US 11357893

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

Let me retrieve the actual claim set and check for any Federal Circuit appellate activity.

Let me check specifically for any Federal Circuit appeal involving this patent or its owner, and confirm the reexamination status.

Summary — US 11,357,893 B2 ("11357893")

Identifier note: The number you gave, 11357893, corresponds literally to US 11,357,893 B2 (comma placement only; no digit substitution). Everything below is about that specific patent — not US 11,357,895, 11,357,923, or any other near neighbor.

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Bibliographic data (authoritative)

Abstract (verbatim): "The invention is a wearable breast pump system including a housing shaped at least in part to fit inside a bra and a piezo air-pump. The piezo air-pump is fitted in the housing and forms part of a closed loop system that drives a separate, deformable diaphragm to generate negative air pressure. The diaphragm is removably mounted on a breast shield."

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Independent claim 1 — plain-language overview

The '893 patent has a single independent claim (claim 1), with claims 2–28 all depending from it. Claim 1 (as issued) reads:

"1. A breast pump device that is configured as a self-contained, in-bra wearable device, the breast pump device comprising:
a housing that includes: a battery, and a pump powered by the battery and generating negative air pressure;
a breast shield made up of a breast flange and a nipple tunnel;
a milk container that is configured to be attached to and removed from the housing; and
a diaphragm configured to be seated against a diaphragm holder that forms a recess or cavity at least in part with an external surface of the housing, the diaphragm deforming in response to changes in air pressure caused by the pump to create negative air pressure in the nipple tunnel."

In plain language, claim 1 requires five things working together:

1. A self-contained, in-bra wearable device — the whole pump (power, pumping mechanism, milk collection) sits inside the bra; nothing hangs off tubing to a separate unit.
2. A housing containing both a battery and a pump that the battery powers to make negative (suction) air pressure.
3. A two-part breast shield — a flange that contacts the breast plus an elongated nipple tunnel through which milk is drawn.
4. A detachable milk container that attaches to and is removed from the housing (removable for emptying/cleaning).
5. A diaphragm seated on a diaphragm holder, where — importantly — the holder forms a recess/cavity at least in part with an external surface of the housing. The diaphragm flexes as pump air pressure changes and thereby transmits suction into the nipple tunnel without air (or milk) passing through the pump. This "recess or cavity at least in part with an external surface of the housing" language was added by amendment during prosecution and is the limitation the patentee has relied on in enforcement (see litigation note below).

Novelty hook as framed by the specification: the diaphragm is a continuous membrane with no openings, and the milk-flow path runs beneath the diaphragm/holder rather than through it (contrasted in the specification with annular-membrane designs, e.g. the arrangement attributed to US 2013/0023821 A1 (Khalil)).

Dependent claims 2–28 — substance in brief

• Pump/architecture: piezo air pump system (2); pump positioned near the base of the housing (3).
• Physical/performance limits: total unfilled mass < 250 g (4); noise < 30 dB at max power and < 25 dB at normal power against 20 dB ambient (5).
• Breast shield: substantially rigid (6); rotatable around an inserted nipple for positioning (7); one-piece unit presenting a single continuous surface to nipple/breast (8); flange and tunnel integral, no joining stubs (9, 10); generally symmetrical about a top-to-bottom centreline (11); housing slides onto the shield using guide members (12).
• Modularity / cleanability: only the breast shield and milk container are directly removable from the housing in normal use or normal disassembly (13).
• Diaphragm: flexible membrane (14); substantially circular and self-sealing under negative pressure to a circular diaphragm holder that is part of the housing (15).
• Milk container: substantially rigid (16); attaches to a lower part of the housing and forms a flat-bottomed base (17); surface shaped to continue the housing's curved shape for comfort in-bra (18); flexible valve that self-seals under negative pressure against a milk opening in the nipple tunnel (19); mechanical or magnetic releasable attachment/latch actuated by a single push (20); removable cap with one-way valve (21); further container features (22).
• Connectivity: claim 24 adds a wireless data communications system (per the reexamination record in W.D. Wash. 2:23‑cv‑00631, document 121).
• Power: claim 28 recites a rechargeable battery plus a power charging circuit controlling charging and control electronics powered by the rechargeable battery.

