US 11105660

I'll verify this patent number against live sources before summarizing.

Verification note on the search

I ran the requested checks. Two things to flag up front, per your strict-literal rule:

1. No CAFC 2026 (or any) appellate docket activity for US 11,105,660 was found. Searches against CAFC/Federal Circuit docket material and PTAB/district-court material returned no hits tying 11105660 to any appeal, IPR/PGR, or infringement suit. I could not query the CAFC docket system directly — only general web search — so treat "no CAFC 2026 docket" as not found, not as certified absent.
2. Literal-string false positive. Searching the bare string "11105660" returns a Chinese-language secondary source (Baidu Wenku) that labels 申请号 "US11105660" for a 2005-04-13 application titled Poly(trimethylene-ethylene ether) glycols, published as US07244810B2. That record is not this patent and not an alternate version of it — the authoritative record for US 11,105,660 shows application 16/907,414. It appears to be a serial number (11/105,660) rendered without the slash in a low-quality aggregator. I am flagging it rather than silently discarding it, since you asked for literal treatment of the ID. I have not treated it as relevant below.

No results were returned for similar-but-different patent numbers, and none were substituted.

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Bibliographic data — US 11,105,660 B2

Abstract (verbatim): "A washable physiological state sensing device, including a flexible carrier, a flexible electrode and a flexible conductive circuit. The flexible carrier is made of elastic material and provided with a bonding surface; The flexible electrode is arranged on the bonding surface, and provided with a flexible substrate and a plurality of conductive particles; The conductive particles are doped in the flexible substrate, and the flexible substrate is made of elastic material. The flexible conductive circuit is arranged on the bonding surface and electrically connected with the flexible electrode."

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Independent claim 1 — plain-language overview

There is exactly one independent claim. In plain terms, claim 1 covers a washable body-signal sensor made of four cooperating parts, all four of which are required:

1. A flexible carrier — made of an elastic material, and having a "bonding surface" that acts as the mounting face for everything else.
2. A flexible electrode on that bonding surface — the electrode is not a plated metal layer; it is a flexible substrate (itself an elastic material) with conductive particles doped into it. The particles are dispersed in the matrix rather than deposited on top.
3. A flexible conductive circuit on the bonding surface, electrically connected to the flexible electrode — i.e., the trace/lead-out.
4. A flexible cover made of an elastic material, covering at least part of the carrier's bonding surface and the flexible conductive circuit, while leaving part of the flexible electrode exposed so it can contact skin or another component.

Point worth noting for infringement/validity analysis: the flexible cover is recited in independent claim 1, not as an optional embodiment. In the Summary of the Invention the cover is introduced as "in one embodiment," but it was elevated into the sole independent claim. So a device lacking the elastic cover with a window opening over the electrode falls outside claim 1 on its face.

Claim 1 is written as an apparatus claim with no method steps and no electrical-performance limitations (no impedance, wash-cycle count, or conductivity range). The "washable" character is carried by structural composition (elastic carrier + doped-particle electrode + elastic cover), not by a numerical test.

Dependent claims (all ultimately depend from claim 1)

• Claim 2 — carrier material is PU, TPU, silicon, rubber, epoxy resin, or textile fiber.
• Claim 3 — flexible substrate material is PU, TPU, silicon, or rubber.
• Claim 4 — conductive particles are graphene, carbon nano-tube, or nano silver.
• Claim 5 — flexible cover material is PU, TPU, silicon, rubber, or a UV-resistant coating.
• Claim 6 — adds an anti-ultraviolet film overlaid on the flexible cover.
• Claim 7 — adds an electronic component electrically connected to the flexible conductive circuit.
• Claim 8 — that electronic component is a temperature sensor, an acoustic transducer, or a combination.
• Claim 9 — the electronic component is electrically connected to the flexible electrode.

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Prosecution and prior-art posture

• Office action mailed 2021-02-26 (non-final); response entered 2021-05-27; Notice of Allowance 2021-06-21; grant 2021-08-31. Single-round prosecution, roughly 14 months from filing to issue.
• Prior art cited by the examiner (8 references): US 2013/0041235 A1 (Rogers), US 2017/0354372 A1 (Nanowear Inc.), US 10,054,496 B2 (Samsung Display), US 2019/0022400 A1 (Element Science), US 2020/0353239 A1 (Kinaptic LLC), US 2020/0243807 A1 (Honda Motor), US 2020/0249197 A1 (Kuan-Chien Chou — same inventor), US 2020/0330002 A1 (National Taiwan University).
• Notable: US 2020/0249197 A1 ("Stretchable and flexible sensing device," Chou, priority 2019-01-31) is by the same inventor and is closely related subject matter (Chinese counterpart CN 111493817 B appears in the "similar documents" set). Any third party attacking this patent will likely start there on §102/§103 and on double-patenting/obviousness-type double-patenting theories.
• Family prior art cited (6): CN 105326495 A, CN 105455804 B, TWI 565446 B, CN 205433673 U, TWI 631932 B, CN 109044326 B.
• Forward citations (examiner-cited): US 2023/0286660 A1 and US 12,497,179 B2, both Goodrich Corporation, "Stretch sensor assembly and method of assembling stretch sensor assemblies for evacuation system inflatables" (priority 2022-03-08). These indicate the disclosure is being treated as prior art in stretch-sensor art, not that it is being litigated.

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Stated technical scope (from the specification)

The patent frames the problem as: conventional wearable sensors use plastic bodies with large sensing probes causing skin discomfort, and their exposed electrodes are electroplated/lithographed metal layers that oxidize and delaminate when washed. The asserted solution is a doped-particle elastic electrode on an elastic carrier plus a stretchable printed/coated conductive circuit (graphene, nano silver, or carbon nanotube), optionally sealed under an elastic cover with a UV-resistant layer. Hot-press, hot-melt adhesive, or other adhesives are disclosed as bonding methods. Applications listed: heart/breath/bowel sound, temperature, ECG/EKG, EEG, EMG, fistula blood-flow sound, body electrical impedance, and use as stimulation or heating electrodes. Geometries disclosed include linear, L-shape, N-shape, and S-shape, with arc angles/chamfers at circuit turning points.

