US 11340161

I'll search for this specific patent number and check for any CAFC litigation.

Let me search more specifically for litigation and USPTO records for this patent.

Let me do a targeted check for any litigation or Federal Circuit activity involving this patent.

US Patent 11,340,161 (US11340161B2) — Analyst Summary

Sourcing note: The full text below is taken from the authoritative Google Patents record (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11340161](/patent/US11340161)/en), corroborated by Justia (https://patents.justia.com/patent/11340161) and the GasPorOx AB portfolio listing on onscope (https://onscope.com/ipowner/en/owner/ip/[505955](/patent/505955)-gasporox-ab.html). I interpreted the identifier literally as US 11,340,161 / US11340161B2 and did not substitute any similarly numbered patent.

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Bibliographic data

Abstract (verbatim): "An apparatus or method for measurement of multiple gas concentrations. The apparatus comprises a multi-wavelength laser module, and a multi-layered/multi-band detector."

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Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — Apparatus (first independent claim). A multi-gas detection instrument built from two cooperating parts:

• a multi-wavelength laser source containing at least two tunable lasers housed in the same can, the can having a window through which uncollimated light is emitted; and
• a multiband detector made of at least two material layers stacked one after another along the same optical axis, each layer tuned to detect a different wavelength range (e.g., a Si layer over an InGaAs layer).
• The apparatus must be configured to do at least one of: measure gas concentration in the headspace of closed food/pharmaceutical containers, measure gas pressure in such headspace, or detect leakage from such a container.

Claim 12 — Method of use (second independent claim). "A method of employing the apparatus of claim 1 for allowing a concentration of a first gas to be retrieved by normalization to a second gas." In plain terms: use the Claim 1 apparatus to measure one gas and normalize its absorption signal against a second (reference) gas so that the unknown optical path length can be inferred, enabling concentration to be derived. (Note as written it is a method claim referencing an apparatus claim — an unusual but literal dependency.)

Claim 14 — Method of detecting multiple gases (third independent claim). A method for the same three end-uses (headspace concentration, headspace pressure, container leakage), comprising:

• transmitting light at at least two wavelengths from a multi-wavelength laser module to a target site, where the module has at least two tunable laser chips arranged side-by-side in the same can to give overlapped beam paths without additional optics; and
• detecting light from the target site with a multiband detector having at least two material layers stacked along the same optical axis, each layer detecting a different wavelength range.

Claim 18 — Apparatus (fourth independent claim). A narrower apparatus claim reciting the laser chips side-by-side in the same can to provide overlapped beam paths without additional optics, plus the same stacked multiband detector, again limited to at least one of the three container/food-pharma applications. Claim 19 adds that the two tunable laser sources are spaced no more than 500 microns apart; Claim 20 recites monolithic integration of the chips on a single substrate.

Common inventive core: eliminating beam-combining optics (dichroic/polarizing beam splitters, fiber combiners, etc.) by placing multiple tunable laser chips extremely close together or stacked, so their beams are inherently overlapped, and reading them out with a single stacked multi-layer photodetector that registers each wavelength band separately.

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Litigation / CAFC 2026 docket check

I searched specifically for Federal Circuit and court docket activity involving US 11,340,161 / 11340161 (including GasPorOx as a party). No CAFC 2026 appeal or district-court docket entry for this patent surfaced in my searches. The only 2026 Federal Circuit material returned was unrelated (e.g., a May 2026 summary referencing U.S. Patent 10,912,321 in Enviro Tech v. Safe Foods — a different patent and different parties).

Caveats / uncertainty:

• On the record available to me, the patent shows as Active with a maintenance fee paid, no PTAB (IPR/PGR) proceeding identified, and an EP counterpart (EP3615919B1) granted 2023-09-13.
• The absence of CAFC/litigation results in a web search is not proof that none exists — court dockets and PTAB filings can be under-indexed or not retrievable through general search. Treat the "no litigation found" statement as a search observation, not an authoritative clearance. The patent number itself, its bibliographic data, and the claim text above are well-corroborated across multiple sources.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11340161 across patent litigation databases.

Let me search the specific litigation databases and the Unified Patents portal.

Let me check the specific litigation databases directly, including the Unified Patents portal and Google Patents litigation data.

Search Results: Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 11,340,161

I searched multiple sources — including the Unified Patents litigation/PTAB portal, Google Patents litigation data, court-report citations, and general web searches keyed to the precise patent number 11340161 / 11,340,161 and to the patent owner GasPorOx AB.

Finding: No litigation found

Based on my searches, I could not identify any known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,340,161. No district court complaint, CAFC appeal, ITC action, or PTAB proceeding naming this specific patent was located.

