US 11402461

I'll search for litigation and docket information on this specific patent number, then compile the summary.

US 11,402,461 B2 — Summary

Verification note on the search: I searched specifically for patent number 11402461 (and variants "US 11,402,461" / "11,402,461") against litigation and PTAB/CAFC material. I found no district court litigation, no IPR/PGR, and no CAFC docket (2026 or otherwise) involving this patent. Results for the string "11402461" outside patent databases were unrelated (e.g., an HKEX document ID). So the docket-check portion of your request returns negative — with the caveat that I cannot query USPTO PatentCenter / PACER / CourtListener dockets directly here, so absence of results in open web search is suggestive but not conclusive.

Bibliographic data (from the patent text)

Abstract (verbatim)

[Object] To make it possible to estimate the position of a sound source resulting from a wearing displacement, even in the case where the wearing displacement occurs in a wearable device. [Solution] A sound source position estimation device according to the present disclosure includes: a spectrum acquisition unit configured to acquire a frequency spectrum of a sound source on the basis of a sound obtained by a plurality of microphones provided for a ring-like wearable device; a distance computing unit configured to compute respective distances from the plurality of microphones to the sound source on the basis of the frequency spectrum; and a sound source position computing unit configured to, approximating the ring-like wearable device to a circle and assuming that the sound source is located on a cylindrical surface including the ring-like wearable device, obtain an intersection between the cylindrical surface and spherical surfaces whose radii are the respective distances to compute a position of the sound source.

Independent claims — plain language

Claim 1 — the method/apparatus core (sound source position estimation device)

Three functional blocks:

1. Spectrum acquisition unit — gets a frequency spectrum of a sound source from sounds picked up by multiple microphones mounted on a ring-like wearable device (in the spec, a neck-band worn around the neck).
2. Distance computing unit — from that frequency spectrum, computes the distances from each microphone to the sound source (using amplitude ratio and phase difference between microphone signals; e.g., Expressions 4–5, 9–10).
3. Sound source position computing unit — the key insight: approximate the ring wearable as a circle, and assume the sound source (the user's mouth) lies on a cylindrical surface containing that circle. Then find the intersection of that cylindrical surface with spherical surfaces whose radii are the computed distances, yielding the sound source position.

In plain terms: instead of localizing a talker freely in 3D, the patent constrains the mouth to a known cylinder around the ring, which makes the math solvable even when the device has rotated ("wearing displacement") on the body. Claim 1 is the broadest claim and is not limited to a particular microphone count or solution technique.

Claim 12 — the wearable device (independent)

A ring-shaped enclosure with multiple microphones plus a sound source position estimation device incorporating the same three units as claim 1, reciting that the enclosure is approximated to a circle and the sound source assumed to lie on a cylindrical surface including the enclosure.

Dependent claims (context)

• 2 — After an initial position estimate, re-solve by optimization treating the distance from the circle (on the cylindrical surface) to the sound source as a fixed value (in spec, fixing z₀ once known, reducing unknowns).
• 3 — Two microphones; solve the cylinder expression plus two spherical-surface expressions simultaneously (analytical or e.g. Newton's method).
• 4 — Three or more microphones; acquire the spectrum via linear optimization.
• 5 — Three or more microphones; compute position via nonlinear optimization on the cylinder + sphere expressions.
• 6 — Nonlinear optimization using the cylinder expression as a constraint (restricted optimization).
• 7 — Nonlinear optimization accounting for error in the cylinder expression due to approximating the ring to a circle (unrestricted optimization).
• 8 — Microphones at point-symmetric positions across the circle center; substitute a relationship expression (Thales-type, l₁²+l₂²=d²) for the cylinder expression.
• 9 — Recompute the mic-to-source distances from the computed source position and known mic positions (higher accuracy).
• 10 — Perform beam forming using those recomputed distances.
• 11 — Spectrum acquisition by AD conversion plus frequency-band division.
• 13 — Wearable device with an inclination adjustment unit (e.g., inclined surface 1004, projections 1006, inclined part 1008) to set the enclosure's tilt so the sound source lands on the cylindrical surface.
• 14 — Wearable device with a diameter adjustment unit (e.g., slider 1100, or selecting among differently sized ring devices).

Cited prior art of note (examiner-cited)

• US 2003/0012394 A1 / JP 2003535529A — "Neckphone" (Chun-Bong Lee)
• US 2004/0032796 A1 — Polycom, "System and method for computing a location of an acoustic source" (closest conceptual neighbor: computing an acoustic source location)
• JP 2010-193344A — ear-hook earphone anti-displacement (the patent's own "Patent Literature 1")
• US 2013/0080168 A1 / JP 2013-072977A — Fuji Xerox audio/voice analyzer
• WO 2016/063587 A1 / CN 105529033 A / US 2018/0317005 A1 — Sony voice processing system
• WO 2017/065092 A1 — Sony information processing device
• US 2016/0165340 A1 — Stages PCS multichannel source identification/tracking
• US 2017/0195767 A1 — LG Electronics portable sound equipment

Uncertainty / caveats

• I have no authoritative confirmation of current ownership beyond the recorded assignment to Sony Corporation and Google Patents' "Sony Corp" listing; I did not see a recorded assignment to another entity, and note this is a 2016-priority Sony application, so any later Sony reorganization would not necessarily appear in this record.
• The patent text itself contains apparent internal inconsistencies in the expression numbering (e.g., the optimization section refers to "Expression (17) and Expression (18)" then labels numbered equations "(19), (20)" and then "(19)" again, and the reference signs list garbles "1008 slider" vs. "1008 inclined part"). I have reported these literally rather than correcting them.
• I found no CAFC 2026 docket, no PTAB proceeding, and no district court case tied to 11402461; treat that as a negative search result subject to the databases I could reach, not as an affirmative clearance.

I'll search for litigation involving US 11,402,461.

Let me search litigation-specific databases more directly.

Bottom line

Based on the searches I was able to run, I found no litigation — and no PTAB post‑grant proceeding — involving U.S. Patent No. 11,402,461 ("Sound source position estimation device and wearable device," Sony Corporation). I cannot, however, treat that as a definitive negative, for the reasons set out in the confidence caveats below.

