US 10569466

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent, including any CAFC 2026 docket activity.

Let me dig deeper into the PTAB proceeding and any Federal Circuit activity specific to this patent.

Let me look for the claim text and verify whether the '466 patent itself has any CAFC 2026 appeal.

US Patent 10,569,466 — Analyst Summary

Verification note: The identifiers below are taken literally from the patent text supplied (which is the authoritative source) and from search results. I did not find a Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket in 2026 that names 10,569,466 as the appealed patent. The nearest CAFC 2026 activity I found involves a sibling patent (9,421,713), not the '466 patent — details below.

Bibliographic Data

Abstract (verbatim theme): "A supply of build material such as a spool or cartridge is instrumented with a data tag that includes information about the build material. A three-dimensional printer can read the information from the tag and determine how to use the build material during fabrication of a three-dimensional object."

Technical overview

The patent is a "fused-deposition-modeling" style 3D-printing platform disclosure built around instrumented consumables. A supply of build material (spool of filament, cartridge of pellets, or liquid cartridge) carries a data tag — RFID, optically-readable (bar code / QR), magnetically-readable (swipe strip), or a mechanical feature encoding (protrusions/recesses read by contact switches). A tag sensor on the printer automatically reads the tag when the supply is coupled. The controller (local or remote over a network) uses the tag data — e.g., material ID, type, diameter, extruder temperature requirement, melting temperature, color, lot number, cost, density, tensile strength, viscosity, recycling code, expiration date — to determine operational parameters (extruder temperature, feed rate, build platform/volume temperature, infill, rafting, support, cooling), and also to perform authentication / digital-rights management (only authorized materials print) and optional in-object recycling labeling.

Independent claims — plain-language overview

The full claim set is not reproduced in the supplied patent text, and I could not retrieve the literal claim language from the publicly available claim charts. Based on the PTAB petition/POR excerpts (which chart "claims 1, 5, 10, 17, 19, 20"), the patent appears to have at least the following claim coverage. Treat the claim reconstructions as probable, not verbatim.

Claim 1 (independent — networked / "client" method): A method covering the core workflow of: reading tag data from a build-material container; providing tag-derived build-material property data to a client over a network; receiving, from the client, operational parameters; and fabricating the object using those client-selected parameters. (The patent-owner expert summarized claim 1 as capturing "reading tag data … providing tag-derived build-material property data to a client over a network, receiving client-selected operational parameters … and fabricating.")

Claim 19 (method, independent-looking): A method comprising (a) providing a 3D printer that includes a controller and a tag sensor; (b) coupling a container of build material that includes a tag storing at least one property of the build material; (c) reading data from the tag with the tag sensor; (d) transmitting the data to the controller; (e) determining an operational parameter for configuring the printer for fabrication based on the property, where the operational parameter includes at least one of a build platform temperature, build volume temperature, infill requirement, rafting requirement, support structure requirement, and cooling requirement; and (f) controlling operation of the printer according to the operational parameter and fabricating an object.

Claim 20: "The method of claim 1, wherein the client includes a computing device." (Its dependency on claim 1 — rather than on claim 19 — is noteworthy and suggests the claim set mixes networked and non-networked independent coverage.)

Uncertainty flags:

• I could not confirm the total claim count or the exact wording of claim 1 from an authoritative full-text source; the supplied Google Patents text is truncated before the claims.
• Whether claim 19 is truly independent or depends on claim 1 is unclear from the charts; the label "19[a]–19[f]" (full method preamble) leans toward independent, but claim 20's citation of claim 1 creates ambiguity.

Litigation / PTAB posture (searched)

• PTAB IPR2025-00438 — Shenzhen Tuozhu Technology Co., Ltd. v. Stratasys, Inc., Patent 10,569,466 (application 16/153,224; Tech Center 1700). Petitioner counsel: Fish & Richardson; Patent Owner counsel: McDermott Will & Emery. Status: Trial Instituted; institution decision dated Oct. 6, 2025. A request for Director Review of the institution decision was denied (Order signed by Director/Under Secretary John A. Squires). Cited prior art includes Loughran (US 2006/0091199), Dubois (US 2008/0192074), Napadensky (US 2010/0191360), Kaur (RFID), Devos, Menchik, Jazayeri, Dahlin, Stonesmith, Gregory, Scott, Phillips, Heugel.
• District court litigation — Stratasys asserted the '466 patent (among ~10 patents, including US 9,421,713; 7,555,357; 8,562,324; 8,747,097; 9,168,698; 9,592,660; 10,556,381; 11,167,464; 11,886,774) against BambuLab / Shenzhen Tuozhu entities. Cases: TX W.D. 1:24-cv-01511 (BambuLab declaratory-judgment action) and consolidated TX E.D. 2:24-cv-00645 / 2:25-cv-00465-JRG (Judge Gilstrap). A September 17, 2026 jury verdict found four asserted patents infringed with ~$27.6 million damages (willfulness; no permanent injunction entered; post-trial motions and appeal anticipated). I could not confirm that the '466 patent was among the four patents tried to verdict — reporting suggests the tried batch centered on the waste/purge-tower '713 patent, the variable-width-fill '357 patent, a force-sensor and a heated-bed patent.
• CAFC 2026 dockets: I found no CAFC appeal in 2026 specific to 10,569,466. The 2026 Federal Circuit activity in this family concerns the '713 patent (PTAB appeal taken by Shenzhen Tuozhu after the PTAB maintained '713 validity).

Uncertainty flags: PTAB filing dates appear inconsistent across secondary sources (Feb. 6, 2025 vs. an Oct. 6, 2025 institution date), and I did not independently confirm the current docket status in USPTO PatentCenter or the CAFC docket in 2026. The Google Patents "Petitioner: Unified Patents" label is a data-attribution artifact; the actual IPR2025-00438 petitioner is Shenzhen Tuozhu Technology, not Unified Patents.

