US 11340152

I'll search for authoritative information on US patent 11340152.

Let me check for litigation/CAFC activity and verify the claim structure.

Let me try to retrieve the full claim set, including any system/method claims.

US Patent 11,340,152 — Verified Summary

Identification (as returned by search, interpreted literally): US11340152B2. The number resolves to a single, consistent patent across sources — no near-miss or alphanumeric variants appeared. Note that Google Patents renders this as patent/US11340152B2 with a related publication US20210247286A1. Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11340152](/patent/US11340152)/en

Bibliographic data

Corroborating source (assignee/inventor/date): https://www.patentleaderboard.com/tokyo-electron-limited/koudai-higashi/[149632](/patent/149632) — lists "11340152 | Substrate processing apparatus, substrate processing system, and substrate processing method | Masato Hayashi, Kohei Noguchi, Makoto Ogata | 2022-05-24." Note: one searched page attributes co-inventor "Makoto Ogata" to Mitsubishi Fuso Truck and Bus, which conflicts with the grant front page; I treat the patent document (Tokyo Electron Limited; all four inventors) as authoritative.

Abstract (as published)

A substrate processing apparatus comprising a supply passage through which fluid supplied to a substrate flows, and a foreign substance detector including a channel forming part forming a portion of the supply passage, a light projector irradiating light to the channel forming part, and a light receiver receiving light emitted from the channel forming part as a result of the light projector's irradiation. The detector detects a foreign substance in the fluid based on a signal from the light receiver. The light projector and the light receiver are disposed in areas that are not opposite to each other among the upper, lower, left, right, front, and rear directions of the channel forming part.

Independent claims — plain-language overview

Claim 1 is the only independent claim I could confirm. It covers a substrate processing apparatus with:

1. A supply passage carrying fluid to a substrate (e.g., a resist/thinner line to a coating nozzle).
2. A foreign substance detector having (a) a channel forming part that constitutes a segment of that supply passage, (b) a light projector shining light at the channel forming part, and (c) a light receiver that receives lateral scattered light from a foreign-substance detection area. A foreign substance is detected from the resulting signal.
3. A housing enclosing the channel forming part, projector, and receiver.
4. Geometry limitation: the channel forming part's inlet and outlet are on the same surface/face and connect to pipes running to outside the housing; the light projector and light receiver sit in directions other than the direction the inlet/outlet face.

The practical claim point is the non-opposed, off-axis placement of emitter and detector plus same-face inlet/outlet — which the specification touts as letting detector optics be moved/shared along a row of channel-forming parts and shrinking the overall tool footprint.

Dependent claims I could partially confirm (dependent on claim 1):

• Claim 4: the projector's optical axis is oriented upper-lower so it passes through the first channel without passing through the second channel (noise suppression).
• Claim 5: the light receiver faces the inlet/outlet pipes across the channel forming part, sits in the front-rear direction, and multiple channel forming parts are spaced in a left-right row.
• Claim 6: the channel forming part includes a convex lens portion protruding rearward from the foreign-substance detection area.

Uncertainty / limits of what I could verify

• Claims 2, 3, and 7: I could not retrieve their full text. The Google Patents claim rendering showed seven claims with claim 1 clearly independent and the rest beginning "The substrate processing apparatus of . . .", but the dependent preambles in the fetched text were truncated. I therefore cannot state with certainty what claims 2, 3, and 7 recite.
• Title vs. claims: the title recites an "apparatus, system, and method," but the granted claim set I retrieved appears to be apparatus-only. I did not confirm a separate independent system claim or method claim. Treat any assertion that such independent claims exist as unverified.
• Cited prior art: Patent Document 1 is Japanese Patent Application Publication H05-251328 (a liquid processing apparatus with an in-liquid particle counter in a resist supply pipe).

Litigation / CAFC check

I searched for this patent number in connection with 2026 Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit dockets. No CAFC 2026 docket or appeal referencing patent 11,340,152 was found. The CAFC results returned were unrelated matters (e.g., Clear Imaging Research v. Google, 2026-1485; Headwater Research v. Verizon, 26-01884; Sung v. Samsung, 26-1197) and none mention this patent. This is a negative search result only — absence of a hit does not affirmatively prove no proceedings exist, and I did not query a proprietary docket service (e.g., Docket Navigator, PACER) directly.

Bottom line: US 11,340,152 is an active Tokyo Electron Limited patent (inventors Hayashi, Noguchi, Higashi, Ogata) on optically detecting foreign substances in fluid flowing through a substrate-processing supply channel, granted 2022-05-24 from application 17/245,220 (a continuation of 16/746,118) with a 2019 JP priority. Its distinguishing claim feature is the light projector and receiver being placed on non-opposed sides of a same-face-inlet/outlet channel block inside a housing.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11340152.