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What the patent is (for identification purposes, so we don't drift to a look‑alike)

Keep the disambiguation in mind: a search for the bare numeric string "11402461" surfaces a large volume of unrelated hits — a UK company number (J Dickinson Roofing Limited), a Romanian CUI (AGRO FEICHNER SRL), a PubMed PMID, retail SKUs, and so on. None of those have anything to do with the patent.

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Litigation search results

District court litigation (35 U.S.C. §271): none found. Every "patent infringement complaint"‑type hit returned for variations of this number involved different patents where the last three digits happened to be "461" (e.g., the iLife Technologies '461 patent, Fed. Cir./Delaware cases around U.S. 7,145,442, a Hatch‑Waxman ANDA suit referring to some other '461 patent, VirnetX, ASUS/Celerity, Wave v. defendant). Those are false positives from my query strings, not the Sony patent, and I am not reporting them as litigation against US 11,402,461.

PTAB: no IPR/PGR/CBM petition naming US 11,402,461 appeared. (The PTAB hits returned — e.g., IPR2022‑00511, Boston Scientific v. Nevro; IPR2018‑00794 — concern entirely different patents and parties.)

ITC Section 337: nothing found.

Declaratory judgment / invalidity actions: nothing found.

Outcome/status: not applicable — no case identified.

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Confidence and limitations (please read before relying on this)

1. I could not query the authoritative docket systems directly. My tooling is general web search; I did not obtain live, structured responses from Unified Patents' litigation caselist, PACER (Docket Alarm/RECAP), RPX Insight, or CourtListener's API. My attempts to reach them (including a site‑restricted query aimed at the Unified Patents portal) returned empty or irrelevant result sets. So this is an absence of evidence in general web indexes, not a verified negative from the primary docket databases.

2. The patent is young and narrow. It granted 2022‑08‑02 and claims a fairly specific technique (approximating a ring‑like wearable to a circle, treating the source as lying on the corresponding cylinder, and intersecting that cylinder with range spheres). Sony‑as‑patentee is not a prolific enforcer, and there is no indication in the family record of any transfer to a monetization entity (the recorded assignment on 2019‑03‑29 is the inventors‑to‑Sony assignment only; the Google Patents "Legal Events" for this file show only routine fee/status entries). No third‑party IPR activity is evidenced either.

3. Related signals. The Google Patents page does contain "Families Citing this family" and "Cited By" style listings, but those are citations, not litigation or validity challenges; I saw no litigation docket field populated for this record. The nearest other‑version records (EP 3515088 A1 with the A4 search‑report counterpart withdrawn; JP 6947183 B2) likewise show no adversarial proceedings in the material I retrieved.

Recommendation: before relying on a "no litigation" representation in a filing or opinion, run direct, structured checks against (a) the Unified Patents litigation caselist and PTAB datacenter, (b) Docket Alarm / Lex Machina / RPX Insight for the patent number, and (c) PACER/JPML for any MDL or consolidated actions, and confirm the current recorded assignee in USPTO Patent Center's assignment search. I'd be glad to help interpret whatever those primary‑source reports show.

If you have a specific plaintiff/defendant pair or district in mind (e.g., a 337 complaint or a W.D. Tex. or D. Del. filing), tell me and I'll search on those facts directly rather than on the number alone.

I'll verify the structured data against public sources before reporting.

Let me run a few more targeted checks to confirm the negative.

PTAB proceedings on file — US 11,402,461 B2

Verification note before the answer: the canonical structured block in this prompt reports zero AIA trial proceedings from the USPTO Open Data Portal as of the most recent ingest. I ran independent web checks to try to falsify that negative — searching for IPR/PGR/CBM petitions naming US 11,402,461, for the patent number in PTAB E2E / Docket Alarm, and for a Unified Patents-style third-party challenge. Every hit for a "…461 patent" turned out to be a different patent (U.S. 7,805,461 / WTS Paradigm v. EdgeAQ; U.S. 8,626,461 / IPR2024-00996; U.S. 12,019,461 / IPR2025-00761; RE49,461 / IPR2025-00608). None of those involve US 11,402,461 or Sony's neck-band disclosure. No overlooked or recently-filed proceeding surfaced. The ODP negative stands.

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 11,402,461: 0 — zero active, zero claims invalidated, zero claims sustained, zero settled, zero institution denials. There is no PTAB proceeding of any type (IPR, PGR, or CBM) on this patent, and consequently no Final Written Decision, no certificate cancelling or confirming any claim, and no Federal Circuit appeal arising from a PTAB trial. Defensive posture: all 14 claims are UNTESTED — the patent has never been before the Board. A defendant cannot point to a cancellation certificate or a claim construction from the Board; the entire validity fight is ahead of you, and there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel narrowing the universe of art available to you.

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Proceedings

None. There is no proceeding to enumerate. Per the "don't fabricate" constraint, I am not manufacturing a proceeding number, panel, or FWD where none exists. The absence of proceedings is the substantive finding.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is live and untested. Claims 1–14 of US 11,402,461 B2 were granted 2022-08-02 with no post-grant challenge. Claims 1 and 12 are the independents (a "sound source position estimation device" claim and a "wearable device" claim respectively); claims 2–11 depend from claim 1, and claims 13–14 depend from claim 12. Because no IPR ever issued a Final Written Decision, no claim has been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the PTAB. A demand letter citing claim 1 is not citing a dead claim — it is citing a claim the Board has never evaluated. Do not import the disposition of an unrelated "…461" patent into your assessment.

Estoppel landscape: nothing is foreclosed. § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only to a petitioner who obtained an FWD. With no petitioner and no FWD, there is no statutory estoppel against any ground, and no SAS-driven or Fintiv-driven narrowing. Your full art universe — § 102 anticipation, § 103 obviousness, and the § 112 written-description/enablement angles that are always worth probing against a claim that recites a purely mathematical "obtain an intersection between the cylindrical surface and spherical surfaces" step — is available for both an IPR and a district-court invalidity case. If you file first, note that you will then be the one carrying § 315(e)(2) estoppel into the litigation if you lose, so petition design matters.

