US 11402474

I'll search for this specific patent number and any associated litigation activity.

Search Results for US 11,402,474

Litigation/docket search — negative finding. I searched for CAFC 2026 docket activity, PTAB proceedings, and district-court litigation referencing this specific number. I found no CAFC appeal, no IPR/PGR, and no district-court case involving US 11,402,474. Caveats on that finding:

• I could not query PACER, the CAFC docket system, or USPTO PatentCenter directly; I relied on public web search. This is an absence-of-evidence result, not an authoritative "no litigation exists" certification.
• The Robert Bosch 2026 docket hits I found are all trademark/Schedule A counterfeiting suits (e.g., N.D. Ill. 1:26-cv-03082, 1:26-cv-05168, 1:26-cv-02459) — unrelated to this patent. I excluded the similar-looking numbers that surfaced (e.g., US 11,246,024 in IPR2023-00148; US 11,175,405 in IPR2023-01421) as not this patent, per the instruction not to return near-miss results.

The following summary is taken from the authoritative full text of the patent.

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Bibliographic Data

Classifications: G02B5/32; G01S7/4816; G01S17/42; G01S17/89; G01S7/4811; G02B27/4277; G01S17/08; G01S17/50.

Abstract (verbatim)

"A compensation device for a biaxial LIDAR system includes two holographic optical elements, which are locatable between a receiving optical system and a detector element, and which are designed to compensate for a parallax effect of the biaxial LIDAR system, incident light being guidable onto the detector element with the aid of the two holographic optical elements."

Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

The invention addresses a known problem in biaxial (as opposed to coaxial) scanning/rotating LIDAR: because the transmit path and receive path sit on different axes separated by a base distance b, return light from near objects lands on a different spot of the detector than return light from far objects — the parallax effect (FIGS. 2–3). Conventional fixes bloat the detector to cover the whole spread of landing positions, which is expensive.

• Claim 1 — the compensation device. A device for a biaxial LIDAR system comprising at least two holographic optical elements (HOEs) positionable between the receiving optical system and the detector element. The two HOEs (a) compensate for the parallax effect, and (b) guide incident light onto the detector element. Critically, claim 1 also requires that the diffraction efficiency of the at least two HOEs is "adjusted in a defined manner" — i.e., set deliberately, not merely inherent. The description ties this to the detector-saturation benefit: high diffraction efficiency in the region receiving far-object light (area p1) and lower efficiency where near-object light converges (area p2), since near objects return far more optical power.
• Claim 7 — the system claim. A biaxial LIDAR system comprising a compensation device with the identical limitations of claim 1 (two+ HOEs between receiving optics and detector, parallax compensation, light guided to the detector, defined diffraction efficiency).
• Claim 8 — the method claim. A method for manufacturing the compensation device, comprising the step of providing at least two HOEs that compensate for the biaxial system's parallax effect and that guide incident light onto the detector element — again with the defined diffraction efficiency requirement. (The specification notes device and method features mirror one another.)

Dependent claims 2–6 add: reflection holograms (2); planar reflection holograms (3); curved reflection holograms (4); a first HOE as a coupling hologram, a second as a decoupling hologram, with an optical waveguide between them (5); and HOEs having a defined optical function for compensating imaging errors, e.g. Petzval field curvature (6).

Prosecution Note Worth Flagging

The granted claim 1 is narrower than the published application. In US 2019/0391241 A1, claim 1 ended at "…light being guidable onto the detector element with the aid of the at least two holographic optical elements," and the published set had 9 claims. In the granted patent the "diffraction efficiency … adjusted in a defined manner" limitation was added to independent claim 1 (and carried into claims 7 and 8), and the claim set dropped to 8. This correlates with the file history showing a non-final action mailed 2022-04-05 followed by a notice of allowance on 2022-04-19. Anyone assessing scope or validity should read claim 1 with that added limitation in mind.

Technical/Textual Caveats

• The description states "Different refractive indices η for the two different materials." Given the surrounding text refers to "refractive index modulation," η here is almost certainly a rendering/OCR artifact for Δn (refractive index modulation). Treat it as an artifact, not claim language.
• The stated Bragg relation "λ = 2 d × sin θ" appears as written in the fetched text; I am reporting it literally rather than correcting it.
• Cited prior art of record (7 references): US 5,714,750 A; DE 4316348 A1; US 2008/0266544 A1; US 2013/0208256 A1; US 2013/0342657 A1; US 2015/0362651 A1; WO 2016/116733 A1. The specification text itself discusses only US 2013/0208256 A1 and WO 2016/116733 A1.
• One third-party site (patentleaderboard.com) lists an "approx. value" of ~$4,697,000 for this patent. That is a third-party heuristic estimate, not an official USPTO/court valuation, and should not be relied upon.

Uncertainty statement: Bibliographic and claim data above are authoritative from the full patent text supplied. The litigation-search result is a negative finding from public web search of uncertain completeness — I have no authoritative confirmation that this patent is free of pending CAFC 2026 or PTAB challenges.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11,402,474 across patent litigation databases.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me try a few more targeted queries on specific litigation portals.

Litigation Search Results: U.S. Patent No. 11,402,474

Bottom line: No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,402,474 was found. I could not identify any district court action, ITC investigation, CAFC appeal, PTAB proceeding, or other adversarial proceeding in which this patent is asserted, challenged, or otherwise at issue.

What I searched and what I found

Per your instruction, I did not treat numerically similar identifiers (other patents, other case numbers) as matches, and I did not auto-correct any identifier. The only records returned for the exact number 11402474 concern the patent document itself.

Case-by-case table

Important caveats — please read before relying on this

1. My two most targeted tool calls (the Unified Patents portal query and the Robert Bosch LIDAR-litigation query) returned no usable results — one hit a step/tool limit and the other returned only tangential Bosch matters. So my negative finding is based on incomplete search coverage, not an exhaustive database sweep.
2. Absence of evidence is not proof of absence. A negative result here means "none located in the sources reachable through these searches," not "none exists." Litigation databases (Unified Patents Portal, Docket Navigator, PACER/RECAP, Lexis CourtLink, Westlaw LitAlert) are not fully indexed by general web search, and newly filed complaints can take weeks to appear.
3. Practical context. This is a Bosch component patent (LIDAR parallax-compensation optics) granted 2022‑08‑02, with priority from 2018‑06‑25. Bosch is typically a patent assertion plaintiff rather than a frequent target on sensor-component patents, and its LIDAR patents are commonly practiced internally in Bosch-supplied automotive systems — which reduces (but does not eliminate) the likelihood of a publicly docketed suit on this specific number.

Recommended verification steps (which I could not complete here)

• Direct query on Unified Patents Portal → Litigation → Case List filtered by patent number 11402474, and the portal's Patent → Litigation/PTAB lookup.
• PACER / RECAP "Find a Case" and Docket Navigator patent-number search.
• USPTO PTAB (IPR/PGR/CBM) and USPTO Assignment/LitAlert records for the patent.
• CAFC docket search for any appeal referencing the '474 patent.

If you want, I can draft a formal "no known litigation" verification memo with these sources listed, or re-run the Unified Patents and PACER-targeted searches if you can confirm which databases you have licensed access to.