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Explicit uncertainty

• I do not have direct USPTO PatentCenter or CAFC docket-system access in this session; findings on status and absence of litigation are based on web-search evidence, not on an authoritative docket query. No CAFC 2026 activity for US 11,105,660 was found — I cannot affirm it does not exist.
• Google Patents' "Active" legal status and the 2040-06-22 expiration are the aggregator's assumptions, not legal conclusions; the 4th-year fee payment is a recorded event, the expiration projection is not.
• The CN 112315477 B counterpart's machine-translated claim 8 reads "temperature sensor, a radio sensor, and combinations thereof," where the US claim 8 reads "acoustic transducer." This is most likely translation variance; I did not obtain the Chinese original to confirm.
• I have not verified the full 8-reference prior-art set beyond the citation listing itself — those are examiner cites as reported by the aggregator.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11105660 across patent litigation sources.

Initial searches returned no relevant hits. Let me try more targeted sources and search the assignee.

Let me try more specific litigation database searches.

Findings: No Known Litigation Involving US Patent 11,105,660

Based on my searches of patent litigation sources — including the Unified Patents litigation portal, CourtListener/RECAP, and general web searches keyed specifically to the number 11105660 — I found no record of any lawsuit (district court or Federal Circuit) involving US Patent 11,105,660.

What I checked and what I found

Important caveat on scope

• The patent itself lists no litigation. The authoritative Google Patents page for US11105660B2 contains a "Cited By" table and a "Citations" table (prior-art references), but no litigation/docket data. On Google Patents, active litigation is normally surfaced; its absence is consistent with there being no known suits.
• No PTAB proceedings either. I found no IPR/PGR/CBM involving this patent in the Unified Patents PTAB data returned.

Identifiers for the record (interpreted literally, not auto-corrected)

• Patent: US 11,105,660 B2 — "Washable physiological state sensing device"
• Application: US 16/907,414 (filed 2020-06-22)
• Priority: 2019-07-19 (provisional 62/876,092)
• Inventor: Kuan-Chien Chou
• Assignee: Soft Sense Life Tech Pte Ltd (Singapore); recorded assignment from Chou, Reel/Frame 052997/0192, effective 2020-06-22
• Status: Active; 4th-year maintenance fee paid 2024-11-19; anticipated expiration 2040-06-22
• Family: CN 112315477 B (Chinese counterpart)
• Cited-by (patent literature only, not litigation): US 2023/0286660 A1 (Goodrich Corporation) and US 12,497,179 B2 (Goodrich Corporation)

Conclusion

No litigation is known involving US Patent 11,105,660 as of the search date. To be fully transparent about confidence: I could not access PACER or the Unified Patents caselist directly (search surfaced their content only indirectly), so a very recent, low-profile filing could conceivably exist that is not indexed in the sources reached. However, across every source I did search, there is no indication of any plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, or filing date for a suit on this patent. Any such case would most likely be brought by the current assignee, Soft Sense Life Tech Pte Ltd, but no assertion activity by that entity was found.

If you need a negative confirmed against live docket feeds, I'd recommend a direct PACER/RECAP docket search and a Docket Navigator or Lex Machina query for the patent number and for the assignee name — tools I could not query directly here.

I'll verify the structured data with a couple of targeted searches before reporting.

Let me run a few more checks to make sure nothing has slipped past the ODP index.

PTAB / AIA Trial Proceedings — US 11,105,660 B2

Verification performed: Structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal, most recent ingest) + supplemental web searches on the patent number, the title ("washable physiological state sensing device"), the assignee (Soft Sense Life Tech Pte Ltd), and the inventor (Kuan-Chien Chou). Searches returned no AIA trial petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal record naming US 11,105,660. Confirming searches at PTAB E2E, USPTO PTAB Decisions, and CourtListener surfaced nothing either.

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. Breakdown by status: 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denied.

Bottom line for a defendant: there is no PTAB record to lean on, and there is no PTAB estoppel protecting you. This patent has never been tested in an AIA trial — not once. That cuts both ways. On the plus side, every prior-art ground you can find is still fully available to you; no petitioner has burned any of it, and no panel has construed a single term. On the minus side, you get zero benefit from an earlier challenger's work product, zero narrowed claim set, and zero "claims already canceled" leverage in licensing negotiations. Any demand letter asserting claims 1–9 asserts a claim set that is 100% intact and 100% untested. If the patent owner is asserting this patent, the PTAB runway is open and you would be first in line — but first in line is a cost, not a gift.

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Proceedings

None. There are no proceedings to describe. I am not reporting any proceeding number, petitioner, panel, institution date, FWD, settlement, or appeal, because none exists on the record I can access.

For completeness, here is what is not a PTAB proceeding but is sometimes confused with one when reviewing this patent's file:

• US 2020/0249197 A1 (Kuan-Chien Chou, filed 2019-01-31, "Stretchable and flexible sensing device") — listed on the face of US 11,105,660 as an examiner-cited reference. Same inventor, closely related subject matter, but it is prior art cited against this patent during prosecution, not an AIA trial.
• CN 112315477 B — the Chinese counterpart application (CN 202010544460.6, filed 2020-06-15), granted 2024-07-30 and listed as active. This is a family member, not a PTAB proceeding, but it means the family is live in China and a parallel validity attack there is a separate track.
• US 2023/0286660 A1 / US 12,497,179 B2 (Goodrich Corporation, priority 2022-03-08, "Stretch sensor assembly…") — the sole forward citation to the '660 patent. Relevant only as evidence the disclosure is being read in the stretchable-sensor space; no adversarial relationship to Soft Sense.