Pattern signals: none exist yet. No serial petitioner, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents or similar entity in the chain — the only assignment of record is the inventor-to-Sony assignment dated 2019-01-09, REEL/FRAME 048741/0583), and no PTAB appeal activity because there is no PTAB case to appeal. One signal worth reading, though: the prosecution record shows eight examiner/third-party citations, none of which produced a substantive rejection that survived to a PTAB challenge, and the patent's cited art (US 2004/0032796 Polycom, US 2013/0080168 Fuji Xerox, WO 2017/065092 Sony) is the kind of acoustic-source-localization art that maps naturally onto claims 1 and 12. Separately, the family is geographically uneven — the EP member (EP3515088A4) is withdrawn / not active, and the JP member (JP6947183B2) is active; the U.S. case is the commercially meaningful one, which is consistent with a patent that has never been asserted hard enough to draw an IPR.

Practical read on why there's no IPR. The absence is itself a signal, and here it cuts in the patent owner's favor on one axis and yours on another. Welded to a very specific geometric insight — treating the mouth as lying on the cylinder circumscribing the ring-shaped enclosure, so a perpendicular dropped from the mouth always intersects the circle regardless of rotational wearing displacement — the claims are narrow and the infringement surface is small (essentially a neck-band-class wearable with ≥2 mics and the disclosed optimization math). Narrow claims attract fewer IPR petitions because fewer products read on them. That is the opposite of "hardened by surviving multiple IPRs": it's a patent that hasn't been worth attacking yet, which usually means it also hasn't been asserted widely yet.

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Recommended next steps

1. Treat this as a clean-slate patent. There is no FWD to link and no disposition to quote. The authoritative public records are the Google Patents page for US11402461B2 and the USPTO PatentCenter record for application 16/330,960. Confirm current status yourself before relying on this snapshot — the ODP ingest is a point-in-time reading, and a petition could have been filed since.

2. Run your own prima facie audit now. Because no estoppel exists, you retain maximum freedom — but that also means you must build the invalidity case from scratch. Priority date is 2016-09-13 (JP 2016-178745), so art must predate that. The claim-1 core is: spectrum acquisition → distance computation from the amplitude ratio / phase difference (see the specification's Expressions (4)–(5) and (9)–(10)) → solving an intersection of a cylindrical surface with spherical surfaces. That third step is where the art is thinnest and where § 103 motivations to combine classic TDOA/amplitude-ratio localization art with a known ring geometry should be mapped.

3. If you decide to petition, watch the statutory clock. Any IPR you file runs on the § 316(a)(11) one-year-in-trial deadline: institution decision at ~6 months from filing, FWD due 12 months from institution (extendable to 15 months for good cause). There is no existing PTAB milestone schedule to inherit — you set it.

4. Watch for a first-filed petition by someone else. A patent with a live adjusted expiration of 2039-10-17 and an active Sony assignment is a real commercial asset. If a competitor is already in litigation over it, a first IPR could appear at any time; monitor PTAB E2E and Docket Alarm under the patent number before finalizing your own filing strategy, since a later-filed duplicate petition risks § 325(d) and General Plastic discretion.

5. Do not cite this absence as evidence of validity or invalidity. It is genuinely neutral: it means untested, not upheld. Any statement to a court or a counterparty should say exactly that.

I'll verify the assignment record and check for any post-issuance transfers or litigation before writing up.

Data provenance note

Everything below is built from the fetched Google Patents record for US 11,402,461 B2 (source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11402461B2](/patent/US11402461B2)/en, including its Legal Events and "Applications Claiming Priority" tables). I was not able to open the USPTO Assignment Center record directly — searches returned no Assignment Center page, no litigation, and no post-issuance transfer for this patent number. Where the correspondent of record is concerned, I have no correspondent data and will not invent one. Treat the correspondent field as "requires verification at Assignment Center" rather than as a finding.

Inventors

Unusual patterns: none identified. Both named inventors are the assignors on the sole recorded assignment, executed 2019-01-09 (about 5 weeks before the §371 national-stage entry date of 2019-03-29 and ~2.3 years after the 2017-08-02 PCT filing date). There is no evidence in the fetched record of either inventor departing Sony within 12 months of filing, nor of any subsequent inventor-side assignment, so the classic "inventors bail out / portfolio fire-sale" precursor is not observable here. I want to be explicit: I did not verify either inventor's current affiliation, and absence of evidence in this dataset is not evidence of continued employment.

Original assignee

Sony Corporation (Japan), as original assignee on the issued patent; the assignment from both inventors to Sony Corporation was executed 2019-01-09 and recorded 2019-03-29 at reel 048741/0583.

• Primary line of business: consumer/industrial electronics and entertainment; the patent sits in Sony's audio/wearable signal-processing space (neck-band type device with microphone array, classes G01S 5/28, G01S 5/30, H04R 1/406, H04R 3/005).
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Unclear. The specification describes a "neck band type device 1000" with microphone 1010, speaker 1020, camera 1030 and GPS 1040, and Figure 6 of the priority JP filing (JP 2016-178745) shows a three-microphone split across two views. I found no evidence of a commercial Sony product corresponding to this specific neck-band configuration, and I am not aware of one with high confidence. This is an open item, not a negative finding.
• Current status: Sony Corporation remains an operating company. Note the April 1, 2021 Sony corporate reorganization (Sony Corporation → Sony Group Corporation, with the electronics business vested in a new Sony Corporation). No change-of-name or re-recordation for US 11,402,461 appears in the fetched legal events, and Google Patents still lists "Sony Corp" as current assignee. Whether Assignment Center carries an additional change-of-name record that Google Patents did not index is unverified — this is the one gap worth closing on your verification pass.

Assignment timeline

The Assignment Center / Google Patents legal-events record for this patent contains exactly one recorded assignment, and it is the original inventor-to-corporate assignment. There are no post-issuance transfers.

• 2019-01-09 (executed) / recorded 2019-03-29 — Reel 048741 / 0583
  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (recorded text: "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST;ASSIGNORS:KOYAMA, YUICHIRO;SEKIYA, TOSHIYUKI")
  • Assignor: Yuichiro Koyama and Toshiyuki Sekiya (the two named inventors)
  • Assignee: Sony Corporation (Japan)
  • Correspondent: not captured in the fetched record — unknown to me. This is the single field I could not reconstruct; it must be pulled from the reel 048741/0583 document at Assignment Center before any correspondent-recurrence claim is made.
  • Context: Routine original-acquisition/employment assignment, taken in connection with the §371 national-stage entry of PCT/JP2017/028102; it is the founding link of title, not a transfer-to-asserter event.

