US 11402350

I'll search for authoritative information on US 11,402,350, including any CAFC/litigation activity.

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

Analysis: US Patent No. 11,402,350 B2

Data source: The authoritative patent text (Google Patents, fetched 2026‑09‑24) provided in the brief. I also ran web searches for litigation/docket activity. No CAFC 2026 docket, IPR, or district‑court case naming 11,402,350 specifically was surfaced; I cannot directly query PACER/CAFC dockets, so treat the "no litigation found" statement as a search result, not a certified negative.

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Bibliographic Data

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Abstract (verbatim)

There is provided a method comprising separating a first population of ions according to a first physico-chemical property in a first separation device, and separating one or more groups of ions emerging from the first separation device in a drift tube and sampling each group of ions using the drift tube to determine the collision cross section of ions in each group of ions, wherein each group of ions corresponds to a range of the first physico-chemical property. The drift tube is configured such that multiple groups of ions in the first population of ions can be sampled by the drift tube in a single cycle of separation of the first separation device. The step of sampling each group of ions comprises determining the mobility of ions in each group of ions by measuring their drift time through the drift tube, and determining the collision cross section of the ions in each group of ions using the determined mobility.

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Plain‑Language Overview of the Independent Claims

Claim 1 — Method

A two‑stage separation scheme:

1. Pre‑separation: Separate a first population of ions in a "first separation device" according to a first physico‑chemical property (e.g., a travelling‑wave ion mobility separator, or a quadrupole mass filter).
2. Post‑separation sampling: Send the groups of ions emerging from that device into a drift tube, and sample each group in the drift tube to determine collision cross section (CCS). Each group corresponds to a range of the first property.
3. Nested timing limitation: The drift tube is configured such that multiple groups from the first population can be sampled within a single cycle of separation of the first device (i.e., fast/over‑pulsed operation).
4. CCS determination: (a) measure each group's drift time through the drift tube to get ion mobility; (b) compute CCS from the mobility (e.g., K = L²/(T·V), then the Mason–Schamp equation) — permitting determination without calibrants.
5. Specific limitation (ion mobility variant): the first property is ion mobility, each group is a mobility peak, and each mobility peak is sampled at multiple points so that multiple CCS values are obtained across a single mobility peak (averaging / purity / variance assessment).

Claim 11 — Apparatus

The apparatus counterpart of claim 1: a first separation device, a downstream drift tube (sized/configured so multiple groups are sampled in one separation cycle of the first device), and a control system that determines mobility from drift time and derives CCS from that mobility. Same terminal limitation as claim 1: the first property is ion mobility, groups are mobility peaks, and each peak is multiply sampled to yield multiple CCS values.

Claim 12 — Apparatus (cycle‑time variant)

An apparatus where the first separation device separates by ion mobility, with the same drift‑tube / control‑system / CCS architecture, but defined by a timing relationship: "cycle time" is the time for the slowest ion in a population to traverse and exit the device, and the cycle time of the first separation device must be at least 10× greater than the cycle time of the drift tube.

Note: In the granted claims, the ion‑mobility/"multiple points across each mobility peak" limitation (claims 1, 11) and the ≥10× cycle‑time limitation (claim 12) appear as narrowing additions — consistent with prosecution over cited art such as Bruker's Measurement of the mobility of mass-selected ions (US 2008/0251712 A1) and Agilent's Fast method for measuring collision cross section of ions utilizing ion mobility spectrometry (US 2015/0219598 A1).

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Key Disclosure Points

• The drift tube is explicitly short, low‑voltage, low‑resolution (e.g., ~2 cm, ~20 V) to enable nested acquisitions within the timescale of the high‑resolution upstream separator.
• Voltage drop across the drift tube: recited in dependent claim 9 as <50 V, 30 V, 20 V or 10 V; drift‑tube length <10 cm (down to 1 cm) in claim 10.
• Disclosed first separation devices include travelling‑wave IMS (claims 6–8), a quadrupole/multipole mass filter (FIG. 2), and cyclic IMS.
• Optional ion trap / modulator between stages; optional fragmentation.

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Uncertainty / Limitations of This Report

• I have high confidence in the bibliographic data and claim summaries because they come directly from the authoritative full text you supplied.
• I found no evidence of a 2026 CAFC appeal, IPR, or district‑court suit specifically asserting 11,402,350. Because I cannot run a certified PACER/CAFC docket query, this is an absence of search hits rather than an affirmative confirmation that no such proceeding exists. (The vendor‑level Micromass/Waters patent activity that does surface, e.g., MSTM LLC v. Waters Corp., 4:23‑cv‑40027, concerns different patents and was not found to involve the '350 patent.)
• Any legal‑status characterization (e.g., "expires 2039‑04‑03") is the source's assumption, not a legal conclusion.

I'll run targeted searches for litigation and post-grant proceedings specifically naming US 11,402,350.

Let me run more targeted searches on specific litigation databases and the assignee.

Let me verify against the Waters/Micromass litigation docket and check PTAB for this patent.

Litigation search report — US Patent No. 11,402,350

Bottom line: I found no litigation, no PTAB proceeding, and no ITC action naming US 11,402,350. Searches specifically for the number and for its assignee/product context returned no case in which the '350 patent appears as an asserted patent, a counterclaim patent, or an IPR/ex Parte Reexam subject.

Date note / item to flag: Your task header states the current date is April 26, 2026, while the operating header on this session reads 2026‑09‑29. I have not tried to reconcile these; treat my "as of" for the negative finding as spanning both, i.e., through late September 2026 on the search index.

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What I searched and what came back

Excluded as similar-but-different numbers (per your instruction):

• US 10,401,350 — Sysmex v. Beckman Coulter, C.A. No. 1:19‑cv‑01642‑RGA‑CJB (D. Del.); IPR filed by Beckman Coulter (e.g., IPR2021‑…). Different patent.
• US 11,562,402 — subject of IPR2024‑01420 (EDTX parallel litigation). Different patent.
• US 11,944,602 / 12,071,402 — Novartis v. Noven (D. Del.). Different numbers.

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Nearest "adjacent" matter — and why it does not involve the '350 patent

MSTM LLC et al. v. Waters Corp., No. 4:23‑cv‑40027‑MRG (D. Mass., filed 03/08/2023; status open as of the D. Mass. March 2026 update; consolidated-related case against Sciex). This is the most relevant case contextually because the accused instruments — SELECT SERIES Cyclic IMS, SYNAPT XS, Vion IMS — are exactly the Waters ion‑mobility platforms relevant to the '350 subject matter (travelling‑wave / cyclic IMS + CCS).

But the asserted patents are the McEwen "inlet ionization" / ASAP family and related patents — e.g., the '973, '096, '894, '629, '458, '838, '648 patents — not the '350 patent. Waters' motion to dismiss was denied in full; the case remains pending.

• Plaintiff: MSTM, LLC (distributor) and associated plaintiffs / universities (M&M markets the technology)
• Defendant: Waters Corp. (and, separately, Sciex in the parallel action)
• Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the District of Massachusetts (Judge M. R. G–…, 4:23‑cv‑40027‑MRG)
• Outcome/status: Motion to dismiss denied in full; case open and proceeding

This is a "no" for the '350 patent — I list it only because it is the Waters mass‑spec case most likely to be confused with an assertion of the '350 patent.

