US 11067487

I'll search for authoritative information on US patent 11067487.

Let me search for the claims and any CAFC/litigation activity.

Let me look for the specific claim text and any court proceedings.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11067487 across patent litigation sources.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me try additional targeted searches for litigation.

Litigation Search Results: US Patent No. 11,067,487

Bottom Line

I found no litigation (district court, CAFC, ITC, or PTAB) involving U.S. Patent No. 11,067,487.

Per the strict rule, I am interpreting the number literally as 11,067,487 and not conflating it with any similar patent. I could not locate any complaint, counterclaim, declaratory judgment action, ITC Section 337 investigation, appeal, or AIA post-grant proceeding in which this specific patent was asserted or challenged.

What I Searched

I ran searches against patent-litigation-oriented sources (Unified Patents litigation portal, Google Patents/Justia patent pages, general docket and PACER-indexed material) using the following query angles:

• The literal patent number "11067487" combined with litigation/ infringement/lawsuit/docket terms
• The assignee/owner, Rarecyte, Inc., combined with infringement and lawsuit terms
• The patent title ("Apparatus, system, and method for collecting a target material") and the patent's family members

What the Searches Actually Returned

Every hit was a false positive — matches on unrelated numbers, unrelated parties, or non-litigation records:

Important Limitations on This Answer

1. Absence of search hits is not proof of absence of litigation. District court complaints are not always well-indexed by the sources reachable through general web search, and a case asserting this patent could exist in PACER or Docket Navigator without surfacing here.
2. I was unable to reach paid or login-gated litigation databases (e.g., Docket Navigator, Lex Machina, full PACER) that provide authoritative, exhaustive assertion histories.
3. The patent is currently active and held by Rarecyte, Inc. (per the granted patent's front page), with an adjusted expiration of 2033-12-05. Notably, Google Patents records show a third-party security interest (Western Alliance Bank, 2019) that was later released — a financing event, not litigation.

Recommended Verification Steps

Because I cannot confirm a negative with high confidence, I recommend confirming via:

• PACER (pacer.uscourts.gov) — party search for "Rarecyte" across all districts
• Unified Patents litigation portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist (patent-number search)
• USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — search by patent number for IPR/PGR/CBM proceedings
• CAFC docket — search for "11,067,487" in appeal records

If you can point me to a specific docket or party, I can dig further. As it stands, the honest answer is: no known litigation involving US 11,067,487 was found, and I cannot rule out that none exists.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" finding against public sources before writing this up.

Let me run a few more targeted checks before concluding.

One more round — checking litigation dockets and defensive aggregators.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 11,067,487: 0.

Breakdown: 0 active · 0 claims invalidated · 0 claims sustained · 0 settled · 0 institution denials · 0 final written decisions · 0 Federal Circuit appeals. The canonical structured block ("PTAB proceedings on file," sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal) returns an empty set, and my searches against public PTAB/web sources surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming either US 11,067,487 or RareCyte, Inc. as patent owner.

Bottom line for a defendant: neither side of the ledger is available to you. There is no invalidated claim you can point to as dead, and there is no FWD holding a claim patentable that the patent owner can wave at you. Every claim of this patent is UNTESTED at the PTAB. The defensive posture is "clean slate, no estoppel, no useful precedent — you would be the first petitioner," which cuts both ways: you face no adverse claim-construction or patentability findings, but you also get no free roadmap and no issued-death certificate for any claim.

⚠️ Disambiguation flag: A web hit references an ITC Section 337 investigation (Federal Register, 2025-05-23) involving "claims 1-4, 6-12, 15-20, and 22 of the '847 patent." That is not this patent. That investigation concerns Entellus Medical/Stryker balloon dilation devices and a different patent sharing the "847" short form. Do not cite it as an assertion or challenge of US 11,067,487. No proceeding in this analysis references it as being this patent.

Proceedings

None to report. There is no proceeding number, petitioner, panel, institution decision, FWD, settlement, or appeal to enumerate. I am deliberately not generating placeholder dockets — the instructions prohibit inventing proceeding numbers, and the canonical ODP data contains none.

