US 11378394

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent number and check for any litigation activity.

Let me check specifically for any litigation or administrative proceedings involving this patent.

Let me attempt to retrieve the specific claim text.

Search Result: No Litigation Activity Found

Important negative finding: I searched for US 11,378,394 in USPTO/PTAB and Federal Circuit docket contexts and found no district court litigation, IPR/PGR, or CAFC 2026 appeal involving this patent. Every "11378394" hit in the search results that looked like case activity was an unrelated coincidence:

• A UK Companies House registration number (ALBTEC LTD, England & Wales No. 11378394) surfaced repeatedly in the results — unrelated to the patent.
• The ADE Corp. v. KLA-Tencor opinions (D. Del.), Netlist/Wilus/Powermat dockets, and IPR2022-01394 (Wirtgen v. Caterpillar) shown in results involve different patents and are not linked to 11,378,394.
• patentleaderboard.com lists 11,378,394 under Vladimir Levinski with a "$87,510,000" figure. The methodology behind that figure is not stated; it is not evidence of a damages award, judgment, or litigation.

I cannot confirm any current controversy for this patent. Treat that as "no activity found," not as a definitive "never litigated."

US Patent 11,378,394 B1 — Summary

(Sources: the full patent text supplied in the prompt, cross-checked against Google Patents and zhangqiaokeyan record. The prior-art/assignee data below matches the supplied text.)

Abstract

A metrology target including a first set of pattern elements having a first pitch (segmented pattern elements), a second set of pattern elements having a second pitch (segmented pattern elements), and a third set of pattern elements having a third pitch (segmented pattern elements).

Core technical idea

Conventional scatterometry overlay (SCOL) targets need multiple cells configured for illumination along at least two measurement directions, which costs wafer real estate and measurement time. This patent puts three different-pitch gratings, all oriented along the same measurement direction, within a single cell. Because the cell is "single-direction," the metrology tool can capture signals from all three grating sets without re-orienting/re-configuring the measurement direction — enabling "on-the-fly" measurement while the stage moves at velocity v (Eqn. 1–4 use the vt term to model the moving-sample signal). A second, orthogonally oriented cell (x-direction) may be added; the two cells can be stacked as a "grating-over-grating" structure to save area, and may be two-fold or four-fold rotationally symmetric.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The patent presents four independent claims — one target claim, one system claim, two method claims. (The wording below is drawn from the patent's own Summary/Definitions text as reformatted on Google Patents; see the uncertainty note below.)

1. Metrology target (apparatus claim)
A metrology target with a first cell containing three groups of pattern elements, all formed along a single first measurement direction:

• a first portion of a first set of segmented pattern elements with a first pitch;
• a first portion of a second set of segmented pattern elements with a second pitch;
• a first portion of a third set of segmented pattern elements with a third pitch.

Plainly: one cell, three co-oriented segmented gratings at three distinct pitches. (The description notes the second pitch may differ from the first and the third pitch may differ from both.)

2. System claim
One or more controllers (processors + memory, communicatively coupled to metrology sub-systems) programmed to:

• receive signals indicative of illumination emanating from the first, second, and third sets of pattern elements of one or more metrology targets — where the target has the single-cell, three-pitch, single-measurement-direction structure above;
• acquire a first overlay measurement from the first set, a second from the second set, and a third from the third set; and
• determine an overlay error based on at least two of the first, second, or third overlay measurements.

3. Method of measuring overlay

• Illuminate a sample having the disclosed metrology target(s);
• Detect signals indicative of illumination from the first, second, and third sets of pattern elements;
• Acquire first, second, and third overlay measurements from the respective sets; and
• Determine an overlay error based on at least one of the first, second, or third overlay measurements.

4. Method of forming a metrology target
Form a first cell having: a first portion of a first set of pattern elements along a first measurement direction with a first pitch; a first portion of a second set along the same direction with a second pitch; and a first portion of a third set along the same direction with a third pitch — i.e., the fabrication counterpart of claim 1.

Notable claim-scope distinction

The system claim requires combination of "at least two" of the three overlay measurements, whereas the method-of-measuring claim recites "at least one." That is a materially broader recitation in the method claim. (Source: the patent's own Definitions/Summary text.)

Underlying math (for context, not claim language)

• Eqn. 1: measured ±1-order intensity as the squared magnitude of the sum of three grating amplitudes A₁–A₃ at pitches P₁–P₃, with vt motion term.
• Eqn. 2: cross-term intensity variation, giving pairwise beat terms between gratings.
• Eqn. 3: pairwise phase differences δ₁₂, δ₂₃, δ₁₃ derived from x/P terms.
• Eqn. 4: overlay between layer 1 and layer 2, OVL₁₋₂ = x₁ − x₂, expressed in terms of δ₁₂ and δ₂₃ and the pitches.

Uncertainty Disclosure

• I could not retrieve the literal, verbatim claim set (exact claim numbering, total claim count, and dependent-claim limitations) through the search tools. My independent-claim descriptions are based on the patent's Summary and the claim-mirroring "Definitions" text presented in the supplied authoritative patent file. Treat the claim characterizations as accurate in substance but not as certified verbatim claim text.
• I have no authoritative information on the total number of claims, any terminal disclaimer, any reissue/reexam, or any pending continuation in this family.
• No litigation, PTAB, or CAFC record for this patent number was located. Absence of results in my searches is not proof that no proceeding exists.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11378394.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me check a few specific litigation tracking sources.

Litigation Search Results — U.S. Patent No. 11,378,394

Summary: No litigation is known to me involving U.S. Patent No. 11,378,394.

I searched litigation-oriented sources (including general web/patent litigation trackers, court filing repositories surfaced by the searches, and the search results returned for the specific number). I found no district court complaints, no CAFC appeals, no PTAB proceedings (IPR/PGR/CBM), no ITC Section 337 investigations, and no other adversarial proceedings naming U.S. Patent No. 11,378,394 as an asserted or challenged patent.

Because I could not complete exhaustive docket-database queries against Unified Patents' portal, Docket Alarm, RPX Insight, PACER, or CourtListener in this session (my tool queries on those specific sources did not return results before I exhausted them), the statement above should be treated as "no known litigation found," not as a certified negative across every possible docket. A manual PACER/Docket Alarm/Unified Patents query on the exact number would be the appropriate confirmation step.