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Prosecution backdrop (the only "challenge" this patent has ever faced)

The '660 patent was granted 2021-08-31 off Application No. 16/907,414 (filed 2020-06-22, priority to provisional 62/876,092 filed 2019-07-19). The file history is remarkably thin:

• 2021-02-26 — Non-Final Office Action mailed
• 2021-05-27 — Response entered
• 2021-06-21 — Notice of Allowance
• 2021-08-11 — Patent grant

One non-final rejection, one response, allowance. No final rejection, no appeal, no examiner's answer, no post-grant challenge. That is a fast, clean prosecution — which is a mild signal that the examiner's cited art (Rogers US 2013/0041235, Nanowear US 2017/0354372, Samsung US 10,054,496, Element Science US 2019/0022400, Honda US 2020/0243807, Chou US 2020/0249197, NTU US 2020/0330002, Kinaptic US 2020/0353239) was not pushed very hard. Those eight references are the natural starting point for any new petition, but note the § 325(d) / Advanced Bionics risk: a panel may be reluctant to institute on art already considered, so you will want to lead with references that are not among these eight, or with a materially new combination or teaching.

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Strategic summary

Claim status. All nine claims are alive and untouched: independent claim 1 (flexible carrier + doped flexible electrode + flexible conductive circuit + flexible cover) and dependents claims 2–9. Claims 2–5 are pure material-selection recitations (carrier materials; substrate materials; graphene/CNT/nano-silver particles; cover materials), claim 6 adds an anti-UV film, and claims 7–9 add an electronic component (temperature sensor and/or acoustic transducer) electrically connected to the circuit and/or electrode. There are no canceled claims and no claims whose construction has been adjudicated anywhere — the only claim-construction event in this patent's life was the examiner's implicit reading during prosecution. For an invalidity theory, that means claims 1 and 3 are the pressure points: claim 1's "conductive particles doped in the flexible substrate" and claim 3's bare list of PU/TPU/silicon/rubber substrates are the kind of functional-plus-genus drafting that draws § 112(a) written-description and § 103 obviousness attacks. Nothing in the record shows the patent owner has had to defend the "doped particle" electrode concept against a competent prior-art combination.

Estoppel landscape. There is none. 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only to a petitioner that obtains an FWD, and no IPR, PGR, or CBM has ever been instituted. Consequently: (i) no party is estopped from raising any ground; (ii) no ground has been "reasonably could have raised"-ed away; (iii) there is no Sotera stipulation, no Fintiv record, and no General Plastic "follow-on petition" taint to worry about. Your § 315(b) one-year clock is purely a function of when you (or a real party in interest or privy) were served with a complaint alleging infringement — and there is no litigation I could identify on this patent, so that clock likely has not started for most would-be petitioners. When it does start, remember the statutory clock does not apply to a § 315(c) joinder request, which is the usual escape hatch if you file late.

Pattern signals. No repeat-petitioner pattern, because there is no petitioner. No PTAB-appeal aggressiveness by the patent owner, because there has been nothing to appeal. No defensive aggregator — Unified Patents, RPX, or otherwise — appears anywhere in the chain; the only assignee on record is Soft Sense Life Tech Pte. Ltd. (Singapore), a small-entity owner that assigned in on 2020-06-22 and paid the 4th-year maintenance fee on 2024-11-19. That combination — small entity, sole patent in the family, no litigation docket I can find, no PTAB history — is characteristic of a patent that has not yet been seriously asserted or seriously challenged.

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Recommended next steps

1. Do not build a defense around PTAB history — there is none. If you receive a demand letter citing US 11,105,660, assume all of claims 1–9 are in play. There is no FWD to quote and no canceled claim to point at.
2. Before filing anything at the PTAB, do a fresh § 102/§ 103 search that deliberately avoids the eight examiner-cited references. Lead with art outside the prosecution record to head off a § 325(d) discretionary denial under Advanced Bionics / Becton, Dickinson. The strongest targets are: (a) pre-2019 stretchable dry-electrode art teaching a conductive filler (carbon black, CNT, graphene, silver flake) dispersed in an elastomeric matrix — this is a crowded, well-documented field and claim 1's core is a 2-D generalization of it; and (b) § 112(a) written-description attacks on the "doped" claim 1 / claim 3 genus, since the spec gives essentially no guidance on doping ranges beyond "adjust according to actual demand."
3. Watch the § 315(b) clock from day one of service. If litigation is filed, calendar the one-year deadline immediately. If you miss it, § 315(c) joinder to an existing IPR (if one exists by then) is the only route in — and none exists today.
4. Check the Chinese counterpart separately. CN 112315477 B is granted and active (grant published 2024-07-30). A CNIPA invalidation there is a different proceeding with different law and different prior art, and it can be run in parallel if you have exposure in China.
5. If you need a definitive negative on PTAB activity before relying on the absence of estoppel, pull the docket directly rather than trusting any secondary source: search the patent number at PTAB E2E and the ODP API, and the "11105660" string at CourtListener for any CAFC appeal. My searches found nothing, but a live E2E pull is the only authoritative confirmation for a filing made in the last few weeks.

Caveat on confidence: I have high confidence in "zero proceedings as of the ODP ingest" for this patent, based on the structured block plus repeated null-result web searches. I have lower confidence about complete negative coverage of the last few weeks of filings, since ODP lags and PTAB petitions sometimes take time to index — hence step 5.

I'll verify the assignment record and cross-reference the parties before writing.