Sources consulted: https://www.patentleaderboard.com/robert-bosch-gmbh/annette-frederiksen/[189554](/patent/189554) · https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist · https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11402474](/patent/US11402474)/en

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 11,402,474: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding for this patent as of the most recent ingest, and my independent web searches (PTAB E2E docket text, Docket Alarm, PTAB decision coverage, aggregator activity) surfaced no AIA trial naming this patent or its application number 16/449,971. There is therefore no breakdown by status to report — 0 active, 0 invalidated, 0 sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution-denied. The bottom-line defensive posture is the opposite of the "hardened patent" story: this patent is untested at the PTAB. No claim has ever been canceled, and no claim has ever been affirmed either. A defendant today faces a patent whose validity has never been adjudicated by the Board — but also one whose prior-art record has never been stress-tested by an Article III or APJ panel, which cuts both ways (see Strategic summary).

Caveat on completeness: ODP ingest lag and coverage gaps are real. I could not access PTAB E2E directly in this session; I relied on the structured block plus public web sources. If you have a live docket stake, verify at PTAB E2E by searching application number 16/449,971, and cross-check CourtListener's PTAB docket and the CAFC docket for any captioned appeal.

No proceedings to detail

Because the structured data lists zero proceedings, there is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. Robert Bosch GmbH entry to write, and I will not fabricate one. For completeness, the fields the task asks for would resolve as follows for every proceeding: not applicable — there is no petitioner, no judge panel (no 35 U.S.C. § 6 panel has been constituted), no petition grounds, no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, no settlement, and no Federal Circuit appeal arising from an FWD.

Two factual predicates worth confirming for a defendant, since they are the usual triggers for an IPR:

• Assertion history. I found no infringement complaint naming U.S. 11,402,474 in the sources searched. Robert Bosch GmbH is the original and current assignee (Google Patents); no reassignment to an NPE or defensive aggregator appears in the recorded assignment history. Importers/implementers of automotive biaxial (rotating) LIDAR therefore may be facing this patent only indirectly, if at all.
• Patent status. Active, filed 2019-06-24, granted 2022-08-02, adjusted expiration 2041-03-15, with a maintenance-fee reminder mailed 2026-03-23. It is a live, enforceable patent with roughly 15 years of term left.

Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED. US 11,402,474 has 8 claims, all in force. Independent claim 1 recites the core structure — at least two holographic optical elements locatable between the receiving optical system and detector element, compensating for parallax, and (added during prosecution, and the likely reason no IPR was ever filed) "wherein a diffraction efficiency of the at least two holographic optical elements is adjusted in a defined manner." Independent claim 7 is the system claim (biaxial LIDAR system comprising the compensation device), and independent claim 8 is the method claim. Dependents 2–4 add reflection/planar/curved hologram limitations; claim 5 adds the coupling-hologram/decoupling-hologram/optical-waveguide architecture; claim 6 adds a "defined optical function for compensating for an imaging error." None of claims 1–8 has been canceled or confirmed, so a demand letter that cites claim 1 is not citing a dead claim — but it is also citing a claim whose validity no tribunal has examined.

Estoppel landscape: empty, which is bad news for the patent owner and good news for a defendant. Because no IPR was ever instituted, there is no 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel running against anyone, and no petitioner is barred from raising any § 102 or § 103 ground. Equally important, no prior IPR means the patent owner cannot point to a Board affirmance (which would have insulated the claims under the PTO's October 2025 "settled expectations" / prior-challenge practice) — if the patent has been asserted against you and the § 315(b) one-year window from service has not yet run, the full universe of printed-publication and patent art remains available to a first petitioner. The best pre-loaded leads are the references already of record from prosecution, which the examiner considered but which were never tested adversarially: US 5,714,750 (PSC Inc.), DE 4316348 A1 (Wild Heerbrugg), US 2008/0266544 A1 (Wolf), US 2013/0208256 A1 (Optical Air Data Systems), US 2013/0342657 A1 (Nikon), US 2015/0362651 A1 (Luminit), and WO 2016/116733 A1 (Popovich). WO'733 and US'256 are the two the specification itself cites as background, which makes them natural primary references for the holographic-optical-element-plus-waveguide architecture of claim 5.

Pattern signals: none. There is no serial petitioner, no repeat filer, no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, et al.) in the chain, and no patent-owner appeal activity, because there is no PTAB proceeding to appeal. That absence is itself informative: U.S. 11,402,474 has been in force since 2022-08-02 without attracting a single AIA petition. For a family of a well-known operating company in a hot technology (automotive LIDAR), that usually means either (a) the patent has not been asserted in a way that put real money at risk, or (b) industry players have independently concluded the claim set is not a practical blocker. Both readings argue against treating this as a hardened, battle-tested asset — and neither reading gives you a validity safe harbor.

Recommended next steps

1. Verify the null result yourself before relying on it. The structured block is the authoritative source here, and it says zero. Confirm at PTAB E2E (search 16/449,971) and via USPTO PatentCenter, because a recently filed petition may not yet be indexed. If a petition exists that ODP has not ingested, the whole analysis above changes.
2. If you have been served with a complaint asserting this patent, calendar the § 315(b) bar immediately. One year from service, and the door to an IPR closes. There is no estoppel against you yet, and no prior-challenge-based institution bar, so a first-filed petition is channel-unencumbered — subject to the current Director-level institution practice, which since the October 2025 memorandum centralizes institution decisions with the Director rather than the merits panel, and the proposed rules (published 2025-10-15, comment period to 2025-11-17) that would restrict IPRs against patents already surviving a validity challenge. See the Willkie client alert, "PTAB Announces New Institution Policy, and Proposes Rule Barring Parallel Challenges, in Effort to Upend IPR Practice", and the PTAB Trial Statistics for current institution rates.
3. Build the invalidity case on the intrinsic record first. Claims 1, 7, and 8 were allowed with the "diffraction efficiency … adjusted in a defined manner" limitation, which the specification supports only at a high level of generality ([0018], describing selecting high efficiency in area p1 and lower efficiency in area p2). That is a classic § 112(a) written-description / enablement pressure point in a PGR-style framing, and in an IPR it is a claim-construction fight over how "defined manner" must be given effect. Pair that with the WO'733 / US'256 art for the two-HOE architecture.
4. Do not over-read the absence of PTAB activity. Zero proceedings does not mean safe claims or invalid claims — it means nobody has spent the money to find out. Treat the claims as fully live and untested, and price the challenge accordingly.

I'll start by verifying the assignment record and checking for any litigation or NPE-related activity around this patent.

Ownership Record — US 11,402,474 B2 ("Compensation device for a biaxial LIDAR system")

Scope note / source caveat: I was unable to complete a direct live query of the USPTO Assignment Center or the assignment.uspto.gov index for this patent — searches against those endpoints returned no usable results, and the authenticated Assignment Center interface does not expose a fetchable record to my tooling. The assignment data below is taken from the Google Patents legal-events rendering of the underlying USPTO assignment record (same source data as the Assignment Center), which is reproduced in the authoritative patent text supplied in the task. Where a field is not present in that rendering — notably the correspondent of record — I say so rather than guess. Verification link is provided at the end.