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Confidence and caveats

• No litigation is a search-based negative, not a certified negative. I was able to run general web searches (which surface Unified Patents portal data, CourtListener/RECAP, Justia, D. Mass./D. Del. opinions, and Finnegan/Lexology litigation updates) but I could not execute a direct docket query against PACER, the CAFC docket, the Unified Patents litigation caselist API, or the PTAB API. A very recent (weeks-old) complaint, a sealed/quiet IPR, or a case where the patent is pleaded under a different caption could in principle be missed.
• Consistency check with the prior section: The previously generated summary reached the same conclusion ("no evidence of a 2026 CAFC appeal, IPR, or district-court suit specifically asserting 11,402,350"). No contradiction — my independent searches here agree.
• Context: The '350 patent (Micromass UK / Waters) issued 2022‑08‑02 and has an adjusted expiration of 2039‑04‑03. Given the ~5–6 year post‑issuance window to date and the niche mass‑spectrometry/IMS market, the absence of an enforcement action is plausible but not a legal conclusion.

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Requested table

If you need an affirmative docket-confirmed negative, the next step would be a direct PACER/CAFC/PTAB-API query or a Darts‑ip/Unified Patents litigator pull on the patent number — which I cannot execute from here.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" default against live search before reporting.

The first pass returned only irrelevant hits. Let me run more targeted queries against PTAB dockets and the patent number directly.

Searches are returning noise. Let me try a few more angles — PTAB E2E-style queries and whether the patent has ever been asserted (which drives IPR filings).

I hit the tool-step limit before completing the final verification queries. Reporting on what the structured data and the completed searches support.

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PTAB / AIA Trial Proceedings — US Patent No. 11,402,350 B2

As of: 2026-09-29
Patent: US 11,402,350 B2 — Post-separation mobility analyser and method for determining ion collision cross-sections
Patent Owner: Micromass UK Limited (Wilmslow, GB)
Grant date: 2022-08-02 | Priority: 2016-09-27 | Adjusted expiration: 2039-04-03 (Active)

Sourcing and confidence note. The canonical proceedings list is the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied in this prompt, which states that the USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest, and instructs that the default conclusion is "no PTAB activity on file" absent a surfaced hit. My independent web searches (multiple query formulations: patent number as printed, unformatted number, party + subject-matter terms, PTAB docket aggregators) returned no PTAB, PGR, CBM, or Federal Circuit proceeding referencing this patent. I could not directly query PTAB E2E, the ODP AIA-trial API, or PACER within this session. This is therefore an absence of hits, not a certified negative.

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0.
Breakdown by status: 0 active · 0 with claims invalidated · 0 with claims sustained · 0 settled · 0 institution-denied.

Bottom-line defensive posture: Neither of the two postures in the prompt template applies. This patent has not been hardened by surviving IPRs, and no claim has been canceled. Every one of claims 1–12 is UNTESTED before the PTAB and carries the ordinary § 282 presumption of validity. For a defendant, that means: (i) there is no statutory estoppel binding you and no adverse PTAB claim-construction or invalidity record you can borrow; but conversely (ii) there is also no public petitioner work-product — no expert declarations, no instituted grounds, no FWD — to hand you a roadmap, and (iii) the IPR door is still open to you, subject to the § 315(b) one-year bar once you are served. The practical read is "clean slate, first-mover advantage available," not "hardened" and not "dead."

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Per-proceeding detail

None. There are no proceedings to enumerate. Per the constraints ("Do not invent proceeding numbers"), I am not populating the per-proceeding template with hypothetical or placeholder dockets. No proceeding number, petitioner, panel, institution decision, FWD, settlement, or appeal is reported because none exists on the record available to me.

What I affirmatively checked and did not find:

• Any IPR, PGR, or CBM naming US 11,402,350 / application 16/337,361 / publication US 2021/0293752 A1.
• Any Federal Circuit appeal arising from such a proceeding (no CAFC docket, no CourtListener opinion).
• Any defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) challenge to this patent.

Cross-reference / contradiction check: This is consistent with the previously generated Patent Summary, which likewise found no IPR, no CAFC 2026 docket, and no case naming '350 — and which flagged the vendor-level hit MSTM LLC v. Waters Corp., No. 4:23-cv-40027, as involving different patents. No contradiction to flag. Note that the prosecution-phase "Citations (22)/(26)" tables in the patent text (e.g., Bruker's US 2008/0251712 A1, Agilent's US 2015/0219598 A1) are examiner-cited prior art, not PTAB proceedings; they should not be mistaken for AIA-trial activity.

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Strategic summary

Claim status across the patent. All twelve claims — independent claims 1, 11, 12 and dependents 2–10 — are UNTESTED. None CANCELED. None SUSTAINED (a claim is "sustained" only when the PTAB has adjudicated it and declined to cancel; silence is not survival). The granted claim set is therefore what was issued on 2022-08-02, unamended and un-cancelled: claim 1 (method, ion-mobility variant requiring multiple CCS values across each mobility peak), claim 11 (apparatus counterpart), claim 12 (apparatus defined by the ≥10× cycle-time relationship).

Estoppel landscape — currently empty, and that cuts both ways.

• § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only to a petitioner that has obtained an FWD. With no petitioners, nothing is estopped. Any prior-art ground under §§ 102/103 that is printed on a patent or publication remains fair game for an IPR or an invalidity defense.
• § 315(b) one-year bar runs from service of a complaint alleging infringement. I found no assertion of '350, so on this record no defendant is yet time-barred — but this is the single most time-sensitive item to verify (see Next Steps).
• § 315(a)(1) bars an IPR by a party that filed a civil action challenging validity before filing the petition. If you are contemplating a DJ action, sequence matters.
• PGR (§ 321) is effectively unavailable: the 9-month post-grant window for a 2022-08-02 grant closed around 2023-05-02. CBM is likewise off the table (the transitional program sunset and the patent is not a financial-services business method).

Pattern signals. There are no patterns to observe: no repeat petitioner, no PTAB-appeals aggressiveness (nothing to appeal), no aggregator involvement, no parallel litigation surfaced. This is characteristic of a comparatively young, apparently unasserted patent in a technical field (ion mobility / collision cross-section measurement) where the owner — Micromass UK / Waters — is itself the incumbent rather than a serial plaintiff. The foreign family (EP3519805B1 granted, JP6768938B2, CN109791125B, GB2562690B) is worth a separate look for EPO opposition activity, which is outside the PTAB scope of this report and which I did not verify.

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Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant being asserted (or expecting assertion):

1. Calendar § 315(b) immediately. The one-year clock from service of the first complaint is the hard constraint on any IPR. Because no proceeding exists, you are likely the prospective first mover.
2. Do not rely on a "hardened patent" narrative, and do not rely on a "dead claim" narrative either. There is no FWD to cite and no claim to quote as canceled. Any validity attack must be built fresh.
3. IPR remains the viable AIA vehicle. Statutory milestones once you file: institution decision within ~6 months of the petition's filing date; if instituted, FWD due within 12 months of institution (§ 316(a)(11)), extendable for good cause. There is no active trial to coordinate with, so no Fintiv discretionary-denial exposure from a parallel district-court schedule unless you create one.
4. Start the art search from the granted-claim limitations that were added during prosecution — the "multiple CCS values across each mobility peak" element in claims 1/11 and the "≥10× cycle time" element in claim 12 — since the previously generated analysis indicates these narrowing additions were made over Bruker US 2008/0251712 A1 and Agilent US 2015/0219598 A1. Those references, plus the other examiner-cited art in the file wrapper, are the natural § 103 starting points.

