US 9164032

I'll search for authoritative sources on this patent number.

Let me get the abstract and claims text, and check for any CAFC 2026 activity.

Let me try to retrieve the actual claim text and any litigation involving this specific number.

I'll search litigation databases and court records for this specific patent number.

Let me search more specifically for this patent in litigation databases.

Let me dig deeper into whether the '032 patent itself was asserted, and search the litigation databases directly.

Bottom line

Based on the sources I could reach, I found no litigation in which U.S. Patent No. 9,164,032 ("the '032 patent") was itself asserted as a patent-in-suit. I found no complaint, docket, or case caption naming the '032 patent as an asserted patent, and no PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR) challenging it.

The '032 patent does appear repeatedly in litigation documents, but only in a derivative/reference capacity — as a related family member cited in related-patent lists and terminal disclaimers filed in other Omni MedSci cases.

What the '032 patent is (for verification)

• Patent: US 9,164,032 B2 — "Short-wave infrared super-continuum lasers for detecting counterfeit or illicit drugs and pharmaceutical process control"
• Inventor: Mohammed N. Islam; Assignee: Omni MedSci, Inc.
• Application: 14/108,986, filed Dec. 17, 2013; priority: Dec. 31, 2012 (provisional 61/747,487); granted Oct. 20, 2015
• Status shown on the face of the record: "Expired – Fee Related," adjusted expiration 2034-03-28 (i.e., the record reflects lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees)
• Google Patents flags "Family has litigation," but that tag attaches to the family (which includes heavily litigated siblings), not to the '032 patent individually. I could not resolve that family-litigation link to any case asserting the '032 patent.

Litigation in the same Omni MedSci family (none asserting the '032 patent)

For context, these are the cases I could confirm from court documents and PTAB filings, with the patents each involved:

The '032 patent is not in any of these asserted-patent lists. Where it appears, it is as:

• A "related" patent listed in Apple/Samsung PTAB petitions (e.g., the '484 and '299 petitions list "U.S. Patent No. 9,164,032" among related issued patents), and
• A patent listed in a terminal disclaimer filed in the '790 family and cross-referenced in file histories (e.g., Omni's terminal disclaimer referencing 11,896,346; 9,494,567; 9,993,159; 10,441,176; 11,564,577; 9,500,635; 9,164,032; 9,500,634).

The parallel litigation history in this family also generated the ownership/standing dispute decided in Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Apple Inc., 7 F.4th 1148 (Fed. Cir. 2021) (University of Michigan Bylaw 3.10 "shall be…" language not a present assignment). That appeal concerned the patents-in-suit in the Apple district court cases — again, not the '032 patent.

Important negative/verification notes

1. A differently-numbered "′403" patent exists in PTAB filings and is not your patent. Several search hits reference an IPR of "the '403 patent" (MTel/AT&T, Jasinski and Thro references) concerning simulcast/messaging. That is a different patent. I have excluded it. I did not auto-correct or conflate identifiers.
2. No IPR/PGR/ex parte reexam of the '032 patent was found. The PTAB proceedings I located target the '533, '484, '299, '304, '455, '790, '475, '868, and '113-family patents.
3. The apparent reason for the absence of litigation is the record status "Expired – Fee Related." An expired patent is of little value as an assertion vehicle, which is consistent with the '032 patent's absence from any complaint.
4. Search limitation / confidence: My searches reached CourtListener/RECAP excerpts, Justia, PACER Monitor summaries, PTAB petition exhibits, and Federal Circuit materials. I was not able to directly query the Unified Patents litigation portal or run a native PACER docket search across all district courts, so I cannot certify a complete negative. I also did not locate a Darts-IP litigation record resolving the "family has litigation" flag to a specific case asserting the '032 patent.

Recommendation: Before relying on this as a clearance-type conclusion, verify via a native search of PACER/Unified Patents Docket Navigator for both "9,164,032" and "9164032" (and the app number 14/108,986), and check the Darts-IP family link (family 51016052) shown on the patent's Google Patents page. This memo is not legal advice and is not a substitute for a full docket-level litigation search.

I'll start by verifying the PTAB record against the structured data and checking for any litigation or appeal activity tied to this patent.

The structured data reports no proceedings, but I need to verify against the Apple April 2019 IPR wave and the 2025 Samsung/WHOOP petitions, which cover a large Omni MedSci family.

The Apple 2019 wave and the 2025 Samsung/WHOOP wave both target sibling patents. Let me run a final targeted check specifically for the '032 patent number.

I'll research the assignment record and litigation history for this patent.

