US 11402476

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

Let me verify litigation/docket status and the citation set with a couple more targeted searches.

US 11,402,476 B2 — Verification & Summary

Identifier check (per your strict rule): The grant number you gave, 11402476, corresponds to US 11,402,476 B2. Note one genuine collision risk I encountered and am flagging rather than silently "correcting": one search hit lists Application Number: 11402476 for US 2007/0244398 A1 (Salutron Inc., heart-rate monitor, filed 2006-04-11). That is an application serial (11/402,476) for a completely unrelated invention — not the same identifier as patent number 11,402,476. Do not cross-reference these.

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Bibliographic data

Abstract (verbatim)

"A light detection and ranging system modulates laser light pulses with a channel signature to encode transmitted pulses with channel information. The modulated laser light pulses may be scanned into a field of view. Received reflections not modulated with the same channel signature are rejected. Multiple light pulses of different wavelengths may be similarly or differently modulated."

Field / problem addressed

Interference rejection in LIDAR. As LIDAR proliferates, one system receives pulse reflections originating from another system. The patent's solution is to channel-encode each transmitter's pulses: a modulation scheme (a "channel signature," driven by modulation parameters at node 169) defines a channel; returns matching the signature are accepted and timed, returns on other channels are rejected.

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Plain-language overview of the three independent claims

Claim 1 — LIDAR system (apparatus):
A LIDAR system with (a) at least one laser light source emitting pulses; (b) at least one pulse generation circuit that creates a digital representation of a pulse modulated with a channel signature; (c) at least one DAC that takes that digital representation and hands an analog version to the laser source; and (d) a receive circuit containing an ADC plus a correlator that correlates the ADC output against the same channel signature. The receive circuit rejects pulses not bearing the signature and measures time-of-flight of pulses that do. The core inventive hook is the chain: digital-domain pulse shaping/modulation → high-speed DAC → optical emission → ADC → correlation-based signature match, with accept/reject gating and TOF on accepted pulses.

Claim 10 — LIDAR system (multi-channel, apparatus):
A LIDAR system with a plurality of laser light sources and a pulse generation circuit that modulates their pulses with a plurality of different channel signatures representing different channels. The receive circuit identifies which channel a reflection belongs to based on those signatures, rejects reflections not modulated with any of them, and a TOF measurement circuit times the reflections that do match. Broader in the multi-laser/multi-channel dimension, but stated at a higher level of generality than claim 1 (it does not itself recite the DAC/ADC/correlator architecture).

Claim 15 — Method:
A method comprising: creating a modulated pulse by modulating a pulse with a channel signature; driving a laser light source with it; receiving reflections; determining whether the reflections are modulated with the channel signature; and measuring TOF of reflections that match while rejecting those that do not. This is the method counterpart to claim 1.

Dependent-claim highlights: FSK modulation on the pulse (claim 5); multiple lasers at different wavelengths (claim 6); multi-laser modulation (7); time offsets (8, 12, 20); on/off keying (9, 11); scanning mirror (2, 14); and TOF derived from the peak of highest correlation (3, 4, 13, 16).

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Litigation / docket status — CAFC 2026 and USPTO

I found no authoritative evidence that US 11,402,476 B2 is the subject of any CAFC 2026 appeal, PTAB proceeding, or district court action. My searches for the number combined with "CAFC 2026 docket," "litigation," and "appeal" returned no docket or decision tied to this patent. Caveats, stated explicitly:

• I did not query PACER or a docket aggregator directly; absence of a hit in my searches is not proof of absence of litigation. Treat this as "no evidence found," not as a verified clean record.
• The EPO decision T 2485/22 (MicroVision, Inc.; opponent Valeo Schalter und Sensoren GmbH; EP application 16163529.7, "Verfahren und Vorrichtung zur optischen Distanzmessung," decided 2025-10-07, appeal dismissed) concerns a MicroVision case but is not established to be the same family as US 11,402,476 B2 — Google Patents shows only one family application (US) for this patent. Do not treat T 2485/22 as being about this patent.
• Broad MicroVision LIDAR enforcement activity appears in the ecosystem (e.g., an IPR relating to U.S. 11,129,163 with EDTX co-pending cases filed 2024-09-20), but 11,129,163 is a different patent and I have no basis to link it to 11,402,476.

Forward citations (third-party, per Google Patents)

US 2021/0405201 A1 (Univ. of Colorado); US 2022/0043135 A1 (Rockwell Automation); CN 112684465 A; JP 2022-109486 A (Hamamatsu); US 2026/0064082 A1 (ActLight SA). The back-citation list was truncated in the source (9 citations listed, first being US 2016/0084651 A1) — I have not reconstructed the remainder and won't guess at it.

Technical/claim-drafting uncertainties worth noting

• Claim 16 as published contains an apparent drafting omission: "...determining a peak of highest correlation between the received reflections of the modulated laser light measuring the time-of-flight..." — likely intended as "...laser light pulses and the channel signature, and measuring..." I am reporting the text literally rather than silently repairing it.
• Claim 20 recites "driving a plurality of laser light sources," but its parent claim 15 recites "a laser light source" (singular) with no plurality introduced earlier — a potential antecedent-basis/gap issue on its face.
• The specification contains at least one internal typo ("DSP 130" for DSP 1310; "node to 37" for node 237), which I note only because it affects literal reading of the description.

Confidence: High on all bibliographic data and claim content (taken directly from the authoritative full text of US 11,402,476 B2). Low/uncertain on litigation status (searched, nothing found; dockets not directly queried).

I'll search for litigation involving US 11402476 across patent litigation databases and court sources.

The initial results are mostly noise — note the PTAB document's "'076 patent" refers to a semiconductor patent in effect for over a decade (TSMC/UMC case), and the other hit is application 11/402,476 (a heart-rate monitor), neither of which is US 11,402,476. Let me run more targeted searches.

Still not finding direct hits. Let me query litigation-specific databases and check both MicroVision-as-plaintiff and MicroVision-as-defendant cases.

Answer: No known litigation involving US 11,402,476 found

Based on my searches, I could not identify any litigation — in district court, the Federal Circuit, PTAB, or ITC — specifically asserting or involving US Patent No. 11,402,476 ("Method and apparatus for LIDAR channel encoding," MicroVision, Inc., granted Aug. 2, 2022; app. 16/358,695).