The initial searches returned unrelated results. Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me try additional targeted litigation database searches.

Litigation Report: U.S. Patent No. 11,340,152

Bottom Line

No litigation (district court, ITC, or Federal Circuit appeal) involving U.S. Patent No. 11,340,152 ("Substrate processing apparatus, substrate processing system, and substrate processing method") was found.

This is a negative finding based on searches that I must flag as incomplete, given the tool-call limits hit during research. The searches performed did not surface any case naming this specific patent number.

What Was Searched

I ran queries targeting patent-litigation sources, including:

• Unified Patents litigation portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist)
• General web searches for 11340152 combined with litigation, infringement, lawsuit, and docket terminology
• Assignee/inventor-based searches (Tokyo Electron Ltd.; inventors Masato Hayashi, Kohei Noguchi, Koudai Higashi, Makoto Ogata)

Critical scoping note: These searches returned only bibliographic and patent-document results (e.g., patent leaderboard profile pages listing the patent to its inventors) — no docket records. The search results did not conclusively query PACER, CourtListener/RECAP, Docket Alarm, or the ITC's EDIS, so I cannot represent that this patent is litigated nowhere. I can only say nothing surfaced.

Patent Identification (as verified)

Case Table

Important Caveats

1. No positive identification. I found no case asserting or challenging this patent. The absence of results is not proof of absence — my searches were cut short before I could systematically query PACER, CourtListener, Docket Alarm, and ITC EDIS directly.
2. Not a legal opinion. This is an informational search summary, not a clearance or freedom-to-operate conclusion.
3. Related-family activity distinct from litigation. This patent is a continuation of Ser. No. 16/746,118 and claims priority to JP 2019‑009831. I did not find litigation on this patent, but I did not verify whether sibling continuations/international counterparts (e.g., JP, KR, CN, TW family members) have been litigated.
4. PTAB/administrative proceedings. No IPR, PGR, or reexamination was identified for US 11,340,152 either. If an attorney-client need requires certainty, these too should be independently verified via USPTO Patent Center and PTAB APIs.

Recommended Verification Steps

To reach a defensible conclusion, query directly:

• PACER / CourtListener RECAP — full-text search for "11,340,152"
• Unified Patents Portal — patent-specific litigation page
• ITC EDIS and USPTO Patent Center — assignment and enforcement history
• Docket Alarm / LexMachina — party- and patent-based dockets

If you would like, I can attempt additional targeted searches (e.g., ITC Section 337 complaints against semiconductor-equipment importers, or Tokyo Electron enforcement actions) in a fresh session.

I'll verify the canonical "no proceedings" signal against public sources before writing up.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks before concluding.

PTAB / AIA Trial Report — U.S. Patent No. 11,340,152

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file against US 11,340,152 — total count 0 (0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution-denied). The USPTO Open Data Portal structured block supplied in this prompt is the canonical source and returns no AIA trials for this patent, PTAB E2E/PTAB Search surfaces nothing, and my web searches for an IPR/PGR/CBM naming this patent or its family returned no petition, institution decision, or Final Written Decision. The bottom-line defensive posture: the patent stands un-challenged and therefore un-narrowed — a defendant gets no free claim cancellations to lean on, and the full claim set as granted remains live. At 2022-05-24 grant with an adjusted expiration of 2040-01-17, this is still a relatively young patent in PTAB terms, so the absence of AIA activity is unremarkable rather than exculpatory.

Per-proceeding detail

None to report. There is no proceeding number, petitioner, panel, ground, institution decision, FWD, settlement, or appeal to describe. I will not manufacture proceeding numbers or claim-level dispositions that do not exist.

Cross-checks performed (and their limits)

Caveat on completeness. My searches were conducted through a general web index, not a direct API query of PTAB E2E or the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's document repositories. A very recently filed petition (within the last few weeks, before public docketing propagates to web indices) could theoretically be invisible. Practically, though, the ODP structured data is the authoritative feed, and it is consistent with everything else I found.

Strategic summary

Claim status. Because no IPR, PGR, or CBM has ever been instituted on US 11,340,152, every claim remains exactly as granted — nothing is canceled, nothing is confirmed, nothing is statutorily disclaimed through a PTAB certificate. There are consequently no "surviving claims" to enumerate and no dead claims to exploit. Whatever the claim set is (the specification describes a foreign-substance detector in which the light projector and light receiver are positioned in non-opposing ones of the up/down/left/right/front/rear regions of a channel forming part), a defendant's validity attack must be built from scratch in district court or in a first-instance IPR — there is no prior PTAB record to mine, no estoppel-laden petitioner admissions, and no Board construction of disputed terms to cite.

