US 11402424

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

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

Search results for US 11,402,424 (no look‑alike numbers returned)

I searched for the exact number 11402424 / 11,402,424 (including "FocusMW" and PTAB/CAFC pairings). I deliberately excluded near-miss numbers such as US 11,402,411, US 11,402,494, and US 9,919,024 B2 — the latter appears in several search hits but is an unrelated pharmaceutical patent and was not used.

Key finding up front: I found no evidence of any CAFC appeal, district‑court case, or PTAB proceeding involving this patent. For context, my CAFC‑side check returned the court's public September 2026 oral‑argument calendar and various unrelated 2026 dockets (Netlist/Samsung, Contour IP v. GoPro, In re BadgeCert, Spero v. Mercedes‑Benz), none of which reference 11,402,424. I cannot state affirmatively that no such proceeding exists — CAFC and district‑court dockets are not comprehensively indexed by general web search, and I do not have direct docket‑database access. Treat the "no litigation found" conclusion as a negative search result, not authoritative confirmation.

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Bibliographic data (from the Google Patents record, retrieved 2026‑09‑24)

Abstract (verbatim)

"A low-profile passive slide screw load pull tuner is used on-wafer, especially in millimeter-wave frequencies from 25 to 110 GHz and above. It uses special rotating tuning probes insertable in a short slabline mounted inside the tuner housing, which holds the control gear. The tuner is mounted at an angle matching the angle of the wafer-probe, is connected directly of the wafer-probe and ensures optimum reflection factor tuning range."

(The phrase "connected directly of the wafer-probe" is reproduced verbatim from the source; I am not correcting it.)

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Independent claims in plain language

Claim 1 — the apparatus (system claim)

A load‑pull test setup for measuring on‑wafer RF transistor chips, built from three cooperating pieces:

1. A low‑profile electromechanical load‑pull tuner containing a low‑loss slabline (a center conductor, a longitudinal slot with a longitudinal axis, plus a coaxial test port and a coaxial idle port) and at least one metallic tuning probe that slides along the slot and can be inserted into it.
2. A wafer probe station with a platform supporting the semiconductor wafer, a microscope, and a set of wafer probes — each probe having a body and a coaxial connector attached to that body at a slope of angle Φ.
3. A 3‑axis tuner positioner with a wedge interface — a 3‑axis (X‑Y‑Z) positioner mounted on the probe‑station platform, plus a wedge interface joining the tuner to the positioner, where the wedge's inclined surface matches the angle Φ of the probe's coaxial connector.

The functional hook: the tuner's test port connects directly to the wafer probe's coaxial connector — no cable or adapter in between.

Claim 4 — the method

A method for establishing direct RF contact between the low‑profile tuner of claim 1 and the wafer probe: the tuner's test‑port coaxial connector is aligned with and connected directly to the probe's coaxial connector.

That is the entire scope of claim 4 — alignment plus direct connection.

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Dependent claims (for completeness)

• Claim 2 (depends on 1): the tuning probe is a metallic disc that rotates eccentrically about an axis perpendicular to the slabline's longitudinal axis; it is moved along the slabline by a first remotely controlled stepper motor and gear, and rotated by a second remotely controlled stepper motor and gear. The tuner is encapsulated in a solid, low‑profile enclosure.
• Claim 3 (drafted as depending from claim 1, but directed to the positioner): the 3‑axis positioner has X parallel to the slabline, Y perpendicular to it, and a vertical Z axis; each axis is controlled manually by micrometric screws; a wedge‑form interface adapter attaches to the positioner's vertical axis and to the tuner enclosure, and the wedge‑form interface adapter can be rotated against the vertical axis (this corresponds to the Θ/theta wafer‑tip adjustment described in the specification).
• Claim 5 (depends on 2): the tuning probe is placed close to the test port.

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Prior art cited on the face of the patent

All four are Tsironis patents: US 6,674,293 B1 ("Adaptable pre‑matched tuner system and method"), US 9,257,963 B1 ("Impedance tuners with rotating probes"), US 9,602,072 B1 ("Compact impedance tuner"), and US 9,899,984 B1 ("Compact multi‑carriage impedance tuner and method"). Eight non‑patent citations are listed, including Focus Microwaves product notes and the FormFactor probe selection guide.

Forward citation: US 12,313,676 B1 ("Planarity control for load pull tuner on wafer," Tsironis, priority 2022‑05‑27, granted 2025‑05‑27).

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Confidence and caveats

• High confidence on title, number, inventor, dates, assignee, abstract text, and claim set — these come from the patent's own Google Patents record and the parallel Justia record.
• Low confidence / unknown: any litigation, licensing, IPR, or CAFC appeal history. My searches surfaced none for this number, but I cannot rule out proceedings that are not captured in general web search. If you need a definitive litigation check, that requires a dedicated docket service (PACER/Docket Navigator/Lexis) queried directly.
• Note on dates: the environment indicates a current date of 2026‑09‑29, while your instruction header says April 26, 2026. The source page I relied on was fetched 2026‑09‑24. Nothing in my findings turns on the difference, but I flag it rather than silently reconciling it.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11402424 across patent litigation databases.

The first search returned irrelevant results from an unrelated 2008 case. Let me search more specifically across patent litigation databases.

Bottom line

I found no evidence of any litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,402,424. Based on the searches I was able to run, this patent does not appear to have been asserted in any district court action, nor does it appear in the PTAB/litigation aggregator results I could reach. I want to be explicit that this is a "no known litigation found" answer, not a certification that litigation does not exist.

Patent being searched (confirmed, not auto-corrected)

What the searches returned

1. A coincidental numerical match (not this patent). The top hit for the bare string "11402424" was a Kenya IEBC registry document containing an unrelated ID sequence ("11402424 WDMK2193930"). This is a document-number coincidence, not a patent citation and certainly not litigation. Flagging it so it is not mistaken for a hit.

2. No case-list entry. Searches combining the patent number with litigation-oriented terms ("patent lawsuit," "infringement complaint," "litigation") returned only unrelated matters — e.g., an AOI/ATI case in N.D. Cal. (3:24-cv-09041) involving different patents ('301, '690, '826, '116, '367, '024), and a MasterObjects v. eBay dispute over U.S. 8,539,024. Those are different patents that happen to contain "024" or "2424"-like strings. I did not find any docket naming 11,402,424.

3. Patent-owner activity exists, but not on this patent. Focus Microwaves (Tsironis) has a history of contested proceedings — notably Maury Microwave's challenge to US 7,135,941 (the "MPT" three-carriage tuner patent), decided by the Federal Circuit on April 22, 2016 in Focus's favor (per Focus Microwaves' own news page). That is a different patent, a different proceeding, and is included only for context.

Reasons for caution about the negative result

• I could not directly load the Unified Patents litigation caselist or PACER/Docket Navigator for this specific number; my search tools returned aggregator pages for other patents rather than a caselist filtered to 11,402,424. A direct PACER/Docket Navigator query by patent number would be the authoritative check.
• I found no evidence of, but cannot rule out, small or very recent filings that are not yet indexed, or matters that were sealed or voluntarily dismissed before publication.
• This is a narrow B2B instrument patent (on-wafer load-pull impedance tuners, 25–110 GHz) held by a single inventor-affiliated entity. The commercial field is small (the likely parties would be a handful of test-and-measurement vendors), which is consistent with — though not proof of — an absence of asserted litigation.
• To be clear on scope: I searched for litigation (district court / CAFC / PTAB assertions). I did not identify any PTAB petition (IPR/PGR) against 11,402,424 either. If you also need reexamination or foreign opposition data, that is a separate check.

Suggested next verification steps

1. Docket Navigator / Lex Machina / RPX Insight search on patent number 11,402,424 (not "11402424" as a bare string, which produces noise).
2. PACER search in the districts where the patentee and likely defendants reside (e.g., D. Del., N.D. Cal., D.N.J., E.D. Tex., W.D. Tex.).
3. Unified Patents portal PTAB caselist filtered by patent number, plus USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board "Patent Number" search.
4. USPTO Assignment Center to confirm the chain from Christos Tsironis to FocusMW IP Inc., since the assignee change helps define who would be the plaintiff in any future assertion.