If you are monitoring rather than defending: the absence of PTAB activity is itself the signal — it suggests the patent has not yet drawn a well-resourced challenger, so an IPR is more likely to be instituted than if the patent had already been litigated to an FWD. Review whether it should be, given the 2039-04-03 expiration runway.

Verification to complete (I could not):

• Query PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb) and the USPTO ODP AIA-trial API directly for patent 11,402,350 — the authoritative check my searches could only approximate.
• Search PACER via Docket Alarm (https://www.docketalarm.com) for any district-court complaint asserting '350, to fix the § 315(b) date.
• Search CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com) and the Federal Circuit docket for any appeal touching '350.

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Uncertainty / limitations of this report

• The "zero proceedings" finding rests on the supplied ODP-derived block plus negative web searches. I was unable to execute direct PTAB E2E / ODP / PACER queries before reaching the tool-step limit. Treat this as a strong-but-not-certified negative; a recently filed petition (within the ODP ingest lag) could exist.
• No proceeding number, panel, or disposition is reported, because fabricating one would violate the core constraint. If a proceeding does exist and was not surfaced, the format above is designed to be filled in cleanly from PTAB E2E without contradicting anything stated here.
• No legal-status conclusion is drawn from Google Patents' "Active / adjusted expiration 2039-04-03" labels; those are source assumptions about maintenance fees, not adjudicated facts. I note the 2026-01-21 maintenance-fee payment in the file, which indicates the owner is keeping the patent alive — a mild signal of continued perceived value.

I'll research the assignment record for this patent before writing anything.

Source status (read first): The single assignment entry below is taken from the Google Patents legal‑events transcription of US 11,402,350 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US11402350/en), which records the reel/frame string "060035/0834". I was not able to open the USPTO Assignment Center record itself in this session (my search tooling returned no Assignment Center hit for this patent number, and I hit a tool-step limit before retrying). The correspondent of record — the field this task most wants — is therefore not captured, and I will not invent one. Everything else is grounded in the authoritative patent text you supplied. Verify at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (legacy: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) by searching patent number 11402350.

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Inventors

Pattern check: Both inventors are long-tenured Micromass/Waters scientists, and the only recorded assignment (reel 060035/0834) is a confirmatory inventor→employer assignment executed 2022-05-04, i.e. ~5 years 7 months after the 2017-09-27 PCT filing and ~3 months before the 2022-08-02 grant. That is the signature of a routine late-recorded employment assignment made in preparation for issuance — not the signature of inventors departing within 12 months of filing ahead of a portfolio fire-sale. I found no evidence of either inventor leaving Micromass/Waters around the filing date. Caveat: employment history is inferred from co-filing patterns and inventor addresses on sibling Micromass filings, not from an employment record for this application; I could not verify current employment status.

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Original assignee

Micromass UK Limited (also spelled "Micromass Ltd" in some Google Patents fields). Named as assignee on the face of the granted patent, and as applicant on the parent PCT/GB2017/052881.

• Corporate status: Operating company — a wholly-owned subsidiary of Waters Corporation (NYSE: WAT), the publicly traded analytical-instruments group. Waters has owned Micromass since 1997. Not in bankruptcy, not dissolved, not an IP-holding shell. Registered addresses across the Micromass UK filings include Floats Road, Wythenshawe, Manchester M23 9LZ and Atlas Park, Simonsway, Manchester M22 5PP; Waters' UK mass-spec operations are based at Wilmslow, Cheshire.
• Primary line of business: Design and manufacture of mass spectrometers and ion-mobility mass spectrometers.
• Does it ship a product embodying the claims? Yes — high confidence. The claims cover a short, low-voltage DC drift tube placed downstream of a travelling-wave ion-mobility separator to obtain collision cross-section values without calibrants. Micromass/Waters ships exactly this class of instrument: SYNAPT G2/G2-Si (travelling-wave IMS), Vion IMS QTof, and SELECT SERIES Cyclic IMS, all of which report CCS. Waters' own continuing prosecution in this area (e.g., GB 202001249 D0, "Techniques for sample analysis using product ion collision-cross section information," assigned to Waters Technologies Ireland Ltd, listed under "Families Citing this family") is corroborating evidence of an active, product-linked portfolio rather than an assertion vehicle.
• Litigation posture on this patent: None found. Note that Waters is the defendant in MSTM LLC v. Waters Corp., 4:23-cv-40027 (D. Mass.) — a suit over different patents (ASAP/MAIV ionization), in which Waters is the accused, not the asserter. It does not involve the '350 patent.

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Assignment timeline

One recorded assignment. No post-issuance transfer to any third party, LLC, trust, or aggregator appears in the record.

• 2022-05-04 (executed) / recorded 2022-05-27 — Reel 060035/0834
  • Conveyance: Assignment — "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST" (inventor→employer; confirmatory of rights arising from employment)
  • Assignor: Wildgoose, Jason Lee; Giles, Kevin (jointly, as "ASSIGNORS")
  • Assignee: MICROMASS UK LIMITED, United Kingdom
  • Correspondent: Not determinable from the source I could reach. The Google Patents legal-event entry (and the recordation text it transcribes) does not surface the correspondent field. It must be read from the Assignment Center record for reel 060035/0834. No recurrence analysis is possible — with a single link in the chain there is nothing to recur against, so even a future capture of the correspondent cannot, on its own, establish the "repeat correspondent" signal here. (For the record, Micromass's UK-side filings are handled by agents such as Avidity IP (Kestrel House, Falconry Court, Baker's Lane, Epping, Essex CM16 5DQ) as their (74) agent of record on PCT filings; I have no evidence that Avidity IP filed the US recordation, and I am not asserting it did.)
  • Context: Internal/confirmatory — inventors assigning their employment-derived rights to the employer, recorded ~2 months before grant and ~4.5 years before the present date. Not an acquisition, fire-sale, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

Other legal events (not assignments), for completeness: 2019-03-27 FEPP (entity status set to undesignated/large entity); 2021-07-22, 2021-11-12 STPP (non-final office actions); 2021-09-29, 2022-02-18 STPP (responses); 2022-03-23 STPP (notice of allowance); 2022-07-13 STCF (patented case). These are prosecution/fee events, not conveyances. Note that the 2019-03-27 national-phase entry shows no companion "AS" assignment event, which is why a single claim-1 assignment is all that surfaces. If an earlier national-phase inventor assignment was ever recorded, it is not reflected in the transcription — flagging as an open verification item rather than asserting it exists or doesn't.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11402350
    2016 : Priority filing in the UK
    2017 : PCT filed by Micromass UK Ltd
    2019 : US national phase entered
    2022 : Inventors assign to Micromass UK Ltd
         : Patent granted

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. No assignment in the chain names an entity with an "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix, and no assignment goes anywhere other than Micromass UK Limited. The sole recorded assignee (reel 060035/0834, recorded 2022-05-27) is a UK operating subsidiary of a NYSE-listed manufacturer, at an operating-company address (Manchester/Wilmslow), not a registered-agent service address.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. Micromass UK Limited and Waters Corporation appear on none of the listed directories (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). No RPX or Unified Patents high-frequency-plaintiff entity appears in the chain. Waters is a defendant, not a plaintiff, in the only directly relevant litigation surfaced (MSTM LLC v. Waters Corp., 4:23-cv-40027).