Let me dig into the assignment records and litigation timeline specifics.

Let me try to retrieve the actual USPTO assignment reel/frame data.

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — US 9,164,032 B2

Scope note / data limitation (read first). I was able to verify the substance of the chain from Google Patents legal events and court/firm publications, but I could not retrieve the Assignment Center reel/frame string for the single recorded 2014 assignment in this session — the Google Patents legal-events entry for this patent literally reads "SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS" where the reel/frame normally appears. I have therefore not invented a reel/frame number. Any claim that there are additional (unrecorded or later-recorded) assignments is flagged as unverified. Verify at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "9164032") and cross-check USPTO Patent Center for maintenance-fee/lapse status.

Inventors

Unusual patterns worth flagging:

• Not a "departing inventors" pattern — there is only one inventor, and he is simultaneously the assignee's founder. There was no inventor exodus preceding a sale, because there was no sale at all.
• The inventor's own employer contested title. In 2013 Dr. Islam asked UM's Office of Technology Transfer to confirm his ownership; UM refused, on the basis that his work was at least indirectly University-supported. UM subsequently filed an amicus brief in the Federal Circuit appeal asserting it owned the patents. A recorded chain of title that begins with the inventor, where the inventor's actual employer formally claims the same inventions, is a first-order chain-of-title defect that any acquirer or lender would flag — and it is the single most litigation-relevant fact about this assignment record. (Fed. Cir. slip op., Omni MedSci, Inc. v. Apple Inc., No. 20-1715; JD Supra ownership timeline)
• Multi-entity, inventor-controlled portfolio. Press coverage states Dr. Islam controls roughly six companies holding 150+ patents; USPTO correspondence for family members is addressed to "Brooks Kushman P.C./Cheetah Omni MedSci," indicating a sibling Islam entity (Cheetah Omni LLC) shares the correspondence of record. Attorney docket numbers on family members ("OMNI0101PUSA7," "OMNI0102PUSA6") run in a single continuous series — i.e., one docket, one filer, multiple Islam entities.

Original assignee

Omni MedSci, Inc. — Ann Arbor, Michigan (later listed at Dexter, MI; USPTO entity status: small entity).

• Entity on the issued patent: Yes — Omni MedSci, Inc. is both the original assignee and the current assignee per Google Patents; no later assignee has ever been recorded.
• Product embodying the claims: I found no evidence that Omni MedSci ships a commercial product. Its public posture is licensing/assertion: it approached Apple repeatedly (June 2014, February 2015, July 2016, December 2017) offering to "license or acquire" its technology, was rebuffed, and then sued.
• Primary line of business: fiber-based SWIR super-continuum laser sources and their biomedical/sensing applications, developed out of Dr. Islam's University of Michigan research and funded as a start-up during his leave of absence.
• Current status: operating as a licensing/assertion entity, not dissolved and not reported in bankruptcy. It filed a further infringement action against Apple in the Western District of Texas on 2026-06-08 (No. 7:26-cv-00226), and continues to defend PTAB proceedings brought by Samsung, Samsung America, Fossil, Fossil Stores I, Fossil Partners, Oura Health and OnePlus (IPR2025-01250; IPR2025-01251; IPR2025-01252; PGR2025-00063).

Status of the patent itself (flag). Google Patents lists the legal status of US 9,164,032 B2 as "Expired – Fee Related," with an adjusted expiration of 2034-03-28. If accurate, this patent was allowed to lapse for non-payment of maintenance fees while the family stayed in active litigation — and US 9,164,032 does not appear among the asserted patents in any of the Omni v. Apple complaints I located (asserted family members are the '533, '286, '484, '546, '698, '299, '304, '805, '194 and '346 patents). I could not confirm this against USPTO fee records in this session; treat it as unverified but significant — it would mean the asserted value sits in the continuations, not in this specification.

Assignment timeline

One recorded assignment. Nothing else.

• 2013-12-17 (executed) / recorded 2014-01-13 — Reel/frame not retrievable in this session (Google Patents legal-events entry reads "SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS"; Assignment Center lookup blocked)
  • Conveyance: Assignment (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST)
  • Assignor: ISLAM, MOHAMMED N. (individual)
  • Assignee: OMNI MEDSCI, INC. (Michigan)
  • Correspondent: not verified for this recording. For context only: prosecution correspondence across the same family is directed to Brooks Kushman P.C. / Cheetah Omni MedSci, 1000 Town Center, Twenty Second Floor, Southfield, MI 48075, and Andrew B. Turner, Reg. No. 63,121 appears as attorney of record on family member US 11,160,455. This is a family-level observation, not a reel/frame-verified correspondent on US 9,164,032's assignment — a single such appearance is not a finding, and I have not established recurrence within this patent's chain.
  • Context: Founder-to-his-own-company assignment. Validated in litigation: the Federal Circuit held (2021-08-02) that UM Bylaw 3.10 was "at most a statement of a future intention to assign" and "did not effectuate a present automatic assignment of title to UM," leaving Dr. Islam's assignment to Omni effective. The chain was later challenged on title, not transferred.

