US 11391592

I'll search for litigation/docket information on this specific patent number and cross-check the bibliographic details.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks for litigation or PTAB activity specific to this patent.

US Patent 11,391,592 B2 — Analyst Summary

Verification status / caveats up front

• Docket search result: no hits. I ran targeted searches for the literal string "11391592" and "11,391,592" against public web sources (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, Justia, CourtListener/recap PDFs, Federal Circuit weekly summaries for 2026). I found no district court action, no PTAB petition (IPR/PGR), and no CAFC 2026 docket entry naming U.S. Patent No. 11,391,592. Searches that did return "litigation" results returned different patent numbers (e.g., 11,316,014; 8,958,853; 10,912,321; 11,395,889; 11,319,596), which I am not attributing to this patent per your instruction not to substitute similar numbers.
• Limitation: I cannot query PACER or Docket Navigator directly, and free aggregators lag. So this should be read as "no publicly indexed litigation found," not as proof that none exists.
• Source of bibliographic data: the authoritative full-text record supplied in the prompt (Google Patents, fetched 2026-09-24), corroborated by FreePatentsOnline's issue-week listing ("11391592 | Display system for augmented reality route section determination", week 29 of 2022). Where the two differ, I use the supplied full text.

Bibliographic data

Note the Google Patents page styles JP7253720B2 as "Display system and program" — a different title from the US member, which is normal for a national-phase family variant.

Abstract (verbatim)

"A display apparatus of the present disclosure determines whether or not a route section is a linear section on the basis of positional relationship among nodes within the route section including three or more nodes, and, for a route section which is determined to be a linear section, forms and displays a line connecting a start node with a terminal node of the route section as an AR route."

Technical field / problem addressed

The patent is directed to an in-vehicle head-up display (HUD) that projects an augmented-reality (AR) route — a band-shaped guidance graphic — onto a windshield as a virtual image superimposed on real scenery. The stated problem (Background Art / Technical Problem) is that AR routes built naively from discontinuous map coordinates (nodes and shape-interpolating points) look bent at intersections on genuinely straight roads, and look like a broken polyline on curves, producing driver discomfort because the AR route sits in the driver's forward field of view. Embodiments add (a) line correction/smoothing, (b) B-spline curve interpolation, and (c) node shifting to the correct travel lane using lane information.

Prior art cited on the face of the patent: JP H7-257228 (Nissan "Vehicle display"), JP 2018-045103, JP 2018-140714. Examiner citations include US6304818B1 (Denso), US2005/0058155A1, US2007/0024624A1 (Poppen, "Generalization of Features In A Digital Map"), US2008/0247645A1 (Vogt, road pattern segmentation), US2014/0297181A1 (Aisin AW lane guidance), US2018/0292229A1 (Nissan).

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

There are two independent claims — claim 1 and claim 5 — but they are nested, not parallel: claim 5 is a display-apparatus claim that incorporates "the display system according to claim 1." So claim 1 carries essentially all of the substantive subject matter.

Claim 1 — Display system (independent; the core claim). A system that displays an AR route as a virtual image overlaid on what the user sees, comprising (i) a processor that forms the AR route and (ii) a display that presents it as a virtual image. The processor does three things:

1. Linear-section test: decides whether a route section is a "linear section" based on the positional relationship of the nodes within that section, where the section contains three or more nodes (i.e., a multi-node geometric test, not a per-link test).
2. Straight-line substitution: for a section found to be linear, it forms, as the AR route, a single line joining the section's start node to its terminal node — effectively discarding the intermediate nodes that would otherwise cause the "slight bend at every intersection" artifact.
3. Recursive splitting (the key limitation distinguishing it from a mere smoothing concept): if any node in the candidate section has a distance to that connecting line greater than a predetermined threshold, the processor divides the section at the node whose distance is the greatest, using that node as the dividing point (and the process repeats on the resulting sub-sections).

Claim 5 — Display apparatus (independent). A display apparatus that makes a driver see a virtual image by projecting light onto a windshield, comprising the display system of claim 1. In practice this limits the claim-1 system to the windshield-projection HUD context and imports all of claim 1's limitations.

Dependent claims (all depend on claim 1, via claim 2 for claims 3–4 lineage):

• Claim 2: the linear/non-linear determination is made based on the distance between the start-to-terminal connecting line and another node in the section (i.e., the yardstick used in the test).
• Claim 3: the section is deemed linear when the distance between that line and all other nodes in the section is equal to or below the predetermined threshold.
• Claim 4: for a section determined to be non-linear, the AR route is formed with a shape produced by curve interpolation using the section's nodes as control points (the specification describes B-spline interpolation as the preferred, distortion-free implementation).

Practical reading: claim 1 is a map-geometry simplification/smoothing claim — hierarchical, distance-thresholded line simplification of a node sequence used to render an AR guidance graphic — drafted into a HUD display system, with the recursive "split at the maximum-distance node" step recited as a positive limitation rather than left to the specification.

Things I am not asserting

• I have no evidence of any specific invalidity contention, claim construction order, IPR institution, or CAFC appeal involving this patent. The CNIPA office actions listed in the record (dated 2021-10-13 and 2022-05-11, in CN 202010218411.3) are the only prosecution-adjacent challenge documents appearing on the face of the record, and they concern the Chinese family member, not the US patent.
• The "adjusted expiration 2040-12-03" figure is taken verbatim from the Google Patents legal-status field; I have not independently recomputed patent term adjustment from the face of the patent.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11391592.

Let me check more specialized litigation sources.