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT ASSESSABLE. The correspondent field is not exposed in the source I could reach, and with only one recorded link there is no second entry against which recurrence could be tested. Even if the correspondent is later read off reel 060035/0834, a single appearance by a firm that also does operating-company work (e.g., Avidity IP, Micromass's PCT agent) would not be a finding under this rubric.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. One recorded assignment in roughly nine years from priority (2016-09-27) to today; zero consecutive LLC-to-LLC hops; no shared-address assignee cluster; no common-principal pattern. There is literally no cascade to evaluate.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. The only assignment (reel 060035/0834; executed 2022-05-04, recorded 2022-05-27) predates the present date by ~4.5 years and is an inventor→employer confirmatory filing, not a transfer to an asserter. No infringement suit naming US 11,402,350 was found in which the patent owner would be plaintiff, so there is no suit date for a transfer to sit within 6 months of.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. Waters Corporation (NYSE: WAT) is a going concern; no Chapter 7/11 of Micromass UK Limited or Waters was found. (The historic Waters–Applera/MDS patent disputes of 2000–2004 and the $53.7M Micromass payment are unrelated to this patent and did not implicate ownership of it.)

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT, and the inverse pattern is present. Waters kept this patent in-house and continued prosecuting in the same technical space under its own name (Micromass Ltd, GB 202011470 D0, "Ion mobility separation"; Waters Technologies Ireland Ltd, GB 202001249 D0, CCS-informed sample analysis). That is an operating company building and holding its own portfolio, not transferring to an NPE to assert on its behalf.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. No RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN entity appears anywhere in the chain; the patent has not been "neutralized," it is simply held by its operating-company owner.

Cross-reference consistency check with the earlier sections: The prior summary stated the assignment was recorded 2022-05-27 with a 2022-05-04 effective date and (implicitly) a single recorded link; this section confirms that and adds the reel/frame (060035/0834). No contradiction found. One clarification rather than a contradiction: the prior report described the 2022 event as occurring within a "chain," but on the evidence it is the entire chain — a single confirmatory link, not one step of several.

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Justification: The complete recorded chain is a single confirmatory assignment of inventors' interest to MICROMASS UK LIMITED at reel 060035/0834, executed 2022-05-04 and recorded 2022-05-27 — no shell LLC, no known asserter, no cascading transfers, no pre-suit transfer, no bankruptcy sale, and no defensive aggregator appears anywhere. The owner is a UK operating manufacturer (wholly-owned subsidiary of Waters Corporation, NYSE: WAT) whose SYNAPT/Vion/Cyclic IMS instruments practice the claimed post-separation drift-tube CCS architecture, and its own subsequent filings confirm it is still prosecuting and holding in this space. One caveat to the bin assignment: the taxonomy's second prong — the owner "suing actual competitors" on this patent — is unverified; no assertion of US 11,402,350 is on record, so on a strict reading this could equally be labelled "insufficient data — only the original assignment." Either way, the NPE finding is negative, and the single open verification item is the correspondent field on reel 060035/0834, which can be read at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/.

Confidence notes: High on the identity of the assignee, the reel/frame string, and the dates (they come from the authoritative patent text / Google Patents legal events you supplied). Medium-low on completeness of the assignment record, because I could not directly query the Assignment Center in this session — treat "only one assignment" as "only one surfaced," not as a certified negative. No correspondent name is asserted anywhere in this report.

I'll research the cited prior-art references to build accurate descriptions, then map each to the claims.

Let me gather details on the remaining key cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 11,402,350 B2

Scope note / method. I was asked to "search the USPTO database" for patent number 11402350 (printed literally as US 11,402,350 B2) and not to substitute similar numbers. I did not have direct authenticated USPTO (PatentCenter / PatFT / PTAB) API access in this session; what I can do is (a) rely on the authoritative full text and USPTO-derived citation data embedded in the record you supplied for US 11,402,350 B2, and (b) supplement it with targeted web/patent-database lookups of the individual cited references. Where I could not independently verify a reference's disclosure, I say so explicitly. All patent/application numbers are quoted exactly as printed in the record; none are auto-corrected.

Small flag: your system header says today is 2026-09-29, while the task text says April 26, 2026. Neither affects the analysis below (the '350 patent is already granted and active), but the two dates are inconsistent.

Controlling date: US 11,402,350 has priority 2016-09-27 (GB 1616395.8) and PCT filing 2017-09-27. It is an AIA patent. Prior art therefore includes: (i) § 102(a)(1) — anything publicly available before 2016-09-27; and (ii) § 102(a)(2) — U.S. patents/applications effectively filed before 2016-09-27. Every reference on the face of the patent predates that critical date.

Critical framing on § 102 vs § 103. Strictly, § 102 anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every limitation of the claim, arranged as claimed. The three independent claims (1, 11, 12) each require the combination of: an upstream separation device; a downstream drift tube; multiple groups sampled by the drift tube within a single cycle of the upstream device; mobility-from-drift-time; and CCS derived from that mobility — with claim 1/11 adding the ion-mobility / multiple-CCS-values-per-mobility-peak element and claim 12 adding the ≥ 10× cycle-time element. No cited reference discloses that combination. Consequently, the realistic statutory basis for these references is § 103 (obviousness), with § 102 being realistic only for isolated sub-limitations outside the independent claims. I have labeled each reference accordingly rather than overclaiming anticipation.

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1. Most relevant prior art (Tier 1)

1.1 — US 2008/0251712 A1 (Bruker Daltonik GmbH) — closest architectural reference

• Full citation: US 2008/0251712 A1, "Measurement of the mobility of mass-selected ions," Bruker Daltonik GmbH; inventors Ian Sanders, Gökhan Baykut, Jochen Franzen. Filed 2008-03-20; published 2008-10-16; priority 2007-04-11. (Same disclosure granted as US 7,893,402 B2, 2011-02-22.) Marked "*" (cited by examiner).
• Brief description: A mass filter (quadrupole) selects ions by m/z; small clouds of ions are periodically collected; the clouds are then separated by mobility in a drift region filled with low-pressure collision gas under a DC field (ions RF-confined on axis); a second quadrupole filters unwanted masses before time-resolved detection. The specification expressly notes that collision cross-sections can be determined (with calibration) from the mobility measurement, and the drift region can double as a CID cell (triple-quadrupole mode).
• § 102 / claim mapping: This is the nearest single reference to the general "upstream selector → downstream drift region → mobility → CCS" architecture, and it is the reference most likely to have been the examiner's primary art. However, it does not disclose: (i) the first property being ion mobility (its upstream separation is by m/z); (ii) mobility peaks multiply sampled to yield multiple CCS values across a peak (claims 1, 11); (iii) multiple groups sampled in a single cycle of the upstream device — it teaches periodic cloud collection and explicitly discusses the complication of overlapping/sequential mobility signals; or (iv) the ≥ 10× cycle-time relationship (claim 12). It cannot anticipate claims 1, 11, or 12 as granted. Best characterized as the primary § 103 reference against the broad "mass-to-charge-ratio first separation" disclosure in the specification (FIG. 2 quadrupole embodiment) — an embodiment that is not in the granted independent claims.

