US 8108130

I'll search for this specific patent number across USPTO and litigation sources.

Let me check litigation/docket sources and the USPTO record specifically.

One more check for any 2026 litigation/docket activity and the current legal status.

Summary — US 8,108,130

Search scope caveat: I ran web searches for the number across patent and litigation sources. I do not have direct access to USPTO Patent Center/Public PAIR or the CAFC's CM/ECF docket; what I can verify comes from Google Patents' USPTO-derived record (which is the authoritative text supplied to me), plus open-web searches. I found no CAFC 2026 docket entry, and no district-court or PTAB proceeding, involving this patent. That is a negative result from limited searching, not proof that none exists — but the patent's legal history (below) makes active 2026 litigation unlikely.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (verbatim)

"In the calibration of a lambda sensor (26), inaccuracies occur during a fuel cut-off overrun phase depending on the temperature. A method is proposed for correcting an output signal of a lambda sensor (16) of an internal combustion engine (1), having the following steps: detection of a fuel cut-off overrun phase of the internal combustion engine (1), sensing of an exhaust-gas composition by the lambda sensor (16) during the fuel cut-off overrun phase, sensing of a temperature which represents a measure of the intake air of the internal combustion engine (1), calibration of the lambda sensor (16) based on the second temperature."

Literal-text note: the abstract's reference numeral "(26)" for the lambda sensor is inconsistent with the specification, where 26 is the control device and 16 is the lambda sensor. I am reporting this as written rather than correcting it.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — Method. Four steps for correcting a lambda sensor's output signal: (1) detect a fuel cut-off overrun phase (DFCO — engine spinning with injection off); (2) measure the exhaust-gas composition with the lambda sensor during that phase (the engine is pumping ambient air, so the sensor sees ~21 vol% O₂ reference gas); (3) measure a temperature that represents the engine's intake air; and (4) calibrate the lambda sensor using that sensed temperature. The novelty point is that a temperature signal is used in the calibration, because air humidity (which varies with temperature) shifts the oxygen concentration of the air being used as reference gas.

Claim 6 — Internal combustion engine (apparatus). An engine comprising (a) a lambda sensor in the exhaust tract, (b) means for sensing a temperature representing the intake air, and (c) a control device wired to both and programmed to: detect a DFCO phase, read the exhaust composition via the lambda sensor during that phase, sense the intake-air-representative temperature, and calibrate the lambda sensor based on that temperature.

Claim 11 — System. A system-format claim covering the same functional elements expressed as means: means for detecting DFCO, a lambda sensor for sensing exhaust composition during DFCO, means for sensing the intake-air temperature, and means for calibrating the lambda sensor based on that sensed temperature.

Dependent claims (2–5, 7–10, 12–15) add: (i) a correction value based on the maximum possible deviation of the sensor signal at maximum air humidity at the sensed temperature relative to a predetermined reference-condition signal (claims 2/7/12); (ii) further basing the correction on an average expected air humidity at the vehicle's geographic position (claims 3/8/13); and (iii) the temperature being either the ambient temperature (4/9/14) or the intake-tract temperature (5/10/15).

The specification's two worked variants are: Variant 1 — correct the manufacturer's reference value by 50% of the maximum possible deviation at the measured temperature (e.g., at 30 °C, 1.98% × 6 mA = 0.119 mA); Variant 2 — correct by the statistical expected humidity at the vehicle's GPS position (e.g., 77% × 2.18% × 6 mA = 0.101 mA at 20 °C). Tables 1–3 give the temperature/humidity/deviations data. The stated advantage is compensating for humidity-driven error without an air-humidity sensor.

Legal status (important nuance)

The record contains two apparently conflicting statements, which I report literally rather than reconciling:

• Google Patents status field: "Expired – Fee Related," adjusted expiration 2028-05-05.
• USPTO legal events: a maintenance-fee reminder mailed 2023-09-18; then "Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees" recorded 2024-03-04, patent expired under 37 CFR 1.362, effective 2024-01-31 (12th-year fee, large entity).

The practical reading is that the patent's nominal term ran to ~2028, but it lapsed for non-payment of the 12th-year maintenance fee effective 2024-01-31. Note the apparent discrepancy: the 8th-year fee was paid 2019-07-23, but no payment event appears for the 12th year. If you need a definitive current status, confirm against USPTO Patent Center / the official fee record.

Closest prior art cited (context for the claims)

• DE 198 42 425 A1 / US 6,279,372 B1 (Siemens) — the base DFCO calibration of a linear lambda probe against a pure-air reference; expressly acknowledged in the Background as the starting point.
• DE 10 2006 011 722 B3 / US 2009/0095049 A1 (Siemens; Graupner) — correcting a broadband lambda probe output using detected air humidity. This is the reference most closely aligned with the correction-value concept, and its citation is notable given it post-dates the DE priority filing but involves overlapping subject matter.
• US 5,778,687 / DE 195 45 706 A1 (VDO) — lambda probe calibration in an internal combustion engine.
• Also cited: EP 1 048 834 A2; EP 1 333 171 A1; US 2004/0060550 A1 (auto-calibration of a wide-range exhaust oxygen sensor, Wu); US 6,789,533 B1; JP 2004-150379 A.

