) for a diffuse hard target is one of the most well-known substitutions in laser optics: a retroreflector returns the beam parallel to its incidence direction, which is exactly what is needed to route the beam back into the co-located apertures. Retroreflectors in cooperative-target laser systems predate the critical date by decades and are the subject of numerous patents and texts.
• (iii) Path-weighting over the retroreflector distance: Gimmestad Eq. (2)'s (1 − s′/S)^{5/3} weighting already "varies over" the source distance S; in the monostatic case S is the retroreflector distance.
• (iv) Cornercube: an express species of retroreflector (cornercube, cat's-eye) — a design choice among known equivalents.

Motivation to combine (articulated):

1. Problem to be solved — alignment and single-ended operation. The patent itself states the motivation for the monostatic configuration: "the inherent ease of system construction and setup to align the source beam … with the apertures," and that the retroreflector "can be movable." A POSITA seeking a field-deployable, single-ended, re-aimable turbulence monitor would be led to put the source at the receiver and a cooperative target at the far end.
2. Gimmestad's own hard-target CW analog provides the immediate technical basis for replacing a diffuse target with a retroreflector to (a) increase returned signal and (b) return the beam on-axis to the co-located apertures.
3. The patent's specification admits the physics is well understood — it discusses the "enhanced backscatter effect" from a cooperative target and treats the folded-path differential motion via the standard correlation-function decomposition. These are not new discoveries; they are known propagation phenomena applied to the combined architecture. That the differential motion is "magnified by a factor of two" on a folded path is a predictable consequence of the known two-way path (and, as discussed below, cuts against any "unexpected results" argument).

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7. Why the secondary considerations do not save the claims

Under Graham step 4, the patentee would need objective indicia with nexus to the claimed invention. On the current record:

• No long-felt, unmet need. DIMM (Sarazin & Roddier 1990) and laser DIM (Gimmestad 2006/2008, Brown/Juarez/Brown) already met the need the patent describes; the patent's contribution is a specific packaging (co-located source + retroreflector + shared support).
• No unexpected results. The patent's asserted advantages — vibration rejection (shared structure), path weighting, and the ×2 folded-path enhancement — are either expressly taught by Gimmestad (vibration/diffraction immunity; the (1−u)^{5/3} weighting) or are predictable consequences of known two-way propagation. A "folding back" weighting curve is exactly the (1−u)^{5/3} function.
• No industry praise or licensing/assertion evidence. As the prior sections found, the patent is unasserted; there is no litigation, no IPR, and no commercial-success record in evidence to support nexus.

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8. Foreseeable counterarguments and where the case is weakest

A rigorous § 103 memo must identify the patentee's likely escape routes:

1. Separate "optics assemblies" each with its own aperture vs. a mask. Sarazin & Roddier cuts two holes in a single pupil mask. The patentee may argue the claims require two separate optics assemblies. Rebuttal: Gimmestad's "multiple-aperture telescope" with separate DIM channels each having its own focal length, plus the patent's own admission that two isolated optical paths are conventional, forecloses this.
2. The single-imager "composite beam" via a combining wedge. Gimmestad uses a wedge to separate images. Rebuttal: combining vs. separating is a routine reversal; and Sarazin & Roddier's wedge already arranges two spots on one focal plane. But note the § 112 indefiniteness vulnerability flagged in the earlier section (what "focal spot displacement variance" means for a composite image) — this is a validity/definiteness hook, not an obviousness hook.
3. The "beam divergence correction function" and "path-weighting function that varies over the retroreflector distance." If the Board were to require structural rather than mathematical disclosure, the patentee might argue these functional claim limitations need a specific algorithm. Rebuttal: these are the standard DIMM/DIM relations; and functional claiming does not confer patentability when the underlying relation is known.
4. Authenticating Thieman / Whiteley / Cole. Because their full texts could not be retrieved here, a challenger should not build the primary case on them; they are best used as secondary art or as additional § 102/§ 103 references after a proper retrieval (and confirmation of their pre-critical-date status and public accessibility).

A second, parallel validity theory (independent of obviousness) is § 112: the heavy "may"/"example embodiments" functional language and the "path-weighting function"/"beam-divergence correction function" limitations invite written-description and indefiniteness attacks — consistent with the earlier section's recommendation.

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9. Bottom line

• Claims 1–8 are, on the available evidence, reasonably likely obvious over Sarazin & Roddier (DIMM) in view of Gimmestad (laser DIM lidar), with Hammel and/or Brown/Juarez/Brown as corroborating secondary art. The motivation is express in the art (Gimmestad describes itself as DIMM-adapted and states the vibration/diffraction-immunity rationale the patent relies on) and the result is predictable.
• Claims 9 (method) is obvious as the operational counterpart of the same combination.
• Claims 17–20 (monostatic device + retroreflector) are obvious by adding, to the above, the well-known cooperative-retroreflector/hard-target teaching (Gimmestad's CW analog) and the admitted ease-of-alignment motivation, with the cornercube being a known species.
• The whole claim set is UNTESTED before the Board (per the prior PTAB section), so any § 103 challenge would be the first public test; the record of the references of record being thin means a well-built combination petition has a credible path.

Caveats on completeness (must be preserved): Three of the four U.S. references cited on the patent's face (US 5,303,024 Thieman; US 6,496,252 Whiteley; US 8,253,932 Cole) and Hammel et al. (SPIE 9224) could not be fully retrieved within the search budget; their specific disclosures are therefore asserted only at the level of subject matter/classification and should be verified before reliance. The Sarazin & Roddier (1990) and Gimmestad (SPIE 6267/6951) disclosures summarized above are supported by the retrieved sources cited in-text. Any invalidity conclusion should be confirmed against the full PDFs of each reference and a POSITA declaration. This is an analytical opinion, not a certified validity determination.