Let me try a few more targeted litigation databases.

Litigation Search Results — U.S. Patent No. 11,391,592

Bottom line: I found no record of any litigation (district court, ITC, or appellate) involving U.S. Patent No. 11,391,592 ("Display system for augmented reality route section determination").

Per your instruction to interpret identifiers literally, I searched for that exact number (and the 11,391,592 variant) and screened out results that matched only similar or unrelated numbers (e.g., the Brazilian corporate-registry entry 11391592, the PubMed PMID 11391592, a German duct part no. 11391592, and unrelated patents such as 11,093,417 and 10,237,577 that surfaced in the results). None of those relate to this patent.

What the searches did surface

Complete case list

None. There are zero cases to report. Consequently, I cannot provide plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome for any case, because no such case was located.

Contextual notes (not litigation findings)

• Owner: Original assignee Panasonic Intellectual Property Management Co., Ltd.; assignment recorded 2024-02-28 to Panasonic Automotive Systems Co., Ltd. Per the patent record, status is Active, with an adjusted expiration of 2040-12-03 (per Google Patents' legal-status notation).
• Family/foreign counterparts (also per the record): US20200309554A1 (published 2020-10-01); JP7253720B2; CN111751993B; DE102020107959B4. Priority to JP2019-061463 (2019-03-27); U.S. application 16/829,529 filed 2020-03-25; granted 2022-07-19; inventors Akira Tanaka and Toshiya Mori.
• Why litigation is unlikely: This is a large operating-company (Panasonic) portfolio asset covering an in-vehicle head-up-display feature, not the typical profile of an asserted patent (which is more often held by NPEs/PAEs). The listed "Citing" and "Similar Documents" activity is patent-analytics noise, not assertion.
• PTAB: No inter partes review, PGR, or reexamination tied to this patent number appeared in the results either.

Limitations on my search

These results reflect what is publicly indexed via the sources I queried (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, general web search reaching Unified Patents/RPX/Justia/CourtListener mirrors) as of today. I could not directly query paid or portal-gated systems (PACER/PatentCenter, Unified Patents' own portal login, Docket Navigator, Lex Machina). It is therefore possible, though I found no indication of it, that:

• a very recently filed case (post-indexing lag) exists, or
• a case exists in which the patent is asserted but the docket is sealed or otherwise not indexed.

To be certain, the definitive checks would be a direct query in Unified Patents' litigation portal (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist), PACER/PatentCenter, and Docket Navigator filtering on 11,391,592. If you can provide portal access credentials, I can run that lookup.

Conclusion: Based on the available public records I searched, no litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,391,592 is known. I state this with the caveat that I cannot fully exclude a sealed or extremely recent unindexed filing.

I'll start by verifying the structured data against public sources, then search for any PTAB activity on this patent.

No PTAB hits yet. Let me run more targeted queries to confirm the absence and check for any related litigation or Federal Circuit activity.

Let me run a couple final checks on litigation and sibling-patent PTAB activity to make sure I'm not missing a challenge filed under a family member.

Proceedings overview

Total PTAB proceedings on file: zero (0). The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 11,391,592 as of the most recent ingest, and my independent web searches surfaced no IPR, PGR, CBM, or derivation proceeding naming this patent, its application number (16/829,529), or its family members on the PTAB docket. There is therefore no breakdown by active/invalidated/sustained/settled status to report — the patent is untested at the Board. Bottom line for a defendant: no PTAB ammunition exists yet; every asserted claim (1–5) stands exactly as issued in 2022, and you would be litigating validity from scratch.

I want to be candid about the limits of this conclusion: I could not run an exhaustive PTAB E2E docket pull, so this rests on (a) the structured ODP data supplied in the prompt and (b) open-source searches. If a petition was filed within the last few weeks it may not yet appear in either source — but nothing surfaced.

No proceeding to profile

There is no proceeding number, petitioner, panel, institution decision, FWD, settlement, or appeal to document. Per the operating rules, I will not invent an IPR number to fill this template. The ### {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} block is intentionally omitted because no such proceeding exists.

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Strategic summary

Claim status. All five claims of US 11,391,592 are UNTESTED and SUSTAINED by default — nothing has been canceled or narrowed by the PTAB. Claim 1 is the sole independent claim (a display system with an AR-route former that (i) determines whether a route section of three-or-more nodes is linear based on node positional relationships, (ii) forms a straight line from start node to terminal node for a linear section, and (iii) recursively divides the section at the greatest-distance node when any node exceeds a threshold). Claim 2 depends on claim 1 and adds the line-distance determination; claim 3 depends on claim 2 and defines the "all other nodes ≤ threshold" linearity test; claim 4 depends on claim 1 and covers B-spline-style curve interpolation for non-linear sections; claim 5 is a display apparatus claim (windshield projection) incorporating the claim-1 system. All live.

Estoppel landscape. Because no petitioner has ever reached a final written decision, no § 315(e)(2) or § 325(e)(2) estoppel has attached to anyone. That is the good news for a defendant: you are not boxed out of any prior-art ground, and there is no petitioner/privy set already estopped. It also means no one before you has publicly road-mapped the best art. Practically, your full IPR menu is open — § 102 and § 103 grounds on patents and printed publications — subject only to the ordinary § 311(b) limits and the § 325(d)/§ 314(a) Fintiv-style discretion overlay.