Strategic summary

Claim status. Because no AIA trial has ever been instituted, no claims have been canceled and none have been adjudicated patentable. All claims stand as issued on 2021-07-20, with a legal-status window running to the adjusted expiration of 2033-12-05. For a defendant, the operative fact is that this patent's validity has never been stress-tested by the Board. Patent owner RareCyte has not been forced to defend a single claim.

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is not triggered — it attaches only to a petitioner whose IPR reached a final written decision, and here there is no petitioner at all. That means the full universe of § 102/§ 103 art is theoretically available to a future petitioner, subject only to the § 315(b) one-year bar from service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent. Practically, that bar is the single most important scheduling fact: if you are served, your IPR window opens immediately and closes 12 months later, and this is a mechanical-tube/fluid-separation art where prior art searches are tractable (the specification itself lists a dense field of known float-and-tube and density-separation references).

The real risk is not this patent alone — it's the family. US 11,067,487 is one node in a very large RareCyte continuation cluster claiming priority to 2012-11-30. The patent's own family/citation data lists siblings including US 9,039,999; US 9,212,697; US 9,492,819; US 9,539,570 (the parent of this application); US 9,541,481; US 9,945,839; US 9,956,555; and US 10,919,034 — all "Apparatus, system, and method for collecting a target material" or close variants. (I report these as observed in the patent's family data; I have not independently verified each one's claim scope or current status.) A validity attack aimed at only US 11,067,487 may simply redirect the patent owner to an unexpired sibling with the same priority date. Any freedom-to-operate or IPR strategy should scope the whole family, not just this number. This is the classic continuation-thicket posture — it is not a "troll has no case" fact pattern.

Pattern signals. No repeat-petitioner pattern (no petitioner at all). No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX) appears in any record I could surface for this patent or this owner. RareCyte appears as a practicing life-sciences company (AccuCyte® sample preparation, CyteSealer®, CyteFinder®), not a litigating NPE, which is consistent with the absence of assertion-driven IPRs.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant: You cannot point to an FWD or a canceled claim — there isn't one. Your IPR must be built from scratch against live claims. Two immediate actions:

1. Pull the claim set and the family tree from an authoritative source and confirm which claims of US 11,067,487 are actually being asserted against you. USPTO Patent Center: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/ — patent page: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11067487/en. The claim set as granted (2021-07-20) is your target; there have been no reexaminations or certificate-of-correction events in the data I reviewed, but verify in Patent Center before relying on that.
2. Calendar § 315(b) on day one of service. With no prior petitioner, you are not blocked by anyone else's estoppel, but you are blocked by your own clock.

If you are looking for a roadmap: none exists. The absence of PTAB activity on a Granted-2021 patent in a commercially active field (CTC/liquid biopsy) is mildly notable — well-asserted patents in this space do eventually attract IPRs — but the far more likely explanation is that RareCyte has simply not asserted this family aggressively, so no target has had a reason to file. That is an absence of dispute, not evidence of strength. Do not read it as "the patent has survived two IPRs and is hardened." It has survived nothing.

Confidence and limitations (stated plainly):

• High confidence that the ODP structured data — the canonical list this analysis is instructed to source from — contains no proceedings for US 11,067,487.
• Moderate confidence in the negative from my independent web checks: searches for "11067487 IPR," "Rarecyte IPR PTAB," and related queries returned no PTAB proceeding. I was unable to complete the last set of searches (PTAB Center / Docket Alarm / Unified Patents queries hit a tool-step limit), so I cannot rule out a very recently filed petition that the ODP has not yet indexed. If precision matters, verify directly at the PTAB Center case search: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ and cross-check CourtListener for any CAFC appeal naming RareCyte, Inc.
• Not verified: current litigation status of US 11,067,487 or its siblings; whether any sibling has itself been challenged. I found no evidence of assertion litigation, but I did not have docket-level access.

I'll research the assignment record for US 11067487 using multiple sources.

Let me search the USPTO legacy assignment records specifically for this application and for the Rarecyte/Western Alliance recordings.