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is irrelevant here — it attaches only to petitioners who have themselves been through an instituted IPR to FWD. Since no entity has ever petitioned, no entity is estopped. Conversely, this cuts both ways for a defendant: you are free to raise any § 102/§ 103/§ 112 ground you can develop, unconstrained by anyone else's earlier choices, but you also get no benefit from a prior petitioner having already "used up" the easy art. A defendant weighing a first IPR should note the § 315(b) one-year bar runs from service of the infringement complaint, and that under Fintiv-era practice (and the current Director's workload-management memoranda) a first-filed IPR with no parallel PTAB history is a clean slate — there is no General Plastic "follow-on petition" problem because there is no earlier petition by anyone.

Pattern signals. There is nothing to pattern-match: no serial petitioner, no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, or similar) in the chain, and no patent-owner appeal activity, because there has been no trial to appeal. Note the enforcement context is materially different from the "troll" framing in the reporting template: the assignee is Tokyo Electron Limited, a major semiconductor-equipment manufacturer, and the patent is a continuation of Ser. No. 16/746,118 claiming priority to JP 2019-009831. Tokyo Electron is a net patent holder and routine defendant in its own industry — patents like this are typically portfolio assets and cross-licensing currency rather than demand-letter instruments. That further reduces the likelihood you will ever see an IPR against it unless it is asserted against a competitor.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant and were hoping for an easy invalidity story: there isn't one. There are no canceled claims to point at, no FWD to quote, and no PTAB disposition to cite. Your options are (a) file your own IPR within one year of service of the complaint under § 315(b), (b) develop invalidity in the district court litigation, or (c) pursue invalidity defenses through the USPTO ex parte reexam path, which requires no petitioner standing and carries no estoppel. Because the patent's disclosure is highly specific about relative physical placement of the projector, receiver, and channel relative to the flow path, a § 103 attack will likely turn on whether the prior art (e.g., Patent Document 1, JP H05-251328, cited on the face of the patent) renders the non-opposing-placement limitation obvious — a factual question well suited to an IPR's claim-construction phase.

If active proceedings are filed later (for monitoring): the statutory clock is one year from institution to FWD under § 316(a)(11), with the institution decision due within six months of the petition's filing under § 314(b). Docket the petition filing date, the § 314(b) three-month Patent Owner Preliminary Response window, and the § 316(a)(11) FWD deadline.

Verification steps for certainty. For an attorney-client-grade conclusion, query directly:

• PTAB E2E (developer.uspto.gov / ptacts.uspto.gov) — patent-number search for 11,340,152
• USPTO Patent Center — full prosecution and post-grant document history for application 17/245,220
• CourtListener / Docket Alarm — any Federal Circuit appeal (none would exist absent a PTAB or district court judgment)

I found no basis to claim any PTAB proceeding exists, and I am stating that plainly rather than filling the template with invented docket numbers.

⚠️ Flagged contradiction with previously generated sections

The Litigation summary section earlier in this analysis states "No litigation … was found" but flags itself as incomplete, noting it did not directly query PACER, CourtListener/RECAP, Docket Alarm, or ITC EDIS. That caveat is consistent with my finding here, and there is no contradiction between the two sections — both report a negative result on their respective dockets (district court vs. PTAB). The combined picture is an entirely unexercised patent on the litigation and administrative side as of the sources checked. However, if a future search surfaces a district court case, that would materially change the § 315(b) bar analysis above and should be re-run before relying on this report.

I'll research the assignment record for US 11340152, starting with the USPTO Assignment Center and related sources.

Let me search the USPTO Assignment Center and legacy assignment database directly for this application number and reel/frame.

Let me check the Assignment Center directly and look for the recorded assignment paperwork.

Ownership Chain Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,340,152

Source-access note up front: I attempted to query the USPTO Patent Assignment Search (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) and its legacy mirror (https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) by patent number and by application number (17/245,220). The structured assignment record — reel/frame, execution date, and correspondent of record — did not surface in any retrievable result in this session. What follows is built from (a) the patent document's own legal-events block (authoritative, per the source rule) and (b) Google Patents legal events. I mark every field I could not verify rather than filling it in. Per the task rules, I am not fabricating reel/frame numbers.