Related family data point (different patent number — do not confuse with US 9,164,032): US 11,160,455 records an assignment from ISLAM, MOHAMMED N. to OMNI MEDSCI, INC., Reel/Frame 054153/0317, effective 2020-10-21. This confirms the family's consistent structure: every recorded conveyance runs inventor → Omni MedSci; the portfolio has never been sold, securitized, or moved to a licensing shell.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9164032
    2011 : Islam signs Michigan employment agreement
    2012 : Unpaid leave of absence begins
         : Provisionals filed
    2013 : Non provisional filed 17 December
         : Islam assigns to Omni MedSci 17 December
         : Michigan technology transfer office denies ownership confirmation
    2014 : Assignment recorded at USPTO 13 January
    2018 : Omni sues Apple in Eastern District of Texas
    2021 : Federal Circuit affirms Omni standing
    2026 : Further Apple suit filed in Western District of Texas

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. No transfer to a licensing-only LLC. The only recorded assignment is inventor → Omni MedSci, Inc., and Google Patents lists Omni MedSci as both original and current assignee. No "IP/Patents/Licensing/Holdings/Ventures" suffix appears anywhere in this chain. Note, however, that Omni MedSci, Inc. itself is a privately held operating vehicle for a single inventor's portfolio with no identified commercial product — non-practicing posture without a shell-transfer event.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT as to the named lists; UNCLEAR as to high-frequency-plaintiff status. No assignee in this chain matches Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or an identified Erich Spangenberg entity. However: (a) Omni MedSci is a serial plaintiff — suits against Apple in 2018 (2:18-cv-00134, filed 2018-04-06), 2018 (2:18-cv-00429), 2019 (N.D. Cal. 4:19-cv-05673), 2020 (N.D. Cal. 3:20-cv-00563) and 2026 (W.D. Tex. 7:26-cv-00226); (b) it is the target of PTAB challenges from Apple, Samsung, Fossil, Oura and OnePlus; and (c) Unified Patents maintains portal entries on Omni MedSci patents (e.g. US-10098546-B2, US-12268475-B2) — i.e., a defensive aggregator treats this portfolio as an assertion threat worth monitoring. Press coverage characterizes the Omni campaign as likely "patent troll" litigation while noting Dr. Islam's six-company, 150+-patent portfolio.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — NOT PRESENT (within this chain). There is only one link, so recurrence cannot be established. Firm-level context: Brooks Kushman P.C. (Southfield, MI) and Andrew B. Turner, Reg. No. 63,121, appear repeatedly across Omni family prosecution, and the correspondence line reads "Brooks Kushman P.C./Cheetah Omni MedSci." One appearance is not a finding; I have not verified recurrence on assignment recordings, and this firm does substantial operating-company work, so no adverse inference is drawn.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. No chained LLCs, no multiple assignments within 24 months, no shared correspondent addresses across unrelated assignee names.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. The sole assignment (executed 2013-12-17, recorded 2014-01-13) predates the first suit (2018-04-06) by more than four years. There is no 6-month pre-filing transfer. The litigation-relevant ownership event here is the opposite of a transfer: a title challenge by the inventor's employer, resolved in Omni's favor on appeal.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding identified for Omni MedSci or Dr. Islam's entities; no patent sale in insolvency.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No operating company transferred this patent to an NPE to assert on its behalf. Omni MedSci is the original owner and the plaintiff, not a proxy.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents or OIN. Unified Patents is adverse to this portfolio, not its owner.

Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

The assignment record itself is the cleanest possible single-link chain — one inventor assigning to the company he founded (executed 2013-12-17, recorded 2014-01-13), with no shell-entity transfer, no cascading LLCs, no named NPE, no bankruptcy, no privateering and no defensive aggregation; and the same inventor→Omni MedSci pattern repeats as late as 2020 (Reel/Frame 054153/0317 on family member US 11,160,455). What drives the verdict is therefore not the chain but the assignee's posture: Omni MedSci, Inc. is the current assignee (per Google Patents), shows no evidence of shipping a product embodying the claims, monetized by offering a license/acquisition to Apple across 2014–2017 before suing, and is a repeat plaintiff (E.D. Tex. 2018; N.D. Cal. 2019 and 2020; W.D. Tex. 2026) whose patents are tracked by Unified Patents and attacked by Apple, Samsung, Fossil, Oura and OnePlus. I found no strong shell-LLC or known-asserter signal, hence moderate rather than high confidence — and I note explicitly that if the analysis were confined to the assignment record alone, the correct answer would be "insufficient data: only the original assignment."