If you need verbatim claim language and the exact CAFC docket check, I recommend pulling the issued patent's claims from USPTO PatentCenter/PatFT and querying the CAFC CM/ECF docket directly for "10,569,466" — I cannot assert those facts with high confidence from the sources retrieved.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 10569466 using available sources.

Let me dig deeper into the district court cases and the parties involved.

Let me gather final details on the IPR outcome and the verdict specifics.

Litigation involving US Patent No. 10,569,466

US 10,569,466 ("Tagged build material for three-dimensional printing") is currently being asserted in the Stratasys v. Bambu Lab patent campaign and is also the subject of a pending IPR petition at the PTAB. Here is what the sources show:

1. Stratasys, Inc. v. Shenzhen Tuozhu Technology Co., Ltd., et al. (District Court)

Key facts: Stratasys filed two related complaints on Aug. 8, 2024. In the lead case (2:24-cv-00644), Stratasys asserted U.S. Patents 9,421,713; 9,592,660; 7,555,357; 9,168,698; and 10,556,381. In the member case (2:24-cv-00645), Stratasys asserted U.S. Patents 10,569,466; 11,167,464; 8,747,097; 11,886,774; and 8,562,324. The two cases were consolidated for all pretrial issues on Oct. 22, 2024.

The '466 Patent was squarely at issue in pretrial motions — including Defendants' "Motion for Summary Judgment of Invalidity of U.S. Patent Nos. 10,569,466 and 11,167,464 Under 35 U.S.C. § 101" (Dkt. 175).

Outcome/status: Following a week-long trial, a Marshall Division jury returned a verdict in September 2026 finding Bambu Lab infringed four asserted U.S. patents, rejecting invalidity challenges, and finding willful infringement. The verdict is reported at $27.6 million (McDermott Will & Schulte secured the verdict for Stratasys). ⚠️ Caveat: The public press releases describe the verdict as covering "four U.S. patents" and specifically identify US 9,421,713 (the purge-tower patent) as one of them, but the available sources do not expressly confirm that the '466 Patent was among the four patents on which the jury returned its verdict. That should be verified against the verdict form / final judgment.

2. BambuLab USA, Inc., et al. v. Stratasys, Inc. (Declaratory Judgment Action)

Key facts: Bambu sought declaratory judgment of non-infringement of the same ten asserted patents, expressly including the '466 Patent. Stratasys moved to transfer (Feb. 18, 2025), and the Western District granted transfer on May 2, 2025. The case became a member case in E.D. Tex. and was consolidated into the lead case; the parties' later motions to amend the docket control order were denied as moot in light of consolidation (Feb. 24, 2026).

3. PTAB Post-Grant Proceeding — IPR2025-00438

Petitioner's counsel is identified as Michael Hawkins et al.; Patent Owner's counsel as Brian Oaks et al. (per the IP-verse/GreyB docket). No final written decision was reflected at the time of these searches.

Related IPRs in the same campaign (context, not the '466 patent)

The Bambu entity also filed IPRs against other Stratasys patents in the same case, including IPR2025-00311 (U.S. 8,562,324), IPR2025-00532 (U.S. 10,556,381), IPR2025-00257 (U.S. 11,886,774), and IPR2025-00321 (U.S. 9,421,713). These are separate proceedings and should not be confused with the '466 IPR.

Summary

Litigation is known for US 10,569,466. It arises entirely from the Stratasys v. Bambu Lab dispute:

1. E.D. Tex. 2:24-cv-00645-JRG — Stratasys v. Bambu entities (infringement; '466 asserted; consolidated with 2:24-cv-00644-JRG; jury verdict Sept. 2026, $27.6M on four patents — whether '466 was among those four is unconfirmed in the available sources).
2. W.D. Tex. 1:24-cv-01511-ADA → E.D. Tex. 2:25-cv-00465-JRG — Bambu entities v. Stratasys (declaratory judgment of non-infringement; '466 included; transferred and consolidated).
3. PTAB IPR2025-00438 — Shenzhen Tuozhu v. Stratasys (challenging '466; instituted Oct. 6, 2025; pending).

Note that the Google Patents page for the patent also flags a Texas Western case (1:24-cv-01511) and Texas Eastern cases (2:24-cv-00645 and 2:25-cv-00465), consistent with the above. If you need exact verdict-form confirmation of whether '466 was one of the four patents in the September 2026 verdict, I'd recommend pulling the final judgment and verdict form from the E.D. Tex. docket, as the public releases reviewed here did not state that at claim-level detail.

I'll research this patent's PTAB history, starting with the proceeding flagged in the patent record.

Now let me dig into the specific proceeding details and check for any other AIA proceedings on this patent.

Let me verify the institution decision details and check for any other proceedings or recent developments.

PTAB Proceedings on US 10,569,466 ("Tagged Build Material for Three-Dimensional Printing")

Sourcing note up front: The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block states the USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest. That is a stale/incorrect default here. Web research surfaced one live proceeding — IPR2025-00438 — which is also flagged in the patent record's own litigation block ("PTAB case IPR2025-00438 filed (Pending - Instituted)"). Treat the ODP "none" as a data-lag artifact, not as an absence of PTAB activity.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 10,569,466: 1. Breakdown by status: 1 active/instituted (trial pending, no Final Written Decision); 0 claims invalidated; 0 claims sustained; 0 settled; 0 institution denied. Bottom line for a defendant: nothing on this patent has been canceled. The single IPR was instituted on 2025-10-06 and the Final Written Decision is due roughly one year later (projected 2026-10-07) — i.e., it has not issued yet as of 2026-09-29. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel on the books, no FWD to cite, and no Federal Circuit disposition. A defendant facing assertion of the '466 patent today cannot rely on any IPR win; the patent remains presumptively valid and is being actively enforced (a parallel E.D. Tex. jury reportedly returned a multi-million-dollar infringement verdict against the accused infringer in late September 2026).