If you want, I can run the searches again with the exact string "11,402,424" and with defendant-side vendor names (e.g., the major wafer-probe and load-pull suppliers) to try to surface any complaint that does not cite the number in a searchable headline.

I'll verify the structured data against live sources before drafting.

No hits so far. Let me probe a few more angles before concluding.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 11,402,424: zero. The structured PTAB-proceedings block (USPTO Open Data Portal, most recent ingest) returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding; my independent web searching across PTAB decision sources, PTAB E2E-linked material, and third-party docket aggregators surfaced no petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or appeal naming this patent. Bottom line for a defendant: there is no PTAB win to inherit — claims 1–5 are all live and untested, so any invalidity case must be built from scratch.

Because there are no proceedings to walk through claim-by-claim, I am replacing the per-proceeding sections with a per-claim status table and a candid statement of what is not known.

Verbatim from the structured data: the ODP block states no AIA trial proceedings exist as of the most recent ingest. Per my operating instruction, that is the canonical answer, and I am flagging that free-text web search is a materially weaker instrument than a direct PTAB E2E / PTAB API query by patent number — it can miss very recent filings that have not yet propagated to indexed sources. Re-confirm against the PTAB E2E "Proceedings" tab before relying on this in a litigation posture.

Non-PTAB adversarial events on file

• Assignment: 2025-11-18, assignor Christos Tsironis → FOCUSMW IP. INC. (recorded as an assignor's-interest assignment). For estoppel and privity analysis, note that the inventor and the current owner are related parties — a defendant should not assume arms-length separation between Tsironis personally and FocusMW if privity questions arise.
• Adjusted expiration listed as 2040-09-09 (filing 2019-10-03). Roughly 20 years plus about 11 months of listed adjustment. That is a long runway for further asserted-family litigation and, correspondingly, for later IPR petitions.
• Family continuity: the patent is cited by US 12,313,676 ("Planarity control for load pull tuner on wafer," Tsironis, priority 2022-05-27). FocusMW is prosecuting a deep continuing series of on-wafer tuner patents (60 assets per third-party owner profiles). This matters for § 315(e)(2) estoppel scope: a petition against US 11,402,424 would estop the petitioner on grounds raised or reasonably raisable against that patent's claims, not against sibling patents.
• Examiner-cited art (all Tsironis): US 6,674,293; US 9,257,963; US 9,602,072; US 9,899,984. Eight non-patent citations including Focus Microwaves Product Notes 41 and 79, Focus Application Note 48 (on-wafer setups), the FormFactor Probe Selection Guide, and a NEMA-8 20×20 mm stepper motor datasheet.

Strategic summary

Claim status. All five claims — 1 through 5 — are live, unamended, and UNTESTED. There are no canceled claims and no surviving-after-narrowing claims, because no narrowing ever occurred. This is the single most important fact for a defendant: there is no free kill. Any non-infringement or invalidity position must be developed independently, and the patent owner has had no opportunity (and no incentive) to amend claims in a way that would otherwise reveal its own fallback positions.

Estoppel landscape. No § 315(e)(2) estoppel exists against anyone yet, because no IPR/PGR was instituted. That cuts both ways. For a defendant today, the entire universe of prior art is technically available — nothing is barred by prior petitioner estoppel. But two pragmatic constraints apply:

• § 315(b): if a district-court complaint asserting this patent has been served, the one-year clock to petition is running; after it, IPR is barred absent joinder.
• § 325(d) and § 314(a): the Board will look at what the examiner already considered. The four cited references are all Tsironis's own prior patents, and the NPL is Focus's own product documentation. A petition built on those same references invites § 325(d) denial as "the same or substantially the same prior art or previously presented to the Office." The cleaner path is art outside the Focus/Tsironis self-citation bubble — e.g., Maury Microwave or third-party slide-screw tuner disclosures, academic on-wafer probe-station literature, or prior public use/sale of 30°/45°-probe direct-mount tuner configurations, which the specification itself concedes as known (the patent states the mounting method "has been described before (see ref. 6)" and that 30- and 45-degree probes are "typically available").

That last point is a genuinely favorable one for a defendant: the specification contains express prior-art admissions that the mounting method on wafer test stations and the 30°/45° probe convention are old. Claims 1 and 4 are arguably the broadest targets, and their novelty rests on the combination — low-profile rotating-probe tuner + 3-axis positioner + wedge interface matching the probe angle Φ + direct test-port-to-probe-connector connection. That is a § 103 combination argument, not a § 102 anticipation argument.

Pattern signals.

• No repeat petitioner — there is only one petitioner: nobody.
• No defensive aggregator in the chain. No Unified Patents, RPX, or similar entity appears anywhere in the record or the assignment history.
• Patent owner posture: FocusMW/Tsironis is not a litigation-scarred patent owner with a crowded PTAB docket on this family. There is no history here of aggressive CAFC appeals from PTAB loss because there have been no losses. The absence of PTAB activity plausibly reflects a small, engineering-driven licensing/enforcement practice rather than a high-volume assertion campaign — though note that absence of PTAB activity is also consistent with a patent that has been licensed without litigation, which would mean the strength has never been stress-tested.
• § 101/§ 112 risk is low-profile but real for claim 4 (a method claim whose single step is essentially "align and connect two connectors"). A § 112(b) indefiniteness or written-description theory, and a § 101 eligibility theory against the bare method claim, are available in district court but are not IPR-eligible grounds (§ 311(b) limits IPR to §§ 102/103).

Recommended next steps

1. Do not treat this as a hardened patent, and do not treat the zero count as meaningless. Well-asserted patents in this space attract IPRs — the equally relevant takeaway is that this patent's assertion history is thin enough that no third party has yet bothered to invalidate it. It is an unknown quantity, not a proven survivor.
2. Verify the null result directly, before investing in a petition. Query PTAB E2E by patent number (and separately by application number 16/592,058 and by patent owner name "FOCUSMW IP. INC."), because my web search cannot substitute for that. Also run the PTAB API / ODP proceedings endpoint again closer to your filing decision.
3. Check the § 315(b) date now. If you were served with a complaint asserting US 11,402,424, that service date starts a one-year IPR window. With today being 2026-09-29 and the patent not expiring until a listed 2040-09-09, there is no urgency from expiration — only from the § 315(b) bar.
4. Build the invalidity case outside the Focus self-citation cluster. Target claims 1 and 4 as the broadest; use the specification's own prior-art admissions (Application Note 48; the FormFactor Probe Selection Guide; the "typically available" 30°/45° probe convention) plus third-party tuner and probe-station art. Expect the patent owner to lean on the low-profile rotating-disc probe (claim 2) and the wedge interface geometry (claim 3) as the distinguishing structure, and expect a motion to amend if an IPR is instituted.
5. Preserve a parallel district-court track. Claim 4's near-zero physical step count and the § 101/§ 112 exposure of the method claim cannot be reached in an IPR — § 311(b) bars those grounds. If you need those theories, they must live in a DJ action or as invalidity contentions in litigation.
6. Estoppel planning if you do file. Any petition you file now buys you the full prior-art universe but will estop you and your privies under § 315(e)(2) from re-litigating, in district court, every ground you raised or reasonably could have raised. Given the deep FocusMW continuation family, weigh whether a single broad petition on US 11,402,424 is worth spending art that might be better conserved for sibling patents (e.g., US 12,313,676, US 11,480,589).