Verification links: USPTO Assignment Center search for 9164032 · Google Patents legal events, US9164032 · RPX Insight, Omni MedSci v. Apple 2:18-cv-00134 · 2026 complaint, Omni MedSci v. Apple 7:26-cv-00226 · Fed. Cir. opinion, 20-1715

Two open items you should resolve before relying on this: (i) the unretrieved reel/frame and correspondent of record for the 2014-01-13 recording; (ii) whether US 9,164,032 really is "Expired – Fee Related" per USPTO fee records — a lapsed maintenance fee on a heavily litigated family would itself be a notable portfolio-management finding.

I'll search for the specific patent and its cited prior art.

The first results were noisy — snippets from other patents that merely cite US9164032. Let me target the actual "References Cited" section of US9164032 itself.

FreePatentsOnline appears to have the reference lists. Let me pull that page and the USPTO/patentimages front page to get US9164032's own cited references.

1. What I was able to verify (and what I could not)

Patent identified (literal reading, no auto-correction):

Critical data-provenance caveat (please read before using the tables): I could not retrieve in this session a verbatim, complete copy of the front-page "(56) References Cited" block of US 9,164,032 B2 from USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Public Search, Google Patents, or Espacenet. What I retrieved were (a) a contiguous ~1997–2001 window of the "Patent References Cited" table rendered for patent 9164032 on FreePatentsOnline (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/9164032.html), and (b) reference lists belonging to sibling/other documents that the search engine mixed into the results. I flag both below, and I do not attribute anything to US 9,164,032 that I did not observe on a page keyed to that number.

Item that is NOT prior art and must not be treated as such: the "Cited By"/"Citing this family" entries that dominate search results — US 9,897,584 B2, US 9,993,159 B2, US 10,136,819 B2, US 10,213,113 B2, US 10,466,102 B2, US 10,660,526 B2, US 11,103,657 B2, ITRM20100286A1, EP 2 875 392 B1, etc. These either post-date US 9,164,032's priority date (2012‑12‑31) or are same-family members (Omni Medsci, same 2012‑12‑31 priority). Under the AIA they cannot anticipate US 9,164,032; family members cannot be §102(a)(2) art against it because they share the priority date.

Lists I deliberately discarded as mis-attributed by the search snippets:

• GB 8625530 D0, SE 8802536 D0, US 5,564,417 A, US 5,037,200 A, CN 2124472 U, US 5,565,982 A, US 5,919,140 A, JP H08247936 A, SE 513163 C2, JP H11506839 A, DE 19601923 C1, US 5,831,719 A — these appeared on the page for CA 2442275 C, not on US 9,164,032.
• US 5,184,880 A, US 5,084,880 A, US 5,400,165 A, US 5,631,758 A, US 5,696,778 A, US 5,867,305 A, US 5,912,749 A, US 6,014,249 A, US 6,043,927 A, US 6,333,803 B1, US 6,381,391 B1 — first surfaced on the page for US 2006/0268393 (a different supercontinuum document). Several of these also plausibly appear in the US 9,164,032 list (see §2, asterisked), but the snippet alone did not prove that.

Contradictions to flag explicitly (per your cross-reference instruction):

1. Date conflict. Your task header says "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while my operating environment states today is 2026‑09‑22. I have not reconciled these; I used neither to change any patent date.
2. Unfulfilled prior section. The previously generated section ends with three promises ("Let me get the abstract and claims text," "Let me try to retrieve the actual claim text and any litigation," "check for any CAFC 2026 activity") but records no output. Nothing about the abstract, the verbatim claims, or CAFC activity was actually produced, so I cannot build on it — and I was unable to close that gap here. I found no CAFC 2026 activity for this number; the only litigation signal is Google Patents' Darts‑IP badge "Family has litigation / First worldwide family litigation filed" for family 51016052, which names no case.
3. Verbatim claim numbers unavailable. Because the claim set did not come through, the claim mapping in §3 is keyed to the claim-element language reproduced in the patent's own Summary/Definitions ("In one embodiment, a measurement system includes…"; "In another embodiment… a receiver comprises a Fourier transform infrared (FTIR) spectrometer or a dispersive spectrometer…"; "a method of measuring includes…"). Those are independent claims 1, ~11–12 and one method claim respectively, but the exact claim numbering must be verified against the granted text before any of this is relied on.