Per your instructions, I'm reporting this as a negative finding rather than substituting a similar number.

Important: results that look relevant but are NOT this patent

My searches returned several hits that mention an "'076" patent or the digit string "11402476," but none of them concern US 11,402,476. I'm flagging them so they aren't mistaken for the requested record:

1. PTAB petition referencing the "’076 patent" (TSMC/UMC dispute, E.D. Tex.) — This is a different patent. The petition describes a patent "in effect for more than a decade" and "nearing expiration," litigated against TSMC (filed Aug. 1, 2024) and UMC (filed Sept. 6, 2024) before Judge Rodney Gilstrap, with claim construction Dec. 18, 2025 and trial June 22, 2026. A patent granted in 2022 cannot be "in effect for more than a decade," and the subject matter (transistor isolation, silicon wafer substrates) is unrelated to LIDAR. This is a coincidental "'076" colloquialism, not US 11,402,476.

   • Source: ptacts.uspto.gov petition document (petition 1557691)

2. US Application No. 11/402,476 — This is a pre-grant application number (Power Saving Techniques for Continuous Heart Rate Monitoring, Salutron Inc.). It is not patent 11,402,476.

   • Source: portal.unifiedpatents.com

3. Flick Intelligence, LLC v. MicroVision, Inc., 2:26-cv-10753 (E.D. Mich.) — MicroVision is a defendant here (filed March 5, 2026, Judge Mark A. Goldsmith, Nature of Suit 830 – Patent). However, the case flags and Flick Intelligence's litigation pattern indicate Flick is asserting its own asserted patents (it is a well-known patent assertion entity), not MicroVision's LIDAR portfolio. I found no indication that US 11,402,476 is at issue in this case.

   • Source: gaeflexstaging-dot-docketupdate.appspot.com case docket

4. Other LIDAR litigation (Ouster v. Hesai / Hesai v. Ouster IPR2023-01422 on US 11,287,515; Alms v. Luminar, 6:23-cv-00982 (M.D. Fla.)) — These involve different LIDAR patents and parties, not US 11,402,476.

Corroborating context

MicroVision's own SEC filings are consistent with a negative litigation finding. Its 10-K/10-Q legal proceedings disclosures state:

"We are not currently party to any other legal proceedings that management believes are reasonably possible to have a material adverse effect on our financial position, results of operations or cash flows." (MicroVision 2023 Annual Report, Item 3, Legal Proceedings)

One filing does note: "We are aware of several patents held by third parties that relate to certain aspects of light scanning displays, 3D sensing products..." — but awareness of third-party patents is not litigation, and none of these are tied to US 11,402,476.

(Sources: ir.microvision.com SEC filings, including the 2023 annual report and 2023/2024/2025 10-Q and 10-K documents)

Caveats and limitations

• I was unable to query PACER directly, and my searches on the Unified Patents litigation portal returned no case list for this patent. My conclusion rests on repeated targeted web searches plus MicroVision's SEC disclosures.
• LIDAR patent litigation generally arises under N.D. Cal., E.D. Tex., D. Del., and W.D. Wash. dockets, which I did search by party and subject matter. Court records for very recent filings (e.g., 2026) may not yet be fully indexed by the sources I could reach.
• Should litigation exist that is not publicly indexed, or filed after my last search, I would not have captured it.

Bottom line: I have no reliable evidence of any litigation involving US Patent 11,402,476, and I am reporting "no known litigation" rather than attributing the coincidentally similar "'076" semiconductor case or unrelated applications to this patent. If you need confirmation, the authoritative next step is a direct PACER/RECAP docket search and a Docket Navigator or Lex Machina query keyed specifically to Patent No. 11,402,476.

I'll verify the structured block's default against live sources before finalizing.

No PTAB hits yet — the one apparent match was a false positive (a 2005 Salutron application whose application number coincidentally contains "11402476"). Let me run confirmatory searches.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 11402476: 0. The structured USPTO ODP block returns no AIA trial proceedings, and independent web searches on 2026-09-29 surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition naming this patent as the challenged patent — no active proceedings, no claims invalidated, no claims sustained through trial, no settlements, and no institution denials, because nothing has ever been filed. The defensive posture this gives a defendant is the opposite of a hardened patent: the patent has never been stress-tested at the PTAB, so its claims are fully intact on paper and its validity has never been adjudicated — which means an IPR is a live, un-plowed option rather than a spent one. Equally, because there is no prior proceeding, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel, no adverse FWD to cite, and no PTAB record to leverage. Any "the PTAB already upheld these claims" or "claim 1 is dead" argument would be fabricated.

No proceedings to itemize

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner} entry to list. I am not going to synthesize one. For transparency, here is the verification trail:

False positives I encountered and rejected — worth flagging so you don't repeat the error:

1. Unified Patents portal "US-20070244398-A1" showing "Application Number: 11402476." That is Ser. No. 11/402,476 (Salutron Inc., heart-rate monitor, granted 2007) — the 8-digit application number merely contains the digit string of the 9,402,476-series patent number. Do not let an automated docket tool conflate application numbers with patent numbers.
2. IPR2023-00665 / -00720 / -00721 / -00796 / -01060 / -01393 / -01400 / -01403 / -01429 / -01469, IPR2024-…, IPR2025-… — these appeared in an expert witness CV and in unrelated docket text. They are proceedings on other patents (e.g., Micron v. Yangtze, Samsung, Microsoft v. EyesMatch, the Ouster/Hesai lidar IPRs filed September 2023 on Ouster's patents). None is Microvision v. anyone on US11402476.
3. EPO Board of Appeal decision T 2485/22 ("Optische Distanzmessung / Microvision"), decision date 2025-10-07, Board 3.4.01 — a Microvision-owned European patent, but titled Verfahren und Vorrichtung zur optischen Distanzmessung ("Method and apparatus for optical distance measurement"), not "Method and apparatus for LIDAR channel encoding." The Google Patents family data for US11402476 shows Family Applications (1) — US-only, no EP member. I therefore cannot tie T 2485/22 to this family, and you should not cite it as a validity signal for US11402476. Its only soft relevance is that it shows Microvision litigates validity at appellate tribunals rather than settling by default — that is an inference about the owner, not a finding about this patent.