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Sourcing and confidence disclosure

• High confidence: no PTAB proceeding on file, per the structured ODP block (canonical source for this task). Claim text, claim count (5), filing date 2019-10-03, grant date 2022-08-02, inventor, assignee, assignment date, cited references, and the cited-by reference are taken verbatim from the patent text supplied in the prompt rather than from any search result.
• Lower confidence / explicitly flagged: the negative search result from web sources is inference from absence, not affirmative documentation. I found no PTAB decision, institution order, or CAFC opinion referencing US 11,402,424. I did not find any proceeding numbers, judge panels, petition grounds, or dispositions, and I have deliberately not supplied any — fabricating a proceeding number here would be worse than reporting an empty set. If the ODP ingest is stale and a recent petition exists, PTAB E2E is the authoritative check.
• Not verified: whether any district-court litigation asserting this patent exists. That was outside the scope of the sources I was able to consult, and it is the fact most likely to change the § 315(b) analysis above.

I'll research the assignment record for this patent, focusing on the USPTO Assignment Center records.

Let me try to locate the specific recorded assignment and its reel/frame details.

Let me dig for the specific assignment record details and the assignee entity profile.

Inventors

Christos Tsironis — sole named inventor (confirmed on the face of US 11,402,424 B1 and in the Google Patents record).

• Employer at time of filing: Tsironis is the founder/principal of Focus Microwaves Inc. (970 Montée-de-Liesse / 277 Lakeshore Road, Quebec, Canada) — the operating company that designs, manufactures, and sells the electro-mechanical load-pull tuners and software described throughout this patent's specification. The specification's non-patent citations are almost entirely Focus Microwaves product notes (Product Note 41 "CCMT," Product Note 79 "MPT," Application Note 48, datasheet DS-CCMT-4020-V03), which corroborates the employment relationship.
• Unusual pattern to flag: The application was filed as an individual ("Original Assignee: Individual"), not assigned to Focus Microwaves Inc. at filing. Tsironis's older patents in this family were recorded to Focus Microwaves Inc. (e.g., US 6,297,649) or to Christos Tsironis personally, and from ~2011 onward many were recorded to FocusMW IP Inc. (e.g., US 8,629,742 B1 "VHF harmonic impedance tuner," assignee "Focusmw Ip. Inc."). Filing in the inventor's own name is itself unremarkable for this family, but it means there is no recorded pre-issuance assignment on this patent — the individual is the original owner.
• Departure signal: Not applicable — sole inventor, still the principal of the related operating company. No "all-inventors-depart-within-12-months" pattern.

Original assignee

• On the issued patent: Individual — Christos Tsironis, personally (not a company).
• Product embodying the claims: Yes, at the operating-company level. Focus Microwaves Inc. sells the low-profile rotating-probe load-pull tuners and on-wafer test setups that practice the claimed subject matter; the specification itself describes these as the company's commercial product line (see refs. 2, 5, 6, 10 = Focus Microwaves product notes/datasheets). The patent's own figures (FIGS. 6–9) depict the tuner and its mounting on a wafer probe station.
• Primary line of business: Focus Microwaves Inc. — RF/microwave and millimeter-wave load-pull and impedance-tuner test equipment (a niche but real instrument vendor, not a patent-holding entity).
• Current status: Operating. I found no evidence of acquisition, dissolution, or bankruptcy for either Focus Microwaves Inc. or the IP-holding affiliate. The inventor-affiliated IP entity remains active and is still being recorded as assignee/owner on 2020–2022 filings (per IPQwery's owner page for "FOCUSMW IP. INC.").

Assignment timeline

Important sourcing limitation, stated plainly: I could not retrieve the reel/frame number or the correspondent of record. The USPTO Assignment Center / assignment.uspto.gov is an interactive database, and general web search did not surface the underlying recording page or its bibliographic detail. What I can verify comes from the Google Patents "Legal Events / Reassignment" block (fetched 2026‑09‑24), which reproduces the USPTO reassignment abstract but not the reel/frame. I therefore report the assignment that is documented and explicitly mark the reel/frame and correspondent as not retrieved rather than guessed.

• 2025-11-18 (recording date) — Reel not retrieved / not verified
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignor's Interest (recorded event label: "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNOR'S INTEREST")
  • Assignor: Tsironis, Christos
  • Assignee: FOCUSMW IP. INC.
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved — I could not access the recording's correspondent field. Do not treat this as "none"; it is simply unknown from the sources available to me.
  • Context: Internal IP-holding consolidation. The sole inventor transfers his personally held patent to FocusMW IP Inc., the Canadian IP-holding affiliate that has been the recorded assignee on the Focus Microwaves patent family since at least 2011 (e.g., US 8,629,742 B1). This is a reorganizational/IP-holding move within the same inventor-controlled group, not an arm's-length acquisition.
  • Execution date: Not retrieved (recording date is 2025-11-18; execution date is a distinct field I could not confirm).

No other assignments are recorded. There is no pre-issuance assignment (the application was filed by the individual), no security agreement, no license, no merger, and no further transfer after 2025‑11‑18. The 2026‑03‑23 USPTO event on the record is only a maintenance-fee reminder (post-grant fee), not an ownership event.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11402424
    2019 : Filed by Christos Tsironis as individual
    2022 : Patent issued 2022-08-02
    2025 : Assigned to FOCUSMW IP Inc
    2026 : Maintenance fee reminder mailed

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present (weak ambiguity). The only transfer moved the patent from the individual inventor to FOCUSMW IP. INC., an entity whose name carries the "IP" suffix. But three concrete facts cut against a shell reading: (a) the assignor was a natural person, not an operating assignee being stripped of assets, so the classic "operating company → licensing LLC" pattern is not met; (b) FOCUSMW IP Inc. is a Canadian entity (per IPQwery's owner record, "FOCUSMW IP. INC. (Canada)"), not a single-member Delaware/Texas LLC of the type the signal targets; and (c) it has served as the recorded assignee across the Tsironis/Focus Microwaves portfolio since ~2011, i.e., it is an established, long-lived IP-holding arm of a real instrument business, not a purpose-built assertion vehicle. Citation: the 2025‑11‑18 reassignment to FOCUSMW IP. INC. (reel/frame not retrieved); corroborating prior-family records such as US 8,629,742 B1 (assignee "Focusmw Ip. Inc.," 2011 filing).

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither Christos Tsironis nor FOCUSMW IP. INC. appears on the enumerated NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities) nor in anything I surfaced from Unified Patents / RPX. The prior section of this analysis likewise found no litigation naming US 11,402,424.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / insufficient data. There is only one recorded link in the chain, so recurrence cannot be assessed even in principle; and the correspondent field itself was not retrievable from the sources available. I decline to name a correspondent I could not verify.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. A single transfer (individual → affiliated IP holder) over the patent's life; no chain of consecutive LLC-to-LLC assignments within a 24-month window, no shared-correspondent clustering observable.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. The 2025‑11‑18 transfer is not followed by any infringement suit I could locate; the prior section reported a negative litigation search (no district-court, PTAB, or CAFC activity found for this number). With no suit to anchor a "within-6-months-before-filing" analysis, this signal cannot be satisfied.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding involving either the inventor or FOCUSMW IP Inc. surfaced; the assignor group remains an operating enterprise.

7. Privateering — Not present. There is no operating company transferring to an unrelated NPE that then asserts on its behalf. The transferor (Tsironis) and the transferee (FOCUSMW IP Inc.) are the same inventor-controlled group, and no assertions are on record.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at the inventor's own IP-holding affiliate.

Verdict

Insufficient data.

The record shows exactly one post-issuance ownership event — the 2025‑11‑18 "assignment of assignor's interest" from sole inventor Christos Tsironis to his affiliated Canadian IP-holding entity FOCUSMW IP. INC. (reel/frame not retrieved) — and nothing more. Every classic NPE signal screens not present or unclear: no known asserter, no litigation, no cascading LLC transfers, no bankruptcy, no defensive-aggregator termination, and the single "IP"-suffixed assignee is a long-standing corporate IP holder for a real operating instrument business rather than a purpose-built assertion shell. The honest verdict is therefore not NPE on the available evidence; I label it Insufficient data rather than "operating-company assertion" because the current assignee is an IP-holding affiliate (which sells no products itself) and because I could not retrieve the reel/frame and correspondent that a complete NPE screen requires. If a definitive call is needed, the missing fields must be pulled directly from the USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/, patent number 11402424) and cross-checked against a dedicated docket service (PACER / Docket Navigator / RPX / Unified Patents) for assertion history.

Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 11402424) — note that the same records surface at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

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Contradiction / caveat flags for the record:

• The previously generated section and this section are consistent on the 2025‑11‑18 assignment and the assignor/assignee identities.
• New caveat surfaced here: the header date in the prior section ("April 26, 2026") differs from the operating-date context (2026‑09‑29) and from the 2026‑03‑23 maintenance-fee event. Nothing in the ownership analysis turns on this.
• Unverified fields: reel/frame number, execution date, and correspondent of record — not fabricated; explicitly marked unknown.

I'll pull the cited references for US 11,402,424 and verify their bibliographic details against the record.

Now the remaining two cited references, plus a confirmation search on the patent itself.

Let me check the two "similar documents" that bear most directly on claim 1's on-wafer/direct-connection subject matter.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 11,402,424 B1

Note on method (read first). The record I worked from is the Google Patents mirror of the USPTO file (https://patents.google.com/patent/US11402424/en), supplemented by Justia/FPO mirrors of each cited reference. I did not issue a live query to USPTO Patent Public Search or PatentCenter in this session, so where a date or bibliographic field below comes from a mirror rather than the USPTO front page itself, I say so. As instructed, I searched only the literal number 11402424 / 11,402,424 and did not substitute near-miss numbers. Nothing here amends the identifying data already established in the earlier sections (filed/priority 2019-10-03, granted 2022-08-02, inventor Tsironis, 5 claims, now FocusMW IP Inc.).

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1. The four patent citations on the face of US 11,402,424

The patent lists "Patent Citations (4)" — all four are Christos Tsironis patents. The record marks US 9,602,072 B1 and US 9,899,984 B1 with an examiner-citation asterisk; US 6,674,293 B1 and US 9,257,963 B1 appear without it.

All four granted well before 2019-10-03 and are therefore available as § 102(a)(1) printed publications against the '424 claims. (AIA § 102 governs; the '424 application was filed 2019-10-03 with no earlier priority — "PRIORITY CLAIM: Not applicable.") None of the four depends on being § 102(a)(2) art.

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2. Reference-by-reference § 102 analysis

Reminder of the claim architecture I must map onto (from the earlier sections): claim 1 (independent system claim) = low-profile electromechanical tuner (slabline + center conductor + longitudinal slot/longitudinal axis + coaxial test port + coaxial idle port + at least one metallic tuning probe movable along and insertable into the slot) + a wafer probe station (platform + microscope + wafer probes having a body and a coaxial connector attached at slope angle Φ) + a 3-axis positioner with wedge interface whose inclined surface matches Φ; and the tuner test port is connected directly to the probe connector. Claim 4 = the method of aligning and directly connecting those two connectors. Claim 2 = metallic disc probe rotating eccentrically about an axis perpendicular to the slabline axis, moved along the slabline by a first remotely controlled stepper motor/gear and rotated by a second, in a solid low-profile enclosure. Claim 3 = the X/Y/Z positioner with manual micrometric screws and a rotatable wedge-form interface adapter. Claim 5 = probe placed close to the test port.

A. US 6,674,293 B1 — "Adaptable pre-matched tuner system and method"

Citation: US 6,674,293 B1 (Tsironis), filed 2000-03-01, granted 2004-01-06. https://patents.google.com/patent/US6674293/en

Disclosure (verified from the record): Two cascaded wideband slide-screw tuners integrated in a single housing, one acting as a pre-matching impedance transformer, the other as the tuning section, with a common controller and a Smith-chart search algorithm. Vertical motors (13) and horizontal motors (15) with an electronic module (17) in one housing; a single tuner with two independently controlled slugs is an alternative. It is the classic "high-Γ by pre-matching" teaching.

§ 102 mapping: This is a tuner-architecture reference. It can only bear on the tuner limb of claim 1 (and, loosely, on the "solid enclosure"/motor-driven-probe idea in claim 2). It is silent on: the reciprocating/metallic tuning probe being a rotating disc; any wafer probe station, microscope, wafer probes, or connector slope ∠Φ; any 3-axis positioner with wedge interface; and any direct connection between a tuner test port and a wafer-probe connector.

Anticipation verdict: No anticipation of any claim. Its proximity to the '424 patent is thematic (same field, same inventor, same "maximize Γ" motivation), and it is exactly the kind of art a motivation-to-combine obviousness case would lean on — not a § 102 reference for claims 1, 2, 3, 4 or 5.

B. US 9,257,963 B1 — "Impedance tuners with rotating probes"

Citation: US 9,257,963 B1 (Tsironis), App. 14/311,413, filed 2013-06-27, granted 2016-02-09. https://patents.justia.com/patent/[9257963](/patent/9257963)

Disclosure (verified): Explicitly replaces block/slug probes with metallic disc-formed RF probes; "further differences to prior art tuners are the missing vertical axis and associated precision gear"; the disc is rotated eccentrically about an axis, and rotating the eccentric disc changes the vertical distance to the center conductor (amplitude of Γ), while horizontal travel along the slabline changes phase. Includes a stepper motor (86) driving the rotation angle Φ, and calibration with motor steps S substituted for angle.

§ 102 mapping — this is the single closest reference on the face of the '424 patent for claim 2:

• "the tuning probe is a metallic disc, which rotates eccentrically around an axis perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the slabline" → disclosed.
• "moved along the slabline by a first, remotely controlled, stepper motor and gear" / "rotated by a second, remotely controlled, stepper motor and gear" → the two-motor (horizontal carriage + rotation) arrangement is substantially disclosed, though this reference frames motion in terms of the disc/axis rather than the claim's exact "first/second motor and gear" wording.
• "encapsulated inside a solid, low-profile tuner enclosure" → the low-profile/housing aspect is at least suggested, but the word "low-profile"/HEIGHT-2 framing is a '424-specific characterization; I would not concede it as expressly disclosed here.

Anticipation verdict: Potential single-reference anticipation of the rotating-disc probe subject matter of claim 2 (and it would independently defeat any claim limited to an eccentric rotating disc probe). It does not touch claim 1 (no wafer station, no wedge, no direct connection), nor claims 3, 4; for claim 5 it is neutral (it does not expressly require the probe be placed close to the test port — if anything, that proximity teaching lives in the later, separately-cited US 10,686,239).

C. US 9,602,072 B1 — "Compact impedance tuner"

Citation: US 9,602,072 B1 (Tsironis), priority on provisional 62/017,930 filed 2014-06-27, granted 2017-03-21. https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9602072B1](/patent/US9602072B1)/en · https://patents.justia.com/patent/[9602072](/patent/9602072)

Disclosure (verified): A circular slide-screw tuner using a circular slabline (two disc plates + toroidal center conductor + spacer), eccentrically rotating disc probes, and a rotating carriage/radial arm ("planetary configuration") — arm rotation = phase, disc rotation = amplitude. The mechanism is integrated "in a solid housing (215) since mechanical precision is of highest importance." It claims a ~3× length reduction over a linear tuner and carries a full interpolation-based calibration scheme.

§ 102 mapping: Covers the disc + eccentric rotation + amplitude-control concept of claim 2, and the "solid housing" concept. It is a different geometry from claim 2's frame of reference: claim 2 requires the disc axis be "perpendicular to the longitudinal axis of the slabline" and the probe be "moved along the slabline" — the '072 structure moves the probe by rotating an arm around the disc's center, not by translating a carriage along a longitudinal slot. That is arguably a distinct structural limitation, which weakens a § 102 reading and pushes the dispute into § 103 territory.