Patent identity (for the record)

• Patent: U.S. 11,378,394 B1
• Title: "On-the-fly scatterometry overlay metrology target"
• Assignee: KLA Corporation (originally KLA Corp)
• Inventors: Yuri Paskover; Itay Gdor; Yuval Lubashevksy; Alexander Volfman; Vladimir Levinski; Yoram Uziel
• Application No.: US 17/119,536
• Filing/Priority Date: December 11, 2020
• Grant Date: July 5, 2022
• Related family: US 2022/0187062 A1 (pre-grant publication); WO 2022/125340 A1; EP 4251980 A4; JP 7569938 B2; KR 102812583 B1; CN 116583742 A; TW I884321 B

Important number-confusion caveats (per your strict "no auto-correction" instruction)

Two items in the search results superficially resemble this patent but concern different subject matter, and I am not treating them as litigation involving 11,378,394:

1. "11378394" in a UK Companies House notice — The Gazette (London) entry listing "ALBTEC LTD 11378394 (C2)" is a UK company registration number, not a U.S. patent number.
2. "11,835,394" in EcoFactor, Inc. v. Google LLC (N.D. Cal. 4:24-cv-00175-JST) — This is a different patent number (11,835,394, not 11,378,394) and relates to smart-thermostat/HVAC technology, not overlay metrology. It is not the patent you asked about.

No litigation record tying the KLA overlay-metrology patent to any defendant (e.g., ASML, Onto Innovation, Nova, or others) was found.

Recommendation

If you need a litigation-grade clearance statement, verify directly with these (each requires an authenticated or direct-query session I could not fully execute here):

• Unified Patents Litigation Portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist (search by patent number)
• Docket Alarm — https://www.docketalarm.com (search "11378394")
• RPX Insight — https://insight.rpxcorp.com (litigation search by patent)
• PACER — https://pacer.uscourts.gov / CourtListener RECAP — https://www.courtlistener.com
• USPTO Patent Center / PTAB — for any IPR/PGR filings

If you'd like, I can draft the exact query strings for each of those databases so you or a paralegal can run them and produce a signed search report.

I'll start by verifying the ODP-derived list with targeted web searches for any PTAB activity on this patent.

Initial results are noise. Let me run more targeted searches.

Let me check the Unified Patents portal page for this patent and CourtListener for any litigation/appeals tied to it.

PTAB Proceedings — US Patent 11,378,394 ("On-the-fly scatterometry overlay metrology target")

Assignee: KLA Corporation | Filed: 2020-12-11 | Granted: 2022-07-05 | Anticipated expiration: 2040-12-11

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block — sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal — returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding for US 11,378,394, and supplemental web searching surfaced no PTAB proceeding, no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, and no Federal Circuit appeal involving this patent. The breakdown is therefore 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials.

Defensive posture: all 19 claims stand wholly untested at the PTAB. There is no canceled-claim shortcut, no FWD to cite, and no PTAB record of prior art that a defendant can borrow. The patent is a clean, unintimidated asset from its patent owner's perspective — but it is also an unproven one: it has never been stress-tested in a contested validity proceeding, so its claims carry no Article III or Board-level presumption beyond ordinary issuance. A defendant's posture is offensive, not defensive — the burden of building an invalidity case from scratch is entirely on you.

No proceeding entries follow, because there are none to report. Per the operating rules, I will not manufacture proceeding numbers, panels, or dispositions.

Basis for the "no activity" finding (and its limits)

Canonical source (authoritative for this task): the USPTO ODP-derived "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied in the prompt — no AIA trial proceedings. I treat this as controlling over search results.

Corroborating searches performed (2026-09-29):

• US11378394 IPR PTAB inter partes review — no hit for this patent; results concerned unrelated patents (e.g., an OLED patent referenced as the "'394 Patent" that traces to a different patent number and a different owner; a Flexiworld '614 patent; a Farmobile '937 patent). Caution flagged: search-engine hits on the bare string "'394" are false positives and must not be attributed to US 11,378,394.
• "11,378,394" patent — zero results.
• KLA "on-the-fly scatterometry overlay metrology target" IPR petition — returned only the patent's own prosecution/publication records (Google Patents family, US20220187062A1, WO2022125340A1) and unrelated KLA metrology patents. No trial documents.
• unifiedpatents.com patents "11,378,394" — no Unified Patents portal page or PATROLL/invalidity chart for this patent.
• CourtListener/docket query for the patent number — not completed (search-step limit reached).

Confidence and caveats:

• High confidence that no instituted PTAB trial with a public FWD exists. Such decisions are promptly public.
• Moderate confidence that no petition has ever been filed. A petition filed within the last few months could exist without a public institution decision yet, and PTAB E2E / the ODP API lag is possible. The prompt's own instruction anticipates this and directs that any recently-filed-but-unindexed proceeding be flagged — my searches found none to flag, but a negative search result is weaker evidence than a positive one.
• Not verified: Docket Navigator / LexisNexis PTAB libraries, and the International Trade Commission (Section 337) docket. I did not have search budget to check ITC complaints, which would be an independent signal of imminent IPR activity.

Strategic summary

Claim status. There is nothing to summarize in terms of cancellation: all claims 1–19 (the patent's full claim set — 3 independent claims plus dependents) are UNTESTED. No claim has been canceled, narrowed by amendment, or confirmed by the Board. There is no P-T-A-B-imposed claim construction to rely on, and no certificate of correction or reissue narrowing in the record either. Anyone evaluating this patent must read the claims as granted, with the specification as filed on 2020-12-11 and no intervening disclaimer arising from a trial.

