US 11092580

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

Let me verify the granted claim language and check for any litigation or post-grant proceedings.

Let me run a few more targeted searches on the application number and any court proceedings.

Summary — US Patent No. 11,092,580

Important process note: I searched for the exact identifier 11092580 (and US 11,092,580, 16/805,590, US20200200721) across public patent databases. My CAFC-2026-specific searches returned no docket, appeal, IPR, or Federal Circuit activity tied to this patent. The only "2026" hits were unrelated: Enviro Tech Chemical Services v. Safe Foods, No. 2024-2160 (U.S. Pat. No. 10,912,321) and an IPR appeal concerning U.S. Pat. No. 10,649,580 (Apple v. Smith Interface Technologies). Those are different patent numbers and I am not conflating them with 11,092,580. I also could not directly open USPTO Patent Center or the CAFC CM/ECF docket, so I cannot affirmatively certify the absence of litigation — treat "no 2026 CAFC activity found" as a search-result statement, not a legal conclusion.

Bibliographic data (per Google Patents / Justia, consistent)

Abstract: A diagnostic apparatus for analysing a sample to diagnose disease, comprising a separating element that separates gas derived from the sample into component parts; a sensor arrangement coupled to the separating element such that a component part of the gas is directed toward it, the sensor arrangement being configured to detect compounds which may be indicative of disease; and a processing element coupled to an output of the sensor arrangement and configured to process the sensor signal to provide a diagnosis.

Independent claim (plain language)

The granted patent has one independent claim — claim 1, a method claim (claims 2–9 are dependent). Paraphrased:

1. A method of diagnosing disease by analysing gas obtained from a faeces or urine sample, comprising:
   • (i) heating the faeces/urine sample to about 60 °C using a sample heater to release gas;
   • (ii) supplying that released gas to one or more heated separation columns in a gas chromatography oven;
   • (iii) separating the gas into component parts by heating it in those column(s) in the GC oven;
   • (iv) directing the separated components toward a sensor arrangement configured to detect a disease-indicative compound, where the sensor includes (a) a metal oxide element made of a mixture of powdered zinc oxide and powdered tin oxide and (b) a sensor heater to heat that element, and where the sensor applies a voltage across the metal oxide element to produce current flow through it;
   • (v) using the sensor heater to hold the metal oxide element at 425 °C–500 °C during sensing; and
   • (vi) processing a signal indicative of the current flow to produce an output capable of providing a diagnosis.

So the monopoly as granted is narrower than the disclosure's broad "apparatus" concept: it is tied to (a) a faeces/urine sample heated to ~60 °C, (b) a Zn-oxide/Sn-oxide powder metal-oxide sensor with an applied voltage/current readout, and (c) an operating temperature of 425–500 °C.

Dependent claims add: multi-capillary column (2); single/multiple single-capillary columns (3); serial sensor configuration (4); parallel sensor configuration (5); detection of volatile compounds (6); elution-time signal (7); comparison to a known profile from previously diagnosed samples (8); and ANN-based diagnosis (9).

Uncertainties / caveats to flag

• Claim text source. The authoritative full text supplied to me is the Google Patents description/summary (it reproduces the summary-of-invention language, not the granted claims). The verbatim claim 1 language above comes from the Justia claims listing for this patent. The two are consistent in substance but I am relying on Justia for the exact granted claim wording.
• Numerical tension to be aware of. The specification describes two metal-oxide sensors operating at 400 °C and 450 °C and states 400–500 °C is "particularly suitable," whereas granted claim 1 recites 425–500 °C. Anyone reading the specification alone could mis-state the claimed range.
• COFC/CAFC status. I found no 2026 Federal Circuit docket, appeal, or post-grant proceeding referencing this patent. I cannot rule out activity not surfaced by these searches.
• Assignee naming. Records list both "University of The West of England, Bristol" and "The University of Bristol"; the 2026 assignment recorded 2020-03-02 reflects both institutions.

Primary sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11092580/en and https://patents.justia.com/patent/11092580 (claims, bibliographic data).

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11092580.

Let me refine my searches to litigation-specific databases.

Let me search more targeted sources for this specific patent.

Litigation Search: US Patent No. 11,092,580

Result: No litigation found

Based on my searches of patent-litigation sources, I found no record of any litigation involving US Patent No. 11,092,580 (B2) — neither as an asserted patent, a counterclaim patent, nor in any declaratory-judgment action. I also found no PTAB post-grant proceedings (IPR/PGR) against it.

What I searched

• General litigation queries for "11092580" and "11,092,580" combined with "litigation," "lawsuit," and "infringement complaint."
• The kind of litigation portal you referenced (Unified Patents portal, portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) and Docket Alarm references surfaced in results.
• Assignee-directed queries (University of Bristol / University of the West of England) plus the patent's subject matter (gas-chromatography / volatile-biomarker diagnostic apparatus).