1.2 — US 2015/0219598 A1 / US 9,482,642 B2 (Agilent Technologies, Inc.) — closest "CCS-from-drift-time" reference

• Full citation: US 2015/0219598 A1, "Fast method for measuring collision cross section of ions utilizing ion mobility spectrometry," Agilent Technologies, Inc.; inventors Alexander Mordehai, Ruwan T. Kurulugama, Christian Klein, John Fjeldsted. Filed 2014-01-31 (App. 14/170,068); published 2015-08-06; granted as US 9,482,642 B2 on 2016-11-01. Marked "*" (cited by examiner).
• Brief description: A method for calculating CCS directly from the measured total drift time of an ion through an IMS drift cell, using proportionality coefficients, including correction for the mobility-dominated region between cell exit and detector. Explicitly derives CCS via the Mason–Schamp relation for a low-field uniform-DC drift cell (10–20 V/cm, 1–760 Torr), i.e., without calibrants. Formulas: K = L/(t_d·E) with reduced mobility, and Ω from K₀.
• § 102 / claim mapping: Directly pertinent to the "determine CCS from the measured drift time through a drift tube" element and to the calibrant-free CCS determination recited in the specification and embodied in claim 1's final clause. It does not disclose a high-resolution upstream separation device feeding a fast, short, low-resolution drift tube that samples multiple groups in a single cycle of that upstream device, nor multiple CCS values per mobility peak. Not anticipatory of claims 1/11/12; it is a strong § 103 reference (arguably the closest art on the CCS-calculation step, which is why it appears with an examiner citation mark).

1.3 — US 8,507,852 B2 / US 2012/0153140 A1 (Thermo Fisher Scientific (Bremen) GmbH) — drift-tube IMS + CCS reference

• Full citation: US 2012/0153140 A1, "Apparatus and Methods for Ion Mobility Spectrometry," inventor Alexander A. Makarov; assignee Thermo Fisher Scientific (Bremen) GmbH. Filed 2010-12-16 (App. 13/327,396) — GB priority 2010-12-16; published 2012-06-21; granted as US 8,507,852 B2 on 2013-08-13. Marked "*" (cited by examiner).
• Brief description: Ion-mobility-spectrometry apparatus/method using a drift tube/drift space, ions presented as a pulse or packet and separated by mobility, with provisions (ion mirror, curved/linear drift path) to improve resolution and to measure mobility/CCS; combinable with a mass analyser.
• § 102 / claim mapping: Discloses a drift tube used to determine mobility/CCS, and the pulse/packet separation concept. It does not disclose the nested, multiply-sampled drift-tube operation within one cycle of an upstream high-resolution separator, nor the ion-mobility-first-separation + multi-CCS-per-peak combination. Not anticipatory; § 103 reference against the drift-tube/CCS determination and against dependent claim 5 (constant DC voltage gradient along a plurality of drift-tube electrodes).

1.4 — US 10,388,499 B2 / US 2017/0131238 A1 / WO 2015/136264 A1 (Micromass UK Limited) — "multiple CCS measurements" reference

• Full citation: US 10,388,499 B2, "Confirmation using multiple collision cross section ('CCS') measurements," Micromass UK Limited. Priority 2014-03-10 (GB 1404195.8 / EP 14158643.8); PCT/GB2015/050693 filed 2015-03-10; WO 2015/136264 A1 published 2015-09-17; US 2017/0131238 A1 published 2017-05-11; US grant 2019-08-20. (US 2017/0131238 and US 10,388,499 marked "*".)
• Brief description: Determining a physico-chemical property (drift time / ion mobility / CCS, peak skew/kurtosis) of analyte ions under two or more different buffer-gas conditions using a travelling-wave IMS, recording CCS differences, and identifying/confirming the analyte against a library. States that "more than one measurement relating to ion mobility may be made for a given analyte ion." Examples use a TWIMS at ~2.5 mbar with calibrated drift times.
• § 102 / claim mapping: Relevant to the idea of multiple CCS measurements per analyte ion (echoing the '350 claim 1 "multiple CCS values … across each mobility peak"). But its multiplicity arises from changing buffer-gas conditions, and it relies on TWIMS calibration — the opposite of the '350 approach (a downstream low-resolution DC drift tube, calibrant-free). It does not disclose sampling multiple groups in a single upstream cycle. Not anticipatory; § 103 / background reference. Note this is a within-portfolio Micromass reference (2014 priority) that post-dates the inventors' own work stream.

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2. Tier 2 — relevant to the "first separation device" and to IMS background

2.1 — US 2004/0031920 A1 (Micromass UK) — the travelling-wave IMS foundation

• Full citation: US 2004/0031920 A1, "Mass spectrometer," inventors Kevin Giles, John Brian Hoyes, Steve Pringle, Jason Lee Wildgoose; Micromass UK Limited. Filed 2003-06-26 (App. 10/603,824); published 2004-02-19; granted US 6,791,078 B2 on 2004-09-14; GB priority 2002-06-27. Marked "*" (cited by examiner).
• Brief description: An ion mobility separator comprising a plurality of electrodes to which one or more transient DC voltages / travelling DC voltage waveforms are progressively applied, separating ions by ion mobility. (The foundational TWIMS patent; corresponds to the "travelling wave" technology the '350 patent uses as its upstream device.)
• § 102 / claim mapping: Anticipates nothing in the independent claims (no downstream drift tube, no nested sampling). It is the art that supports the "first separation device may comprise an ion mobility separator comprising a plurality of electrodes" concept (dependent claims 6, 7, 8), and combined with a drift-tube reference is a § 103 combination. Individually it maps only to the upstream-device sub-limitation.

2.2 — JP 2007-534126 A and US 2011/0095175 A1 (Micromass UK) — "Mass spectrometer"

• Full citation: JP 2007-534126 A, "Mass spectrometer," Micromass UK Ltd, priority 2004-04-20, published 2007-11-22; its U.S. counterpart US 2011/0095175 A1 (published 2011-04-28; marked "*").
• Brief description: Micromass mass-spectrometer disclosure in the travelling-wave ion-guide/IMS lineage (I could not independently verify the full disclosure; described here from the record's citation and family data only).
• § 102 / claim mapping: Background; no independent-claim anticipation. Potentially cumulative with 2.1.

2.3 — JP 2008-513941 A (Micromass UK) — "Mass spectrometer"

• Full citation: JP 2008-513941 A, "Mass spectrometer," Micromass UK Ltd, priority 2004-09-14, published 2008-05-01.
• Brief description: Further Micromass mass-spectrometer family member (full disclosure not independently verified here).
• § 102 / claim mapping: Background; not anticipatory of the independent claims.

2.4 — US 2009/0014641 A1 (Micromass UK) — "Mass Spectrometer"

• Full citation: US 2009/0014641 A1, "Mass Spectrometer," Micromass UK Limited, priority 2005-12-07, published 2009-01-15. Marked "*".
• Brief description: Micromass mass-spectrometer disclosure; from the record's citation data only — I did not independently verify its full text in this session, so treat the scope characterization as provisional.
• § 102 / claim mapping: Background / cumulative; not anticipatory of claims 1/11/12.

2.5 — US 2014/0027627 A1 (Micromass UK) — "Ion Guide Array"

• Full citation: US 2014/0027627 A1, "Ion Guide Array," Micromass UK Limited, priority 2008-09-18, published 2014-01-30. Marked "*".
• Brief description: Ion-guide-array disclosure relevant to stacked-ring/apertured-electrode ion transport (the '350 patent notes both devices may be "stacked ring electrodes … part of the same stack of electrodes").
• § 102 / claim mapping: Background; supports only structural sub-limitations (electrode arrays), not the independent claims.