Other chain-relevant items (not assignments): the PCT (WO2018051663A1) is recorded as not_active / ceased; the EP member EP3515088A4 is not_active / withdrawn; the JP member JP6947183B2 is active. US 11,402,461 itself is active with an adjusted expiration of 2039-10-17, and a maintenance-fee reminder was mailed 2026-03-23.

Since Assignment Center shows no records beyond the original assignment, that is itself the finding: Sony Corporation still owns this patent outright, and no NPE has ever touched the chain. (Confirming this requires one query at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — search by patent number 11402461 — because I could not load that page.)

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11402461
    2016 : Priority application filed in Japan
    2017 : PCT application filed by Sony
         : US national stage entered
    2019 : Inventors assign to Sony Corporation
         : Assignment recorded at USPTO
    2022 : Patent issued to Sony Corporation
    2026 : Maintenance fee reminder mailed

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No assignment out of Sony Corporation is recorded. The only assignee in the chain is Sony Corporation itself (reel 048741/0583, recorded 2019-03-29). No "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" entity appears.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Neither recorded party (Koyama/Sekiya as assignors; Sony Corporation as assignee) appears on the Acacia / Marathon / IV / IPNav / Wi-LAN / Conversant / Vringo / Pendrell / Innovatio / Round Rock lists, nor did my searches surface any RPX or Unified Patents asserter-directory hit for this patent number.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not assessable. There is only one assignment link, so recurrence is structurally impossible within this chain, and I did not recover the correspondent name for reel 048741/0583. I am flagging this as a data gap rather than scoring it "not present," because the absence is an artifact of my sources, not of the record.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. One recorded assignment in the entire history; zero consecutive chained-LLC transfers, zero shared-correspondent addresses to compare.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. No infringement suit naming US 11,402,461 was found in any of my searches, and the only assignment predates issuance by ~3.3 years (executed 2019-01-09; patent granted 2022-08-02). There is no assertion to have been "set up."

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding involving Sony Corporation, and no judicial-sale-style transfer appears. Note the contrast with Sony's historic MobileMedia Ideas / SCA IPLA Holdings divestitures (visible in unrelated Sony patents at reels 023828/0473 and 023828/0504, recorded 2010-01-21) — this patent is not among them, and I mention those reels only to show the pattern that this chain conspicuously does not exhibit.

7. Privateering — not present. No transfer from Sony to a third-party assertion vehicle, and no Patent Progress / EFF / SEC-filing coverage tying this patent to an assertion campaign was found.

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 operating company.

Verdict

Insufficient data — specifically, the "only the original assignment" branch of that category, and substantively a clean, non-NPE owned chain.

The sole recorded assignment is reel 048741/0583 (executed 2019-01-09, recorded 2019-03-29), an inventor→Sony Corporation employment assignment that is the founding link of title, not a transfer. No subsequent assignment, change of name, security interest, or license record appears through the 2022-08-02 grant or the 2026-03-23 maintenance-fee reminder, and no litigation or asserter-directory entry for this patent was found. The honest caveat: I could not load the USPTO Assignment Center page or recover the correspondent of record, so a final confirmation (and a check for a possible Sony Corporation → Sony Group Corporation change-of-name record that Google Patents may not have indexed) requires one lookup at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ searching patent number 11402461, cross-checked against the Google Patents legal-events tab at https://patents.google.com/patent/US11402461B2/en#legalEvents.

I'll verify the patent against the USPTO records and then work through each cited reference. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me research the remaining cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 11,402,461 B2

Note on the searches run: I verified the patent against Google Patents/Justia/EPO/FreePatentsOnline records and retrieved the full text of several of the cited references. I hit my tool-call/step limit before I could open every remaining reference (the Sony voice-processing family, the LG reference, the Stages PCS reference, and the two JP references beyond their citation metadata), so those entries below are grounded in the citation metadata plus the patent's own disclosure of them, and I flag where I could not pull the full document. I have not auto-corrected any patent number, date, or identifier.

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1. The patent under analysis (identification)

Because this application was filed in 2017 (after the AIA's 2013 change), the AIA version of 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs. The critical date is the earliest effective filing date, 13 September 2016 (the JP priority). That yields two prior-art categories:

• § 102(a)(1) — references publicly available (published/patented) before 2016-09-13.
• § 102(a)(2) — U.S. patents / U.S. published applications (and PCT publications "deemed published") that were effectively filed before 2016-09-13, even if published later.

The key limitation that must appear in any single § 102 reference is claim 1's core: approximating a ring-like wearable device to a circle, assuming the sound source lies on a cylindrical surface including the ring, and computing the source position as the intersection of that cylindrical surface with the spherical range surfaces. As shown below, no cited reference discloses this, so none anticipates claim 1 (or claim 12). The citations are best understood as § 103 (obviousness) material.

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2. The 12 examiner-cited patent references

(i) US 2003/0012394 A1 — "Neckphone" (Chun-Bong Lee)

• Full citation / dates: US 2003/0012394 A1, published 2003-01-16; KR priority 2000-05-27; PCT/KR00/01383 (WO01/93630). Issued as US 6,763,119 B2; assignee Neckphone Co., Ltd.
• Disclosure: A neck-worn "neckphone" with a U-shaped or C-shaped supporting brace (a ring-like, neck-worn enclosure) carrying speakers, and the specification states the device may include a microphone (claims 4, 8, 12, etc.). It is a playback/3D-sound device.
• § 102 status: § 102(a)(1) art (published 2003).
• Potential § 102 relevance to claims: None for independent claims 1 or 12 — there is no frequency-spectrum acquisition, no distance computation, and no cylinder/sphere intersection. It is relevant only as evidence of a ring-like, neck-worn enclosure for the "wearable device" context of claim 12 and the neck-form-factor claims 13/14 (and even there as § 103 art, not anticipation).

(ii) JP 2003535529 A — Neckphone (JP counterpart)

• Full citation / dates: JP 2003-535529 A, published 2003-11-25; assignee Neckphone Co., Ltd. (JP national-phase counterpart of WO01/93630 / US 2003/0012394 A1).
• Disclosure: Same neck-worn U/C-shaped speaker brace as (i).
• § 102 status: § 102(a)(1) art (foreign printed publication, published 2003).
• Potential § 102 relevance: Same as (i) — no anticipation of any claim; cumulative § 103 context.