None of these returned any case naming this patent. The only hits for the literal string "11092580" were unrelated (e.g., a payroll record and a Czech government contract registry entry), which I excluded as non-responsive per your instruction not to return similar/unrelated numbers.

Why this is plausible

This aligns with the patent's profile:

• Owners: University of Bristol and University of the West of England (academic/research institutions), per the front page.
• Technology: A point-of-care diagnostic apparatus combining a separating element (multi-capillary/single-capillary column) with a metal-oxide/UV/ammonia-amine sensor array and an ANN-based processor (claims directed to diagnostic apparatus and method).
• Prosecution history: The application (US 16/805,590, filed 2020-02-28) was a continuation-type filing from a 2009 priority date; the patent issued 2021-08-17 and is now recorded as "Expired – Fee Related" with an anticipated expiration of 2030-11-19. Academic diagnostic patents with a lapsed/fee-expired status and no commercial assertion history frequently have no litigation.

Important caveats (as required by your strict rules)

1. I could not directly query PACER, the CAFC docket, or the Unified Patents portal's live case list in this session; my conclusion rests on open web searches that index those sources. A PACER/CAFC docket search using the patent number as a party-search term would be the definitive confirmation.
2. "No litigation found" is not the same as "no litigation ever existed." District-court complaints, especially settled or voluntarily dismissed ones, can be poorly indexed by general search engines.
3. I did not auto-correct or normalize the number; all searches used the literal string 11092580 / 11,092,580.

Recommended next steps to confirm

• Search PACER (all district courts) for "11,092,580" and "11092580" as a full-text/party term.
• Search the CAFC docket and USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) caselist for the patent number.
• Check Unified Patents Portal litigation caselist and RPX / Docket Navigator for "University of Bristol" as a plaintiff.
• Check the USPTO Assignment record for any transfer that would indicate monetization/assertion activity (the 2020-03-02 assignment listed shows only the original academic assignees, which supports a no-litigation finding).

If you'd like, I can attempt a further targeted search (e.g., "University of Bristol v." in district courts) if additional search steps are available.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 11,092,580: 0 (zero). Breakdown: 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denied. There is no Final Written Decision, no institution decision, no settlement, and no Federal Circuit appeal arising from a PTAB trial. The bottom line for a defendant is not "the patent survived two IPRs and is hardened" — it is the softer and more double-edged fact that the patent has never been tested at the PTAB at all, so there is neither an invalidation to lean on nor any § 315(e) estoppel to constrain you. The single most important defensive fact on this record is instead administrative, not adjudicative: the USPTO's public bibliographic data lists the patent as "Expired – Fee Related," i.e., lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees (see the legal-status field at https://patents.google.com/patent/US11092580/en). That is a status assumption, not a legal conclusion, and it is worth verifying in Patent Center before you rely on it in a demand-letter response.

Proceedings

No AIA trial proceeding is on file for US 11,092,580. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied with this task — sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and treated as canonical — returns an empty set. Consistent with the operating instruction that the default is "no PTAB activity on file," I also ran targeted web searches (patent number, patent title, patent owner, and petitioner-style queries) and surfaced nothing: no IPR, PGR, or CBM docket number, no PTAB E2E case, no institution decision, no FWD, and no CAFC opinion naming this patent. I found no evidence of a defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, etc.) challenging it either.

Because there is no proceeding, the per-proceeding template (type / filed / status / panel / grounds / institution / FWD / settlement / appeal / defensive value) has nothing to populate. I am deliberately not inventing case numbers or outcomes to fill it.

Caveats on the null result (flagging these rather than asserting them):

• A zero from the ODP plus zero from web search is strong but not dispositive of "never challenged." A very recently filed petition may not yet be indexed; PTAB E2E is the authoritative check (search by patent number at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations).
• I found no district-court assertion of this patent in the course of searching, but absence of litigation on the open web is not proof of non-assertion.

Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED. No claim of US 11,092,580 has been canceled, confirmed, or construed in any AIA trial. There is no FWD to point to, so I cannot tell you that claim 1 is dead — it isn't, at least not by any PTAB action. The patent issued 2021-08-17 from application US 16/805,590 (filed 2020-02-28), claiming priority to 2009-11-20 (PCT/WO 2011/061308), and is held by University of Bristol and University of The West of England — i.e., two UK universities, not a classic monetization troll and not a commercial competitor.

Estoppel landscape: none, because there has been no trial. § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only to a petitioner that reaches a final written decision. With no IPR and no FWD, no one is estopped, and the full universe of prior art — including art that would be "reasonably could have raised" art in a hypothetical IPR — remains available to any defendant. Conversely, you get no benefit from an institution decision or FWD either; you are starting from scratch on the merits.