Residual uncertainty (stated plainly): I do not have direct API access to PTAB E2E / the USPTO Open Data Portal in this session. My confirmation is web-search-based and inherits that channel's indexing gaps. The structured block is authoritative here and agrees with every search. Recommend a one-minute confirmation at the PTAB E2E portal before you rely on this in a brief: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptab/ (search by patent number 11402476, then by application 16/358,695).

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all 21 claims UNTESTED. No claim of US11402476 has ever been canceled, narrowed, or confirmed by the PTAB. The three independent claims stand exactly as granted on 2022-08-02:

• Claim 1 — LIDAR system: laser source; pulse generation circuit creating a digital representation of a pulse modulated with a channel signature; DAC delivering the analog pulse to the laser source; and a receive circuit with an ADC plus a correlator that correlates the ADC output with the channel signature, rejecting non-matching pulses and measuring TOF of matching ones.
• Claim 10 — LIDAR system: plural laser sources; pulse generation circuit modulating pulses with a plurality of different channel signatures representing different channels; receive circuit that identifies which channel a reflection belongs to; and a TOF measurement circuit.
• Claim 15 — Method: create modulated pulse → drive laser source → receive reflections → determine whether reflections carry the channel signature → measure TOF of matching reflections while rejecting non-matching ones.

Dependent claims 2–9 (scanning mirror; peak-of-highest-correlation timing; FSK; multiple wavelengths; multiple sources modulated with a channel signature; time offsets; on/off keying) and 11–14, 16–21 all ride on those independents. Practical consequence: you cannot win an invalidity fight by pointing at a cancelled claim, and you cannot lose one by attacking a claim the Board already blessed. Everything is on the table.

Estoppel landscape: clean slate. With zero prior petitions, no petitioner and no privy is barred under § 315(e)(2), and the patent owner cannot invoke SAS, General Plastic, or Fintiv-type history against a new petitioner. Every § 102/§ 103 ground a competent searcher can raise is available. Two caveats matter more than the estoppel question:

• § 325(d) / Advanced Bionics: the nine references of record (the Google Patents "Citations (9)" list is truncated in my source, and shows US20160084651A1 among others) are already before the Examiner. Building a petition on art the Examiner considered invites discretionary denial. Lead with art not of record, and consider system/device art that by definition cannot be the basis of an IPR ground (a pair of S.D. Cal. and D. Del. decisions quoted in one of my search hits state that "IPR estoppel does not apply to device or system art because a petitioner cannot use an IPR to challenge the validity of a patent claim based on prior art products or systems"). System art is the useful complement to an IPR, not a substitute.
• § 315(b) one-year clock: I found no published litigation asserting US11402476 — the only Microvision-related infringement docket hit was Flick Intelligence, LLC v. Microvision, Inc., No. 2:26-cv-10753 (E.D. Mich., filed 2026-03-05), which is Microvision as defendant on someone else's patent, not this patent being asserted. If that remains true, no § 315(b) clock is running against you and you can file on your own schedule. Confirm the moment a complaint accusing a product of infringing 11402476 is served, because that starts a hard, non-extendable 12-month window.

Pattern signals: none on this patent. No repeat petitioner, no serial-petition cluster, no Unified Patents or other defensive aggregator in the chain (the Unified portal hit was the Salutron false positive described above). The patent's forward-citation list (five documents: a University of Colorado 3D-imaging application, a Rockwell Automation application, CN112684465A on phase-modulation-coded pulse detection, JP2022109486A to Hamamatsu, and a 2024 ActLight application) shows the space is active, but citation is not challenge. The absence of IPRs is itself a signal, and per your framing it should be read honestly: this is a young, US-only, single-family patent (priority 2019-03-20, active, adjusted expiration 2041-05-15) held by a small-cap operating company with a large portfolio — not the classic profile of a serial-asserted monetization patent that attracts IPR fire. If Microvision or a successor monetizes it, expect petitions.

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Recommended next steps

If you have been accused of infringing 11402476 (or expect to be):

1. Do not represent to a court that the PTAB has ruled on anything here. There is no FWD to link to, no disposition to quote, and no cancellation to rely on. The IPR route is a to-be-filed option, not a previously-won one.
2. Preserve and date-check the § 315(b) trigger. Docket the service date of the first complaint asserting this patent; the petition deadline is 12 months from it, non-extendable.
3. Run a pre-filing invalidity search focused on art not of record, targeting the three independent claims' distinguishing limitations: (a) a digital pulse representation feeding a DAC to drive the laser (claim 1); (b) a correlator comparing ADC output against the channel signature and rejecting mismatches while still measuring TOF (claim 1); (c) multiple laser sources carrying a plurality of different channel signatures mapped to different channels, with channel identification on receive (claim 10). Amplitude/Frequency/Phase-shift keying and time-offset/on-off encoding for lidar interference rejection had substantial pre-2019 literature — the search should target pulsed-lidar coding and optical-code-division approaches, not just the nine references of record.
4. Budget a § 325(d) strategy up front. Identify which references the Examiner actually applied versus merely listed, and keep the petition's primary ground on non-record art. The full citations list was truncated in my source — pull the complete file wrapper from Patent Center before drafting.
5. Consider the exposure asymmetry. With no adverse PTAB precedent and no estoppel, a first-filed petition has an unusually clean run: no General Plastic discretion to overcome, no Fintiv overlap narrative to rebut if no parallel suit is filed, and no prior panel findings constraining the merits panel.

If you are clearing FTO (not yet accused):
The untested status cuts both ways — the claims have never been narrowed by the Board, so claim 1's broad "digital representation … correlator … reject" language and claim 10's multi-signature/multi-channel language should be read at their full granted breadth for design-around purposes. Assume all 21 claims are live and enforceable.

If you represent the patent owner:
The clean record is an asset for now, but the absence of any IPR means you have no defensive estoppel net. Consider whether the 2019-03-20 priority filing leaves the specification (which discloses FSK, PSK, ASK, TSK, on/off keying, time offsets, and multi-wavelength signatures largely in functional terms, with no claim-level narrowing) vulnerable to written-description or enablement attacks under § 112 on any channel-encoding modality not actually exemplified — that is a PGR-flavored issue that is not available in an IPR but could surface in district court or a future PGR on a continuation.

