US 10318655

I'll search for the specific patent number and any associated litigation/docket information.

Let me search for litigation and docket information specific to this patent.

Search scope and caveats

I ran targeted searches for the exact number 10,318,655 (no fuzzy/similar-number substitution). What I could retrieve was the Google Patents full-text record (which I treat as authoritative for this patent), plus secondary aggregator entries (OnScope, Unified Patents, Golden wiki) and family data. I did not find any CAFC 2026 docket or Federal Circuit appeal record tied to US 10,318,655 in the results returned.

Two important honesty flags:

• I cannot directly query USPTO PatentCenter/PTAB or the CAFC docket system through the tools available; my results come from indexed web sources. A live USPTO/CAFC docket check should be performed to confirm the absence of litigation or appeal activity — absence in my search results is not proof of absence.
• "Strict rule" respected: I have not corrected any identifier. Where sources disagree with the primary document, I say so rather than silently harmonizing.

US 10,318,655 B2 — Bibliographic summary

Inventor/assignment note: The post-issue reassignment records show an assignment from the inventors (Fiere, Mosnier, Ryan) to Medicrea International, a 2018-11-30 patent security agreement to Perceptive Credit Holdings II LP, and a 2020-11-20 release by that secured party. I saw no assignment transferring the patent out of the Medicrea entity in the retrieved data.

Abstract (as issued)

The method has the following steps: (a) take a sagittal preoperative x-ray of the patient's vertebral column extending from the cervical vertebrae to the femoral heads; (b) on that x-ray identify the pelvic parameters, the lumbar lordosis, the position of the apical lumbar vertebra, the distances SVA and SFD, and a cloud of points; (c) deduce, among predetermined morphotypes, the morphotype to which the treated vertebral column corresponds and deduce therefrom the desired postoperative apex point; (d) position the points of the cloud of points in a reference centered on the plate of S1; (e) simulate the correction to be applied to the lumbar segment by defining co-radial arcs below and above the desired postoperative apex point, and defining two arcs concentric to the two curvatures so obtained, tangent to each other at the apex point; (f) translate those arcs away from the mean line of the vertebral column and define a two- or three-dimensional model of the rod to be implanted, curved along the arcs.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — Method of producing the curvature of a spinal rod

The claim is a step-by-step workflow that starts with imaging and ends with a physically bent rod:

1. Image acquisition — take a sagittal preoperative x-ray of the patient's spine.
2. Measure/identify on the x-ray — pelvic parameters; lumbar lordosis; the position of the apical (forwardmost) lumbar vertebra; at least one of three sagittal-balance metrics: SVA (S1 posterior-superior vertical to C7 vertical), SFD (S1 vertical to femoral-head vertical), or T1/SPI angle; plus a cloud of points defining the preoperative curvature with one point per vertebral level.
3. Morphotype deduction — classify the column against predetermined morphotypes, deduce the desired postoperative apex point, and decide which vertebrae will receive anchor members (e.g., pedicle screws).
4. Build a S1-based reference frame from the pelvic parameters, centered on the S1 endplate.
5. Fit arcs — reposition/adjust the cloud points and draw multiple arcs through them, with (i) arc-to-arc tangency and (ii) the arc from S1 tangent to a line perpendicular to the S1 plate.
6. Read the arc lengths.
7. Simulate the correction, which is the heart of the claim:
   • draw a line tangent to the desired postoperative apex, rotate/move it to vertical so the attached arc is tangent to that apex, thereby repositioning the apex as the new model apex;
   • force the arcs below the apex to be co-radial with each other, and the arcs above the apex to be co-radial with each other — yielding two distinct curvatures (one above, one below the apex);
   • set the lumbar lordosis to within ±10° of pelvic incidence and satisfy at least one of: SVA < 5 cm; SVA/SFD ratio between −1.9 and +0.1 (sign convention tied to which side of the S1 vertical faces the femoral heads); or T1/SPI between −9° and 0°;
   • define two concentric arcs respectively concentric to the above-apex and below-apex curvatures, tangent at the apex, forming a curved segment that represents the desired rod curvature;
   • translate that curved segment away from the spinal mean line by an average distance from vertebral centers to the anchor points, so the segment sits where the implanted rod will actually sit.
8. Define rod diameter, then define a 2-D or 3-D model of the rod curved along the segment.
9. Transmit the curvature data to a production unit.
10. Physically produce the curvature from a straight rod according to the model.

Key structural point: the claim requires the co-radial decomposition about the apex (two curvature regimes joined at the apex) plus the translation offset to the rod's implanted position — that combination is what distinguishes it from generic "plan a curve and bend a rod" disclosures.

Claim 10 — System for producing the desired curvature

The same substantive sequence, but recast in apparatus terms: an interface (expressly comprising a computer processor and an electronic storage medium) does the x-ray analysis, morphotype/apex deduction, S1-reference definition, arc fitting, arc-length determination, the full correction simulation (co-radial above/below apex, lordosis ±10° of PI, the SVA/SFD/T1-SPI criteria, concentric arcs, and the translation offset), rod diameter and model definition, and transmission of data to a production unit; the production unit then physically bends the rod from a straight blank per the model.

Dependent claims (brief)

• 2 / 11 — the four predetermined morphotypes: type 1 (apex at median plane of L5, SS < 35°), type 2 (apex at base of L4, SS < 35°), type 3 (apex at median plane of L4, SS 35°–45°), type 4 (apex at base of L3, SS > 45°).
• 3 / 12 — modeling = establishing a drawing/plan of the rod.
• 4 / 13 — curvature produced by cold bending.
• 5 — data transmitted to a service provider operating the production unit.
• 6 / 14 — pelvic parameters = sacral slope, pelvic version, and/or pelvic incidence.
• 7 / 15 — apical lumbar vertebra is the one furthest forward on the x-ray.
• 8 / 16 — x-ray spans cervical vertebrae to the femoral head.
• 9 / 17 — model defined using CAD software.

Context from the specification

The background frames the problem as intraoperative guesswork: surgeons currently bend rods by hand, which is time-consuming and risks a non-ideal (non-"economic") posture. The specification expressly asserts that WO 2004/017836 A2, WO 2009/254326 A1 and US 2008/079546 A2 describe methods that "do not achieve this goal satisfactorily" (quoted literally as printed). It also cites WO 98/55038 as illustrative prior osteosynthesis material. The stated advantage is producing the ideal curvature of the rod off-line, then delivering a pre-curved, patient-specific rod to the practitioner.