Ownership reconstruction — US 11,105,660 B2 ("Washable physiological state sensing device")

Method note / limitation (read first). I could not execute a live query against USPTO Assignment Center in this session — the search tool returned unrelated results for the reel/frame query. The assignment data below is taken from the USPTO assignment records as indexed in the Google Patents legal-events feed (https://patents.google.com/patent/US11105660/en#legalEvents), which mirrors the same underlying reel/frame data. Only one reel/frame is disclosed anywhere I could retrieve: 052997/0192. The correspondent of record on that reel is not exposed in the retrievable metadata, so I flag it as undetermined rather than guessing. Verify against the reel image at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html before relying on the correspondent field.

Inventors

Background on the inventor (press-level, not record evidence): Chou graduated from the Institute of Mechanical Engineering, National Taiwan University, and previously led the R&D center and medical business unit at Compal Electronics before founding Soft Sense (VCBeat, 2026-07-03).

Unusual patterns: Mostly absent. The red flag you asked about — all inventors leaving the original assignee within 12 months of filing, which precedes portfolio fire-sales — does not appear. The single inventor is still the founder of the assignee and the company raised a new round in July 2026 (see below). Two patterns are worth noting:

• Single-inventor patent assigned to the inventor's own startup on the day of filing (both 2020-06-22). This is a housekeeping assignment, not a transfer between unrelated parties — it tells you nothing about NPE intent, but it does mean there is no record of any corporate transfer to analyze.
• Related but separately-owned family. Chou is also a named inventor on US 12,007,355 B2 ("Stretchable and flexible sensing device," priority 2019-01-31), which is owned personally by Chou Kuan-Chien and Soh Boon-Ping, not by Soft Sense Life Tech. That is a different ownership chain — do not read the two together as one portfolio.

Original assignee

SOFT SENSE LIFE TECH PTE. LTD. — Singapore Exempt Private Company Limited by Shares, UEN 201902756Z, incorporated 2019-01-22, status Live Company.

• Primary line of business: SSIC 72106 – Research and experimental development on medical science; user-described activity "RESEARCH AND DEVELOPMENT OF SOFT BIOSENSOR" (secondary SSIC 72104, R&D of engineering products). Officers: 4–7 depending on vintage; issued share capital SGD 10,000.
• Registered addresses on record: 25 Bukit Batok Crescent #02-06, The Elitist, Singapore 658066 (earlier listing) and 21 Bukit Batok Crescent #02-76, WCEGA Tower, Singapore 658065 (later listing). Both are ordinary multi-tenant commercial buildings — not registered-agent/virtual-office service addresses.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Consistent with yes, on press evidence, though I have no claim chart: the company describes a machine-washable, TPU-electrode, textile-laminated sensing platform (ECG error within 3%; <5% signal attenuation after 100 machine washes; 0.2 mm sensing layer, >100% damage-free stretch). Reports dated 2026-07-03 describe a multimillion-USD angel round and first-generation smart apparel entering small-batch production in July 2026, with pre-clinical validation at Chinese tertiary hospitals. The same reporting states the company holds "five valid Chinese and U.S. invention patents, with another five applications in progress." A related mainland entity, 厦门冠钧智创科技有限公司 (Xiamen Guanjun Zhichuang Technology Co., Ltd.), was established 2025-11-04 and is described as the Soft Sense SPV/operating vehicle — the press does not state an assignment of US 11,105,660 to it, and no such assignment is recorded.
• Current status: Operating. No acquisition, dissolution, bankruptcy, or insolvency event found.

Family context: Chinese counterpart CN112315477A (pub. 2021-02-05) granted as CN112315477B (2024-07-30), from CN application 202010544460.6A filed 2020-06-15 — same family, independently active.

Assignment timeline

Exactly one recorded assignment exists for this patent.

• 2020-06-22 (executed) / recorded 2020-06-22 — Reel 052997/0192
  • Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: CHOU, KUAN-CHIEN (individual inventor; also the applicant of provisional 62/876,092 filed 2019-07-19)
  • Assignee: SOFT SENSE LIFE TECH PTE. LTD. (Singapore)
  • Correspondent: Not determinable from the retrievable record. Google Patents' legal-events feed for the AS entry exposes only the reel/frame (052997/0192), the free-form text, and the effective date — no correspondent name. For completeness: prosecution counsel of record on the face of the patent is McClure, Qualey & Rodack, LLP, while a related Soft Sense patent (US 12,089,663 B2) lists Merchant & Gould P.C. Those are prosecution firms and are not confirmed to be the recording correspondent here; two different firms across the two patents would in any event argue against a single repeat-player attorney. Treat the correspondent field as open.
  • Context: Founder-to-own-startup housekeeping assignment — the inventor conveyed his own rights to the company he founded, recorded contemporaneously with the 2020-06-22 filing of the non-provisional (US 16/907,414), which claims priority to provisional 62/876,092 (2019-07-19). No consideration/acquisition context is visible.
  • Not an assignment, but on the same record (do not miscount): 2020-06-22/2020-06-30 entity-status events (undiscounted → small entity), 2021-02-26 non-final office action, 2021-05-27 response, 2021-06-21 notice of allowance, 2021-08-11 patent grant, 2024-11-19 payment of 4th-year maintenance fee (M2551, small entity). A small-entity election is consistent with a startup; it is not diagnostic of NPE status either way (asserters elect it too).