Timing / statutory windows. The PGR window (9 months post-grant) closed around 2022-05-17 and is time-barred. IPR remains available to any petitioner, but a defendant who has been served with a complaint alleging infringement more than one year ago is time-barred under § 315(b). So the practical question is the date of service of any infringement notice/pleading.

The expiration signal dominates. Google Patents records the legal status as "Expired – Fee Related" with an anticipated expiration date of 2030-11-19. A lapsed patent changes the entire defensive calculus — the usual reason to file an IPR (kill the patent so it can't be asserted later) largely evaporates. But two cautions: (1) a fee-lapsed patent can be revived on petition under 37 C.F.R. § 1.378 (unintentional delay), and petitions to revive are routinely granted; and (2) lapse does not retroactively wipe out damages for past infringement. Verify the current fee/reinstatement status in Patent Center and check the assignment/chain of title for both universities.

Pattern signals: none to report. Single patent, single ownership grouping, no repeat petitioner, no PTAB appeals by the owners, no defensive aggregator involvement. This is the profile of an academically-held patent that has simply never been litigated to the point where an IPR made sense.

Recommended next steps

1. Confirm there is no proceeding before you invest in a PTAB strategy. Search PTAB E2E by patent number (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations) and cross-check the Patent Trial and Appeal Board's public docket. If E2E confirms zero, stop budgeting for an IPR.
2. Verify the fee-lapse status in USPTO Patent Center. Pull the maintenance-fee and transaction history for US 11,092,580. If the patent is truly lapsed and not revived, a demand letter citing it has little litigation leverage; if a revival petition is pending or granted, treat the patent as live and the expiration date as the real term limit (priority 2009-11-20 → nominal expiry ~2029-11-20, subject to any PTA).
3. Check the assignment chain for both assignees (University of Bristol and University of The West of England) via the USPTO Assignment database, and confirm whether either has exclusive-licensed the patent. Standing and real-party-in-interest issues often matter more than invalidity for university-held patents.
4. Because there is no estoppel, preserve all art. Build your invalidity case on the full prior-art universe, including the applicants' own published work (the inventors — Ratcliffe, de Lacy Costello, Ewen, Probert — published extensively on VOC-based diagnostics in 2008–2011; the specification itself at https://patents.google.com/patent/US11092580/en concedes a crowded field and cites a 30-donor/297-VOC stool study). Those publications and the WO 2011/061308 family are the natural § 102/§ 103 starting points.
5. If served with a complaint, calendar the § 315(b) one-year bar immediately, and note that any IPR petition would be subject to the current Fintiv/§ 325(d) discretionary-denial framework.
6. Absence of PTAB activity is itself informative but weak. Well-asserted, commercially significant patents tend to attract IPRs; this one has not, which is consistent with a patent that hasn't been meaningfully asserted. That cuts in a defendant's favor — but it also means you cannot borrow anyone else's invalidity work, and any § 101/§ 112 attack (e.g., the diagnostic-method eligibility questions that dog this art) would be yours to build from scratch in district court.

I'll start by verifying what records exist for this patent across the USPTO systems and secondary sources.

Let me look for the specific assignment reel/frame and correspondent details, plus the patent family history.

Let me check the USPTO assignment center records, litigation history, and any commercial spinout.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 11092580 B2 ("Diagnostic apparatus")

Patent: US 11092580 B2 | App.: 16/805,590 | Filed: 2020-02-28 | Granted: 2021-08-17 | Priority: 2009-11-20 | Status: Expired – Fee Related (per Google Patents legal status)

Source note / limitation on data: The authoritative full text (Google Patents, fetched 2026-09-24) reproduces the legal-events table for this patent, which contains a single assignment-type event (recorded 2020-03-02). The reel/frame number and the correspondent of record were not exposed in the sources I was able to retrieve — my searches of the USPTO Assignment Center index did not return the record page, and my attempt to open additional queries was cut off by a tool-call limit. I am therefore not going to invent a reel/frame or a correspondent name. Everything below is grounded in what I could verify; the missing reel/frame is flagged explicitly and should be confirmed at the Assignment Center link at the end.

Inventors

Pattern notes:

• The inventor list explains the two-assignee structure: three inventors are UWE personnel and one (Probert) is University of Bristol personnel, so the resulting co-ownership by UWE + Bristol is consistent with institutional employment, not with any assignment strategy.
• I found no evidence of inventors departing the original assignees within 12 months of filing, and no fire-sale precursor. UWE's own repository (worktribe) still lists Ratcliffe and de Lacy Costello under the same research centre well after filing (e.g., https://uwe-repository.worktribe.com/output/[943663](/patent/943663)/ and /962350/). I cannot confirm the inventors' current status with high confidence, so this is a "no evidence found" call rather than a verified negative.
• The invention is a 2010-era PCT family (WO 2011/061308 A2, published 2011-05-26; EP 2502065 A2) whose US member was continued into a new US application filed 2020-02-28 — i.e., the patent-in-suit here is a 10-year-later continuation that issued with narrower method claims (a method of diagnosing from faeces/urine with a ZnO/SnO₂ metal-oxide element held at 425–500 °C). This is evergreen-continuation prosecution by a research institution, not a sign of assertion activity.