⚠️ Caveat on completeness: I could not confirm at claim-level granularity which grounds the Board actually instituted on, nor the APJ panel names, from the sources I could reach. Where I state something I could not verify, I say so.

IPR2025-00438 — Shenzhen Tuozhu Technology Co., Ltd. v. Stratasys, Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319)
• Filed: 2025-02-06 (filing date per ODP-derived case data; petition dates in the record are Feb 6, 2025). Case page
• Status: "Trial Instituted" (ODP-derived status) / "Pending - Instituted" (Google Patents litigation block). Plain English: the Board granted institution on 2025-10-06; the case is in trial, no FWD yet.
• Petitioner / RPI: Shenzhen Tuozhu Technology Co., Ltd. ("et al." in the case caption) — the parent of Bambu Lab, the Chinese consumer 3D-printer maker accused in the parallel litigation. Petitioner counsel: Fish & Richardson P.C. (Michael T. Hawkins, Joshua A. Griswold, Kim H. Leung, et al.).
• Patent Owner: Stratasys, Inc. (assignee of record since the 2022-07-19 assignment from MakerBot Industries LLC). PO counsel: McDermott Will & Emery LLP (Brian W. Oaks, Aashish G. Kapadia, Kevin J. Meek, Syed K. Fareed).
• Judge panel: Not confirmed. The Board's institution decision (2025-10-06) would name the panel, but I could not retrieve it in this research pass. The two Director-level papers do not list APJs.
• Petition grounds: The petition challenged claims 1–5, 7–13, and 16–20 of the '466 patent on 15 grounds (1A–1F, 2, 3A–3H), all under 35 U.S.C. § 103 (with anticipation/§ 102 theories folded into the Menchik ground), per Stratasys's Preliminary Response. Key references:
  • Ground 1A: Claim 1 obvious over U.S. Pub. 2006/0091199 (Loughran) + U.S. Pub. 2008/0192074 (Dubois).
  • Ground 1B: Claims 1 et al. over Loughran + Dubois + U.S. Pub. 2011/0299110 (Jazayeri).
  • Ground 2: Claim 19 obvious over U.S. Pub. 2007/0026102 (Devos).
  • Grounds 3A/3B: Claims 1 and 19 over U.S. Pub. 2006/0127153 (Menchik), alone (3A — anticipation/§ 102 and § 103) and in view of Jazayeri (3B).
  • Remaining grounds (1C–1F, 3C–3H) target the dependent claims in the same combinations.
  • No § 112 grounds. (PGR is unavailable: the '466 patent's earliest priority is 2012-10-29, pre-dating the AIA PGR effective date. CBM is unavailable — it applies to financial-services patents and the CBM program sunset in 2020.)
  • PO Preliminary Response | PO Request for Discretionary Denial brief
• Institution decision: Instituted 2025-10-06. Two Director-level events bracket it:
  1. Acting Director Coke Morgan Stewart issued a Decision Referring the Petitions to the Board, denying Stratasys's Fintiv/§ 325(d) discretionary-denial request in the captioned Stratasys cases. Reasoning (quoted): "it is unlikely that a final written decision in these proceedings will issue before the district court trial occurs. These facts generally favor discretionary denial" — but "most of the challenged patents have not been in force for a significant period of time (issued in 2020, 2020, 2021, and 2024). Accordingly, Patent Owner has not developed strong settled expectations that favor discretionary denial," and the parallel case "involves nine different patents spanning six families that involve a diverse range of subject matter," which weighs against denial. Referral decision
  2. A request for Director Review of the decisions granting institution was filed in IPR2025-00438 (and companions), and Director John A. Squires denied the requests: "Having reviewed the requests and responses, it is ORDERED that the requests for Director Review are denied." Director Review denial order
  • The referral decision's guidance that "neither party shall file a request for rehearing or Director Review of this decision until the Board issues a decision on institution" confirms the Board then issued the substantive institution decisions.
• Final Written Decision: None issued as of 2026-09-29. The Acting Director's decision states the "projected final written decision due date in the Board proceeding is October 7, 2026." I cannot state which claims, if any, will be canceled — no FWD exists to quote.
• Settlement / termination: None reported. The proceeding was contested through institution and through a Director Review request; the parallel litigation proceeded to trial, which is inconsistent with a global settlement.
• Appeal: None. No FWD → nothing appealable to the Federal Circuit. (Institution decisions are not appealable; Medtronic v. Bosch line.)
• Defensive value: Currently zero as an invalidity shield. There is no FWD, no cancellation, and no estoppel. The only usable asset is the record: the petition and PO response frame the obviousness fight over Loughran + Dubois (+ Jazayeri), Devos, and Menchik, plus Stratasys's § 325(d) argument that the Office "already considered substantially the same art and arguments" during prosecution — useful intelligence for a new petitioner, but not a defense in itself, and a second petitioner would face § 325(d)/§ 314(a) discretion headwinds. Conversely, for Stratasys, the survived institution + denied Director Review is a reinforcement signal it will cite to the district court.

Strategic summary

Claim-by-claim posture (as of 2026-09-29):

• Canceled: None. No FWD has issued; no statutory disclaimer reported.
• Instituted-for-trial (contested, outcome unknown): claims 1–5, 7–13, and 16–20, per the petition and PO Preliminary Response. This includes independent claim 1 and independent claim 19 — both of which Stratasys is asserting against Bambu (the -645 action asserts claims 1, 5, 10, 17, and 19).
• Untested by the IPR: claims 6, 14, and 15 fall outside the challenged set (the challenged list is 1–5, 7–13, 16–20). These are the claims a defendant can still attack with a fresh IPR without a § 315(e)(1) bar and with lesser § 325(d) exposure — though they are all dependent claims, so their value to a defendant is limited.
• Surviving/unaffected by PTAB: everything, for now — with the important caveat that Stratasys has not disclaimed or amended any claim in this IPR.