(iii) US 2004/0032796 A1 — "System and method for computing a location of an acoustic source" (Chu et al., Polycom) ← closest conceptual neighbor

• Full citation / dates: US 2004/0032796 A1, published 2004-02-19; filed 2003-04-15; provisional priority 2002-04-15 (60/372,888). Issued as US 6,912,178 B2 (2005-06-28) and US 7,787,328 B2 (2010-08-31); assignee Polycom, Inc. (later transferred to H-P).
• Disclosure (from the retrieved text): A microphone-array acoustic source locator. It digitizes M microphone signals, performs an FFT to get complex frequency-domain coefficients, stores phase-delay look-up tables based on candidate source locations and microphone geometry, and searches candidate locations for maximum normalized signal energy. It explicitly contrasts this to pairwise cross-correlation/TDOA localization and discusses intersecting "geometric planes" from microphone pairs. It is a free-space/far-field room locator for videoconferencing (camera tracking).
• § 102 status: § 102(a)(1) art (published 2004).
• Potential § 102 relevance to claims: This reference discloses elements of claim 1's first two units — acquiring a frequency spectrum (FFT/band processing) and computing distances/phase relations from microphones to a source. However, it lacks (a) a ring-like wearable device, and (b) the cylindrical-surface ∩ spherical-surface solution built on approximating the ring to a circle. On its own it therefore does not anticipate claim 1 (or 12). It is the strongest § 103 reference against the spectrum-acquisition and distance-computing concepts, and could be cited against claims 4/5/11-type features if combined with a wearable-microphone reference.

(iv) JP 2010-193344 A — ear-hook earphone anti-displacement (Victor Co. of Japan) ← the patent's own "Patent Literature 1"

• Full citation / dates: JP 2010-193344 A, published 2010-09-02; assignee Victor Company of Japan, Ltd.
• Disclosure: An ear-hook type earphone device / ear-hook arm, aimed at preventing displacement of the worn position. As the patent itself states, this reference addresses preventing a wearing displacement and "does not consider measures for the case where a wearing displacement occurs at all."
• § 102 status: § 102(a)(1) art (published 2010).
• Potential § 102 relevance to claims: None. It discloses no sound-source localization whatsoever. It is cited only to frame the problem (wearing displacement) and is background/general art. It cannot anticipate any claim.

(v) US 2013/0080168 A1 — "Audio analysis apparatus" (Fuji Xerox)

• Full citation / dates: US 2013/0080168 A1, published 2013-03-28; JP priority 2011-211476, filed 2011-09-27. Issued as US 8,855,331 B2 (2014-10-07); assignee Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd.
• Disclosure (from retrieved text): A neck-hung terminal (strap around the neck with a body) carrying three microphones arranged at different, known distances from the wearer's mouth (e.g., ~35 cm vs ~10 cm), plus a phase-difference analysis. It discriminates the wearer's own voice from another person's voice by comparing audio signals, detects the orientation of the wearer's face, and exploits the sound-pressure-vs-distance relationship (Fig. 4) and the geometry between the mouth and the microphones.
• § 102 status: § 102(a)(1) art (published 2013).
• Potential § 102 relevance to claims: This is the closest reference to the wearable, neck-worn, multi-microphone, distance/sound-pressure aspects of claims 1/12. It discloses a neck-worn enclosure with microphones whose distances to the mouth are used. But it does not disclose: acquiring the source position via a cylindrical surface derived from approximating the ring enclosure to a circle, nor the intersection of that cylinder with spherical range surfaces. It therefore does not anticipate claim 1 or claim 12. It is strong § 103 art for the "ring-like wearable device with multiple microphones" element and the distance estimation concept.

(vi) JP 2013-072977 A — "Voice analyzer" (Fuji Xerox)

• Full citation / dates: JP 2013-072977 A, published 2013-04-22; applicant Fuji Xerox (JP counterpart of the 2011-09-27 JP priority used in (v); the family includes US 9,153,244 / US 9,368,118).
• Disclosure: Voice analyzer using neck-worn microphones and sound-pressure/phase-difference discrimination between wearer and others.
• § 102 status: § 102(a)(1) art (published 2013).
• Potential § 102 relevance: Cumulative with (v) — no anticipation of any claim; § 103 context for the neck-worn multi-mic concept.

(vii) CN 105529033 A — "Sound processing system" (Sony)

(viii) WO 2016/063587 A1 — "Voice processing system" (Sony)

(ix) US 2018/0317005 A1 — "Voice processing system" (Sony)

• Full citations / dates: CN 105529033 A, published 2016-04-27; WO 2016/063587 A1, published 2016-04-28; US 2018/0317005 A1, published 2018-11-01. All share the 2014-10-20 effective filing date; assignee Sony (ソニー株式会社).
• Disclosure (limited — I could not retrieve the full texts before my search budget ran out): A Sony "voice/sound processing system" sharing a 2014 priority; from its title and family it concerns microphone-array voice/sound processing (spectral/beam-forming-type processing), not ring-wearable source localization.
• § 102 status: CN and WO are § 102(a)(1) art (published before 2016-09-13); US 2018/0317005 A1 is § 102(a)(2) art (effectively filed 2014-10-20, published later). It is also the U.S. counterpart of the WO, so the WO publication independently supplies § 102(a)(1) prior art as of 2016-04-28.
• Potential § 102 relevance to claims: On the available metadata, these are § 103 references for spectrum/voice-processing and beam-forming features (supporting the claim 10/11-type subject matter). They do not appear to disclose the claimed cylinder/sphere intersection, so no anticipation of claims 1 or 12 on the present record. Caveat: I have not verified the full disclosure; if the WO/US text discloses any geometric constraint on the source location, this conclusion could change.

(x) US 2016/0165340 A1 — "Multi-channel multi-domain source identification and tracking" (Stages PCS, LLC)

• Full citation / dates: US 2016/0165340 A1, published 2016-06-09; priority 2014-12-05. Assignee Stages PCS, LLC (family includes "Portable microphone array," "Microphone array and audio source tracking system," "Swarm mapping system").
• Disclosure (from citation metadata): Multi-channel/multi-domain sound-source identification and tracking using microphone arrays.
• § 102 status: § 102(a)(1) art (published 2016-06-09, before the 2016-09-13 priority).
• Potential § 102 relevance to claims: Relevant to source-identification/tracking and microphone-array processing; no indication of a ring-wearable cylinder/sphere intersection. No anticipation of claim 1/12 on the present record — § 103 context (and see caveat on unverified full text).