Original assignee

Entities named on the issued patent: The University of the West of England, Bristol and The University of Bristol (co-assignees; both of Bristol, United Kingdom).

• Primary line of business: Public higher-education and research institutions (UK universities), not commercial manufacturers.
• Product embodying the claims: None identified. The only embodiment of the claims is the in-house prototype described in the specification (two lab prototype GC/sensor systems used on stool and urine samples). No commercial diagnostic device was shipped by either assignee that I could verify.
• Current status: Both institutions are operating (active UK universities). Neither is dissolved, acquired, or in bankruptcy.
• Post-grant disposition: The patent is recorded as "Expired – Fee Related" on Google Patents — i.e., the university owners allowed it to lapse for non-payment of a maintenance fee rather than enforce or monetize it. Anticipated natural expiration is 2030-11-19 (20 years from the 2010 PCT filing).

Assignment timeline

Only one assignment-type record exists for this patent (per the Google Patents legal-events table). The authoritative text lists it as a 2020-03-02 reassignment, with assignors recorded as PROBERT, CHRISTOPHER; COSTELLO, Benjamin Paul; RATCLIFFE, NORMAN; EWEN, RICHARD, and assignees recorded as UNIVERSITY OF THE WEST OF ENGLAND and BRISTOL, THE UNIVERSITY OF BRISTOL.

• Executed: not stated in the accessible record / recorded 2020-03-02 — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN (NOT RETRIEVED — verify at Assignment Center)
  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: Norman Ratcliffe; Benjamin Paul Costello; Richard Ewen; Christopher Probert (individual inventors)
  • Assignee: The University of the West of England, Bristol and The University of Bristol (co-assignees)
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved from my sources. Cannot assess recurrence. (Because this is the only link in the chain, a repeat-correspondent signal is structurally impossible to establish here anyway.)
  • Context: Internal/institutional title perfecting — the four inventors assigned their rights to their two employing universities, recorded three days after the 2020-02-28 continuation filing. No third party, no consideration to an unrelated acquirer.

No post-issuance assignments (2021 → present) are recorded. Under the working assumption you supplied, that means the two universities still own the patent and there is no acquisition, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter event anywhere in the chain.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11092580
    2009 : Priority filing for the family
    2010 : PCT application filed
    2011 : WO publication of the family
    2020 : US continuation filed
         : Inventors assign to UWE and Bristol
    2021 : US patent granted
    2025 : Status shows expired fee related

(The "2025" entry reflects the current "Expired – Fee Related" legal status combined with the 2021-08-17 grant date; the exact lapse date is not stated in the source and should be confirmed at the Assignment Center / Patent Center.)

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The sole assignee entities are two named UK universities. No "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix, no registered-agent service address, no single-member LLC. Record: 2020-03-02 event only.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. Neither The University of the West of England nor The University of Bristol appears on any public NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, DGC, Spangenberg entities, or Unified/RPX high-frequency-plaintiff directories). No such entity appears at any point in the chain.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNKNOWN / NOT ESTABLISHED. The correspondent of record was not retrievable from my sources, and there is only one assignment link, so recurrence cannot exist by construction. This signal is not present on the evidence available; it cannot be scored as a finding.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Zero consecutive transfers, let alone multiple chained LLCs in <24 months. The chain is a single inventor→institution step.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. No infringement suit naming US 11092580 was found, and the only recorded assignment (2020-03-02) predates issuance (2021-08-17) and is an inventor→employer title step, not a transfer to an assertion vehicle. (Caveat: my litigation searches were truncated by the tool-call limit; I found no evidence of suit, but I cannot claim a fully exhaustive litigation negative.)

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No bankruptcy of either assignee; both universities are operating and solvent.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No operating company transferred rights to an NPE to assert against competitors. The rights stayed with the originating institutions.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at the two originating universities.

Aggregate: 0 of 8 signals present.

Verdict

Insufficient data — under your rubric this is the bucket that applies when the record contains only the original assignment, and that is precisely the situation here: a single inventor→university title record (recorded 2020-03-02), no post-issuance transfers, no litigation, and a patent that lapsed for non-payment. This is a clean negative finding, not an information gap about ownership: the record affirmatively shows the two co-owning assignees are public UK universities (not shell LLCs, not listed asserters), with the patent's only embodiment being an in-house research prototype, and with the owners choosing to let the patent expire for failure to pay maintenance fees rather than enforce it. No NPE or troll pattern is supported by any reel/frame entry in this chain, and none should be inferred from the entity names alone.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 11092580 or application 16/805,590) and the mirrored index at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html — this is where the reel/frame and correspondent of record I could not retrieve should be confirmed before this memo is relied upon.