2.6 — US 2013/0009053 A1 (Excellims Corporation) — "Practical ion mobility spectrometer…"

• Full citation: US 2013/0009053 A1, "Practical ion mobility spectrometer apparatus and methods for chemical and/or biological detection," Excellims Corporation, priority 2006-02-14, published 2013-01-10. Marked "*".
• Brief description: Practical IMS apparatus/methods (drift-tube IMS instrument family).
• § 102 / claim mapping: Background drift-tube IMS art; no independent-claim anticipation.

2.7 — CN 101093211 A (Institute of Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences) — "Transient drift field method … drift tube of ionic mobility spectrometer"

• Full citation: CN 101093211 A, "Transient drift field method in use for drift tube of ionic mobility spectrometer," 中国科学院电子学研究所 (Institute of Electronics, Chinese Academy of Sciences), priority 2006-06-21, published 2007-12-26.
• Brief description: A transient drift-field technique applied in an IMS drift tube (drift-tube operating-field innovation).
• § 102 / claim mapping: Relevant to drift-tube driving-field art (contrast: the '350 claim 5 requires a constant DC gradient). No independent-claim anticipation.

2.8 — CN 104170053 A (Micromass UK) — "Ion mobility separation device"

• Full citation: CN 104170053 A, "Ion mobility separation device," 英国质谱公司 (Micromass UK), priority 2011-12-23, published 2014-11-26.
• Brief description: Micromass ion-mobility-separation device family member.
• § 102 / claim mapping: Background; cumulative with 2.1.

2.9 — JP 2015-512515 A (Micromass UK) — "Multidimensional survey scans for improved data-dependent collection"

• Full citation: JP 2015-512515 A, Micromass UK Ltd, priority 2012-03-22, published 2015-04-27.
• Brief description: Multidimensional (e.g., IMS-MS) survey-scan / data-dependent acquisition disclosure.
• § 102 / claim mapping: Background workflow art; no independent-claim anticipation.

2.10 — US 2015/0340221 A1 (W. Henry Benner) — "Instruments for measuring ion size distribution and concentration"

• Full citation: US 2015/0340221 A1, "Instruments for measuring ion size distribution and concentration," inventor W. Henry Benner, priority 2014-05-22, published 2015-11-26. Marked "*".
• Brief description: Instrumentation for measuring ion size distribution and concentration (particle mobility-sizing lineage).
• § 102 / claim mapping: Peripheral; size/CCS-adjacent but no two-stage nested architecture. Not anticipatory.

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3. Tier 3 — peripheral / cumulative references (no independent-claim anticipation)

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4. Claim-by-claim § 102 mapping summary

Because granted claims 2–10 depend from claim 1, and claims 11–12 are independent (apparatus), a reference must disclose claim 1's (or 11's / 12's) full combination to anticipate any of them. On the cited art:

Bottom line: No reference on the face of US 11,402,350 discloses all limitations of claim 1, 11, or 12. The cited art is properly § 103 material, with the examiner having drawn on:

• US 2008/0251712 (Bruker) for the select → drift → mobility → CCS architecture, and
• US 2015/0219598 (Agilent) and US 8,507,852 (Thermo/Makarov) for the drift-tube CCS-by-drift-time determination,
• plus the Micromass TWIMS lineage (US 2004/0031920) for the upstream travelling-wave separator,
• cumulatively with US 10,388,499 / WO 2015/136264 (Micromass) for "multiple CCS measurements."

The validity-distinguishing features in the granted claims relative to all of the above are: (1) nested acquisition — multiple groups sampled by a short, low-voltage, low-resolution drift tube within a single cycle of the upstream high-resolution separator; (2) the resulting multiple CCS values across a single ion-mobility peak (claim 1/11); and (3) the express ≥ 10× cycle-time ratio (claim 12).

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5. Uncertainty / honesty statements

• High confidence in the bibliographic data, citation lists, and claim text — they come from the authoritative full text you provided.
• Moderate confidence in the brief descriptions of Tier-1 references (US 2008/0251712, US 2015/0219598, US 8,507,852, US 10,388,499, US 2004/0031920) because I retrieved their abstracts/background directly; descriptions of the Tier-2/3 Micromass and Chinese-language references are drawn from the record's citation metadata and family data and were not all independently full-text-verified in this session. Where that is the case I said so.
• I could not run a certified USPTO full-text or PTAB/litigation docket query in this session. The § 102/§ 103 characterizations are analytic, not legal conclusions; each reference's actual disclosure (especially the non-English documents) should be verified against its full text before being relied upon in any office action or validity opinion.
• No reference numbered 11,402,350 or similar other than the subject patent was substituted; all citations above are quoted exactly as printed on the face of US 11,402,350 B2.

I'll research the prior-art references of record before building the §103 analysis. Let me pull the substantive disclosures of the examiner-cited references.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,402,350 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Reference date for this analysis: the task header states 2026‑04‑26; the session metadata states 2026‑09‑29. The discrepancy is immaterial here (no post‑2026 art is at issue), but I flag it rather than silently pick one.

Inputs used: (a) the authoritative full text of US 11,402,350 supplied in the brief; (b) the Citations (22) / Patent Citations (26) / Non‑Patent Citations (2) lists on the US 11,402,350 Google Patents page; (c) the previously generated Bibliographic Data, Abstract, and Claim Overview sections, which I do not repeat; (d) targeted web searches on the substantive disclosures of the examiner‑cited references.

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0. Scope, sources, and evidentiary caveats (read first)

1. I cannot see the actual USPTO Office Actions. The citation list tells me which references are of record and which bear the "* Cited by examiner" marker, but not which reference the examiner relied on, in what combination, or under what statutory provision. Any statement below that reference X was "the basis" of a rejection is an inference from the record, not a file‑wrapper fact.
2. Substantive verification status. I obtained and read substantive text (abstracts, claim sets, or specification passages) for some references and not others. I mark these explicitly in §4. Where I could not verify a reference, I say so and do not build load‑bearing arguments on it.
3. Non‑prior‑art material on the page. The Families Citing this family table (CN110455907B, GB202001249D0, GB202011470D0, GB2629671B) and the Similar Documents table are not prior art to the '350 patent — they post‑date it or are merely topically similar. I exclude them. Only the Patent Citations (26) / Non‑Patent Citations (2) lists are candidates.
4. A date trap worth flagging. Several references on the page are listed by priority date, not publication date. That distinction is dispositive for two of the Micromass family members (see §1). Do not auto‑read the "Priority date" column as the prior‑art date.

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1. Effective filing date and which cited references actually qualify

The '350 patent claims priority to GB 1616395.8, filed 2016‑09‑27, via PCT/GB2017/052881 filed 2017‑09‑27. The §103 critical date is therefore no later than 2016‑09‑27 (and the AIA §102(a)(2) "effectively filed" date is 2017‑09‑27 for the national‑phase application). Every reference must be measured against that.

Practical conclusion: the usable core of the record is (i) Agilent US 9,482,642, (ii) Bruker US 7,893,402, (iii) the Micromass travelling‑wave IMS family (US 2004/0031920; US 2009/0014641; US 2011/0095175), (iv) Makarov US 8,507,852, (v) Micromass WO 2015/136264, and (vi) Excellims US 2013/0009053. Note that (i) and (ii) are both examiner‑cited (asterisked) — the strongest signal in the record as to what drove the narrowing.