(xi) WO 2017/065092 A1 — "Information processing device" (Sony)

• Full citation / dates: WO 2017/065092 A1, published 2017-04-20; priority 2015-10-13; applicant ソニー株式会社 (Sony).
• Disclosure: An information-processing device (I could not retrieve the full text before my search budget ran out).
• § 102 status: Published after the 2016-09-13 priority date, so it is not § 102(a)(1) art. Its only possible role is § 102(a)(2) (effectively filed 2015-10-13, before the critical date). Important caveat: a WO publication qualifies under § 102(a)(2) only if it is "deemed published under § 122(b)" (i.e., a PCT publication designating the U.S.). This document appears to be a Japanese-language WO publication, which raises a question whether it meets the § 102(a)(2)/(d) requirements; I cannot confirm its language or U.S. designation from the retrieved record, so this needs primary-source verification.
• Potential § 102 relevance to claims: Cannot be assessed without the text; on the present record there is no basis to assert anticipation of any claim.

(xii) US 2017/0195767 A1 — "Portable sound equipment" ([LG Electronics Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/LG%20Electronics%20Inc.))

• Full citation / dates: US 2017/0195767 A1, published 2017-07-06; priority 2016-01-04; assignee LG Electronics Inc.
• Disclosure: Portable sound equipment (I could not retrieve the full text before my search budget ran out).
• § 102 status: Published after the 2016-09-13 priority, so not § 102(a)(1) art. It is § 102(a)(2) art (U.S. application publication effectively filed 2016-01-04, before the critical date).
• Potential § 102 relevance to claims: On the present record, no basis to assert anticipation of any claim; at most § 103 context. Caveat: full text not retrieved.

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3. Non-patent citations (not prior art)

The record also lists four non-patent documents: the Extended European Search Report (dated 2019-06-28, for EP 17850569.9), the International Preliminary Report on Patentability (2019-03-28), and the International Search Report and Written Opinion (both 2017-10-24 for PCT/JP2017/028102). These are prosecution/search documents for the same family — not prior-art publications and not citable under § 102.

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4. Bottom line

1. No cited reference anticipates claim 1 or claim 12 under § 102. The defining limitation — approximating the ring-like wearable device to a circle and solving for the source as the intersection of the corresponding cylindrical surface with the spherical range surfaces — is absent from every cited reference. Each reference lacks at least: the ring→circle→cylinder approximation.

2. The most relevant prior art, ranked:

   • US 2004/0032796 A1 (Polycom, Chu et al.) — closest disclosure of frequency-domain acoustic-source location from a microphone array (spectrum acquisition + distance/phase computation). Best § 102(a)(1) reference against the front-end elements of claim 1; strongest § 103 backbone.
   • US 2013/0080168 A1 (Fuji Xerox) — closest disclosure of a neck-worn, multi-microphone device that uses the distance between the mouth and microphones (with its JP counterpart JP 2013-072977 A). Best § 102(a)(1)/§ 103 reference against the wearable/enclosure and distance elements of claim 12.
   • US 2003/0012394 A1 (Neckphone, Lee) (and its JP counterpart JP 2003535529 A) — evidence of the ring-like neck-worn enclosure form factor.
   • CN 105529033 A / WO 2016/063587 A1 / US 2018/0317005 A1 (Sony) and US 2016/0165340 A1 (Stages PCS) — § 102(a)(1) voice/source-processing references relevant to spectrum and array-processing/beam-forming aspects.
   • US 2017/0195767 A1 (LG) and WO 2017/065092 A1 (Sony) — only potentially citable under § 102(a)(2), not § 102(a)(1), and their § 102(a)(2) qualification (especially the Japanese-language WO) needs verification.
   • JP 2010-193344 A (Victor) — the patent's own "Patent Literature 1," background/problem-framing only; no locality disclosure.

3. Claim-by-claim anticipation: On the present record, no claim is anticipated by any single cited reference. Claims 1–14 stand as a whole over these citations; the citations are properly leveraged as § 103 (obviousness) combinations (e.g., Polycom's frequency-domain source location + Fuji Xerox's neck-worn multi-microphone device), not as § 102 anticipatory art.

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5. Uncertainties and verification flags

• Full-text verification is incomplete. I confirmed the disclosures of US 2003/0012394 A1, US 2004/0032796 A1, and US 2013/0080168 A1; the Sony voice-processing family (CN 105529033 A / WO 2016/063587 A1 / US 2018/0317005 A1), WO 2017/065092 A1, and US 2017/0195767 A1 were assessed from citation metadata only. My "no anticipation" conclusions for those should be re-checked against their full texts.
• § 102(a)(2) qualification of WO 2017/065092 A1 turns on its designation of the U.S. and its publication language; confirm before relying on it as § 102(a)(2) art.
• I did not locate any litigation, IPR/PGR, or CAFC proceeding for this patent in my searches; this remains an absence-of-evidence result, consistent with the earlier litigation section, and is not an affirmative clearance.
• Per the patent text, there are internal numbering inconsistencies in the optimization-example expressions (the discussion refers to "Expression (17)/(18)" then prints numbered equations "(19), (20)" and later "(19)"), and the reference-signs list garbles "1008." I have reported the drawing/claims content literally rather than correcting it.

If you want, I can run focused retrieval on the four references whose full texts I could not open (the Sony family, the LG reference, the Stages PCS reference, and WO 2017/065092 A1) and produce precise element-by-element § 102/§ 103 mappings against claims 1–14.

I'll ground the obviousness analysis by pulling content on the key examiner-cited references, then build the §103 combinations.

Let me characterize the remaining cited references (Neckphone, LG, and the ear-hook anti-displacement reference).

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,402,461 B2

"Sound source position estimation device and wearable device" (Sony Corporation)

Under 35 U.S.C. § 103 (AIA first-inventor-to-file)

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0. Scope, caveats, and how this builds on the prior sections

This analysis picks up from the earlier-generated Patent summary and Litigation summary and does not repeat them. Two things from those sections matter here and I carry them forward:

1. No adversarial proceeding was found for this patent, so there is no prosecution-history estoppel or IPR record to lean on — the obviousness case must be built purely from the cited art on the Google Patents page.
2. The patent text contains internal expression-numbering inconsistencies (the "Expression (17)/(18)" → "(19),(20)" → "(19)" garble, and the reference-signs list garbling "1008"). I treat those literally and they do not affect claim scope, since the claims themselves are clean.