2. Prior-art references observed as cited against US 9,164,032

Dates are as printed in the citation table. Descriptions are my characterization of the reference's subject matter (from its title/citation line); I have not read the full texts of every item in this session, and I mark the ones where descriptions go beyond the printed title.

Non-patent literature: the sibling US 9,651,533 B2 front page cites NPL (e.g., Istepanian, "The Comparative Performance of Mobile Telemedical Systems based on the IS‑54 and GSM Cellular Telephone Standards," J. Telemedicine and Telecare 1999, pp. 97–104), and US 9,897,584 B2 cites e.g. Pan et al., J. Biomedical Optics 8(4), Oct. 2003, pp. 648–654. I could not confirm which NPL items sit on the US 9,164,032 face; do not attribute these to it without checking.

3. §102 assessment

Governing statute. Application 14/108,986 was filed 2013‑12‑17, after the AIA's 2013‑03‑16 cutoff. Whether the AIA §102(a)(1)/(a)(2) or pre‑AIA §102(a)/(b)/(e) applies turns on whether any claim has an effective filing date on or after 2013‑03‑16; the transitional statement (if any) is in the file wrapper. This matters because it decides whether §102(e)/§102(a)(2) "secret prior art" is even available against the cited U.S. patents' applications — and it is the reason same-family members cannot be used against US 9,164,032 at all.

Finding, stated plainly: on the references I was able to observe, no single reference anticipates any independent claim of US 9,164,032. Independent claim 1 (as reflected in the Summary/Definitions language) requires the concurrence of: (a) semiconductor source(s) → (b) optical amplifier(s) → (c) fiber(s); (d) a nonlinear element broadening the spectrum by ≥10 nm; (e) an output spectrum including 1400–2500 nm SWIR; (f) a fused-silica fiber with core diameter <400 µm; (g) a measurement apparatus delivering the beam to a sample non-destructively and non-contact; (h) a receiver of ≥10 nm bandwidth producing an output signal based on chemical composition; and (i) at least part of the delivered beam at least partially transmitting through a packaging material covering the sample. The cited art splits cleanly across these elements:

• Source-side (a)–(f): US 6,043,927 (broadening), US 6,014,249 and US 5,867,305 (amplifier/fiber chain), US 5,696,778 (nonlinear wavelength conversion). Each is a §102 candidate only for a dependent or sub-combination claim, or as §103 art in combination.
• Detection/processing-side (h): US 5,747,806, US 6,115,673, US 6,181,414 — §102 candidates for receiver/processing-claim language, individually silent on the SWIR SC source.
• Application-side (g), (i), (j): nothing in the retrieved list discloses spectroscopic interrogation of a pharmaceutical through its packaging to derive a composition-based output signal. This is the limitation that most plausibly supported allowance.

Consequence for strategy: if US 9,164,032 was ever challenged (the Darts‑IP family-litigation badge suggests a family dispute exists), the realistic attack on claim 1 is §103 — e.g., US 6,043,927 or US 5,696,778 (SC/broadening) in view of US 6,115,673 or US 5,747,806 (NIR spectroscopic analysis) in view of a packaging-transmission teaching — rather than §102. The strong recitation of fused silica, core <400 µm, 1400–2500 nm, ≥10 nm receiver bandwidth and transmission through packaging material are the numerically-bounded hooks a validity/infringement analysis should focus on.

Do not over-read this table. Because I could not read the complete face of US 9,164,032, there may be cited art I have not seen — in particular mid-1980s-to-1990s spectroscopy patents and the NPL set — that is closer to the pharmaceutical/packaging claims than anything above.

4. Verification steps I recommend before this analysis is used

1. Pull the authoritative list: USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter, application 14/108,986, the granted patent's front page "(56) References Cited," plus the examiner's PTO‑892 and the applicant's IDS — the FPO/Google tables merge these.
2. Get the verbatim claim set (all claims, with dependency) — every claim-number mapping in §3 is provisional until then.
3. Confirm the foreign references DE 102010012987 A1, CN 101849821 B, CA/DE 2 458 123 on the US 9,164,032 face (I only observed them on US 9,651,533 B2).
4. Resolve the two flagged conflicts — the 2026‑04‑26 vs 2026‑09‑22 date, and the unfulfilled prior-section promises — and confirm the AIA/pre‑AIA transition statement for this application.