Family / related matters (for disambiguation)

The authoritative record lists, sharing the same 2013-09-18 priority, among family members: US 10,970,426 B2 (via continuation 16/389,348, filed 2019-04-19, titled "Methods, systems, and devices for designing and manufacturing a spinal rod"), US 12,019,955 B2 (via 17/188,261), US 12,417,323 B2 (via 18/752,014), and pending US 2025/0356065 A1 (via 19/281,469). Foreign counterparts listed: EP 3049011 B1, JP 6467744 B2, AU 2014322670 B2, ES 2654372 T3, FR 3010628 B1, WO 2015/040552 A1.

One data discrepancy worth noting: Unified Patents' portal showed the priority date for US 10,318,655 B2 as 2013-09-17, while the Google Patents record and the FR priority document show 2013-09-18. The authoritative full text states FR 1358988 was filed 2013-09-18 and the PCT was filed 2014-09-17; I have not auto-corrected either source.

Also note the close-but-distinct sibling family with priority 2013-10-18 (e.g., US 10,413,365 B1 and WO 2015/056131 A1, "Method making it possible to achieve the ideal curvature of a rod…"). Those are different families and I have treated them as such.

Litigation / CAFC status

• No CAFC 2026 docket, appeal, or Federal Circuit proceeding referencing US 10,318,655 appeared in any search result. I could not confirm that the patent is or has been involved in any appeal.
• I also did not retrieve a district-court complaint or PTAB proceeding expressly citing the '655 patent. I have a general (unverified against primary court records) awareness that Medicrea/Medtronic and NuVasive have been adverse in spinal-implant IP disputes, but I have no authoritative confirmation that US 10,318,655 is a patent-in-suit, so I am not asserting it.
• Recommended authoritative checks: USPTO PatentCenter (application 14/914,474) for assignments/reexaminations, USPTO PTAB API/Patent Trial and Appeal Board docket, CourtListener/RECAP for district court and CAFC dockets, and the CAFC oral argument/opinion archive for 2026.

If you want, I can next attempt to pull the prosecution history (office actions, terminal disclaimer accounting for the 2036-03-21 adjusted expiration) or the EP 3049011 B1 opposition status.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 10318655. Let me run several targeted searches.

Initial searches returned mostly irrelevant results. Let me search more specifically for the assignee's litigation activity and patent-specific case databases.

Summary of Findings: Litigation Involving US Patent 10,318,655

Bottom line: I could not verify any litigation specifically asserting US Patent 10,318,655 (or its application/priority family) as an asserted patent. The specific-identifier searches returned no case dockets, complaints, PTAB/IPR proceedings, or ITC actions keyed to patent number 10,318,655. Notably, the patent's Google Patents page lists no litigation or post-grant events (unlike some sibling Medicrea patents).

Below is what I found, with an important caveat about a possible but unconfirmed related matter.

Searches run

• "US patent 10318655 litigation"
• "10318655 patent lawsuit infringement"
• "'10318655' patent case docket"
• "Medicrea International patent infringement lawsuit spinal rod"
• "Medicrea v. NuVasive patent litigation spinal"
• "Medicrea Globus Medical patent lawsuit spinal rod curvature"

None produced a case tied to US 10,318,655.

Confirmed adjacent event that does NOT name the patent

Medicrea International USA Inc. v. K2M Spine, Inc., et al.

• Plaintiff: Medicrea International USA Inc. (U.S. subsidiary of Medicrea International SA, the patent's assignee)
• Defendant(s): K2M Spine, Inc. "et plusieurs autres personnes" (and several other unnamed persons)
• Jurisdiction: Supreme Court of the State of New York (reported as "tribunal de grande instance de New York")
• Filing date: November 8, 2017
• Case number: Not disclosed in available reporting
• Subject matter reported: Described by Medicrea as concerning "activités illicites" (unlawful activities) by K2M over the preceding year; framed around protection of Medicrea's UNiD™ patient-specific spinal rod / "Adaptive Spine Intelligence" franchise
• Outcome/status: Unknown from available sources. I could not locate a docket, docket number, asserted patents, or resolution.
• Source: Medicrea press release via Combourse, Nov. 10, 2017 — https://www.combourse.com/News/MEDICREA_Medicrea_intente_une_action_en_justice_contre_K2M__2250918.html

Critical caveat: This New York action is reported only at the corporate press-release level. The press release does not identify any asserted patent number, and the public descriptions suggest the 2017 K2M matter may have sounded in trade-secret/unfair-competition theories rather than patent infringement. I cannot confirm that US 10,318,655 was asserted in this action, and I found no document connecting the two. I am flagging it only because it is the closest known Medicrea enforcement event of the relevant era.

Things I checked and ruled out (to avoid false positives)

The following surfaced in searches but are different patents/parties and should not be attributed to US 10,318,655:

• Warsaw Orthopedic (Medtronic) v. NuVasive — U.S. patents 5,860,973 / 6,945,933 / 7,470,236 (S.D. Cal. 3:08-cv-01512).
• NuVasive v. Alphatec — U.S. 7,819,801 / 8,439,832, etc. (S.D. Cal. 3:18-cv-00347).
• The 2025 surgeon-vs-NuVasive jury verdict (spinal screws/rods) — unrelated patents.
• A Brazilian JUCISRS filing listing "10318655" — that is a company registry number, not the patent.

What I could not verify

• Any district court complaint, CAFC appeal, ITC §337 action, or PTAB IPR/PGR involving the '655 patent itself.
• Any case number, docket, or outcome for the 2017 Medicrea v. K2M New York action.
• Whether any Medicrea enforcement campaign (K2M, NuVasive, or others) ever asserted the '655 family.

Recommended next steps to close the gap

Because I hit the tool/search limit before exhausting sources, I recommend confirming via:

1. Unified Patents litigation portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist (search "10318655")
2. PACER / CourtListener RECAP — full-text search for "10,318,655"
3. USPTO PTAB and USITC EDIS — for post-grant and §337 activity
4. LexMachina / Docket Navigator — patent-level litigation trackers
5. The cross-referenced sibling patents (e.g., US 10,970,426; US 12,019,955; US 12,417,323) — a challenge or suit aimed at one family member often names the others, and may reveal activity for the '655 as well.

Confidence level: High that no litigation is affirmatively documented for US 10,318,655 in the sources searched. Moderate that none exists at all — the search was not exhaustive, and I am explicitly unable to rule out an unindexed or sealed action, or an action where the patent is asserted but not publicly numbered.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" default against live sources before writing the analysis.

Let me check for PTAB activity on the broader Medicrea family and any petitioner patterns.

PTAB / AIA Trial Analysis — US 10,318,655 B2

Working date: 2026-10-01. Analysis sourced from the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal ingest), cross-checked against live web search.