Ownership Analysis — US Patent 11,067,487 ("Apparatus, system, and method for collecting a target material")

Source note / limitation up front: The authoritative Google Patents legal-events record for this patent (embedded in the provided full text) shows three post-filing recordings. I was unable to retrieve the reel/frame numbers for those three recordings — the Assignment Center records for application 15/401,054 did not surface through the available search indexing before I hit my retrieval limit. I did retrieve one fully documented family assignment (reel 033809/0876) that covers a parent application in the same chain. I report exactly what is verified and flag what is not. I have not fabricated any reel/frame.

Inventors

Named inventors on US 11,067,487 (per Google Patents bibliographic data):

Employer: All six are listed as assignors to Rarecyte, Inc. on the family assignment recorded at reel 033809/0876, which identifies them as "joint inventors" of the "Apparatus, System, and Method for Collecting a Target Material" family. Ronald Seubert is independently documented as Rarecyte's founder (multiple third-party profiles; e.g. Tracxn and Himalayas company profiles).

Unusual-pattern check — flagged:

• The family assignment at reel 033809/0876 (executed 2014-09-22) lists seven assignors, including David Stewart. Stewart is not a named inventor on US 11,067,487. This is consistent with a continuation narrowing/re-selecting the inventive entity rather than anything suspicious, but it is the kind of inventor-set drift worth noting.
• No evidence of inventors departing Rarecyte en masse within 12 months of filing. Rarecyte was actively raising capital through 2017–2024 and retains Seubert as a participating investor/founder. No fire-sale precursor pattern present.

Original assignee

Rarecyte, Inc. (Seattle, WA) — the entity named on the issued patent and the current assignee of record.

• Line of business: Life-sciences / precision-biology instruments and consumables — spatial biology (Orion) and liquid-biopsy / rare-cell detection (CyteFinder, AccuCyte sample prep, RarePlex kits, CytePicker). This patent family directly underlies the AccuCyte / sample-preparation side of that product line.
• Does it ship a product embodying the claims? Yes. Rarecyte commercializes integrated sample-preparation and rare-cell-analysis platforms; press releases and company profiles describe the AccuCyte Sample Preparation System among its product line. This is an operating company, not a licensing vehicle.
• Corporate history: Founded 2009; described as spun out of Applied Precision Inc. after GE Healthcare acquired API in 2011. HQ at filing: 228 – 9th Avenue North, Suite 100, Seattle, WA 98109. Current HQ: 2601 Fourth Avenue, Suite 500, Seattle, WA 98121.
• Current status: Operating, privately held, generating revenue. Funding history shows later-stage VC and debt rounds through at least 2024 (≈$20M round, 2024; ≈$130M raised to date). No bankruptcy, no acquisition, no dissolution evidenced.

Assignment timeline

Chronological. Reel/frame is given where verified; recordings confirmed only via the Google Patents legal-events table are marked [reel/frame not retrieved].

• 2014-09-22 (executed) / 2014-09-24 (recorded) — Reel 033809/0876

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (inventor → company)
  • Assignor: Daniel Campton, David Stewart, Jonathan Lundt, Joshua Nordberg, Lance U'Ren, Steve Quarre, Ronald Seubert
  • Assignee: Rarecyte, Inc., 228 – 9th Avenue North, Suite 100, Seattle, WA 98109
  • Correspondent: Richard L. Bell, Olympic Patent Works PLLC, P.O. Box 4277, Seattle, WA 98104 (email joanne@olympicpatentworks.com; ph 206-621-1933). Single documented appearance in this family; Olympic Patent Works is a Seattle prosecution firm doing ordinary operating-company patent work — not an NPE recording mill, so no repeat-correspondent tell.
  • Context: Original inventor-to-company assignment — but note this recording is for parent application 14/495,449 (issued as US 9,039,999), not for application 15/401,054. It is family-level evidence of the inventor/employer relationship, not a recording against the '487 patent itself.
  • (Docket 1414US; submitter of record Richard L. Bell.)

• 2018-03-29 (recorded) — [reel/frame not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Ronald Seubert, Jonathan Lundt, Daniel Campton, Joshua Nordberg, Steve Quarre, Lance U'Ren
  • Assignee: Rarecyte, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Ordinary inventor-to-company assignment for application 15/401,054 (the application that issued as the '487 patent). Recorded roughly 14 months after the 2017-01-08 filing. No third-party involvement.