Pattern signals. None to report. No serial petitioner, no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX) in the chain, and no patent-owner Federal Circuit activity — because there has been no adverse PTAB ruling to appeal. The patent is a Panasonic in-house asset (originally Panasonic IP Management; reassigned to Panasonic Automotive Systems Co., Ltd. effective 2024-02-07 per the assignment record), not an NPE/aggregator patent. Its PTAB history is empty, which for a HUD/AR-route patent of this vintage suggests it has not yet been asserted in litigation against a deep-pocketed defendant — well-asserted patents of this age typically attract at least one petition.

One timing note worth flagging. The statutory PGR window (9 months from grant, 35 U.S.C. § 321(c)) closed around 2023-04-19, so § 101/§ 112-based post-grant review is no longer available for claims as issued. IPR remains fully available regardless of elapsed time, and the patent's adjusted expiration is 2040-12-03.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant: there is no FWD to link to and no disposition to quote — the patent has never been challenged at the Board. Do not represent otherwise to a court or an adversary. Your validity defense is pristine but unbuilt; commission a prior-art search now, because the absence of IPR activity means the art landscape has not been publicly worked over.
• Timing: IPR petitions are not time-barred by patent age, but watch § 315(b) — you have one year from service of an infringement complaint to file. If you have been served, the one-year clock is the binding constraint, not the PGR window (which is already closed).
• Trial-stage milestones: not applicable — no proceeding is pending, so there is no institution-decision deadline, no oral hearing date, and no 1-year § 316(a)(11) FWD deadline running.
• Absence as signal: treat the empty PTAB docket as a genuine data point, not an oversight. If this patent is now being asserted, you may be the first target — which cuts both ways: no one has probed the claims' validity, but you also have no established prior-art template and no co-petitioner to share costs with. Consider whether an early IPR (or a reexam) is worth filing to shape the claim-construction record before Markman.

Caveat on sourcing: the above reflects the canonical ODP "no proceedings" data plus open-source searching conducted 2026-09-29. I found no contrary evidence, but this is not a substitute for a direct PTAB E2E docket query and a full litigation-history check before you rely on it in a filing.

I'll verify the assignment record and check for any assertion activity before reconstructing the chain.

Ownership Reconstruction — US 11391592 B2

Method / source note. Reel/frame values and conveyance types below are taken from the Google Patents legal‑events table for US 11391592 B2 (the authoritative text supplied). I attempted to pull the underlying assignment cover sheets from USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/, indexed at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) and via targeted web retrieval. I was not able to retrieve the actual cover sheets for the two reel/frame entries on this patent, and the correspondent of record field is therefore not verifiable from what I could access. Where I flag a correspondent below, I say explicitly that it is inferred from other Panasonic filings, not from this patent's records. I did not fabricate any reel, frame, or attorney name.

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Inventors

Departure pattern: No abnormal pattern detected. Both inventors executed the employer assignment (effective 2020‑03‑16), i.e., the standard pre‑filing inventor→corporate transfer for a Japanese‑corporate (Panasonic) filing. The JP priority is JP 2019‑061463, filed 2019‑03‑27; the US application (16/829,529) was filed 2020‑03‑25. There is no evidence of inventor exodus preceding a portfolio sale — the "all inventors departed within 12 months" tell is not present.

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Original assignee

Panasonic Intellectual Property Management Co., Ltd. (Osaka, Japan) — the entity to which the inventors assigned and the assignee of record at issuance (2022‑07‑19).

• This entity is an IP‑holding / IP‑management subsidiary of the Panasonic group, not a product‑shipping operating company. It does not itself make or sell goods.
• The operating entity on the other end of the chain — and the current assignee — is Panasonic Automotive Systems Co., Ltd. ("PAS"), the Panasonic group's automotive business (in‑vehicle HUDs, ADAS, infotainment), which does ship products in the same technical space as the claims (an in‑vehicle head‑up display that superimposes an AR route on a windshield). PAS confirmed its product role publicly via the Magna cross‑licence announcement (Feb 2025) and court filings in which PAS is described as the manufacturer of accused infotainment units.
• Current status: Operating. PAS is an active Panasonic group company that (a) asserts its own patents (sued Magna over ADAS patents in 2021, settled by cross‑licence Feb 2025), (b) defends (sued by Infogation Corp. in 2:24‑cv‑00303, E.D. Tex., voluntarily dismissed 2024‑07‑19), and (c) files IPRs against NPE‑style asserters (IPR2024‑00364 against UNM Rainforest Innovations). This is the profile of an operating company with an active IP‑enforcement posture, not a shell.
• Family counterparts: JP 7253720 B2, CN 111751993 B, DE 102020107959 B4 — all Panasonic entities; no evidence of any foreign transfer.

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Assignment timeline

Two recorded assignments. Both are intra‑Panasonic.

• 2020‑03‑16 (executed) / recorded 2020‑06‑04 — Reel 052831 / Frame 0750

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (NATURE: assignment of inventors' rights)
  • Assignor: TANAKA, AKIRA; MORI, TOSHIYA (the inventors)
  • Assignee: PANASONIC INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT CO., LTD. (Osaka, JP)
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved. (See caveat — Panasonic IP Management recordings are typically filed through the group's house IP‑services firm Pasona Knowledge Partner Inc., 8F OBP Panasonic Tower, 1‑61 Shiromi 2‑chome, Chuo‑ku, Osaka, per other Panasonic assignment records; this is an inference from comparable filings, not confirmed for frame 0750.) No repeat NPE‑associated correspondent appears.
  • Context: Standard inventor→employer assignment taken pre‑issuance; ordinary corporate IP‑ownership housekeeping.
  • Note: Reel 052831 is a large, shared reel. A wholly unrelated assignment (Vironovative BV → Erasmus University Medical Center Rotterdam) is recorded on the same reel at frame 0378 (recorded 2020‑06‑03, correspondent Daniel J. Morath, Patent Law Works). The coincidence of reel number does not connect these parties; frames differ by ~372 entries.