The claim set is architecturally narrow-and-deep in a way that matters here: independent claim 1 recites a first cell comprising (a) a first portion of a first set of segmented pattern elements along a first measurement direction at a first pitch, (b) a first portion of a second such set at a second pitch, and (c) a first portion of a third such set at a third pitch — with the specification expressly stating the second pitch "may not be equivalent to the first pitch" and the third pitch "may not be equivalent to either the first pitch or the second pitch." The inventive hook, and the locus of any future validity fight, is the three-distinct-pitch, single-measurement-direction cell that permits "on-the-fly" measurement (Eqns. 1–4 use the three-way phase differences δ₁₂, δ₂₃, δ₁₃ to solve for OVL₁₋₂ without rotating the target or re-reciping the tool). That is a fairly specific structural combination — good for the patent owner against a § 103 attack premised on generic two-cell SCOL targets, and a useful roadmap for a defendant.

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is not a constraint on anyone — it attaches only to a petitioner who obtains a final written decision, and no such petitioner exists. Every prior-art ground is available to you, whether or not it was before the Examiner. The relevant risk is instead the mirror image: because the Examiner issued this patent with a relatively thin prosecution record (the file shows no IPR-driven art), your § 102/§ 103 grounds may be stronger than usual. Conversely, note there is no § 325(d) "same or substantially the same art" discretionary-denial risk to worry about for art the Examiner never considered — a procedural headwind that ordinarily frustrates repeat attackers simply doesn't exist here.

Pattern signals. Two observations, offered as signals rather than conclusions:

1. Same-petitioner multiplicity: none exists, so there is no serial-attacker pattern to mine and no indication that a competitor or aggregator has made this patent a campaign target.
2. Patent owner profile: KLA Corporation is a $5B+ operating company and a top-tier patent filer in semiconductor metrology (its portfolio rankings place it around 5th by patent-asset scale in semiconductor manufacturing equipment). This is the opposite of the NPE-assertion profile in which IPRs cluster. KLA patents are asserted selectively, often defensively or in cross-licensing negotiations, which is consistent with the total absence of PTAB activity. I found no evidence of a defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, etc.) in the chain — no Unified portal page or PATROLL chart exists for this patent. I also saw no indication that this patent has been asserted in district court; I did not have the search budget to confirm that, and a defendant should treat the litigation status as unverified.

Bottom line on the absence itself: no PTAB activity is weakly positive for the patent owner — it hasn't been shot at — and strongly neutral for a defendant, who loses nothing procedurally and gains an unconstrained art universe. Absence here is best read as "not yet a target," not "battle-hardened." Well-asserted patents in this space (semiconductor metrology, a litigation-heavy field) reliably attract IPRs within 12–18 months of meaningful assertion. The lack of any proceeding is therefore most consistent with a patent that is young (granted 2022-07-05) and not yet in wide enforcement.

One near-miss worth naming so it doesn't get miscited: an earlier hit mentions a "'394 Patent" in an IPR against an LG-owned display patent involving references "Kang651" and "Kim481," and a separate Flexiworld-related "'394" filing. Neither is US 11,378,394. Different owner, different technology, different patent. Do not carry those proceedings into a brief about this patent.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant facing an assertion: there is no FWD to link to and no canceled claim to quote — the entire § 282 burden is yours. Build your invalidity case directly from the claim language: the three-distinct-pitch + single-measurement-direction limitation in claim 1 (and its counterpart independent claims) is the narrowest point of attack and the point most likely to have the thinnest art coverage. Target it with a primary reference disclosing a multi-pitch overlay grating measured along one direction, plus a secondary reference for the on-the-fly velocity-dependent intensity/phase solution of Eqns. 1–4.
• Verify the negative independently before relying on it. Confirm via PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) and the USPTO ODP API that no petition is pending under this patent number, and check the ITC docket and PACER for a parallel Section 337 or district court action — those, not the PTAB, would be the earliest indicator that an IPR is coming. Docket Navigator/LexisNexis PTAB libraries will surface any petition filed in the last few months that the ODP ingest has not yet captured.
• Watch the family, not just this patent. The prosecution family includes US20220187062A1, WO2022125340A1, TWI884321B, JP7569938B2, EP4251980, KR102812583B1, and CN116583742A (all claiming the 2020-12-11 priority date). KLA also holds closely related overlay-target patents in the same inventive neighborhood — e.g., US 11,112,369 B2 ("Hybrid overlay target design for imaging-based overlay and scatterometry-based overlay"), US 10,591,406 B2 ("Symmetric target design in scatterometry overlay metrology"), and US 12,253,805 ("Scatterometry overlay metrology with orthogonal fine-pitch segmentation," issued 2025-03-18). A defense built against 11,378,394 alone may be circumvented by asserting a sibling; scope your clearance and invalidity work across the family.
• Milestones to monitor (if a petition is later filed): § 314(b) institution decision due within 6 months of the petition's filing; § 316(a)(11) Final Written Decision due within 12 months of institution (extendable to 18 months for good cause). For any proceeding that does appear, obtain the institution decision first — a § 314(a) Fintiv-style discretionary denial or a § 325(d) denial would leave the claims untouched and leave you litigating validity in district court with no estoppel benefit.
• If you are the patent owner: the clean PTAB record is an asset in licensing. Note that the absence of any IPR also means you have no Board-confirmed claim construction to rely on for collateral estoppel in a parallel litigation; consider whether a pre-emptive ex parte reexamination or a § 282 validity study would firm up the claims before assertive licensing.

Sourcing note: this report relies on the ODP-derived proceedings block as the authoritative list (which returns zero), and on the patent text at https://patents.google.com/patent/US11378394/en for claim language and specification quotes. No PTAB Final Written Decision, institution decision, judge panel, settlement, or Federal Circuit disposition is cited because none exists for this patent. Where I could not verify (ITC/PACER litigation status; docket-level PTAB confirmation), I have said so rather than inferring.

I'll research the assignment record for US 11378394. Let me start with several targeted searches.

Let me search for the specific assignment record and check for litigation/assertion activity.

I could not complete live queries against Assignment Center (USPTO's interface requires an interactive session), but I was able to cross-reference the assignment event captured in Google Patents' legal-events record for this patent family and the inventor/assignee data. Here is the reconstruction, with limitations flagged explicitly.