Verification link for any citation you file: PTAB E2E — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptab/ ; Federal Circuit opinions/dockets — https://courtlistener.com/ (no CAFC appeal exists for this patent, since there is no FWD or Board decision to appeal).

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Bottom line: the "PTAB proceedings on file" list is empty, and every independent check agrees. The correct statement for a defendant is: "US 11402476 has never been challenged at the PTAB. All 21 claims, including independents 1, 10, and 15, are untested and intact, with no estoppel and no adverse precedent — and so an IPR remains open to you, on non-record art, subject to the § 315(b) clock if and when this patent is asserted against you."

I'll reconstruct the assignment record for US 11402476, starting from primary and cross-reference sources.

Ownership Reconstruction — US 11,402,476 B2 ("Method and apparatus for LIDAR channel encoding")

Retrieval caveat up front: I was unable to pull the Assignment Center record itself. My live lookups against the Assignment Center / assignment.uspto.gov index returned no assignment-entry results for this patent number, and I will not invent reel/frame values. Everything below that can be grounded is grounded in the Google Patents legal-events and bibliographic data for US 11,402,476 (fetched 2026-09-24) and in SEC/company filings. Where a field (reel/frame, correspondent) is unretrieved, I say so rather than guess. Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (query "11402476" → "Patent Number").

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Inventors

• Both inventors are named on the published application US 2020/0300983 A1 (published 2020-09-24) and on the granted patent (2022-08-02).
• Employer basis: the only corroborated basis is the recorded "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST" naming both inventors as assignors and MICROVISION, INC. as assignee, recorded the same day as the filing (2019-03-20). Job titles, locations, and whether either inventor remained employed at MicroVision are not determinable from the sources I retrieved.
• Unusual patterns: none observable. There is no evidence of inventors departing within 12 months of filing, and no evidence of an inventor-side assignment to any party other than MicroVision. Do not read the absence as confirmation — it is a data gap, not a finding.

Original assignee

• Entity on the face of the patent: MicroVision, Inc. (Redmond, Washington; recorded address in related MicroVision filings: 18390 NE 68th St, Redmond, WA 98052 — earlier records use 6244 185th Ave NE, Redmond, WA 98052).
• Primary line of business: microelectromechanical-systems (MEMS) laser beam scanning (LBS); historically head-mounted/AR display engines (the display engine in Microsoft HoloLens 2 and the military IVAS headset), today principally automotive/industrial lidar sensors and perception software (MAVIN, MOVIA, MOSAIK).
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? MicroVision is an operating, revenue-generating public company (Nasdaq: MVIS) that ships lidar hardware (MAVIN) and perception software, i.e., the same time-of-flight lidar domain as the claims. Whether a specific shipping product practices the channel-encoding claims of this patent is not established by the records I reviewed; treat "ships an embodying product" as plausible but unverified.
• Current status: operating, publicly traded. The 2025 Form 10-K states the company holds "over 700 issued patents and pending patents worldwide" and describes a strategy of growing the portfolio (and pruning low-value patents). In January 2026 MicroVision agreed to acquire Luminar Technologies' lidar sensor business assets, including IP, out of Luminar's Chapter 11 §363 auction for $33M (8-K dated 2026-01-30; court approval 2026-01-27). This is the opposite direction from a fire-sale.
• Portfolio note: as of the Google Patents data, US 11,402,476 is listed Active, with an adjusted expiration 2041-05-15 (i.e., a substantial patent-term-adjustment tail beyond the nominal 2039-03-20 filing anniversary), which widens any future monetization window.

Assignment timeline

Chronological, every recorded assignment I could corroborate:

• 2019-03-20 (executed, simultaneous with filing) / recorded 2019-03-20 — Reel/Frame: not retrieved (my Assignment Center lookup returned no entry; Google Patents legal events show the record without a reel/frame citation)
  • Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: ADKINS, Christopher Brian and MORARITY, Jonathan A (joint inventors)
  • Assignee: MICROVISION, INC.
  • Correspondent: not determinable from the sources retrieved — no attorney/firm of record was surfaced. I cannot state a name. (Because there is only one recording in this chain, the "repeat correspondent" test is not even capable of being satisfied; see signal 3.)
  • Context: routine inventor-to-employer assignment at filing — this is an ordinary employment-obligation assignment, not an acquisition, fire-sale, or transfer to an asserter.

No post-issuance assignment is recorded. The Google Patents legal-events chain for US 11,402,476 (snapshot 2026-09-24) contains exactly one reassignment entry — the 2019-03-20 inventor assignment — with no subsequent Assignment, Security Agreement, Merger, Change of Name, License, Release, or Correction event. On the evidence available, MicroVision, Inc. remains the owner of record, and the patent sits inside the same portfolio described in the company's 2025 10-K as "over 700 issued patents."

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11402476
    2019 : Filed by inventors Morarity and Adkins
         : Inventor assignment to MicroVision Inc recorded
    2020 : Application published as US 2020 0300983 A1
    2022 : Patent issued as US 11402476 B2
    2023 : MicroVision acquires Ibeo assets
    2026 : MicroVision agrees to buy Luminar lidar IP in bankruptcy auction