Estoppel landscape:

• No § 315(e)(1) or § 315(e)(2) estoppel has attached — estoppel runs only from a Final Written Decision, and none exists. There is therefore no IPR-induced bar on any party today.
• Once the FWD issues (projected 2026-10-07), Shenzhen Tuozhu and its privies will be estopped under § 315(e)(2) from raising in the district court any ground they raised or reasonably could have raised in IPR2025-00438 (Loughran, Dubois, Jazayeri, Devos, Menchik combinations). Other defendants / non-privies are unaffected.
• Note the petitioner filed a broad Sotera-plus stipulation in the district court (cited in the DD opposition: "Petitioner has also filed a broad stipulation"), which was a decisive factor against Fintiv denial. That stipulation is petitioner-specific — it does not help or bind a different defendant.

Pattern signals:

• Same petitioner, portfolio-wide campaign. Shenzhen Tuozhu (Bambu Lab) filed a coordinated wave against Stratasys covering at least nine patents: IPR2025-00257, -00311, -00321, -00354, -00438, -00531, -00532, -00585, and -00611 (patents include the '660, '698, '381, '466, '464, and '774). Only -00438 targets the '466 patent. This is a commercial rival's mutual-assurance-of-destruction strategy, not a defensive-aggregator campaign.
• Defensive aggregator? No. Though Google Patents pulls its docket tracker from "Unified Patents PTAB Data," Unified Patents is not the petitioner — the petitioner of record is Shenzhen Tuozhu. No CBM or aggregator-funded proceeding on this patent.
• Patent owner posture: Stratasys is not a passive defendant — it litigated the discretionary-denial question up to the Director, prevailed on institution, and is pressing the patent in E.D. Tex. It is not (yet) a PTAB appellant, because there is nothing to appeal.
• Parallel-litigation pressure: A jury in the consolidated E.D. Tex. action (2:24-cv-00644 / 2:25-cv-00465) reportedly found infringement of four Stratasys patents with willful infringement and roughly $27.6M in damages in late September 2026 (Chinese-language press, 2026-09-28). I could not confirm which four patents, and I explicitly cannot confirm that the '466 patent was one of them — the pre-trial record shows Bambu moved for § 101 summary judgment on the '466 and '464 patents (Dkt. 175), which may have removed the '466 from the trial set. Flagging this as an open question rather than asserting it.

Recommended next steps

1. Do not cite IPR2025-00438 as invalidating anything. There is no FWD. If a demand letter or complaint asserts claims 1, 5, 10, 17, or 19, there is currently no PTAB cancellation to hang a defense on. Pull the institution decision (Paper ~10, dated 2025-10-06) from PTAB E2E to confirm the exact instituted claim/ground scope — that determines what a third party can still do.
2. Calendar the FWD deadline immediately: 2026-10-07 (projected, per the Acting Director's decision). PTAB's statutory deadline is one year from institution (§ 316(a)(11)), extendable up to six months for good cause (§ 316(a)(11)). If the FWD cancels claims 1 and/or 19, the defensive picture inverts on that date — and Shenzhen Tuozhu's § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches simultaneously. Watch for a possible settlement/termination before FWD, which is common when parallel litigation goes to verdict.
3. If you are a different defendant (not a Tuozhu privy): the claims-invalidated ones aren't available yet, but the untested dependent claims 6, 14, and 15 are open. More importantly, the § 325(d) fight the Board already adjudicated (Stratasys argued the Office "already considered substantially the same art and arguments") is a live risk for any new petition on art that was before the examiner — plan to clear § 325(d) Advanced Bionics factor (d)/(e) heads-on, and expect a Fintiv/§ 314(a) fight given the E.D. Tex. verdict.
4. Monitor the Federal Circuit. If the FWD issues 2026-10-07 as projected, a notice of appeal is due within 63 days (Fed. R. App. P. 4(a)(1)(B) applies to the 30-day rule; for PTAB appeals it's 63 days per 37 C.F.R. § 90.3). Docket it now rather than waiting for the mandate to appear.
5. Track the '466 patent family together. Stratasys asserted the '466 alongside its continuation US 11,167,464 (also in IPR — IPR2025-00585/00611 family), and those two patents share the same specification and claim-construction disputes ("providing a three-dimensional printer that includes a tag sensor"; "receiving one or more operational parameters from the client"). An outcome for one is a strong signal for the other; check the '464 FWDs for claim-construction rulings you can import.

Key links

• Patent: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10569466/en
• IPR2025-00438 case data: https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2025-00438
• Director referral / discretionary-denial denial (Acting Dir. Stewart): https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1557241](/patent/1557241)/download-documents?artifactId=kuA2gbCcQIusWOv24YErJO2AFC12W-n0fDl4HmVH2MkGBaPa4V3_6bE
• Director Review denial (Dir. Squires): https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1557345](/patent/1557345)/download-documents?artifactId=x4F7uas9CsWJC4V36aWRepXbqzwq_iZe8CJShkJ9lZf1nG6gv5KCN7E
• PTAB Decisions portal: https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-api/swagger-ui/index.html (PTAB E2E: https://ptacts.uspto.gov)
• Parallel litigation docket: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/69028070/stratasys-inc-v-shenzhen-tuozhu-technology-co-ltd/

Confidence flags: Filing date (2025-02-06), institution date (2025-10-06), challenged-claim set (1–5, 7–13, 16–20), grounds/references, counsel, and the Director rulings are grounded in documents I retrieved and are high confidence. The APJ panel composition, the claim-level scope actually instituted, and whether the '466 patent was among the four patents in the September 2026 jury verdict are not confirmed — do not treat them as established.

I'll research the assignment record for US 10,569,466 using the USPTO Assignment Center and cross-reference sources.

Let me look at the Google Patents legal events and USPTO assignment records in detail.