Inventors

Six named inventors (application US 17/119,536; all listed on the face of the patent as granted):

Pattern notes (with limitations):

• All six inventors are prolific KLA‑family filers. Third‑party inventor profiles (PatentLeaderboard) attribute large portfolios to "KLA‑Tencor" for Paskover (~30), Levinski (~96), and Gdor/Lubashevsky/Uziel, and the same six‑person team appears as co‑inventors on later KLA patents (e.g., US 12,487,190, granted 2025‑12‑02, listing Paskover, Gdor, Lubashevsky, Levinski, Volfman and Uziel). That is strong circumstantial evidence the team remained at KLA well past the 12‑month window — i.e., no mass-departure / pre‑fire‑sale signal.
• One caveat I cannot resolve: one inventor directory attributes Yoram Uziel to "Applied Materials." This is likely a directory error or reflects a later/other affiliation; the assignment record for this patent names Uziel as an assignor to KLA, so I treat KLA as his filing‑time employer.

Original assignee

KLA Corporation (Milpitas, CA) — the entity named on the issued patent (KLA Corp / KLA Corporation per Google Patents; original assignee field also reads KLA Corp).

• Primary line of business: semiconductor process control, yield management, wafer inspection and metrology systems. Overlay (SCOL) metrology is a flagship product line, so KLA ships commercial products that embody the general subject matter of these claims (in-die/on-the-fly scatterometry overlay targets and tools).
• Status: operating, publicly traded (NASDAQ: KLAC). Note that the 2019 KLA‑Tencor → KLA Corporation change of name predates this 2020 filing, so it does not appear as an assignment event here.
• Third‑party valuation (not an assignment fact): PatentLeaderboard assigns this patent a rough "approximate value" of ~$87.5M — a heuristic estimate, not recorded consideration.

Assignment timeline

The accessible record shows one post‑filing assignment for this patent. I was not able to retrieve the reel/frame number from the sources reachable in this session — I am flagging that gap rather than fabricating a number.

• 2021‑06‑01 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN — not retrievable from accessible sources
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest ("see document for details")
  • Assignor: VOLFMAN, Alexander; UZIEL, Yoram; GDOR, Itay; LEVINSKI, Vladimir; LUBASHEVKSY, Yuval; PASKOVER, Yuri (i.e., all six inventors)
  • Assignee: KLA CORPORATION
  • Correspondent: not retrievable from the accessible record. (For a standard operating-company inventor assignment of this type the correspondent is typically the assignee's in-house IP department or outside prosecution counsel, but I could not verify the name as recorded — do not treat that as a finding.)
  • Context: Original inventor‑to‑employer assignment — the routine conveyance of the inventors' rights to their employer. Execution date is ~6 months after the 2020‑12‑11 filing; recording 2021‑06‑01. No NPE, no LLC, no reorg.

No further assignments are recorded. There is no downstream transfer to any holding/licensing entity in the record I can see. Related family filings proceeded under KLA (TW priority 2021‑10‑04; JP/EP/KR/CN/PCT national filings 2021‑11‑30), which is consistent with KLA retaining and prosecuting the family.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11378394
    2020 : Application filed 11 Dec 2020 by KLA Corporation
         : Six inventors assign rights to KLA
    2021 : Inventor assignment recorded 2021-06-01
         : PCT and foreign family filed 30 Nov 2021
    2022 : US11378394B1 granted 2022-07-05
    2040 : Anticipated expiration 2040-12-11

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The only recorded conveyance is inventors → KLA Corporation (2021‑06‑01). KLA is an operating semiconductor-equipment manufacturer, not an "IP/Licensing/Holdings/Ventures" vehicle, and no LLC appears anywhere in the chain.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No assignee matches Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi‑LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or any Spangenberg entity. The sole assignee is KLA.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not assessable. With only one recorded link, the "repeat correspondent" test cannot be run, and I could not retrieve the correspondent name from the accessible record. No finding either way.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. One link in the chain, no consecutive assignments through chained LLCs.

5. Pre‑litigation transfer — not present. No infringement suit naming this patent surfaced in the searches, and there is no assignment adjacent to any litigation date.

6. Bankruptcy fire‑sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 event, no trustee sale; KLA is solvent and operating.

7. Privateering — not present. No transfer to an NPE asserting on KLA's behalf; KLA retains the patent.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti‑NPE) — not present. Chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN.

Verdict

Insufficient data (no records, or only the original assignment).

Justification: the entire recorded chain consists of a single inventor‑to‑employer assignment to KLA CORPORATION recorded 2021‑06‑01 (all six inventors as assignors), with no subsequent transfers. Every NPE/troll signal is "not present," and KLA is a large operating semiconductor‑metrology manufacturer that continues to prosecute and own this family — so substantively this is clean operating‑company ownership rather than an NPE chain. I selected "Insufficient data" strictly because the record contains no post‑issuance transfers to test; that is itself the finding (the original assignee still owns the patent).

Caveat / verification: I could not retrieve the USPTO reel/frame or the correspondent of record in this session, and no litigation was confirmed. Verify the reel/frame and correspondent directly at the USPTO Assignment Center by searching patent number 11378394: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html).

I'll research the prior art references cited for US 11,378,394. Let me run several targeted searches.

I found the Justia "Referenced Cited" list. Let me get detailed citation data on each reference and confirm the list against Google Patents.

Prior Art Analysis — US 11,378,394 B1

"On-the-fly scatterometry overlay metrology target" · KLA Corporation · App. 17/119,536 · Filed 2020-12-11 · Granted 2022-07-05

Note on the "USPTO database" instruction: My tooling in this session queries public web/patent mirrors (Google Patents, Justia Patents, Espacenet, patentimages) rather than the authenticated USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Full-Text (PatFT/AppFT) interface. The reference list below is the "References Cited" block reproduced from the patent's own front page as mirrored on Justia (patents.justia.com/patent/11378394), cross-checked against Google Patents. This is the same IDS/face-of-patent data PatFT would return. I flag below where I could not independently verify a reference's subject matter.

1. The complete "References Cited" list for 11,378,394

Per Justia's reproduction of the patent's front page (which I matched against the Google Patents record for the same number — no similar-but-different numbers were substituted, per your instruction):

U.S. Patent Documents

Foreign Patent Documents

Non-Patent Literature

• Adel, M. et al., "Diffraction order control in overlay metrology: a review of the roadmap options," Proc. SPIE 6922, Metrology, Inspection, and Process Control for Microlithography XXII, 692202 (2008).
• International Search Report and Written Opinion, PCT/US2021/061296, dated 2022-03-24, 9 pages.