Inventors

• Both named inventors executed the inventor-to-corporate assignment (signing dates 2019-08-26 to 2019-09-11, per REEL 050644/0432), which is the standard Bosch employment-assignment practice for German-origin applications.
• Renningen is the site of the Robert Bosch research campus near Stuttgart; Rottenburg am Neckar is also within the Bosch Baden-Württemberg engineering footprint. Both inventors therefore appear to be salaried Bosch R&D personnel, not independent inventors or acquired-in talent.
• Unusual-pattern check — no signal. There is no evidence in the record that either inventor departed Bosch within 12 months of the 2018-06-25 priority date or the 2019-06-24 US filing. There is also no re-assignment of individually-owned rights, which is the usual fingerprint of an inventor-retention / portfolio-carve-out arrangement. This patent originates from the ordinary corporate-invention pipeline.
• Note: a prior-art-keyword-level detail worth flagging for accuracy — several public databases render this patent's number in a way easily confused with US 11,663,474, an unrelated patent owned by Autonomous Devices, LLC and asserted against Tesla. Those are different patents; do not conflate them.

Original assignee

Robert Bosch GmbH (Stuttgart / Gerlingen, Germany) — named assignee on the issued patent, and the only assignee ever recorded.

• Line of business: Diversified industrial/engineering multinational; the relevant segment here is the Mobility Solutions (automotive technology) sector, which supplies radar, camera and LIDAR/sensor systems for driver assistance and automated driving.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Not established. The specification describes a compensation device (two holographic optical elements between the receiving optical system and the detector) that is presented as an enabling technology for a biaxial, scanning LIDAR sensor, and it expressly states the multi-lens receiving optics can be made "more compact and/or more cost-efficient and/or more simply" using the claimed holograms. However, the patent is silent on any commercial embodiment, and I found no evidence of a Bosch product practicing the specific claimed holographic parallax-compensation architecture. Bosch is a well-documented LIDAR developer (and a supplier in the lidar sensor space for automotive applications), but mapping this particular claim set to a shipped part number is not something the record supports. Mark this undetermined rather than assumed.
• Current status: Operating. Robert Bosch GmbH remains an active, privately held (Robert Bosch Stiftung–controlled) industrial group and a large-entity patent owner — confirmed by the USPTO fee-status event "ENTITY STATUS OF PATENT OWNER: LARGE ENTITY" in the legal events.
• Product-assertion history (context, not this patent): Bosch is an active, aggressive enforcer of its own patents — e.g., Robert Bosch LLC v. Pylon Manufacturing Corp., D. Del. 1:08-cv-00542, and the Costco IPR chain (IPR2016-00034 through -00041) over its wiper-blade patents. That is operating-company assertion, and it demonstrates Bosch does not need an NPE intermediary to litigate. It does not involve US 11,402,474.

Assignment timeline

One — and only one — assignment is recorded against this patent.

• 2019-08-26 → 2019-09-11 (executed) / recorded 2019-10-07 — Reel 050644 / Frame 0432
  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: Annette Frederiksen; Stefanie Hartmann (as individuals)
  • Assignee: ROBERT BOSCH GMBH, Germany
  • Correspondent: Not present in the fetched record. The Google Patents legal-events rendering of REEL 050644/0432 lists the owner name, the assignors, the signing dates and the reel/frame, but does not display the recording correspondent (attorney/firm of record). I could not retrieve it via search. I am therefore not reporting a correspondent name — fabricating one would be worse than leaving the field empty. To capture it, open the Assignment Center record for this patent and read the "Correspondent" block for reel 050644/0432; note also that the assignee being a large German industrial entity makes a Bosch-selected outside-recording firm the likely filer, not an NPE-side standby counsel.
  • Context: Initial corporate assignment of employee inventions — the standard inventor-to-employer capture executed before grant (application filed 2019-06-24, granted 2022-08-02). It is not an acquisition, not a reorg, not a securitization, and not a transfer-to-asserter.

There are no further recorded assignments. No post-issuance transfer, no security interest, no change-of-name, no license record, no release, no correction, no merger. The chain terminates at Robert Bosch GmbH.

Family context (same ownership, no separate assignment chain):

• DE 10 2018 210 291 B4 — German priority, granted 2020-11-05, Robert Bosch GmbH
• CN 110632575 A — Chinese counterpart, published 2019-12-31, status Pending
• US 2019/0391241 A1 — US pre-grant publication, 2019-12-26

Prosecution / maintenance timeline (ownership-adjacent):

• 2018-06-25 — DE priority application filed
• 2019-06-24 — US application 16/449,971 filed; large-entity status set
• 2019-10-07 — Inventor assignment recorded (REEL 050644/0432)
• 2019-12-26 — US 2019/0391241 A1 published
• 2022-04-05 — Non-final action mailed
• 2022-04-19 — Notice of allowance
• 2022-08-02 — US 11,402,474 B2 granted
• 2026-03-23 — Maintenance fee reminder mailed (large entity)
• Adjusted expiration 2041-03-15 (patent status: Active)

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11402474
    2018 : DE priority application filed by Bosch
    2019 : US application 16 449 971 filed
         : Inventor assignment to Bosch recorded
    2022 : US 11402474 granted to Bosch
    2026 : Maintenance fee reminder mailed

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Overall: no NPE signal on any axis. The chain is a single pre-grant inventor-to-employer assignment.

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present.
   There is no transfer of any kind after the initial recording. The sole recorded assignee is Robert Bosch GmbH (REEL 050644/0432), a German industrial parent — there is no "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" successor, no registered-agent-service address, no single-member Delaware or Texas LLC anywhere in the chain.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present.
   Neither the assignor (two natural-person inventors) nor the assignee (Robert Bosch GmbH) matches any name on the Acacia / Marathon / Intellectual Ventures / Wi-LAN / Conversant / Vringo / Pendrell / Round Rock / MPHJ / Lumen View lists, or any Unified Patents or RPX high-frequency-plaintiff directory I can consult. Bosch does appear frequently in patent litigation — as a plaintiff operating company, not as an NPE — which is the inverse of this signal.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not applicable / undetermined.
   This signal is defined by recurrence — the same attorney or recording firm appearing on multiple links. Here there is exactly one link, and the correspondent field is not exposed in the record I could retrieve. With a chain length of one, the recurrence test cannot be satisfied. I decline to name a correspondent I could not read from the record.

4. Cascading transfers — not present.
   Zero subsequent assignments, therefore zero chained-LLC hops, zero shared-correspondent-address patterns, and no <24-month cascade. The 2019-10-07 recording sits ~3.5 months after the 2019-06-24 US filing and ~2 years 10 months before grant — consistent with standard corporate invention capture, not with pre-assertion chain-building.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present.
   No assignment within 6 months before any infringement suit naming this patent, because no such suit exists. Searches for litigation naming US 11,402,474 returned nothing (the only litigation hits for a "'474 patent" concern US 11,663,474 / Autonomous Devices, LLC v. Tesla, an unrelated patent). Bosch's own LIDAR assertion activity, where it exists, is direct operating-company enforcement.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present.
   Robert Bosch GmbH has not filed Chapter 7 or 11; there is no transfer in bankruptcy, no §363 sale, no assignment to a liquidating trust. Bosch remains a going concern and a large-entity fee payer as of the 2026-03-23 maintenance-fee event.

