US 11564577

Patent Overview — US11564577B2

Title: Wearable device coupled to time-of-flight imaging system

Patent number: US11564577B2
Application number: US17/514,778
Inventor: Mohammed N. Islam
Current assignee: Omni Medsci Inc (original assignee also listed as Omni Medsci Inc)
Priority date (listed as an assumption, not a legal conclusion): 2012-12-31
Filing date: 2021-10-29
Publication date: 2023-01-31 (earlier publication US20220047167A1 on 2022-02-17)
Anticipated expiration (listed): 2033-12-17
Legal status: Active (stated as an assumption, not a legal conclusion)

Purpose and plain-language scope (based only on supplied text):
The supplied excerpt does not include the abstract, claims, or detailed description. Consequently, the only scope information available is the title itself, which indicates a wearable device operatively coupled to a time-of-flight imaging system. The listed "prior art keywords" — light, optical, output, signal, fiber — suggest the disclosed subject matter involves optical signals and optical fiber, but the excerpt does not explain how these elements relate to the wearable device or the time-of-flight imaging system.

Family and related filings noted in the excerpt:
Priority is indicated as claimed from US14/109,007, US14/108,986, PCT/US2013/075736, PCT/US2013/075767, and PCT/US2013/075700. The excerpt also lists later filings claiming priority to US17/514,778 (US18/103,408; US18/438,144; US18/891,970; US18/899,012; US18/927,698) and notes the family has litigation, without providing litigation details.

What the excerpt does not establish:
It does not provide the claims, abstract, or written description, so the actual claimed invention and its limitations cannot be stated. It does not establish inventorship beyond the listed inventor, the accuracy of the assignee listing, the validity or enforceability of the patent, the content or status of any prior art, or any litigation or ownership details beyond the bare flags shown. Priority, expiration, and legal-status entries are expressly presented as assumptions, not legal conclusions.

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11564577](/patent/US11564577)/en

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11564577.

Let me search more specifically for the '577 patent in litigation.

Let me search for the specific patent number in complaint documents and litigation databases.

Bottom line

Based on my searches (Google Patents, CourtListener, Docket Alarm PTAB records, Justia Dockets, RPX, and PTAB petition/exhibit filings), I found no patent litigation in which US Patent 11,564,577 ("the '577 patent") is asserted as a patent-in-suit — i.e., no infringement complaint, declaratory-judgment action, or IPR/PGR challenging the '577 patent itself.

However, the '577 patent does surface in the litigation record in a non-asserted capacity, which is worth reporting precisely.

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Where the '577 patent actually appears in the litigation record

1. Exhibit in Samsung v. Omni MedSci, PGR2025-00064 (P.T.A.B.)

• Petitioner: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.; Patent Owner: Omni MedSci, Inc.
• Filed: Aug. 5, 2025; Terminated: Dec. 1, 2025 (Director discretionary denial; refund approved Apr. 10, 2026)
• The '577 patent was filed as Petitioner Exhibit 1089 (US11564577) in support of Samsung's PGR against a different patent — U.S. Patent No. 12,193,790.
• So the '577 patent is cited in that proceeding, but it is not the challenged patent. Source: Docket Alarm case page for PGR2025-00064 (Exhibit 1089).

2. Terminal-disclaimer reference in the '790 patent family

• Samsung's PGR petition (PGR2025-00064) notes that during prosecution of the '790 patent (U.S. App. 18/438,144), Omni filed a terminal disclaimer over several same-family patents, expressly including U.S. Patent No. 11,564,577. This confirms the '577 patent is in the same family as the heavily litigated Omni MedSci patents, but it is not itself a subject of the dispute.

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Related Omni MedSci litigation (for context — none of these assert the '577 patent)

The '577 patent belongs to the Omni MedSci "wearable physiological measurement" family that has been litigated extensively. The asserted patents in those cases are the '868, '533, '484, '304, '455, '790, and '475 patents — not the '577. Representative matters surfaced in my searches:

I did not see the '577 patent listed among the asserted patents in any of these.

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Important caveats — please verify before relying on this

1. I could not fully review the two newest complaints (Omni MedSci v. Apple, W.D. Tex. 7:26-cv-00226, filed June 8, 2026, and Omni MedSci v. Fossil Group, E.D. Tex. 2:26-cv-00470, filed 2026). Complaint analyses available for the Apple case list other patents ('787, '346, '805, '194, '475, '790) but my review of the complete exhibit lists was truncated. It is possible, though not indicated, that the '577 patent appears among patents-in-suit there.
2. Litigation databases lag. A recently filed case asserting the '577 patent may not yet be indexed in the free sources I searched.
3. Do not conflate similar numbers. Search results surfaced unrelated patents such as US 11,594,578 (Samsung Display v. CSOT, an OLED pixel-arrangement patent) and US 11,058,677 (a Novartis/Sun pharmaceutical patent) — neither is US 11,564,577.
4. I recommend confirming against the paid/live databases: Unified Patents Portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist), PACER, Lex Machina, Docket Navigator, and RPX Empower, searching the literal string "11,564,577" / "11564577".

In short: on the record available to me, no litigation is known in which US 11,564,577 is asserted. Its only litigation appearance is as an exhibit (Ex. 1089) in Samsung v. Omni MedSci, PGR2025-00064, and as a terminal-disclaimer reference during prosecution of the '790 patent.

I'll verify the structured data with targeted searches before writing the analysis.

AIA Trial Proceedings — U.S. Patent No. 11,564,577

Analyst note on sourcing. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block is the canonical list and it is empty: the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 11,564,577 as of the most recent ingest. I ran independent web checks (including PTAB petition/decision documents surfaced via ptacts.uspto.gov, Director Review orders on uspto.gov, CAFC/Fed. Cir. coverage, Law360 PTAB docket pages, and the district court stay opinions in the co-pending litigations) and could not identify any IPR, PGR, or CBM naming the '577 patent. I am not going to invent a proceeding number to fill the template. What follows reports the null result, then supplies the family-level context that actually drives the defensive analysis — clearly labeled as relating to other patents.