Also incorporated by reference into the 11,378,394 disclosure itself (admitted background art, per the patent's own text): US 8,330,281; US 9,476,698; US 7,541,201; US 2013/0035888; US 9,214,317; US 10,527,951; US 10,190,979; and PCT/US2016/039531 ("Apparatus and method for the measurement of pattern placement and size of pattern and computer program therefor," filed 2016-06-27). Note that the last of these (PCT/US2016/039531) is absent from the Justia "Referenced Cited" block even though it is cited in the specification — a small inconsistency worth flagging.

2. Reference-by-reference analysis

Because this application has a 2020-12-11 effective filing date, it is an AIA patent, so the governing provision is 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) (and § 102(a)(2) for the pre-published applications). All 17 documents above pre-date 2020-12-11 and therefore qualify as prior art. The real question is which of them disclose every element of a given claim (§ 102 anticipation) versus only pieces of it (§ 103 obviousness). I have marked my honest read on that question for each.

Claim-scope reminder (from the prior section, restated): I could not retrieve certified verbatim claim text. The independent claims are, in substance: (i) claim 1 – a target with a first cell containing first/second/third sets of segmented pattern elements at first/second/third pitches, all along the same first measurement direction; (ii) a system claim – controller acquires 1st/2nd/3rd overlay measurements and determines overlay from at least two; (iii) a method-of-measuring claim – acquire and determine overlay from at least one; (iv) a method-of-forming claim – the fabrication counterpart of claim 1. I map prior art to these four in that vocabulary.

2.1 — The strongest § 102 candidate

US 7,440,105 B2 — "Continuously varying offset mark and methods of determining overlay"

• Full citation: US 7,440,105 B2; App. 11/060,588 filed 2005-02-16; granted 2008-10-21; inventors Daniel Kandel, Michael E. Adel, Joel L. Seligson; assignee KLA-Tencor Technologies Corp.; priority tied to Dec. 5, 2003 (Ser. No. 10/729,838 family). Published as US 2005/0195398 A1 (2005-09-08).
• Description: Discloses a single overlay mark composed of overlaid periodic structures whose grating characteristic — expressly including pitch — varies (across position / between the superimposed gratings), and a method of extracting overlay by finding the mark's center of symmetry relative to its geometric center (the displacement divided by the mark's preset gain = overlay error). It teaches obtaining a spatial array of optical data along the mark (i.e., relative scan motion between mark and optics), and even lists an overlay target whose upper portion carries two side-by-side gratings at slightly larger and slightly smaller pitch than the lower grating.
• § 102 assessment: This is the closest single-reference § 102(a)(1) candidate for the target claim (claim 1) and for the method-of-forming claim (iv). It discloses (a) a mark/cell containing (b) multiple overlaid segmented periodic structures at (c) different pitches. The main gap for a clean anticipation is that 7,440,105 frames its gratings as two superimposed structures with a small pitch differential (Moiré/beat), whereas claim 1 recites three distinct pitches in one cell all oriented along one measurement direction. If the examiner/analyst maps the "continuously varying" pitch across the mark onto three nominal pitch sets, anticipation is arguable; absent that mapping, it is a strong § 103 reference against claim 1 and against the "at least one overlay measurement" step of method claim (iii).

2.2 — References expressly incorporated into the 11,378,394 disclosure (admitted prior art)

US 8,330,281 B2 — "Overlay marks, methods of overlay mark design and methods of overlay measurements" (Ghinovker et al.; granted 2012-12-11).

• Description: KLA foundational AIM/scatterometry overlay-mark design patent — mark/cell architectures, grating-over-grating targets, and design methodology for overlay measurement marks.
• § 102 assessment: Discloses multi-region overlay marks and grating-over-grating targets; does not appear to disclose a single cell with three co-directional pitches. Most useful as § 103 art (target-architecture framework) and as a § 102 reference against any claim language reciting generic "sets of pattern elements … segmented pattern elements" if read broadly. Low standalone anticipation risk.

US 9,476,698 B2 — "Periodic patterns and technique to control misalignment between two layers" (Abdulhalim et al.; granted 2016-10-25).

• Description: Periodic (grating) patterns and diffraction-based misalignment/overlay control between two layers — the canonical grating-over-grating SCOL reference.
• § 102 assessment: Relevant to the "grating-over-grating" structure recited in the description and to the segmented pattern elements limitation. Not a standalone anticipator of claim 1 because it lacks the three-distinct-pitch, single-cell, single-direction combination; § 103 relevance is high.

US 7,541,201 B2 — "Apparatus and methods for determining overlay of structures having rotational or mirror symmetry" (Mark Ghinovker; App. 11/227,764 filed 2005-09-14; granted 2009-06-02; priority 2000-08-30). Published US 2007/0008533 A1 / WO 2007/008473 A2.

• Description: Overlay targets with flexible symmetry — x-direction and y-direction structures with different centers/lines of symmetry, structures that are 180°-rotationally symmetric or mirror symmetric, and imaging/metrology techniques to extract overlay from the symmetry.
• § 102 assessment: Directly relevant to 11,378,394's recitation that the first and second cells "may be two-fold or four-fold rotationally symmetric" and that the two measurement directions are perpendicular. It anticipates the rotational/mirror-symmetry limitations if those are claimed as dependent features, but it does not disclose the three-pitch single-direction cell. § 102 as to any symmetry-reciting dependent claim; § 103 as to the independent claims.

US 9,214,317 B2 — "System and method of SEM overlay metrology" (Shur; granted 2015-12-15).

• Description: SEM-based (electron-beam) overlay metrology system/method.
• § 102 assessment: Bears on the system claim's generic "one or more metrology sub-systems … configured to operate in a non-imaging mode" breadth (the 11,378,394 description expressly contemplates a particle-based / e-beam sub-system). Weak on the optical/scatterometry elements; § 103 at most, and only as background.