I'll pull the actual claim text and the cited prior art for this specific patent before analyzing.

Let me retrieve the actual claim text and the face-of-patent citations.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 9,164,032 B2 (35 U.S.C. § 103)

Patent: US 9,164,032 B2, "Short-wave infrared super-continuum lasers for detecting counterfeit or illicit drugs and pharmaceutical process control"
App.: 14/108,986 | Filed: 2013-12-17 | Priority (per Google Patents family table, flagged as an assumption): 2012-12-31 | Inventor: Mohammed N. Islam | Assignee: Omni MedSci, Inc. | Status: Expired – Fee Related, adjusted expiration 2034-03-28

0. Source reliability and gaps in the record — read this first

I was instructed to use "the results from the Prior Art section of this page." The Prior Art material actually available is limited and must not be over-read:

1. The "Prior art keywords" on the page (output, optical beam, infrared, sample, fiber) are keyword-extraction artifacts, not prior-art references. They carry no § 103 weight.
2. The page's citation tables did not load in retrieved form. I could not retrieve the '032 face-of-patent "References Cited" / "Cited By" tables, nor the verbatim issued claim set. Two automated attempts to fetch the claim text and citation list were cut off by the search-step limit. Everything below is therefore built from (a) the specification text provided, (b) the family citation lists that did surface, and (c) the litigation/IPR record for the sibling patents. Any statement about a specific reference's disclosure is flagged where I have lower confidence.
3. Contradiction to flag: the search results surfaced family tables attributing the '032 title ("Short-wave infrared super-continuum lasers for detecting counterfeit or illicit drugs…") to sibling US 9,651,533. Other records associate the '533 with a semiconductor-source physiological measurement title. One of those attributions is wrong; I would not rely on the '533 title without pulling its face page.
4. Date inconsistency: this instruction states the current date is April 26, 2026; the system context and the page fetch timestamp say 2026-09-22. I have not relied on either for anything material.
5. No IPR/PGR or Federal Circuit decision on the '032 itself was found. The verified litigation is Omni MedSci, Inc. v. [Apple Inc.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Apple%20Inc.), No. 2:18-cv-134-RWS (E.D. Tex.) (asserting the '533, '040, '286, and originally '698 — not the '032); IPR2019-00910/00913/00916 against the '533 and '040; IPR2020-00029; IPR2021-00453 (final written decision in Apple Inc. v. Omni MedSci, Inc., Fed. Cir. No. 2023-1034, decided June 21, 2024, affirmed-in-part/vacated-in-part on the "identify an object" limitation of the '484); and IPR2025-01250/01253 and PGR2025-00064 (Samsung/Fossil/OnePlus/Oura). If a 2026 challenge to the '032 exists, I could not verify it.

1. Governing law and effective date

• Pre-AIA § 103(a) most likely governs. The application was filed 2013-12-17 but claims a 2012-12-31 priority. Under AIA § 3(n)(1) the AIA §§ 102/103 apply to applications filed on or after 2013-03-16, but a "transition" application that never contained a claim with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16 remains subject to pre-AIA §§ 102/103 — including pre-AIA § 103(c). I could not verify the priority chain (no provisional number was surfaced), so this should be confirmed against the file wrapper.
• Consequence for the applicant's own earlier work: Islam's own pre-2011 patents/publications are § 102(b) art (more than one year before 2012-12-31) and are not removed by § 103(c), which reaches only § 102(e)/(f)/(g) art. By contrast, commonly owned § 102(e)-only references (later-filed Islam/Omni applications published within the year) are potentially disqualified. This is the single most consequential drafting fact for this family, and it cuts against the patent.
• Standard framework: Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) (scope/content, differences, PHOSITA level, secondary considerations); KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (motivation may reside in the problem, common sense, design incentives, and "obvious to try" over a finite set of predictable solutions).

Level of ordinary skill (proposed): a B.S./M.S. in optics, physics, or analytical chemistry with 3–5 years in fiber lasers/supercontinuum sources or in NIR/SWIR spectroscopy, with access to the mature telecom/fiber-optics component base. The specification itself concedes this maturity ("an all-fiber integrated SWIR SC source, which leverages the mature technologies from the telecommunications and fiber optics industry").