7. Privateering — not present.
   No transfer to an NPE asserting on Bosch's behalf. Bosch transfers nothing here — it retains title. No SEC-disclosed monetization vehicle, no Patent Progress / EFF coverage, no third-party asserter appears anywhere in the 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 original operating-company assignee. The patent has not been neutralized; it is a live Bosch asset with an adjusted expiry of 2041-03-15.

Verdict

Insufficient data (the record contains only the original assignment).

Justification: The entire recorded chain is a single instrument — REEL 050644/0432, executed 2019-08-26/2019-09-11 and recorded 2019-10-07 — conveying the two inventors' rights to Robert Bosch GmbH, with no post-issuance assignment of any kind. Bosch is a large operating entity that retains title, markets LIDAR-adjacent automotive sensor systems, and is a documented direct enforcer of its own patents (e.g. Bosch v. Pylon, D. Del. 1:08-cv-00542); there is no shell LLC, no listed NPE, no cascading transfer, no pre-litigation assignment, no bankruptcy sale and no defensive-aggregator terminus. Because the record contains nothing beyond the initial corporate assignment, the honest verdict under the stated rubric is insufficient data — no NPE-pattern evidence exists to assess, and the two open items for a follow-up pass are (a) the correspondent of record on reel 050644/0432, unreadable in the source I used, and (b) confirmation whether any Bosch product practices the granted claims.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 11402474; also mirrored at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). Underlying record: REEL 050644 / FRAME 0432. Patent record: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11402474B2](/patent/US11402474B2)/en

I'll verify the USPTO record and gather details on each cited reference.

Let me gather details on the remaining cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis for US 11,402,474 B2 ("Compensation device for a biaxial LIDAR system")

0. Scope and verification note

I searched for the specific number 11402474 and did not substitute near-misses. Confirmed record for the target patent (consistent with the authoritative full text already supplied):

Critical date for § 102 purposes: 2018-06-25 (the DE priority date). Every reference cited on the face of US 11,402,474 predates that date, so all seven are facially available as § 102(a)(1) art (and, where earlier-filed/later-published, potentially § 102(a)(2) art). I verified content for US 5,714,750, DE 4316348 A1, US 2008/0266544 A1 and US 2013/0208256 A1 directly via search this session; for US 2013/0342657 A1, US 2015/0362651 A1 and WO 2016/116733 A1 I rely on the bibliographic data in the patent text plus general knowledge, and I flag that below.

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1. The seven examiner citations, with dates and descriptions

Family / third-party citations also of note (not examiner citations on US 11,402,474; listed as "Family Cites Families"): AU PR301401 A0 (CSIRO, "Lidar system and method"); CN 102439393 B (range imaging lidar); DE 10 2009 029 372 A1 (Robert Bosch GmbH, optical measuring device); CN 103513425 A (holographic optical element illumination); JP 6862751 B2 (Fujitsu, distance measuring device); and GB 2560490 B (Envisics Ltd, "Holographic light detection and ranging," priority 2017-01-19, published 2020-08-12) — the last being the most substantively relevant third-party LIDAR/holography reference, though it post-dates in publication but pre-dates in priority.

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2. § 102 anticipation analysis, reference by reference

Governing standard. Anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102 requires a single reference disclosing every element of the claim, arranged as claimed. Claim 1 in particular requires: (a) at least two HOEs; (b) locatable between the receiving optical system and the detector element; (c) that compensate for the parallax effect; (d) that guide incident light onto the detector element; and (e) "a diffraction efficiency of the at least two holographic optical elements [that] is adjusted in a defined manner." Element (e) was added during prosecution (it is absent from pre-grant pub. US 2019/0391241 A1) and is the element most likely to defeat anticipation.

US 5,714,750 A (PSC Inc.) — no anticipation of any claim

• Discloses a volume/hologram grating with progressively varying Bragg angles that collects light over a range of incidence angles and concentrates it at a detector — i.e., element (d) and a form of "guided-mode" collection. It also teaches diffraction efficiency as a designed function of Bragg angle (FIG. 12 curve; >95% transmission off-Bragg), which is arguably close to element (e).
• Missing: it is a bar-code scanner, not a LIDAR; no biaxial transmit/receive geometry and no parallax compensation (element (c)); and while claim 1 of the reference recites "measurement" of two ring sets, the reference is a single collection optic (one body/plate), not "at least two holographic optical elements" in the claim-1 sense.
• Result: does not anticipate any of claims 1–8. Best used as § 103 art for the HOE-collector concept and for the diffraction-efficiency-versus-angle teaching.

DE 4 316 348 A1 (Wild Heerbrugg) — no anticipation; strongest "parallax" art

• Discloses the exact problem the patent addresses: the parallax between separated transmit and receive paths in a biaxial arrangement, and a compensation mechanism (moving fiber input face).
• Missing: the compensation is mechanical/opto-mechanical (movable fiber), not holographic. No HOEs at all, hence no elements (a), (d) or (e).
• Result: does not anticipate any claim. It is important as background/§103 art showing that parallax compensation in biaxial distance-measuring devices was known.

US 2008/0266544 A1 (Wolf) — no anticipation; most material single reference for the problem + a holographic solution

• Discloses: (c) an explicit bi-axial system with parallax compensation; and (for short ranges) a diffractive/holographic diffraction grating that deflects the returning beam to the receiver — i.e., elements (c) and (d) in a holographic variant, plus a hint of wavelength/angle selectivity.
• Missing: the parallax compensating diffractive structure is one short-range element integrated with the receiving lens, not "at least two holographic optical elements locatable between the receiving optical system and the detector element" (element (a)); there is no defined adjustment of diffraction efficiency as claimed (element (e)); and the device is a distance meter, not a scanning LIDAR detector-side compensation device.
• Result: does not anticipate claim 1 (or any claim). It is the best §103 combination anchor for "holographic parallax compensation in a biaxial optical measuring device." A challenge to claim 1 would most plausibly be Wolf + WO 2016/116733 A1 or Wolf + US 2013/0208256 A1 under § 103, with the "defined diffraction efficiency" limitation as the crux.

US 2013/0208256 A1 (Optical Air Data Systems) — no anticipation

• Discloses: (a) at least two HOEs ("a combination of HOEs may be used," first HOE collects, second HOE focuses/redirects to a sensor) — i.e., elements (a) and (d); and HOE wavelength selectivity.
• Missing: it is a transceiver/LDV for air-and-wind measurement; no parallax effect or biaxial parallax compensation (element (c)), and no defined adjustment of diffraction efficiency (element (e)).
• Result: does not anticipate any claim. It is the reference the patent itself concedes in the Background, so applicants already distinguished it; it remains §103 fodder for the "two HOEs routing light to a detector" concept.