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No transfer to any "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" entity exists in the record. The sole recorded assignment runs to the operating company on the filing date, and the chain terminates there. No registered-agent address, single-member LLC, or licensing-only vehicle appears on any reel/frame entry in this chain.
2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. The only assignee is MicroVision, Inc., an operating NASDAQ company. It does not match any entity on the Acacia / Marathon / IV / IPNav / Wi-LAN / Conversant / Vringo / Pendrell / Innovatio / MPHJ / Lumen View / Round Rock / Spangenberg lists, and I found no Unified Patents or RPX asserter-directory entry for MicroVision as a plaintiff on this patent. (Caveat: I could not query the RPX/Unified directories directly in this session — this is a negative finding from the sources I obtained, not a verified clearance.)
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not present (test not satisfiable). One single pre-issuance recording, and even the correspondent for that recording is unretrieved. There is no recurrence to flag. I explicitly decline to name a correspondent I could not verify.
4. Cascading transfers — not present. Zero consecutive assignments, let alone chained LLCs within 24 months. One recording in 2019-03-20 and nothing since.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present / no assertion activity surfaced. I found no infringement suit naming US 11,402,476 in the sources reviewed, so no 6-month-before-suit transfer window exists to evaluate. MicroVision does state in its 2025 filings that its results depend in part on "its ability to enforce its intellectual property rights," but that is boilerplate risk-factor language, not assertion evidence, and I will not treat it as a finding.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present as to this patent. MicroVision has not been shown to have sold patents in insolvency proceedings. The only bankruptcy adjacency in the record runs the other way: MicroVision was the winning bidder for Luminar's lidar assets under §363 in January 2026. Separately, MicroVision absorbed Ibeo (German lidar, insolvent) in 2023 — again as acquirer. Both are accumulation events.
7. Privateering — not present. No operating-company→NPE transfer, no third-party assertion on MicroVision's behalf surfaced.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent remains with the operating originator, which cuts against neutralization as well as against NPE transfer.

Verdict

Insufficient data — per the rubric's definition ("no records, or only the original assignment"), because the only recorded conveyance is the 2019-03-20 inventor→MicroVision assignment and I could not retrieve the reel/frame or correspondent to complete the record.

Justification: every NPE signal above resolves to "not present," so this is not merely a data gap in the ordinary sense — the visible chain affirmatively shows a single-purpose-free, operating-company ownership with no post-issuance transfers, no shell LLCs, no asserter, no correspondent recurrence, and no litigation timing hook. The reason I stop short of an affirmative "Operating-company assertion" verdict is the rubric's independent requirement that the current assignee be suing actual competitors, and I have no evidence of any suit on this patent. Practical read: strong non-NPE fact pattern; the missing piece is the unretrieved Assignment Center entry, which should be pulled directly at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ by patent number 11402476 and confirmed to contain no entries beyond the 2019-03-20 recording.

I'll research the prior-art citation set for US 11,402,476, since the authoritative text provided was truncated at the first cited reference.

Let me identify the actual cited references, starting with the one reference the source did reveal.

The citation list hasn't surfaced yet. Let me target the databases that reproduce a patent's "References Cited" section.

I hit a hard limit before I could retrieve the complete "References Cited" list, so I need to be straight with you about what I could and could not verify.

What I set out to do

Pull the specific citation set for US 11,402,476 B2 (Morarity & Adkins, MicroVision, "Method and apparatus for LIDAR channel encoding," filed 2019‑03‑20, granted 2022‑08‑02) and map each cited reference to the claims it could anticipate under 35 U.S.C. § 102.

The blocker (stated plainly)

The authoritative full text you supplied renders the citation table truncated. It literally ends:

"Citations (9) — *Cited by examiner, † Cited by third party — Publication number | Priority date | Publication date | Assignee | Title — US20160084651A1"

…and then the page cuts off to "Tools." So the source confirms the patent carries nine cited references, but exposes only the first entry. My subsequent web searches (Google Patents mirrors, Justia, FPO, patentimages PDF, general queries) did not return the remaining eight, and the second and third searches in my final batch were cut off by the step limit before returning anything.

I will not fabricate the other eight citations. That is the single most damaging error I could make here, so I'm flagging the gap instead.

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Confirmed citation (the only one I can stand behind)

What I could not confirm: title, assignee, inventors, exact publication date, and content. My targeted search for "US20160084651A1" returned only unrelated documents (a semiconductor process-chamber WO, an EPO printing patent, an electrostatic-chuck search report, a Vietnamese gazette) — none of which is this publication. So I have high confidence the entry exists and is cited, and low-to-no confidence about what it discloses. I therefore cannot responsibly state which claim(s) it anticipates.

What I can say about its § 102 posture: as a US published application with a 2016 publication date, it is facially available as prior art against the 2019‑03‑20 filing under AIA § 102(a)(1) (publicly available) and, if it names another inventor and effectively filed before 2019‑03‑20, under § 102(a)(2). Whether it is actually anticipatory turns entirely on its disclosure, which I could not retrieve.

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Why I can't just substitute "close enough" references

Your standing rule — interpret identifiers literally, don't auto-correct — bites hard here. My searches surfaced a lot of near-miss material that a careless analyst would fold into this answer:

• US 2015/0378187 A1 (Heck et al.), US 2010/0187442 A1 (Hochberg et al.), US 2018/0031680 A1 (Samsung), US 2017/0098917 A1 (Ayar Labs), US 2017/0371227 A1 (Skirlo et al.) — these are cited in the ISR for PCT/US2019/035084 (a different MicroVision LIDAR filing). They are not in this patent's citation table, and I will not present them as such.
• US 2007/0244398 A1 (Salutron heart-rate monitor) — this is application 11/402,476, not patent 11,402,476. Already flagged in the earlier sections; flagging again because it keeps surfacing under the digit string "11402476."
• Post-2022 forward citations (Univ. of Colorado, Rockwell, Hamamatsu, ActLight, CN 112684465) are cited by later documents, not prior art against this patent — they post-date the 2019 filing and cannot anticipate it.

Candidate prior-art landscape (my analysis, NOT the patent's citation list)

Since I can't give you the examiner's actual set, here is the element-by-element map of where § 102 art for this patent would have to live. Treat this as a search roadmap, explicitly not as verified citations:

Honest assessment: the novelty pressure point for claim 1 is the specific digital-modulated-pulse → DAC → optical → ADC → correlator chain with accept/reject gating, not any single element. Most of the individual pieces (FSK on an optical pulse, correlation ranging, multi-wavelength TOF) had meaningful pre‑2019 art.

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What I recommend as the authoritative next step

1. Open the granted-PDF "References Cited" block directly — patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/41/aa/68/db7c3187962b7f/US11402476.pdf, page 2 (col. 1–2). That is definitive and lists all nine.
2. Google Patents "Citations" tab for US11402476B2 (the truncation happened in the scraped version, not necessarily on the live page).
3. USPTO Patent Center / Global Dossier for app. 16/358,695 — pull the PTO‑892 (Notice of References Cited) and any IDS (SB/08), which separate examiner-cited from applicant-submitted art and often carry the examiner's own § 102/§ 103 labels.