Points of uncertainty

1. Assignee chain: the record shows Continental Automotive GmbH as assignee of the inventor's rights (effective 2009-06-21), then transfer to Vitesco Technologies GmbH (effective 2020-06-01). Whether that makes Vitesco the current owner as of April 2026 depends on any further assignments not reflected in this aggregated record.
2. Litigation: I could not locate any CAFC 2026 docket, IPR, or district-court case naming this patent. Absence in my searches is not conclusive.
3. Numerical identifier: I interpreted "8108130" literally as US 8,108,130 (utility patent); the retrieved sources consistently resolve to that document and I found no conflicting document under this number.
4. The abstract's "(26)" versus specification's "16" numeral mismatch is as-published (see above).

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 8108130 across patent litigation databases.

The generic searches didn't surface the patent. Let me search patent litigation-specific databases more directly.

No litigation surfaced yet. Let me try more targeted litigation databases and case-number searches.

Result: No litigation identified involving US Patent No. 8,108,130

I searched for litigation specifically tied to US 8,108,130 ("Method for calibrating a lambda sensor and internal combustion engine," inventor Johannes Scheuerer). I did not find any district court, CAFC, ITC, or PTAB proceeding asserting or challenging this patent. I am not going to invent case details where none were found.

Why the searches returned nothing (and what they did return)

• The Google Patents record for US8108130 contains no litigation data. Its "Cited By," "Families Citing," "Citations," and "Similar Documents" sections list patent documents only (e.g., US20100212414A1, US20100236532A1, DE19842425A1) — these are prior-art/citation relationships, not lawsuits.
• Keyword searches for the number returned only false positives. Results matched other unrelated strings containing "8108130" (e.g., a Deere/EMD parts list "8108130 CLAMP," a USDA grant number "PCM-8108130," and German design utility DE8108130U1 for a burglar-proof glass panel). None relate to this US patent.
• Generic patent-litigation queries returned unrelated matters (e.g., HydraFacial/Cartessa ITC, ClearOne v. Shure, IDEAHUB v. Unified Patents). None mention US 8,108,130.

On the patent itself (context, not litigation)

From the authoritative full text:

• Granted: US 8,108,130 B2, published 2012-01-31.
• Application: US 12/518,604, filed 2007-10-31 (US national stage of PCT/EP2007/061779).
• Priority: 2006-12-13 (DE 10 2006 058 880.0).
• Current assignee: Vitesco Technologies GmbH (assignment from Continental Automotive GmbH recorded 2020-07-30).
• Status: Expired – Fee Related; lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees, with a lapse entry effective 2024-01-31 (8th-year fee had been paid in 2019; the 12th-year fee was not).

This is a component-supplier patent (lambda/wideband oxygen sensor calibration). Its portfolio posture — a Continental/Vitesco powertrain control patent that lapsed in 2024 for non-payment — is consistent with a patent that was maintained defensively or for cross-licensing rather than asserted offensively, which is a plausible (but not proven) explanation for the absence of litigation.

Important caveats on completeness

• I could not exhaustively query PACER, Docket Navigator, or the Unified Patents litigation caselist directly in this session; my tool budget was exhausted after the initial rounds. Those are the best places to confirm a negative.
• Absence of evidence is not proof of non-litigation. To be certain, you would want to run the exact string "8,108,130" (and "8108130") as a party/document search in:
  • Docket Navigator or Lex Machina (patent case filter)
  • Unified Patents Portal – https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist
  • PACER (federal district courts), CAFC docket, and PTAB (for IPR/PGR on this number)

If you can share PACER/Docket Navigator access or want me to keep digging with more searches, I can attempt those specific queries. Based strictly on what I located in this session, no known litigation involves US Patent No. 8,108,130.

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

Let me run a few more targeted checks to make sure nothing has been missed.

One more pass to be thorough before I conclude.

PTAB Proceedings Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 8,108,130 B2

Patent: Method for calibrating a lambda sensor and internal combustion engine
Inventor: Johannes Scheuerer
Original assignee: Continental Automotive GmbH → Vitesco Technologies GmbH (assignment effective 2020-06-01; Vitesco is now within the Schaeffler group)
Application: US 12/518,604 (U.S. national stage of PCT/EP2007/061779, filed 2007-10-31)
Priority: DE 10 2006 058 880.0, filed 2006-12-13
Granted: 2012-01-31

Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings on file for US 8,108,130 — the structured USPTO Open Data Portal "PTAB proceedings on file" block returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM at all, and independent web checks surfaced no petition number tied to this patent. The breakdown is therefore 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials, and the defensive posture is the opposite of a "hardened" patent: the patent is completely untested at the PTAB, no claim has been narrowed, no petitioner is estopped, and the entire prior-art universe remains available to a defendant. That is compounded by a much bigger fact — the patent lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees, effective 2024-01-31.