Inventors

Unusual patterns: None observed. This is the opposite of the "inventors depart within 12 months" precursor. All four inventors remained with TEL; Higashi continued to be granted TEL patents through at least September 2025, and three of the four (Hayashi, Noguchi, Ogata) reappear on the sibling grant US 11,002,656 (2021-05-11) and Hayashi/Noguchi on US 11,879,839 (2024-01-23). The inventorship is a stable, in-house TEL coating/developing team, not a thin, transaction-oriented inventor set.

Original assignee

Tokyo Electron Limited (TBS/Akasaka Biz Tower, 3-1 Akasaka 5-chome, Minato-ku, Tokyo 107-6325, JP) — named as assignee on the face of the patent and the sole assignee/current assignee.

• Primary line of business: semiconductor and flat-panel-display production equipment — coaters/developers (the "CLEAN TRACK" line), plasma etch, thermal processing, single-wafer deposition, cleaning, and wafer probers. Founded 1963-11-11; ~17,200 employees; publicly listed (Tokyo). Source (corporate profile): https://www.10jqka.com.cn#1669632610928545802
• Does it ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, with high confidence. The specification's own apparatus — a resist coating apparatus with spin chuck, cup, multi-nozzle resist/thinner arm, and an integrated in-line foreign-substance detector on the resist supply line — is a description of TEL's coater/developer product class (FIGS. 1, 2, 18, 19 describe a full coating/developing system of the type TEL sells). TEL is not a licensing shell.
• Current status: Operating, independent, solvent. No evidence of acquisition, dissolution, or bankruptcy. (If required, corroborate via TEL's annual securities report / 20-F-equivalent filings; I did not pull an SEC 10-K because TEL is a Japanese issuer.)

Assignment timeline

The chain contains exactly one recorded assignment (inventors → Tokyo Electron Limited). I could not recover the reel/frame or the correspondent from the assignment database in this session; those cells are marked [not retrieved] and should be pulled directly from https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ before this is relied on.

• 2021-05-03 (recorded) — Reel [not retrieved] / Frame [not retrieved]
  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: Masato Hayashi; Kohei Noguchi; Koudai Higashi; Makoto Ogata (all four named inventors, jointly)
  • Assignee: TOKYO ELECTRON LIMITED
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved] — the Assignment Center record, which carries the attorney/agent of record, was not reachable in this session. Contextual only (NOT a finding for this patent): a legacy USPTO assignment PDF recorded to Tokyo Electron Limited in 2006 (reel 018530/0813, unrelated "Data Flow Management…" matter) shows TEL's recordings being filed by correspondent Peter J. Yim, Morrison & Foerster LLP, Customer No. 77464. I am flagging this only as TEL's historic recording practice — I have no evidence it is the correspondent on the 2021 reel for US 11,340,152 and I am not asserting it. Source of that unrelated record: https://legacy-assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/assignment-pat-018530-0813.pdf
  • Context: Original inventor-to-corporate assignment (employment/obligation assignment), executed in connection with the continuation application filed 2021-04-30. This is a routine in-house title-perfection filing, not an acquisition, fire-sale, reorg, or securitization.

Non-assignment legal events from the patent's own legal-events block (for completeness, not assignments):

• 2019-01-24 — JP priority JP 2019-009831 (foreign priority).
• 2020-01-17 — parent application Ser. No. 16/746,118 filed (continuation parent).
• 2021-04-30 — application 17/245,220 filed by Tokyo Electron Ltd.
• 2021-08-12 — publication of US 2021/0247286 A1.
• 2022-05-24 — patent granted (US 11,340,152 B2).
• 2040-01-17 — adjusted expiration.

Note on the parent: the parent case 16/746,118 was filed Jan 2020 and would ordinarily carry its own TEL inventor-to-corporate assignment. I did not retrieve it. If a full family-chain reconstruction is needed, query the Assignment Center for both 16/746,118 and 17/245,220.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11340152
    2019 : JP priority filed
    2020 : Parent application filed
    2021 : Continuation application filed
         : Inventors assign rights to Tokyo Electron
    2022 : Patent granted to Tokyo Electron

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Corroborating negative check: no IPR/PGR/CBM and no district-court or Federal Circuit matter naming this patent surfaced (see the earlier Litigation and PTAB sections) — consistent with a portfolio asset that has never been put into an assertion posture.

Verdict

Insufficient data — under the menu's own definition ("no records, or only the original assignment").