2. Reconstructed claim scope and element breakdown

The '032 page does not expose verbatim claims, but the specification's own summary passages mirror the independent claims closely, and sibling US 9,897,584 B2 (same family) carries near-identical language ("At least a portion of the one or more fibers comprises a fused silica fiber having a core diameter less than 400 microns"; "a receiver configured to receive at least a portion of the spectroscopy output beam having a bandwidth of at least 10 nanometers"). I therefore treat the independent claims as:

Parallel independent claims cover (i) a plurality-of-sources + multiplexer variant with a receiver that is an FTIR or dispersive spectrometer, and (ii) a method of generating the beam, delivering it to a sample "comprising an organic compound with an overtone or combinational absorption band" between ~1 and ~2.5 µm, generating a spectroscopy output beam of ≥ 10 nm bandwidth using FTIR or a dispersive spectrometer, and processing it.

Critical structural observation: no independent claim recites any performance limit — no minimum source power, brightness, signal-to-noise ratio, stand-off distance, or detection accuracy. The only numerical limits are (i) ≥ 10 nm broadening (satisfied by any supercontinuum by definition), (ii) ~1400–2500 nm, and (iii) a < 400 µm fused-silica core, a range so broad it encompasses essentially every standard single-mode and most multimode silica fibers. Broad numerical ranges that encompass the prior art's disclosed values are obvious. In re Peterson, 315 F.2d 817 (CCPA 1963); Titanium Metals Corp. v. Banner, 778 F.2d 775 (Fed. Cir. 1985).

3. Prior art references available for combination

Fiber/SC light-source art (all § 102(b) relative to a 2012-12-31 priority):

NIR/SWIR spectroscopy-for-drugs art (admitted by the specification itself):

The '032 specification does not present its figures as the inventor's experiments; it reproduces the prior literature: FIG. 1 (polyethylene/polystyrene absorbance), FIG. 2 (genuine vs. counterfeit tablet NIR spectra — described as "the genuine drug" and "a counterfeit drug" from previously studied grades), FIG. 3 (second-derivative comparison of Prozac and a generic), FIGS. 5–10 (illicit drug mid-IR and NIR spectra, including heroin band assignments and cutting agents), FIG. 12 (excipient spectra), FIG. 15A (wheat flour). It also quotes the WHO counterfeit-drug definition and states the operative admissions outright: "most drug packaging materials are at least partially transparent in the near-infrared or SWIR, so that drug compositions may be detected and identified through the packaging non-destructively"; NIR measures "tablet identification, determination of moisture, residual solvents, active ingredient potency… blending operations, and the detection of capsule tampering"; and lock-in/modulation, second-derivative, PLS, PCA, and chemometric processing were all known.

Field literature corroborates this (e.g., Scafi & Pasquini, "Identification of counterfeit drugs using near-infrared spectroscopy," Analyst 126 (2001) — cited from field knowledge, not verified against the '032 face-of-patent list), as does FDA's 2004 PAT initiative discussed at length in the specification.

Sibling-litigation art usable against the "plurality of semiconductor sources / receiver" variants: Lisogurski US 9,241,676; Carlson US 2005/0049468; Mannheimer US 5,746,206; Tran US 8,108,036 (all asserted by Apple in Omni MedSci v. Apple, per the '913 patent-owner preliminary response). Do not use Mio Alpha (2013) or FitBit (2014) — they post-date the priority date and are not § 102(b) art for the '032.

4. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — Islam SC source + admitted NIR/SWIR drug spectroscopy + conventional spectrometer

Combination: US 2006/0268393 A1 (or US 7,433,116) as the light source; NIR/SWIR counterfeit-drug and illicit-drug spectroscopy as described in the '032 specification's own background and in the counterfeit-drug NIR literature; a commercial dispersive or FTIR spectrometer as the receiver.

• B1–B4 are met by the SC source references (semiconductor seed → amplifier → fiber → nonlinear broadening). The specification concedes this architecture is conventional.
• B5 is met because the '032 specification itself describes "fiber-based super-continuum sources" generally as emitting in 1.4–1.8 µm, 2–2.5 µm, and 1.4–2.4 µm.
• B6 is a routine design choice: standard single-mode and HNLF SC fibers (8–10 µm cores) fall within "< 400 µm."
• C–F are met by conventional NIR diffuse-reflectance spectroscopy, and E is met by the specification's own admission that drug packaging is transparent in this window.
• D's "≥ 10 nm bandwidth" receiver is inherent to any broadband spectrometer.

Motivation (KSR): (1) The SC references expressly contemplate spectroscopy/sensing applications, so the field of use is the same; (2) the specification itself identifies the problem solved by the combination — incoherent lamp light "may spatially diffract rapidly, thereby making it difficult to perform spectroscopy at stand-off distances or remote distances," whereas a spatially coherent broadband source enables stand-off detection. That statement is an admission of both the problem and the solution path; (3) combining a known broadband source with a known analytical technique yields the predictable result of a reflectance/transmission spectrum — no new physical principle is required; (4) no reference teaches away.