Anticipation verdict: Not a clean § 102 reference for claim 2 as written (different carriage kinematics/geometry); strong § 103 art against claim 2. No bearing on claims 1, 3, 4, 5.

D. US 9,899,984 B1 — "Compact multi-carriage impedance tuner and method"

Citation: US 9,899,984 B1 (Tsironis), App. 15/206,192, priority on provisional 62/192,197 filed 2015-07-14, granted 2018-02-20. Status: expired for failure to pay maintenance fees (lapse event dated 2022-02-20). https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9899984B1](/patent/US9899984B1)/en · https://patents.justia.com/patent/[9899984](/patent/9899984)

Disclosure (verified): Multi-carriage tuner using disc probes on a disc-shaped slabline with rotating radial arm carriages (planetary movement), with a full multi-probe calibration/de-embedding method ([S0]⁻¹ cascading, TE = |S11 − Γ_target|² search). Addresses harmonic/multi-frequency synthesis.

§ 102 mapping: Again directed to disc probes and multi-carriage mechanics — relevant at most to claim 2's disc-probe/motor-and-gear elements, and it is one of several references that would make a "disc-probe tuner" claim obvious. It shares the same non-linear, circular kinematics drawback as (C) relative to claim 2's literal "along the slabline" wording. Silent on the wafer station, wedge, angle Φ, and direct connection.

Anticipation verdict: No anticipation of claims 1–5 as written. Best used as § 103 art on the disc-probe concept.

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3. Non-patent literature cited (8 items)

These are listed on the face of the record: Focus Microwaves Product Note 41 ("Computer Controlled Microwave Tuner, CCMT," 1998, pp. 2–4); the CCMT datasheet DS-CCMT-4020-V03; Wikipedia "Load Pull" (retrieved 2017-08-24) and "Standing wave ratio" (retrieved 2017-02-03); Focus Microwaves Product Note 79 ("MPT, a universal Multi-Purpose Tuner," Oct. 2004); the OMC-Stepperonline "Nema 8 — 20×20 mm" stepper motor product page (retrieved 2019-10-01); Focus Microwaves Application Note 48 ("On Wafer Load Pull Tuner Setups: A Design Help," Dec. 2001, p. 2 ff., FIG. 2); and the FormFactor "Probes Selection Guide" (retrieved 2019-09-01).

Analytically these are background/enabling art, not § 102 anticipatory references in their own right — except that Application Note 48 is the reference the specification itself leans on for the "mounting of tuners on wafer test stations" teaching and for the microscope-conflict problem (see ref. 6 in the '424 text). If a challenger wanted a printed-publication attack on claim 1's on-wafer mounting concept, Application Note 48 is the most useful NPL item, and the FormFactor guide is the likely source for the 30°/45°/90° probe-connector slope teaching that underpins the claim's angle-Φ limitation. Neither, on its face, discloses a wedge interface whose inclined surface matches Φ.

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4. The gap: the most relevant prior art is not on the face of the patent

This is the significant finding. The four cited patents all go to tuner internals (probes, carriages, calibration, pre-matching). But claims 1, 3 and 4 are about a system-level, on-wafer integration: probe station + 3-axis positioner + wedge interface + direct, cable-free connection to a wafer probe. The references that actually address that subject matter are Tsironis's own earlier filings, and they were not cited on the face of the '424 patent:

• US 6,998,836 B1 / US 2003/0132759 A1 — "Low Loss Integration of Wafer Probes with Microwave Tuners" (prov. 60/346,300, filed 2002-01-09; pub. 2003-07-17). This is the most probative single reference I found for claims 1/4. It expressly addresses "relative reduction of insertion losses on a high frequency measurement system for load pull… consisting of microwave load pull tuners, a wafer probe station and associated wafer probes," and teaches joining the slotted airline directly to the wafer probe, including machining the airline end to screw onto the probe's coaxial barrel and using a metallic cylinder as the RF interface — i.e. eliminating the intervening cable/adapter. It also states that once the airline reaches the probe "and its axis direction coincides with the nominal probe axis," the two are joined. That is a strong, if not exact, disclosure of the direct-connection concept of claim 1's final "wherein" clause and of claim 4's alignment method. It does not disclose a wedge interface with an inclined surface matching Φ. https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/53/cd/02/112c4ac3de2640/US20030132759A1.pdf · http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/1b/be/2a/7d67dfa4de9d08/US6998836.pdf
• US 2003/0107363 A1 — "Low loss links between wafer probes and load pull tuner" (Tsironis), pub. 2003-06-12. Listed among the '424 patent's own "Similar Documents." Directed at a low-loss link formed by extending the tuner's coaxial airline / slabline / coplanar guide to connect directly to wafer probes. Same claim-1/claim-4 relevance as above. I was unable to re-verify its full text in this session; treat the characterization as provisional.
• US 7,102,457 B1 — "Mechanically balanced microwave load pull tuner" (Tsironis, ~2006). Teaches that the low-loss link between tuner and DUT is "best configured with a 30° or 45° angle, in order to fit perfectly to the micro-probes used for the on-wafer testing (bent airlines)," and that semi-rigid/flexible cables are inferior. This is the closest thing I located to the angle-matching concept behind claim 1's "inclined surface matching the angle Φ" — but it achieves it with a bent airline, not a wedge interface on the Z-axis of a 3-axis positioner. https://companyprofiles.justatic.com/patent/[7102457](/patent/7102457)
• US 11,480,589 B1 — "Wafer probe integration with load pull tuner" (Tsironis). Caution: this appears in the '424 patent's "Similar Documents" list but is NOT § 102 prior art — it was filed 2021-04-16 and granted 2022-10-25, after the '424 priority date of 2019-10-03. Its own text, however, is a useful roadmap of what the '424 patent's claims cover: it describes the very same strategy of (i) placing the tuning probe closest to the test port, (ii) mounting "at an angle matching the slope of the coaxial connector of the wafer probe and connected directly to it," and (iii) adding a planarity-controlling probe-holding bracket. Because its date is later, it is not citable against claims 1–5. https://patents.justia.com/patent/[11480589](/patent/11480589)

Additional caveat on US 10,686,239 B1 ("Slide screw tuners with offset tuning probes and method"), which is the reference cited elsewhere for "having the protruding tuning probe placed closest to the test port." It is directly on point for claim 5 (probe close to the test port), but I could not confirm its filing/priority date against 2019-10-03 in this session, so I do not assert it as § 102 art here. This should be checked on the front page of that patent before anyone relies on it.

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5. Bottom line

1. On the face of US 11,402,424, no cited reference anticipates claim 1. Every one of the four patent citations is silent on the wafer-probe-station element, the 3-axis positioner with wedge interface, and the angle-Φ-matching inclined surface — three separate limitations that must all be found in a single reference for § 102 to apply. US 6,674,293 is furthest from claim 1; US 9,257,963 / 9,602,072 / 9,899,984 come closest only to the internal tuner limb.
2. The strongest single-reference anticipation case from the face-level citations is against dependent claim 2, and the best candidate is US 9,257,963 B1 (eccentrically rotating metallic disc probe, no vertical axis, two stepper motors), with US 9,602,072 B1 and US 9,899,984 B1 as § 103 support. Even there, claim 2's literal "moved along the slabline" and "longitudinal axis" wording is not cleanly met by the circular/planetary single-slabline-rotation geometry of '072/'984.
3. Claims 3 and 4 have no § 102 reference in the cited set at all. Claim 3 (manual micrometric X/Y/Z + rotatable wedge-form adapter) and claim 4 (align + directly connect) are the strongest claims on the face of this record, and my searches surfaced no anticipation for them.
4. The most relevant prior art overall is off the face of the patent: the Tsironis wafer-probe-integration family, led by US 6,998,836 B1 / US 2003/0132759 A1 (filed 2002-01-09) and US 2003/0107363 A1 (pub. 2003-06-12) for direct tuner-to-probe connection, and US 7,102,457 for the 30°/45° on-wafer link geometry. Those references make claim 1's "connected directly" and "angle-matching" concepts look far from novel, even though none appears to disclose the wedge interface with inclined surface matching Φ as a physical element. If I were building an invalidity theory, I would run it through § 103 starting from US 6,998,836 + US 7,102,457 (+ a wedge/adjustable-tilt reference), not through § 102.
5. Common-inventor point worth flagging: all four cited patents and all the additional art I surfaced share the same sole inventor. That does not create a § 102(b) exception (the one-year grace only reaches the inventor's own disclosures within one year of 2019-10-03; all this art is older), but it does mean the '424 claims read as a narrow, incremental step over the applicant's own large prior portfolio — which is consistent with the 5-claim, wedge/direct-connect-centric claim set.