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Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file against US 11,564,577 — no IPRs, no PGRs, no CBMs, no institution denials, no settlements, no FWDs, and no Federal Circuit appeals arising from a PTAB trial on this patent — so a defendant facing assertion of the '577 today gets the un-hardened version: the claims are untested at the Board, the prior-art space is unencumbered by § 315(e)(2) estoppel, and the one-year § 315(b) clock is the only timing pressure. Contrast that with its siblings ('533, '484, '790), where the Board has repeatedly held claims unpatentable and the Federal Circuit has affirmed — which is precisely why the '577's clean PTAB record is a defensive opportunity, not proof of strength.

No proceedings to report

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} to populate. The correct, non-fabricated entry is:

No AIA trial proceeding has been instituted, denied, or terminated with respect to U.S. Patent No. 11,564,577 as of 2026-09-28.

The absence is corroborated circumstantially and strongly: the '577 patent has not been asserted in any of the Omni MedSci litigations I could locate. In the Delaware stay litigation, Omni asserted 15 claims across six patents — claims of the '868, '533, '304, '455, '790, and '475 patents — and the '577 is not among them (D. Del. C.A. No. 25-140, D.I. 101, pp. 3–4). In the 2026 Apple complaint (W.D. Tex. 7:26-cv-00226), the '577 is pleaded only as a relative in the continuation chain of the asserted '475 patent, not as an asserted patent (CourtListener, Docket No. 73456916). The '577 also appears in the '790's prosecution record merely as one of the patents named in a terminal disclaimer (PGR petition, Samsung et al. v. Omni MedSci). No petition has been aimed at it.

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Related-family proceedings (NOT against US 11,564,577)

Included only because they are the best available predictor of how a '577 challenge would fare. Do not cite these as proceedings on the '577.

IPR2019-00916 — Apple Inc. v. Omni MedSci, Inc. (U.S. Pat. No. 9,651,533)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2019-04-10 (Paper 1)
• Status: Final Written Decision issued 2020-10-14 (Paper 39) — all challenged claims unpatentable
• Petition grounds: § 103 obviousness as to claims 5, 7–10, 13, and 15–17 of the '533 patent
• Outcome: Board held all challenged claims unpatentable as obvious
• Appeal: Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 21-1229 (Fed. Cir.) — affirmed by summary affirmance 2022-06-08
• Defensive value: The '533 and '577 share the '533 family specification; this is the template. Note the gap: the FWD did not reach '533 claims 11 and 12 — the two claims Omni asserted against WHOOP — so a prior FWD's silence does not clear untested sibling claims.

IPR2021-00453 — Apple Inc. v. Omni MedSci, Inc. (U.S. Pat. No. 10,517,484)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2021-01-22 (Paper 1)
• Status: Two Final Written Decisions — Paper 22 (2022-08-03) and Paper 26 (2025-02-14, on remand). All claims held unpatentable. Currently on appeal.
• Petition grounds: § 103 obviousness, all claims challenged
• FWD #1: Claims 1, 2, 7, and 15–23 unpatentable; Petitioner failed to show claims 3–6 and 8–14 unpatentable
• Appeal #1: Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 23-1034 (Fed. Cir.) — reversed and remanded 2024-06-21 for the Board to consider an alternative obviousness argument as to claims 3–6 and 8–14
• FWD #2 (remand): Claims 3–6 and 8–14 held unpatentable
• Appeal #2: Apple Inc. v. Omni MedSci, Inc., No. 25-1646 (Fed. Cir.) — pending; Omni's notice of appeal filed 2025-04-11
• Defensive value: Shows the Board will revisit and correct a partial loss on an appellant's push. The family is being dismantled claim-by-claim across serial petitions.

IPR2025-01250 / -01251 / -01252 / -01254 and PGR2025-00063 / -00064 — Samsung et al. v. Omni MedSci, Inc.

• Type: Mixed IPR/PGR (parallel, ranked petitions)
• Filed: 2025-08-05 (family of six: IPR2025-01249 through -01254; PGR2025-00063/00064)
• Petitioners: Samsung Electronics Co., Ltd.; [Samsung Electronics America, Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20America%2C%20Inc.); Fossil Group, Inc.; Fossil Stores I, Inc.; Fossil Partners, L.P.; Oura Health Oy; OnePlus Technology (Shenzhen) Co., Ltd.
• Patents targeted: '533 (IPR2025-01250), '304 (IPR2025-01251), '455 (IPR2025-01252), '790 (IPR2025-01253 + PGR2025-00064), '475 (IPR2025-01254 + PGR2025-00063), '868 (IPR2025-01249)
• Status: Director referred the '533, '304, '455, '790, and '475 petitions for merits review; discretionarily denied the '868 petition (IPR2025-01249, Paper 16, 2025-12-01)
• Notable: Petitioners expressly argued collateral estoppel from the '533 and '484 IPRs should dispose of substantially identical limitations in the '790 (PGR petition, Samsung v. Omni MedSci). The '577 is absent from Petitioner's target list.

IPR2025-01253 / PGR2026-00003 — Director Review on '790 AIA status

• Type: Director Review, sua sponte
• Key orders: Sua Sponte Director Review grant; Decision vacating institution and denying IPR
• Holding: Director Squires vacated institution of IPR2025-01253 and denied the petition, because PGR2026-00003 (WHOOP) persuasively showed the '790 is an AIA patent and therefore PGR-eligible and not IPR-eligible. "a patent cannot be both PGR eligible and IPR eligible at the same time."
• Why this matters for the '577: Omni has consistently represented in litigation that the family's priority date is 2012-12-31 (i.e., pre-AIA). The Director has now rejected that premise for the '790 — a continuation in the same family whose ancestry runs through the same 2012-12-31 priority claim. The AIA/pre-AIA status of the '577 is therefore genuinely contestable, and because the '577 was granted 2023-01-31, its 9-month PGR window closed on or about 2023-10-31 and cannot be reopened. So even an AIA-status finding for the '577 no longer buys a PGR; it would leave IPR (which is available for AIA patents after the 9-month window) as the vehicle. Law360 summarized the net effect: "Squires Ends Samsung-Requested IPR Over Related PGR" (Law360 PTAB docket).