If Assignment Center shows additional reels for this patent, they post-date the sources I could retrieve — re-run the reel lookup before finalizing.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11105660
    2019 : Provisional application filed by inventor Chou
         : Soft Sense Life Tech incorporated in Singapore
    2020 : Nonprovisional application filed on 22 Jun
         : Inventor assigns rights to Soft Sense Reel 052997 frame 0192
    2021 : Patent US11105660B2 granted on 31 Aug
    2024 : Fourth year maintenance fee paid
    2026 : Soft Sense announces angel funding round
         : Smart apparel production planned

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The only recorded transfer is inventor → Soft Sense Life Tech Pte. Ltd. (reel 052997/0192, 2020-06-22). Name contains no "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix; the assignee is an ACRA-registered Live Singapore Exempt Private Company (UEN 201902756Z, inc. 2019-01-22) with a stated R&D-of-biosensor business purpose, 4–7 officers, issued capital, and a commercial (not registered-agent) address. That combination is the opposite of the shell profile.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. Neither assignor CHOU nor assignee Soft Sense Life Tech appears on the Acacia / Marathon / Intellectual Ventures / IPNav / Wi-LAN / Converso / Vringo / Pendrell / Innovatio / MPHJ / Lumen View / Round Rock / Spangenberg sets, nor on any Unified Patents or RPX high-frequency-plaintiff listing that surfaced in search. No infringement suit naming US 11,105,660 or its owner was found.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (not a finding). There is only one recorded assignment, so recurrence cannot be established — one link is definitionally not a pattern. The reel/frame 052997/0192 correspondent name is not exposed in the retrievable data. Note for contrast: prosecution counsel differs across the Soft Sense portfolio (McClure, Qualey & Rodack on this patent; Merchant & Gould on US 12,089,663 B2), which is a mild counter-indicator to single-attorney control.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. One corporate assignment in six years (2020-06-22), and it runs from an individual to his own company, not through chained LLCs. No shared correspondent address, no common-principal LLC sequence.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. No suit found. The sole assignment (2020-06-22) predates grant (2021-08-31) by ~14 months and post-dates the provisional by ~11 months, i.e. it was executed at filing, not staged before an assertion.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 record for Soft Sense Life Tech or Chou; the assignee is a going concern that announced financing in July 2026 and paid its 4th-year maintenance fee on 2024-11-19.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. Privateering requires an operating company → NPE transfer; here the transferor is the individual inventor and the transferee is a startup that is itself commercializing the technology and litigating nothing.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at the operating startup. No evidence of RPX / AST / LOT Network / Unified Patents / OIN acquisition or membership.

Verdict

Insufficient data — per the rubric's own definition, the record contains only the original assignment (reel 052997/0192, executed and recorded 2020-06-22, inventor CHOU, Kuan-Chien → Soft Sense Life Tech Pte. Ltd.).

That label is about the thinness of the paper trail, not about suspicion: every affirmative NPE signal above is absent, and the evidence that does exist points the other way — the assignee is a live ACRA-registered Singapore R&D company (UEN 201902756Z) whose stated business is soft-biosensor R&D, it paid its 4th-year maintenance fee as a small entity on 2024-11-19, and as of 2026-07-03 it was reported to have raised a multimillion-dollar angel round with first-generation machine-washable smart apparel entering production. I decline to call this "Operating-company assertion" only because that category requires proof of suit against actual competitors and I found no litigation; and I decline to call it "Defensive / non-asserting" because no defensive aggregator is in the chain — it simply has never been asserted.

Verify at: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html and https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (patent number 11105660 / application 16/907,414), cross-checked against https://patents.google.com/patent/US11105660/en#legalEvents.

I'll verify the patent record and pull details on each cited reference before analyzing §102 exposure.

Now let me pull details on the remaining cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 11,105,660 B2

0. Record verification and scope note

Number searched literally: 11105660. The record returned is unambiguously:

I did not return or substitute any similar number. Two housekeeping flags, per your strict-literal rule and the "flag contradictions" instruction:

1. Date contradiction. This task states "Current Date: April 26, 2026." The earlier generated sections and the system context state 2026-09-29. I am proceeding on the patent record, which is date-independent; but you should resolve which date governs any "as of" statements.
2. Tool limitation. I could not query USPTO PatentCenter directly; "the USPTO database" here was reached through Google Patents, Justia, and FreePatentsOnline mirrors. The authoritative full text was supplied to me and is the basis below. Anything I could not confirm from primary text is labeled [UNVERIFIED].

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1. The statutory frame that decides everything

The critical date for US 11,105,660 is 2019-07-19 (provisional 62/876,092). The AIA applies. That bifurcates the eight references on the face of the patent into two buckets:

• § 102(a)(1) art — publicly available (published or patented) before 2019-07-19. Available for both anticipation (§102) and obviousness (§103).
• § 102(a)(2) art — US patent/application publication that was effectively filed before 2019-07-19 but published after the critical date. Available under §102(a)(2), subject to the §102(b)(2) exceptions — which is where the same-inventor reference gets interesting.

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2. Master table — the eight references on the face of US 11,105,660

Google Patents' markup marks all eight with the "cited by examiner" asterisk, so I treat them as examiner-applied art, not applicant IDS art.

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3. Reference-by-reference § 102 exposure against claims 1–9

Recall the four mandatory elements of claim 1: (a) elastic flexible carrier with a bonding surface; (b) flexible electrode = flexible substrate (elastic) with conductive particles doped in it; (c) flexible conductive circuit on the bonding surface, electrically connected to the electrode; (d) elastic flexible cover over at least part of the bonding surface and the circuit, with part of the electrode exposed.

Anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every element as arranged. My candid assessment per reference:

3.1 US 2013/0041235 A1 (Rogers) — the structural workhorse

• Discloses: (a) stretchable substrate; (b) electrodes and sensing elements; (c) interconnected flexible/stretchable circuit (serpentine interconnects); (d) a "cover layer" and a barrier/encapsulation layer.
• Does not disclose: an electrode formed as an elastic substrate with conductive particles doped therein. Rogers' electrodes are evaporated/transferred metals (Au/Cr), doped inorganic semiconductors, or conductive polymers — a deposited conductor over a substrate, which is precisely the construction the patent disparages in its Background (§ "metal layer made through the process of electroplating or lithography … will be oxidized easily after washing and also separated from its carrier to fall off").
• Also misaligned: Rogers' barrier layer encapsulates the circuit; claim 1 requires the cover to leave part of the electrode exposed.
• § 102 targets: none for claim 1. Realistic §102 exposure only to claim 8 (sensors — Rogers discloses temperature sensing and biopotential electrodes) and arguably claim 2 (silicone/PDMS as the elastic carrier material). Expect this reference to be the primary § 103 backbone, not a §102 reference.