⚠️ Flag on the record: The Google Patents header lists "Adjusted expiration 2028-05-05" (a projected term date) alongside legal status "Expired - Fee Related." The Legal Events table is more specific and controls: the 12-year maintenance fee was not paid, and on 2024-03-04 the Office recorded "PATENT EXPIRED FOR FAILURE TO PAY MAINTENANCE FEES" with an effective lapse date of 2024-01-31. The 2028-05-05 figure is a term calculation, not a statement that the patent is alive. Verify current status on Patent Center before relying on either date — a lapse can be cured by petition for unintentional delay (37 C.F.R. § 1.362(d)), and if it were revived the patent would be back in force. My searches found no evidence of revival.

Per-proceeding detail

None exists. There is nothing to report at the proceeding level — no proceeding number, no petitioner, no panel, no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, no settlement, no Federal Circuit appeal. I will not manufacture docket entries to fill this section. The absence is itself the finding, and it is corroborated by two independent signals:

1. The structured ODP data returns an empty set — the canonical source for AIA trial proceedings lists nothing for 8,108,130.
2. Web searches for PTAB activity on this patent returned nothing on point. Queries combining the patent number with "IPR," "PGR," "PTAB," and "petition" surfaced only unrelated proceedings (e.g., PGR2024-00035, IPR2024-00463, IPR2024-00384) and the patent's own Google Patents/FPO pages. No petition to which 8,108,130 is the challenged patent appeared.

Limits of this verification: My search tooling is not a substitute for a PTAB E2E / Patent Center API pull, and I cannot rule out a very recently filed petition that neither ODP nor the open web has indexed yet. Treat "no PTAB activity" as the strong working conclusion, not an audited certainty — a same-day Patent Center "Proceedings" tab check takes a minute and closes the gap.

Strategic summary

Claim status on 8,108,130: all UNTESTED. Claims 1–5 (the method claims) and 6–10 (the engine/system claims) — plus claims 11–15, a third independent system claim set added at the 2010-06-10 pre-grant publication — have never been before the Board. Zero claims are CANCELED; zero are SUSTAINED by adversarial adjudication. A patent owner asserting this patent cannot point to any PTAB or Federal Circuit pronouncement that its claims survived scrutiny, and a defendant cannot point to any that they fell. Notably, claims 11–15 appear in the printed patent's claim listing but were not carried into the family's dependent-claim discussions elsewhere; if you are analyzing scope, read the granted claims directly rather than the summary-of-invention passages, which track only independent claims 1 and 6.

Estoppel landscape: clean slate, and unusually clean. Because no IPR or PGR was ever instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel never attached to anyone — no petitioner, no privy, no real party in interest is barred from raising any ground. Any defendant today may petition on any § 102/§ 103 ground, including art that was before the examiner during prosecution (subject to § 325(d) discretion, which is a discretionary brush-off, not a bar) and art that was not. The usual calculus — "the strong art was burned in a prior IPR and I'm left with the leftovers" — does not apply here. The full field is open.

Pattern signals: no pattern to report, because there is no activity to pattern. Concretely: (i) no petitioner has ever filed on this patent, so there is no repeat-petitioner or General Plastic story; (ii) the patent owner has never had a PTAB appeal to prosecute or defend; (iii) no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, etc.) appears anywhere in the chain — the absence of a Unified filing is meaningful, because Unified and similar entities disproportionately target NPE-asserted, fee-lapsed-overlooked patents, and this one was never picked up. The ownership history is a straightforward corporate line (Siemens-lineage Continental automotive electronics → Vitesco carve-out → Schaeffler orbit), not a PAE or NPE assignment chain. That is consistent with this being a real operating-company portfolio patent that was simply never asserted or challenged hard enough to draw an IPR — and then was allowed to lapse.

The dominant practical fact is the lapse, not the PTAB. If the 2024-01-31 expiration stands, the patent has no enforceable remaining term, and infringement liability for post-lapse conduct is off the table; damages would be limited to accrued pre-lapse infringement, if any. The prior-art/PTAB analysis above is relevant mainly if (a) you are evaluating pre-2024-01-31 conduct, or (b) the patent owner petitions to revive under § 1.362(d) and succeeds.

Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the expiration before anything else. Pull the fee history on Patent Center for US 12/518,604 / 8,108,130 and check whether a § 1.362(d) revival petition has been filed. If the patent is lapsed and unrevived, that is a threshold, potentially case-dispositive defense, and no IPR analysis is needed. If it has been revived, the analysis below becomes live.

2. If the patent is live and you are a defendant — you are not estopped, and there is no adverse PTAB record to overcome. There is no FWD to link or quote, because none exists. The first-petitioner position is available, which carries real advantages: you set the grounds, you are not fighting a prior panel's claim constructions, and you avoid the "follow-on petition" discretionary-denial posture that second filers face under General Plastic.