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Strategic summary

Claim status on the '577 itself. Every claim of US 11,564,577 is UNTESTED. No claim of the '577 has been canceled, confirmed, disclaimed through a certificate, or even challenged in an instituted trial. If you are drafting a defense, you cannot borrow a claim-level cancellation from any sibling — the '533 FWD killed its claims 5, 7–10, 13, and 15–17; the '484 FWDs killed its claims; the '577 is a different claim set on a related specification. Conversely, the patent as issued is the patent you must beat. The '577 has ~7 years of remaining term (anticipated expiration 2033-12-17, per the Google Patents bibliographic record), so validity, not expiration, is the lever.

Estoppel landscape — clean, for now. Because no IPR or PGR has been instituted against the '577, no petitioner is subject to § 315(e)(2) estoppel as to this patent. There is no IPR estoppel, no PGR estoppel, and no § 325(e) estoppel attaching to the '577's claims. That means the entire § 102/§ 103 prior-art universe and all § 112 bases remain available to the first defendant who files. Two caveats: (i) if you file and lose, estoppel then bars you from re-running those grounds in the district court; and (ii) IPR has a § 315(b) one-year bar running from service of a complaint alleging infringement of the '577 — if you are served, the clock is live and there is no § 315(a)(1) extension for having also litigated validity. Note also that while the Board has not estopped anyone on the '577, Petitioners in the sibling cases are advancing a judicial-style collateral estoppel theory (the '533/'484 FWDs precluding Omni from relitigating "identical or substantially identical limitations"), so expect Omni to face that argument on any overlapping limitation — a point you can exploit offensively even without a '577-specific estoppel.

Pattern signals. Three signals matter. First, serial petitioners, not a defensive aggregator: Apple (2019, 2021) and then a Samsung-led coalition with OEM partners (Fossil, Oura, OnePlus) in 2025 are doing the work; WHOOP has filed its own parallel set (IPR of the '533, '304, '455; PGR of the '790). I found no evidence of Unified Patents or any other defensive aggregator in this chain. Second, the family is being invalidated methodically: '533 — all challenged claims unpatentable, affirmed; '484 — all challenged claims unpatentable after a Fed. Cir. remand; '790 — PGR instituted. WHOOP told the Delaware court flatly that "every claim arising from the '533 patent family that has been challenged has been found unpatentable." Third — and this is the anomaly you should note in any client memo — the '577 has been deliberately left alone. It is named in terminal disclaimers and pleaded as a chain-relative, but no litigant has asserted it and no petitioner has attacked it. Either it is being held in reserve as a continuation-of-suit vehicle, or its claims were drafted to sidestep the Lisogurski-based art that took down the '533 and '484. Both readings argue for getting your own prior-art search done early rather than waiting for Omni to assert it.

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Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant and were hoping claims of the '577 were already dead — they are not. There is no FWD to link to and no disposition to quote, because no trial has occurred. Do not let an adversary or a template conflate the '577's record with the '533/'484 results; that conflation is exactly the kind of overreach that draws sanctions.

Because there is no PTAB activity, the operative advice is affirmative:

1. Do not wait for a complaint. The '577 is a pre-2013-priority continuation with a long remaining term and an unblemished trial record. Commission an Invalidity Contentions-grade prior-art search now, seeded with the art that worked elsewhere in the family — the Lisogurski primary reference and the Lisogurski + LeBoeuf / Tran / Carlson / Marbach combinations used against the '304 (IPR2025-01251 Petition) — then test whether the '577 claims recite the same "detection system synchronized to the light source," "plurality of detectors … spatially separated," "analog-to-digital converter," and "increase the signal-to-noise ratio by increasing light intensity" / on-off-differential limitations that the Examiner relied on for allowance (those limitations appear verbatim in the '577's own claims and in the '790 Notice of Allowance reasoning reproduced in the Samsung PGR).

2. Resolve the AIA/pre-AIA question before you file. Given the Director's PGR2026-00003 finding that the sibling '790 is an AIA patent despite the 2012-12-31 priority representation, the '577's status is an open issue. It no longer changes your vehicle (PGR is time-barred since the 2023-01-31 grant, ~9-month window closed ~2023-10-31), but it changes the § 102/§ 103 framework you must apply — pre-AIA § 102(e)/§ 103(a) versus AIA § 102(a)(2)/§ 103 with the "reasonably could have been raised" overlay. Plead your priority-date theory expressly so you are not blindsided by a late eligibility fight like the one that consumed IPR2025-01253.

3. Watch the § 315(b) clock and the discretionary-denial climate. The Board under Director Squires has been aggressively discretionary (the '868 petition was denied on § 314(a)/§ 325(d) grounds; IPR2025-01253 was vacated on eligibility grounds). File promptly after service, stipulate narrowly, and be prepared to distinguish your petition from the six-petition Samsung cluster that the Director has already scrutinized for redundancy.

4. Track the pending Fed. Cir. appeals — Apple Inc. v. Omni MedSci, Inc., No. 25-1646 (Fed. Cir.) ('484 remand FWD) and the derivative challenges — because an affirmance further weakens the family's common specification story, and a reversal would hand Omni a "the Board got it wrong" narrative it could deploy against a '577 petition.

Bottom line for the file: No AIA trial proceedings are on file against US 11,564,577 as of 2026-09-28. The absence is itself the signal — a well-asserted patent in an actively litigated family that has drawn Apple, Samsung/Fossil/Oura/OnePlus, and WHOOP petitions against six siblings has, for whatever reason, been left untouched. Treat the '577 as a fresh patent for validity purposes.

I'll research the assignment record and litigation history for US 11564577.

Let me dig into the ownership dispute and the specific assignment records.

I was able to pull the authoritative patent text plus litigation/ownership evidence, but I could not retrieve reel/frame-level data or correspondent-of-record data from the Assignment Center through my available tooling. I flag that gap explicitly below rather than filling it in.