• 2019-04-04 (recorded) — [reel/frame not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: Security interest / Security agreement
  • Assignor: Rarecyte, Inc.
  • Assignee: Western Alliance Bank, an Arizona corporation
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Securitization — Routine venture-debt collateral filing covering Rarecyte's IP, consistent with the debt financing reflected in Rarecyte's funding history (debt rounds in 2018 and 2020). Not an ownership transfer.

• 2019-12-30 (recorded) — [reel/frame not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: Release by secured party
  • Assignor: Western Alliance Bank, an Arizona corporation
  • Assignee: Rarecyte, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Lien release — the secured party released its security interest, clearing the encumbrance from the patent. Consistent with payoff/refinance of the debt facility (Rarecyte closed a $22M equity round on 2019-12-19, ~11 days earlier). Ownership returned to fully unencumbered Rarecyte ownership.

• 2021-07-20 — Patent issued (US 11,067,487 B2). No assignments recorded after issuance.

Net chain: Inventors → Rarecyte, Inc. (2014 family / 2018 for this app) → secured-lien to Western Alliance Bank (2019) → release back to Rarecyte (2019). No transfer to any third party, LLC, or aggregator at any point.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11067487
    2012 : Priority date Nov 30
    2014 : Family inventors assign to Rarecyte
    2017 : Application 15401054 filed
    2018 : Inventors assign to Rarecyte Inc
    2019 : Security interest to Western Alliance
         : Release of security interest
    2021 : Patent issued to Rarecyte

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data (with an affirmative finding that no NPE chain exists)

The assignment record affirmatively shows the patent remains with its original operating-company assignee, Rarecyte, Inc., with the only third-party involvement being a security interest to Western Alliance Bank and its later release by secured party (both 2019) — a lender/borrower relationship, not an ownership transfer. None of the eight NPE signals is present on the retrievable evidence; there are no shell LLCs, no known asserters, no cascading transfers, and no litigation-driven transfers (reel 033809/0876 documents the underlying inventor→Rarecyte relationship; the 2018, 2019-04-04, and 2019-12-30 recordings are confirmed via the Google Patents legal-events table). I mark the verdict Insufficient data rather than "Operating-company assertion" only because the definition of that category requires evidence that the owner is suing competitors — no such suit was found. The evidence is not consistent with any NPE/troll pattern.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 11067487 and application 15/401,054)
• Legacy EPAS index: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Family assignment of record (reel 033809/0876): https://legacy-assignments.uspto.gov/assignments/assignment-pat-033809-0876.pdf
• Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11067487/en

Open items to close the record (recommended next steps): retrieve the reel/frame, execution dates, and correspondents for the three 2018–2019 recordings (inventor→Rarecyte; Rarecyte→Western Alliance Bank; Western Alliance Bank→Rarecyte release) directly from Assignment Center. Those correspondents, once known, are the only remaining element that could change any signal call — though given the parties involved, a change is unlikely.

I'll research the prior art citations on the face of US 11,067,487. Let me pull the patent's reference lists from multiple sources.

Let me pull the full patent page and the PDF front page to extract the complete "References Cited" list.

Let me try to retrieve the complete front-page citation list from the patent PDF.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,067,487 (literal ID: "11067487")

1. Patent identification (confirmed from the fetched document)

Building on the earlier section: the prior litigation screen found no court/PTAB/ITC activity for this number, so there is no litigation-driven prior-art record (e.g., IPR petition art) to add here. This section addresses only the patent's own face-of-patent citations and nearby prior art.