Let me look at the USPTO assignment records and the corporate history in detail.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US Patent No. 10,569,466

Data-integrity note (read first): I was able to confirm that assignments are recorded against this patent (via Google Patents legal events) but was not able to retrieve the reel/frame numbers or the correspondent of record for any entry from the sources reachable in this session. I am therefore reporting the recorded events by date and party, and flagging the missing reel/frame and correspondent fields explicitly rather than inventing them. The reel/frame numbers and correspondents should be pulled directly from the USPTO Assignment Center (search patent 10,569,466) before this is relied on. This is the single most important open field for the NPE analysis below.

Inventors

All five are common-inventor on the MakerBot "tagged build material" family. Employer is determinable from the specification's original assignee/RECORD and from the recorded inventor→MakerBot assignments (see timeline). Specific job titles are not confirmed by the sources I could access — I will not assert them.

Unusual-pattern check (departure within 12 months): Unclear / not determinable. MakerBot underwent post-acquisition restructuring under Stratasys, and public bios suggest several of these engineers moved on, but I could not verify departure dates for each inventor with confidence. No 12-month departure finding is made. A within-12-month migration here would still be weak evidence of a fire-sale, because the assignee (MakerBot) was a wholly-owned Stratasys subsidiary — i.e., the patents were already inside the Stratasys perimeter and could not "leak" to a third party.

Original assignee

• Entity: MakerBot Industries, LLC, Brooklyn, New York.
• Line of business: Desktop/consumer fused-deposition 3D printers and (later) proprietary filament.
• Product embodiment: MakerBot shipped 3D printers and build-material spools/cartridges throughout the relevant period, so the assignee is an operating company in the same technical field as the claims (which recite reading tag data off a build-material supply and deriving operational parameters). I did not verify a specific MakerBot product that reads a tagged spool, so I do not assert direct embodiment of the claims.
• Current status: MakerBot was acquired by Stratasys in 2013 and operated as a Stratasys subsidiary/brand. The patent title itself did not transfer until the 2022-07-19 recorded assignment (below). MakerBot is not, and has never been, a licensing-only entity.

Assignment timeline

Chronological, from Google Patents legal events (reel/frame not retrieved — see note):

• Executed on/around 2013-10-28 (parent application 14/064,974; priority 2012-10-29) — rights originally flowed to MakerBot Industries, LLC.

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (original prosecution assignment)
  • Assignor: Ariel Douglas; Robert J. Steiner; Aric Lynn Jennings; William B. Buel; Anthony D. Moschella
  • Assignee: MakerBot Industries, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Original employment assignment — normal operating-company capture of employee inventions.

• 2018-10-09 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN (not retrieved)

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest ("see document for details")
  • Assignor: Anthony D. Moschella; William B. Buel; Robert J. Steiner; Aric Lynn Jennings
  • Assignee: MakerBot Industries, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Internal formality for the new continuation (16/153,224, filed 2018-10-05) — inventors re-confirming rights to the assignee on the child case. Not a third-party transfer.

• 2018-10-09 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN (not retrieved)

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Ariel Douglas
  • Assignee: MakerBot Industries, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Same-day companion recording to the entry above (single-inventor document). The fact that Douglas was recorded separately may indicate a separate instrument or an execution-date difference — worth checking on the Assignment Center, but it is not, on its face, an NPE tell.

• 2022-07-19 (recorded) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN (not retrieved)

  • Conveyance: Assignment (reassignment)
  • Assignor: MakerBot Industries, LLC
  • Assignee: Stratasys, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Internal corporate IP consolidation — moving the asset from the acquired subsidiary up to the publicly traded parent ~9 years after the 2013 acquisition. This is the transfer that put the patent in the entity that later sued.

No further assignments are recorded. The current assignee of record is Stratasys, Inc. (Google Patents lists current assignee as Stratasys Inc; the 2022-07-19 entry is the last recorded event).

⚠️ Contradiction to flag: the earlier Litigation summary in this analysis says the '466 was filed by MakerBot and later moved to Stratasys — consistent with the above. Nothing in the ownership chain contradicts the litigation summary. Note also there are two 2018 recordings to the same assignee on the same date — a common artifact of continuation filings (one per inventor group), not a cascade.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10569466
    2012 : Priority filing Oct 29
    2013 : Parent application filed
         : Stratasys acquires MakerBot
    2016 : Parent issues as 9233504
    2018 : Continuation filed Oct 5
         : Inventors assign to MakerBot
    2020 : Patent 10569466 issues
    2022 : MakerBot transfers patent to Stratasys
    2024 : Stratasys sues Bambu Lab

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The only post-issuance transfer (2022-07-19) moves the patent from an operating subsidiary (MakerBot Industries, LLC) to the publicly traded parent (Stratasys, Inc., NASDAQ: SSYS). No "IP/Holdings/Ventures" licensing vehicle appears anywhere in the chain. No registered-agent-service address, no single-purpose LLC.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. No assignee matches any public NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Mosaid, Pendrell, Round Rock, Spangenberg entities, etc.). Every link is MakerBot or Stratasys — operating companies.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (not determinable). The correspondent of record was not retrieved for the 2018×2 or 2022 recordings. This is the one signal that could not be tested. Normal expectation for this chain is that the same Stratasys/MakerBot in-house or outside prosecution firm handled both the 2018 and 2022 filings — but a recurring operating-company firm is not an NPE tell; the signal only fires when the recurrent name also appears on an NPE assertion list. Recommend pulling the correspondents for all three entries to close this out.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Two same-day 2018 recordings to the same assignee (continuation formalities) plus a single 2022 transfer do not constitute a chain of LLC-to-LLC hops in <24 months. No shared-principal / common-correspondent cascade.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT (outside window). The transfer to the asserting parent was 2022-07-19; the first suit naming the '466 was filed 2024-08-08 (E.D. Tex. 2:24-cv-00645) — roughly 25 months later, well outside the 6-month window. Note the proximity of business logic (IP consolidated to the litigating parent ~2 years before the campaign), but that is normal corporate housekeeping, not venue-engineering.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No bankruptcy or insolvency proceeding involving MakerBot or Stratasys over this asset. (Distinguish: the entity here did not fail; Stratasys's separate financial pressures are noted in the litigation summary but produced no assignment-driven fire-sale of this patent.)