Confidence: High on the four patent citations' bibliographic data, citations-by-examiner status, and technical content (all verified from patent mirrors). High on the "no anticipation of claim 1 in the cited set" conclusion. Moderate-to-low on the off-face references: US 6,998,836 / US 2003/0132759 A1 are verified in substance; US 2003/0107363 A1 and the exact date of US 10,686,239 B1 I could not re-verify in this session and have flagged as such rather than asserted.

I'll ground the § 103 analysis by verifying the key off-face references and probing for additional combination art before drafting.

Good — the two key off-face references are now verified in substance. Let me check for third-party (non-Tsironis) art on angled/wedge probe mounts and confirm the dates of the remaining candidates.

Let me identify the "wafer probe holder for planarity and orientation adjustment" patent (app. 14/108,600) — it looks directly relevant to claim 3's wedge adapter.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,402,424 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Building on: the Patent Summary, Litigation Summary, PTAB Challenges, Assignment History, and Prior Art sections already generated for this record. I do not repeat their bibliographic or litigation content. Citations below are to the reference disclosures themselves, quoted where the language matters.

Scope note on dates: the task header says April 26, 2026; the operating context and the prior sections use 2026‑09‑24/29. As the earlier sections flagged, nothing in this § 103 analysis turns on the difference. What matters is the critical date: the '424 effective filing date, 2019‑10‑03 (no earlier priority — "PRIORITY CLAIM: Not applicable"). Every reference I use below is a printed publication or issued patent more than one year before that date, so AIA § 102(a)(1) applies and the § 102(b)(1)(A) inventor-grace exception does not reach them (the grace period only covers disclosures made one year or less before the effective filing date).

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1. What this section adds to the earlier Prior Art section

The earlier Prior Art section flagged two items as unverified. Both are now resolved, and I add several references that materially strengthen the § 103 case.

Confirmations of previously-flagged items:

Newly located prior art (not in the earlier section), all pre-dating 2019‑10‑03:

References that must be excluded as post-dating art (do not use): US 11,480,589 B1 (filed 2021‑04‑16), US 11,662,364 B1 (filed 2021‑12‑07), US 12,313,676 B1 (priority 2022‑05‑27), and US 12,693,322 B1 ("Universal tuner for on wafer load pull"), whose claim 2 recites a tuner "mounted on the three-axis positioner at an angle on a vertical plane allowing alignment and direct connection of the coaxial connector of the test port … with the coaxial connector of the external wafer microprobe." The last one is strikingly close to '424 claim 1, but it is far later art and is usable only as context showing the concept was incremental — never as § 102/§ 103 prior art against '424. I flag this explicitly so it is not mistaken for a citation.

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

For a § 103 analysis the level of skill must be stated. On this record:

A person with a bachelor's degree in mechanical or electrical engineering (or equivalent), plus 3–5 years of experience designing or integrating electro-mechanical microwave/RF test equipment — specifically slide-screw impedance tuners, coaxial/slabline transmission structures, and on-wafer probe stations — or a master's degree with 1–2 years of such experience. The PHOSITA is familiar with: (i) the slide-screw tuning principle and the amplitude/phase roles of probe penetration and probe travel; (ii) the fact that insertion loss between tuner and DUT shrinks the tuning range; (iii) the commercial convention of wafer probes exiting at 30°/45°/90°; and (iv) standard micro-positioning hardware (3-axis stages, micrometer screws, tilt/wedge interfaces).

This is a mechanical- and electromechanical-arts case. Under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), combinations in such predictable arts face a low non-obviousness threshold, and "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious."

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3. Claim 1 — element breakdown and the combination

Claim 1 is a system claim spanning three subassemblies. Breaking it into limitations:

Primary combination — US 7,102,457 + US 6,998,836 + US 9,653,332

This is the combination I would lead with. It maps every limitation of claim 1, and — critically — the motivation comes out of the references' own text, not from hindsight.

US 7,102,457 B1 supplies the system architecture (limitations 1d and the on-wafer orientation concept), expressly:

"In order to present the device under test with the highest possible reflection factor during load pull or noise measurements, the best possible method to reduce the insertion loss of the RF connection link (21) between tuner and DUT is to use low loss transmission airlines. The said low loss transmission airlines are best configured with a 30° or 45° angle, in order to fit perfectly to the micro-probes (22) used for the on-wafer testing (bent airlines (21))."

"For on-wafer measurements using solid bent airlines, a microwave tuner needs to be mounted on a 3-axis positioner (26, 27, FIG. 3)."

That second sentence is, almost verbatim, the "3-axis tuner positioner … mounted on the platform of the wafer probe station" element, and the first sentence is the functional requirement the wedge/angle-Φ limitation exists to satisfy.

US 6,998,836 B2 / US 2003/0132759 A1 supplies the direct connection (limitation 1f) and the station context (1c), expressly:

"Once the slotted airline (22) has reached the level of the wafer probe (21), and its axis direction coincides with the nominal probe axis ((32) FIG. 3) we join both components, i.e. probe and slotted airline…"

"The end of the slotted airline is machined with an internal thread in order to be able to receive and screw on the outside thread (54) of the barrel (55) of the coaxial connector of the probe. The RF contact … is made using a metallic cylinder (43)… in order to reduce RF loss."

"The present patent deals only with lossy interconnections between the tuners and the probes… the direct interconnection is established by extending the slotted airline … of the tuners outside the tuner body; then the DUT-close end of the slabline is prepared and machined in such a way as to be able to be connected directly with a coplanar or a coaxial wafer probe."

Its FIG. 2 is expressly "the integration of a wafer probe with a microwave tuner using an extended and 45 degree bent slotted airline."

US 9,653,332 B1 supplies the wedge interface (limitation 1e) — the only element the other two lack:

"A compact device allows individual or combined correction of wafer probe planarity and orientation misalignment. The device is made as a metallic block … and contains three sections, which are held together by a steel blade or by a steel blade and a rotation pin; the sections are split apart for 'Phi'—orientation alignment or rotated against each-other for 'Theta' planarity alignment… The device is inserted between the fixed probe support and the probe itself."

Why the PHOSITA would combine these three

The motivation is triple-sourced and express:

1. Same field, same problem, same stated goal. US 6,998,836 and US 7,102,457 both begin from the identical problem the '424 specification states verbatim — "Insertion losses between the DUT and the tuners … reduce the tuning range" and "It is a general aim in the technology to minimize this insertion loss." US 7,102,457 states the causal chain the '424 patent repeats: "the insertion loss of the RF connection link (21) between tuner and DUT … reduces the said reflection factor by twice the loss of said RF connection link." A PHOSITA optimizing tuning range is directly led to both the direct connection ('836) and the low-loss rigid link at the probe's native angle ('457).
2. The 3-axis mounting is taught as a consequence, not an option. US 7,102,457 conditions it: "For on-wafer measurements using solid bent airlines, a microwave tuner needs to be mounted on a 3-axis positioner." Once the rigid, cable-free link of '836 is adopted, the need for a 3-axis stage follows mechanically.
3. The wedge is the ordinary way to hold a body at an angle against a vertical stage. US 9,653,332 already discloses a rotatable interface block inserted between a fixed support and a probe for exactly this alignment purpose — the '424 patent's "wedge interface … inclined surface matching the angle Φ" is that same mechanical expedient, with the incline re-labeled from an orientation-alignment function to a connector-slope-matching function. Third-party art (US 2004/0227532's screw-adjusted tilt orientation plate; KR 10‑0269547's tilting micro-positioner) confirms the wedge/tilt interface was a conventional building block in micro-positioning, which is fatal to any "hindsight" objection to this element.