3. Grounds worth scouting — the prosecution record is thin and the art is crowded. The two closest references already on the face of the patent are the strongest starting points, precisely because the examiner had to distinguish them:

• DE 198 42 425 A1 / US 6,279,372 B1 (Siemens) — the overrun-phase lambda probe calibration method the specification itself concedes as known. The asserted point of novelty is the temperature input (claims 1, 4, 5), so the § 103 attack runs through the well-known humidity↔temperature↔oxygen-concentration relationship.
• DE 102 006 011 722 B3 / US 2009/0095049 A1 (Graupner, Siemens) — "Correcting output signal of broadband lambda probe … computing probe calibration factor taking into account known exhaust gas composition and detected air humidity." This is a same-field, near-contemporaneous Siemens filing that expressly uses air humidity in lambda-probe correction. Note the priority date proximity: the Graupner case is dated 2006-03-14 against this patent's 2006-12-13 priority. Run the § 102(e)/§ 102(a) dates carefully — this is pre-AIA art (application filed 2007-10-31, priority 2006-12-13), so pre-AIA §§ 102(a)/(e)/103 govern and the critical-date analysis is fact-specific.
• Also on the citation record and worth a look: EP 1 048 834 A2 / EP 1 333 171 A1 (lambda-sensor characteristic correction) and DE 195 45 706 A1 / US 5,771,687 (lambda-probe calibration).

The vulnerability thesis: claim 1 recites overrun detection + sensing exhaust composition + sensing an intake-air-representative temperature + calibrating on that temperature. If a reference or an obvious combination teaches temperature-based correction of the overrun calibration (and Graupner's humidity-based correction is close), claim 1 is exposed; claim 2's "maximum possible deviation at maximum air humidity" correction adds a statistical-modeling limitation that is a fair § 103 battleground; claim 3's geographical-position/GPS-average-humidity limitation is narrower and may be the hardest to crack, so consider whether it is even asserted. Do not assume — the specification's own Table 1 and Table 2 are admissions of the underlying relationships, which cuts for a petitioner.

4. Statutory posture. This is a pre-AIA patent (effective filing 2006-12-13), so PGR is unavailable (PGR applies only to first-inventor-to-file patents) and CBM is unavailable unless the patent owner has sued over a "financial product or service" — it has not; this is engine controls. IPR is the only AIA vehicle available, with the usual § 315(b) one-year bar clocking from service of a complaint alleging infringement. If the patent is expired, weigh whether an IPR is worth the fee at all — the Board can institute on expired patents but the practical value is limited once damages exposure is fixed, so a district-court invalidity case or a pure § 285/§ 101 posture may be the better route.

5. Docket monitoring. Because nothing has been filed, the meaningful events to watch are negative events: any § 1.362(d) revival petition, any assignment to a PAE, and any district-court complaint naming 8,108,130. Set a watch on PTAB E2E and CourtListener under the patent number; given the lapse, filings are unlikely, but a revival-then-assertion sequence is the one scenario that would change this picture overnight.

Bottom line for a defendant: there is no PTAB history to work with, no claim has been canceled, and no claim has been confirmed. The absence of any IPR on a 2006-priority patent that was never asserted and then lapsed for non-payment tells you this asset was never considered worth attacking — and its 2024-01-31 fee lapse likely tells you it is not worth defending against either. Confirm the lapse first; only then spend money on prior art.

I'll research the assignment record for US 8108130, starting with the USPTO Assignment Center and cross-referencing the assignor/assignee names.

Let me dig into the specific assignment records and the parties involved.

Good — I now have the two recorded assignments from the Google Patents legal events. Let me try to pull the actual USPTO Assignment Center records to capture reel/frame and correspondent details.

I hit the tool-call ceiling before I could pull the Assignment Center's correspondent field directly, so I'll build this from the authoritative full-text legal events plus what the searches confirmed, and I'll clearly mark what I could not retrieve.

Inventors

• Johannes Scheuerer — sole named inventor on US 8,108,130 B2.
• Employer at time of filing: Not directly stated in the assignment record I could retrieve. The recorded assignment (Reel 024164/0937, executed 2009-06-21) shows Scheuerer assigning his rights to Continental Automotive GmbH, confirming he was within the Continental/Siemens-VDO powertrain organization. Because the German priority filing (DE 10 2006 058 880.0) predates Continental's 2007 acquisition of Siemens VDO, the filing-time employer may have been Siemens VDO Automotive AG — this is inference, not confirmed by a primary record.
• Unusual patterns: None observed. This is a single-inventor patent; there is no evidence of inventor departures preceding a portfolio sale. (A single-inventor patent simply gives us no departure signal to read — it is not itself a red flag.)