• 2024‑02‑07 (executed) / recorded 2024‑02‑28 — Reel 066703 / Frame 0245

  • Conveyance: Assignment (intra‑group)
  • Assignor: PANASONIC INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY MANAGEMENT CO., LTD.
  • Assignee: PANASONIC AUTOMOTIVE SYSTEMS CO., LTD. (Yokohama, JP)
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved.
  • Context: Internal reorganization / ownership realignment — a carve‑out transfer following the Panasonic group's spin‑off of its automotive business into PAS (PAS was established as a Panasonic subsidiary, effective 2022‑04‑01). IP held at group level was pushed down to the automotive operating entity. This is a name‑plate reorganization, not a sale to a third party.

No security agreements, licenses, mergers, releases, or corrective assignments are on record for this patent. Legal status is Active, with an adjusted expiration of 2040‑12‑03 and a 4th‑year maintenance fee paid (event dated 2025‑12‑17), confirming the current owner intends to keep the asset alive.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11391592
    2019 : JP priority application filed
    2020 : US application filed
         : Inventors assign to Panasonic IP Management
    2022 : Patent US11391592B2 issued
    2024 : Assigned to Panasonic Automotive Systems

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The receiving entity (Reel 066703/0245, 2024‑02‑07) is Panasonic Automotive Systems Co., Ltd., a large operating subsidiary of the Panasonic group headquartered in Yokohama — not a "Holdings / Ventures / Licensing" single‑purpose LLC, no registered‑agent service address, no single‑member Delaware/Texas structure.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither assignee (Panasonic Intellectual Property Management Co., Ltd.; Panasonic Automotive Systems Co., Ltd.) matches any entity on the Acacia / Marathon / IV / Wi‑LAN / Conversant / Pendrell / Round Rock / Spangenberg lists or any RPX/Unified high‑frequency‑plaintiff directory. Both are Panasonic group operating entities.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / not established (and no NPE link). I could not retrieve the correspondent of record for Reel 052831/0750 or Reel 066703/0245, so I cannot affirm or deny recurrence on this chain. Separately, Panasonic IP Management's assignments elsewhere consistently list Pasona Knowledge Partner Inc. (Osaka) as correspondent — a Panasonic‑affiliated house IP‑services firm, i.e., the opposite of the "one lawyer running unrelated shell LLCs" pattern. A single/repeated appearance by a captive corporate IP firm is not an NPE signal.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Only two transfers, ≈47 months apart, both intra‑group. No chained LLC hopscotch in <24 months, no shared correspondent address among unrelated assignees, no common principals across nominally distinct buyers.

5. Pre‑litigation transfer — Not present (for this patent). The 2024 assignment (2024‑02‑07) post‑dates the Panasonic‑v‑Magna ADAS litigation (filed March 2021) by ~3 years, and US 11391592 was not among the asserted patents in that case (those were US 10,615,516; 10,673,149; 6,912,001; 6,970,184, per the Feb 2025 settlement release). No suit naming US 11391592 appears in the record. So there is no "transfer within 6 months before first suit" tell.

6. Bankruptcy fire‑sale — Not present. No Chapter 7/11 proceedings involving Panasonic, Panasonic IP Management, or PAS.

7. Privateering — Not present. No operating‑company→NPE transfer; no SEC‑disclosed privateering arrangement. The only outgoing move is into the operating automotive subsidiary, the reverse of privateering.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti‑NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN. It terminates at an operating company (PAS). Note the inverse fact: PAS is a defensive challenger, having filed IPR2024‑00364 against UNM Rainforest Innovations (institution denied) — but that is PAS acting against an NPE, not a transfer to one.

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion — with the caveat that assertion of this specific patent is unverified.

Justification: The chain is short and entirely intra‑Panasonic — inventors → Panasonic Intellectual Property Management Co., Ltd. (Reel 052831/0750, executed 2020‑03‑16, recorded 2020‑06‑04) → Panasonic Automotive Systems Co., Ltd. (Reel 066703/0245, executed 2024‑02‑07, recorded 2024‑02‑28) — and terminates at an operating company that ships products in the claimed technical space (in‑vehicle HUD / AR‑route display) and actively enforces its portfolio (Panasonic v. Magna ADAS suit, settled Feb 2025; IPR2024‑00364). Zero of the eight NPE signals are present; the only ambiguity is signal #3, where I could not verify the correspondent but found no NPE‑linked correspondent across Panasonic's comparable filings. No suit naming US 11391592 is on record, so characterize this as operating‑company ownership with a non‑NPE, portfolio‑holding posture rather than an active assertion campaign on this asset.

Verify: USPTO Assignment Center — search patent number 11391592 at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (or https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/). Reels to pull directly: 052831/0750 and 066703/0245.

I'll start by pulling the USPTO record for this exact patent number and then research each cited reference individually.

The authoritative patent text supplies the citation lists. Let me verify the USPTO record and research the individual cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,391,592

0. Scope, method, and an important framing note

Number check (literal). The identifier searched is 11,391,592 → US 11,391,592 B2, application 16/829,529, granted 2022-07-19, title "Display system for augmented reality route section determination," inventors Akira Tanaka and Toshiya Mori. This matches the authoritative full text supplied. I did not substitute any similar number.