US 2013/0342657 A1 (Nikon) and US 2015/0362651 A1 (Luminit) — no anticipation

• Nikon (US 2013/0342657 A1): a stereo-vision camera for laser radar. On its face it concerns a laser-radar imaging architecture; nothing in the record before me shows two HOEs between a receiving optical system and a detector, parallax compensation, or defined diffraction efficiency. No anticipation. I could not independently pull the full text this session — flag as unverified.
• Luminit (US 2015/0362651 A1): a method for designing/manufacturing holographic optics (for a holographic sight). Most plausibly relevant to claim 8 (method of manufacturing) and to how one would produce an HOE with a designed optical function/efficiency, not to the parallax/LIDAR combination of claim 1. On the record available, no anticipation of any claim. Full text not independently verified this session.

WO 2016/116733 A1 (Popovich) — no anticipation of claim 1; closest art for claim 5

• Discloses (for claim 5): a holographic optical waveguide LIDAR with an in-coupling hologram and an out-coupling hologram and a waveguide between them, delivering light to a detector. That is structurally very close to claim 5's "first HOE as coupling hologram, second HOE as decoupling hologram, optical waveguide between them."
• Missing for claim 1: no disclosure that the two HOEs compensate the parallax effect of a biaxial LIDAR system (the reference concerns a waveguide-based LIDAR architecture, with no biaxial-parallax teaching surfaced), and no "diffraction efficiency … adjusted in a defined manner." Because claim 5 depends from claim 1, the reference's disclosure of the waveguide/HOE structure does not anticipate claim 5 either — it lacks the claim-1 elements that claim 5 incorporates.
• Result: does not anticipate any claim. It is the strongest § 103 reference against claim 5 (and against claim 1 when combined with Wolf or DE 4316348).

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3. Claim-by-claim § 102 mapping (best single reference available)

Overall § 102 conclusion: None of the seven references of record anticipates any of claims 1–8. Each reference supplies only a subset of the claimed combination, and the two elements that are most consistently absent across all seven are (i) the two-HOE, detector-side, biaxial-parallax-compensating arrangement and (ii) the "diffraction efficiency … adjusted in a defined manner" limitation that was added to independent claim 1 during prosecution (and carried into claims 7 and 8). The real validity battleground here is § 103, not § 102 — with probable combinations being:

• Wolf (US 2008/0266544 A1) + WO 2016/116733 A1 (parallax compensation + holographic waveguide to detector), and/or
• Wolf + US 2013/0208256 A1 (parallax compensation + plural HOEs routing to a sensor), optionally + PSC (US 5,714,750) for the diffraction-efficiency-as-designed-function teaching.

The non-obviousness of the granted claims therefore hangs on whether the art renders obvious distributing parallax compensation across two HOEs and deliberately setting their diffraction efficiency (high for far-object region p1, lower for near-object region p2 to avoid detector saturation).

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4. Uncertainty / limitations of this analysis

• I could not run a direct USPTO PatentCenter/API query; I relied on the authoritative full text supplied plus public web sources. The bibliographic data above matches the supplied record.
• I did not independently verify the full text of US 2013/0342657 A1 (Nikon), US 2015/0362651 A1 (Luminit), or WO 2016/116733 A1 (Popovich) in this session (search budget exhausted). Their descriptions above rest on title, assignee, dates, and general knowledge; my "no anticipation" conclusions for those three should be re-checked against their full texts before being relied on.
• The "Family Cites Families" list (e.g. GB 2560490 B, Envisics, "Holographic light detection and ranging") contains third-party citations, not examiner citations on US 11,402,474 — I have kept them distinct. GB 2560490 B (priority 2017-01-19) is nonetheless worth reading as possible § 102(a)(2)/§ 103 art given its holographic-LIDAR subject matter.
• Nothing here constitutes a legal conclusion on validity; it is a technical prior-art mapping.

I'll research the prior art of record to ground the obviousness analysis in what these references actually disclose.

Let me research the remaining prior-art references of record.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,402,474 B2

"Compensation device for a biaxial LIDAR system" — 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst note on sourcing. This analysis is built exclusively on the prior-art references of record listed on the patent page (the 7 examiner-cited references) plus the two references the specification itself discusses, and on the previously generated sections of this file. I directly retrieved and read the disclosure text of US 5,714,750, WO 2016/116733 A1 (and its U.S. counterpart US 10,330,777), US 2013/0208256 A1, US 2013/0342657 A1, and a German-language summary of DE 431 634 A-family context. My tool budget was exhausted before I could pull the full texts of US 2008/0266544 A1 and US 2015/0362651 A1; for those two I flag disclosure statements as provisional / unverified and do not lean on them for any independent claim. Nothing below should be read as a legal conclusion; it is a technical § 103 analysis.

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0. Framework and critical date

• Critical date: 2018-06-25 (DE 102018210291.0 priority). All seven references of record pre-date it comfortably.
• Framework: Graham v. John Deere factors — scope/content of the prior art, differences between the prior art and the claims, level of ordinary skill, and objective evidence of nonobviousness. Under KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, a claimed combination can be obvious where the elements were known, the combination was "obvious to try," there was a design incentive or market pressure, or a known technique was applied to a known device ready for improvement.
• Prosecution history relevance (from the earlier file summary, used as authoritative here): the published claim 1 (US 2019/0391241 A1, 9 claims) ended at "…light being guidable onto the detector element with the aid of the at least two holographic optical elements." The granted claim 1 (8 claims) added "wherein a diffraction efficiency of the at least two holographic optical elements is adjusted in a defined manner," carried into independent claims 7 and 8. That amendment followed a non-final action (2022-04-05) and preceded allowance (2022-04-19). Practical consequence: the pre-amendment subject matter — two HOEs between receiving optics and detector that compensate parallax and guide light to the detector — was, on the record, not sufficient for allowance. The allowability of the independent claims therefore rests on the "defined diffraction efficiency" element. My analysis splits accordingly.

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1. Level of ordinary skill in the art (LOHS)

A POSITA here would be a person with a bachelor's degree in optical engineering, applied physics, or electrical engineering and 2–4 years of experience designing diffractive/holographic optical systems and/or LIDAR receivers, or equivalent. Such a person would be familiar with: volume holography and Kogelnik coupled-wave theory (cited of record in US 5,714,750); Bragg angle and diffraction efficiency vs. angle/wavelength behavior; HOE recording and wavelength-shift pre-compensation; and standard LIDAR receiver architectures (coaxial vs. biaxial, monostatic/bistatic, scanning vs. flash).

This matters because several claim limitations ("diffraction efficiency adjusted in a defined manner"; "defined optical function for compensating for an imaging error") are performance/result-oriented recitations of routine optical-design knobs, not structural departures. A POSITA routinely computes and specifies a desired diffraction-efficiency-versus-angle profile when designing a volume HOE.

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2. The dispositive limitations, construed

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3. What the prior art of record discloses

3.1 US 5,714,750 A — Eastman et al., PSC Inc. (1998) — (read in full)

"Bar code scanning and reading apparatus and diffractive light collection device suitable for use therein."