What the searches did return (context, not litigation)

• Patent identification confirmed: US 11,340,161 B2, "Compact multi-wavelength TDLAS system," inventors Märta Lewander Xu, Patrik Lundin, and Johannes Swartling; assignee GasPorOx AB (Lund, Sweden). App. No. 16/609,145; 371 national phase of PCT/EP2018/061019; priority SE 1750515-7 (2017-04-28); granted 2022-05-24.
• Owner's own materials (GasPorOx press release, Feb. 15, 2022, and quarterly/redeye reports) describe the patent as strategic for future applications and mention "working strategically with our patent portfolio," but contain no mention of any enforcement action or lawsuit. (e.g., https://storage.mfn.se/c1412f79-33ad-4a57-bad3-bad58493dfea/gasporox-far-patent-i-usa-for-sin-laserteknik-avseende-anvandning-av-parallella-lasrar.pdf)
• ONScope owner page lists this patent under GasPorOx's portfolio with no litigation annotation. (https://onscope.com/ipowner/en/owner/ip/[505955](/patent/505955)-gasporox-ab.html)
• The Unified Patents, PACER, and Docket Alarm results that surfaced were unrelated — they concerned different patents (e.g., 7,454,002; 9,641,849; 8,222,723; 9,253,239; the EscapeX/Google fee case) and other litigants. None referenced patent 11,340,161.

Important caveats

1. I was unable to directly query PACER (which requires authenticated access and is paywalled) or obtain a live, patent-number-keyed result from the Unified Patents litigation portal for this specific number. My conclusion rests on public, indexed sources only.
2. Negative results from web search are not conclusive. A recently filed and not-yet-indexed case could exist.
3. To confirm definitively, I'd recommend a direct PACER / Docket Navigator / Lex Machina / Unified Patents litigation portal query filtered on patent number 11,340,161 and on assignee GasPorOx AB (including subsidiaries GPX Medical AB).

Bottom line: As of the information available to me, no litigation is known involving US 11,340,161 — I state this with the explicit caveat that it reflects the limits of the sources I could reach, not a certified nationwide PACER clearance search.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" signal against live sources before concluding.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks to be thorough about any recent filings or related litigation.

One more check on litigation/docket databases to rule out a recently-filed petition not yet in ODP.

PTAB proceedings on file — summary

I ran the structured ODP "PTAB proceedings" block (canonical) plus targeted live checks against PTAB/PTAB E2E-style results, docket aggregators, and third-party PTAB analytics. All sources agree.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings (0 IPRs, 0 PGRs, 0 CBMs) have ever been filed against U.S. Patent No. 11,340,161 as of 2026-09-30 — active: 0; claims invalidated: 0; claims sustained: 0; settled: 0; institution denied: 0. The bottom line for a defendant is unusual and worth internalizing: this is an unlitigated, un-challenged patent. All 20 claims are UNTESTED, none are CANCELED, and none have been vindicated. There is no FWD to lean on — meaning there is also no adverse PTAB record, no patent-owner-favorable Board holding, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel constraining anyone. A defendant's IPR options are wide open on a first-come basis.

Corroboration:

• Structured ODP block: "The USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest."
• IP Verse (third-party PTAB/opposition analytics, last updated 2026-06-11) shows Gasporox with "PTAB Cases Filed: – / PTAB Cases Faced: –" — https://ipverse.greyb.com/competitive-analysis/company/gasporox
• No petition caption ("Gasporox" / "'161 patent" / "11,340,161") surfaced in PTAB petition text or decision search results.

No proceedings to detail

Because the count is zero, the per-proceeding template (petitioner, panel, grounds, institution, FWD, settlement, appeal) has no entries. I am not going to invent proceeding numbers to fill that space. If a member of the public, a competitor, or a defensive aggregator has a paper filing that predates the ODP ingest window, it would be the only thing that could change this picture.

Adjacent signals that are NOT PTAB proceedings (flagged so they aren't mistaken for AIA trials)

• EPO opposition — Gasporox as opponent, not target. IP Verse records Gasporox filing an opposition on 2021-11-24 against GEA Food Solutions Germany's "Method And Packaging Machine For Determining The Concentration Of Gas In A Packaging." This tells you Gasporox is an active, offense-minded IP enforcer in Europe — a useful warning sign for a US defendant — but it is an EPO proceeding, not an AIA trial, and it is against someone else's patent.
• EP counterpart is granted and alive. EP3615919B1 (the Art. 153-family sibling of the '161 patent) granted 2023-09-13, with EP3615919C0 also recorded on 2023-09-13. That is a separate European right subject to EPO opposition, not the PTAB. If you are mapping your exposure, do not conflate the EP opposition window with US PTAB options.
• Earlier family member: EP3208603B1 (GasPorOx's own earlier "System and method for determining a concentration of a gas in a container" rights) appears as a family citation, not as prior art of record in a PTAB trial.
• Third-party citations, not challenges: the "Families Citing this family" entries (GB202001029D0 / Ishida Europe; SE546545C2 / Beamonics; CN118329332B / Hanwei) are forward citations only. None is a validity attack.
• No parallel US litigation surfaced in my searches. That matters for the § 315(b) clock: with no complaint served, no petitioner is on the one-year bar, and no Fintiv-style discretionary-denial posture has been created.

Strategic summary

Claim status. The patent issued 2022-05-24 with 20 claims and 3 independent claims — claim 1 (apparatus: at least two tunable laser sources in the same can, window emission of uncollimated light, plus a multi-layer band-stacked detector, tied to food/pharma headspace concentration, pressure, or leakage), claim 14 (method, requiring chips arranged side-by-side in the same can to provide overlapped beam paths "without additional optics"), and claim 18 (apparatus, chips side-by-side in the same can). No claim of the '161 patent has been canceled, narrowed, disclaimed under 37 C.F.R. § 1.321(a), or confirmed in any AIA trial. Every claim is UNTESTED — this is a greenfield and a blank slate simultaneously.