I'll search for the specific patent and its citations.

Let me get the specific citation list from the patent's Google Patents page and related family members.

Let me get the specific cited references and the NPL citations from the patent's family pages.

Important caveat up front

I must be transparent: the authoritative full text you provided for US 11092580 B2 does not contain a "References Cited" / "Citations" section, and my later searches for the literal USPTO citation list for application US 16/805,590 hit a tool-call limit before I could confirm it directly from the USPTO PatentCenter/Google Patents "Citations" tab. What follows is therefore built from (a) the authoritative text you supplied and (b) citation data I did retrieve from the patent's family-member pages (EP 2502065 A2, DK 2502065 T3, WO 2011061308 A2/A3, EP 0317299 A2). I have flagged every item where I could not fully verify the source. Do not treat this as the certified USPTO IDS/citation list without confirming it.

1. The patent, interpreted literally

• Patent number: US 11092580 B2 (not "US11092580" — the grant is B2)
• Title: Diagnostic apparatus
• Application: US 16/805,590, filed 2020-02-28
• Grant date: 2021-08-17; publication US 20200200721 A1 (2020-06-25)
• Assignee: University of The West of England, Bristol / University of Bristol
• Inventors: Norman Ratcliffe, Benjamin Paul Costello, Richard Ewen, Christopher Probert
• Priority: GB 0920315.9, 2009-11-20 (so the critical prior-art date recited by Google Patents is 2009-11-20)
• Prosecution posture: This is a continuation of US 13/510,692 (US 20120309048 A1), which was the US national stage of PCT/EP2010/067859 → WO 2011061308 A2, corresponding to EP 2502065 B1 ("Device and method for analysing samples to diagnose disease"). It is not an independent filing; it shares the 2009 priority chain.
• Claim 1 (apparatus), per the patent's own "Definitions"/abstract: a diagnostic apparatus comprising (i) a separating element for separating gas derived from the sample into component parts; (ii) a sensor arrangement coupled to the separating element so a component part is directed toward it, configured to detect a compound indicative of disease; and (iii) a processing element coupled to the sensor output, configured to process the sensor signal to provide a diagnosis.

⚠️ I do not have the granted claim set verbatim in the provided text (the fetched document stops mid-description and omits the "Claims" section). The claim language below is drawn from the abstract and the "Definitions" summary, which mirrors WO 2011061308's claim 1. Treat claim-number attributions as provisional.

2. Cited references identified (with source and verification status)

A. Non-patent literature expressly discussed in the specification

(1) Nilsson et al., "Quantitative Determination of Volatile Organic Compounds in Indoor Dust Using Gas Chromatography–UV Spectrometry."

• Date: not stated in the retrieved text (predates 2009; cited in DK 2502065 T3 ¶[0006]).
• Description: Thermal desorption of VOCs, concentration by SPME, capillary GC separation, detection/identification by diode-array UV spectrophotometry.
• Relevance / potential §102: It discloses GC separation + spectrometric detection of VOCs, i.e., the separating-element + sensor combination. However, it is directed to indoor dust, not a biological sample, and does not disclose deriving a disease diagnosis via a processing element. On the record available, it would not anticipate claim 1 (missing the "diagnose disease" and processing-element/diagnosis limitations) but is squarely §103 background. Verification: partial (quoted from the DK family text, not independently confirmed against the US IDS).

(2) Garner et al., "Volatile Organic Compounds from Feces and their Potential for Diagnosis of Gastrointestinal Disease."

• Date: not stated in retrieved text (predates 2009; cited in DK 2502065 T3 ¶[0007]).
• Description: Volatiles from feces collected by SPME and analyzed by GC/MS, with stated potential for diagnosis of GI disease.
• Relevance / potential §102: This is the closest NPL to the inventive concept — it links fecal VOCs → GI disease diagnosis. It would be the most dangerous art against claim 1 if it disclosed the specific sensor arrangement and automated processing element. Based on the summary available it appears to use GC/MS (a mass-spectrometer detector) rather than the claimed metal-oxide/UV/ammonia-amine sensor arrangement with an ANN-based processor. Potentially relevant to claim 1's "separating element" + "diagnose disease" elements; likely not full anticipation. Verification: partial.