2. Method and important limitations (read before using the table)

I retrieved the front-page "References Cited" list from the Google-hosted patent PDF (patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/.../US11067487.pdf). The retrieved list is truncated and OCR-degraded. Specifically:

• The list cuts off after 8,309,343 B2 11/2012 Min et al. and a partial 9,... entry. I could not confirm the remaining U.S. references, the Foreign Patent Documents section, or the Non-Patent Citations section.
• Several entries are internally inconsistent (number vs. date vs. inventor), which are almost certainly OCR artifacts of the scanned original. Per the operating rule I report the identifiers literally and flag the suspected artifacts rather than silently correcting them.
• I was unable to retrieve the full claim set of US 11,067,487 in this session, and I could not reach USPTO PatentCenter/PAIR or the USPTO full-text search directly. The § 102 mapping in Section 5 is therefore provisional and claim-element-based on the disclosed system as described in the specification, not a verbatim claim chart. Treat every anticipation statement below as a hypothesis to be verified.

3. Examiner-cited U.S. patent documents (as retrieved, literal)

All of these predate the 2012-11-30 priority date and are therefore § 102(a)(1)/(b)-eligible art (patents/printed publications more than one year before the effective filing date) assuming the 2012-11-30 priority holds.

* = appeared with an asterisk in the OCR of the front page; in this listing that mark is consistent with examiner-emphasized references, but I could not confirm its meaning from the record.

An earlier pre-grant publication of this same application (US 2017/0191911 A1) shows a "Patent Citations (6)" list that includes at least US 2010/0136679 A1 (Baxter International — "Apparatus and Method for Processing Biological Material," 2010), i.e., art directed to processing biological material in a vessel. I could not retrieve the other five entries.

4. Foreign / other cited material

• Could not retrieve. The front-page "Foreign Patent Documents" block and the "Other Publications / Non-Patent Citations" block were not present in the retrieved excerpt. Two related JP-family citations appear on the counterpart record (JP2016540494A, a RareCyte family member, not prior art), but these are family/relational, not anticipatory art.
• The specification itself lists numerous non-patent chemical/commercial references (e.g., Percoll, Ficoll, OptiPrep/iodixanol, perfluorocarbon oils). These are enabling-materials disclosures, not § 102 anticipatory references, and I treat them as background.

5. Provisional § 102 mapping (based on the disclosed system, not verified claim text)

US 11,067,487 is directed to a system in which a collector (main body with a first end and second end) sits in a primary vessel, has an internal funnel feeding a cannula into a cavity that holds a processing vessel, and uses a displacement fluid (denser than the target) so that, on centrifugation, displaced target material is driven up through the cannula into the processing vessel. The independent claims are apparatus/system claims to that collector and system.

On that understanding, the cited art that is most likely relevant to a § 102 challenge (all of it appears to be § 102(a)(1)/(b) art given the 2012 priority) is:

Honest bottom line on § 102: On the face of the record I can retrieve, none of the confirmed cited references appears to disclose the full combination of (a) a collector with an internal funnel in fluid communication with (b) a cannula that extends into (c) a cavity holding a removable processing vessel, used with (d) a displacement fluid to buoyantly drive a selected density fraction into the processing vessel. The examiner-cited art looks more like § 103 background art (density separation, centrifugal fraction collection, vessel construction) than clean § 102 anticipatory art. I cannot state with high confidence that any single cited reference anticipates a specific claim, because (i) I do not have the verbatim claim text, and (ii) the citation list is truncated.

6. Family relationships that matter for date/§ 102(e) analysis

The application is a continuation in a chain claiming 2012-11-30. The following related U.S. publications/applications are the same family, not third-party art, but they are the correct bases for the effective filing date and for any § 102(a)(2) cross-analysis:

• US 2014/0161688 A1 (Ser. 14/090,337, filed 2013-11-26) — from which priority is claimed
• US 2014/0349828 A1 (Ser. 14/266,939, filed 2014-05-01)
• US 9,444,391 B2 (Ser. 14/495,445)
• US 9,039,999 B2 (Ser. 14/495,449)
• Parent: Ser. 14/610,522 (now US 9,539,570), filed 2015-01-30

If any third-party reference postdates 2012-11-30, it is not prior art under the 2012 priority date; if it predates 2012-11-30 (as all confirmed cited references do), it is § 102(a)(1)/(b) art.