Estoppel landscape. There is none. Because no petition was ever filed, § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to nobody. A defendant today faces no risk of being blocked by another party's prior IPR grounds, and conversely gets no benefit from anyone else's work. Practical consequence: a first-filed IPR on the '161 patent would face no General Plastic serial-petition problem, no Advanced Bionics/Fintiv follow-on problem tied to an earlier petitioner, and no § 325(d) argument that the Office already considered the art — everything you would choose to raise would be fresh. That cuts both ways: the first petitioner also has no one else's institution decision to learn from, and must build the obviousness case from scratch against a fairly sparse, mechanism-focused disclosure (stacked Si-on-InGaAs-style multi-band detector; co-packaged closely-spaced tunable diode lasers in a single TO-can; <500 µm chip separation; overlapped beams without dichroic/polarizing combiners).

Pattern signals. No petitioner has filed anything, so there is no repeat-petitioner pattern. Gasporox has neither been a patent owner in a PTAB appeal nor a petitioner in an AIA trial — it has no PTAB track record on either side. There is no Unified Patents or other defensive-aggregator presence in the chain for this patent. Read the whole picture together: the assertion/enforcement activity on this patent is at most nascent (and my searches found no US suits at all), which is consistent with the zero-IPR record. Note the caveat directly: well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs; the absence of PTAB activity here most likely reflects that the '161 patent has not yet been asserted at scale in the US, not that it is bulletproof. Keep the priority date (2017-04-28) and the anticipated expiration (2038-04-30) in mind for prior-art scoping — you have art through at least 2017-04-28 to work with, and § 102(a)(2)/§ 102(b)(2) grace-period rules apply to a pre-AIA-to-AIA transition-era priority date.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not cite a non-existent FWD. There is nothing to link to. If an adversary or a demand letter implies the patent "has been upheld by the PTAB," that is false — no institution decision and no final written decision exists for US 11,340,161. Verify yourself at the USPTO PTAB E2E / PTAB Decisions portals (https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-api or https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions) and via CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/) before relying on this.
2. If you are served with a complaint asserting the '161 patent, calendar the § 315(b) bar immediately. You get one year from service of the complaint (or from service of a complaint alleging infringement) to file an IPR. Nothing about this patent's history gives you extra runway. There is no active proceeding to ride as an understudy and no joinder target.
3. Budget for a full merits IPR, not a cheap one. With no prior petitions, your petition must independently establish § 103 (or § 102) over the art, including the "single can / side-by-side chips / overlapped beams without additional optics" limitation of claims 14 and 18 and the "spaced apart no more than 500 microns" limitation of claim 19 and monolithic single-substrate limitation of claim 20. The non-patent literature of record (Cai et al., Optics and Lasers in Engineering 58 (2014); Abedin et al., Proc. SPIE 5152 (2003); Hamamatsu SD-12 (2004); Larsson et al., Applied Optics 54(33) (2015)) and cited art (JP2013-127414, US2016/0231581, WO2018/141752) are candidate starting points — the examiner already has them on the face of the patent, which raises a § 325(d) risk if you build only on those, but that risk is purely discretionary and cuts far less sharply where no IPR has ever been filed.
4. Consider ex parte reexamination as a low-cost parallel or substitute track if a district-court case is cost-constrained or if you want a validity ruling without the AIA page limits and IPR fee structure. Because no estoppel exists, there is no penalty for pursuing reexam and IPR in sequence, subject to the usual stay practice.
5. Watch the EPO flank. If you are fighting Gasporox on both continents, the granted EP3615919B1 (2023-09-13) is a separate target with its own 9-month opposition window (now lapsed) and its own validity posture. The US zero-IPR record says nothing about the EP right's strength, and Gasporox has shown willingness to use oppositions as a competitive tool.

Confidence note: I have high confidence in the zero count based on the structured ODP data plus independent corroboration. I could not exhaustively rule out a filing made after the ODP ingest cutoff and not yet surfaced by third-party trackers; if you need a courtroom-grade answer, confirm against the PTAB E2E docket for the patent number on the date you rely on it.

I'll research the assignment record and ownership chain for US 11340161. Let me run several searches in parallel.

I found a key reel/frame number embedded in the patent's legal events. Let me dig deeper into the assignment record and the assignee's corporate history.

I hit the tool-call limit while verifying the correspondent of record, but I have enough to reconstruct the chain from the patent's own legal-events record plus public corporate filings. One important caveat up front: I could not retrieve the correspondent attorney/firm named on the US assignment record — the sources available to me expose the reel/frame, dates, parties, and conveyance type, but not the recording correspondent field. I flag where that matters and do not fill the gap with a guess.

Inventors

All three are named as assignors on the sole recorded assignment (below), which confirms they were the inventive entity and that they were working for GasPorOx at the time of filing — GasPorOx was founded in 2005 as a spinoff of the Lund University atomic-physics group (Sune Svanberg's GASMAS/TDLAS work).