Original assignee

• Continental Automotive GmbH — this is the entity named as assignee in the first recorded assignment (Reel 024164/0937, effective 2009-06-21). Address per a related Continental USPTO filing: Vahrenwalder Str. 9, 30165 Hanover, Germany.
• ⚠️ Discrepancy to flag: the Google Patents "Original Assignee" / "Application filed by" fields render the entity as "Continental Automotive Technologies GmbH," whereas the Assignment Center legal event names "Continental Automotive GmbH." I could not verify in this session whether the former is a distinct legal entity or a Google name-modernization artifact. Treat the recorded assignment name (Continental Automotive GmbH) as controlling.
• Business / product: Tier-1 automotive supplier; primary line of business is powertrain and engine-management systems. The claimed subject matter (on-board lambda/wideband oxygen-sensor calibration logic) is implemented as engine-control software in production ECUs, so Continental (and later Vitesco) shipped products embodying the claims.
• Current status: Continental AG is an operating company (ongoing). The patent's recorded owner changed to Vitesco Technologies GmbH (see timeline). Vitesco Technologies Group AG merged into Schaeffler AG on 2024-10-01, making Schaeffler the ultimate corporate parent today, though no assignment to Schaeffler appears in the Google Patents legal-event record.

Assignment timeline

Two assignments are recorded. (Note: the very first "assignment" is the standard inventor-to-employer recordation on national-stage entry; there is no separate pre-issuance sale.)

• 2009-06-21 (executed) / recorded 2010-03-31 — Reel 024164/0937

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Johannes Scheuerer
  • Assignee: Continental Automotive GmbH
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved — the correspondent-of-record field was not exposed in the sources I could reach this session. I will not guess a name. (Note: Continental's US patent recordations routinely use a "Victor M. …" correspondent, seen on an unrelated Continental/TTAB filing, but I could not tie that correspondent to this reel/frame, so I am not asserting it.)
  • Context: Ordinary inventor-to-employer assignment, recorded alongside US national-stage entry of PCT/EP2007/061779.

• 2020-06-01 (executed) / recorded 2020-07-30 — Reel 053366/0079

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Continental Automotive GmbH
  • Assignee: Vitesco Technologies GmbH
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved (same limitation as above; this could not be confirmed to be the same or a different correspondent — so signal #3 below is reported as unclear rather than negative).
  • Context: Internal corporate reorganization — the Continental powertrain/drivetrain carve-out into Vitesco Technologies (business operating independently from 2019; spin-off completed 2021). A change-of-ownership within the same corporate family, not a third-party sale.

No other post-issuance assignments (no security agreements, mergers, licenses, or corrections) appear in the record.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8108130
    2006 : German priority application filed
    2007 : PCT application filed
    2009 : Inventor assigns to Continental Automotive GmbH
    2010 : US national stage published
    2012 : US patent granted
    2020 : Assigned to Vitesco Technologies GmbH
    2024 : Patent lapses for unpaid maintenance fee

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only transfer is Continental Automotive GmbH → Vitesco Technologies GmbH (Reel 053366/0079, 2020). Vitesco is a large operating automotive supplier (Regensburg, Germany), not a licensing-only LLC; no "IP/Licensing/Holdings/Ventures" naming, no registered-agent-only address.
2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither Continental Automotive GmbH nor Vitesco Technologies GmbH appears on the Acacia / Marathon / IV / Wi-LAN / Conversant / Pendrell / Round Rock / Spangenberg lists or in Unified Patents / RPX high-frequency-plaintiff directories. Cross-reference: the prior litigation section found no litigation involving this patent.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear. I could not retrieve the correspondent-of-record for either Reel 024164/0937 or Reel 053366/0079 in this session, so I cannot test for recurrence. Given both recordings belong to the same corporate family, a shared in-house/outside correspondent is the expected and benign outcome — but I am not asserting it without the reel-level field.
4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Only two assignments across ~11 years (2009 → 2020), the second being an intra-group reorganization. No chain of LLCs, no shared-address rapid flipping, no <24-month cascade.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No infringement suit names this patent (confirmed in the prior section), so there is no 6-month pre-suit assignment to anchor to.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No Chapter 7/11 or insolvency sale; Continental and Vitesco were solvent, and the 2020 transfer was a planned carve-out, not a distressed sale.
7. Privateering — Not present. No evidence Continental transferred the patent to a separate NPE to assert on its behalf; the transfer stayed inside the corporate group.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present as a terminal transfer. The chain does not end at RPX/AST/LOT/Unified/OIN. However, the inverse signal is present: the patent was neutralized by abandonment — lapsed 2024-01-31 for non-payment of the 12th-year maintenance fee (8th-year fee paid 2019; reminder mailed 2023-09-18; lapse declared 2024-03-04).

Verdict

Defensive / non-asserting. The ownership chain (Reel 024164/0937, inventor → Continental Automotive GmbH, 2009; Reel 053366/0079, Continental → Vitesco Technologies GmbH, 2020) is a pure operating-company lineage with an intra-group reorganization as its only post-issuance event, zero NPE-style transfers, no known asserter, and no litigation — and the patent was neutralized by fee lapse in 2024.

Caveat on the forced-choice taxonomy: this option is defined as "chain terminates at a defensive aggregator," which literally does not apply here — the terminal recorded owner is an operating supplier (Vitesco/Schaeffler), not RPX/AST/Unified. I selected it because "non-asserting" is the substantively correct characterization and the patent has been neutralized. Strictly on the "no post-issuance third-party transfer, essentially only the original assignment plus a reorg" reading, "Insufficient data" is the alternative defensible call; I do not consider this an NPE under any reading.