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Bottom line

Confidence: High that my citation set is incomplete and why. High on bibliographic anchoring. Low/unknown on the substantive § 102 mapping — that requires the nine actual references, which I could not retrieve. If you can paste the "References Cited" block (or the PDF's front page), I'll produce the full per-reference anticipation table you asked for.

I'll pull the actual prior-art citation set for US 11,402,476, since the authoritative text above truncated the citations list at the first entry.

The first two searches didn't surface the examiner's citation list. Let me target the citations directly.

Good — I found a highly relevant sibling. Let me try to retrieve the actual cited-reference table for the '476 patent.

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,402,476 B2

"Method and apparatus for LIDAR channel encoding" (MicroVision, Inc.)

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0. Evidence base and an important disclosure

What the authoritative text gave me: the full specification, all 21 claims, and the beginning of the examiner's citation list — which is truncated after the first entry, US 2016/0084651 A1. Google Patents listed "Citations (9)" but the source I was given cut off at entry 1. I therefore do not have the examiner's complete 9-reference list, and my searches for it did not retrieve it either.

That has two consequences I want stated up front rather than buried:

1. I cannot confirm what US 2016/0084651 A1 discloses. It is a pre-2016 publication and therefore 102(a)(1) art, but I will not characterize its subject matter or build a rejection on it, because I could not verify its content. Anyone using this analysis should pull the actual PTO-892 / PTO-1449 from the file wrapper (app. 16/358,695) first.
2. The analysis below is therefore constructed from references I could independently confirm and date-qualify, drawn from the same technical field and from search reports on closely parallel subject matter. This is a reconstruction of an obviousness case, not a verbatim reproduction of the examiner's.

Also flagging a nomenclature collision (consistent with the earlier sections' care about IDs): the '476 patent (MicroVision, inventors Morarity/Adkins, app. 16/358,695) has a near-twin with a consecutive grant number — US 11,402,477 B2 (Beijing Voyager Technology, inventors Zhu et al., app. 16/290,785), which issued on the same day, Aug. 2, 2022. These are different patents, different inventors, different assignees. The '477 is highly relevant here as prior art, not as a family member. The earlier sections correctly reported the '476 family as containing only one application; this finding does not contradict that.

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1. Level of ordinary skill and the legal framework

Proposed PHOSITA (no construction has been judicially adopted; this is my reasoned proposal): a person with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, optical engineering, or applied physics, and approximately 2–4 years of experience designing pulsed time-of-flight optical ranging systems, including laser drive electronics, high-speed data conversion, and correlation/matched-filter signal processing — or equivalent practical experience. This is a crowded, fast-moving, and commercially urgent field as of March 2019.

Framework applied:

• Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966) — scope and content of the prior art; differences; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations.
• KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007) — a combination is obvious where the elements were "known in the art," the combination is "a familiar element[ ]... according to known methods," and there existed a "finite number of identified, predictable solutions" with "a reasonable expectation of success."
• MPEP § 2144 motivations to combine: (a) teaching/motivation in the references themselves; (b) the nature of the problem to be solved; (c) knowledge of the PHOSITA; (d) design incentives and market forces; (e) art-recognized equivalents ("substitution of one known element for another to obtain predictable results").
• In re Bigio, 381 F.3d 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2004) — analogous art where the reference is from the same field or reasonably pertinent to the problem.

Analogous-art threshold is easily met. Every reference below is either a LIDAR/optical-ranging reference or is directed to the same problem (distinguishing one's own returns from a neighbor's). No reference is excludable as non-analogous.

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2. The prior-art set

Two notes on the ISA report that listed P1-P5: it is the search report for PCT/CA2019/000036, a different application. Its value here is corroborative — it confirms that a separate examiner, in a separate LIDAR case, treated these five references as the material prior art on multi-beam orthogonal-waveform LIDAR with correlation decoding. That is meaningful evidence of what the art considered conventional.

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3. Claim 1 — the primary obviousness combination

Claim 1 elements: (a) ≥1 laser light source emitting pulses; (b) ≥1 pulse generation circuit creating a digital representation of a pulse modulated with a channel signature; (c) ≥1 DAC converting that to an analog representation fed to the laser source; (d) a receive circuit with an ADC and a correlator correlating the ADC output against the channel signature; (e) rejection of non-matching pulses and TOF measurement of matching pulses.

Combination A: P1 (Campbell) in view of P7 (de Messeman), further in view of P5 (Fersch)

(a) Laser source emitting pulses — P1 (multiple laser beams), P7 (laser source driven by modulated pulses).

(b) Pulse generation circuit creating a digital representation of a pulse modulated with a channel signature — P1 teaches the information content: orthogonal Hadamard/Walsh waveforms and pseudo-noise pulse trains impressed on emitted laser pulses so that returns can be separated by (auto)correlation. P7 teaches the implementation: a pulse modulation circuit and amplitude modulation circuit that generate a plurality of modulated pulses and apply them to the optical signal to create a PAM optical signal. Combining the two yields exactly element (b): a pulse generator producing a digitally-specified, signature-bearing pulse.

(c) DAC feeding the analog representation to the laser — P7's modulation circuits drive the optical emitter with an electrical waveform synthesized from a defined modulation pattern. Converting a stored digital waveform into an analog drive signal via a DAC is the paradigm design choice for arbitrary-waveform generation — MPEP § 2144.04 (art-recognized technique; substitution of known element for predictable result). The '476 specification itself concedes the DAC is conventional: "RF DACs are generally known and commercially available."

(d) ADC + correlator against the channel signature — P1's (auto)correlation; P6's receiver-side processing chain; P7's quadrature receive processing; P5's CDMA code correlation. Digitizing a photodetector signal with a high-speed ADC before correlating is the ordinary way to correlate in the digital domain, and P7's quadrature receiver confirms digitized receive processing was standard.

(e) Reject non-matching / TOF on matching — P1 (orthogonal waveforms exist precisely to separate wanted from unwanted returns), P5 (CDMA coding exists precisely to reject other sensors' pulses), P6 (identify and associate the correct return; implicitly discard the rest), P3 (correlation → timing).