7. Confidence and recommended verification

1. Confidence in the confirmed citation list: moderate — it is the OCR of the patent's own front page, but truncated after 8,309,343 B2.
2. Confidence in the § 102 mapping: low-to-moderate — no verified claim text was available this session, so the mapping is structural/provisional, not element-by-element.
3. To finalize, retrieve directly:
   • USPTO PatentCenter / Patent Application (15/401,054) → "References Cited" + full claim set.
   • USPTO Patent Full-Text Search (PatFT/Patent Public Search) for US11067487 — Cited References section.
   • Google Patents / Espacenet "Cited By" and "Citations" tabs (Espacenet lists EPO-search-cited X/Y/A categories, which give the examiner's relevance labels directly).
   • Global Dossier for the JP/EP/CN counterparts — EPO search reports carry explicit X (novelty-destroying) / Y (obviousness) categorizations that are the best proxy for the § 102/§ 103 split you asked about.

If you can supply (or authorize me to pull) the verbatim claims of US 11,067,487, I will convert Section 5 into a proper limitation-by-limitation § 102 chart against Zuk (6,156,189 / 6,344,140), Van Vlasselaer, and Vassarotti first.

I'll research the prior art cited in US 11,067,487 and its family, plus the claim scope, to build the obviousness analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,067,487 (35 U.S.C. § 103)

Analyst note on sources. Before the analysis, an important caveat consistent with the earlier sections of this report: the Google Patents page I was able to fetch for US 11,067,487 did not render the "Patent Citations"/"Cited By" tables in machine-readable form — the only prior-art data that came through cleanly were the page's Prior-art keywords ("primary vessel, vessel, primary, buffy coat, float") and the prior-art date (2012-11-30). My targeted searches for the examiner's citation list returned noise (unrelated patents such as US 11,125,657, US 11,220,895, US 11,039,917, and a design patent D1,069,156). I therefore ground the analysis below on (a) the prior-art keywords actually shown, (b) references I could independently confirm as being in this family's prosecution/art field (notably Haubert), and (c) analogous art I identify expressly as my own identification. Where I name a reference I could not independently verify, I label it. This is not a substitute for pulling the actual citations from the file wrapper.

1. The claims at issue

Two independent claims (1 and 12), 20 claims total. Independent claim 1 (from the Justia full-text record) requires:

Claim 12 is the same architecture re-cast ("a system for retrieving buffy coat from a blood sample"). Dependents add: float of buffy-coat density (2, 13); clearing fluid denser than buffy coat (3, 14); a sealing ring that tightens around the primary vessel to collapse it against the float (4, 15); a window in the main body (5, 16); a circumferential shoulder (6, 16); a lock ring (7, 17); a canopy (8, 18); the long displacement-fluid species list (9, 19); resealable plug (10, 18); cannula = needle (11, 19).

Critical effective-date observation. The application was filed 2017-01-08 as a continuation of Ser. No. 14/610,522 (filed 2015-01-30), and the family traces to provisional 61/732,029 (2012-11-30). This is a post-AIA case. But claim 1's architecture (collector + processing vessel + displacement fluid + "extends upwardly") appears to have been introduced via the CIP chain, so its effective filing date may be 2014-02-04 or 2015-01-30 rather than 2012-11-30. That matters: it determines whether intervening art between 2012 and 2015 is §102(a)(1)/(a)(2) art. An obviousness conclusion should be re-run once the actual priority determination is fixed.

2. The prior-art landscape (per the page's own keywords)

The page's prior-art keywords — primary vessel, vessel, buffy coat, float — confirm the claimed subject matter is squarely in the crowded tube-and-float / buffy-coat-separation art. That field had a deep, well-developed body of work by the 2012–2015 window, which is the single most important fact for the §103 analysis: the "primary vessel + float + buffy coat" core is old; the dispute is only over the collector/cannula-to-septum architecture that sits on top of it.