Verification: search US 8,108,130 at the USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) — and confirm Reel 024164/0937 and Reel 053366/0079. To close the one open gap (correspondent-of-record), that reel/frame detail must be pulled directly from the Assignment Center, which I could not reach this session.

I'll verify the patent via USPTO and then research each cited prior-art reference.

Let me research the remaining key cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US Patent No. 8,108,130 B2

1. Patent identification (confirmed)

Independent claims are claim 1 (method), claim 6 (internal combustion engine), and claim 11 (system). All three share the same four-step core: (a) detect a fuel cut-off overrun phase; (b) sense exhaust-gas composition with the lambda sensor during that phase; (c) sense a temperature representing a measure of the intake air; (d) calibrate the lambda sensor based on that sensed temperature.

Structural note for the §102 analysis: The novelty hook over the closest art is step (c)+(d) — using intake-air/ambient temperature as a proxy for air humidity to correct the off-air reference point, without a humidity sensor. None of the 18 cited references, on the record available, discloses this specific temperature-as-humidity-proxy calibration. Accordingly, no cited reference anticipates claims 1, 6, or 11 in full; the references are background/§103-tier art. Details per reference below.

Caveat: I hit my tool-call ceiling mid-research. Descriptions below for the U.S./EP/DE references are grounded in fetched primary text; the older Japanese references (JPS5857050A, JPS622149A) are characterized from the citation table and titles only — flagged where applicable.

2. Citation-by-citation analysis

3. Independent-claim element mapping (why nothing anticipates)

Result: Clause (c)–(d) is unmet by every cited reference; therefore no §102 anticipation of claims 1, 6, or 11, and by extension none of dependent claims 2–5, 7–10, 12–15.

4. Bottom line — most relevant prior art

1. DE19842425A1 / DE19842425C2 (Siemens, 1998/2000) — the admitted-background method: overrun-phase calibration against a pure-air reference. This is the closest art to the claims' preamble and the base for any §103 combination.
2. US20090095049A1 → US8359899B2 (Graupner/Rösel, Siemens, 2006) — extends #1 with air-humidity-sensor-based correction of the calibration factor. It is the most technically proximate reference and the one the patent most clearly improves upon (by substituting temperature as a humidity proxy and eliminating the humidity sensor). None of claims 2, 3, 7, 8, 12, 13 is anticipated by it, but it is the leading §103 reference against claims 2/3/7/8/12/13.
3. US6279372B1 / EP1048834A2 (Siemens-Zhang/Heinze, 1999–2001) — overrun-phase correction of the gradient of a linear/wideband lambda characteristic against ambient-air oxygen concentration.

The patent's §102 novelty rests entirely on the temperature-as-humidity-proxy limitation; the cited art collectively supplies the remaining environment (wideband sensor, overrun phase, characteristic correction, humidity impact) and thus frames an obviousness (§103) case rather than an anticipation case.

Note: three references (JPS5857050A, JPS622149A and, to a lesser degree, US6116228A / US6789533B1) were not retrieved as primary text before my research budget ran out; their treatment above is based on the patent's own citation table and titles. If you want, I can fetch those PDFs to close out the record.

I'll verify the dates and subject matter of the key references before building the obviousness analysis.

Now let me check two more cited references that could bear on the humidity/temperature relationship.

Obviousness Analysis — US 8,108,130 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Framework and one correction to the earlier sections

Governing statute. The application (US 12/518,604) was filed 2007‑10‑31 with a DE priority of 2006‑12‑13. It is therefore governed by pre‑AIA § 103(a). The relevant tests are Graham v. John Deere, the four Graham factors, and KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (obviousness where the combination is "obvious to try," where a known technique is applied to a known device to yield predictable results, or where a market/cost incentive points to the solution).

Level of ordinary skill (POSITA). A person with a B.S. in mechanical or electrical engineering and roughly 3–5 years of engine‑management calibration experience (or an M.S. with fewer years), familiar with wideband lambda (linear oxygen) sensor characteristic curves, DFCO ("overrun fuel cut‑off" / Schubabschaltung) calibrations, and map‑based engine control (the '130 specification itself describes "Map‑based engine control functions KF1 to KF5 and a lambda controller LR"). This is a routine-skill level, not a research level — which matters for the "predictable results" prong.

Correction/refinement to the earlier summary. The prior summary characterized DE 10 2006 011 722 B3 / US 2009/0095049 A1 (Graupner) as "post‑dat[ing] the DE priority filing but involv[ing] overlapping subject matter." That understates the problem. As shown in § V below, every date attaching to that family postdates the '130 priority date, and under In re Hilmer its German priority cannot supply a § 102(e) date. It is therefore a questionable prior-art reference at best — which materially changes which combination is the strongest § 103 case.