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. This is the inverse of privateering: the operating parent itself (Stratasys) holds the patent and asserts it in its own name against competitors (Bambu Lab / Shenzhen Tuozhu; historically Tiertime/Afinia). There is no NPE asserting on Stratasys's behalf, no SEC-disclosed royalty-back arrangement, and no third-party assertion vehicle in the chain.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent is being actively asserted, not neutralized. (Unified Patents is adverse to the patent in the PTAB proceeding IPR2025-00438, which is the opposite relationship.)

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The chain is short and entirely within one corporate family: inventors → MakerBot Industries, LLC (recorded 2018-10-09 entries on the continuation), then MakerBot Industries, LLC → Stratasys, Inc. (recorded 2022-07-19). Both assignees are operating 3D-printing companies; Stratasys is the publicly traded parent (NASDAQ: SSYS) that sells printers and materials and is now suing actual market competitors (Bambu Lab, E.D. Tex. 2:24-cv-00645) in its own name. No shell entity, no known NPE, no cascade, no defensive-aggregator termination. The only unresolved items are the reel/frame numbers and correspondents of record, which I could not retrieve and which should be verified at the Assignment Center before this is treated as final; even if a single firm recurs across the 2018 and 2022 recordings, that would be expected of an operating-company prosecution file and would not change the verdict without an independent NPE-list match.

I'll research the prior art cited against US 10,569,466, including the patent's own citation record and the references relied on in the pending IPR.

Let me pull the actual petition's ground listing and the full prior-art reference set, plus the patent's own cited references.

Let me retrieve the remainder of the IPR exhibit list (the secondary references) and the patent's own cited prior art.

Prior Art Analysis — US 10,569,466 B2

Scope note / strict-ID compliance: I searched only for 10,569,466. One search result surfaced US 10,469,966 B2 (a different patent — the "References Cited" front-page list in that CourtListener PDF belongs to 10,469,966, not to 10,569,466). I did not treat it as the patent in question and excluded its citation list. Anything below that I could not confirm at reference level is flagged.

Also flagging a contradiction with the earlier generated section: The prior summary stated claim 20 depends from claim 1. The Patent Owner's Preliminary Response (POR) in IPR2025-00438 states the opposite — "claims 2-5, 7-13, 16-18 depend from claim 1 and claim 20 depends from claim 19." Per the authoritative PTAB filing, claim 20 depends from claim 19. That earlier statement should be corrected.

Sources actually used

1. Google Patents, US10569466B2 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US10569466B2/en (bibliographic + spec; claims truncated).
2. IPR2025-00438, Shenzhen Tuozhu Technology Co., Ltd. v. Stratasys, Inc. — Patent Owner Preliminary Response and Petitioner's expert declaration, USPTO PTAB (PTACTS), petition ID 1557241 — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1557241 (exhibit list and ground map).
3. Prosecution-history excerpts of the '466 patent as quoted in the POR (EX1002).

Limitation: I could not retrieve the '466 patent's own front-page "References Cited" list verbatim, nor the full IPR exhibit list beyond EX1011 (the secondary references named in my earlier summary — Stonesmith, Gregory, Scott, Phillips, Heugel — were not individually re-confirmed here). Treat the reference identities below as confirmed by the IPR record where cited to it; treat publication dates marked "(unverified)" as inferred from the publication number.

A. References relied on in the pending IPR (IPR2025-00438)

The petition raises 15 grounds (1A–1F, 2, 3A–3H) against claims 1–5, 7–13, 16–20. Crucially for your §102 question: only Ground 3A is a §102 anticipation ground. Every other ground is a §103 obviousness challenge.

Secondary references named earlier (Stonesmith, Gregory, Scott, Phillips, Heugel) appear on the petition side of the docket but I could not re-confirm their citation numbers/dates at this pass — treat them as unverified.

B. References cited during original prosecution

From the POR's summary of the '466 prosecution history (EX1002):

§102 takeaway from prosecution: neither Jung nor Wahlstrom was applied as an anticipation reference, and the applicant's winning argument was the absence of operational-parameter adjustment based on tag read — the same deficiency the POR now presses against the IPR petitioner.

C. Bottom line on §102

• Only one reference is asserted to anticipate any claim of US 10,569,466: U.S. 2006/0127153 (Menchik) as to independent claims 1 and 19 (Ground 3A of IPR2025-00438). (Note: the file also contains sibling-patent petitions where the '466 patent itself, EX-1005 "Douglas," is the prior art — e.g., IPR petition 1557430 against US 11,886,774 — but that is the '466 used against another patent, not prior art against the '466.)
• All other asserted art (Loughran, Dubois, Jazayeri, Devos, Napadensky, Kaur, Dahlin) is directed to §103 obviousness, not §102.
• Prosecution applied Jung + Wahlstrom as a §103 combination; no §102 rejection was sustained.

Confidence & verification caveats: Reference identities and the ground/claim mapping are grounded in the IPR2025-00438 papers and the '466 specification (Google Patents). The exact publication/issue dates above (except Kaur's Feb. 2011 journal date, stated in the exhibit itself) are inferred from publication numbers and are marked unverified; the '466 front-page "References Cited" list and IPR exhibits beyond EX1011 were not retrieved. To close these gaps I recommend pulling (a) the '466 patent's front page from USPTO PatentCenter/PatFT for the verbatim cited-references list, and (b) the full exhibit list from IPR2025-00438 in PTACTS.

I'll research the specific prior-art grounds from the PTAB proceeding and related references before building the §103 analysis.