Sources actually reached. I was able to confirm the record via the Google Patents full text (which reproduces the USPTO "Patent Citations" and "Citations" tables), plus Justia Patents (patents.justia.com/patent/11391592), FreePatentsOnline (issuance week 29, 2022, "11391592 | Display system for augmented reality route section determination"), and uspto.report mirrors. I did not directly open patentcenter.uspto.gov; the citation lists below are taken from the authoritative record text you supplied, which is what the USPTO record itself carries.

Critical caveat on § 102 vs. § 103. Every reference below is a reference of record that was already before the examiner (cited by the examiner, marked *, or listed by the applicant as PTL 1–3). A reference cited in a granted patent is ordinarily a reference that was considered and overcome, not a reference that anticipates. Anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102 requires a single reference disclosing every element of a claim, arranged as in the claim. As shown below, no single cited reference discloses all elements of claim 1, because claim 1 requires the combination of (a) an AR-route virtual-image display system and (b) the specific node-geometry linear-section determination with threshold-based recursive division. The cited art splits cleanly into "geometry/algorithms" references and "AR/HUD display" references. The realistic legal theory is therefore § 103 obviousness over combinations, not § 102 anticipation. I flag each spot where a reference comes closest to anticipation.

The claims being mapped (from the authoritative text):

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1. The cited references — full citation, dates, description

1A. "Citations (9)" (references of record; * = cited by examiner per the record)

1B. Additional entries in "Patent Citations (11)" (US counterparts of PTL 2 and PTL 3)

1C. "Family Cites Families (2)"

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2. Per-reference § 102 analysis (and where each reference actually bites)

★ US20070024624A1 (Poppen / deCarta) — the most material reference

• Full citation: US 2007/0024624 A1, "Generalization of Features In A Digital Map," pub. 2007-02-01, priority 2005-07-26, Richard F. Poppen. Granted as US 7,859,536 B2.
• What it discloses (quoting the reference): "The first and last shape points of the polyline are marked as 'to be kept'. The chord … from the first shape point P1 to the last shape point Pn … is considered. The shape points … are inspected to see whether any of them are more than the maximum distance d_max from the chord. If any are, then the shape point Pi farthest from the chord is marked as 'to be kept,' and the same operation is applied to the partial polylines … This process … is applied recursively until the original polyline has been broken up into pieces such that the chord … is no farther than d_max from any of the shape points in between."
• Potential § 102 anticipation: Claims 2 and 3 (and the third clause of claim 1) are the target. Poppen discloses the substantive test those claims recite: distance between a line (chord) and another point vs. a threshold, and dividing at the greatest-distance point, applied recursively.
  • But it does not anticipate. Claims 2/3 depend from claim 1, and Poppen discloses no AR route, no virtual image, and no display. It is a map-authoring/generalization algorithm, not an AR navigation display. Because claim 1's AR-route/virtual-image/display limitations are absent, § 102 anticipation fails for all five claims.
• Correct theory: § 103 — Poppen as the primary reference against the distance/threshold/linear-determination and recursive-division features, combined with any of the AR-HUD references (#1, #7/10, #8/11, #9). This is the single highest-risk reference in the list.

JP4929057B2 (Asia Air Survey) — secondary

• Section: claims 1 (3rd clause), 2, 3.
• "Diagram compression processing" is the same genus of threshold-based line simplification as Poppen. § 103 support; no anticipation (no AR route/display).

US6304818B1 (Denso) — closest prior art for claim 4

• Full citation: US 6,304,818 B1, "Vehicular navigation system with road curve informing function," granted 2001-10-16, priority 1999-05-13, Denso.
• What it discloses: Extraction of curve points along the route and interpolation of road coordinate points using a B-spline function to compute curvature.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: Claim 4 (curve interpolation). This is the closest art on the interpolation feature. However, no anticipation — (i) claim 4 depends from claim 1, which requires the AR-route virtual-image display system; (ii) the reference interpolates to derive a radius of curvature for a warning, not to form an AR route; (iii) it is a navigation/map display, not a superimposed virtual image. § 103 reference against claim 4 when combined with an AR-HUD display reference.

US20080247645A1 (Vogt) — "Segmenting and Computing the Pattern of a Road"

• Section: claim 1 ("route section," "linear section," road shape/segment determination).
• Discloses segmenting a road and computing its pattern. Supports the general notion of deriving road-section shape from map data. No anticipation (no AR route, no node-distance threshold line test). § 103 background.

US20050058155A1 (Mitsubishi Denki) — map data structure

• Section: claim 1 (the "nodes"/"route section" data the processor operates on).
• Discloses node data + link data + link-row map structures. This is the data substrate, not the AR route-forming logic. No anticipation. § 103 background only.

US6058350A (Matsushita) — road map information readout

• Section: claim 1 (map/node data readout).
• Navigation map-data readout apparatus. No anticipation. Background.

The AR/HUD display references — #1 JPH07257228A, #7/10 JP2018045103A / US20190196187A1, #8/11 JP2018140714A / US20190333481A1, #9 US20180292229A1

• Section: claim 1 (display; virtual image superimposed on a real image) and claim 5 (display apparatus projecting light on a windshield).
• These disclose the in-vehicle head-up/AR display hardware and virtual-image superimposition that the preamble of claim 1 and all of claim 5 contemplate. The patent itself lists JPH07257228A, JP2018045103A and JP2018140714A as PTL 1, 2 and 3 (the admitted HUD/AR-route-display background).
• Potential § 102 anticipation: none. Each lacks the linear-section determination and the threshold-based recursive division that distinguish claim 1. § 103 role: supply the AR-HUD display element when combined with the geometry references (Poppen / Denso / JP4929057).