This is the single most structurally on-point reference, and it is surprising how close it is to independent claim 1's geometry. It discloses:

• A volume hologram grating (HOE) light-collector in a plate, positioned between a rotatably mounted, oscillating scan assembly (housing 10, rotor 14, flexures 44, pivot 15) and photodetectors 28/30, for collecting return light and concentrating it on a "central common collection region" — i.e., the device sits between the receive aperture and the detector, exactly claim 1's recited location.
• Bragg planes whose angles "vary progressively" across the aperture, "which define progressively varying Bragg angles," and "which diffract said return light along different paths to propagate the light to a central common collection region" (claim 1). FIG. 4 shows two side-by-side sets of annular rings (gratings 82, 84) each with its own center region 32/34 and its own detector 28/30 — a multi-element HOE arrangement feeding a detector.
• Different rates of change for inner vs. outer grating groups (elements 91/92, FIG. 6), expressly for path-length/critical-angle management. This is a designed, spatially varying diffraction geometry — the very thing the '474 describes as "adjusted in a defined manner," realized through grating design.
• Explicit treatment of diffraction efficiency: FIG. 12 is a curve of diffraction efficiency vs. angle; the spec states efficiency "at the Bragg angle condition is almost 100% but decreases rapidly when incidence is off the Bragg angle"; "when more than 10° off the Bragg angle, 95% or more of the light … is transmitted therethrough." The reference affirmatively reasons about designing η to a desired behavior (high where you want diffraction, low where you want transmission). It also cites the Kogelnik coupled-wave paper and a paper titled "The Diffraction Efficiency Of Multiple Grating Holographic Fan Out Elements" (Cawte, SPIE 1732) — evidence that controlling η across a holographic element was a well-developed, known design discipline by 1998.
• Guided-mode propagation within the plate ("the diffraction mode in the optic 20 is a guided wave mode"), with TIR/reflections at internal surfaces — the physical principle later invoked in the '474's FIG. 8 waveguide embodiment.

Mapped to '474: discloses most of claim 1 structurally and functionally. Its principal differences: (a) it is a bar-code collector, not described as a LIDAR receiver; (b) the "parallax" being compensated is the incidence-position/field-of-view variation, not specifically the biaxial base-distance range-parallax; (c) it does not label its efficiency design as a "compensation" feature.

3.2 DE 431 634 A (Wild Heerbrugg AG, 1993-05-15 / pub. 1994-11-17) — "Vorrichtung zur Distanzmessung" (secondary-source characterization; moderate confidence — verify against the DE document)

The German full text retrieved describes a time-of-flight distance-measuring device of the separate transmit/receive-objective ("biaxial") type, and explicitly identifies the near-range problem: because the transmit and receive objectives are separate, from about 10–15 m inward a supplementary lens must be placed in front to make the transmit and receive beams overlap ("Da Sende- und Empfangsobjektiv getrennt angeordnet sind, muß für den Nahbereich unter 10 bis 15 m zur Überdeckung von Sende- und Empfangsbündel eine Vorsatzlinse aufgesetzt werden"). A third-party document that cites DE 431 634 (the JP 2007-514942 family material, surfaced as: "DE4316348A1は、…光ファイバーを備える二軸基本形式の距離測定装置を開示している。これは、第１に測定速度を低減し、第２に複雑なデザインを要求する") characterizes it as disclosing a biaxial distance-measuring device with an optical fiber movable in the focal plane that tracks the received beam as a function of the distance to the object, and criticizes it as (1) slow and (2) complex.

Why this matters: DE 431 634 is the explicit recognition, in the optical-ranging art, of the exact problem claim 1 addresses — range-dependent displacement of the return spot in a biaxial ranging instrument — and a disclosed solution (a movable light-guiding element in the focal plane that follows the spot as a function of target distance). The '474's contribution over this is substituting a fixed HOE pair for the moving fiber. Replacing a moving opto-mechanical tracking element with a static diffractive element that performs the same redirection is a textbook [known technique] + [known device] KSR combination with a clear motivation (eliminating moving parts; increasing speed — the very criticism leveled at DE 431 634).

Caveat: the FRG document's own claim language was not retrieved; the "movable fiber in the focal plane" characterization comes from a citing document, not from DE 431 634's claims directly. Verify against the original before relying on it as 102/103 art in a formal opinion.

3.3 WO 2016/116733 A1 — Popovich et al. (DigiLens), 2016-07-28 — (read in full)

"Holographic waveguide lidar." This is the closest prior art to dependent claim 5, and it is cited on the face of the '474 and discussed in the '474 specification itself.

• A receiver waveguide containing a multiplicity of grating elements that diffract light reflected from external points, incident within a predefined angular range, into a total internal reflection (TIR) path to the detector; a separate transmitter waveguide; and beam deflector/scanner coupling. Claim 1 of WO '733: "…a receiver waveguide … each said element diffracting light reflected from external points and incident within a predefined angular range into a total internal reflection (TIR) path to said detector."
• Coupling in then coupling out: "Light is 'coupled' out of the SBG when the switchable grating diffracts the light at an angle beyond the TIR condition"; the guided beam "is coupled into the detector module, typically by a grating or prism." That is a coupling hologram → waveguide → decoupling hologram → detector chain, i.e., claim 5's structure.
• Designed diffraction efficiency: "The resulting volume phase grating can exhibit very high diffraction efficiency, which may be controlled by the magnitude of the electric field"; "the diffraction efficiency of the device can be adjusted … over a continuous range." Claim 6 of WO '733: grating elements "have at least one of aspect ratio or surface area varying across the waveguide" — a physical, spatially varying η profile, not merely a voltage knob. FIG. 9: "the widths of SBG elements in the receiver component SBG array 120 increase from the centre of the array to the edge in order to maintain a fixed detection aperture at all angles" — a deliberately varied effective collection/diffraction characteristic across the aperture.
• Curved/planar waveguide variants: "the waveguides may be curved or formed from a mosaic of planar or curved facets" (relevant to claims 3–4).
• HOE as the focusing element: "In another embodiment the lens 118 may be replaced by a holographic optical element" (relevant to claim 6 — an HOE assuming an imaging function).
• The '474 specification itself acknowledges this reference: "WO 2016 116733 A1 describes a LIDAR system, including optical waveguides, which are coupled to a detector and which may be combined with holographic optical elements."

3.4 US 2013/0208256 A1 — Optical Air Data Systems, LLC (pub. 2013-08-15) — (read in full)

"LDV with Diffractive Optical Element for Transceiver Lens." Also discussed in the '474 specification.

• Explicitly teaches HOEs (DOEs) used as transceiver optics in LIDAR, in monostatic, bistatic, or multistatic designs, "to reduce the required size and/or number of optical elements (e.g., lasers and receivers)."
• Wavelength/angle selectivity and intrinsic filtering: "An HOE may be tuned to diffract, reflect, focus, select, filter, and/or collimate light at a particular wavelength or within a narrow band of wavelengths"; "A single HOE may serve as both a prism and a filter … while completely blocking light at another wavelength." This anticipates the '474's stated design rationale for choosing HOEs ("intrinsic filter effect," fixed LIDAR wavelength).
• Plural-HOE combinations performing the receive-path optical work: "Additionally, a combination of HOEs may be used to perform some or all of the necessary optical processing tasks of the transceiver device. For example, a first HOE … may serve to generate or collect a distinctive pattern of light, while a second HOE may serve to focus the pattern of light, or otherwise redirect the pattern of light so obtained, towards an optical sensor for image collection and processing." That is two HOEs, in series, in the receive path, redirecting light to a sensor — the '474's core architecture.
• Expressly contemplates plural HOE elements sandwiched to perform multiple functions (multi-element DOE system 200).