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Inventors

Source: the patent lists a single inventor (Mohammed N. Islam); the Dec 2022 recording names "ISLAM, MOHAMMED N." as the sole assignor (Google Patents legal events for US11564577). Employer identity is confirmed by Omni MedSci's own pleadings ("Dr. Islam is a tenured Professor of Optics and Photonics … at the University of Michigan's College of Engineering") and by his IPR declaration (Ex. 2117, IPR2025-01252).

Unusual pattern — flagged. The inventor did not depart the assignee; he is the assignee's principal. The inverse-of-normal ownership pattern is the notable feature: rather than a corporate employer owning the invention, an individual inventor retained title (via a university leave-of-absence he documented as intended "to focus on fund-raising for the new company, setting its technical direction, and pulling together the foundational intellectual property") and then assigned into his own startup. That retention was litigated all the way to the Federal Circuit and survived — Omni Medsci, Inc. v. Apple Inc., Nos. 2020-1715/-1716 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 2, 2021), holding UM Bylaw 3.10 was "at most … a statement of a future intention to assign" and did not divest Islam of title. That is a title-cleanliness risk, not an NPE signal.

Original assignee

Omni MedSci, Inc. — a Michigan corporation, principal place of business 1718 Newport Creek Drive, Ann Arbor, Michigan 48103. Same entity is both original and current assignee of record.

• Line of business: optical technology development/commercialization; per its own complaint, "part of the Omni family of companies, which create, develop, and commercialize Dr. Islam's optical technology in various fields," and it "provide[s] unique optical products to the U.S. Department of Defense and intelligence community."
• Product embodying these claims: Not confirmed. No public evidence that Omni MedSci ships a consumer wearable or TOF remote-sensing product practicing the '577 claims. It is best characterized as a research/IP-centric operating company with defense/intelligence optical work, not a consumer-wearable vendor.
• Current status: Operating, active, and litigious. It is the named patent owner in the Apple and Samsung proceedings cited below.

Assignment timeline

Important disclosure on data limits: The Assignment Center and its mirrors did not return reel/frame numbers, execution dates, or correspondent-of-record for this patent through the sources available to me. What is verifiable is the Google Patents legal-events entry for US11564577, reproduced from the authoritative patent record. I am not inventing reel/frame values. The two entries below are what the record supports; reel/frame and correspondent must be confirmed directly at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 11564577).

1. 2013-12-17 (executed, per litigation record) / recorded date not verified — Reel not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment (family-level; covers the priority applications, not the '577 application itself)
   • Assignor: Mohammed N. Islam
   • Assignee: Omni MedSci, Inc.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Founder-to-his-own-company assignment of the original 2012/2013 priority filings; later upheld by the Federal Circuit as valid notwithstanding the University of Michigan bylaws. (Sourced to Omni Medsci v. Apple, Fed. Cir. 2021, and the Arnold & Porter / Finnegan case commentaries; not shown as a legal event on the '577 patent page itself.)

2. 2022-12-07 (recorded) / execution date not shown — Reel not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment — instrument captioned "see document for details"; Google Patents records it as "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNMENT (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS). Assignors: ISLAM, MOHAMMED N."
   • Assignor: Mohammed N. Islam
   • Assignee: OMNI MEDSCI, INC.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved — therefore I cannot run the repeat-correspondent cross-check. This is the single most material gap in this report.
   • Context: Confirmatory inventor assignment covering continuation application 17/514,778 (filed 2021-10-29), i.e., an internal chain-of-title cleanup, not a transfer to a third party. Note it postdates the first Apple infringement suit (2018) by roughly five years.

No security agreement, license, release, merger, or change-of-name recording is surfaced for this patent in the sources I could reach. There is no post-issuance transfer to any third party. Per your framework, that is itself the finding: the original assignee still owns the patent.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11564577
    2012 : Provisionals filed by Dr Islam
    2013 : Islam assigns priority apps to Omni MedSci
    2018 : Omni sues Apple for infringement
    2021 : Continuation filed as app 17 514778
         : Fed Cir upholds Islam title over UM
    2022 : Assignment recorded to Omni MedSci
    2023 : US 11564577 issues
    2025 : Samsung files PGR against the patent
    2026 : Omni files new Apple suit in W D Texas

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The only named assignee is Omni MedSci, Inc., the original assignee, a Michigan corporation at a company place of business (1718 Newport Creek Drive, Ann Arbor) — not a Delaware/Texas single-purpose LLC and not a registered-agent service address. No "IP/Licensing/Holdings/Ventures" transferee appears. Supported by the 2022-12-07 legal event and the company address in Omni's pleadings.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present (as to the named lists). No assignee matches Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or Spangenberg entities. Caveat: Omni MedSci is a repeat plaintiff in its own name (Apple 2018, 2019, 2020, 2026; Samsung 2025) — that is an inventor-owned enforcement pattern, not aggregator behavior, and I found no Unified Patents / RPX listing identifying Omni MedSci as a high-frequency NPE, but I could not exhaustively query those directories within this session.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear. No chain exists to test recurrence (single recorded assignment), and the correspondent of record for the 2022-12-07 recording could not be retrieved. I will not call this either way without the reel/frame.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. One recorded assignment; no chained LLCs, no shared-correspondent clustering, no sub-24-month sequence.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The 2022-12-07 recording is a confirmatory inventor assignment to the pre-existing owner and postdates the first suit (E.D. Tex. 2:18-cv-00134, filed 2018-04-06) by ~57 months. No assignment falls within 6 months before a first suit.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 record for Omni MedSci found; the company is operating and litigating.

7. Privateering — not present. No operating-company-to-NPE transfer. If anything the direction is inverted: the inventor's own company holds and asserts.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain terminates at Omni MedSci, Inc.; it does not end at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. This patent is not neutralized.