Proceedings overview

There are zero (0) AIA trial proceedings on file for US 10,318,655 B2 — no IPRs, no PGRs, no CBM reviews — meaning the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials. The bottom-line defensive posture this gives a defendant is the opposite of comfort for the patent owner: the patent is wholly untested at the PTAB, all 17 claims remain presumptively valid and un-narrowed, and there is no FWD, no estoppel record, and no prior-art roadmap purchased by someone else. As a defendant, you are the first mover — you get the benefit of the § 315(b) one-year window from service of any complaint, but you also get none of the leverage that comes from a co-defendant's already-instituted trial.

Honesty flag / scope caveat. The structured ODP block is canonical and returns no proceedings. Absence in the ODP is strong but not conclusive evidence of absence: ODP ingest can lag newly filed petitions, and settlement-driven terminations before institution leave thin public footprints. I could not independently confirm a null result against PTAB E2E or a commercial docketing service (LexMachina / Docket Navigator) from the tools available. Treat "zero proceedings" as high-confidence but not infallible.

Per-proceeding detail

Not applicable — no proceeding numbers exist to report. I am deliberately not generating placeholder or inferred IPR/PGR numbers, because that would be fabrication of the exact identifiers the analysis turns on.

For completeness, here is what the absence means against each field the template calls for:

Products of the search, listed to show the negative was probed rather than assumed:

• Searches keyed to the exact string 10318655 returned only a Brazilian JUCISRS corporate-registry document (JUCISRS, ata 10/04/2024 — "10318655 JOSE ANTONIO GASPARIN, SOCIEDADE EMPRESARIA LIMITADA"). That is a company registration number, not this patent, and must not be attributed to it.
• Searches for Medicrea-side PTAB activity returned only third-party trials in which Medicrea is not a party — e.g., Medtronic v. NuVasive (IPR2013-00504, IPR2013-00506, IPR2014-00487 on U.S. 8,361,156), NuVasive v. Michelson ('997 patent), Alphatec v. NuVasive (IPR2019-00362), and Amneal v. Jazz (IPR2015-01903, '963 patent). None of these involves US 10,318,655 or any Medicrea patent.
• No IPR was found against the closest family sibling either — US 10,970,426 B2 (the continuation off application 16/389,348) — which is a meaningful signal given that a petitioner attacking the '655 would ordinarily consider the sibling simultaneously.

Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED; nothing is CANCELED. All 17 claims — independent claim 1 (method) and independent claim 10 (system), plus dependents 2–9 and 11–17 — stand exactly as granted on 2019-06-11, unamended and never subjected to an AIA challenge. There is no certificate of cancellation, no adverse judgment under 37 C.F.R. § 42.73(b), no statutory disclaimer of record in the ODP proceedings data, and no reissue or reexamination reflected. Practically, this means a defendant facing assertion cannot point to any claim that has already been killed, and cannot lean on a prior FWD's claim constructions or obviousness findings.

Estoppel landscape: it is a blank slate. Because no petition has been filed, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) has never attached and no petitioner or privy is estopped as to any ground. For a defendant being asserted against today, that cuts both ways:

• Available to you: every § 102 and § 103 ground you can build on the patent's own cited art and any art you independently locate is fully available — nothing was "raised or reasonably could have been raised" by anyone. You are also not bound by any adverse institution-stage claim-construction or discretionary-denial reasoning.
• Unavailable to you: you cannot free-ride on an existing institution decision to time your petition against a § 314(a) Fintiv-type discretionary denial, nor share costs with a co-petitioner. You bear the entire evidentiary burden of the § 103 combination yourself, on a patent whose specification already frames the field and cites its own art.

A note on the art the patent itself hands you. The specification expressly disparages three references as not satisfactorily achieving the goal — WO 2004/017836 A2, WO 2009/254326 A1, and US 2008/079546 A2 — and cites WO 98/55038 for prior osteosynthesis material. Those are the natural seed references for any § 103 challenge, and the patent owner has already conceded they are in the field. One identification discrepancy worth resolving before you build grounds: the specification as printed cites "US 2008/079546 A2," but the Google Patents citation list shows U.S. 2008/0079546 A1 as a Sensormatic Electronics "programmable chip design" document, while WO 2008/079546 A2 is the General Electric surgical-navigation-planning document that actually fits the sentence. Per the operating rule I have not auto-corrected the patent's text — but confirm which document the applicant meant, because your petition's ground 1 should not be built on a mis-identified reference.

Pattern signals: none, on any axis. There is no repeat petitioner, because there is no petitioner. The patent owner has not needed to defend a PTAB appeal, and there is no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) in the chain on this patent. The assignee history is a clean single-entity line — inventors (Mosnier, Ryan, Fiere) → Medicrea International, a 2018-11-30 security agreement to Perceptive Credit Holdings II LP, and a 2020-11-20 release by that secured party — with no assignment out of the Medicrea entity visible, and no corporate successor substituted as assignee of record in the retrieved data. Medicrea was reported as acquired by Medtronic around July 2020, but I found no assignment record moving this patent's title as a result, so do not assume Medtronic is the record owner without a PatentCenter check.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant:

1. Do not expect help from an existing FWD — there is none. All 17 claims are live. Any invalidity story must be built from scratch, and any non-infringement story must engage the claim limitations the patent actually recites — most importantly the co-radial decomposition above and below the apex point and the translation of the curved segment away from the spinal mean line by the mean center-to-anchor distance. Those are the structural features that distinguish claim 1 from generic "plan a curve, bend a rod" art; attack the combination head-on rather than the imaging/measurement preamble, which is largely conventional pelvic-parameter measurement.
2. Calendar § 315(b). No petition has ever been filed, so the one-year bar has not started running on anyone. If you receive a complaint asserting the '655, your IPR window opens from service and closes one year later — and because no co-defendant has petitioned, you will not be able to piggyback.
3. Consider the family in parallel. A challenge aimed only at the '655 is incomplete. US 10,970,426 B2, US 12,019,955 B2, US 12,417,323 B2, and pending US 2025/0356065 A1 share the 2013-09-18 priority; the continuation line is intact. A petitioner who invalidates claim 1 of the '655 but leaves the continuation claims standing has bought very little.
4. Verify the record before filing. Confirm on PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/) that no recently-filed petition exists, and confirm current title and any disclaimers via USPTO PatentCenter for application 14/914,474.

If you are the patent owner: the absence of any IPR is a genuine strength — no claim has been narrowed, no estoppel has been created against you, and you have never had to defend a § 318(a) appeal. It also means you have no trial-tested constructions to rely on, so a first-filed petition would be litigated on a clean record.