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

Consistent with the field and with the references themselves, the POSITA would be a scientist/engineer with an advanced degree (M.S., or Ph.D.) in analytical chemistry, physics, or an equivalent engineering discipline, plus 2–4 years of hands‑on experience building or operating ion‑mobility/mass‑spectrometry instrumentation, or a B.S. with substantially more experience. That artisan would:

• know the low‑field mobility relation v = K·E and the Mason–Schamp equation by heart (recited in both Agilent and Makarov);
• know that a DC drift tube's resolving power scales as ≈ ½√(ezEL/kT), i.e. ∝ √(voltage drop), and that the low‑field limit caps E/P (Makarov US 8,507,852 cols. discussing R and E/P < ~200 V/(m·mbar); Micromass US 2009/0014641 at R = [LEze/(16kT ln2)]^1/2);
• know that travelling‑wave ("T‑Wave") IMS gives high resolution but that its CCS values are not obtainable from first principles and require calibrants (an express admission in the '350 specification itself, and consistent with WO 2015/136264, which states CCS "can be calculated or otherwise determined … either by theoretical calculation or by applying a predetermined calibration");
• know how to design for duty cycle and to pulse/gate ions into a drift region.

The '350 specification's own Background is a usable admission of the problem and of the skilled artisan's knowledge: it states that static‑DC drift tubes permit CCS "from first principles," that T‑Wave CCS "are not attainable from first principles, but may be derived or estimated through the use of appropriate mobility calibration compounds," and that DC‑drift‑tube resolution "is proportional to the square root of the voltage drop."

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3. The claim "delta" — what the granted claims actually add

This matters because §103 is assessed claim‑by‑claim on the claimed subject matter, not on the specification's disclosure.

The critical observation: the granted independent claims are limited to the ion‑mobility‑first architecture. The FIG. 2 embodiment of the '350 specification — quadrupole mass filter → drift tube → CCS — is described but not claimed. That is exactly the architecture of the examiner‑cited Bruker reference. The inference is that Bruker forced the applicant off the mass‑filter‑first claim, and the applicant retreated to (a) IMS‑first, (b) per‑peak multi‑sampling, and (c) a numeric cycle‑time ratio. I say "inference" because I cannot see the Office Actions.

So the non‑trivial delta over the cited art reduces to three propositions:

• Δ1 — Serial arrangement: a first IMS stage (high‑resolution, e.g. T‑Wave or cyclic) feeding a second, deliberately low‑resolution DC drift tube used as a CCS "reader."
• Δ2 — Nested/over‑pulsed operation: the second stage runs fast enough that ≥2 (and in the commercial embodiments, 10–20) mobility peaks are read within a single separation cycle of the first stage.
• Δ3 — Per‑peak multiplexing of CCS: many CCS values per mobility peak (for averaging, purity assessment, variance).

Everything else in claims 1/11 (drift time → K → Mason–Schamp → Ω; ion mobility as the property) is admitted prior art.

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4. The references, mapped to the claim elements

Marked [verified] where I read substantive text, [unverified] where I could not.

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5. Obviousness combinations

Ground 1 (primary): Agilent (R1) in view of Micromass T‑Wave art (R3/R4/R10) — and optionally Makarov (R5)

What Agilent alone does not teach: Agilent's drift cell is the sole mobility stage; it has no upstream high‑resolution ion‑mobility separator, and therefore no "multiple groups / multiple peaks per single cycle of a first device."

What the Micromass T‑Wave art supplies: a high‑resolution ion‑mobility separator whose output is a train of temporally resolved mobility peaks (R3/R10), together with the express recognition that a T‑Wave's own CCS values are not obtainable from first principles and require calibration (R4 and Micromass's own WO 2015/136264, R6, at [0093]).

Why the POSITA would combine them — the motivation is triple‑sourced and strong:

1. The problem is stated in the art and solved by the art. T‑Wave IMS = high resolution, no first‑principles CCS. DC drift tube = first‑principles CCS, lower resolution. Agilent supplies a complete, formula‑level recipe for the latter (its eq. (4) is literally the Mason–Schamp inversion used by the '350 patent). Placing Agilent's drift cell downstream of a T‑Wave is not an inventive leap; it is the assembly of two known devices each doing what it is known to do.
2. The same applicant‑owned art already teaches stacking IMS stages in series. WO 2015/136264 (R6) expressly discloses "a plurality of ion mobility separators … in series … ions … pass sequentially through the separate ion mobility separators." A fortiori, the POSITA had the design incentive to place a second mobility stage after a first.
3. KSR/known‑technique rationale. Where a known technique (DC drift tube + Mason–Schamp) is available to improve a known device (T‑Wave IMS, which cannot yield first‑principles CCS), and the improvement is in the same field for the same purpose, the combination is obvious unless there is a teaching away or unexpected results. KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007).

Result: Ground 1 renders the core of claims 1 and 11 obvious (IMS first → drift tube → drift time → K → Ω). It does not, on its own, cleanly render Δ2 (over‑pulsing) obvious.

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Ground 2: Bruker (R2) as the primary reference, in view of Micromass T‑Wave art (R3/R10) — attacks the architecture directly

Bruker's claimed method is remarkably close in architecture: a separation device → periodically collected "small clouds" of ions → a drift region in which the clouds are separated "by switching potential gradient profiles" → time‑resolved detector. In other words, Bruker already teaches repetitive, pulsed loading of a drift‑region with discrete ion packets, which is the mechanical precursor to the '350 patent's "multiple groups sampled in a single cycle."

The only substitution required is to replace Bruker's first‑stage quadrupole mass filter with the Micromass T‑Wave ion‑mobility separator. Is that obvious?

• Motivation from Bruker's own text: Bruker frames the invention as combining "the measurement of the mass‑to‑charge ratios of ions with the measurement of collision cross‑sections" and notes that absolute CCS requires "the extra effort of a calibration." The '350 patent solves precisely the calibration problem by moving from a first stage whose CCS is uncalibratable (T‑Wave) to a first stage coupled to a drift tube that reads CCS first‑principally.
• Motivation from the art's structure: Bruker's components are (1) ion source, (2) ion selector, (3) mobility measuring cell, (4) time‑resolving detector. Substituting one ion selector for another ion selector is the paradigm of a predictable, field‑recognised substitution. When the reference teaches that any ion selector can be the "first stage," swapping in the industry‑standard T‑Wave selector is routine.
• The result is a known, predictable ordering of IMS→IMS (R6 teaches it) with a known formula (R1/Mason–Schamp).

Weakness of Ground 2 (be candid): Bruker's first stage mass‑selects, which is functionally different from mobility‑separating; and the whole point of a T‑Wave is to not be a DC drift tube. An applicant could argue that Bruker's motivation runs the opposite way — Bruker mass‑selects first precisely so the drift region sees a narrow, pure species, which is the opposite of feeding it a whole train of mobility peaks. Ground 2 is therefore stronger on architecture, weaker on Δ2 than it first appears.

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Ground 3: Agilent (R1) + Bruker (R2) + Micromass T‑Wave (R3/R10) — the "three‑reference" case

This is the combination I would expect a careful examiner to run:

Motivation, one sentence: each reference is doing the thing it is known for, in the same field, for the same purpose, and the assembled device solves a problem the art itself articulates (T‑Wave CCS requires calibrants).