B. Patent references (from the EP/WO family citation lists)

(3) US 2002/0182739 A1 (family ref. "US2002/182739")

• Date: published 2002-12-05 (per family).
• Description (from DK 2502065 T3 ¶[0008]): Methods/devices for rapidly detecting, quantifying and imaging gases, odors, malodors, volatiles and semi-volatiles using gas chromatography coupled with arrays of organic conducting polymers; detection via polymer conductivity change, with thermal desorption to avoid sensor fouling.
• Relevance / potential §102: Discloses GC + sensor array for volatile detection — anticipatory against the "separating element + sensor arrangement" combination. But it detects odors/malodors, not disease, and its sensing chemistry (conducting polymers) differs from the claimed MOS/UV/amine sensors. Not full anticipation of claim 1; strong §103 art. Verification: partial (quoted from DK family text).

(4) EP 0926492 A1

• Date: ~1999 (EP number series; publication not captured verbatim).
• Description (DK 2502065 T3 ¶[0009]): A multi-passage capillary arrangement drawn from ductile glass, providing multiple ≤250 µm capillary passages; useful in chromatography and as flow restrictors.
• Relevance / potential §102: Directly relevant to the multi-capillary column limitation recited in dependent claims (the spec touts a ~0.5 m, ~1200-capillary column). Potentially anticipates claims directed to the multi-capillary separating element, but not independent claim 1 as a whole (no disease-diagnosis processor). Verification: partial.

(5) AU 2002355079 C1 — "A diagnostic apparatus," Sensor Tech, Inc.

• Date: filed 2001-07-16; published/granted 2008-03-06 (per EP 2502065 A2 citation table).
• Description: A diagnostic apparatus (title matches); retrieved content did not expose its disclosure in detail.
• Relevance / potential §102: Title overlap makes it a §102 candidate for claim 1, but I could not retrieve its substance, so I cannot responsibly state which claim(s) it anticipates. Flag as unverified — warrants direct retrieval of AU 2002355079 C1.

(6) EP 1098195 A2 — "Odor identifying apparatus and method," Givaudan SA

• Date: 1999-11-04 (per EP 0317299 A2 citation table).
• Description: Device for olfactory judgement of an odorous substance.
• Relevance / potential §102: An odor-identification (electronic-nose-type) apparatus — relevant to the sensor-array/detection concept, but it identifies odors, not disease. Not anticipation of claim 1; general background. Verification: item appears in a family citation table; substance unverified.

C. Related/adjacent documents surfaced (lower-confidence)

(7) US 4,818,348 A — "Method and apparatus for identifying and quantifying simple and complex chemicals." Listed as a similar document on the EP 2502065 page; classic GC/sensor-array prior art. Relevant to the separating/quantifying concept, not to disease diagnosis. Verification: low.

(8) US 2004/0137637 A1 — "Breath gas analyzer for diagnosing diabetes." Listed as similar; relevant as disease-diagnosis-by-gas art but uses a different architecture. Verification: low.

3. Bottom line on §102 anticipation

• No single reference located discloses all elements of claim 1 (gas-derived-from-biological-sample separation + disease-indicative sensor arrangement + processing element outputting a diagnosis).
• The strongest §102 candidates requiring direct retrieval are AU 2002355079 C1 (Sensor Tech) (title-identical) and Garner et al. (feces → GI-disease potential). Both are flagged unverified as to substance.
• EP 0926492 is the best candidate against multi-capillary-column dependent claims; US 2002/0182739 is the best candidate against the GC + sensor-array independent-concept elements.
• The realistic threat to this family is §103 combinations (e.g., GC-VOC separation art + sensor arrays + pattern-recognition diagnosis), not clean §102 anticipation — consistent with the fact that the EPO ultimately granted EP 2502065 B1 with a narrowed claim 1 requiring "a metal oxide element comprising a mixture of zinc oxide and tin oxide," a limitation absent from the broad US abstract/definition text.

4. What I could NOT verify (explicit)

1. The exact USPTO "References Cited" list for US 16/805,590 / US 11092580 B2 — not in the provided text and not retrievable within my tool budget.
2. The granted US claim set verbatim — so the per-claim §102 mapping above is provisional and keyed to the abstract/definition language, not certified claim numbering.
3. The substance of AU 2002355079 C1 and several low-confidence items, whose descriptions were inferred from titles only.

If you need the authoritative numbers, the next step is to pull the US 16/805,590 file wrapper (USPTO PatentCenter) → "References Cited" and the EP 2502065 B1 A1 publication front page, and provide the AU 2002355079 C1 full text so I can complete the claim-by-claim §102 table.

I'll research the prior art cited against US11092580 to ground the obviousness analysis.

Let me pull the granted claims of US11092580 and examine the key prior-art references from the family's search report.

Let me retrieve the complete granted claim set for US11092580.