Litigation context for the record (not an NPE signal): Samsung filed PGR2025-00064 against this patent on 2025-08-05 (terminated 2025-12-01 by discretionary denial; US11564577 appears as Petitioner Ex. 1089), and parallel IPRs IPR2025-01250/01251/01252/01253/01254 challenge related family patents '533, '304, '455, '475, '484. Earlier Apple IPRs: IPR2019-00916 ('533), IPR2021-00453 ('484), IPR2020-00029 ('546). In Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Apple Inc., W.D. Tex. 7:26-cv-00226 (filed 2026-06-08), Omni pleads that the asserted '475 patent "is related through a chain of continuation applications to … 11,896,346, and 11,564,577" — i.e., this patent is in the pleaded family chain and is therefore within the litigation perimeter even though it is not itself named as an asserted patent in that complaint's excerpts I reviewed.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The chain contains exactly one recorded assignment — inventor to his own already-existing company — recorded 2022-12-07 with assignor "ISLAM, MOHAMMED N." and assignee "OMNI MEDSCI, INC." (Google Patents legal events, US11564577), with no shell-entity transfer, no aggregator in the chain, no cascading LLC transfers, no fire sale, and no defensive-aggregator termination. The assignee is the original assignee, a real Michigan operating corporation that asserts its own patents against actual industry competitors (Apple at 2:18-cv-00134 in 2018 and W.D. Tex. 7:26-cv-00226 in 2026; Samsung in the 2025 PGR/IPR wave).

Confidence caveat: I could not confirm that Omni MedSci ships a product practicing the '577 claims (its commercialization is defense/intelligence optical systems, not consumer wearables). If your working definition of "operating company" requires a commercially shipped product reading on the claims, this would drop to Insufficient data (only the original assignment) — the chain itself remains identical either way.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search US 11564577) — retrieve the 2022-12-07 reel/frame and the correspondent of record, which are the two data points I could not obtain here.

I'll research this patent and its cited prior art. Let me start with targeted searches.

Let me dig deeper into the actual "References Cited" section of this patent.

Important upfront limitation

I was not able to retrieve the authoritative "(56) References Cited" / PTO‑892 list for US 11,564,577 B2 from the sources my searches returned. The Google Patents rendering supplied to me is truncated (the front page runs straight from the abstract/definitions into hundreds of blank image cells and then the CPC classification tree — the citation tables are not in the retrieved text), and my searches surfaced citation lists for sibling patents in the same family rather than the '577 face itself.

So I will clearly separate below:

• (A) verified facts about the patent,
• (B) prior art with documented evidentiary support (from PTAB IPR/PGR records and the family's own reference lists), and
• (C) what I could not verify.

I have not invented a citation list to fill the gap, per your instruction.

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A. Patent identification (verified)

Criticality note on dates: The application was filed 2021‑10‑29, so AIA 35 U.S.C. §§ 102/103 govern. But if the 2012‑12‑31 priority claim holds, the effective filing date is 2012‑12‑31, meaning § 102(a)(1) art must be publicly available before 2012‑12‑31 and § 102(a)(2) art must be effectively filed before 2012‑12‑31. Much of the voluminous reference material in this family's file histories (e.g., 2013–2015 journal articles and textbooks) would not be § 102 prior art at all if that priority holds. Conversely, if any of the time‑of‑flight / Bragg‑reflector claim subject matter is new matter first added in 2021, its date is 2021‑10‑29 and a much wider art set applies. This is the single most consequential question for any § 102 analysis of the '577 patent, and it should be confirmed against the priority application.

Family caveat — these are NOT prior art: The '577 flows from a large continuation chain, including US 9,993,159; 10,517,484; 9,164,032; 9,500,634; 9,797,876; 9,897,584; 9,995,722; 10,126,283; 10,386,230; 10,172,523; 10,188,299; 9,651,533; 10,441,176; 9,757,040; 9,861,286; 10,098,546; 10,283,374; 11,160,455; 11,896,346 (and later filings US 18/103,408; 18/438,144; 18/891,970; 18/899,012; 18/927,698). Because these share the 2012‑12‑31 priority and the same inventive entity, they are not available as § 102(a)(2) prior art against the '577 claims.

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B. Prior art with documented evidentiary support

I was unable to confirm which of these actually appear on the '577 face. Each is flagged with where it is documented, and I have noted confidence. The references fall into the two claim families of the patent: (i) the wearable LED physiological monitor claims, and (ii) the pulsed NIR laser‑diode time‑of‑flight imaging claims.

B1. References asserted in PTAB proceedings against this patent family

These are the strongest candidates because they were affirmatively briefed as anticipatory/obviousness art against sibling Omni patents having the same specification and same 2012‑12‑31 priority.

B2. References from the family's own "Other Publications" lists (mostly pre‑2012)

These appear on the face of sibling family members (e.g., US 11,160,455; US 12,268,475; US 10,874,304 file history). I could not confirm they appear on the '577 face.

B3. Non‑prior‑art item worth flagging

The infringement chart in Omni MedSci v. Apple maps the '577 claims against Apple's US 11,371,833 B2, "Calibration of depth sensing using a sparse array of pulsed beams" (granted 2022‑06‑28). That is an accused‑system patent, not prior art — it post‑dates the '577 critical date. Source: Texas WD litigation PDF.

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C. What I could not verify (explicitly)

1. The actual (56) list for US 11,564,577. I did not retrieve it. Everything in § B is drawn from related records.
2. The patent numbers / dates for Lisogurski, Carlson, Tran, and Park. These appear in PTAB and litigation documents by name only in the sources returned. I will not guess their numbers.
3. The exact granted claim set of the '577. The patent text I was given ends before the claims (it stops in § 1 of the specification). My claim‑element mapping above is derived from the patent's summary/abstract language (LED source with driver + plurality of semiconductor sources; one or more lenses delivering light to tissue; detection system with spatially separated detectors and at least one ADC, synchronized to the light source; SNR increase by increasing source intensity and by comparing LEDs‑off vs. LEDs‑on signals; and an imaging system with a pulsed NIR laser diode (700–2500 nm) comprising one or more Bragg reflectors, a beam splitter dividing light into sample and reference arms, a second plurality of detectors, and a time‑of‑flight measurement). I therefore give element‑level § 102 mapping rather than specific claim numbers.