Reference A — Haubert et al., U.S. Pub. No. 2005/0154308 A1 (Battelle Memorial Institute) (confirmed)

I could confirm this reference and its disclosure. In the family's own prosecution (the JP national-phase office action, PCT/US11/30414), the examiner characterized Haubert as disclosing "the generic device comprising a flexible sample tube having a sidewall (130) … and a rigid volume-occupying separator float (110) comprising a main body portion (112) spacedly surrounded radially" by the tube, i.e., defining an annular volume. The EP counterpart is published as EP 2,458,381 A3 ("Buffy coat float"), whose abstract confirms: "separator float (110) having a specific gravity intermediate that of red blood cells and plasma … the main body portion … together with an axially aligned portion of the sidewall define an annular volume … the centrifugal force … permit[s] density-based axial movement of the float." Haubert thus discloses elements 1(a) (tube), the float of claims 2/13, and the buffy-coat fractionation concept.

Reference B — Levine et al. tube/float separation patents (identified; content partially confirmed)

Levine is the seminal name in the tube/float separation art (e.g., the "Centrifugal separation apparatus and method for separating fluid components" family, and a Levine reference appears in the art cited around U.S. 9,838,485). These references disclose a tube with a float/ceiling, a closure at the tube opening, and septa/plugs that can be pierced to remove or fix separated components — i.e., they supply the idea of sealing the open end of the separation tube with a pierceable element and forming a seal against the tube wall. I flag that I could not independently confirm the exact disclosure of every Levine patent here.

Reference C — Septum/plug-pierced-by-cannula collection into a vessel holding a dense fluid (identified; generic field art)

The concept of a processing/collection vessel closed by a resealable septum or plug that is pierced by a cannula, with a dense fluid inside that is expelled under centrifugation to buoyantly displace a lighter target up into the vessel, is the crux of the claim and is the element most likely to have been the examiner's focus. There is a large body of analogous "displacement/bladder" fluid-transfer art (e.g., "bellows/plunger" and "displacement chamber" centrifugal devices) in the same CPC neighborhood (B01L 3/50215 – "test tubes specially adapted for centrifugation purposes using a float to separate phases"; G01N 33/491). I was unable to pin down a specific verified hit from the page's citation list, so I treat this element's prior-art mapping as the weakest-evidenced link in the analysis.

3. Proposed §103 grounds

Ground 1 (primary): Haubert + Levine + the secondary tube/plug art → claims 1 and 12

Combination rationale (KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007)):

1. "Combination of familiar elements." Haubert already provides the entire density-based buffy-coat separation engine (tube + buoyant float + annular buffy-coat band). Levine provides the mechanical sealing/piercing interface (closure forming a seal with the tube wall; pierceable septum). Adding a cannula-bearing insert that plugs the tube's open end is, at bottom, the use of a known tube-closure element for its known function — sealing a tube while allowing fluid access.
2. "Predictable use / known technique to improve similar device." Once one has a separated, expanded buffy-coat band (Haubert), extracting that band into a downstream vessel is a recognized need; a cannula-through-septum is the routine laboratory technique for withdrawing a fraction without breaching sterility or disturbing the gradient.
3. Design incentive / market pressure. The '487 specification itself frames the motivation: the difficulty of detecting rare analytes (e.g., 5 CTCs in 7.5 mL) creates pressure to automate and miniaturize fraction collection. KSR holds that an express teaching is unnecessary where the design incentive is inherent in the field.
4. "Obvious to try." Where there is a finite number of identified, predictable solutions (grab the fraction by pipette, by side-port, or by cannula; contain it in a tube or a syringe), trying the cannula-plus-collection-tube option is obvious.

Gap analysis. Haubert + Levine do not plainly disclose elements 1(d)–(g) as an integrated upward-stacked architecture with an internal displacement fluid in the processing vessel. This is where the obviousness case is contestable. A shift to "processing vessel filled with a dense fluid that is expelled and buoyantly drives the target upward through the cannula" is the patent's real point of novelty over the tube/float art, and an examiner relying only on Haubert + Levine would likely struggle to close that gap without a third reference. That same gap is presumably why the claims were allowed.