Caveats and sources used

Before the analysis, three transparency notes:

1. The patent text you supplied is truncated. It ends mid‑sentence at the description of FIG. 10 and does not contain the printed claim set or the "Citations / Cited By" tables that normally appear on the Google Patents page. The only "Prior Art" metadata actually present on the supplied page is: Prior art keywords — gas, sensor, sample, sensor arrangement, metal oxide; and Prior art date — 2009‑11‑20.
2. I therefore reconstructed two things from search: (a) the claim set, from the pre‑grant publication of the same application, US20200200721A1 (application US16/805,590, which issued as US11092580B2) — 10 claims; and (b) the cited prior art, from the International Search Report of the PCT counterpart WO2011061308A3 (same 2009‑11‑20 priority; EP family member EP2502065A2/B1). If the granted claims of US11092580B2 differ from the published set (claims are frequently amended during prosecution), the analysis below must be re‑run against the printed claims.
3. I have not auto‑corrected any identifier; all numbers are reproduced exactly as surfaced.

1. The invention and the claim to be tested

US11092580B2, "Diagnostic apparatus," inventors Norman Ratcliffe, Benjamin Paul Costello, Richard Ewen, Christopher Probert; assignees University of Bristol / University of the West of England; priority 2009‑11‑20; filed 2020‑02‑28; granted 2021‑08‑17. Because the effective filing date is pre‑16 March 2013, pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) governs (subject to the priority question in §6 below).

Claim 1 of the published companion set (US20200200721A1) is a method claim requiring, essentially:

2. The prior art of record on the family

The WO2011061308A3 search report (authored against the same disclosure) cites:

• Garner et al., FASEB J. 21(8):1675–1688 (2007) — "Volatile organic compounds from feces and their potential for diagnosis of gastrointestinal disease" — cited as X. PMC/PubMed: https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/17314143/. It collects faecal VOCs by SPME and analyses them by GC/MS; identifies 297 volatiles; shows that VOC patterns of C. difficile, Campylobacter jejuni and ulcerative colitis differ significantly from healthy donors; and expressly states the findings "could lead the way to the development of a rapid diagnostic device based on VOC detection." (Note: three named inventors are co‑authors.)
• Nilsson et al., Environment International 31(8):1141–1148 (2005) — "Quantitative determination of volatile organic compounds in indoor dust using gas chromatography–UV spectrometry" — cited as X. DOI 10.1016/J.ENVINT.2005.04.003. It teaches a bench GC coupled to a non‑mass‑spectrometric detector for VOC quantification.
• US2002/0182739A1 (Sadik et al.), 5 Dec 2002 — cited as Y at ¶¶[0008], [0009], [0050] (sensors/arrays for analyte detection).

Additional art that a PHOSITA would have had, and that is referenced elsewhere in the family:

• WO2009037289A1 / US20110259080A1, "Gas sensor" (Bristol/de Lacy Costello line) — UV‑LED‑activated ZnO chemiresistive gas sensing (this is the "UV sensor" concept in the disclosure). https://patents.google.com/patent/US20110259080
• Kaur, Aswal & Yakhmi, "Chemiresistor Gas Sensors: Materials, Mechanisms and Fabrication" (2007) — general textbook treatment of MOX chemiresistors, including ZnO and SnO₂ and their mixtures.

Two timing points matter: Garner 2007 and Nilsson 2005 both published more than one year before 2009‑11‑20, so they are §102(b) art and are not removable by the common‑ownership exception of §103(c). A further point: the "OdoReader" description (GC column + single metal‑oxide sensor) that appears in https://core.ac.uk/download/323895559.pdf is post‑2009 and appears to be a thesis; I would not rely on it as prior art.

3. Proposed §103 combination and motivation

Primary combination

Garner 2007 + Nilsson 2005 + the Kaur chemiresistor review (optionally Sadik 2002 and US20110259080A1).

• Teaching of elements A, B, C, D: Garner teaches diagnosis of GI disease from faecal VOCs using GC separation, and expressly proposes the endpoint of a "rapid diagnostic device." Elevated‑temperature headspace sampling and pH adjustment of the matrix are routine, well‑documented sample‑preparation steps in bio‑VOC headspace/SPME analysis (acidification to liberate volatile acids/ammonia from their salts is standard practice); the patent's own background concedes that "efforts have been made" at exactly this and that sample pre‑treatment was known.
• Teaching of D (alternative detector): Nilsson 2005 shows the GC separation train can be terminated by a non‑MS optical detector and still yield a quantitative VOC determination — i.e., GC detectors are treated in the art as interchangeable.
• Teaching of E–H: MOX chemiresistors of the "Taguchi" type comprise a metal‑oxide sensing film on a substrate with an integrated (e.g., platinum) heater, are operated by applying a voltage and measuring current/resistance, and are conventionally fabricated from SnO₂, ZnO, or mixtures/dopings thereof. Operating temperatures of a few hundred °C are conventional, and mixed ZnO/SnO₂ films were known in the 2007 literature before the priority date.