If you are simply due-diligencing the patent: the fact that this patent has never attracted an IPR despite being commercially asserted-adjacent (it is named in Medicrea's own 2019 press materials as a core UNiD ASI platform patent, alongside U.S. 10,314,657 and 10,292,770) is itself notable. Well-asserted, high-value patents in crowded medtech fields usually draw at least one petition. That it has not, eight-plus years post-issuance, is a signal to investigate — not a conclusion that the claims are strong or weak.

Authoritative confirmations still outstanding:

• USPTO PTAB E2E / PTAB API — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/ and https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-api/ (proceedings search by patent number)
• Unified Patents litigation & PTAB portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist (search 10318655)
• CourtListener / RECAP — https://www.courtlistener.com/ (full-text search for 10,318,655; also the CAFC docket and opinion archive for any 2026 appeal)
• USPTO PatentCenter — https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/ (application 14/914,474: assignments, disclaimers, terminal disclaimer accounting for the 2036-03-21 adjusted expiration)

Confidence: High that no AIA trial proceeding against US 10,318,655 is documented in the ODP proceedings data or in any indexed source I could reach. Moderate-to-high that none exists at all — the null result is consistent across every query run, but I could not exhaustively query PTAB E2E, PACER, or the commercial docketing platforms directly.

I'll attempt to pull the recorded assignment data for this patent before reconstructing the chain.

Ownership & Assignment Reconstruction — US 10,318,655 B2

Access caveat, stated up front: I could not reach the USPTO Assignment Center database directly through the tools available to me (the Assignment Center / assignment.uspto.gov search interfaces are dynamic and were not returned in retrievable form, and I hit the step limit before exhausting alternate routes). I therefore do not have reel/frame numbers or registered correspondents of record for this patent. I will not invent them. What follows separates (a) what the authoritative record confirms, (b) what public non-PTO sources corroborate, and (c) what is unknown. Verify each entry at the USPTO Assignment Center (search "10318655") or the indexed mirror at assignment.uspto.gov.

Inventors

Unusual-pattern check: I found no evidence that any inventor departed the assignee within 12 months of filing. The 2016-02-25 recording lists Fiere, Mosnier, and Ryan collectively as assignors to Medicrea International — the standard inventor-to-employer confirmation assignment, not a departure signal. No finding here; note only that I could not confirm actual employment relationships, so a departure pattern could not be ruled in or out.

Original assignee

Medicrea International SA (French société anonyme; registered offices referenced in its own filings as Neyron / Rillieux-la-Pape, France — R.C.S. 393 175 807).

• Shipped a product embodying the claims — yes. Medicrea was the first spine company to commercialize custom-made ("sur-mesure") osteosynthesis rods and 3D-printed patient-specific interbody cages, delivered through its UNiD® ASI (Adaptive Spine Intelligence) platform and UNiD™ LAB planning / UNiD™ TEK implant lines. Its own 2019 management report states >1,850 surgeries with custom implants in 2019 and describes the UNiD ASI pre-operative planning + patient-specific realignment rod business as its core strategic activity — i.e., the claimed workflow is the product. (Source: Medicrea 2019 Rapport de gestion, https://investors.medicrea.com/~/media/Files/M/Medicrea-IR/financial-information/french/2019/12-2019%20MEDICREA%20-%20Rapport%20de%20gestion%[202019](/patent/202019).pdf)
• Primary line of business: design, integrated manufacture, and distribution of implantable spinal devices + surgical planning software/services.
• Current status: acquired, now a Medtronic subsidiary — not dissolved, not in bankruptcy. Public filings reference a tender offer (offre publique d'achat) initiated by the Covidien Group (Medtronic's interventional-spine entity), and Perceptive committed to tender its warrants/shares under a July 15, 2020 contribution undertaking (Source: Medicrea project note in response to the OPA, http://ch.zonebourse.com/cours/action/MEDICREA-INTERNATIONAL-32731/actualite/...31280149/). The exact completion date is not confirmed in my sources; the OPA was in progress in 2020. Medicrea International SA remains the assignee of record for the '655 patent.

Assignment timeline

The authoritative Google Patents legal-events record shows three recorded events for US 14/914,474. Reel/frame and correspondent were not retrievable in this analysis and are shown as [not retrieved]. Do not treat the blanks as absence — they are a tool-access gap.

1. ~2013–2014 (executed, exact date unknown) / recorded 2016-02-25 — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]

• Conveyance: Assignment
• Assignor: Vincent Fiere; Thomas Mosnier; David Ryan (individually)
• Assignee: Medicrea International
• Correspondent: [not retrieved]
• Context: Original inventor-to-employer assignment, recorded during national-stage entry of PCT/IB2014/064586 (US 14/914,474). Routine prosecution housekeeping, not a transfer of opportunity.

2. Executed ~2018-11-26/27 / recorded 2018-11-30 — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]

• Conveyance: Patent Security Agreement (security interest — encumbrance, not an ownership transfer)
• Assignor: Medicrea International
• Assignee: Perceptive Credit Holdings II, LP
• Correspondent: [not retrieved]
• Context: Securitization. Medicrea's Nov-2018 refinancing: $30M senior secured guaranteed notes under a Note Purchase Agreement dated 2018-11-26 (notes settled 2018-11-27), plus 1,000,000 warrants to Perceptive. French statutory accounts confirm the grant — "nantissement des brevets, marques et autres propriétés intellectuelles détenus par MEDICREA INTERNATIONAL au profit de Perceptive Advisors" (pledge of patents/trademarks/IP). Security for a healthcare-credit lender; medtech venture debt, not an NPE.
• Sources: Medicrea press release 2018-11-27 (https://investors.medicrea.com/~/media/Files/M/Medicrea-IR/press-releases/french/2018/20171127%20CP%20Medicrea%20%20Notes%20%20BSA%20English%20Final.pdf) and Medicrea International Comptes sociaux 2018 (https://investors.medicrea.com/~/media/Files/M/Medicrea-IR/financial-information/french/2019/Medicrea%20International%20-%20Comptes%20sociaux%[202018](/patent/202018).pdf).

3. Executed ~2020-11 / recorded 2020-11-20 — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]

• Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
• Assignor: Perceptive Credit Holdings II, LP
• Assignee: Medicrea International
• Correspondent: [not retrieved]
• Context: Termination/release of the security interest. The Perceptive note-purchase terms called for early repayment of the Perceptive notes upon success of the tender offer; the recorded release is consistent with that early payoff/release as the Medtronic (Covidien) transaction proceeded. Consistent with the financing context — not a fire-sale, not an assignment to an asserter.

Correspondent recurrence check: Unclear — no correspondents were retrievable for any of the three recordings, so I cannot test the "same recording attorney across the chain / across site-tracked patents" signal. This is the single largest evidentiary gap in this reconstruction; it should be closed via a direct Assignment Center pull (the "Correspondent" column on each recorded row), because it is the highest-yield tell when anonymous-LLC chains are in play.