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Ground 4 (Δ2/Δ3 — over‑pulsing and per‑peak multi‑sampling): the weakest, but arguable

The "over‑pulsing" limitation — loading multiple mobility groups into the drift tube simultaneously (claim 3), while preceding groups are still transiting — is the feature most likely to be defended as non‑obvious, because the classical teaching is that overlapping packets in a low‑resolution drift tube destroys drift‑time assignment.

The obviousness argument runs as follows:

• Duty‑cycle pressure is a universal design driver in pulsed IMS; the POSITA routinely shortens the drift region and increases the repetition rate to raise duty cycle. Makarov (R5) quantifies exactly the coupling between L, ΔV, R and the time budget.
• The '350 patent's own rationale is a straightforward corollary of pre‑separation: because the first stage has already narrowed the mobility range entering the drift tube, the "reduced mobility range within the drift tube at any one time" makes overlap tolerable. That rationale is itself a mechanical consequence of Ground‑3 architecture and does not require a new physical insight. If you know the incoming band is narrow, the conclusion that you can overlap bands follows.
• Bruker (R2) already pulses successive discrete packets into the same drift region ("periodically collecting … sampling times"), i.e. temporal stacking is taught.
• Excellims US 2013/0009053 (R7) is the reference I would expect to be used for multiplexed/overlapped IMS packet processing, but I could not verify its disclosure, so I do not rely on it. That is a genuine gap in this analysis, and I flag it as the single most useful next step (see §9).

Honest assessment: Δ2 (claim 3, and the "multiple groups in one cycle" clause of claims 1/11) is the strongest non‑obviousness position available to the patentee. It is not a strong position, but it is the one worth arguing.

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Ground 5 (claim 12 specifically): the ≥10× cycle‑time ratio

Claim 12 has no multi‑sampling recitation; it has a numeric ratio. Once the "you need many CCS samples per upstream cycle" requirement is established, the arithmetic is compelled: if a designer wants ~10–20 CCS values per peak (as the '350 specification itself recites: "at least 2, 3, 4, 5, 10 or 20 collision cross section values … for each mobility peak"), the upstream cycle time must be ≳10× the drift‑tube cycle time. A numerical range that is a direct, predictable consequence of the stated performance goal is, under In re Aller / In re Woodruff‑type reasoning, an obvious design choice absent evidence of a critical, unexpected threshold. I see no evidence in the record of a criticality argument for the 10× value; the specification presents 10/20/50/100 as a desideratum list, not as a discovered boundary.

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6. Claim‑by‑claim summary

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7. Counterarguments the patentee will raise, and how they fare

A. Teaching away / "long tube required for CCS." Makarov (R5) and Micromass (R4) both teach that resolution requires length and voltage. The patentee will argue this dissuades the POSITA from a 2 cm / 20 V tube. Rebuttal: those passages address resolving power, not CCS accuracy. Agilent (R1) shows CCS accuracy depends on the t₀ correction and the regression of t_D vs 1/V — i.e., not on drift‑tube resolution. And the '350 specification's own point is that the upstream separator has already done the resolving. The art therefore teaches away from using a short tube as a separator, not from using a short tube as a CCS reader. That is a narrow teaching‑away that does not reach the claimed architecture.

B. Over‑pulsing would destroy measurability. The strongest argument (see §5, Ground 4). Rebuttal: Bruker's pulsed‑packet drift region plus the pre‑narrowing of the mobility range make the overlap tolerable; the POSITA does not need the '350 insight to see this. But: I have not located a reference that expressly teaches deliberate simultaneous overlap in a DC drift tube. If the patentee can show the art uniformly required one packet at a time, this argument has real force.

C. Unexpected results / secondary considerations. I found no evidence of commercial success, long‑felt need, industry praise, licensing, or copying tied by nexus to 11,402,350, nor any data in the record showing a surprising CCS‑accuracy benefit. Absent such evidence, secondary considerations do not appear to carry the claims.

D. Rebuttal risk from 112/claims scope: the independent claims are conspicuously narrow relative to the specification (the FIG. 2 quadrupole embodiment is unclaimed). That narrowness is itself evidence that the broader architecture was conceded to the prior art.

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8. Bottom line

• Claims 1 and 11 (and dependents 2, 4–10, 12) are more likely than not obvious over a combination of Agilent US 2015/0219598 / US 9,482,642 (R1) and the Micromass travelling‑wave‑IMS art (R3/R4/R10), with Bruker US 2008/0251712 / US 7,893,402 (R2) supplying the "separation stage → pulsed drift region → time‑resolved detection" architecture and the Micromass WO 2015/136264 (R6) supplying the express teaching of serially arranged ion‑mobility separators. Makarov US 8,507,852 (R5) supplies the resolution/voltage/time trade‑off that makes the "short, low‑voltage, fast" drift tube a routine design choice.
• Claim 12's ≥10× cycle‑time ratio is very likely obvious as a compelled arithmetic consequence of the recited goal of ≥10–20 CCS values per mobility peak.
• Claim 3 (and the "multiple groups in a single cycle" clause of claims 1/11) is the one live non‑obviousness battleground. The strongest available position for the patentee is that the art teaches sequential, one‑packet‑at‑a‑time drift‑tube operation and that deliberate simultaneous over‑pulsing is a departure.
• The single most important unresolved item is the disclosure of Excellims US 2013/0009053 (R7) — and, secondarily, the actual Office Actions — because multiplexed/overlapped IMS packet handling, if taught there, would collapse the last non‑obviousness argument.

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9. Confidence and limitations of this report

High confidence. The bibliographic data, claim language, and the specification's own admissions (T‑Wave CCS needs calibrants; K = L²/(TV); Mason–Schamp; √V resolution scaling) come from the authoritative text supplied. The substantive disclosures I [verified] for Agilent, Bruker, Makarov, Micromass US 2009/0014641, and Micromass WO 2015/136264/US 10,388,499 are quoted or closely paraphrased from the sources cited.

Medium confidence. The inference about which references the examiner relied on is drawn from the "Cited by examiner" asterisks in the citation table, not from Office Actions, which I cannot access. Which reference was the primary reference, and the order of the combinations, is my construction.

Explicitly not established — do not treat as fact:

• The substantive contents of Excellims US 2013/0009053 (R7), Benner US 2015/0340221 (R8), CN 101093211 A (R9), GB 2534431 A (R11), US 2014/0027627 A1 (R12), and the JP/CN members I did not retrieve. I did not verify these, and no load‑bearing argument above rests on them.
• Any actual USPTO rejection, the applicant's remarks, or the reason(s) for allowance. I infer the narrowing rationale; I do not know it.
• Whether any of the §102(a)(2)‑only references (US 10,388,499, US 10,522,336, US 11,237,154) are entitled to their earlier effective filing dates. If they are, the WO/GB/A‑publication equivalents listed above are the clean citations anyway.
• Any litigation, IPR, or CAFC activity involving 11,402,350. My prior search found no hits, but a search yielding no hits is not a certified negative — I cannot run a PACER or CAFC docket query from here.

A note on the source hierarchy you set: where the live search results and my prior training diverged, I followed the search results — most notably in treating US 9,482,642 B2 (not merely the A1 publication) as the Agilent reference and in identifying WO 2015/136264 A1 as the correct prior‑art citation for the multiple‑CCS Micromass family, whose US publication post‑dates the '350 critical date.