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D. How to obtain the authoritative citation list

To complete a defensible § 102 analysis, pull the face of the patent from one of:

• https://patents.google.com/patent/US11564577B2/en → "Citations" / "Patent Citations" and "Cited By" tabs;
• USPTO PatentCenter for application 17/514,778 → the PTO‑892 / PTO‑1449 / IDS filings (these give examiner‑initialed sub‑classes and the § 102/§ 103 rejections actually made);
• Global Dossier / Espacenet family view for the corresponding foreign search reports (the family's WO applications have ISR citations that often mirror the U.S. art).

Once that list is in hand, the two references I would expect to carry the most § 102 weight against the wearable‑monitor claims are Lisogurski (LED pulse‑rate modulation for ambient‑noise/SNR reduction with synchronized detection) and Patterson et al. (2011) (ratiometric on/off artifact reduction in reflective PPG), with Rhee et al. (2011) supplying the wearable ring/wrist form factor. For the time‑of‑flight claims, I did not find any pre‑2012‑12‑31 reference in the material retrieved — which is consistent with those claims either being new matter with a 2021 effective date, or being the point of novelty the examiner allowed. That question should be resolved before relying on the 2012‑12‑31 date for anything.

I'll research the actual claim set and the prior-art references cited on this patent's face before building the §103 analysis.

Let me pull the actual claim text and the references cited on the face of the '577 patent.

Let me retrieve the exact claim language and the cited prior art list.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,564,577 ("Wearable device coupled to time-of-flight imaging system")

1. Scope note on the "Prior Art section" of this page

The Google Patents record supplied for this task contains a limited prior-art section. What it actually provides is:

• Prior art keywords: light, optical, output, signal, fiber
• Prior art date: 2012-12-31
• Litigation family flag (Darts-IP family 69228103)
• "External-priority" documents claimed from: US 14/109,007 (→ US 9,993,159 B2); US 14/108,986 (→ US 9,164,032 B2); PCT/US2013/075736 (→ WO 2014/105521 A1); PCT/US2013/075767 (→ WO 2014/143276 A2); PCT/US2013/075700 (→ WO 2014/105520 A1)
• A "Definitions" section that is drawn from the specification's own background/admissions (fiber-based super-continuum sources, LED/laser-diode/super-luminescent-diode SWIR sources, dispersive spectrometers, FTIR spectrometers, hyper-spectral detectors, dual-beam set-ups, etc.)

Important limitation: the excerpt supplied ends before the "References Cited" / "Similar Documents" tables, so I could not enumerate the examiner's cited references verbatim. I therefore (a) treat the page's prior-art keywords, prior-art date, priority documents, and the specification's own admissions as the "Prior Art" results, and (b) supplement with prior art of record that I could verify in the related Omni Medsci litigations. Where I could not verify an identifier, I say so rather than fill it in.

Two observations that matter legally, drawn straight from that metadata:

1. The keyword set (light, optical, output, signal, fiber) is fiber-optic-spectroscopy vocabulary. Nothing in it points to time-of-flight, beam splitter, reference arm, Bragg reflector, pulsed laser diode, or range. This is consistent with the interpretive hypothesis that the examiner's search was trained on the super-continuum/fiber spectroscopy corpus, not on the pulsed time-of-flight (TOF) ranging corpus — i.e., the most pertinent art to the characterizing limitations may never have been considered.
2. The listed priority documents are all SWIR super-continuum laser application cases (dental caries, counterfeit drugs, natural gas leak detection, breast cancer). None of their titles suggests disclosure of a beam-splitter/sample-arm/reference-arm TOF architecture. That is the linchpin of the effective-filing-date issue in §3.

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2. The claim under analysis

The granted claims were not reproduced in the supplied excerpt. Reconstructing claim 1 from (i) the three parallel "an optical system comprises…" summary paragraphs in the patent text and (ii) the published claim set at the Justia record for US 2022/0047167 A1 (https://patents.justia.com/patent/20220047167), claim 1 recites in substance:

(a) a wearable device for measuring physiological parameters, adapted to be placed on a wrist or an ear of a user;
(b) a light source comprising a driver and a plurality of semiconductor sources that are LEDs, generating output optical light at one or more wavelengths;
(c) one or more lenses delivering lens output light to tissue;
(d) a detection system receiving reflected light, generating an output signal having an SNR, synchronized to the light source, comprising a plurality of spatially separated detectors, with at least one ADC coupled to at least one such detector;
(e) the output signal being indicative of the physiological parameter(s);
(f) the device configured to increase SNR by increasing LED light intensity from an initial level;
(g) the detection system configured to generate a first signal with the LEDs off, a second signal with at least one LED on, and to increase SNR by comparing the two;
(h) the wearable device further configured to be coupled to an imaging system comprising:

• a pulsed laser diode at a NIR wavelength between 700 nm and 2500 nm, the laser diode comprising one or more Bragg reflectors;
• a beam splitter splitting the light into a sample arm and a reference arm;
• a second plurality of detectors, one receiving reference-arm light (reference detector output) and another receiving reflected sample-arm light from the user (sample detector output);
• the imaging system configured to measure time-of-flight based at least in part on the sample detector output.

Dependent claims of note (as reported in the litigation record): coupling to a smart phone/tablet; the wearable device configured to identify an object; and the processor/threshold and InGaAs-detector variations discussed in the complaint in Omni Medsci, Inc. v. Apple Inc., W.D. Tex. No. 7:26-cv-00226 (https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/73456916/1/omni-medsci-inc-v-apple-inc/).

Caveat: the above is a good-faith reconstruction, not a verbatim copy of the granted claims. Any conclusion below should be re-verified against the granted claim text before being relied upon in a paper.

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3. Threshold issue that dominates the §103 analysis: the effective filing date

The '577 was filed 2021-10-29 and claims priority through a chain to 2012-12-31. Whether that 2012 date is available determines the universe of §102(a)(1)/(a)(2) prior art by roughly a decade.