Justification: The assignment record accessible to me consists of a single link: the 2021-05-03 recorded assignment from inventors Hayashi, Noguchi, Higashi, and Ogata to Tokyo Electron Limited, i.e., the founding inventor-to-corporate assignment. There is no downstream assignment, no LLC, no aggregator, and therefore no NPE chain to classify — every one of the eight troll-pattern signals is either "not present" or "unclear" due to missing metadata, not due to adverse evidence. The practical ownership conclusion is nonetheless clear and favorable on the troll question: US 11,340,152 is held by its operating-company original assignee, Tokyo Electron Limited, a semiconductor-equipment manufacturer that ships the coater/developer product class embodying the claims, and has not moved the patent to any licensing entity. The "Insufficient data" label reflects only the retrieval gap on reel/frame and correspondent, not any suspicion of an NPE chain.

Two caveats to re-verify before relying on this:

1. The reel/frame and correspondent of record were not retrievable here. Pull them from the Assignment Center by patent number 11,340,152 (and by application 17/245,220 and parent 16/746,118) — the correspondent name is the one field I was asked to capture and could not.
2. I did not retrieve the prior assignment on parent Ser. No. 16/746,118, nor any JP/foreign-family recordation; those are outside this session's results.

Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "11340152"; mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html)

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 11,340,152, starting with confirming the patent's own front-page references and the one reference named in its specification.

Good — I've confirmed the JP reference named in the specification. Now let me pull the front-page citation list for US 11,340,152 and details on the key reference found.

Let me pull the specific references — the JP publication named in the spec, the likely EP family search report, and the citation table.

I've hit my research-step limit, so I'll report what the searches actually established and be explicit about the one thing I could not retrieve.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,340,152 B1/B2

A. USPTO-identifying search for 11340152 (literal)

The number 11340152 resolves, in every source returned, to a single document — US 11,340,152 B2, "Substrate processing apparatus, substrate processing system, and substrate processing method," Tokyo Electron Limited (inventors Hayashi, Noguchi, Higashi, Ogata), granted 2022‑05‑24 from app. 17/245,220. No near-miss or variant number (11,340,153; 11,340,512; 11,430,152; etc.) surfaced as a distinct record. This is consistent with the bibliographic table already established in the earlier Patent summary section of this analysis, so I won't repeat it.

Important limitation, stated up front: the Google Patents rendering of US 11,340,152 supplied as the authoritative full text in this matter contains no "References Cited / Patent Citations" table — the fetch jumps from the specification straight to the Landscapes/Abstract data. I therefore cannot enumerate the examiner's full front-page citation list (the itemized US patent documents and foreign patent documents under § 102/§ 103), and I will not invent entries for it. What I can state with confidence is set out below: the patent document itself names exactly one prior-art reference, and my searches surfaced corroborating citation chains that independently place that reference, and one closely related TEL patent, in the same technical space.

B. Reference 1 — the only prior-art citation named in the patent document

Discrepancy flagged (not auto-corrected): three separate Google Patents citation tables I retrieved list the assignee of JPH05251328A as "Nec Yamagata Ltd," and I am treating the search results as ground truth per my operating rules. However, the J‑GLOBAL record for 特開平5‑251328 did not display an applicant (出願人) in the retrieved excerpt, and US 11,340,152 names no assignee for the reference. It is therefore unverified whether the true applicant is NEC Yamagata Ltd or another entity, and I make no representation on that point. This does not affect the reference's status as prior art.

Brief description (from the published abstract and claim excerpt): A photoresist-film coating apparatus in which a liquid particle counter is installed in the chemical-solution piping system to monitor particles and prevent yield loss. The chemical solution is drawn from a resist container through a chemical filter by a chemical pump, guided through piping to a spin-coat section, spun onto a semiconductor wafer, and drained to a drain tank. A sensor part (sensor unit) and a control part are disposed in the piping system; the sensor part measures the number of particles in the chemical solution passing through it. If the particle count satisfies the set specification, the photoresist is dispensed onto the wafer; if out of specification, a dummy dispense discharges the chemical to the drain tank until the specification is met. The published claim excerpt recites the sensor part being "disposed between the chemical pump and the spin-coat section" and a control part that guides the chemical to the spin-coat section only when the detected particle count satisfies the set standard.

Examiner citations appearing on the face of JP H05‑251328 (3 of 6 shown on J‑GLOBAL): 特開昭62‑025416; 特開昭63‑227020; 特開昭61‑245527.

§ 102 anticipation assessment against US 11,340,152

Because this reference predates the 2019‑01‑24 priority date by ~25 years, it is available as prior art under AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1) (printed publication) and, being a foreign publication, it is not available under § 102(a)(2), which is limited to U.S. patents, U.S. application publications, and PCT publications designating the U.S.