3.2 US 2017/0354372 A1 (Nanowear)

• Discloses: dry textile electrodes, garment integration, biopotential monitoring.
• Does not disclose: a doped-particle elastic electrode over an elastic carrier, nor a flexible cover with a window. Textile electrodes are woven/knitted conductive yarn, not a doped elastomer matrix.
• § 102 targets: none for claim 1. Possible §102 exposure to claim 2 in its "textile fiber" alternative. Otherwise a §103 secondary reference.

3.3 US 10,054,496 B2 (Samsung Display)

• Discloses: a wearable temperature-sensing device.
• Does not disclose: the claim 1 architecture at all.
• § 102 targets: claim 8 only — the "temperature sensor" alternative. This is a clean §102(a)(1) reference against claim 8's temperature-sensor species, and nothing more.

3.4 US 2019/0022400 A1 (Element Science)

• Discloses: patient-engagement substrates with sensing electrodes and flexible circuitry; electrode/adhesive layers; moisture-management substrates; water-resistant housings.
• Does not disclose: doped conductive particles in an elastic electrode substrate; the reference is an electrode-housing/defibrillator architecture, not a materials-based electrode.
• § 102 targets: none for claim 1. §103 relevance on "washable/water-resistant wearable electrode" framing.

3.5 US 2020/0353239 A1 (Kinaptic) — closest structural reference

• Discloses: (a) "bottom substrate comprising a flexible, elastic material" — express elastic substrate; (b) electrodes as a preprinted conductive pattern in direct face-to-face skin contact; (c) conductive pattern/wiring; (d) "encapsulating adhesive layer" plus a top substrate laminate — a functional cover over the wiring with the electrodes exposed for skin contact.
• Does not disclose: element (b) in its claimed form. Kinaptic's electrode is a printed conductive ink/pattern on an adhesive print media layer — a deposited conductor, not conductive particles doped into an elastic substrate. That is a genuine, non-trivial difference, and the patent's specification specifically claims the doping as the wash durability mechanism.
• § 102 targets: closest to claim 1, but on the literal text I would not call it a clean §102 anticipation of claim 1 — the doped-particle electrode limitation is missing. Its strongest §102 exposure is to claim 2 (elastic/fabric carrier materials) and claim 7 (embedded electronic device electrically connected to the conductive pattern).
• § 103 role: this is the most dangerous §103 primary reference for claim 1, combinable with a doped-elastomer electrode teaching.

3.6 US 2020/0243807 A1 (Honda) — second-closest structural reference

• Discloses: a flexible/stretchable platform (battery) onto which wearable sensors and processing/transmitting electronics are integrated; inherent flexible encapsulation.
• Does not disclose: the doped-particle electrode, or a cover with a deliberate electrode opening (it is a platform/integration disclosure).
• § 102 targets: none for claim 1. §103 relevance to claims 7–9 (electronic component electrically connected), which is its real purpose in this art.

3.7 US 2020/0249197 A1 (Chou — same inventor) — the reference with the highest real-world validity stakes

• Discloses: elastic membrane with electrode contacts; strain sensor printed on the membrane electrically connected to the contacts; protective film (explicitly thermoplastic polyurethane or UV-resistant material) bonded by hot pressing or liquid/solid adhesive; processing unit; EMI-prevention unit. Compare that to US 11,105,660's claim 5 (cover material selected from … TPU … or UV resistant coating), claim 6 (UV film), and the spec's bonding disclosure ("direct hot pressing, or hot melt adhesive, or other adhesives"). The overlap is substantial.
• § 102(a)(2) status is legally fragile for the examiner's use. Because Chou is the sole inventor of US 11,105,660 and is a named inventor on US 2020/0249197 (with Soh Boon-Ping), the §102(b)(2)(A) exception (subject matter obtained directly or indirectly from the inventor) and, if both were commonly owned by Soft Sense Life Tech by 2019-07-19, the §102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership exception, would disqualify it as §102(a)(2) prior art. [UNVERIFIED: I did not confirm the recorded ownership chain of US 16/747,663 as of 2019-07-19.]
• Practical consequence: this reference's real bite is likely obviousness-type double patenting against US 12,007,355 B2 and §103, not §102.
• § 102 targets: if the §102(b)(2) exceptions do not apply, it is a serious §102 candidate against claims 5 and 6 (TPU/UV-resistant cover; UV film) and a §103 candidate against claim 1.

3.8 US 2020/0330002 A1 (National Taiwan University)

• Discloses: a flexible piezoelectric patch sensor for physiological measurement.
• Does not disclose: doped conductive particles in an elastic electrode substrate. Its sensing element is piezoelectric (polarized polymer/ceramic), a different transduction mechanism.
• § 102 targets: none for claim 1. Marginal §103 relevance.

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4. Foreign art cited in the CN counterpart (examined on the CN 112315477 side)

These appear in the "Family Cites Families (6)" set — i.e., cited during prosecution of the Chinese family member, not listed on the face of the US patent. They are nonetheless §102(a)(1)/(a)(2) art against the same 2019-07-19 critical date.

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5. Bottom line

1. No reference on the face of US 11,105,660 is a clean §102 anticipation of claim 1. Every one of the eight is missing at least one claim 1 element, and the consistent gap is the same one: an electrode made of an elastic substrate with conductive particles doped into it. The second consistent gap is the elastic cover with a deliberate electrode opening (claim 1, element (d)).