Citation-status nuance flagged. On the Google Patents face of US 8,108,130, the entries bearing an asterisk ("cited by examiner") are US 6,116,228, US 2005/0247288 and US 2009/0118988. US 2009/0095049 A1 and DE 10 2006 011 722 B3 carry no asterisk, i.e. they appear to be applicant/IDS-supplied references rather than examiner discoveries. (Google's star convention is an interpretation of the USPTO record, not the record itself; verify against the printed patent.)

1. Claim 1 — element mapping

Claim 1 is a four-step method. No single reference teaches all four, so this is a § 103 case, not § 102.

Conclusion on claim 1: not anticipated, but obvious. Two independent combinations get there.

Combination 1 (strongest legal footing): US 6,279,372 + US 6,820,461 + EP 1 048 834 A2 + psychrometric general knowledge

• US 6,279,372 supplies (a) and (b) in full — it is the acknowledged starting point.
• EP 1 048 834 A2 (Siemens, priority 1999‑04‑28; also cited on the '130 face) states expressly at [0004] that the dynamic and static properties of the lambda probe "werden … durch Umgebungsbedingungen (z.B. Feuchte), Alterung und Vergiftung verändert" — i.e. humidity is already recognized in the same field as a cause of probe error. This is the motivation, not an after‑the‑fact rationalization.
• US 6,820,461 B2 supplies both (i) the intake‑air temperature as a standard, already‑available engine‑control signal, and (ii) the methodology of the invention — it "combin[es] … a base characteristic field, which is referred to a normal state and/or exhaust‑gas test conditions" with corrective values via multiplicative logic coupling, and it expressly teaches that "an increasing water vapor component of the intake air" is a further accuracy‑improving parameter. The '130 claim 2 ("correction value … relative to … predetermined reference conditions") is this teaching, one probe over.
• General knowledge / psychrometrics. That saturation (maximum) absolute humidity is a monotone function of air temperature, and that water vapor displaces O₂ in air (Dalton's law), is textbook. The '130 specification concedes this: "The relationship between the maximum air humidity and the temperature and the relationship between the air humidity and the output value of the lambda sensor are known and can … be stored in a memory of a control device." A patentee cannot rely on its own admitted knowledge as the inventive contribution (In re … / MPEP 2144.03).

Combination 2 (expressly signposted, but date‑vulnerable): US 6,279,372 + US 2009/0095049 A1 (Graupner)

Graupner is on‑point in the most literal way:

• Itself states: "the method known from DE‑A‑198 42 425 C2 for correcting the characteristic curve of the broadband lambda probe is extended by a correction that takes into account the air humidity."
• It claims (claim 3 of DE 10 2006 011 722 B3 / US 2009/0095049 A1): "(a) Detecting an overrun fuel cut‑off phase … and measuring of an exhaust gas composition with the aid of the broadband lambda probe … (b) measuring the humidity of the ambient air … (c) calculating a calibration factor … taking into account the known exhaust gas composition and the measured air humidity." That is the '130 invention with "humidity" swapped for "temperature."
• It supplies the humidity sensitivity factor and even the numerical error budget — its companion US 8,359,899 B2 tabulates "Air humidity … 4.20%" as the single largest error contribution to the calibration factor K.
• It supplies the substitution logic: "define the air humidity factor on the basis of manufacturer specifications" or "determined with selective modification of the air humidity" — i.e., characterize sensitivity once, store it in a map.

Motivation to substitute temperature for a measured humidity value (the only real difference from the '130 claims): Graupner's own preferred embodiment requires an "air humidity sensor … arranged … in an engine air intake duct, an air conditioning system or elsewhere in the motor vehicle." The '130's stated advantage is exactly the elimination of that sensor. Replacing a dedicated sensor with a table/model driven by an existing temperature signal is a cost‑ and packaging-driven substitution of a known technique with a predictable result, squarely within KSR. Graupner also directs the skilled person to an air‑conditioning‑system humidity signal — and air‑conditioning/psychrometric controls routinely derive absolute humidity from temperature (cf. EP 1 588 875 A1, cited on the '130 face, on vehicle air‑conditioning operating methods).

2. Dependent claims

3. The motivation‑to‑combine case (why it is more than hindsight)

Courts require the reason to combine to come from the references or the knowledge of the skilled person, not from the patent. Five independent threads:

1. Same field, same problem, same "base" reference. US 6,279,372, EP 1 048 834 and Graupner are all Siemens lambda‑probe corrections; the '130's own Background names DE 198 42 425 A1 as the known method. Combining art aimed at the same accuracy problem in the same component is not hindsight.
2. Express lead‑in in the secondary reference. Graupner does not merely render the combination obvious; it performs it, stating the DE 198 42 425 method "is extended by a correction that takes into account the air humidity." Where the reference itself identifies the primary reference as the starting point, the combination is by definition suggested (MPEP 2143(A)).
3. Art‑recognized problem. EP 1 048 834 A2 already identifies ambient humidity as a cause of probe characteristic drift. A known problem in the same art supplies a motivation to solve it.
4. An available, already‑used solution tool. US 6,820,461 B2 teaches (a) that intake air temperature is a free, existing signal and (b) that the water‑vapor content of intake air belongs in the exhaust‑gas computation. Nothing is invented by reaching for it.
5. Cost/package incentive + predictable result. Graupner's sensor‑based approach has a known cost penalty; the physics of "temperature → saturation humidity → reduced O₂ fraction → probe output deviation" is textbook and reducible to a look‑up map ("stored in the form of a table in a memory element of the control device" — the '130 spec's own description of the prior art's data handling). KSR makes this predictable-result substitution a classic obviousness fact pattern.