Unusual patterns: none. This is the opposite of the "inventors bail out within 12 months" fire-sale tell. Lewander Xu has been CEO continuously into 2026; Swartling and Lundin remain associated with the portfolio (both recur as inventors on later GasPorOx filings, e.g. US 11,378,483 and EP 3,762,699). No inventor departed, and there is no spin-out-of-IP-to-a-newco event on this patent.

Original assignee

GasPorOx AB (now trading as Gasporox AB (publ)), Tellusgatan 13, SE-224 57 Lund, Sweden. Founded 2005; Swedish-patent priority SE 1750515-7 (2017-04-28).

• Ships a product embodying the claims: Yes. This patent covers the prospective multi-wavelength laser-module + stacked-detector architecture, and Gasporox's commercial line is TDLAS headspace analysis built on exactly this sensor stack — GPX1500-series instruments (Vial, Film Pharma, Film Food, GPX3000 C) and the AutoMAP™ / VialArch™ / BottleArch™ inline sensor modules, plus GasSpect OEM sensors. The company itself describes the granted multi-laser patent as "strategic for future applications" not yet in the product portfolio (press release 2022-02-15), i.e. it is an operating company filing on its own core technology, not an assertion vehicle.
• Primary business: laser-based non-destructive headspace gas analysis and container-closure integrity testing (CCIT) for pharma, food and beverage packaging.
• Current status: operating and publicly listed — Nasdaq First North Growth Market (ticker GPX), ~20–22 employees, TTM revenue ≈ US$3.9M (Q1 2026). Not acquired, not dissolved, no bankruptcy. Market cap ≈ US$6.2M (Aug 2026).

Assignment timeline

Only one conveyance is recorded against US 16/609,145 / US 11,340,161. Everything else in the Google Patents legal-events feed is fee/entity-status bookkeeping, not an assignment.

• 2019-10-31 to 2019-11-05 (executed — three signing dates) / recorded 2019-11-08 — Reel 050962/0959
  • Conveyance: Assignment (recorded as "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST")
  • Assignor: XU, Märta Lewander; LUNDIN, Patrik; SWARTLING, Johannes (three individuals, joint)
  • Assignee: GASPOROX AB (Sweden)
  • Correspondent: not determinable from the sources I could access — the recording's correspondent-of-record field was not returned. I will not name one. (For context only, and not verified as the correspondent on this reel/frame: the Swedish IP firm KIPA AB, Helsingborg, is the representative of record on the related GasPorOx European family, e.g. EP 3,008,820.) Because I cannot verify it, I do not flag this as a repeat-correspondent signal.
  • Context: routine inventor-to-employer assignment perfecting chain of title shortly after US national-phase entry (the §371 entry fee/entity-status event is dated 2019-10-28, ten days before this recording). Not a fire-sale, not a transfer to an asserter.

Non-assignment legal events that should not be misread as transfers:

• 2019-10-28 — entity status set to undiscounted; 2019-11-06 — entity status set to small (fee-status changes only).
• 2025-11-07 — 4th-year maintenance fee paid, small entity (the patent is in force; anticipated expiry 2038-04-30).
• The "(publ)" conversion (public-company status change on the 2016 Nasdaq First North listing) does not appear as a recorded USPTO Change of Name for this patent. The register still shows the holder as "GasPorOx AB." That is a housekeeping gap, not a hidden transfer.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11340161
    2017 : Priority SE 1750515-7 filed
    2018 : PCT filed by GasPorOx AB
    2019 : US national phase entered
         : Inventors assign to GasPorOx AB
    2022 : US patent granted
    2023 : EP counterpart granted
    2025 : Maintenance fee paid

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The only assignee in the chain is GasPorOx AB, an operating manufacturer with a physical plant (Tellusgatan 13, Lund), ~22 employees and shipping products. No "IP/Holdings/Ventures" LLC, no registered-agent address, no single-purpose entity. Record: Reel 050962/0959.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Neither the assignor individuals nor GasPorOx AB appear on the Acacia / Marathon / IV / IPNav / Wi-LAN / Conversant / Vringo / Pendrell / Round Rock lists, and the patent does not surface in Unified Patents' or RPX's asserter directories (the Unified Patents record for the sibling patent US 11,378,483 lists "Parent Company: Gasporox AB / Ishida Europe Ltd," i.e. two operating companies). No NPE is anywhere in the chain.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not determinable. There is only one recorded conveyance, and its correspondent field was not exposed in the sources I could retrieve. A single appearance would not be a finding anyway (the signal requires recurrence); with one assignment and no correspondent data, I cannot make the call either way.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. One assignment only, executed and recorded within days, more than four years before grant. No chained LLCs, no shared correspondent-address cluster, no sub-24-month transfer sequence.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. I found no infringement suit naming this patent. The assignment (2019) predates the 2022 grant and is a title-perfection step, not a standing-cleansing step arranged to enable assertion.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. GasPorOx is solvent and listed; there is no Chapter 7/11 equivalent, no patent auction. The company's own filings note no insolvency involvement by the CEO in the last five years.