US 10,190,979 B2 — "Metrology imaging targets having reflection-symmetric pairs of reflection-asymmetric structures" (Manassen et al.; granted 2019-01-29).

• Description: Imaging-metrology target designs built from reflection-symmetric pairs of reflection-asymmetric structures.
• § 102 assessment: Relates to target design symmetry/symmetry-breaking, tangentially relevant to the "symmetry" language. No teaching of multi-pitch single-direction cells — § 103 / background only.

US 10,527,951 B2 — "Compound imaging metrology targets" (Yohanan et al.; granted 2020-01-07).

• Description: Compound metrology targets — i.e., a single target footprint integrating multiple sub-target/measurement functions.
• § 102 assessment: This is the second-most interesting reference after 7,440,105, because "compound target" art is the natural antecedent to "three sets of pattern elements within a single cell." If 10,527,951 discloses stacking multiple measurement gratings within one compound footprint, it is a serious § 103 combination partner (with 7,440,105) and a possible § 102 reference against the area-saving dependent subject matter (grating-over-grating stacking) recited in the 11,378,394 description. It does not, as far as I can confirm, teach three co-directional different-pitch gratings in one cell.

US 2013/0035888 A1 — "Method and system for providing a quality metric for improved process control" (Kandel et al.; published 2013-02-07).

• Description: Overlay/metrology quality metric and process-control methodology.
• § 102 assessment: Relevant to the system claim's "determine an overlay error" + optional feedback/feed-forward correctables (optional Step 414) recitations. It anticipates, at most, the correctables/process-control dependent subject matter. § 103 / background for the independent claims.

2.3 — References where I verified the citation but could not confirm subject matter

Per your standing rule, I will not fabricate descriptions. For the following I confirmed only the bibliographic citation from the patent face; I could not independently verify titles/claim content in this session, so any § 102 mapping would be speculative:

Several of these (Vanoppen, Yang, and the US 2015/2016 publications) are plausibly multi-grating/one-dimensional-target disclosures and could be materially relevant, but I will not assign them to claims on unverified speculation.

2.4 — Non-patent literature

• Adel et al., "Diffraction order control in overlay metrology: a review of the roadmap options," Proc. SPIE 6922 (2008). A KLA roadmap review of diffraction-order selection in SCOL. § 102 assessment: qualifies as a § 102(a)(1) printed publication; it is a general-teaching / § 103 reference about choosing diffraction orders (relevant to the ±1-order intensity framing of the patent's Eqns. 1–2), not an anticipator of the three-pitch single-cell target.
• ISR/WO for PCT/US2021/061296 (2022-03-24). This is the international search report on this very application's PCT. It is post-filing, so it is not itself prior art; it is the examiner's relevance categorization of the art. Notably, its content overlaps the Justia "Referenced Cited" block — meaning some of items 1–17 above were flagged by the ISA as the pertinent art, which is a strong hint about which references the examiner considered closest.

3. Bottom line

1. No cited reference, as far as I can verify, discloses all elements of the target claim in combination — specifically a single cell containing three sets of segmented pattern elements at three distinct pitches, all formed along one measurement direction. On the present record the cited art is predominantly § 103 (obviousness) material, not clean § 102 anticipation.
2. US 7,440,105 B2 is the single most dangerous reference — it is a single-mark, multi-pitch, symmetry/center-of-symmetry overlay patent by the same assignee (KLA-Tencor) whose inventor list overlaps the 11,378,394 family's ecosystem. It is the reference most capable of reading on claim 1 and the method-of-forming claim, and it is the reference I would expect an IPR petitioner to anchor on.
3. US 10,527,951 ("Compound imaging metrology targets") is the natural § 103 partner to 7,440,105 for the "multiple pattern-element sets within a single cell/footprint" limitation.
4. US 7,541,201 most directly touches the symmetry dependent limitations (two-fold / four-fold rotational symmetry; perpendicular measurement directions).
5. US 9,476,698 and US 8,330,281 supply the grating-over-grating / segmented-element foundation and are the standard admitted-background art.

Recommended verification step: because I could not classify the seven "Unverified" US publications and the two foreign documents, and because I could not obtain the verbatim claim set, a definitive anticipation mapping requires (a) the certified claim text from USPTO PatentCenter, and (b) a full-text read of items 3, 7, 11–17 above. Until those are pulled, treat § 102 mappings 1–4 above as the only claim-grounded conclusions and everything else as § 103/background with the noted caveats.

No contradictions were found between this analysis and the previously generated Patent Summary / Litigation sections; the prior "no litigation found" negative remains unchanged, and this section adds no adversarial-proceeding evidence.

I'll research the prior art landscape before building the § 103 analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,378,394 B1

"On-the-fly scatterometry overlay metrology target" (KLA Corporation; filed/priority 2020‑12‑11; granted 2022‑07‑05)

Scope note up front. This memo builds on the prior summary and litigation sections. Two things must be flagged before the analysis:

1. Refinement / partial contradiction with the earlier summary. The earlier summary characterized the independent claims solely from the patent's Summary and "Definitions" text, which describes the three pattern-element sets without layer limitations. A retrieved excerpt of the actual granted claim text (Justia, claim‑language listing) shows the claim set includes sample-layer limitations and an explicit "as the sample is in motion" limitation that the Summary-level description does not convey. See Table 1 below. The earlier characterization was correct in substance but materially incomplete on claim scope.
2. Verification status. I could not retrieve the full verbatim claim set. Some prior-art characterizations below are based on retrieved reference text (verified); others are based on the patent's own on-face citation list where I judged the reference's field from its title only (flagged as "title-only"). Each entry is labeled.

1. Governing standard and level of ordinary skill

Law. Under 35 U.S.C. § 103 (as construed in KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007)), a claim is obvious when "the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made." Where the elements are individually known, the question is "whether there was an apparent reason to combine the known elements in the fashion claimed by the patent at issue." Id. at 418. The patent owner's own specification is a permitted source of evidence of what was known — the "Background" section of US 11,378,394 is itself a concession that SCOL targets with multi-cell, two-direction configurations were conventional and that the unmet need was measurement time and target area.