US20140297181A1 (Aisin Aw) — lane guidance display

• Section: not directed at any issued claim. It is relevant to the specification's §<2-3> "shift the node onto the lane the subject vehicle will travel," but that lane-shift subject matter was not claimed in the 5 granted claims. No anticipation of any claim. It is, however, the natural prior-art hook for any later/related claim that adds lane-shifting, and it is a neighboring-family art of record (see "Similar Documents": US9175976B2, JP5810842B2).

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3. Bottom line — ranking and the § 102 / § 103 verdict

Most relevant prior art (ranked):

1. US20070024624A1 (Poppen, deCarta) — discloses the distance-to-chord-vs-threshold test, the "greatest-distance point" selection, and recursive subdivision — i.e., the substance of claims 2, 3 and the division clause of claim 1. Primary § 103 reference. Closest to anticipation, but fails § 102 for lack of any AR-route/virtual-image display.
2. US6304818B1 (Denso) — B-spline interpolation of road coordinate points; the closest art for claim 4. § 103 (combined with an AR-HUD reference).
3. JP4929057B2 (Asia Air Survey) — threshold-based polyline/diagram compression; secondary support for claims 1(3rd clause)/2/3.
4. US20080247645A1 (Vogt) — road segmentation/shape computation; support for the "route section / linear section" framing of claim 1.
5. The AR-HUD display group — JPH07257228A; JP2018045103A / US20190196187A1; JP2018140714A / US20190333481A1; US20180292229A1; US20140297181A1 — supply the display/virtual-image/claim-5 element in any § 103 combination.
6. US20050058155A1 (Mitsubishi) and US6058350A (Matsushita) — background map-data-structure/readout art; no claim-specific impact.

§ 102 verdict: No cited reference anticipates claim 1 (and therefore none anticipates dependent claims 2–5, which incorporate claim 1 by dependency), on the record available to me. The reason is structural: the references that teach the node-geometry/threshold logic (Poppen, JP4929057, Denso) are map-processing algorithms with no AR-route virtual-image display; the references that teach the AR virtual-image display (the PTL 1–3 family and the other HUD references) contain none of the linear-section / threshold-division logic. Claim 1 requires both halves in one system.

§ 103 verdict: The real exposure is obviousness over a two-reference combination — the geometry references (chiefly US20070024624A1 for claims 1(3rd clause)/2/3, and US6304818B1 for claim 4) in view of any AR-HUD/virtual-image reference (the PTL 1–3 family) for claim 1's display element and claim 5. That these references were cited and the patent nonetheless issued (2022-07-19) indicates the examiner did not find such a combination to render the claims unpatentable.

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4. Explicit limitations / uncertainties

• I could not open a primary patentcenter.uspto.gov page for application 16/829,529; my citation lists come from the authoritative record text you supplied, cross-checked against Justia, FreePatentsOnline and uspto.report. Google Patents' own "third-party" footnotes suggest a reexamination-mirror document (ptacts.uspto.gov/…/1458827) also reference-number-matched, but that document concerns US 6,605,751 / US 7,619,912, not 11,391,592 — I screened those out per the literal-ID instruction.
• For US20080247645A1 (Vogt), US20140297181A1 (Aisin Aw), US20180292229A1 (Nissan), JP2018045103A / US20190196187A1, and JP2018140714A / US20190333481A1, I relied on the record's citation metadata and short descriptions; I did not retrieve and read the full claim sets of those references. My anticipation conclusions for those items are therefore provisional and rest on the absence, in the record descriptions, of any linear-section/threshold-division teaching. A definitive § 102/§ 103 opinion should read each reference's full disclosure.
• Per your operating rule, patent numbers are reproduced exactly as they appear in the record and were not auto-corrected.

I'll ground the analysis in what the reference titles and the record actually show, and verify a few key references before drawing conclusions.

Let me verify the AR-route/HUD references cited on the face of the patent.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,391,592 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst note on a date conflict (flagged per instructions): the task header states "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while the system context states today is 2026-09-29 and the authoritative patent fetch is timestamped 2026-09-24. This does not affect the § 103 analysis, but the reader should treat the "current date" as ambiguous between those two values. I have not attempted to reconcile them.

Incremental scope. Per the instruction to build on prior sections, I do not repeat the bibliographic table, claim-summary, or the (negative) litigation findings. I rely on them: two independent claims (1 and 5, nested), five claims total, effective filing date 2019-03-27 (JP 2019-061463), U.S. filing 2020-03-25, granted 2022-07-19.

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1. Legal framework and which statute applies

• The application was filed 2020-03-25 with a foreign priority date of 2019-03-27 — both after 2013-03-16 — so the AIA versions of §§ 102/103 govern. Every reference discussed below is either a patent/printed publication published before 2019-03-27, so all are available as prior art under § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2).
• The controlling test is Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966) (scope and content of the prior art; differences; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations), as refined by KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (a combination is obvious where the elements were known, the combination is of familiar elements according to known methods, and it yields predictable results; a "motivation to combine" may be found in the nature of the problem, the teachings of the references, or the knowledge of a PHOSITA). In re Keller and In re Merck support using the disclosure of a reference, including its background discussion of known techniques, as evidence of the state of the art.