Articulated motivation (KSR‑compliant)

1. Explicit problem‑statement motivation: Garner 2007 itself frames the unmet need — a rapid, point‑of‑care device instead of transport‑to‑lab GC/MS. That is a direct, recited reason to substitute a cheap, small, solid‑state detector for the MS.
2. Predictable substitution: Nilsson 2005 establishes GC‑UV as a viable non‑MS GC detector, so a PHOSITA would understand the detector end of a GC to be a design choice among known options (FID, MS, UV, MOX). The patent's Table 6/7 even compares its sensor data against FID data — showing the substitution is the obvious design axis.
3. "Obvious to try" (KSR): Choosing MOX sensor chemistry and its heater set‑point is an optimisation of result‑effective variables long recognised in the sensor art. Because the claim's lower bound (425 °C) merely carves a sub‑range out of the 400–500 °C window the specification itself calls "particularly suitable," the range is prima facie an obvious optimisation.
4. Art‑recognised problem of water masking: the specification concedes that at ≤300 °C the MOX response "can be masked due to the presence of water eluting from the separating stage," and that 400–500 °C avoids this. This is a stated result, not an unpredictable discovery — it supplies the very reason to select the claimed window.

4. Element‑by‑element shorthand

5. Where obviousness is vulnerable (the applicant's best rebuttals)

A rigorous §103 attack must confront the two narrowing limitations that most likely secured allowance:

1. The 425 °C–500 °C window. Applicant can argue criticality: that something changes at the upper end (avoidance of water masking and of the ≤300 °C obscuration) and that the bound is not merely arbitrary within a disclosed range. The rebuttal is that the specification itself identifies 400–500 °C as suitable, making 425 °C a selection of a sub‑range without a demonstrated critical effect at 425 °C specifically. Whether this rises to a "new property discovered at the boundary" depends on data not present in the specification.
2. The ZnO + SnO₂ mixture. Absent a reference specifically disclosing the mixed (as opposed to doped) ZnO/SnO₂ film, applicant can argue the specific film composition is not taught. The counter is Kaur‑type literature plus the well‑recognised practice of mixing/doping MOX oxides.
3. Secondary considerations. The specification reports 74–92 % classification accuracy (Tables 3, 5, 9; 74 % for prostate cancer). To defeat obviousness these must be (i) unexpected against the closest prior art and (ii) nexus‑bearing to the claimed features. The FID comparison (Tables 6–7) shows the sensor data outperform FID, but FID is not the closest art — Garner's GC/MS is, and no direct accuracy comparison to GC/MS is offered. That nexus gap is the applicant's practical weakness if challenged.
4. Species/utility limitations (urine → prostate cancer; faeces → C. difficile) are diagnostic‑method limitations; under pre‑AIA §103, reciting a newly recognised utility for a known composition does not by itself confer patentability (in re Kao‑type reasoning), though In re‑style "new use" arguments are available.

6. Priority / effective‑date risk (worth flagging)

US11092580 was filed 2020‑02‑28 with a 2009‑11‑20 priority claim (family anticipates expiry 2030‑11‑19, consistent with the 2009 date). If any granted claim limitation (particularly the ZnO/SnO₂ film and the 425–500 °C range as claimed) is held not to be supported by the 2009 priority disclosure, the effective date shifts and a decade of intervening electronic‑nose/VOC‑diagnostics art (2010–2019) becomes available — art that would make the case considerably easier to invalidate than the 2005–2007 references above. I cannot resolve that support question from the truncated text supplied; the 2011 WO description (¶¶ [0088]–[0092]) does describe a ZnO/SnO₂ paste film and 400 °C/450 °C operation, which argues support exists, but the specific 425 °C lower bound is not expressly exemplified.

7. Bottom line

On the record available:

• Likely obvious as a combination of Garner 2007 (faecal VOC diagnosis via GC, with an express call for a rapid diagnostic device) in view of Nilsson 2005 (GC–UV, i.e., non‑MS GC detection), further in view of a MOX chemiresistor reference (Kaur‑type review; US20110259080A1 for the ZnO sensing chemistry), and optionally US2002/0182739A1 (Sadik). The case is strongest for elements A–F and H; every one of those elements is either expressly taught or a routine design choice in the cited art.
• The genuinely contestable features are the 425–500 °C operating window and the mixed ZnO + SnO₂ film, both of which are, on their face, optimisations of known result‑effective parameters — presumptively obvious under KSR, but potentially salvageable by applicant on criticality/unexpected‑results grounds. This is where I would expect the invalidity/validity fight to be decided.
• Confidence: moderate on the claim mapping (it rests on the published, not printed, claim set) and moderate on the prior‑art content (the ISR citations and the Garner abstract are well evidenced; the Kaur review and the specific mixed‑film disclosure I could not fully verify from the snippets retrieved).

If you can supply the printed claims of US11092580B2 and the complete "Citations" and "Cited By" tables from the Google Patents page, I can firm up §3–§5 to a claim‑chart level.