Result: claim 1 would have been obvious under § 103 as a combination of US 7,102,457 + US 6,998,836 + US 9,653,332 (with FormFactor/Application Note 48 as corroborating NPL on the 30°/45° convention and on-wafer mounting, and US 2004/0227532 / KR 10‑0269547 as third-party wedge support).

Alternative combination — US 6,998,836 + US 9,653,332 + US 9,602,072 (low-profile emphasis)

If the patent owner argues that the "low-profile" preamble element is the point of novelty, the combination should be re-anchored on a compact tuner reference:

• US 9,602,072 B1 (cited on the '424 face) — "Compact impedance tuner," disc probes and a circular slabline, "integrated … in a solid housing (215) since mechanical precision is of highest importance," with a claimed ~3× length reduction.
• US 9,257,963 B1 (cited on the '424 face) — metallic disc-formed probes with "the missing vertical axis and associated precision gear." It is the absence of the long vertical axis that makes a tuner low-profile — the very point the '424 specification concedes: "To avoid this conflict, one needs a low-profile tuner, which is incompatible with long vertical axis, possible only when using low profile housing comprising extra-small footprint stepper motors … and rotating tuning probes (see ref. 8)."

That last sentence is an express admission in the '424 specification itself that the low-profile rotating-probe tuner was known art (the applicant cites his own US 9,257,963, "ref. 8," as the source). A claim whose distinguishing feature is a relative height that the specification attributes to already-known structure is on very weak § 103 footing.

Alternative combination — US 8,933,707 + US 6,998,836 + US 9,653,332 (mounting/planarity emphasis)

US 8,933,707 B1 independently reinforces limitations 1c–1f from a different angle (waveguide/millimeter-wave rather than coaxial):

"The tuners themselves (3, 4) must be mounted on micro-positioners (10, 11) which allow exact positioning of the wafer probes (8, 9), which are rigidly connected to the tuner bodies…"

"This creates a very low loss rigid connection between tuner and wafer probe."

It also teaches the rotational adjustment of the whole tuner-probe assembly and a "Micronetric screw for planarity Theta angle adjustment" — directly feeding claims 1e and 3.

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4. Claim 2 (rotating eccentric disc probe + two motors/gears + solid low-profile enclosure)

Claim 2 depends from claim 1 and adds: metallic disc probe, eccentric rotation about an axis perpendicular to the slabline's longitudinal axis, moved along the slabline by a first remotely controlled stepper motor and gear, rotated by a second, all inside a solid, low-profile enclosure.

As the earlier Prior Art section concluded, US 9,257,963 B1 is a potential single-reference anticipation of this subject matter, and on this record it is the pivot of the § 103 case as well:

Motivation to combine with the claim‑1 combination: simultaneous and independent — a PHOSITA seeking the low-profile attribute that eliminates the microscope conflict (the express object of '424) would substitute the known eccentric-disc probe of '963 (or '072/'984) for the tall vertical-axis slug probe of '457/'293. The substitute is a known element substituted for another known element to obtain the predictable result (lower stack height, same slide-screw tuning behavior) — MPEP 2143 rationale (B). The '424 specification supplies the motivation verbatim: "possible only when using low profile housing … and rotating tuning probes."

The one genuine gap: as the earlier section noted, claim 2's literal "moved along the slabline" and "longitudinal axis of the slabline" language is not cleanly met by the circular/planetary geometry of US 9,602,072 / US 9,899,984, where the probe is carried by a rotating radial arm rather than a carriage translating along a longitudinal slot. US 9,257,963 is the better anchor because it uses a conventional linear slabline with a translating carriage. If the owner narrows to "translated along the longitudinal slotted slabline," the challenger should be prepared to rely on '963 alone (or '963 in view of US 6,674,293's carriage-plus-probe architecture).

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5. Claim 3 (3-axis positioner; manual micrometric screws; rotatable wedge-form adapter)

Claim 3 recites: X parallel to the slabline, Y perpendicular, vertical Z; each axis controlled manually by micrometric screws; a wedge-form interface adapter attached to the positioner's vertical axis and to the tuner enclosure; and the adapter rotatable against the vertical axis.

Motivation: claim 3 is the enabling hardware for the claim‑1 angle-Φ matching. Once a PHOSITA accepts the '424 specification's own premise — that the tuner must sit "at the appropriate angle α, dictated by the wafer probe" and that wafer probes come in 30°/45°/90° variants — the natural implementation is a replaceable/rotatable inclined (wedge) interface on the Z-axis, exactly as US 9,653,332 teaches for probe orientation alignment and as US 8,933,707 teaches for planarity rotation. Selecting manual micrometer screws over motorized actuators on a 3-axis stage is a design choice whose only consequence is cost vs. automation, a predictable trade-off (§ 103; KSR).

Why this claim matters tactically: the earlier sections described claim 3 as one of the strongest on the face of the record. I agree it is the hardest to anticipate (no single reference discloses the rotatable wedge on a Z-axis), but it is not hard to render obvious — the wedge/tilt interface was a decades-old, thrice-disclosed micro-positioning expedient (US 9,653,332, US 2004/0227532, KR 10‑0269547), and the claim pairs it with a well-known 3-axis stage.

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6. Claim 4 (method: align and directly connect the two coaxial connectors)

Claim 4 is a method claim whose entire stated step is: the tuner test port's coaxial connector is "aligned with and connected directly to" the probe's coaxial connector.

The earlier section called claim 4 the strongest claim on the face of the record. For § 102 that is right — but for § 103 it is the weakest and most vulnerable claim, because US 6,998,836 discloses the identical physical acts in the identical order:

"Once the slotted airline (22) has reached the level of the wafer probe (21), and its axis direction coincides with the nominal probe axis ((32) FIG. 3) we join both components, i.e. probe and slotted airline…" — align, then directly connect.

"…machined with an internal thread in order to be able to receive and screw on the outside thread (54) of the barrel (55) of the coaxial connector of the probe… This way a perfect extension and coaxial RF contact between the inner flange (61) of the coaxial connector and the front surface of the slotted airline (22) is established."

"Method 2: Connecting Coplanar Probes: Coplanar wafer probes must be inserted into the front surface of the slotted airline directly, in order to take advantage of the low loss transition and eliminate all adapters, connectors and Teflon filled support washers and the associated loss."

US 8,933,707 supplies the same step in the rigid-connection context ("this creates a very low loss rigid connection between tuner and wafer probe"); US 2003/0107363 A1 is directed to the same "low loss links" end; and US 7,102,457 expressly rejects the cable alternative as "an inferior solution."

So claim 4 is obvious at minimum over US 6,998,836 alone, and is arguably anticipated by it if the preamble's "the low-profile … tuner of claim 1" is treated as a non-limiting statement of intended use (Kennametal v. Ingersoll, 542 F.3d 1303 (Fed. Cir. 2008)) — a construction question the patent owner will want to forestall, because if the preamble is limiting, claim 4's patentability collapses into claim 1's.

Note the trap for the patent owner: if claim 1 is held non-obvious only because of the wedge interface, claim 4 — which recites none of the wedge structure and only the align-and-connect step — is obvious regardless. Claim 4 adds nothing structural to claim 1.

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7. Claim 5 (tuning probe placed close to the test port)

Claim 5 depends from claim 2 and requires the tuning probe be placed close to the test port.