PHOSITA in this art (per the patent's own field framing) would hold at least a B.S./M.S. in physics, optics, or electrical engineering plus roughly 2–5 years working with diffraction-based overlay (DBO/SCOL) metrology target design and grating diffraction models — including pupil-plane order separation, segmented (sub-resolution) grating design, induced-offset cell design, and stage-motion/tool-throughput tradeoffs.

2. Claim scope to be tested

Table 1 — Claim elements (retrieved text; partial)

Key takeaway for § 103: the claim's structural heart is three segmented gratings at three distinct pitches, co-linear in periodicity (one measurement direction), split across only two sample layers (2+1), read out while the wafer is moving. The specification attaches no numeric pitch relationship, no critical pitch ratio, and no critical segmentation geometry — a strong indicator the alleged novelty lies in the combination/arrangement, not in any unpredictable parameter.

3. The prior art landscape

3.1 References on the face of the patent ("Referenced Cited," Justia listing for patent 11378394)

3.2 Additional prior art located (publications all pre‑date 2020‑12‑11)

4. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — Single-cell, multi-pitch, single-measurement-direction SCOL target (E1–E3) is obvious

Combination: US 10,197,389 B2 (primary) in view of US 2019/0137412 A1, and optionally US 9,753,364 B2 (segmentation).

• E1/E2/E3 (three sets, three different pitches, same measurement direction, segmented). US 10,197,389 expressly teaches the two-grating version of precisely this concept: a "single cell SCOL target having gratings with different pitches," with "at least two periodic structures having at least two corresponding different pitches." It also supplies the reason the pitches must differ: to separate the overlap regions of the 0th and ±1st orders in the pupil, and to "retrieve the phase of the diffracted electromagnetic field by each one of the gratings." Adding a third pitch is the natural, mathematically trivial extension of the same teaching — a third pitch gives a third independently separable overlap region and a third phase/position estimate, exactly the redundancy needed to eliminate unknowns (see Ground 3). KLA's own US 2019/0137412 and WO 2020/106335 confirm the field's accepted direction of improvement: fewer cells, smaller cells, single-cell targets, simultaneous multi-direction extraction, all with the express purpose of "reducing measurement time and enhancing the metrology throughput" and reducing target area.
• Segmenting the gratings is admitted conventional: US 2019/0137412 describes segmented single-cell SCOL targets; US 9,753,364 claims segmented metrology features having a pitch; the patent's own spec calls segmentation merely "compatible with any metrology mode known in the art."
• Motivation: (a) pupil-plane order separation (US 10,197,389's stated purpose); (b) target-area reduction and throughput (US 2019/0137412, US 9,740,108, WO 2020/106335); (c) redundancy/accuracy (Adel 2008 roadmap; US 10,591,406). All three point the same way — there is no teaching away.

Ground 2 — "As the sample is in motion" / "on-the-fly" (E4, E5) is obvious

Combination: Ground 1 in view of EP 3,700,840 A1 (ASML) and/or WO 2020/106335 (KLA/Paskover).

• E4 ("as the sample is in motion"). EP 3,700,840 discloses metrology in which a substrate grid is iteratively updated after each measurement and used to align the subsequent measurement, i.e., a pipeline that does not require the stage to settle/idle between targets — the classic "on-the-fly" mode whose entire purpose is throughput. WO 2020/106335, by the patent's own inventor, discloses measuring a single SCOL cell "at multiple spot locations on the target" (a relative target/spot scan) and building a signal matrix — a measurement taken while relative motion occurs. The patent's own description confirms that "on-the-fly" is a known tool operating mode, not a new physics: "[t]he metrology system 200 may be configured such that the amount of time required to determine an overlay error is reduced in that operation … may be performed 'on-the-fly' and the operation need not be discontinued between each individual overlay measurement."
• E5 (claim 13: "acquired on-the-fly") adds nothing beyond this mode choice, and is therefore obvious a fortiori over Ground 2; a claim reciting only the timing of a measurement step (not the step's content) is a classic obviousness-weak dependency.
• Motivation: move-and-settle time dominates overlay tool cycle time; eliminating it is the express object of both references and of KLA's own commercial framing. Predictable result: you get the same overlay signal, sampled during translation.

Ground 3 — The 2+1 layer split and the pitch-triangulated overlay algorithm (E1–E4, Eqs. 3–4 analog) is obvious

This is the aspect most likely to be asserted as the point of novelty, and it is the most vulnerable.

• The patent's overlay computation reduces to: for each grating pair, relate a measured phase difference δ_ij (from x_i/P_i − x_j/P_j) to a position difference; then solve OVL₁₋₂ = x₁ − x₂ from δ₁₂ and δ₂₃ using the three pitches (Eqns. 3–4).
• US 10,197,389 teaches exactly this algorithm class: "different pitches of the individual gratings may be used to retrieve the phase of the diffracted electromagnetic field … by each one of the gratings," and "individual grating position may be derived from the phase difference of the corresponding diffraction orders and overlay may be retrieved from the difference of individual grating positions." The only delta between that teaching and the patent's Eqns. 3–4 is using three rather than two gratings to supply a third equation — a mathematically obvious step (three equations, three unknowns x₁, x₂, x₃) fully within the PHOSITA's ordinary skill and requiring no experimentation.
• The 2+1 layer assignment (first and third sets in layer 1; second set in layer 2) is the natural way to obtain, from a single cell, three co-directional gratings that give you (i) two layer-1/layer-2 pairs plus (ii) a same-layer pair usable as a self-consistency/reference term. Nothing in the patent asserts a criticality or unexpected result for this split; the spec offers no data showing a difference versus any other distribution. Under KSR, "[a] person of ordinary skill is also a person of ordinary creativity, not an automaton," 550 U.S. at 421, and where "the improvement is nothing more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions," the claim fails § 103, id. at 417.
• Supporting references: US 9,740,108 ("extracting overlay data from several layers in a single target"; "measuring the overlay data simultaneously from different layers"), and the on-face overlay-mark-design family (US 7,671,990; US 8,330,281; US 7,541,201 — rotational/mirror symmetry target design), which supply co-directional grating sets and symmetry conventions for multi-layer targets.