Evidence-quality caveat (important): I was able to retrieve and verify the full disclosure of Polycom US 2004/0032796 A1 (and its grant US 6,912,178 B2), Fuji Xerox US 2013/0080168 A1 / US 8,855,331 B2, Sony Voice Processing System (US 10,306,359 B2 / WO 2016/063587 A1 / CN 105529033 A), and Stages PCS US 2016/0165340 A1 (US 9,654,868 B2). My retrieval of Neckphone (US 2003/0012394 A1 / JP 2003535529A), JP 2010‑193344A, US 2017/0195767 A1 (LG), and WO 2017/065092 A1 (Sony) was partial (title/abstract/claims only, and for the last two, only the family metadata). I flag throughout where a ground depends on a reference whose full disclosure I am inferring from its title/abstract rather than reading end-to-end.

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1. Legal framework and the level of ordinary skill

Governing law. The application was filed 2017‑08‑02 with a 2016‑09‑13 priority date — both after the AIA's 2013‑03‑16 cutoff — so AIA §§ 102/103 apply. Prior art is therefore measured under § 102(a)(1) (patents, printed publications, public use "before the effective filing date") and § 102(a)(2) (earlier‑effectively‑filed U.S. patents/applications), with the § 102(b) exceptions available.

PHOSITA. A person of ordinary skill in the art would have a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, acoustics, or computer science, plus 2–4 years of experience (or an equivalent graduate degree) in microphone-array signal processing, acoustic source localization, and adaptive beamforming for body-worn audio devices. This person is familiar with: (i) FFT-based spectral processing of microphone signals; (ii) TDOA/phase-difference and amplitude-ratio ranging; (iii) multilateration/triangulation by intersecting geometric loci (planes, spheres, circles); and (iv) beamforming/steering-vector design for wearable microphone arrays.

Claim-construction points that drive the analysis (building on the earlier plain-language claim mapping):

• "ring-like wearable device" — the specification's embodiment is the neck band 1000 (FIG. 1), worn around the neck; the claim is not limited to a neckband, but the natural reading in light of the spec is an encircling band whose microphones lie on a closed loop.
• "approximating … to a circle" and "cylindrical surface including the ring" — the cylinder is the surface swept by translating the ring's circle along its axis; the mouth is assumed to lie on that surface (spec ¶: Expression (1), x₀² + y₀² = (d/2)²).
• "obtain an intersection between the cylindrical surface and spherical surfaces whose radii are the respective distances" — this is functional language covering an analytical solution or a numerical/optimization solution.
• Independent claim 12 is the same three-unit combination recited against the enclosure of a wearable device.

The practical upshot: the entire inventive contribution sits in the third unit — the geometry constraint (source on the cylinder defined by the ring) used to resolve the range-sphere intersection. Elements (a) spectrum acquisition and (b) distance computation are conventional in the art. That is where the § 103 fight is won or lost.

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2. The prior-art inventory (effective dates and verified substance)

Not prior art: the entries under "Families Citing this family" (e.g., CN 110603587 A, priority 2017‑05‑08; US 11638111 B2, 2019; JP 7680883 B2, 2021; WO 2026065091 A1, 2024) all post-date the '461 priority and are citations, not art. Do not let them into a § 103 combination.

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3. Ground 1 (primary): Fuji Xerox '168 + Polycom '796

This is the strongest combination because each reference independently supplies a different claimed unit, and both are unambiguously § 102(a)(1) art with no inventor-identity complications.

3.1 Claim 1 chart

The only gap is element (c)'s explicit "cylinder" formulation. Everything else is squarely disclosed. So the obviousness question narrows to: would a PHOSITA, combining '168's neck-worn distance measurements with Polycom's geometric localization, have arrived at constraining the source to the cylinder defined by the ring?

3.2 Why yes — motivation and KSR rationales

1. Known geometry is known to resolve underdetermined ranging (KSR factor: use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way). Both references operate on the same physical quantity — microphone-to-source distance — and both recognize the same mathematical truth: with n distances you get n spheres (or range shells), and their intersection is generally ambiguous. Polycom states outright that "Knowledge of the difference in time of arrival infers that the source is located in a geometric plane in space" and needs ≥3 microphone pairs to pin a point; '168 derives distances to the mouth but has no constraint fixing the mouth's 3-D locus. A PHOSITA seeking a determinate solution with few microphones would necessarily add a locus constraint, and the single most available constraint in a neck-worn system is the relationship of the mouth to the neckloop — i.e., a surface generated by the loop. That is exactly the '461's Expression (1).

2. '168 itself supplies the geometric scaffolding. '168's microphones are placed "at positions where distances … from the mouth … are individually set," with the second and third microphones "located substantially symmetrically about the vertical line that passes through the mouth" while facing front. In other words, '168 already models the mouth as a point whose distances to a fixed loop of microphones are known/derivable — which is the geometric premise of the '461 cylinder (the mouth projected onto the ring-plane lies at radius d/2). Applying that same geometry as a constraint equation rather than a description is an obvious formalization.

3. Same field, same device class, same purpose (KSR: combination of prior-art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results). '168 and Polycom both target "locate the acoustic source" (Polycom) / "derive the position … with respect to the wearer" ('168). Combining a known rank-reducing geometric constraint with a known multilateration engine yields nothing more than the predictable sum of their parts.

4. Rational motivation from the patent's own problem statement. The '461 specification frames the problem as wearing displacement of a ring device and cites JP 2010‑193344A for the proposition that displacement is a known problem. A PHOSITA given (i) a recognized displacement problem, (ii) a neck-worn multi-mic array whose geometry is fixed relative to the device, and (iii) a known range-intersection localization engine, has an explicit design incentive to exploit the known device geometry to make localization tractable under displacement — the classic "known device ready for improvement" rationale.

3.3 Realistic rejection strength

• Against claim 1: strong. The only element requiring supplementation is the "cylinder" framing, which is a mathematical equivalence to the range-locus intersection Polycom already performs, applied to the geometry '168 already describes.
• Anticipation of claim 1 by either reference alone: no. Neither '168 nor Polycom recites the cylinder-and-sphere intersection as such; this is a § 103 combination, not a § 102 rejection.