I have the actual IPR grounds. Let me get the claims and the institution decision to ground the analysis precisely.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 10,569,466 (35 U.S.C. § 103)

Builds on: the bibliographic and litigation sections already generated. This section assumes those facts and does not restate them. One contradiction to flag up front: the previously generated summaries describe the IPR as having been "Trial Instituted" with a decision "dated Oct. 6, 2025," and that is confirmed by the IPverse docket. The grounds themselves were not previously itemized; I reconstruct them below from the Patent Owner Preliminary Response and the institution-decision excerpt.

0. Source and confidence notes

• The claim language of the '466 patent is not in the supplied Google Patents text (truncated before the claims). Where I quote claim text below, I am relying on quoted claim language appearing in the E.D. Tex. claim-construction brief and the parties' IPR papers. Treat quotations as high-confidence paraphrases, not certified verbatim text.
• The prior-art set is the one actually applied in IPR2025-00438, which is the operative "prior art section" for this patent. The Google Patents machine-extracted "Prior art keywords" (tag; build material; data; dimensional printer; dimensional) are consistent with that set.
• The petition asserted 15 grounds (1A–1F, 2, 3A–3H) against claims 1–5, 7–13, 16–20. I have high confidence in Grounds 1A, 1B, 2, 3A, 3B (they are named in the Preliminary Response and the institution decision). I have low confidence in the specific make-up of Grounds 1C–1F and 3C–3H and do not fabricate them.

1. Legal framework applied

Motivation-to-combine principles available on this record:

1. The references themselves supply the motivation. Loughran expressly frames the problem the '466 patent purports to solve (see §3).
2. The patent specification admits the problem. The '466 Background states: "There remains a need for methods and systems for the automatic detection and acquiring of three-dimensional printer build material characteristics." An applicant-admitted need is legitimate "general background knowledge" motivating the combination. See Qualcomm v. Apple, 134 F.4th 1355 (Fed. Cir. 2025).
3. Combination of familiar elements yielding predictable results — KSR, 550 U.S. at 416.

2. The claims in issue

Per the Preliminary Response, the challenged claims are 1–5, 7–13, 16–20. Two independent claims were identified: claim 1 and claim 19; claim 20 depends from claim 1 (and per the claim-construction brief, claim 20 adds only "wherein the client includes a computing device").

Claim 1 (independent — networked method), reconstructed elements:

• (a) providing a 3D printer that includes a tag sensor;
• (b) receiving a request from a client over a network to fabricate an object;
• (c) reading/obtaining data from a tag on a build-material container, the data including at least one property of the build material;
• (d) providing the data from the tag to the client over the network;
• (e) receiving one or more operational parameters from the client selected for use in controlling the printer when fabricating with that build material; and
• (f) fabricating the object.

Claim 19 (independent — local method), reconstructed elements:

• (a) providing a 3D printer that includes a controller and a tag sensor;
• (b) coupling a container of build material having a tag storing at least one property;
• (c) reading the tag with the tag sensor; (d) transmitting to the controller;
• (e) determining an operational parameter for configuring the printer based on the property, where the parameter is at least one of build platform temperature, build volume temperature, infill requirement, rafting requirement, support structure requirement, and cooling requirement; and
• (f) controlling the printer accordingly.

The claim-construction dispute matters to obviousness because Patent Owner sought constructions of "receiving … operational parameters from the client" / "determining an operational parameter" that would narrow the claims. If the Board adopted the plain meaning (as the Petitioner advocated, "ordinary and customary meaning"), the prior-art mapping below is straightforward; if Patent Owner's narrowing constructions prevail, the network-routing and parameter-derivation limitations become harder to meet.

3. Ground-by-ground §103 analysis

Ground 1A — Loughran (US 2006/0091199) + Dubois (US 2008/0192074) → claim 1

Loughran describes a solid freeform fabrication (SFF) system in which material information is held by both the SFF fabricator and the client system, and where the client system "receive[s] the information regarding the material." Loughran expressly identifies the problem: SFF systems and client devices are hard-coded or soft-coded with material information, making introduction of new materials "difficult," requiring users "to remember to perform updates," and — critically — "information regarding already known materials can change over time." Loughran [0001], [0003].

Dubois supplies the printer-specific implementation of consumable/material data (the Patent Owner itself characterized Dubois as teaching "printer-specific implementations"). In context, Dubois provides the machine-readable data-tag/consumable-parameter storage aspect that Loughran's abstract "material information" lacks.

Element mapping (claim 1): Loughran teaches (b) the client/network relationship and (e) the flow of material information to and from a client; Dubois teaches the er printer-side data carrier and (c) machine-readable material property data; the combination yields (a), (d) and (f) as conventional SFF printing.

Motivation to combine: Loughran's own stated problem — the burden of hard-coding material information and keeping it current — supplies the reason to adopt a machine-readable carrier of printer-specific material data as in Dubois. A POSITA would do so with a reasonable expectation of success, because both address material identification in the same fabrication workflow.

Weakness (per Patent Owner): The Preliminary Response argued Loughran–Dubois "does not teach or suggest receiving one or more operational parameters from the client selected for use in controlling operation of the three-dimensional printer." That is the gap Ground 1B and Ground 3 close.

Ground 1B — Loughran + Dubois + Jazayeri (US 2011/0299110) → claim 1

Jazayeri discloses a "cloud-aware printer" and a networked (printer-agnostic) printing environment that permits use of "software that is not printer specific."

Institution outcome: The Board instituted on Ground 1B, finding reasonable likelihood that claim 1 is unpatentable over Loughran + Dubois + Jazayeri. The Board reasoned:

"[T]he proposed combination of Loughran, Dubois, and Jazayeri is no more than a 'combination of familiar elements according to known methods . . . [which] does no more than yield predictable results.'" (quoting KSR, 550 U.S. at 416)

and that "implementing Loughran's system with a network server to receive a certain request is within the ordinary skill with a reasonable expectation of success." The Board rejected Patent Owner's "bodily incorporation" objection, citing Lear Siegler v. Aeroquip for the proposition that "all of the components of Jazayeri need not be bodily incorporated."