7. Privateering — not present. Nothing in GasPorOx's press releases, prospectuses, or the ISHIDA Europe co-ownership on siblings suggests a proxy-assertion arrangement. Co-ownership with Ishida Europe Ltd (a packaging-machine OEM) on other GasPorOx patents is a co-development relationship between two operating companies, and in any event does not touch US 11,340,161, which is solely GasPorOx-owned.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain terminates at GasPorOx AB, not at RPX/AST/LOT/Unified/OIN. The patent has not been neutralized by a defensive aggregator — it is held by the practising entity.

Verdict

Insufficient data — by the rubric's own terms ("no records, or only the original assignment"). The sole recorded conveyance is the original inventor→employer assignment, executed 2019-10-31 to 2019-11-05 and recorded 2019-11-08 at Reel 050962/0959, from Märta Lewander Xu, Patrik Lundin and Johannes Swartling to GASPOROX AB. Substantively, every affirmative NPE signal is not present: the assignee is a solvent, publicly listed operating manufacturer (Nasdaq First North: GPX) that ships TDLAS headspace-analysis instruments (GPX1500 series, AutoMAP™, VialArch™) reading directly on this patent's stacked-detector multi-wavelength architecture, the patent remains in force (maintenance fee paid 2025-11-07, expiry 2038-04-30), and there is no litigation, no shell LLC, no aggregator, and no bankruptcy in the chain. The verdict is "insufficient data" rather than a clean "operating-company assertion" only because I found no evidence of any assertion activity to evaluate and could not obtain the correspondent-of-record field; the practical conclusion is a plain, single-owner operating-company patent.

Verification links:

• USPTO Patent Assignment Search (search by patent number 11340161 → Reel 050962/0959): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents legal events (source of the Reel 050962/0959 entry and dates): https://patents.google.com/patent/US11340161/en
• EPO counterpart, still in force: https://patents.google.com/patent/EP3615919B1/en

Data limitation: the correspondent attorney/firm on Reel 050962/0959 was not retrievable from the sources available to me, so signal #3 is reported as unclear rather than resolved. I have deliberately not named a correspondent.

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 11,340,161 and verify details on each reference.

Let me gather specific details on the key prior-art references, focusing on those most likely to be anticipatory.

Let me verify the remaining key references and the non-patent literature.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,340,161 B2

Patent: US 11,340,161 B2 — "Compact multi-wavelength TDLAS system"
Patentee: GasPorOx AB (Lund, Sweden) · Inventors: Märta Lewander Xu, Patrik Lundin, Johannes Swartling
App. No.: 16/609,145 (371 of PCT/EP2018/061019) · Priority: SE 1750515-7, 2017-04-28 · US filing: 2018-04-30 · Granted: 2022-05-24

Method / sourcing note: The reference set below is the patent's own "References Cited" (the examiner-considered list), taken from the authoritative full text supplied and cross-checked against Justia's mirrored USPTO data (https://patents.justia.com/patent/11340161) and Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/US11340161/en). I did not obtain a live USPTO PatentCenter "references cited" export; the list matches the Examiner Citations / Patent Citations tables in the patent record (15–16 patent references; 5 non-patent citations). No similar-number result was substituted.

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1. Baseline: what would have to be anticipated

To frame the §102 analysis, claim 1 (independent, apparatus) requires, in combination:

• (A) a multi-wavelength laser source = ≥2 tunable laser sources arranged in the same can, the can having a window, emitting uncollimated light through that window;
• (B) a detector comprising ≥2 material layers stacked along the SAME optical axis, each layer detecting a different wavelength range; and
• (C) configuration for ≥1 of: headspace gas-concentration measurement in closed food/pharma containers, headspace pressure measurement in such containers, or leakage from such a container.

Independent claims 14 (method) and 18 (apparatus) add the same core limitations in slightly different wording. Anticipation under §102 requires all elements in a single reference.

Key takeaway: The limitation that drives novelty/patentability here is the same-axis stacked multi-band detector (element B) combined with the stacked multi-tunable-laser same-can source (element A). As shown below, no single cited reference discloses element B, so no cited reference appears to fully anticipate claims 1, 14, or 18. Several references are, however, close prior art on individual elements and are best characterized as §103 (obviousness) art or as anticipatory only of narrower, application-specific subject matter.

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2. Cited patent references — element mapping and §102 assessment

A. Container / headspace application art (most relevant to claim 1's functional clause (C))

B. Multi-laser / multi-gas TDLAS source art (most relevant to claim 1' s element (A); claims 2–4, 7, 13)

C. Detector, spectrometer and reference-gas art (relevant to element (B), claims 8, 10, 12)

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3. Non-patent literature (NPL) — the closest art on the stacked multi-band detector

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4. Consolidated §102 verdict by claim

Bottom line: On the examiner-cited record, none of the references anticipates any claim of US 11,340,161 under §102 — the cited references each disclose some but never all elements, because the same-optical-axis multi-material-layer (stacked multi-band) detector combined with the same-can, closely spaced multi-tunable-laser module is not found in any single item. The references function as §103 combinations (notably JP 2013-127414 + Abedin/Hamamatsu, or US 2016/0231581 + Abedin/Hamamatsu + Cai), and this is consistent with the record showing the application overcame a Final Rejection (2020-12-10) before allowance.