Element-by-element against claim 1 (using the claim-1 reconstruction already established in the Patent summary section — no priority/claim-set contradiction found):

Conclusion for Reference 1: JP H05‑251328 does not anticipate claim 1 as granted. It anticipates at most a generic, much broader genus — "an optical particle counter disposed in the resist supply line between pump and coat section, used to gate dispensing." It is not § 102 art against the granted claim set; its real force is as § 103 base art, combined with (i) an ordinary in-liquid particle counter's emitter/detector geometry and (ii) routine mechanical design of a flow cell to yield same-face porting, to attack the "not opposite to each other" + "same-surface inlet/outlet" limitations as an obvious packaging choice. Note the applicant's own characterization in the specification: "Patent Document 1 discloses a particle counter that detects foreign substances in a channel for a resist connected to a nozzle. However, there is no description about the positional relationships between the channel and the components of the particle counter." That is essentially an admission that the reference discloses the detection concept but not the positional limitation on which allowance turned.

Secondary value: H05‑251328 also independently anticipates nothing in this patent, but it is itself cited as prior art against US 6,268,013 B1 (below) and appears in the "Family Cites Families" tables of other Tokyo Electron filings (e.g., US 20220034802A1). That puts it squarely in the lineage of TEL's own in-line resist-particle-counting art — relevant if anyone argues the problem was not known.

C. Reference 2 — closely related art surfaced by the search (citation status of record UNCONFIRMED)

Brief description: A resist-film coating method/apparatus in which particles in the coating liquid are counted in-line before the liquid is applied to the wafer. The apparatus includes a particle-detecting section 181, a particle-counting section 182, a sensor 184 and an optical cell 185 through which the resist flows, with a laser beam applied to the liquid and scattered light detected. The reference expressly recognizes the core engineering problem the '152 patent later addresses: a conventional counter placed "between the nozzle and the semiconductor wafer" suffers resist sticking to the inner wall of the optical cell, and the resist liquid itself "emits light" when irradiated, degrading counting accuracy — hence the '013 solution of sampling at a "dummy dispensing position" and detecting impurities in the collected sample. Particle increases are classified as abrupt (contamination/pump malfunction → stop the apparatus) versus gradual (filter/pump degradation → replace parts), with an alarm to the operator or host computer.

§ 102 assessment: US 6,268,013 does not anticipate claim 1 — its detection is on a sampled receptacle quantity outside the supply passage, not on a channel forming part of "a portion of the supply passage" within a housing having same-face porting, and it lacks the claimed projector/receiver non-opposition geometry. Its § 102 relevance would arise only if a claim were read broadly onto in-line laser scattering in a resist line. Its more realistic role is § 103 art, and specifically it is the strongest available evidence that (a) in-line optical particle counting on resist supply lines was known, and (b) the known drawback was optical-cell fouling and resist auto-fluorescence — giving a skilled artisan motive to redesign the flow cell, which cuts against non-obviousness of the '152 geometry.

Caveat: I could not confirm that US 6,268,013 appears on the face of US 11,340,152. Because the front-page citation table was not retrievable, this is offered as relevant art found during search, not as a confirmed citation of record. Do not represent it as a citation of the '152 patent without checking the printed front page.

D. What I could not establish (and will not fabricate)

1. The complete examiner citation list for US 11,340,152. The authoritative full text supplied for this matter contains no "References Cited" section. The itemized list of U.S. patent documents and foreign patent documents cited on the front page is unverified.
2. Whether H05‑251328's true applicant is NEC Yamagata Ltd. Google Patents says so in three independent citation tables; the J‑GLOBAL record is silent on applicant in the retrieved excerpt. Interpreted literally per the search results, with the discrepancy flagged rather than auto-corrected.
3. The optical architecture of H05‑251328 (emitter/detector geometry). Without the figures/spec I cannot assert whether it uses a 90°-scatter or an opposed straight-through (extinction) layout. This matters: if it is 90°-scatter, then "projector and receiver not opposite each other" is inherently disclosed for the generic counter, and the only remaining novelty in claim 1 is the same-face inlet/outlet plus housing packaging — a much narrower and more fragile distinction.
4. Whether a counterpart EP application (candidate EP 3912725 A1) has an EPO search report citing art against this family. One search result returned an EP citation-annex URL with document numbers that did not visually match this patent's field; I could not open the document before hitting the step limit. The EP family search-report path is the single highest-value next check for finding additional § 102/§ 103 art not on the U.S. face.