Motivation to combine: Both Loughran and Jazayeri are directed to networked printing environments; a POSITA seeking printer-agnostic, updatable material handling would look to Jazayeri's cloud/network architecture. KSR "known system ready for improvement to yield predictable results" applies.

Ground 2 — Devos (US 2007/0026102) → claim 19

Devos, "Systems and Methods of Solid Freeform Fabrication with Improved Powder Supply Bins," discloses a removable powder supply bin with a "memory mechanism 146," and states that the fabrication system may "use the data encoded in or on the memory mechanism 146 to determine certain operating parameters."

This maps directly onto claim 19's core: a replaceable build-material container carrying machine-readable data, and a controller determining operating parameters from that data.

Motivation: Devos itself supplies it — "a convenient supply powder packaging" whose removable bin allows unused powder to be "easily removed … for disposal or reuse … without the need for powder scooping or vacuuming" (Ex. 1008 ¶¶ 11, 31). Devos's explicit teaching of using the memory data "to determine certain operating parameters" is the strongest single-reference hook for claim 19 in the whole set.

Weakness (per Patent Owner): The Preliminary Response contended Devos does not teach every element of claim 19 — presumably the enumerated parameter categories (rafting/infill/support/cooling) and/or "configuring the three-dimensional printer." This is where the secondary references matter.

Ground 3A — Menchik (US 2006/0127153) (§102 and §103) → claims 1, 19

Menchik, "Three-dimensional object printing," filed Nov. 12, 2003, published June 15, 2006, describes 3D printing where "material for object printing is deposited in consecutive layers according to a pre-determined configuration … as defined by, for example, a Computer Aided Design (CAD) system." Petitioner asserted Menchik both as an anticipatory (§102) and obvious (§103) reference for claims 1 and 19.

Institution-related posture: The Board's excerpt indicates Petitioner argued Menchik teaches the "determine certain operating parameters" limitation. Patent Owner argued (i) Menchik does not teach receiving a request from a client over a network, (ii) does not teach providing tag data to the client over the network, and (iii) does not teach receiving client-selected parameters. Those are network-routing gaps, which Grounds 1A/1B fill with Loughran/Dubois/Jazayeri.

Motivation: Menchik's layered-deposition printing is the same field; combined with a networked material-data flow it yields predictable results.

Ground 3B — Menchik + Jazayeri → claims 1, 20

Same rationale as Ground 1B: Jazayeri contributes the cloud/network printing architecture; Menchik contributes the 3D-printing process and (arguably) the consumable/material-data handling. Claim 20 (client is a computing device) is met by Jazayeri's cloud-aware client devices.

Remaining grounds (1C–1F, 3C–3H) — dependent-claim support

I could not confirm the exact composition of these grounds from the retrieved record. What I can say with confidence is which exhibit references exist and the limitations they are positioned to support:

The dependent claims likely include (based on the specification): tag types (RFID/optical/magnetic/mechanical); authentication/DRM (conditional build only on authenticated material); recycling-code labeling; ordering information; specific operational parameters; and the client-is-a-computing-device limitation. Each is either a known alternative (RFID per Kaur) or a design choice/routine optimization, and would be obvious in view of the primary ground plus the secondary reference. Flag: dependent-claim-by-dependent-claim mapping is inferential.

4. Consolidated motivation-to-combine arguments

5. Secondary considerations

• No objective evidence of non-obviousness (commercial success, long-felt need, unexpected results, copying) surfaced as a Patent Owner argument in the retrieved '438 materials, and the Board in the sibling '713 IPR expressly noted Patent Owner did not address objective evidence.
• Any commercial-success argument would require a nexus to the tagged-material feature rather than to Stratasys's overall FDM platform; the record retrieved does not establish one.
• Willfulness/trial outcome in E.D. Tex. is not an objective indicium of non-obviousness and should not be conflated with it.

6. Bottom line

1. Claim 1 is most vulnerable under Ground 1B (Loughran + Dubois + Jazayeri) — the only ground the Board (on the retrieved excerpt) reasoned through to a likelihood finding, applying KSR directly. Grounds 3A/3B (Menchik ± Jazayeri) supply the §102/§103 fallback.
2. Claim 19 is most vulnerable under Ground 2 (Devos) because Devos expressly discloses using container-stored data "to determine certain operating parameters" — the core of the claim — with Menchik (Ground 3A) as an alternative.
3. The dependent claims appear to be obvious over the instituted grounds in view of Kaur (RFID), Napadensky, and the process-parameter materials (KISSlicer, Scott, Heugel), though the exact per-claim mapping could not be verified.
4. §103 conclusion: on the retrieved record, a POSITA would have had both motivation (applicant-admitted need + Loughran's own stated problem) and reasonable expectation of success (same-field, predictable combination) to arrive at the claimed subject matter. The principal defenses are (i) Patent Owner's narrowing claim constructions of the "operational parameter" / "providing to the client" terms and (ii) whether each secondary reference is analogous art (Patent Owner argued Jazayeri is not analogous art).

7. Explicit uncertainties / recommended verification

• Verbatim claim text of claims 1 and 19 was not available in the supplied source; pull from USPTO PatentCenter/PatFT for exact language.
• Grounds 1C–1F and 3C–3H are unverified; obtain the Petition and the Oct. 6, 2025 institution decision to confirm.
• POSITA definition and claim constructions should be confirmed from the E.D. Tex. Markman order.
• Prior-art dates for EX1013 (Gregory II, published Mar. 28, 2013) require a §102(e)/(a)(2) filing-date check against the Oct. 29, 2012 priority date.

Sources: Google Patents, https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10569466](/patent/US10569466)/en; IPverse PTAB docket, https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2025-00438; IPR2025-00438 Petition Exhibit List and Patent Owner Preliminary Response (USPTO PTAB public documents, ptacts.uspto.gov).