3.5 US 2013/0342657 A1 — Nikon Corp. (pub. 2013-12-26) — (read in full)

"Stereo vision camera for laser radar." Cited by a third party.

• Directly addresses parallax in laser radar: "Parallax errors that can be introduced with a single camera and non-stereoscopic imaging can be reduced or eliminated with dual imaging systems that evaluate more than one target image obtained along differing axes. Such parallax errors can be especially difficult at short target distances." That is the identical physical phenomenon the '474 addresses (short-range parallax from axis separation), stated in the identical technological field (laser radar).
• Discloses a laser-radar system with a first imaging axis and a second imaging axis, a scan axis parallel to and equidistant from the imaging axes, all coplanar, and a beam-steering assembly carrying the cameras and rotating the axes in azimuth and elevation — i.e., a rotating/scanning biaxial-equivalent laser-radar architecture.
• Also: "Other types of refractive, reflective, diffractive, holographic and other optical elements can be used as may be convenient."

3.6 US 2008/0266544 A1 — Wolf (pub. 2008-10-30) — "Electro-Optical Measuring Device" — provisional, unverified

I was unable to retrieve the disclosure text (tool budget). Based on the title, assignee/inventor, and field, this is an electro-optical (likely laser-based) distance/position measuring device. I do not rely on this reference for any limitation below, and I flag that any assertion about its specific disclosure should be verified against the document. It is, at minimum, further § 102(b) art in the generic field of electro-optical distance measurement with separated transmit/receive paths.

3.7 US 2015/0362651 A1 — Luminit LLC (pub. 2015-12-17) — provisional, unverified

"Method for design and manufacturing of optics for holographic sight." I was unable to retrieve the text. Based on the title and Luminit's known work, this reference is directed to designing and manufacturing HOE optics for a holographic weapon sight — a field in which the diffraction efficiency of the holographic reticle/window is a deliberate, specified design parameter (to control reticle brightness and see-through transmission). Because I could not verify the text, I do not rest any independent claim on it. If its disclosure in fact teaches designing a hologram to a specified diffraction-efficiency value (which the title and field strongly suggest), it would be a clean secondary reference for the "adjusted in a defined manner" element, combined with § 3.1/§ 3.3.

References seen only in the family-citation table (not US examiner citations)

• GB 2560490 B (Envisics Ltd), "Holographic light detection and ranging," priority 2017-01-19. Its A-publication date is around July 2018 — at or after the 2018-06-25 critical date. I therefore do not treat it as available § 102 prior art; treat as verify dates only.
• JP 6862751 B2 (Fujitsu), priority 2016-10-14 — the corresponding JP-A publication (~2018-04) would pre-date the critical date, but this is a family citation, not an examiner citation; verify.
• DE 102009029372 A1 (Robert Bosch GmbH, 2011-03-24), "Measuring device … by means of optical measuring radiation" — Bosch's own earlier art; clearly prior art by date, but I have only title-level information.

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4. Claim-by-claim § 103 analysis

Claim 1 (independent — compensation device)

Combination A (primary): DE 431 634 + US 5,714,750 + US 2013/0208256.
Combination B (alternative): DE 431 634 + WO 2016/116733.
Combination C (alternative): US 2013/0342657 + US 5,714,750 + US 2013/0208256.

Result: claim 1 is prima facie obvious. Every element is disclosed, and the only element that was arguably not squarely presented by a single reference — parallax compensation in a biaxial LIDAR receiver — is the explicit subject matter of DE 431 634 and is recognized verbatim in US 2013/0342657 ("parallax errors … especially difficult at short target distances" in laser radar). The "defined diffraction efficiency" element, which is what actually secured allowance, is disclosed three ways: US 5,714,750 (efficiency-vs-angle design and varying Bragg rate to manage it), WO 2016/116733 (spatially varying element geometry/η), and US 2013/0208256 (η "tuned" behavior).

Claim 2 — "reflection holograms"

Obvious. US 5,714,750 is a volume hologram grating and discusses the reflection/transmission distinction in the volume-grating context; WO 2016/116733 states "SBGs may be used to provide transmission or reflection gratings for free space applications." Selecting a reflection (rather than transmission) volume hologram for a receive-path collector is a routine design choice with a known benefit — reflection volume holograms give high η in a thin layer and strong angular/wavelength selectivity (the "intrinsic filter effect" the '474 touts, which US 2013/0208256 supplies the rationale for).

Claim 3 — "planar reflection holograms"

Obvious. US 5,714,750's collector is a flat plate with the volume grating parallel to its surface ("In the body, parallel to the surface, is a volume hologram grating") — i.e., planar. WO 2016/116733's waveguides are planar slabs. The claim adds no structural or functional distinction.

Claim 4 — "curved reflection holograms"

Obvious. WO 2016/116733: "the waveguides may be curved or formed from a mosaic of planar or curved facets." US 5,714,750 teaches curved (annular/ring) grating geometry. Selecting planar vs. curved HOE surface geometry is one of the two ordinary alternatives available to an optical designer; the '474 itself offers no asserted unexpected result for curvature beyond "a high degree of design freedom."

Claim 5 — coupling hologram + decoupling hologram + optical waveguide between them

This is the most clearly anticipated-by-combination dependent claim, and it maps essentially 1:1 onto WO 2016/116733.

US 5,714,750 reinforces the same principle ("guided mode propagation, including reflections at the internal surfaces of the body"). The '474 specification admits this reference discloses "a LIDAR system, including optical waveguides, which are coupled to a detector and which may be combined with holographic optical elements." Claim 5 is obvious over WO 2016/116733 alone, and a fortiori over WO 2016/116733 + US 5,714,750.

Claim 6 — "defined optical function for compensating for an imaging error" (e.g., Petzval field curvature)

Obvious, on the weaker side but defensible. US 2013/0208256 teaches that an HOE "may serve as both a prism and a filter," "may be tuned to diffract, reflect, focus, … and/or collimate," and that "a combination of HOEs may be used to perform some or all of the necessary optical processing tasks." WO 2016/116733 teaches "the lens 118 may be replaced by a holographic optical element" — i.e., an HOE performing an imaging (aberration-influencing) function. Once a POSITA places HOEs in the receive path (claims 1–5), using them to correct a known off-axis imaging error such as field curvature is the application of a known technique (HOE aberration correction — cf. Sweatt, "Achromatic triplet using holographic optical elements," which appears in WO 2016/116733's of-record references) to a known element to achieve a predictable improvement in image quality. The '474 asserts no unexpected result.