No ownership-changing assignment away from the operating company appears in the record. The only post-issue "Assignments" are a security interest and its release, both of which leave Medicrea International as owner of record.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10318655
    2013 : French priority filed
    2014 : PCT application filed by Medicrea
    2016 : Inventors assign to Medicrea
    2018 : Patent security agreement to Perceptive
    2019 : US patent issued
    2020 : Security interest released
         : Medicrea acquired by Medtronic

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The ownership chain is clean: inventors Fiere, Mosnier, and Ryan assigned to Medicrea International (recorded 2016-02-25), the patent then served only as collateral for a $30M Perceptive credit facility (Patent Security Agreement recorded 2018-11-30), and that security interest was released (2020-11-20), leaving the operating medtech company — the maker of the UNiD ASI patient-specific rod the claims read on — as owner of record. There is no shell entity, no listed asserter, no cascading LLC chain, no bankruptcy sale, and no defensive aggregator anywhere in the record; the security-interest and release recordings are financing artifacts, not NPE signals.

Two qualifications to keep the call honest: (i) per the earlier litigation section, I could not confirm that Medicrea (or successor Medtronic) has sued competitors on this patent, so the "assertion" prong is unverified — the accurate statement is that the patent is held by a product-shipping operating company with no NPE chain; and (ii) the correspondent of record is entirely unretrieved, so signal #3 remains open.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "10318655") — pull the three rows for application 14/914,474 and capture reel/frame + correspondent for each; that will confirm the release and close the one unresolved signal.

I'll research the specific patent and its cited prior art. Let me run targeted searches.

Let me dig into the specific cited references and the front-page citation list.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 10,318,655 B2

Scope, method, and honesty flags (read first)

Search performed. I searched for the exact identifier 10318655 (no fuzzy substitution) and retrieved the patent's own front‑page citation record. Two process limitations must be stated up front:

1. I cannot directly query USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR or the PTAB with the tools available. My results come from indexed sources, of which the Google Patents full‑text record of US 10,318,655 B2 (which mirrors USPTO data and matches the authoritative text supplied in this analysis) is the most reliable. A live PatentCenter pull of application 14/914,474 would be the authoritative confirmation.
2. The patent's own "References Cited" list contains ~384 entries. That is far more than can be individually analyzed, and the great majority are peripheral to the claims (e.g., RF‑signal chip design, Conformis joint‑arthroplasty tooling, NuVasive neuromonitoring, pedicle‑screw hardware). I therefore analyze the subset of cited references whose subject matter actually maps onto the elements of claims 1 and 10 — that is what "most relevant prior art" means here — and I say so explicitly rather than padding the list.

Critical §102 caveat that shapes the entire answer. The issued patent has 17 claims (two independent: claim 1 method, claim 10 system). A §102 anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every element of the claim. Reviewing the cited art below, no single cited reference appears to disclose all elements of claim 1 or claim 10 (in particular, the combination of: S1‑centered reference frame from pelvic parameters → arc‑fitting with mandatory tangency constraints → co‑radial decomposition into an above‑apex and below‑apex curvature regime → the lordosis‑±10°‑of‑PI and SVA / SVA‑SFD‑ratio / T1‑SPI constraints → two concentric arcs tangent at the apex → translation of the curved segment by the mean center‑to‑anchor distance). That structural conclusion is consistent with the patent having issued. Consequently, most of the listed art has §103 (obviousness) relevance and partial §102 relevance only. I flag which is which, and I do not assert anticipation where I cannot see it.

Claim‑element shorthand used below. [A] sagittal pre‑op x‑ray; [B] pelvic parameters + lumbar lordosis + apical vertebra + one of SVA / SFD / T1‑SPI + one cloud point per vertebral level; [C] morphotype deduction → desired postoperative apex + anchor levels; [D] S1‑centered reference frame; [E] arc‑fitting with tangency (arc‑from‑S1 tangent to the S1‑plate perpendicular); [F] arc‑length readout; [G] correction simulation (co‑radial above/below apex; lordosis±10°PI; SVA<5 cm / SVA‑SFD ratio −1.9…+0.1 / T1‑SPI −9°…0°); [H] two concentric arcs tangent at apex; [I] translation offset by mean center‑to‑anchor distance; [J] rod diameter; [K] 2‑D/3‑D model; [L] bend the rod from a straight blank.

Statutory framework. Priority is 2013‑09‑18 (FR 1358988); PCT filed 2014‑09‑17. That post‑dates the AIA first‑inventor‑to‑file cutover (2013‑03‑16), so AIA 35 U.S.C. §102 governs: §102(a)(1) for patents/printed publications before the effective filing date, §102(a)(2) for U.S. patents/applications effectively filed before it. Anything with an effective date after 2013‑09‑18 is not prior art (this matters for one family member listed below).

Patent identity (confirmation of the searched record)

Most relevant cited prior art — patent documents

Each entry gives the requested fields plus a §102 assessment. "Cited on" = listed in the '655 front‑page/reference record.

1. US 2005/0262911 A1 — Dankowicz et al. (highest relevance to the rod‑bending/manufacturing steps)

• Full citation: U.S. Pub. 2005/0262911 A1, "Computer‑aided three‑dimensional bending of spinal rod implants, other surgical implants and other articles, systems for three‑dimensional shaping, and apparatuses therefor."
• Filing date: 2004‑02‑06; Publication date: 2005‑12‑01.
• Brief description: An integrated CAD/CAM system that translates a surgeon‑specified desired 3‑D rod shape into actuator commands and automatically (non‑manually) bends an implantable spinal rod, with local and global automated feedback and spring‑back compensation. Expressly addresses the same background problem as the '655 (manual French‑bender rod contouring is slow, tiring, and error‑prone).
• §102 assessment: This is the closest cited reference for element [L] (producing the curvature from a straight rod) and for [K] (defining a model from which bends are imposed). It does not disclose the diagnostic/planning core of the claim — [B]–[I] (the pelvic‑parameter reference frame, the morphotype/apex deduction, the co‑radial above/below‑apex decomposition, or the translation offset). It does not anticipate claim 1 or claim 10. Its §102 exposure is realistically limited to the narrowest dependent‑claim‑type subject matter (a "produce the curvature of the rod by bending per a model" concept), and even that is likely to have been treated under §103.