Why the PHOSITA would have combined these

1. Same field, same problem, same solution space. All of P1, P5, P6, P7 are automotive/optical ToF ranging art, and all are directed at the very problem the '476 specification names as its motivation: "Interference that results from one LIDAR system receiving pulse reflections that emanate from a different LIDAR system." P5 says this in terms. When the references confront the identical problem and propose the identical genus of solution (code the pulse; correlate on receive), KSR's "predictable solutions" standard is met.
2. The references themselves supply the motivation. P1's teaching that orthogonal/pseudo-noise waveforms enable separation by correlation is an express teaching to use transmit-side signature encoding plus receive-side correlation. P6 goes further and expressly frames it as identifying which transmitter a return belongs to.
3. Reasonable expectation of success. Correlation/matched-filter detection of a known transmit waveform is textbook; P1 and P3 already do it in LIDAR. There is no teaching away.
4. Market forces / design incentive. The '476 specification and P5 both reflect the 2018–2019 automotive-LIDAR reality: multiple LiDARs on the same road, requiring co-existence. That is an enumerated MPEP § 2144 motivation.

The likely patentee counterargument, and why it is weak

The patentee will argue that no single reference teaches the integrated chain: digital pulse synthesis → high-rate DAC → optical emission → high-rate ADC → correlator → accept/reject gate → TOF, all at 500 MSPS to GSPS. That is an argument about aggregation, and it fails because the claim recites a combination of individually known elements performing their known functions with no asserted (and no disclosed) unexpected result:

• The specification provides no comparative data, no surprising performance numbers, and no criticality. To the contrary, it repeatedly disclaims narrowness: the modulation "may include any number or type of parameters"; "Any frequency or combination of frequencies may be utilized"; detection may be by correlation or demodulation — "the various embodiments... are not limited by the manner in which the modulation is detected"; and the correlator is described as "one of many possible techniques." Under KSR and In re Peterson, that breadth is itself evidence that the claim covers any known implementation of a generic idea.
• P7 independently supplies the "digitally-modulated pulse driving an optical emitter" architecture, and P1/P5 supply the coded-pulse-plus-correlation architecture. Combining them is a predictable juxtaposition of known elements, not an inventive union.

Preliminary conclusion on claim 1: reasonable-to-strong § 103 rejection via P1 + P7 + P5 (with P3 and P6 as confirmatory). Confidence: moderate-high, contingent on verifying the actual contents and dates of P1 and P7 against the full texts rather than index summaries.

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4. Claim 10 — the multi-laser, multi-channel combination

Claim 10 elements: plurality of laser sources; pulse generation circuit driving them with a plurality of different channel signatures representing different channels; receive circuit identifies which channel the reflection belongs to and rejects reflections not modulated with any of the signatures; TOF measurement circuit.

Combination B: P1 (Campbell) + P2 (Warke) + P6 (US 2018/0074198), optionally with P5 (Fersch)

• Plurality of laser sources + different codes: P1 (multiple laser beams; orthogonal waveform set), P2 (cited as Y against the multi-channel/plural-code claims in the parallel ISA report), P8 (plurality of codes each with different timing/amplitude combinations for different groups of signals).
• Receive circuit identifies the channel: P6 is the closest art and is almost a direct read. In P6, transmitter A and transmitter B each modulate their beam at a distinct characteristic frequency; the receiver detects a unique beat frequency for each and "appropriately associate[s] it with the optical beam transmitted" from the correct transmitter. Table A/Table B of P6 even tabulate the beat frequencies that resolve multiple concurrent transmitters at a single receiver. That is claim 10's "identifies a channel to which the reflections of the pulses belong."
• Rejection of non-matching returns: inherent in P6's association step and express in P1/P5.
• TOF measurement circuit for the multi-signature reflections: P8 (ranging on identified return signals), P3 (correlation-derived timing).

Motivation

The motivation is unusually clean and comes from three directions at once:

1. The references state it. P1's orthogonal waveforms exist to let simultaneous multi-beam emissions be separated. P5's CDMA discussion of sequence cardinality is expressly about supporting more sensors and more simultaneous ToF measurements. P6 exists because a single receiver must resolve multiple transmitters.
2. The problem demands it. More channels = more LIDARs can co-exist and more simultaneous measurements per frame = higher frame rate and angular resolution. That is the classic KSR design incentive.
3. The patent's own specification concedes the design space. It states the number of channels "increases exponentially with the number of different modulation schemes on each pulse" and that multi-wavelength/multi-signature channelization "provides redundant/repeated ToF return data." In other words, the specification describes channel-count scaling as an expected, arithmetic consequence of combining known modulation dimensions — which is exactly what a PHOSITA would have predicted.

Detection-modality substitution is not a saving distinction

Claim 10 requires that the receiver "identif[y] a channel... based on the plurality of different channel signatures" — it does not require a correlator. P6 identifies the channel by detecting a frequency signature. Under MPEP § 2144.04, substituting one known signature-detection mechanism for another to obtain the same predictable result (knowing which transmitter produced the return) is obvious. If the patentee argued that claim 10 implicitly requires correlation, that is a claim-construction fight they would likely lose — and if they won it, the claim would be narrower, giving them less coverage, not more validity.

Preliminary conclusion on claim 10: reasonable § 103 rejection via P1 + P2 + P6. Confidence: moderate-high on the conceptual case; moderate on the citation-by-citation mapping until P1/P2 full texts are checked.

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5. Claim 15 — the method claim

Claim 15 steps: create a modulated pulse by modulating a pulse with a channel signature; drive a laser light source with it; receive reflections; determine whether the reflections carry the channel signature; measure TOF of the matching reflections while rejecting the non-matching ones.

Combination C: P5 (Fersch) as the primary reference, in view of P7 (de Messeman) and P3 (Retterath)

This is the combination I would expect to be most dangerous to the patent, because it maps to the claim steps in order with minimal gap-filling:

Motivation: P5 is a printed publication that expressly identifies the mutual-interference problem in automotive ToF LIDAR and expressly proposes pulse coding plus code-based detection as the answer. P7 supplies the physical apparatus for driving a laser with a modulated pulse. A PHOSITA seeking to build P5's scheme into a working LIDAR would routinely reach for P7's transmit architecture. There is no teaching away in any reference.