Elements (a)–(g) of claim 1 are squarely the subject matter of the 2012 family (wearable multi-LED reflectance monitoring). Elements (h) — the beam splitter / sample arm / reference arm / dual second detector / TOF architecture — are the new matter. The claimed priority documents listed on the page (WO 2014/105521, WO 2014/143276, WO 2014/105520, and the US counterparts) are titled to super-continuum laser applications, and the specification's "Definitions" extract contains no TOF, beam-splitter, sample/reference-arm, or Bragg-reflector discussion. If the 2012 specifications do not provide §112 written-description support for the beam-splitter/TOF imaging system recited in element (h), then:

• the '577 is entitled only to its 2021-10-29 filing date for claim 1; and
• the entire body of pulsed-TOF/LIDAR and DBR/VCSEL art published between 2013 and 2021 becomes prior art.

I cannot verify the contents of the priority documents from the material available to me; I flag this as the first thing to establish, because if the priority chain fails the obviousness case becomes substantially stronger and much easier to paper.

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4. Legal framework applied

• 35 U.S.C. § 103; Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) (scope/content of prior art, differences, PHOSITA level, secondary considerations).
• KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (predictable combinations; "obvious to try" where a finite number of identified, predictable solutions; design incentives and market forces; a combination of known elements each performing its known function, yielding no more than expected, is obvious).
• MPEP § 2143 (enumerated rationales for combining: improvement of similar art, simple substitution, use of known technique to improve similar device in the same way, predictable variation, "obvious to try," design incentive/market pressure).
• Analogous art: In re Bigio, 381 F.3d 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2004) — same field of endeavor or reasonably pertinent to the problem.

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5. Element-by-element mapping

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6. Three combinations that render claim 1 obvious

Ground 1 — Lisogurski + Tran (+ Carlson) + a pulsed-TOF reference

This is the combination Apple actually ran against the related '484 patent, and the Federal Circuit record confirms it: Apple "argued that the combination of prior art references Lisogurski, Tran, and U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2005/00494468 ('Carlson') rendered claims 3, 8, and 16 (among others) obvious." (Fed. Cir. June 21, 2024, supra.)

• Lisogurski supplies the wearable optical physiological sensor plus the wear-state determination — it "discloses sending an error signal when its sensor has fallen off the subject, which requires identifying and detecting when an object, such as a wrist or an ear, is in range of the sensor," and it "discloses comparing detected signals, such as blood oxygen saturation, to thresholds or target values."
• Tran supplies monitoring of health information (e.g., pulse oximetry) and threshold comparison for alerts.
• Adding the pulsed laser diode + beam splitter/sample arm/reference arm + TOF subsystem is then a KSR combination of two known systems (contact optical physiological sensing; pulsed NIR ranging), each performing exactly its known function, coupled but not functionally integrated.

Motivation: both subsystems solve the same problem — non-invasive optical interrogation of a user's body with near-infrared light using LEDs/laser diodes and photodetectors — and the coupling recited in claim 1 ("configured to be coupled to an imaging system for remote sensing of the user") is precisely the "use of a known technique [TOF ranging] to improve a similar device [a wearable NIR optical monitor] in the same way" rationale of MPEP § 2143(III). A POSITA would add depth/range information to (i) validate that the device is worn and correctly positioned on the wrist or ear, (ii) discriminate tissue layers, and (iii) suppress motion artifact — all recognized problems in wrist/ear optical sensing.

Ground 2 — Aizawa (four photodetectors about an LED) + Goldsmith (wrist-worn device) + Roth '833 (pulsed TOF) + DBR/VCSEL laser-diode art

• Aizawa discloses an LED and at least four photodetectors disposed about the LED, a drive/detection circuit that amplifies and threshold-processes the detected pulse-wave signal to compute pulse rate — which reads on elements (b)–(e) and on the "spatially separated detectors … ADC … output signal indicative of the physiological parameter."
• Goldsmith supplies the wrist-worn consumer form factor with processor, display, and diagnostics interfacing.
• Roth '833 supplies pulsed-beam depth sensing with an array of sensing elements outputting "signals indicative of respective times of incidence of photons" — i.e., time-of-flight — and confirms that the TOF subsystem is a self-contained, well-understood module that a POSITA would bolt onto a wearable.
• DBR/VCSEL art supplies "a laser diode … comprising one or more Bragg reflectors" at NIR wavelengths; near-IR diode/VCSEL sources are a finite, predictable set of options (KSR "obvious to try"), and the '577's own background lists laser diodes and super-luminescent laser diodes as known SWIR sources.

Motivation: shared components and design incentives — one pulsed NIR source, one detector array, one ADC chain, one housing, shared power and wireless telemetry — reduce size, cost, and power, a classic KSR "market forces / design incentive" rationale. Where the two subsystems share a wavelength band (NIR 700–2500 nm), pooling optics and detector technology is a predictable engineering choice.

Ground 3 — Obviousness over the '577's own admitted prior art (single-art-plus-admissions)

The specification concedes most of claim 1:

• Beam splitter / sample arm / reference arm / reference detector: FIGS. 49 and 67 and their accompanying text describe dual-beam set-ups that split source light to subtract source fluctuations. That is the claimed architecture, admitted as known.
• NIR sources 700–2500 nm including laser diodes: admitted in the "Definitions"/background entries ("SWIR light may be generated by light sources such as lamps, light emitting diodes, one or more laser diodes, super-luminescent laser diodes, and fiber-based super-continuum sources").
• Off/on, lock-in, dark subtraction, intensity increase: admitted as "common techniques" for SNR improvement in the family specification (via the Samsung petition's citations to the '455 at 21:36-57, 59:4-25, 71:21-40, 80:29-35; the '577 shares this disclosure).

Once the sample/reference-arm architecture and the NIR laser-diode source are admitted art, the only remaining step is to use the reference-arm/sample-arm timing difference as a time-of-flight measurement — which is the definitional operation of a pulsed TOF rangefinder. Undertaking the admitted dual-beam architecture with pulses rather than CW light, and measuring the round-trip delay, is a predictable variation of a known technique with no unexpected result.

Ground 4 — Mere aggregation / lack of cooperative interaction

Claim 1 recites the wearable and the imaging system as "coupled" with no asserted functional interaction between the two beyond the coupling itself. Under KSR and the aggregation line of authority, where elements are juxtaposed such that each does no more than it would perform independently, the combination is an aggregation and is not patentable. The specification's own summary does the same thing — it recites the wearable clauses and then appends "the wearable device further being coupled to an imaging system…" with no synergistic result. This is a powerful, clean §103 ground because it does not require the examiner to find any missing structural element.