2. US 2009/0254326 A1 / US 8,549,888 B2 — Isaacs (Vilaspine Ltd. → NuVasive, Inc.)

• Full citation: U.S. Pub. 2009/0254326 A1 (= granted US 8,549,888 B2), "System and Device for Designing and Forming a Surgical Implant."
• Filing date (pub.): 2008‑04‑04; Publication date: 2009‑10‑08; Grant date: 2013‑10‑08 (US 8,549,888 B2 is listed in the '655 citation record).
• Brief description: Determines the shape of a surgical linking device (spinal rod) from digitized locations of attachment elements on bony anatomy, implemented by a computer system through a GUI, generating an "initial bend curve" to mate with the anchors, simplifiable to reduce the number of bends. Continuation US 9,636,181 B2 ("Systems, devices, and methods for designing and forming a surgical implant") shares the disclosure.
• §102 assessment: Relevant to [H]/[K] (generating a rod bend curve from anchor locations) and to the "model of the rod" concept; also touches the anchor‑placement aspect of [C]. It does not teach the S1‑based frame, morphotype classification, or the sagittal‑balance acceptance criteria of [B]/[G]. Not anticipatory of claim 1 or 10; §103 relevance.

3. WO 2004/017836 A2 — Orthosoft Inc. (and US 2006/0015030 A1)

• Full citation: WO 2004/017836 A2, "Computer aided surgery system and method for placing multiple implants" (U.S. counterpart US 2006/0015030 A1; EP family).
• Priority: 2002‑08‑26 (US 60/405,703); Publication date: 2004‑03‑04.
• Brief description: CAS planning apparatus that lets a surgeon place multiple virtual implants on an image and computes a "desired curve… corresponding to an interconnecting member for the at least two spinal implants" (i.e., the optimal rod curve), including re‑adjusting a preceding implant to optimize alignment of all implants.
• §102 assessment: Directly relevant to [C]/[H] (computing the rod curve that interconnects the planned anchors). This is one of the three references the '655 specification itself identifies as known art that "do not achieve this goal satisfactorily" (see the discrepancy note in §"Note on the specification's own cited references" below). Not anticipatory — it lacks the sagittal‑balance metric framework and the co‑radial/concentric‑arc construction.

4. EP 2 053 580 A1 — K2M, Inc. (Boachie‑Adjei)

• Full citation: EP 2 053 580 A1 (App. EP08018561.4), "Spinal surgery modeling system"; assignee K2M, Inc.; inventor Oheneba Boachie‑Adjei.
• Priority: US 60/982,079, 2007‑10‑23; Filing date: 2008‑10‑23; Publication date: 2009‑04‑29.
• Brief description: A physical, hands‑on 3‑D spine model/rehearsal platform (platform + tension members) for training and manual surgical rehearsal, configured to simulate scoliosis, kyphosis and sagittal imbalance, with template indicia corresponding to digital planning software.
• §102 assessment: Peripheral. It is a mechanical/teaching model, not a computer‑implemented method for computing and then bending a patient‑specific rod; its overlap is at most the generic concept of simulating sagittal imbalance. No anticipation; unlikely even strong §103 art for claims 1/10.

5. US 2008/0255575 A1 — Justis et al. (Warsaw Orthopedic)

• Full citation: U.S. Pub. 2008/0255575 A1, "Instruments and methods for sizing a connecting element for positioning along a bony segment."
• Filing date: 2007‑04‑11; Publication date: 2008‑10‑16.
• Brief description: Surgical instruments/methods for sizing (length‑determining) a connecting element (rod) along a bony segment.
• §102 assessment: Touches only the rod‑sizing/"diameter‑or‑length" aspect (analogue of [J]). Cytologically unrelated to the image‑based planning core. No anticipation.

6. US 2009/0204159 A1 — Justis et al. (Warsaw Orthopedic)

• Full citation: U.S. Pub. 2009/0204159 A1, "Methods and devices for deformity correction."
• Filing date: 2008‑02‑12; Publication date: 2009‑08‑13.
• Brief description: Deformity‑correction devices/methods (spinal anchoring/rod‑based correction).
• §102 assessment: Background‑level relevance to the clinical purpose of [C] (correcting a spinal deformity). No anticipation.

7. US 2010/0042157 A1 — Trieu (Warsaw Orthopedic)

• Full citation: U.S. Pub. 2010/0042157 A1, "Vertebral rod system and methods of use."
• Filing date: 2008‑08‑15; Publication date: 2010‑02‑18.
• Brief description: A vertebral rod system and its methods of use.
• §102 assessment: Rod‑hardware/§103 environment only. No anticipation.

8. US 2015/0100091 A1 — Tohmeh et al. (NuVasive)

• Full citation: U.S. Pub. 2015/0100091 A1, "Systems and Methods for Performing Spine Surgery."
• Filing date: 2013‑10‑09; Publication date: 2015‑04‑09.
• Brief description: Spine‑surgery planning/execution systems.
• §102 assessment / IMPORTANT DATE POINT: Its filing date (2013‑10‑09) is after the '655 priority date (2013‑09‑18), so it can only be prior art, if at all, as a §102(a)(2) reference based on its own earlier‑filed subject matter (or as a §102(a)(1) reference only to the extent it published before the '655's effective filing date of 2014‑09‑17 — it published 2015‑04‑09, i.e., after the filing date). On the face of it, this reference cannot qualify as prior art against the '655 on the dates given in the '655 record. I flag this as a likely citation‑record artifact rather than a supportable §102 citation.

9. Referenced‑but‑mis‑numbered specification citation (flag, per the strict‑rule)

• US 2008/079546 A2 is quoted literally in the '655 specification as one of the three references that "do not achieve this goal satisfactorily." No published document US 2008/079546 A2 exists in the citation record. The record contains (a) US 2008/0079546 A1 (Sensormatic Electronics, "Programmable chip design for radio frequency signal generation," 2006‑09‑29 → 2008‑04‑03) and (b) WO 2008/079546 A2 (General Electric, "Surgical navigation planning system and method for replacement of percutaneous instrumentation and implants," 2006‑12‑22 → 2008‑07‑03). I am not correcting the identifier; I note only that the literal string in the specification does not resolve to a single unambiguous reference, and that the WO 2008/079546 A2 (GE) is the plausible intended antecedent on subject‑matter grounds.
• §102 assessment: The GE navigation‑planning document is field‑adjacent (surgical planning with implants) but not anticipatory of claims 1/10.

10. Family member that is NOT prior art (flag)

• WO 2015/056131 A1 (Medicrea International) appears in the surrounding records with priority 2013‑10‑18 — it belongs to the sibling 2013‑10‑18 family cited in your prior sections. Because its priority post‑dates the '655 priority (2013‑09‑18), it is not prior art to the '655 and any §102 listing of it would be a date error.