Note on the "while rejecting" clause: Claim 15's rejection language is arguably a statement of the inherent consequence of the determining step — if you determine a return does not carry the signature, you necessarily do not measure its TOF. Claim 36/17 aside, that phrasing adds little patentable weight. Similarly, claim 17 ("not measuring the time-of-flight of rejected... reflections") is a negative limitation reciting the inherent result of the rejection already claimed. Under In re Skoner / In re Cruciferous Sprout, a limitation that merely recites the intended or inherent result of the recited steps does not patentably distinguish.

Preliminary conclusion on claim 15: strong § 103 rejection via P5 + P7 + P3. Confidence: moderate-high, highest of the three independents, because claim 15 is the least architecture-specific.

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6. Dependent claims — mapping and motivation

Note the direction of travel: the dependent claims are, if anything, more exposed than the independents, because P8's "code = timing + amplitude information" concept and P3's correlation-timing teaching line up with claims 3, 4, 8, 12, 13, 16, 18, 19, 20 almost element-for-element.

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7. Secondary considerations — what I could and could not find

An obviousness conclusion should account for objective indicia. Based on the earlier sections of this analysis and my searches:

• No evidence found of litigation involving the '476 patent (prior section: "no known litigation"), so there is no record of a competitor's validity challenge, no jury verdict, no PTAB outcome to weigh.
• No evidence found of licensing revenue, royalties, or industry praise specifically tied to the '476 patent. MicroVision's SEC legal-proceedings disclosures in the earlier section describe no material proceedings.
• No unexpected-results evidence in the specification itself — no comparative data, no criticality, no measured improvement over uncoded pulses. This is significant: the specification asserts benefits ("interference rejection," "improve SNR and extend range") but supplies no data distinguishing the claimed arrangement from the predictable operation of known coded-pulse correlation.
• No established nexus between any commercial MicroVision product and these claims that I could verify.

Caveat, stated plainly: the absence of a found secondary-considerations record is not evidence that none exists. A defendant would have to serve contention interrogatories and take discovery on MicroVision's LIDAR commercialization, licensing, and any industry recognition. But on the present record, there is nothing for the patentee to put on the Graham scale's secondary side.

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8. The § 102(a)(2) overlay — and why P8 matters beyond § 103

There is a structural point worth surfacing because it can be converted into either a § 102 or § 103 attack.

P8 (US 11,402,477 B2 / US 2020/0278430 A1; Zhu et al.; app. 16/290,785) was filed 2019-03-01 — nineteen days before the '476's 2019-03-20 filing date. It names different inventors and a different assignee. Under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(2), a U.S. patent or application publication that (i) names another inventor and (ii) was "effectively filed" before the claimed invention's effective filing date is prior art as to subject matter described in it. P8 therefore qualifies as:

• § 102(a)(2) prior art for whatever it describes (codes specifying timing and amplitude information; matched-filter receive processing configured from the code; threshold-based identification of return signals; ranging), and
• § 103(c) / § 103 basis art for combining with P1, P2, P3, P5, P6, or P7.

The near-identity of grant numbers and issue dates ('476 and '477, both Aug. 2, 2022) is coincidental but makes this an easy reference to overlook — and an easy one to conflate, which is why I flagged it in §0. Note also the '476's own patent number was 11402476 while its application is 16/358,695; the earlier section correctly flagged the separate collision with Salutron's application 11/402,476. None of these are the same document.

One caution: because P8's claim 1 recites a "code storage" and a "controller" and is framed as a vehicle LiDAR module, its claims are not coextensive with '476's claims. Its value is as prior art disclosure, judged by what its specification describes, not by what it claims.

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9. Anticipated patentee rebuttals

Teaching away: I found no teaching away in any reference. None of P1–P8 disparages coded-pulse channelization; several exist for no other purpose.

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10. Bottom line

Overall: the strongest single-thread attack runs through Fersch (P5) for the method claims and Campbell (P1) + Veoneer (P7) for the apparatus claims, with US 11,402,477 / 2020/0278430 (P8) supplying a genuine § 102(a)(2) overlay for the timing/amplitude-coded dependent claims. The combination narrative rests on the fact that all of these references are directed at the identical problem the '476 specification identifies — LIDAR-to-LIDAR interference — and that the disclosure is written at a level of generality ("any number or type of parameters," "any frequency," "many possible techniques") that leaves little room to argue the claims are tied to any specific, surprising, or narrowly-enabled implementation.

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11. Confidence statement and recommended next steps

Confidence:

• High on claim scope, the specification's own concessions, the statutory framework, and the internal consistency of the combination logic.
• Moderate-high on the substantive § 103 conclusions for the independent claims.
• Low-to-moderate on the specific reference identifications, for the reason stated in §0: the examiner's citation list in the source I was given is truncated after US 2016/0084651 A1, and I could not retrieve the remaining eight entries. Several of the references I used (P1–P5) are confirmed from the ISA search report for PCT/CA2019/000036, which is a different application; they are corroborative prior art, not necessarily the examiner's citations.

What would materially firm up this analysis:

1. Pull the file wrapper for app. 16/358,695 — the PTO-892/PTO-1449 notices of references cited, all Office Actions, and the applicant's remarks. The examiner's actual 9-reference list, and any examiner reasons for allowance, will tell you which reference nearly got the claims and why they issued. This is the single highest-value next step.
2. Retrieve the full texts of US 2017/0038464 A1 and US 2017/0329010 A1 and verify the paragraphs the ISA report cites, plus confirm assignees.
3. Confirm Fersch et al., IEEE Sensors Journal 17(11):3507–3516 publication date and content, and treat it as the primary method-claim reference.
4. Verify the effective filing chain of US 11,402,477 / US 2020/0278430 (including app. 16/290,660, filed 2019-03-01) to lock in the § 102(a)(2) date.
5. Run a Docket Navigator / Lex Machina validity challenge query on Patent No. 11,402,476 — the prior sections found no litigation, but this would confirm there is no IPR/PGR estoppel or prior claim-construction ruling to build on.

One drafting caveat carried forward: claim 16 as published contains an apparent omission ("...the modulated laser light measuring the time-of-flight...") and claim 20 recites "a plurality of laser light sources" though parent claim 15 recites only "a laser light source" (singular). These are noted for completeness and for any invalidity/infringement analysis; they do not change the obviousness conclusions above.