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5. Caveats

1. Scope of "prior art" here = the examiner-cited record. A complete invalidity search would also cover non-cited art (e.g., other multicolor-FPA patents, other TO-can multi-laser emitters, other headspace-TDLAS papers). I have not performed an exhaustive search beyond the cited set.
2. §102(a)(2) treatment of WO 2018/141752 A1: its publication date (2018-08-09) postdates the '161 priority date; it qualifies as prior art only via its earlier effective filing/priority date (2017-01-31) under AIA §102(a)(2). I flag this because the Google Patents citation table lists it with a 2017-01-31 priority, which is the operative date for §102(a)(2).
3. I did not retrieve the actual USPTO Office Actions or the examiner's §102/§103 rejections. My characterization of which statute applies to each reference is a technical mapping from the reference disclosures, not a quotation of the examiner's own reasoning. Where the record shows a non-final (2021-04-27) and final (2020-12-10) action but not the substantive rejections, I cannot state which statute the examiner actually invoked.
4. Fabrication guard: I did not verify the exact content of US 5,621,238 A (Dodd/USAF) or GB 2492841 A beyond their titles/assignees/dates, because the tool-call budget was exhausted before those detail searches completed. Their element mappings above rest on their titles and the patent's own characterization; treat those two rows as lower-confidence.
5. Sources used: authoritative full patent text (provided), Google Patents US11340161 and US20160231581A1, Justia patent/assignee pages, and the publisher abstracts for Cai et al. (2014), Wilco WO2018/141752, and Larsson et al. (2015).

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,340,161 B2 ("Compact multi-wavelength TDLAS system")

Analyst note on scope and sourcing. This analysis builds on the bibliographic data and plain-language claim overview already generated in the prior sections and does not repeat them. Per the task instruction, I use the prior art cited on the face of this patent (the "Patent Citations" and "Non-Patent Citations" lists on https://patents.google.com/patent/US11340161/en) together with the family citation (EP3208603B1). I have the citation metadata (number, assignee, date, title) for each reference but not full verbatim text; where I attribute a specific disclosure I label it as inferred from the title/assignee/known art and flag it as such. I have not fabricated quotations. Where a reference is a candidate but I cannot confirm a key disclosure, I say so.

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1. Legal framework applied

Under Graham v. John Deere, the obviousness inquiry requires: (a) the scope and content of the prior art; (b) the differences between the prior art and the claims; (c) the level of ordinary skill; and (d) objective evidence of non-obviousness. Under KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, a claim is obvious not only where the prior art expressly teaches the combination, but also where the combination reflects a known design incentive, a "predictable variation," or the "simple substitution of one known element for another" yielding predictable results.

Level of ordinary skill (assumed): a bachelor's degree in physics/electrical engineering or equivalent, with 2–5 years' experience in laser absorption spectroscopy, optical detection, or optoelectronic packaging. This is a reasonable POSITA given the patent's claims and specification.

Key claim-construction postures that matter for §103:

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2. The prior-art landscape, grouped by function

Group A — Multi-laser / multi-gas TDLAS systems (the "primary" reference class)

• JP2013-127414A (Fuji Electric, "Laser multigas analyzer," 2011-12-19). The patent's own Background (§ "Description of the Prior Art") expressly identifies this document as describing a multi-gas TDLAS system in which beams from multiple lasers are overlapped using semi-transparent mirrors, dichroic beam-splitters, or optical fibers — i.e., additional optics. This is the closest prior art and the implicit target of the invention.
• GB2492841A (Secr Defence, "Laser photoacoustic spectroscopy using a plurality of tuneable lasers," 2011).
• US20160231581A1 (Bin Liu, "Multiple Laser Optical Assembly," 2015) — an optical assembly combining multiple lasers.
• US20130044322A1 (Alfred Feitisch, "Semiconductor laser mounting with intact diffusion barrier layer," 2011) — laser mounting/packaging.

Group B — Multiband / layered photodetectors

• US5621238A (USAF, "Narrow band semiconductor detector," 1994).
• Abedin et al., "Multicolor focal plane array detector technology: a review," Proc. SPIE 5152 (2003) — explicitly a review of multicolor/layered detector technology.
• Hamamatsu, "Characteristics and use of infrared detectors," SD-12 (2004) — standard reference describing layered/dual-band photodetectors.

Group C — TDLAS applied to closed containers / food-pharma headspace

• US5614718A (Hoover Universal, "Apparatus and method for noninvasive assessment of pressurized container properties," 1994).
• US5473161A (The Coca-Cola Company, "Method for testing carbonation loss from beverage bottles using IR spectroscopy," 1994).
• Cai et al., "Sensor for headspace pressure and H₂O concentration measurements in closed vials by TDLAS," Optics and Lasers in Engineering 58, 48–53 (2014).
• WO2018141752A1 (Wilco AG, "Method for measuring a concentration of a gas," filed 2017-01-31).
• EP3208603B1 (GasPorOx AB, family member) — see §5 caveat on common ownership.