2. Most relevant prior art, ranked for claim 1:

1. US 2020/0353239 A1 (Kinaptic) — elastic substrate + printed electrodes + encapsulating layer; closest structure, used as §103 primary.
2. US 2013/0041235 A1 (Rogers) — the foundational stretchable-skin-electronics disclosure; §103 backbone across claims 1–8.
3. US 2020/0249197 A1 (Chou, same inventor) — highest practical risk (double patenting + §103), but vulnerable to the §102(b)(2)(A)/(C) exceptions.
4. US 2020/0243807 A1 (Honda) — §103 for claims 7–9.
5. US 2019/0022400 A1 (Element Science) — §103 on washable/water-resistant wearable electrodes.
6. US 2017/0354372 A1 (Nanowear) — §103 / claim 2 textile alternative.
7. US 10,054,496 B2 (Samsung Display) — clean §102(a)(1) against claim 8's temperature-sensor species.
8. US 2020/0330002 A1 (NTU) — marginal.

3. Ranking by §102 bite, honestly stated:

• Only one genuinely clean §102 hit exists: Samsung Display US 10,054,496 B2 → claim 8 (temperature sensor).
• Kinaptic → claim 2 / claim 7, and Nanowear → claim 2 (textile fiber), are arguable §102 hits on dependent claims only.
• Everything else is a §103 reference.

4. A prosecution-history inference worth acting on. Claim 1 as issued recites the flexible cover, yet the specification's Summary of the Invention introduces the cover only "in one embodiment." That asymmetry is strong circumstantial evidence that the flexible cover was added to claim 1 by amendment during the single round of prosecution (non-final OA 2021-02-26 → response 2021-05-27 → allowance 2021-06-21). If so, the examiner's §102 rejection was against a cover-less claim 1, which reframes which reference was treated as the closest anticipatory art. [HYPOTHESIS — I did not retrieve the originally-filed claim set from US 2021/0018345 A1 to verify.] Verifying the pre-grant publication's claim 1 is the single highest-value next step for a validity opinion.

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6. Additional art not on the face of the patent that a challenger or defender should search

Because the claim 1 gap is the doped-particle elastic electrode, the most relevant art may be outside the eight cited references:

• US 10,736,213 B2 / US 2020/0068708 A1 (L.I.F.E. Corporation S.A., Longinotti-Buitoni et al.) — "conductive ink typically includes between about 40-60% conductive particles, between about 30-50% binder …", used in stretchable conductive ink patterns on garments. This is squarely a conductive-particle-loaded elastic conductor, and is a more direct §102/§103 hit on the claim 1 electrode limitation than any of the eight cited references. Its family priority predates 2019-07-19. Flagging it because it did not appear in the citation record supplied — it surfaced in my searches, not from the patent's face.

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7. Confidence and what I could not verify

• High confidence: the bibliographic record, the claim set, the identity and dates of the eight cited references, the §102(a)(1)/(a)(2) classification, and the substantive gaps in claim 1.
• Medium confidence: the material-composition comparison for Kinaptic and Rogers (based on abstract/claim/BRIEF SUMMARY text, not full-text claim charts of every paragraph).
• Low / explicitly unverified: (i) the original claims of US 2021/0018345 A1; (ii) filing dates marked [UNVERIFIED]; (iii) the ownership chain of US 16/747,663 as of 2019-07-19, which governs the §102(b)(2)(C) exception for the Chou reference; (iv) the pre-grant A-publication date of CN 109044326.
• I am not representing that no better art exists — I am reporting what the citation record and the searches I could run support. A full-text, limitation-by-limitation claim chart against each of the eight references would be required before relying on any anticipation conclusion.

I'll ground the obviousness analysis in the actual cited references before charting them.

Now the remaining cited references — Nanowear, Element Science, Kinaptic, Samsung, and the family references.

Obviousness analysis — US 11,105,660 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Note on dates before I begin. The task header gives the current date as April 26, 2026, while my working context today is September 29, 2026. I flag the discrepancy rather than silently pick one; nothing in the analysis below turns on it, because all the art at issue predates the 2019-07-19 critical date by construction.

Scope. I analyze only the nine issued claims as they appear in the authoritative text, using the eight U.S. references and six family references listed on the face of US 11,105,660. Where I have not retrieved a reference's specification, I say so.

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1. Legal framework and the critical date

• AIA applies (filed 2020-06-22). Effective filing date is 2019-07-19, the provisional 62/876,092 filing, assuming the provisional supports claim 1 — I do not have the provisional, so that assumption is unverified and is itself a validity battleground.
• Graham/KSR factors govern: scope and content of the prior art, differences from the claims, PHOSITA level, and secondary considerations. Under KSR, the question is whether the claimed combination was predictable, not whether the references suggested it in so many words.
• No numerical limitations appear in any claim. There is no wash-cycle count, no impedance value, no conductivity range. The word "washable" sits only in the preamble as a statement of intended use. This materially weakens any applicant argument that the claims capture an unexpected result — the specification contains no comparative wash-durability data to support a secondary-considerations case, and no nexus evidence was found in the earlier sections of this analysis.

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2. Which references are actually available as prior art

This is the threshold issue and it is not trivial here.

The single most important §103 issue in this patent is US 2020/0249197 A1. It is Chou's own earlier "Stretchable and flexible sensing device" application, effectively filed 2019-01-31 — squarely before the critical date, which is why the examiner cited it. But as §102(a)(2) art it is subject to the §102(b)(2) exceptions: (A) subject matter obtained from the inventor, and (C) common ownership. This is exactly the fact pattern that would have forced the applicant to amend claim 1 to add the flexible cover. Whether those exceptions apply depends on facts I cannot fully resolve (the '197 publication appears to name Chou and Soh Boon-Ping as inventors, while '660 names Chou alone, and ownership of the two families is not identical on the face of the records I retrieved — US 12,007,355 B2 lists Chou and Soh as inventors). A third party attacking '660 should treat the §102(b)(2) exceptions as the first obstacle to any Chou-'197-based rejection, and should build the primary case on third-party art instead. That is what I do below.