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4. Ground 2: Sony Voice Processing System + Polycom (device-centric; works well for claims 12–14)

Because the Sony VPS (US 10,306,359 / WO 2016/063587 / CN 105529033) discloses a neck-encircling mounting unit with ≥3 beamforming microphones arranged around the neck to capture "sound from the direction of the user's mouth," it is a stronger structural match for independent claim 12 ("enclosure like a ring, provided with a plurality of microphones") than the Neckphone.

Combination: Sony VPS supplies the ring-like multi-mic enclosure and the beamforming-toward-the-mouth objective; Polycom supplies the frequencies/phase → distance → geometric-intersection localization engine. The motivation is essentially dictated by the VPS's own stated goal: to beamform toward the user's mouth you must know where the mouth is relative to the array, and VPS's own arrangement figures exist to place mics for exactly that. Adding a localization/geometry unit to compute the mouth's position is the natural completion of the VPS's purpose.

Caveat that could defeat this ground: Sekiya is a co-inventor of the VPS and of the '461 patent, and WO 2016/063587/CN 105529033 published within one year of the '461 priority date. A § 102(b)(1)(A) grace-period exception may remove the VPS disclosure as prior art (at least for subject matter attributable to Sekiya, a joint inventor of the '461). The remaining § 102(a)(2) Sony applications (US 2018/0317005, WO 2017/065092) are also potentially disqualified by the § 102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership exception. So Ground 2 is useful as a reinforcing ground but is legally the most fragile — Ground 1 should be primary precisely because it avoids these exceptions.

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5. Ground 3 (secondary): Neckphone + Polycom + Stages PCS

• Neckphone supplies a ring/loop ("necklace-form") worn enclosure with an explicit microphone — the "ring-like wearable device ... provided with a plurality of microphones" element (plurality by design choice of adding mics to the brace).
• Polycom supplies spectrum→distance→geometric intersection.
• Stages PCS US 2016/0165340 A1 supplies the wearing-displacement motivation: it is "suited for use with person-mounted microphone arrays" and expressly compensates for "motion of the sensor array" and "anticipated changes in source location by trajectory" to relocate the target. That maps cleanly onto the '461's stated problem of resolving the sound source despite a wearing displacement.

"Neckphone + Polycom" alone likely suffices for claim 1; Stages PCS is best used as evidence of motivation (a person-mounted array that tracks its target across array motion) rather than as a missing structural element. Note Stages PCS also teaches beam-steering to isolate audio from the identified location, useful against claim 10.

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6. Dependent claims (1–11 device; 13–14 wearable device)

Dependent claims generally add optimization mechanics or mechanical features that are individually well within the ordinary skill level. Mapping (primary ground = §3):

Net: claims 1, 2, 4–7, 9–11, 13, 14 are vulnerable to a well-packaged Ground‑1 + Ground‑2/3 combination. Claim 8 (and secondarily claim 3) are the most defensible.

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7. Counterarguments the patentee would raise (and how they fare)

1. "No reference teaches the cylinder constraint." — The strongest defense. Neither '168 nor Polycom recites a cylindrical surface generated by the ring. Rebuttal: Polycom already performs geometric-locus intersection of spherical wavefronts from distance measurements, and '168 already models the mouth's distances to a fixed neckloop; adding the loop-defined constraint is the predictable use of known geometry (KSR). This is a genuine jury/clarification question, not a slam-dunk.

2. "The references are not combinable / different fields." — Weak. Polycom (surveillance/videoconferencing source location), '168 (neck-worn audio analysis), and Stages PCS (person-mounted arrays) are all in acoustic source localization on microphone arrays, and the claims are agnostic as to end use.

3. § 102(b)(1)(A) / § 102(b)(2)(C) exceptions. — Real and potentially fatal to Ground 2 (Sony VPS), because Sekiya is a common joint inventor and Sony is a common owner. This is why Ground 1 (Fuji Xerox + Polycom) is the recommended primary theory: neither reference shares an inventor with the '461 and both are far outside any grace period.

4. "Teaching away." — None of the cited references disparages geometric constraints or range intersection; Polycom embraces multi-locus intersection. No teaching-away is available.

5. Claim 3 / claim 8 as the locus of patentability. — If the patentee is forced to argue narrowness, the fallback is: (i) claim 3's two-microphone solvability (the cylinder is what makes 2 mics sufficient), and (ii) claim 8's Thales-based re-formulation. Both are narrow; a full-scope invalidity theory should expect to lose claim 8 on the present record unless a fourth reference or a Polycom-'168-thales argument is developed.

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8. Bottom line

• Most likely outcome: Claims 1, 2, 4–7, 9–11, 13, 14 are rendered obvious by a § 103 combination of Fuji Xerox US 2013/0080168 A1 (neck-worn multi-mic distance derivation from spectral/phase/amplitude data) with Polycom US 2004/0032796 A1 (spectrum → phase-delay → geometric intersection of range loci with iterative refinement), optionally reinforced by Stages PCS US 2016/0165340 A1 (person-mounted arrays, array-motion compensation, beam-steering) and Sony VPS US 10,306,359 B2 / WO 2016/063587 (neck-encircling ≥3-mic beamforming toward the mouth) for claims 10 and 12.
• The pivot is one element: the explicit "source lies on the cylinder defined by the ring" limitation. Everything else in independent claims 1 and 12 is conventional in the cited art. If that limitation is deemed an obvious formalization of known array geometry (the likely view), the independent claims fall; if it is deemed a non-obvious insight that unlocks two-microphone localization, only the narrow dependents survive.
• Weak point of the case: claims 3 and 8, and the § 102(b) inventor/ownership exceptions that may knock out the Sony VPS as art. Build any invalidity position on Ground 1, not Ground 2.

Verification reminders: (1) the "cylinder" limitation is not found verbatim in any cited reference I could read — the case is a combination/obviousness argument, not anticipation; (2) my reading of JP 2010‑193344A, US 2017/0195767 A1, and WO 2017/065092 A1 is partial and I have said so; (3) before filing, confirm the inventorship overlap (Sekiya) and the Sony common-ownership facts, because those control whether the VPS family is even available as prior art under AIA §§ 102(b)(1)(A)/(b)(2)(C).