E. Recommended next steps to complete the citation list

1. USPTO Patent Center / Global Dossier for app. 17/245,220 and its parent 16/746,118 — pull the Form PTO/SB/08 "References Cited" and any PTO‑892/1449 from the file wrapper. This is the only authoritative way to enumerate the citations.
2. Global Dossier for the JP priority application JP 2019‑009831 and the EP counterpart — the JPO and EPO search reports often cite art the USPTO examiner did not.
3. Full text of JP H05‑251328 via J‑PlatPat — specifically to resolve item D.3 above (scatter geometry), which is outcome-determinative for any § 102/§ 103 analysis.

F. Cross-check against earlier sections

No contradiction. The earlier Patent summary identified JP H05‑251328 as the sole named reference; this analysis confirms that identification against two independent sources (J‑GLOBAL title/abstract/dates and Google Patents citation tables) and adds the element-level § 102 assessment. Consistent with the Litigation and PTAB sections, there is no adversarial record in which any of this art has been tested — no IPR has been filed, so the sufficiency of H05‑251328 as § 103 base art remains untested by the Board.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,340,152 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Updates to the previously generated sections (flagged)

• Claim set now fully retrieved. The earlier "Patent summary" section could not verify claims 2, 3, and 7. The full granted set is now available from Justia (https://patents.justia.com/patent/11340152): seven claims, claim 1 the only independent claim. The prior section's characterizations of claims 4, 5, and 6 are consistent with the retrieved text (no contradiction), but claims 2, 3, and 7 were previously blank and are now filled in below.
• One genuine tension worth flagging. The Abstract and the Summary of the Invention recite that "the light projector and the light receiver … are disposed in areas that are not opposite to each other." Granted claim 1 does not recite that language. Claim 1's geometric proviso is keyed only to the inlet/outlet direction: "the light projector and the light receiver are disposed in areas in directions other than a direction in which the inlet and the outlet are formed with respect to the channel forming part." Taken literally, claim 1 therefore reads on an opposed projector/receiver pair (e.g., projector below, receiver above) so long as neither sits in the inlet/outlet direction. That is a materially thinner limitation than the Abstract suggests, and it enlarges the prior-art coverage discussed below.
• The negative litigation and PTAB findings in the earlier sections mean there is no adjudicated validity holding, no claim construction, and no estoppel to work from. The analysis below is therefore a fresh-art analysis.

1. Framework and level of ordinary skill

The patent's priority date is 2019-01-24 (JP 2019-009831), so AIA §§ 102/103 govern and KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (550 U.S. 398 (2007)) controls: a teaching, suggestion, or motivation is not required; a claimed combination is obvious where (a) the references are analogous and reasonably pertinent, (b) the elements are known and arranged as claimed, and (c) there is a known reason to combine (design incentive, market demand, "obvious to try" over a finite set of predictable solutions).

POSITA: a bachelor's degree in optical/mechanical/electrical engineering or applied physics plus 2–5 years' experience in (i) optical particle measurement (liquid particle counters, flow cytometry) or (ii) semiconductor liquid-processing equipment (resist/developer coaters), or equivalent experience. The POSITA knows the G01N 15/02 and 15/14 art (both the patent and the references are classified there) and knows that particle sizing in a liquid stream is conventionally done with forward scatter (near the beam axis) or side scatter (off-axis, ~90°).

2. Prior art forming the core combinations

3. Claim 1 — combination "A + B + C (+ D)" renders it obvious

Motivation to combine (KSR factors).

1. Same field / reasonably pertinent. A, B, C, E, F, I, J all address optically counting particles in a flowing liquid. A is literally in the same sub-field as the patent (particle monitoring inside a resist coating line).
2. Same problem, complementary disclosures. A supplies the apparatus context but is silent on optical layout — exactly the gap the patent's own specification concedes Patent Document 1 leaves. B supplies the flow-cell optics; C supplies same-face porting; J supplies the substrate-agnostic flow-cell geometry.
3. Express art statement that the arrangement is conventional. D states that "usually" the light source and detector are oriented perpendicular to each other, and places the illumination and detection windows on different legs of a bent pipe. That is affirmative evidence of what POSITAs did, not a teaching away.
4. Finite, predictable design space. Placing an emitter and detector relative to a flow cell involves at most the six orthogonal direction choices recited in the patent's own FIG. 10 discussion. KSR's "obvious to try" applies with full force.
5. Design incentives recognized by the art itself. J's background explains that pipes connected to flow cells warp/move and can interfere with the irradiation light, causing noise; same-face porting and off-port-face optics are the recognized fixes. C gives a further, mundane incentive (spillage avoidance with same-face ports). And the patent's own stated benefit — keeping the port face free of optics so tubing need not be disconnected for maintenance and the other housing walls can be removable covers — is a predictable mechanical advantage, precisely the kind of "arrangement of parts" change that is obvious absent a new function (MPEP 2144.04).
6. Beam dumping is routine. B already teaches a light-absorbing trap opposite the projector to kill the transmitted beam; the patent's light absorber 56 and shutter are admitted prior practice refinements (H teaches a shutter/beam dump as an enumerated option).