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3. Claim 1 — element-by-element mapping

Reading of the mapping. Elements (a), (c) and (d) are squarely met by Kinaptic alone or in trivial combination with any of the others. Element (b) is the only limitation with genuine §103 fight in it, and only because of the word "doped." Nanowear's nanostructures are grown/coated on fibers rather than dispersed in an elastomeric matrix; the printed-elastomer dry-electrode references (CN 109044326 B, CN 105455804 B) are the better fit and were cited in the family.

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4. Grounds of rejection

Ground A — Kinaptic in view of Nanowear (and optionally Rogers).
Kinaptic discloses the elastic bottom substrate, the printed conductive pattern that is both electrode and trace, and — critically — an encapsulating layer laminated over the pattern with the electrodes left exposed for face-to-face skin contact, in a device that is by design a launderable garment/sleeve. Nanowear supplies the express teaching that such textile electrodes may be functionalized with nanoparticles/nanostructures and that the skin-contacting elements and conductive leads must be constructed to survive the wash environment of clothing, bed sheets and pillow cases. Motivation: both are wearable physiological-signal platforms in the same field; a PHOSITA asked to make Kinaptic's sleeve washable would predictably substitute a nanoparticle-filled elastic electrode (Nanowear) for a metal-layer electrode and retain Kinaptic's encapsulating laminate. Rationale: KSR (A) known elements combined by known methods with predictable result; (D) known technique applied to a known device ready for improvement.

Ground B — Chou US 2020/0249197 A1 as §102(a)(2) art in view of Kinaptic (if the §102(b)(2) exceptions are overcome).
Chou '197 discloses nearly the whole structure: elastic membranes as carrier, a printed strain sensor and electrode contacts on the membrane, and a protective film 18 with a hole 181 over the circuitry that may be thermoplastic polyurethane or UV-resistant material, bonded by hot pressing. The only gap is that the hole 181 exposes the processing unit rather than the sensing electrode, and the cover is described over a second membrane. Kinaptic closes that gap by teaching an encapsulant with the electrode left exposed. This is the strongest, most on-point two-reference combination available — which is presumably why the applicant amended to put the cover in claim 1.

Ground C — Rogers in view of Nanowear and Kinaptic.
Rogers is the foundational epidermal-electronics reference: conformal skin-mounted flexible/stretchable electronics, elastomeric substrates, encapsulating and barrier layers, and stretchable interconnects, with openings exposing the active/sensing elements. Nanowear and Kinaptic supply the washable-textile and launderable-garment context. Motivation: applying a known conformal encapsulation technique to a known wearable electrode to protect the circuitry from the environment.

Ground D — Element Science in view of CN 109044326 B.
Element Science discloses a wearable with a flexible patient-engagement substrate carrying sensing electrodes, adhesive, and flexible circuitry with waterproof connector segments for extended wear. CN 109044326 B (family-cited) discloses a fully flexible dry electrode made by printing. Motivation: extended-wear skin contact creates a recognized need for cleaning/laundering and for electrodes that do not delaminate.

Ground E — the four family references (CN 105326495 A, CN 105455804 B, CN 205433673 U, TWI 631932 B) taken together.
Collectively these teach wearable flexible skin electrodes and dry flexible electrodes with manufacturing methods. They are useful as corroboration that particle/print-based flexible dry electrodes were known in the art before 2019, but standing alone they are the weakest ground because none of them clearly shows the elastic cover element now in claim 1.

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5. Dependent claims

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6. Where the obviousness case is weak, and honest caveats

1. The §102(b)(2) exception problem with Chou '197. As explained in §2, the best reference may be statutorily disqualified. Anyone pursuing this should confirm the inventorship and ownership overlap before relying on it.
2. "Doped" is the whole case on element (b). I have not retrieved the specifications of CN 109044326 B, CN 105455804 B, CN 105326495 A, or Samsung US 10,054,496 B2. My mapping of those to "conductive particles dispersed in an elastic matrix" is based on their titles and abstracts, not on claim or paragraph-level review. The obviousness theory stands or falls on whether one of them actually discloses particle-doped elastomer electrodes rather than coated or plated ones — if all of them are coating/plating references, element (b) becomes a genuine point of novelty.
3. Claim 8's "acoustic transducer." Nothing in the cited set clearly discloses a body-sound (heart/breath/bowel) acoustic pickup in a wearable patch. Expect that alternative to survive a §103 attack on the cited record.
4. Rogers' and Kinaptic's electrode chemistry. I verified Kinaptic's lamination/encapsulation disclosure from its published summary text, and Rogers' general scope from its abstract and keyword profile, but I did not read their claim sets in full. Statements about their electrode materials should be treated as directional.
5. The "washable" limitation carries no claim weight absent a numerical test — which cuts against the patentee on validity but also means a competitor cannot design around the preamble.

Bottom line

Claim 1 is likely obvious over Kinaptic US 2020/0353239 A1 in view of Nanowear US 2017/0354372 A1, with Rogers US 2013/0041235 A1 as a reinforcing reference — and would be even more exposed to Chou US 2020/0249197 A1 if the §102(b)(2) exceptions do not apply. Dependent claims 2–7 and 9 fall with routine application of the cited art; claim 8 is obvious as to the temperature-sensor alternative (Nanowear RTD; Samsung) but not as to the acoustic-transducer alternative on this record. The claims' structure — elastic carrier + doped-particle elastic electrode + printed trace + elastic cover with an exposed electrode window — is a combination of individually known elements in a single well-populated field, producing no result that the specification shows to be unexpected.