Non‑patent literature (NPL)

Honesty flag: I could not retrieve a clean, sourced NPL/"Other Publications" block for US 10,318,655 B2 itself within the available tool budget. The spinal‑deformity‑metric literature below (the type of NPL that is decisive for elements [B]–[G] of claim 1 — pelvic parameters, lumbar lordosis, SVA, T1/SPI, morphotype/classification) is drawn from the same corporate family/sibling records. I therefore list it as the relevant body of NPL for the '655's claims but do not represent it as the '655's own confirmed citation record, pending a PatentCenter verification.

Net effect of the NPL: it establishes that the individual inputs to claim 1 (SS, PV, PI, lumbar lordosis, SVA, T1/SPI, morphotype classification) were known and documented before 2013‑09‑18 — hence the '655's novelty (if any) sits in the specific computational construction ([D]→[E]→[G]→[H]→[I]), not in the metrics. This is why the strongest attacks on the '655 would be §103 combinations (e.g., NPL metric framework + a NuVasive/Dankowicz CAD‑bending reference), not §102.

Bottom‑line §102 assessment

Conclusion: On the record retrieved, no cited reference singly anticipates claim 1 or claim 10; the cited art is an obviousness (§103) landscape plus metric/classification background (§102 support for individual concepts, not the claimed combination). Two citations in the surrounding record (US 2015/0100091 and WO 2015/056131) carry dates that post‑date the '655's priority/filing and therefore should not be relied on as prior art without further explanation.

What I could NOT verify (explicit)

• The actual §102‑vs‑§103 use in prosecution of each of the 384 citations. That requires the file history / office actions for 14/914,474, which I could not pull. My §102 labels above are my subject‑matter assessment, not a recitation of examiner rejections. (The Google Patents record marks some citations "cited by examiner" and others "cited by third party," but the rendering available to me is ambiguous and I will not over‑read it.)
• The '655's own NPL ("Other Publications") block — the NPL table above is sourced from family/sibling records and is flagged as such.
• The full, untruncated front‑page (56) References Cited list (the rendered list cut off around US 9,554,411 B1); several hundred entries were not individually inspected.

To close the gap authoritatively: pull USPTO PatentCenter (application 14/914,474) → "Documents" (Office Actions / PTO‑892 / IDS) and the EP 3049011 B1 file, which will show exactly which references were applied under §102 vs §103, and issue an IDS cross‑reference ("cited by examiner" asterisks) for the front page.

I'll ground this analysis by pulling details on the key prior-art references listed in this patent's Citations section.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,318,655 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst note / scope. This is a technical obviousness assessment, not a legal opinion. It uses the prior-art references listed in the "Citations (384)" section of the Google Patents record for US 10,318,655 (treated as authoritative for this patent), supplemented by retrieved full-text passages from those references. Where I could not obtain a reference's full text (e.g., WO 2004/017836 A2, WO 2009/254326 A1), I say so. I do not auto-correct any identifier.

1. Governing framework and the analytical premises

Legal standard. Obviousness is assessed under the Graham v. John Deere factors: (1) scope and content of the prior art; (2) differences between the prior art and the claims; (3) level of ordinary skill; and (4) secondary considerations. Under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), a combination is obvious where there existed a known problem for which there was an obvious solution encompassed by the claims, where the combination is "the product of ordinary creativity, not innovation," or where the claimed subject matter is the result of "design choice" / "predictable variation." A motivation to combine may be found in the references themselves, in the nature of the problem, in the ordinary creativity of a skilled artisan, or in market/design incentives — it need not be explicit in any single reference.

AIA applies. The application was filed 2014-09-17 as a national-stage entry of PCT/IB2014/064586, claiming FR 1358988 (2013-09-18). Because the effective filing date is after 2013-03-16, AIA §§ 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) govern. The references below were all publicly available well before 2013-09-18 and therefore qualify as prior art printed publications.

POSITA. For this art I would define the person of ordinary skill as a multidisciplinary team: (a) an orthopedic spine surgeon familiar with sagittal-balance parameters (PI, PT, SS, LL, SVA, T1/SPI) and deformity-correction strategy, working with (b) a biomechanical/software engineer with 2–5 years' experience in medical-image-based surgical planning and CAD/curve-fitting. This is the level against which the claims should be measured.

Load-bearing admission in the specification. The Background of the Invention states: "It is known to analyze a patient's vertebral column in reference to so-called 'pelvic' parameters and different morphotypes of a vertebral column, documented in the scientific literature." The specification then recites the PI/PT/SS criteria and the four morphotypes (type 1 apex at L5 / SS<35°; type 2 apex at base of L4 / SS<35°; type 3 apex at L4 / SS 35°–45°; type 4 apex at base of L3 / SS>45°). Applicant's own admission is prior art under § 103, and it supplies the entire clinical/geometry framework of independent claims 1 and 10. The claimed invention therefore reduces largely to (i) the computational method of building a rod curve from a preoperative sagittal image and (ii) the manufacturing step of bending the rod off-line.

2. The strongest prior-art references available on this record

Data-integrity flag (per the strict rule): The specification cites three references as failing to achieve the goal: WO 2004/017836 A2, WO 2009/254326 A1, and US 2008/079546 A2. Two observations:

• The Google Patents citation list matches the string "US20080079546A1" to a Sensormatic Electronics document ("Programmable chip design for radio frequency signal generation," priority 2006-09-29), which is facially unrelated to spinal surgery; the Justia citation list for US 10,318,655 instead shows "20080079546 — April 3, 2008 — Alicot et al." This looks like a bibliographic-record mismatch in one of the two indexes. I do not resolve it; I flag it as something a challenger must verify against the actual office action/citation of record.
• "WO 2009/254326 A1" as printed is a non-standard WO number format. I could not retrieve it and therefore do not rely on it.

3. Element-by-element mapping of independent claim 1

4. Specific § 103 grounds

Ground 1 (primary) — Isaacs '326 + Dankowicz '911 + Orthosoft '030, in view of applicant's admitted prior art

Combination: US 2009/0254326 A1 (or its grant counterparts US 7,957,831 / US 8,549,888 / US 9,636,181) in view of US 2005/0262911 A1, further in view of US 2006/0015030 A1 (Orthosoft / WO 2004/017836 family), and the pelvic-parameter/morphotype knowledge admitted in the '655 specification.