Independent claim 1 does not require the projector and receiver to be non-opposed to each other (see §0). The only geometric constraint is that both be off the inlet/outlet face. That constraint is met by B+C and by J directly.

4. Dependent claims — separately obvious

Because every claim depends from claim 1, a § 103 holding on claim 1 collapses the set unless a dependent claim independently establishes patentability — and none of claims 2–7 recites structure that the references above lack.

5. The nearest-miss reference — and a validity risk you should size

RION's US 11,009,445 / US 2020/0240893 / JP 2020-118549–118550 family is, on the retrieved text, close to point-for-point on claims 1, 3, 4 and 6 (same-face inlet/outlet, transparent quartz block, beam through only the first passage, off-port-face receiver with condensing lens, multi-cell array with movable optical axes).

Critical § 102(a)(2) caveat. The J-GLOBAL record for JP 2020-118550 lists application JP 2019-009880, filed 2019-01-24 — the same day as this patent's priority document, JP 2019-009831 (filed 2019-01-24). Section 102(a)(2) requires the reference to be "effectively filed before the effective filing date of the claimed invention," so a same-day filing does not qualify. I therefore treat the RION family as not established prior art on the record I could check, and I flag that I did not verify whether the RION JP case claims an earlier (e.g., 2018) priority. Two consequences:

• If RION's effective filing date is genuinely the same day, the RION disclosure is not § 102/§ 103 art, and the combination in §3 (A+B+C+D) is the operative attack. It remains powerful direct evidence of what a POSITA regarded as conventional.
• If this patent's JP priority claim fails for the claims (e.g., lack of § 112 written-description support in JP 2019-009831 for the granted claim scope), the effective filing date shifts to the 2020-01-17 parent application. RION's JP 2019-01-24 priority would then be before that date, and RION becomes § 102(a)(2) art — potentially anticipating claim 1 outright. This is the single highest-leverage validity issue I identified. (Note that RION is a competitor in particle-counter instrumentation, not in coaters.)

Also worth noting for the record: US 2019/0277745 A1 (transparent tubular flow cell with a bent flow passage and a beam damper 19 absorbing light that passed through the cell) publishes 2019-09-12 — after the critical date — so it is only usable if its earlier priority predates 2019-01-24; I could not verify that. And JP 2019-220712 ("Patent Document 2" cited in TEL's later US 2024/0125697) published in December 2019 and is likewise not prior art to this patent.

6. Rebuttal considerations and limits

• Teaching away? None identified. D affirmatively endorses perpendicular source/detector orientation; no reference disparages side-scatter detection or off-port-face optics.
• Unexpected results? The patent's asserted benefits (smaller detector footprint, easier maintenance, reduced noise from stray light) are predictable from the geometry and are already described in the art (J on pipe/beam interference; B on beam traps; E on stray-light suppression). No data of record ties them to the specific claimed arrangement.
• Objective indicia: none available. The earlier sections found no litigation and no PTAB proceedings, so there is no nexus-backed evidence of commercial success, copying, or industry praise, and no adjudicated construction.
• Not legal advice / not a validity opinion. I could not verify US 6,268,013's assignee and dates, the RION family's earliest priority, or US 2019/0277745's priority within this session's tool budget; the claim-1 text I rely on is drawn from Justia rather than from the USPTO Patent Center certified copy.

Bottom line: Claim 1 is, on the references checked, obvious under § 103 over JP H05-251328 (substrate-processing supply line with in-line particle counter) in view of US 5,030,843 (flow cell with off-axis lateral-scatter receiver and beam-absorbing trap) and US 2002/0071119 A1 (same-face inlet/outlet porting in a particle-measuring flow cell), with EP 2 510 333 A1 supplying an express teaching that perpendicular source/detector orientation is the norm. Claims 2–7 add only routine fluidic geometry (downstream taper/curvature; beam confined to a single passage; U-shaped three-passage cell; shared movable optics over a row of cells; a condensing lens on the cell's rear face), each of which is taught — most directly by WO 2018/123771 A1 and US 11,009,445 (RION) — and none of which establishes independent patentability. The strongest single-source attack, if the RION priority date ever resolves favorably, is the RION family itself.