4. What the patentee could argue, and how it fails (or doesn't)

• "Graupner uses a humidity sensor; we use none" (teaching away). Not teaching away — Graupner's sensor is a preference, and it expressly contemplates deriving the humidity factor from manufacturer specifications or one‑time characterization. Choosing a model over a sensor is a cost decision, not a technical prejudice.
• "Unexpected accuracy." The specification reports no comparative or measured results showing accuracy beyond what the humidity error magnitude predicts; Tables 1–3 are manufacturer/bench data (saturation humidity vs. temperature; % deviation vs. temperature). No nexus.
• "Criticality of the 50% factor." Variant 1's 50%‑of‑maximum‑deviation value is described but not claimed; it therefore cannot rebut any claim. Even if claimed, a 50% midpoint of a known error band is a routine calibration choice (KSR; range optimization).
• "Long‑felt need / prior failure." Could be asserted, but the record shows the humidity problem was already being solved (Graupner), which argues against long‑felt need.
• Claim 3 genuinely helps. The geographic‑position/expected‑humidity feature is the one limitation for which the cited art supplies no teaching or suggestion, and it appears to have been added for exactly that reason. It does not save claims 1, 2, 4–7, 9–12, 14, 15.

5. Prior‑art date verification (critical caveats)

The Graupner problem, spelled out. Under pre‑AIA § 102(e) (and In re Hilmer), a US patent or application publication is prior art only as of its US filing date; a foreign (§ 119) priority date cannot antedate it. For a PCT national stage, that date is the international filing date (PCTs filed on/after 2000‑11‑29 and published in English). If the international filing date of the Graupner family is 2007‑02‑02 (as the third‑party record for app. 12/282,557 indicates), then Graupner's § 102(e) date is after the '130's 2006‑12‑13 priority, and its earliest publication (DE B3, 2007‑04‑12) is likewise after — so it is not § 102(a), (b) or (e) art.

Two qualifiers I cannot resolve from the sources available, and which should be checked against the official file:

1. The Google Patents "priority" field for US 2009/0095049 A1 is listed as 2006‑03‑12 (two days before the DE member's 2006‑03‑14), whereas the DE member's own priority is 2006‑03‑14. If 2006‑03‑12 is a genuine US provisional filing date that supports the relied‑upon disclosure, the reference would qualify as § 102(e) art. If it is merely a mis‑transcription of the German date, it does not.
2. The US filing date of 2007‑02‑02 is drawn from a third‑party database, not the official record — confirm on USPTO Patent Center / Global Dossier.

Practical consequence for the rejection. The examiner should not build the case on Graupner alone. Combination 1 (§ 1 above) is fully supported by references that unambiguously predate the priority date, and is therefore the durable § 103 rejection. Graupner should be used, if at all, as corroboration of the state of the art and of the motivation — with its date status expressly resolved first.

6. Bottom line

• Claims 1, 2, 4, 5, 6, 7, 9, 10, 11, 12, 14, 15: strong § 103(a) rejections over US 6,279,372 B1 in view of US 6,820,461 B2 and EP 1 048 834 A2, further in view of the admitted general knowledge that saturation humidity is a known function of air temperature and that water vapor lowers the O₂ content of air (a fact the '130 specification itself concedes). Motivation is supplied by EP 1 048 834's recognition that humidity alters the probe characteristic, by US 6,820,461's teaching of intake‑air temperature and intake‑air water vapor as engine‑control parameters, and by the cost incentive to avoid the humidity sensor that Graupner requires. If the Graupner family is confirmed as prior art, US 6,279,372 + US 2009/0095049 A1 is an even tighter rejection, since Graupner literally extends DE 198 42 425 by a humidity correction to the DFCO calibration factor.
• Claims 3, 8, 13: not established as obvious on the cited record. The GPS/geographic‑position‑specific expected‑humidity limitation has no support in the cited art; it likely requires a separate search and, absent such art, would survive.
• Overarching caveat: the strongest single reference's prior‑art status is date‑questionable (§ 5). Resolve that before relying on it.

Cross‑section consistency note: this analysis does not contradict the earlier "Patent summary" or "Litigation summary" sections — the lapsed 2024 maintenance fee, the Vitesco assignment, and the absence of litigation are unaffected. It does refine the earlier statement that DE 10 2006 011 722 B3 / US 2009/0095049 A1 merely "post‑dates the DE priority filing": it postdates the '130 priority date in every publication and US filing respect, which is a materially stronger point against its use as § 103 art.