Ground 4 — KSR "combination of familiar elements" / design choice

Even absent an explicit two-reference motivation, the claimed subject matter is a juxtaposition of known SCOL target-design elements (multi-pitch gratings, single cell, segmented features, multi-layer grating-over-grating, symmetric layout) with a known tool operating mode (continuous-motion measurement). Under KSR, combining familiar elements according to known methods to yield predictable results — including "the mere duplication of parts" and "a structure [that] was old" — is unpatentable absent a demonstrated unexpected result. The specification supplies none: it contains no comparative data, no accuracy/throughput measurements, and no asserted critical pitch values. That evidentiary vacuum is itself its strongest weakness.

5. Element-by-element mapping (claim 12, as retrieved) to the Ground 1+2 combination

6. Is there anticipation (§ 102)?

On the record I have, no single reference anticipates claim 12. US 10,197,389 gets you "single cell, multiple pitches, phase-difference-derived overlay," but I have not located in it a teaching of three pitch sets in one cell plus the specific 2+1 layer split plus the in-motion limitation. WO 2020/106335 gets you single-cell scanning and varying illumination parameters, but not the three-pitch, one-direction architecture. Accordingly, the case is a § 103 case, not a § 102 case — unless the ISR for PCT/US2021/061296 (2022‑03‑24) cites a reference, or the applicant's own unpublished-at-filing work, that I have not retrieved. That ISR is my largest evidence gap and should be pulled from Global Dossier.

7. Anticipated patent-owner counterarguments and rebuttals

1. "Multi-pitch gratings inside one illuminated spot were avoided in SCOL because the 0th/±1st orders of different pitches overlap and cross-talk in the pupil; putting three different pitches in one cell is a teaching away."
   Rebuttal: US 10,197,389 confronts and solves that exact overlap problem (annular illumination + pitch selection to separate overlap regions) and advocates the multi-pitch single cell as the desired architecture. That converts the alleged "teaching away" into a known, solved design problem with a known solution, which supports obviousness rather than defeating it.
2. "The on-the-fly read-out requires the beat-frequency model (Eqn. 2's vt(1/P₁−1/P₂) terms) — that's the real invention."
   Rebuttal: The moving-grating phase term is elementary superposition/interferometry — when a grating translates at velocity v, its diffracted field acquires a phase 2πvt/P. The cross-terms therefore beat at v(1/P_i − 1/P_j) as a matter of mathematics. US 10,197,389 already teaches using different pitches to separate/retrieve individual grating contributions; adding motion merely converts a spatial or pupil-plane separation into a temporal-frequency separation. That is the kind of "predictable variation" that does not confer patentability, and the specification's equations are unaccompanied by any data showing the technique performs better than alternatives.
3. "The claims require three pitches; the art shows two."
   Rebuttal: "[T]he mere duplication of parts has no patentable significance" and a "change in the number of repetitions" is generally obvious absent a new and unexpected result. KSR, 550 U.S. at 417 (quoting In re Harza). Here the third grating supplies a third equation for a third unknown — a purely arithmetic benefit.
4. "The 2+1 layer split is not taught."
   Rebuttal: The split is the direct, predictable consequence of wanting two layer-pair overlay signals plus a same-layer reference within one cell; US 9,740,108 teaches multi-layer data extraction from a single target; no criticality is asserted in the specification.

8. Secondary considerations

I found no objective evidence of non-obviousness in the record: no unexpected-results data in the specification, no evidence of copying, no evidence of a long-felt-but-unmet need that others failed to solve (to the contrary — the same inventor's WO 2020/106335 and KLA's US 2019/0137412 family show the field was moving toward exactly this single-cell, throughput-first target architecture before the 2020‑12‑11 filing). If KLA asserts commercial success, the required nexus would be difficult to establish in a market where the target is a consumable design used on the owner's own tools, not a separately sold product. No litigation or PTAB record for this patent was found (per the earlier search section), so there is no adverse-judgment or IPR estoppel record bearing on validity.

9. Bottom line

Overall assessment: On the record available, claims 12, 13, and 23 (and the E1–E5 subject matter generally) are vulnerable to a § 103 rejection — most forcefully on the single-cell/multi-pitch element (which a third-party KLA-lineage reference recites in haec verba, including the pitch-diversity phase-retrieval algorithm), and secondarily on the "in motion / on-the-fly" limitations, which the specification itself characterizes as a known tool mode. The most defensible claim territory, if any, is the specific 2+1 layer distribution combined with the three-pitch in-motion solve — but the specification provides no data, no critical ranges, and permissive "may not be equivalent" pitch language that will likely be read as a design-parameter space, not a patentable invention.

10. Verification steps I could not complete (needed before relying on this)

1. Pull the verbatim, complete claim set of US 11,378,394 (claims 1–23+) from USPTO Patent Center / Global Dossier — I have only a partial Justia-rendered excerpt of claims 12, 13, and 23.
2. Retrieve ISR/WO of PCT/US2021/061296 (2022‑03‑24) and WO 2022/125340 A1 search report — the examiner's own cited art is the single highest-value gap.
3. Retrieve full text of the on-face references I could only verify by title (US 2015/0177135; US 2015/0293458; US 2016/0093574; US 2016/0146740; US 2020/0241429; US 9,885,961; US 10,591,406; KR 10‑1185992; WO 2018/004511) to determine whether any one of them independently teaches the three-pitch single-cell architecture (possible § 102, not merely § 103).
4. Confirm US 10,197,389 B2's assignee/priority chain (I verified its disclosure text and EP counterpart EP 3,347,701 A1, but not its assignee), and confirm the US 2019/0137412 A1 priority date (2017‑11‑06) from the published document rather than the specification's cross-reference.
5. Confirm the Adel 2008 SPIE paper's treatment of multi-pitch targets — if that roadmap paper already discusses multi-pitch, single-illumination-spot order control, Ground 1 consolidates into a single-reference-plus-common-knowledge rejection.

Caveat on sourcing. Per the operating rules, patent numbers and identifiers above are quoted literally as returned by the sources, including the inventor spelling "Lubashevksy." Where a reference's disclosure is described from its title only, I have said so; those characterizations are provisional and should be re-verified before being asserted in any rejection or invalidity contention.