Ground 2 — Fermann/Shaw-type broadband fiber source + SC-in-silica NPL + NIR drug spectroscopy

Combination: US 6,885,683 / US 7,167,300 / US 2004/0213301 (Fermann et al.) or Shaw (As-Se PCF SC), together with Dudley et al. (2010) and the Hori/Champert/Nicholson NPL, plus the drug-spectroscopy art.

Motivation: By 2010 the SC literature had converged on "small-core, high-NA silica fiber pumped by a compact fiber source" as the standard path to a bright, spatially coherent broadband source. A POSITA seeking a brighter, non-diffracting alternative to a tungsten lamp for NIR drug screening had a finite, identified, predictable set of options (supercontinuum fiber source vs. lamp vs. LED array), which is the KSR "obvious to try" paradigm. The choice of fused-silica (rather than ZBLAN/chalcogenide) fiber for a 1.4–2.5 µm window is dictated by the transmission properties of silica and is thus a result-effective, predictable selection.

Ground 3 — Semiconductor-source measurement systems (Lisogurski, Carlson, Mannheimer, Tran) + multiplexer + SWIR source

Combination for the multiplexer/plurality-of-sources independent claim and the FTIR/dispersive-receiver claims.
These references disclose measurement systems with a plurality of semiconductor sources, a receiver generating an output signal, and comparison of a signal property to a threshold — the framework of the '032's system claims, minus the SC source. Substituting a multiplexed semiconductor source bank for a single source, and selecting FTIR vs. dispersive detection, are routine engineering alternatives with known trade-offs (FTIR: throughput/wavelength accuracy; dispersive: cost/size). In re Keller; KSR ("mere duplication of parts" / "a predictable variation").

Ground 4 — Method claims

The method claims recite: generating/multiplexing/guiding an output beam; delivering it to a sample "comprising an organic compound with an overtone or combinational absorption band" in ~1–2.5 µm; generating a ≥ 10 nm spectroscopy output beam with FTIR or a dispersive spectrometer; and processing it into an output signal. Every one of these steps is a description of using a known instrument on a known class of analyte. The scientific predicate — that organics exhibit C–H first-overtone near 1.7 µm and combination bands near 2.3 µm, and that this enables drug identification — is exactly what the '032's own FIGS. 5–10 (reproduced prior-art data) establish. Method claims of this form are obvious where the only "discovery" is a recognition of an inherent property of known materials plus a known analytical step. In re O'Farrell (no teaching away present here); contrast In re Seaborg.

5. Anticipated patent-owner rebuttals and how they fare

Also note the family risk that is not a § 103 issue: the '032, '533, '040, '484, and dozens of continuations share the 2012-12-31 priority. Overlapping claims across those patents implicate obviousness-type double patenting, and the earlier-generated sections of this analysis flagged the family's litigation history. An ODP challenge can be cured by a terminal disclaimer but the '032's expired/fee-related status complicates enforcement strategy.

6. Bottom line, with confidence levels

• High confidence: The '032's independent claims are a combination of two independently known things — (a) a fiber-based SWIR supercontinuum source built from semiconductor seeds, amplifiers, and small-core silica fiber, and (b) NIR/SWIR diffuse-reflectance spectroscopy of pharmaceuticals/illicit drugs, including through packaging. Parts (a) and (b) are both established by the patent's own admissions and reproduced figures, and by references that appear in the family's cited lists. A § 103 rejection is well supported on the merits, with the strongest specific ground being Islam's own pre-2011 SC publications (US 2006/0268393 A1 and US 7,433,116) in view of the admitted counterfeit-drug/illicit-drug NIR spectroscopy art.
• Medium confidence: Element-by-element mapping, because I could not retrieve the verbatim issued claims. The mapping above rests on the specification's summary passages and sibling US 9,897,584 language and should be re-verified against the printed claims before being relied upon.
• Low confidence / not verified: (i) whether any 2026 challenge to the '032 exists — none found; (ii) the '032 face-of-patent "References Cited" list (my NPL citations come from family-wide lists and general field knowledge, not from the '032 face); (iii) the priority chain and hence the pre-AIA/AIA determination; (iv) the title attributed to US 9,651,533 in the aggregated family tables, which contradicts other records.
• What would change the analysis: a verified claim set showing additional limitations (e.g., a minimum source power, a specific SC fiber dispersion profile, or a specific classification algorithm) — none of which the summary passages suggest — or a file-history statement of unexpected results with comparative data.