Ground 2: Ground 1 + a displacement/buoyant-transfer reference → all of claims 1–20

If a third reference discloses a collection vessel containing a higher-density fluid expelled under centrifugation to buoyantly displace a lower-density fraction into the vessel, then the combination is essentially complete, and the only remaining question is whether the "processing vessel extends upwardly from the device / device extends upwardly relative to the primary vessel" spatial limitations add patentable weight. On KSR "additional element is a mere change in orientation" reasoning, the recitation of upward orientation is likely a printed-matter/insubstantial-difference argument, not a separate inventive contribution — unless it produces an unexpected functional benefit (it is argued to couple with buoyancy vector: the displaced target moves up into the vessel). I would expect a litigator to argue that this coupling is exactly the kind of "interaction of elements" that defeats a mechanical orientational obviousness attack. That is a genuine, defensible nonobviousness position — but it is narrow.

Ground 3: The applicant's own earlier family publications as §102(a)(2)/§103 art — likely unavailable

US 2014/0161688 A1 (Ser. No. 14/090,337, pub. 2014-06-12) and US 2014/0349828 A1 (Ser. No. 14/266,939) are the same Rarecyte disclosure. If the '487 claims are entitled to the 2012-11-30 priority, these publications are after the priority date and are not prior art; if the claims are not so entitled (CIP new-matter problem), they become §102(a)(2) art as of their publication. This is the single highest-leverage §103 lever here: a claim-1 effective date of 2015 or 2017, rather than 2012, materially expands the prior-art universe (including the '168 and '828 publications and any intervening third-party art).

Ground 4: Dependent-claim-specific grounds

• Claims 4 / 15 (sealing ring that collapses the tube against the float). Compressing a flexible tube onto an internal member using a circumferential clamp is old (Levine; hose/collet clamp art is expressly invoked in the '487 spec's own clamp discussion). Strong §103.
• Claims 6–7, 16–17 (shoulder + lock ring). A circumferential stop/retainer with a ring to hold an inserted closure at a fixed height is routine mechanical design; strong §103.
• Claim 8 / 18 (canopy to catch discharge). A shield/cap over an open end to retain splashed fluid is a predictable design choice; moderate-to-strong §103.
• Claim 5 / 16 (window). A sight/window for visual confirmation of proper seating is an established design technique; strong §103.
• Claim 9 / 19 (displacement-fluid species). A Markush-style list of known density-gradient media (Percoll, Ficoll, iodixanol/OptiPrep, oils, fluorocarbons, ionic liquids). Selecting a known density medium for a disclosed density range is generally obvious absent unexpected results; §103 presumptively strong, with a possible rebuttal based on inertness/compatibility data.
• Claims 2 / 13 (float of buffy-coat density). Directly disclosed/suggested by Haubert. Strong §103.
• Claims 3 / 14 (clearing fluid denser than buffy coat). Filling with a dense medium to displace a lighter band is the same principle as the displacement fluid; foreseeable.
• Claims 10–11 / 18–19 (resealable plug; cannula = needle). Textbook mechanical/hardware choices; strong §103.

4. Secondary considerations to weigh (Graham factors)

The prior sections of this report found no litigation and no PTAB (IPR/PGR/CBM) proceeding involving the '487 patent. That cuts both ways for obviousness:

• Nexus problem. Without an infringement suit, there is no adjudicated evidence of commercial success, copying, or licensing tied to the claimed subject matter, so objective indicia are largely unproven. If the patentee later asserts the patent, the accused infringer's strongest §103 posture is Ground 2 with a focus on the 2012-vs-2015 priority question.
• Family prosecution art. The closest confirmed art (Haubert, and the tube/float family generally) was already before the family; the patent survived, which is some evidence the examiner viewed the upward-processing-vessel/displacement-fluid architecture as non-obvious. That is a rebuttable presumption of validity (§282), not a merits finding.

5. Bottom line

Confidence: High that Haubert + tube/float art render the vessel/float/sealing dependent claims obvious. Moderate-low on a complete Haubert+Levine-only rejection of claim 1. Insufficient evidence to name the exact third "displacement fluid" reference, because the page's citation list did not render in my fetch.

Recommended next step (to firm this up): pull the actual "Patent Citations" and the examiner's §103 rejections from the US Patent Center / file wrapper for application Ser. No. 15/401,054 and its parents (14/610,522; 14/495,449; 14/090,337). Those documents will name the precise references and the examiner's stated rationales, which is the only way to convert the above (well-grounded but partly inferred) grounds into a litigation-grade §103 contention.