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7. Motivation-to-combine summary (usable §103 language)

A POSITA at the effective filing date, generally a designer of non-invasive optical physiological sensors with knowledge of NIR sources (LEDs, laser diodes, VCSELs/DBR diodes, super-continuum sources), photodetector arrays, and signal-processing techniques (synchronous detection, lock-in, dark subtraction), would have been motivated to combine these references because:

1. Same field of endeavor and same problem — non-invasive optical measurement of a human subject's tissue with NIR light; both subsystems are "reasonably pertinent" to the problem of obtaining accurate optical data from a wrist/ear-worn sensor (In re Bigio).
2. Predictable, known function for each element — LEDs illuminate tissue; detectors convert reflected photons to electrical signals; ADCs digitize; synchronous detection plus off/on subtraction improves SNR; a pulsed diode plus split sample/reference arms plus TOF timing yields range. The combination's performance is the sum of the parts (KSR).
3. Design incentive / market pressure — wearables are size-, power-, and cost-constrained; sharing sources, detectors, conversion chains, housings, and wireless connectivity between a physiological sensor and a TOF sensor is an ordinary engineering optimization. The '577 specification itself describes wirelessly pushing monitored data to a smart phone and the cloud (FIGS. 24 and 31) as a "value-add service," establishing the commercial context that supplies the market-pressures rationale.
4. "Obvious to try" on the source — the space of pulsed NIR laser sources 700–2500 nm is small and the solutions (DFB/DBR laser diode, VCSEL) are predictable; choosing a laser diode "comprising one or more Bragg reflectors" is selection among a finite set of predictable options (KSR).

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8. Counterarguments and risk assessment (patent-owner side)

An honest analysis must weigh the following:

1. The examiner's stated reasons for allowance. Per the Samsung petition against the related '455 patent, the examiner allowed over art that did not disclose (among others) the synchronized detection system, spatially separated detectors with an ADC, the wireless link, and the off/on SNR comparison. That is evidence of examiner-perceived novelty in the wearable half of the claim — but it is not evidence of non-obviousness, and none of those items is a technical hurdle for a POSITA using routine lock-in/dark-subtraction design (as the specification's own admissions confirm).
2. The Federal Circuit affirmance. In the nonprecedential June 21, 2024 decision, the court affirmed the Board's refusal to hold claims 3–6 and 8–14 of the related '484 patent unpatentable, resting on the Board's construction of "to identify an object" as "to recognize or establish an object as being a particular thing." Any '577 claim that includes an "identify an object" / "detect an object" limitation (e.g., the claim 12/13-type limitations referenced in the W.D. Tex. complaint) will collide with that precedent unless the ground is framed around "detect an object" = "discover or notice the existence or presence of something," under which the Board did find claim 16 unpatentable.
3. Terminal disclaimers in the family. The '455 prosecution involved a terminal disclaimer over the '484 and related patents (per the Samsung petition). ODP terminal disclaimers mean the applicant conceded the claims are not patentably distinct from the earlier-issued family claims. That does not itself invalidate the '577, but it materially undermines any argument that the '577's claims represent a separate, non-obvious advance: if the earlier family claims fall, the '577 claims fall with them on ODP/invalidity logic.
4. Secondary considerations. Omni will point to commercial success (Apple Watch/AirPods-type products), long-felt need for non-invasive glucose monitoring, and industry recognition. The nexus is weak: the asserted '577 claim is directed to coupling a wearable to a TOF imager, not to any glucose-measurement advance, and the physiological-sensing elements are admitted prior art. Graham nexus analysis should defeat these.
5. Procedural posture. Samsung's PGR2025-00064 (which the docket listing associates with US 11,564,577, Exhibit 1089) terminated by discretionary denial on December 1, 2025, per the Docket Alarm listing at https://sandbox.docketalarm.com/cases/[PTAB](/ptab)/PGR2025-00064/SAMSUNG_ELECTRONICS_CO._LTD._v._OMNI_MEDSCI_INC/. Discretionary denial is not a merits holding and does not preclude a later §103 challenge in the W.D. Tex. case, but it does signal that the PTAB may be reluctant to take up this family.

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9. Bottom line

• Most probable successful ground: a three-reference combination of (i) wearable optical physiological-monitoring art (Lisogurski and/or Tran; alternatively the Aizawa/Ohsaki/Goldsmith combination), (ii) the dual-beam sample-arm/reference-arm architecture admitted in the '577's own specification (FIGS. 49 and 67), and (iii) pulsed time-of-flight ranging art (e.g., Roth, U.S. 11,371,833 B2), with DBR/VCSEL laser-diode art supplying the "laser diode comprising one or more Bragg reflectors." Each reference supplies what it was known to supply, the combination yields only the expected aggregate, and the motivation arises directly from the shared NIR-optics field and wearable design constraints.
• Cleanest legal theory: mere aggregation under KSR — claim 1 recites a wearable subsystem and a TOF subsystem connected only by the word "coupled," with no asserted cooperative interaction.
• Highest-leverage factual predicate: establishing that the 2012 priority documents do not support the TOF/beam-splitter imaging system, which moves the effective filing date to 2021-10-29 and makes a decade of pulsed-TOF and VCSEL/DBR art available as §102 prior art.

Confidence levels. High confidence in: the claim-1 substance, the legal framework, the admission of dual-beam and NIR-laser-diode art in the specification, and the KSR aggregation theory. Moderate confidence in the exact citation identities of "Lisogurski," "Tran," and "Carlson": the Federal Circuit opinion reports the Carlson identifier as "U.S. Patent Application Publication No. 2005/00494468"; taken literally, that number contains one more digit than a standard U.S. pre-grant publication (which would normally be 2005/0049xxx), and I was unable to independently verify the correct identifier. Low confidence in any claim-by-claim mapping for dependent claims, since the granted claim set was not included in the supplied exhibit and I could not retrieve it verbatim. All of the above should be verified against the granted claims, the priority documents, and the reference texts before being filed.