Claim 7 (independent — biaxial LIDAR system comprising the compensation device)

Obvious for the same reasons as claim 1. US 2013/0342657 discloses a laser-radar system (steering stages, cameras, scan axis) — i.e., the "system" context; DE 431 634 discloses the biaxial ranging system; US 5,714,750 discloses HOE collectors mounted in a rotating scan engine with a laser and detector in a unitary assembly. Combining a known HOE-compensated receiver into a known biaxial scanning LIDAR system involves no change in the operating principle of any element.

Claim 8 (independent — method of manufacturing)

Obvious. The method claim recites "providing" the two HOEs plus the functional result and the defined-η requirement — with no additional manufacturing step, order, or process condition recited (no recording geometry, no pre-compensation angle Δθ, no contact-copy step). US 5,714,750 discloses a detailed method of recording the hologram to produce exactly the varying-Bragg-angle structure claimed (FIGS. 7–11: object beam + reference beam, object point-source position determining the Bragg angle, 60°-sector exposures). WO 2016/116733 discloses manufacturing SBG elements by "illuminating the liquid material … with two mutually coherent laser beams, which interfere to form a slanted fringe grating structure." US 2013/0208256 supplies the "combination of HOEs … to perform optical processing tasks" objective. A "provide X such that it does Y" method claim whose product and function are obvious is obvious.

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5. Motivation to combine (the KSR rationales)

1. The problem itself was known and articulated in the same field. DE 431 634 (biaxial ranging, near-range transmit/receive beam-overlap problem) and US 2013/0342657 ("parallax errors … especially difficult at short target distances," in laser radar) independently establish that a POSITA in ~2018 faced the exact problem the '474 frames. KSR: where the problem is known and the solution is a known technology, the combination is obvious. The '474 Background section's own failure to cite any prior attempt to solve parallax with HOEs (it cites only two references for general HOE-in-LIDAR use) suggests the problem-solving gap, not an inventive leap.

2. The substitution is [known technique] → [known device], with a stated motivation. DE 431 634's movable-fiber tracker is (by the citing document's own characterization) slow and complex. Replacing a moving optical element with a static diffractive element is the paradigm KSR substitution, motivated by exactly those two drawbacks. The '474 itself asserts the benefit of "high diffraction efficiency of volume holograms" and design freedom — the standard known advantages of the substitute.

3. Design incentive / predictable result. All three primary references teach HOEs handling receive-path light, and US 5,714,750 teaches that a diffractive collector can redirect return light arriving at different positions to a common detector region — precisely claim 1's functional result. A POSITA adopting it to the biaxial LIDAR receiver would predict, not merely hope for, the claimed outcome (single-region convergence → smaller detector).

4. The "defined diffraction efficiency" feature answers a well-known, independently-recognized problem (detector saturation). The '474's own rationale is that near objects return much more power, so η should be lowered in the near-object region to "protect detector element 4 from saturation." Saturation protection was old and well recognized in the optical-ranging art (cf. the DE 19804051 / EP 1 901 091 family material on amplifier saturation in distance-measuring apparatus). US 5,714,750 goes further and shows η is a designable curve (FIG. 12), with inner and outer grating groups expressly given different rates of Bragg-angle change (claims 11/12/29/30) — i.e., spatial variation of diffractive behavior for an engineering purpose. WO 2016/116733 shows the same idea implemented physically (element width/aspect-ratio varying across the aperture; continuously adjustable η). Thus the allowance-winning element is, on the record, a known design parameter applied for a known reason with a predictable benefit.

5. Common ownership/field overlap and design-community awareness. US 5,714,750 (PSC, 1998) and US 2013/0208256 (Optical Air Data Systems) and WO 2016/116733 (DigiLens) are all directed to "collect return light with diffractive optics and deliver it to a detector." KSR permits combination of references from the same field of endeavor even where the specific end-application differs (barcode scanner vs. LIDAR), particularly where the reference is cited on the face of the patent and discussed in the specification — which is true of both US 2013/0208256 and WO 2016/116733 here.

6. The specification concedes the key element is a design parameter. The '474 describes η adjustment not as a structural invention but as "the possibility of specifically adjusting the diffraction efficiency of holographic optical elements 11, 12" and notes "It may be meaningful, for example, to select the diffraction efficiency in area p1 … to be very high, whereas in area p2 … a lower diffraction efficiency may be selected." That is the language of an optimization choice, not a discovery.

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6. Rebuttal arguments a patent owner would raise — and my assessment

Net: the strongest nonobviousness argument is a motivation/teaching gap regarding range-parallax specifically, not any missing structural element. That gap is narrow, and DE 431 634 plus US 2013/0342657 largely close it.

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7. Secondary considerations

None available on this record. The prior searches found no litigation, no PTAB proceeding, and no CAFC appeal involving this patent (negative finding, caveated as incomplete because PACER/PTAB/Docket Navigator were not directly queried). Absence of objective indicia leaves the Graham balance resting entirely on the prior art and the level of skill.

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8. Bottom line

The independent claims of US 11,402,474 are, in my technical assessment, vulnerable to a § 103 obviousness challenge, with the following confidence and reference combinations:

The pivot point is the "diffraction efficiency … adjusted in a defined manner" limitation, which prosecution added and which carries all three independent claims. On this record it is disclosed by (i) US 5,714,750's explicit diffraction-efficiency-vs-angle treatment and its inner/outer grating groups with differently varying Bragg angles, (ii) WO 2016/116733's continuously adjustable η plus element aspect-ratio/width varying across the aperture, and (iii) US 2013/0208256's "tuned" HOE behavior — each applied for the recognized purpose of managing how much return light reaches the detector. If a challenger's § 103 theory fails, it will most likely fail at this element, and the best counter-argument the patent owner has is that the primary references address field/incidence variation rather than range-dependent biaxial parallax and do not expressly state a saturation-avoidance motivation for spatially tailoring η. That is a real but thin distinction, and it is rebuttable by the DE 431 634 / US 2013/0342657 / EP-ROM saturation-teaching evidence.

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Explicit uncertainty flags

1. DE 431 634 A1 — I retrieved its German background text directly but the "movable optical fiber in the focal plane" characterization comes from a citing document, not from DE 431 634's own claims. Verify against the document. If that characterization is wrong, the DE 431 634 leg of the theory degrades, leaving US 2013/0342657 as the parallax-in-laser-radar reference.
2. US 2008/0266544 A1 and US 2015/0362651 A1 — full texts not retrieved (tool limit). No independent claim theory rests on them. Verify before using in any formal opinion, particularly US 2015/0362651 for the η element.
3. GB 2560490 B (Envisics) — priority 2017-01-19, but its A-publication likely falls at/after the 2018-06-25 critical date; do not treat as prior art without a date check.
4. PTO/prosecution record — I relied on the previously generated file summary (amendment of claim 1 to add the η limitation; 9→8 claims; non-final 2022-04-05; allowance 2022-04-19) as authoritative. The examiner's stated reasons of allowance were not retrieved and should be obtained from PatentCenter; they would sharpen or undercut the analysis above.
5. No litigation was found (negative, incomplete-coverage finding per the earlier section). The absence of objective indicia is a search result, not a certification.