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

A POSITA here would be a software/systems engineer with ~2–5 years' experience in vehicle navigation and head-up display (HUD) rendering, or equivalently a cartography/GIS engineer with experience in digital map-data generalization and vehicle guidance graphics. That POSITA would be familiar with (i) HUD projection geometry and AR-route rendering (per the patent's own Background Art citing PTL 1–3), (ii) map data models (nodes/links/shape points), and (iii) standard polyline-simplification algorithms, including the Ramer–Douglas–Peucker (RDP) algorithm, which is a staple of every GIS and computational-geometry curriculum and is described in the very references already on the face of this patent. This is the crux of the obviousness case: the algorithm is entry-level cartographic knowledge, and the patent record itself proves it.

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3. The claim-1 limitations, mapped to the art

Claim 1 requires (a) a processor forming an AR route + a display showing it as a virtual image; (b) a linear-section test based on the positional relationship of ≥3 nodes in a route section; (c) forming, as the AR route, a single line from start node to terminal node for a linear section; and (d) recursive division at the maximum-distance node when any node exceeds a threshold distance from that line.

Elements (b), (c) and (d) are, element for element, the Ramer–Douglas–Peucker algorithm. That is not my characterization alone — it is the characterization of the examiner-cited prior art itself:

US 2007/0024624 A1 (Poppen; granted as US 7,859,536 B2), [0012]: "One of the most common methods of polyline simplification is the Douglas-Poiker algorithm… The first and last shape points of the polyline are marked as 'to be kept'. The chord (direct line segment) from the first shape point P₁ to the last shape point Pₙ of the original polyline is considered. The shape points of the original polyline are inspected to see whether any of them are more than the maximum distance d_max from the chord. If any are, then the shape point Pᵢ farthest from the chord is marked as 'to be kept', and the same operation is applied to the partial polylines from the beginning P₁ to the farthest point Pᵢ and from the farthest point Pᵢ to the end point Pₙ. This process of checking, marking, and subdividing is applied recursively until the original polyline has been broken up into pieces such that the chord from the beginning to the end of each piece is no farther than the maximum deviation distance d_max from any of the shape points in between."
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US20070024624A1/en (background section; corroborated at https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[7,859,536](/patent/7859536))

Compare claim 1 verbatim: "divides the route section … at a node to which a distance is greatest as a dividing point, in a case where a node for which a distance to the line is greater than a predetermined threshold exists." The mapping is essentially literal.

Critical nuance the challenger must handle: Poppen's claimed invention is not RDP — it is a graph/least-cost-path alternative that Poppen proposes because conventional RDP can reverse a turn angle (see Poppen's FIG. 1, "causing a driver to go in the wrong direction"). Poppen therefore is usable not for its claims, but for (i) its express, enabling disclosure of RDP and (ii) its statement (via In re Merck) of what was known in the art. It is also usable for the admitted purpose: RDP-style simplification of polylines that describe a driving route.

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4. Reference-by-reference: what each supplies

Transparency on confidence: I directly verified the RDP disclosure in Poppen, the straight-line/spline segmentation in Vogt, and the B-spline interpolation over four coordinate points in Denso '818. I did not retrieve and read the bodies of Denso US 2019/0333481, Nissan US 2018/0292229, and Aisin US 2014/0297181; I therefore treat them as secondary/supporting references only, and I do not rest any conclusion on their unverified contents.

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5. Proposed combinations and motivations

Combination A — primary: Panasonic US 2019/0196187 A1 (or Denso US 2019/0333481 A1) + Poppen

Covers claims 1, 2, 3.

• US 2019/0196187 supplies the § 101/claim-preamble structure: processor-formed AR route displayed as a virtual image superimposed on the real scene in a windshield HUD, including a route-guidance arrow ("AR route" in the '592 patent's sense).
• Poppen supplies the entire geometry-processing core: the ≥3-point linearity test (chord vs. intermediate shape points), the straight chord as the output line where all deviations ≤ threshold, and the recursive split at the maximum-distance point where any deviation exceeds threshold.
• Motivation: The '592 patent's own Technical Problem — "although a route is a linear road, the route looks bent in route display" — is a graphics-fidelity problem that is the exact mirror image of the problem Poppen solves (a polyline with "many times more points than necessary" produces awkward angles). Both references are in the same field of endeavor (digital map data rendered for a vehicle driver), and the claimed combination is mere application of a known algorithm to a known display. Under KSR, using a known polyline-simplification technique to smooth a known AR guidance graphic is "a predictable variation" using a technique "known to improve one of the [same] devices."

Combination B — Combination A + US 6,304,818 B1 (Denso)

Covers claim 4. Claim 4 requires that a section found non-linear be rendered via curve interpolation using the section's nodes as control points. Denso '818 expressly retrieves four successive road coordinate points and interpolates coordinate points using a B-spline function based on the retrieved coordinate points, then informs the driver. That is curve interpolation using the map nodes as control points, applied to vehicle guidance. The '592 specification itself concedes B-spline interpolation is the preferred implementation and calls it "not limited to interpolation using a B-spline curve" — an admission that the interpolation technique is a design choice.

• Motivation: after Combination A splits a route into linear and non-linear sub-sections, the residual "broken-line" artifact on curves is the very problem the '592 Background Art identifies. Denso '818 is directed to the same class of problem (accurately determining curve shape from sparse map coordinate points) in the same field, and the results are predictable.

Combination B′ — Combination A + Vogt US 2008/0247645 A1

Alternative support for claim 4, and a reinforcing reference for claims 1/3: Vogt treats a road segment as a straight line where no support point is needed and computes curved segments via splines. Vogt thus separately teaches the "straight where approximately straight, spline where curved" dichotomy that underlies claims 1 and 4.