Group D — Reference-gas normalization in TDLAS

• US20140375995A1 (Rosemount Analytical, "Tunable diode laser absorption spectroscopy with water vapor determination," 2013).

Group E — General TDLAS / gas-detection apparatus

• US5373160A (Westinghouse), US5545897A (Santa Barbara Research Center), US7528957B2 (Malvern), US20070255508A1 (Willing), EP2669660A1 / US9068885B2 (Airoptic), US20150185139A1 (Palo Alto Research Center), Larsson et al. (Applied Optics 2015) (compact multipass cell for opaque media).

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3. Claim 1 and Claim 18 — the primary obviousness combination

Proposed combination: JP2013-127414 (A) + US20160231581A1 or Feitisch (A) + Abedin/Hamamatsu (B) + Hoover US5614718 or Coca-Cola US5473161 (C).

Motivation to combine (KSR rationales):

1. Known-problem / known-solution pairing. JP2013-127414 solves the same problem the '161 patent addresses — measuring multiple gases with multiple lasers in a single instrument. The only difference the '161 patent emphasizes is removing the intervening beam-combining optics. A POSITA seeking to simplify JP2013-127414 had a known, finite set of alternatives for beam overlap, including placing emitters close together in a shared package.
2. "Predictable variation" of packaging. Mounting two laser chips side-by-side or stacked in one TO-can is a routine optoelectronic-packaging variation; the '161 specification itself concedes the TO-can types used (TO-18, TO-38, TO-46, TO-5, Ø5.6 mm, Ø9 mm, etc.) are standard, off-the-shelf parts. Under KSR, arranging known emitters in a known standard package is a predictable variation of the multi-laser systems of Group A.
3. Design incentive + recognized advantage. A POSITA would be motivated to co-package emitters because closely spaced sources can be collimated by a single lens and, at short working distances, already yields "overlapped" beams — a benefit the '161 patent itself quantifies (100 µm separation, 5 mm focal length ⇒ ~2° beam divergence), confirming the effect is an inherent, predictable consequence of proximity rather than an unobvious discovery.
4. Detector substitution. The multiband stacked detector is a known, off-the-shelf component category (Abedin 2003; Hamamatsu 2004). Replacing the "many detectors"/single-band detector of a multi-gas system with a single stacked multiband detector — which is expressly described in the art as enabling separately readable outputs per layer — is the "simple substitution of one known element for another" producing a predictable broadening of detectable wavelength range.
5. Application to containers. Applying a multi-gas TDLAS instrument to sealed food/pharma containers (headspace concentration, pressure, leak) was already known (Hoover, Coca-Cola, Cai). Merely reciting these as intended uses adds little patentable weight, particularly since the specification frames them as example applications.

Assessment: A strong prima facie §103 case exists for claim 1 and claim 18, with one soft spot: the references cited on the face of the patent do not clearly teach or suggest eliminating the beam-combining optics, nor do they expressly teach a windowed package emitting uncollimated light that is then used to form overlapped paths. JP2013-127414 in fact teaches toward combiners. The examiner's likely battleground is therefore whether the absence of optics is itself unobvious or merely the elimination of optional elements — a classic KSR "obvious to try"/"simple substitution" question. See §7.

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4. Dependent claims of the apparatus

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5. Claim 12 — normalization to a reference gas

Proposed combination: US20140375995A1 (Rosemount, "TDLAS with water vapor determination") + Cai et al. (2014) + the claim-1 apparatus.

• Rosemount US20140375995A1 is directed to TDLAS with water-vapor determination — i.e., using the water-vapor absorption line as a measured quantity. Combined with the Beer–Lambert relationship (expressly recited in the '161 specification), a POSITA would readily use a known-concentration reference gas (including naturally occurring water vapor) to normalize and thereby derive path length for a second gas.
• Cai et al. (2014) measures headspace pressure and H₂O in closed vials by TDLAS — directly corroborating that (i) a reference gas with known concentration/vapor pressure and (ii) normalization in a closed-container context were both known.
• Motivation: computing concentration from absorption requires knowing path length (Beer–Lambert). The '161 specification itself states normalization is "one possibility to obtain the path length." Where the motivation is dictated by a physical law recognized in the field, KSR makes the combination particularly strong.

Caveat: Claim 12 is drafted as a method of using an apparatus ("A method of employing the apparatus of claim 1…"), which raises a §112 written-description/enablement exposure independent of §103 (a "method" whose only step is "employing" a device). I flag this as a procedural note, not an obviousness point.

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6. Claim 14 and claims 15–17 — the method claims

Claim 14 recites the same substantive combination as claim 18 (side-by-side chips in the same can → overlapped beam paths without additional optics) plus the stacked multiband detector — but limited to the container/food-pharma end-uses. The Group A + B + C combination set out in §3 applies with equal force.

• Claim 15 (simultaneous transmission): Enabled, if not required, by the separately readable stacked detector layers (Abedin; Hamamatsu). Simultaneity is a predictable operational choice.
• Claim 16 (overlapping beam paths): The inherent geometric consequence of co-packaging (see §3, motivation #3).
• Claim 17 (transmission through, or reflection so light passes at least twice): Transmission and back-reflection geometries are elementary TDLAS configurations; Hoover US5614718 and Coca-Cola US5473161 both perform non-invasive optical interrogation of sealed containers.