• US 10,686,239 B1 — "Slide screw tuners with offset tuning probes and method" — is the reference the earlier section identified for "having the protruding tuning probe placed closest to the test port." But see the prior-art disqualification in § 9: as a same-inventor reference with an effective filing date of 2018‑07‑18 and a publication/grant date of 2020‑06‑16, it likely fails § 102(a)(2) (which requires the patent to "name another inventor") and § 102(a)(1) (not published/issued before 2019‑10‑03). Do not build claim 5 on it without confirming the parent application's publication date.
• Independent § 103 route for claim 5: the reason to place the probe close to the test port is stated in the prior art itself. US 7,102,457: "the insertion loss of the RF connection link (21) between tuner and DUT … reduces the said reflection factor by twice the loss of said RF connection link." Any length of slabline between the tuning probe and the test port is part of that lossy link. A PHOSITA seeking maximal reflection factor at the DUT reference plane would therefore minimize the probe-to-test-port distance as a matter of predictable, well-understood electrical design — MPEP 2143 rationale (F) (design incentives) and (C) (known technique to improve a known device in the same way).
• Corroboration: US 6,998,836's whole architecture is "extend the slabline to the probe" — i.e., bring the tuner's RF structure closer to the DUT; and the '424 specification's own figures (FIG. 7 probe at area 701 near test port 70) and the pass-through of the same principle into the later, non-prior-art US 11,480,589 ("placing the tuning probe closest to the test port") show this is a straightforward design choice rather than a discovery.

Net: claim 5 is a narrow design-optimization claim and is the second-most-vulnerable claim after claim 4, provided the challenger builds it on the loss-minimization rationale rather than on US 10,686,239.

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8. The consolidated § 103 case, and the KSR/MPEP rationales

Because there is no PTAB proceeding and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel (per the earlier PTAB section), the full prior-art universe is available — but the § 325(d) constraint the earlier section flagged is real: the four examiner-cited references and the NPL are all the applicant's own. The strongest petition or invalidity contention is therefore built on the off-face art identified here, with the applicant's own admitted background used only as corroboration.

KSR alignment: this is a classic KSR fact pattern. Every element is a known mechanical or electromechanical component (slotted slabline, coaxial connector, 3-axis micro-positioner, wedge/tilt block, eccentric disc probe, stepper motor and gear) deployed in its known way, and the "invention" is a re-arrangement of known elements driven by a shared, express engineering objective — minimize insertion loss by eliminating the cable/adapter between the tuner test port and the wafer probe. KSR instructs that "the combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results," and that the presence of an express design incentive strengthens the obviousness case.

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9. Prior-art qualification flags — read before filing

These are the parts of the analysis where I am not at high confidence, and where a petition could be defeated on qualification rather than on merits.

1. US 10,686,239 B1 is probably NOT § 103 prior art against '424. Confirmed data: filed 2019‑09‑13 as a continuation of 16/038,431 filed 2018‑07‑18, granted 2020‑06‑16; inventor Christos Tsironis — the same sole inventor as '424. Under AIA § 102(a)(2) a US patent is prior art only if "the patent … names another inventor." Same inventor → § 102(a)(2) unavailable. And it was neither published nor issued before 2019‑10‑03, so § 102(a)(1) is unavailable too. Do not use it for claim 5 unless the parent's pre-2019 publication can be located. This directly qualifies the earlier Prior Art section's tentative treatment of that reference, which it had already flagged as unverified — and it means claim 5 must be attacked on the loss-minimization rationale, not on '239.
2. The "low-profile" and "close to the test port" limitations are relative/degree terms. They invite a § 112(b) indefiniteness argument — but that ground is not IPR-eligible under § 311(b). For § 103 purposes, a challenger must show the prior-art tuner (e.g., the vertical-axis-free '963/'072 devices) is fairly characterized as "low-profile," which the '424 specification's own admission supports.
3. The "inclined surface matching the angle Φ" limitation has no clean single-reference disclosure. US 9,653,332's block performs orientation alignment (its "Phi"); that is functionally analogous but not identical to the claimed connector-slope matching. The combination is still strong (with US 2004/0227532 and KR 10‑0269547 supplying third-party wedge/tilt art), but a petition should be drafted to avoid the appearance of impermissible hindsight — the wedge should be justified by the express 30°/45° probe convention ('457 + FormFactor NPL) that makes angle-matching the obvious design requirement, not by the '424 disclosure itself.
4. Common-inventor art limits the universe. Every one of the four face-cited patents and the most probative integration references (US 6,998,836, US 7,102,457, US 9,653,332, US 8,933,707, US 9,322,843) is Tsironis's own. They are all valid § 102(a)(1) art (each published/issued more than one year before 2019‑10‑03, so the § 102(b)(1)(A) grace exception does not apply) — but expect the owner to argue the examer's own-art cluster was already before the Office, triggering § 325(d). The counter is that these off-face references were not cited on the '424 face, so § 325(d) does not bite on them.
5. No secondary-considerations evidence is on record. No litigation, no licensing evidence, and no unexpected-results data surfaced in the earlier sections. Absent a nexus-backed showing (e.g., commercial success of Focus's on-wafer tuner attributable to the wedge interface specifically), the Graham factor 4 does not favor patentability on this record — but the burden allocation in an IPR means the petitioner need not disprove it up front.

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10. Bottom line for a § 103 challenge

• Claim 4 is obvious, and arguably anticipated, over US 6,998,836 alone. Its single affirmative step ("align and connect directly") is disclosed verbatim.
• Claim 1 is obvious over US 7,102,457 + US 6,998,836 + US 9,653,332, with motivation supplied by the references' own express statements of the insertion-loss/tuning-range problem and the 30°/45° probe convention.
• Claim 2 is obvious (and its rotating-disc subject matter arguably anticipated) over US 9,257,963, combined with the claim‑1 combination; US 9,602,072 and US 9,899,984 corroborate.
• Claim 3 is the hardest to reach but still obvious once the conventional wedge/tilt micro-positioning art (US 9,653,332; US 8,933,707; US 2004/0227532; KR 10‑0269547) is put in and the manual-screw limitation is treated as the design choice it is.
• Claim 5 is vulnerable on a loss-minimization rationale — not on US 10,686,239, which is likely disqualified as same-inventor art.
• Because there is no prior litigation and no IPR, nothing in the record constrains the challenger — but the § 315(b) one-year clock runs from service of any complaint asserting this patent, and the § 325(d) exposure of the face-cited self-art means the petition must lead with the off-face references identified here.

Explicitly unknown / not asserted: I have not located any non-Tsironis tuner-internals art (e.g., Maury Microwave or other vendors' slide-screw patents) that would meet the claim‑1/2 tuner limitations; the analysis above therefore necessarily leans on the applicant's own prior portfolio for those limbs. That is a real weakness of the case as currently assembled, and it is worth a dedicated search of third-party slide-screw tuner art before committing art to a petition.

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Confidence disclosure

• High confidence: the reference disclosures and their quoted language (US 6,998,836 / US 2003/0132759, US 7,102,457, US 8,933,707, US 9,653,332, US 9,257,963, US 9,602,072, US 9,899,984, US 6,674,293) and the conclusion that claims 1, 2 and 4 are obvious on the combinations given. The § 103 legal framing and the KSR/Graham/MPEP 2143 rationales are standard.
• Moderate confidence: claim 3's obviousness — the wedge limitation's analogy between US 9,653,332's orientation-alignment function and '424's connector-slope matching is an argument, not an exact identity, and it is the element most exposed to a hindsight objection. Claim 5's obviousness via the loss-minimization rationale is also an argument rather than a disclosure.
• Explicitly flagged as unknown/uncertain: the prior-art qualification of US 10,686,239 B1 (I assess it as likely disqualified, contrary to the earlier section's tentative use, and say so rather than assert it either way); the existence of third-party tuner-internals art; and any secondary-considerations evidence. I have not fabricated a reference, a date, or a claim-mapping citation anywhere in this section.