Combination C — any of the above + JP H7-257228 (or the HUD aspects of US 2019/0196187) for claim 5

Covers claim 5 (display apparatus that causes a driver to view the virtual image by projecting light on a windshield). All three applicant-cited HUD references are windshield-projection virtual-image displays, and the '592 specification's own § 1 describes the projection-onto-windshield arrangement as conventional.

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6. Element-by-element chart for claim 1

Every element is accounted for. The remaining differences are the environment (AR-route virtual image) and the naming of map entities as "nodes." Both are supplied by the primary HUD reference.

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7. Dependent claims 2–5

• Claim 2 ("distance between the line … and another node") — Poppen's chord-deviation test, literally.
• Claim 3 ("linear … in a case where a distance between the line and all other nodes … is equal to or less than a predetermined threshold") — Poppen: "broken up into pieces such that the chord … is no farther than the maximum deviation distance d_max from any of the shape points in between." Near-verbatim.
• Claim 4 — Denso '818 (B-spline over four coordinate points) and/or Vogt (spline road segments).
• Claim 5 — windshield-projection HUD references (US 2019/0196187; JP H7-257228; JP 2018-140714).

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8. Would anticipation (§ 102) lie instead? — brief note

Poppen arguably anticipates the algorithm itself, but cannot anticipate the claims, because Poppen lacks the AR-route virtual-image display. Conversely, the HUD references lack the recursive simplification. Hence this is a § 103 case by construction, which is precisely why the combination analysis above — not a single-reference anticipation — is the correct vehicle.

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9. The patentee's likely rebuttals, and my assessment

1. "The examiner already cited Poppen and Vogt and allowed the case." This is the strongest practical defense. Both map-generalization references appear in the record as examiner-cited, and the application was allowed on a Notice of Allowance dated 2022-05-11 with no intervening rejection after the 2022-02-15 non-final action. A challenger must therefore show either (a) that the examiner never articulated a reason to combine generalization art with AR-route display, or (b) better art. That the examiner listed the art does not immunize the claims — but it substantially raises the challenger's burden of explanation, and it is the single most important risk factor in this analysis. Assessment: real but not dispositive.
2. "Poppen teaches away." Poppen criticizes conventional RDP because unconstrained simplification can reverse a turn angle and mislead a driver. This cuts both ways: the criticism identifies a failure mode of the specific output, not a reason not to use RDP at all, and the very fact Poppen frames the consequences in terms of drivers being sent the wrong way confirms that RDP-style simplification of route polylines was contemplated in the vehicle-guidance field. Under KSR, mere identification of a known deficiency in a known technique does not rise to teaching away. Assessment: likely to fail, though it is the patentee's most substantive substantive argument.
3. "Non-analogous art." Weak: Poppen/Vogt are map-data references, and the AR route is rendered from map data; the problem to be solved (a bend that should not be there) is the same. Poppen even expressly annotates its figures with driving-route consequences.
4. "The claims require the simplification to be applied to an AR route specifically, oblique-viewed, where a small angle looks large." This is the patent's own § 3 admission that "even a slight difference in orientation between links … looks a large angle in display of the route like display of the AR route, which is obliquely seen." An inventor's own admission of the problem is strong evidence of motivation. Assessment: favors the challenger.
5. Secondary considerations. I found no evidence in the record (or in the earlier litigation search, which returned zero hits) of commercial success, long-felt need, licensing, copying, or industry praise with a nexus to the claims. Assessment: no objective-indicia rebuttal is currently on the record, though I cannot exclude non-public or unindexed evidence, and (as noted in the earlier section) I could not query PACER/Docket Navigator/Lex Machina directly.

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10. Bottom line

• Claims 1–3 are, on this record, the most vulnerable. Poppen's express disclosure of RDP — including the split-at-the-farthest-point and the "no node beyond d_max" acceptance rule — maps element-for-element onto the linear-section test, the start-to-terminal substitution, and the recursive dividing step. The only added subject matter (the AR-route virtual image) is supplied by the applicant's own cited HUD art (US 2019/0196187 A1 / JP 2018-045103) and by PTL 1/PTL 3.
• Claim 4 is vulnerable on a second combination: Denso US 6,304,818 (B-spline interpolation over four map coordinate points informing a driver) and/or Vogt US 8,111,917 (spline road segments), with the specification's own "not limited to B-spline" statement operating as a design-choice admission.
• Claim 5 adds only the windshield-projection HUD environment, which is conventional in the cited art.
• Strongest single-reference attack: Poppen (US 2007/0024624 A1) as the algorithmic core, already of record.
• Weakest link in the challenger's case: the prosecution history. The examiner had Poppen and Vogt in front of them and allowed anyway. Any invalidity theory must therefore attack the reasoning, not merely the presence of the references — i.e., it must show why a POSITA would have applied a map-storage simplification technique to a displayed AR guidance graphic. Poppen's own out-of-context remark about simplified polylines "causing a driver to go in the wrong direction" is the best available textual bridge, and Denso '818 / the applicant's PTL 2 provide the vehicle, and I would build the case on that triad rather than on Poppen alone.

Caveat on completeness: the strongest case above rests on references whose full bodies I verified (Poppen, Vogt, Denso '818, US 2019/0196187). Denso US 2019/0333481, Nissan US 2018/0292229 and Aisin US 2014/0297181 I could not verify in this session, so any additional mapping built on those references should be re-checked against their full texts before being relied upon.