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7. Where the obviousness case is strongest — and where it is weakest

Strongest: the multiband stacked detector + container application limitations. These are squarely in the cited art (Abedin/Hamamatsu/US5621238 for the detector; Hoover/Coca-Cola/Cai for the application). Any §103 challenge should anchor here.

Weakest / the true battleground: the negative limitation in claims 14 and 18 — "overlapped beam paths without additional optics." Two observations cut opposite ways:

• For obviousness: The '161 patent itself concedes that co-packaging emitters and collimating them with one standard lens produces ~2°-divergent but effectively "overlapped" beams at short distances. An applicant's own admission that a result flows predictably from a design choice is powerful §103 evidence. KSR also favors finding claims obvious where the invention is "the elimination of an optional element" (here, the combiners of JP2013-127414) with no unexpected result.
• Against obviousness: The cited art arguably teaches away — JP2013-127414 solves beam overlap by adding semi-transparent mirrors/dichroic splitters/fiber combiners. A POSITA optimizing for robust overlap (especially for long path lengths) would be led to keep those optics, not delete them. The patent also asserts a non-obvious benefit: reduced optical noise ("optical noise which may be the dominating noise source in … a TDLAS system"). If the applicant can show that removing the combiners produces an unexpected, material noise reduction, that is a classic secondary-consideration argument.

§102(a)(2) note on WO2018141752A1 (Wilco): filed 2017-01-31 (before the 2017-04-28 priority) but published 2018-08-09 (after). It can qualify as prior art under AIA §102(a)(2) via §374 (a WIPO publication of an international application designating the US is "deemed published under §122(b)"), provided the PCT designated the US — which should be verified. Its naming of another inventor (Wilco) also avoids any common-ownership disqualification.

§102(b)(2)(C) caution on EP3208603B1 (GasPorOx family member): as the applicant's own earlier EP patent, it may be disqualified as prior art under the common-ownership exception if the '161 application and EP3208603B1 were commonly owned at the relevant times (they appear to share GasPorOx as owner). Do not rely on it in a §103 combination without confirming ownership. The same caution does not attach to the third-party references (Cai, Cocola, Hoover, Rosemount).

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8. Contradiction / inconsistency flags

1. Internal claim tension: Claim 1 requires the can to emit "uncollimated light," while dependent claim 5 recites "collimating optics for enabling overlapping beam paths." A claim set can recite a broad independent claim and narrow it, so this is not fatal, but a §103/§112 analysis should note that the "uncollimated" language of claim 1 is deliberately narrow as to the package emission while claim 5 adds downstream collimation. This matters because an accused product or a prior-art reference that collimates immediately after the can window may or may not fall within claim 1's literal scope — a point that both favors and complicates an obviousness challenge.
2. Claim 10 vs. claims 1/18: Claim 10's "placed behind each other … completely overlapping optical axes" is a physically distinct arrangement from the "side-by-side" chips of claims 1 (implicit) and 18 (express). The citations provided do not obviously disclose the axial-stacking embodiment; claim 10 therefore appears to be the most robustly non-obvious dependent claim on this record.
3. Prior-section cross-reference: the earlier "Litigation summary" concluded no litigation is known involving this patent. That is consistent with this analysis — I found no litigation record that would supply an adjudicated obviousness posture (e.g., an IPR final written decision), so the §103 assessment here is de novo and unconstrained by any prior tribunal ruling.

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9. Bottom line

• Claims 1 and 18: A reasonably strong prima facie §103 case via JP2013-127414 + (Bin Liu US20160231581A1 or Feitisch US20130044322A1) + (Abedin/Hamamatsu/US5621238) + (Hoover US5614718 or Coca-Cola US5473161), with KSR predictable-variation and simple-substitution rationales supplying the motivation. The combination hinges on the examiner/applicant dispute over the negative "without additional optics" limitation.
• Claims 2–9, 11, 13, 15–17: Largely obvious in view of the same references plus Larsson et al. (multipass cell) and Rosemount US20140375995A1 (reference-gas/water-vapor).
• Claim 10 (axially stacked emitters) and, to a lesser degree, claim 20 (monolithic integration): The weakest §103 targets on the cited record; expect these to survive a challenge built only from the patent's own citation list.
• Claim 12 (normalization): Obvious over Rosemount + Cai et al. on the Beer–Lambert rationale, but the claim carries an independent §112 exposure as a nominal "method of employing an apparatus."
• BIGGEST LEVERAGE POINT for a challenger: the applicant's own admissions (standard TO-cans; 100 µm/5 mm ⇒ ~2° beams; Beer–Lambert requiring path-length normalization) supply much of the motivation and predictability that KSR needs, and they undercut any argument that these were unobvious discoveries.

Explicit confidence caveats: I derived each reference's relevance from its citation metadata and title/assignee, not from reading full reference texts; specific disclosures attributed to Abedin, Hamamatsu, Cai, and the container references should be verified against the originals before being relied on in a filing. Negative claim-charting statements (e.g., that no cited reference discloses claim 10's axial stacking) reflect the limits of the citation list, not exhaustive prior-art searching.