Rationale / motivation to combine:

• Isaacs supplies the complete "digitize anatomy → fit a curve → generate bend instructions → bend the rod" pipeline, including planned deformity correction by mathematically adjusting the anatomical target positions and evaluating the predicted resultant curvature. This reads on steps (b)–(j) of claim 1 at a genus level.
• Dankowicz supplies the missing pre-operative, off-line manufacturing dimension: computing the target 3-D shape in advance and non-manually bending the rod to it (claims 18, 24, 25), plus the X-ray→3-D classification workflow. Isaacs and Dankowicz are expressly cited in the '655 record and are in the same field (computer-assisted shaping of spinal rods), addressing the same art-recognized problem (OR time, manual bending error, re-bending/metal fatigue) — the classic KSR "known problem, obvious solution" scenario.
• Orthosoft '030 supplies the preoperative-planning twist on the same idea: determining a "desired curve" along which multiple spinal implants (screws) are placed and, for scoliosis, having the system "provide the optimal curve for the rod." That is precisely the "cloud of points defining a desired/ideal curvature" of claim 1.
• Applicant's admission supplies the pelvic parameters, the four morphotypes, and the S1-based anatomical framework. With that knowledge in hand, the POSITA would necessarily express the Isaacs/Orthosoft curve in the S1-centered reference frame and use the morphotype to select the postoperative apex — because the admitted literature frames the entire treatment goal in exactly those terms.

Reasonable expectation of success: High. Each reference is enabled in the relevant respect, they are combinable by known engineering (digitized points → spline fit → bend commands), and the result is a predictable, verified rod shape.

Ground 2 — NuVasive '888 grant + Dankowicz '911 + Hunter '972 + Teijin '035

This ground is essentially Ground 1 with the grant of the Isaacs family (US 8,549,888 B2) as the primary reference, adding US 2004/0152972 A1 (Hunter) for pre-operative spinal-implant modeling/tuning and US 5,224,035 (Teijin) for computer-based analysis of vertebral deformation from radiographs. Useful as a redundancy ground: it removes any argument that the '326 publication lacks enablement or that its claims differ materially from the asserted method. It also more squarely covers the system claim 10 (see § 5).

Ground 3 — Orthosoft '030 + Isaacs '326 + Spontech '486

For the simulation sub-steps (h1–h4): Orthosoft '030 discloses displaying a "desired curve" and aligning virtual implants to it; Spontech '486 discloses computer simulation of spinal-column geometry/alignment; Isaacs '326 discloses evaluating a predicted resultant curvature after modifying anatomical target data. A POSITA seeking to pre-operatively simulate a postoperative alignment would look to these three (all computer-aided spine-simulation/planning references) and combine them. This ground is particularly useful against the "simulating a correction" limitation and against the tangency/co-radial arc-fitting steps, which are geometry operations performed on the displayed curve.

5. Dependent claims

6. Claim 10 (system) — additional notes

Claim 10 recasts the same sequence in apparatus terms and adds: (a) an "interface ... compris[ing] a computer processor and an electronic storage medium," and (b) a "production unit" that physically produces the curvature. Neither addition creates a patentable distinction:

• A processor + electronic storage medium implementing a GUI-driven planning workflow is disclosed by US 2009/0254326 ("implemented by a computer system through a GUI") and US 2006/0015030. Configuring a general-purpose computer with a processor and memory to run such software is the essence of In re Alappat-era obviousness and KSR's "familiar elements according to known methods."
• The "production unit" is disclosed by US 2005/0262911 (automated rod-bender driven by computer-generated actuator commands) and by the Mazor-family "Shaper for vertebral fixation rods" disclosure (US 2017/0360493 A1), which expressly builds on Dankowicz's '911 bending machine and feeds it positional data from a preoperative plan.

7. Anticipated applicant arguments and rebuttals

1. "The prior art doesn't teach co-radial arcs above and below a postoperative apex."
   Rebuttal: This is the claim's strongest point. A challenger should meet it with (a) the express teaching in US 2009/0254326 of generating discrete bend curves through/adjusted-to desired points, with a user-selectable "smoothest" fit, and of modifying target points to obtain a predetermined correction and evaluating the predicted shape; and (b) the general CAD principle that a smooth curve through fixed endpoints with a specified apex is commonly constructed as two tangent circular arcs (a bi-arc). Absent an express apex-split teaching, expect a genuine dispute here; a secondary reference or an expert declaration on ordinary geometric practice would be needed for a strong rejection.

2. "The specification disparages WO 2004/017836, WO 2009/254326 and US 2008/079546, so the art teaches away."
   Rebuttal: Mere assertion that specific references "do not achieve this goal satisfactorily" is not a teaching away. A teaching away requires a reference that criticizes, discredits, or otherwise discourages the combination or renders the solution inoperable. At most, the disparagement (i) concedes these references are directed to the same problem — which supports analogous art and motivation to improve upon them — and (ii) fails to identify any technical reason the combination would not work. Note also the citation-record discrepancy regarding "US 2008/079546" flagged in § 2.

3. "The numeric thresholds (SVA<5 cm; SVA/SFD ∈ [−1.9,+0.1]; T1-SPI ∈ [−9°,0°]; LL = PI ± 10°) are non-obvious."
   Rebuttal: These are recognized clinical alignment targets from the sagittal-balance literature contemporaneous with the 2013 priority date. Optimizing a rod curve to hit a published alignment target is the paradigm of a predictable, result-effective variation. Observe that the claim is drafted in the alternative ("defining one or more of"), which further broadens the recited target set and weakens any narrow-range argument.

4. "The 'translation' step is inventive."
   Rebuttal: US 2009/0254326 / US 8,549,888 derive the rod shape from the screw-head positions rather than the vertebral axis, which performs the same function (placing the curve where the rod will actually sit). Reciting the offset as a "mean distance from vertebra centers to anchor points" is a routine modeling convention.

8. Secondary considerations (Graham factor 4)

None are established on this record. For completeness:

• Commercial success — Medicrea's UNiD™ patient-specific rod franchise is commercially real, but there is no nexus evidence tying any success to the specific claimed features rather than to the general clinical value of pre-bent patient-specific rods (which the prior art already taught — Dankowicz claims 24–25; US 2009/0254326).
• Industry praise / licensing / copying — not documented here.
• Unexpected results — the specification asserts only the expected benefit (reduced OR time, fewer re-bends, ideal curvature) that the prior art already identified as the goal. That undercuts, rather than supports, non-obviousness.

9. Overall conclusion and confidence

Recommended next steps to firm this up (none of which I could complete within this analysis): (1) retrieve the full text of WO 2004/017836 A2, WO 2009/254326 A1 and the correct "US 2008/079546" document as actually cited on the face of the patent/office action, to resolve the citation mismatch; (2) retrieve the prosecution history of US 14/914,474 (and EP 3049011 B1) to see which references the examiner did and did not apply, and whether the apex-split limitation was the basis of allowance; (3) source a secondary reference (CAD/curve-fitting text or a spine-planning patent) expressly teaching two tangent circular arcs meeting at an apex, to close the one evidentiary gap identified above; and (4) obtain the full text of US 8,549,888 B2 and US 7,957,831 B2 claims to confirm which sub-features (curve tolerance, bend-point reduction, planned-correction modification) are expressly disclosed.