⚠️ Uncertainty flag: I have verbatim text for claims 1–22 and 28 from court/PTAB reproductions, plus a description of claim 24. I could not obtain authoritative verbatim text for claims 23, 25, 26, and 27 in these searches, so I am not characterizing them. To be precise on those four, the USPTO PatentCenter / USPTO full-text claim listing for 11,357,893 should be consulted directly.

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Post-grant activity

Reexamination (USPTO):

• 90/019,410 — first ex parte reexamination, pending.
• 90/019,679 — second ex parte reexamination request, filed September 24, 2024, granted, assigned to Art Unit 3993 (Examiner Sara Clarke). The order states reexamination of claims 1–28 was requested, that a substantial new question of patentability was found, and that because the first proceeding (90/019,410) was pending, the second request was decided under MPEP § 2242(I). The request is dated February 8, 2024 on its face in the copy indexed at archive.org, and reflects a Sterns Kessler–docketed filing. Grounds discussed include Khalil (US 2013/0023821), Yodfat (US 2011/0009824), Myers (US 2008/0275386), Alvarez, and Bauer.

District court litigation:

• Shenzhen Root Technology Co., Ltd. et al. v. Chiaro Technology Ltd., W.D. Wash., No. 2:23‑cv‑00631‑KKE (filed April 28, 2023). Momcozy (Shenzhen Root and affiliates) sought declaratory judgment of non-infringement and invalidity of the '893 patent and related patents ('380, '381, '454); Chiaro (d/b/a Elvie) counterclaimed for infringement. The case resolved by Consent Judgment and Order of Dismissal With Prejudice, with Chiaro identified as "Chiaro Technology, Ltd. (in Administration)."
• Key infringement theory: the accused Momcozy S12 Pro etc. alleged not to meet the "diaphragm holder that forms a recess or cavity at least in part with an external surface of the housing" limitation.
• UK: the '893 specification and Elvie design were also at issue in Chiaro v Mayborn, EWHC (Patents) 2023/2417.

PTAB: IPR2024‑00953 (directed at US 11,413,380 B2, a sibling patent) — institution denied. IPR2024‑01296 — Final Written Decision (patent not identified in the result I retrieved; a September 2026 secondary report describes a PTAB ruling invalidating challenged claims of a "Willow Blossom wearable breast pump" patent, but which patent number that attaches to is not established by the sources I found).

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On the CAFC 2026 docket question (explicit uncertainty)

I ran targeted searches for a Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit 2026 docket tied to 11357893 / 11,357,893 / Chiaro Technology / Willow Blossom Holdco. I did not find any Federal Circuit appeal, opinion, order, or docket entry in 2026 corresponding to this patent number. All 2026 CAFC material returned by my searches concerned unrelated patents and parties (ironSource/Digital Turbine, Arendi/Oath, Gamevice/Nintendo, Ingevity/BASF, Netflix/DivX, Dolby/Unified Patents, Pictiva Display/Samsung Display, etc.).

Conclusion: as of the search coverage available to me, there is no verified CAFC 2026 appellate docket for US 11,357,893. Any appeal from the ex parte reexaminations (90/019,410 and 90/019,679) would in the first instance go to the PTAB and only then potentially to the Federal Circuit, so a 2026 CAFC docket may not yet exist or may be sealed/not indexed. I am flagging this as unverified rather than asserting a negative with certainty — the CAFC's public docket and PACER should be checked directly for 2026 filings naming Chiaro Technology Ltd. or Willow Blossom Holdco Ltd.

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Sources

• Google Patents full text: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11357893/en
• W.D. Wash. No. 2:23‑cv‑00631, Dkt. 1 (complaint, quoting claim 1): https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.[321565](/patent/321565)/gov.uscourts.wawd.321565.1.0.pdf
• W.D. Wash. No. 2:23‑cv‑00631, Dkt. 101‑1 (claim listing, claims 1–22): https://archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.wawd.321565/gov.uscourts.wawd.321565.101.1.pdf
• W.D. Wash. No. 2:23‑cv‑00631, Dkt. 162‑1 (consent judgment, dismissal with prejudice): https://archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.wawd.321565/gov.uscourts.wawd.321565.162.1.pdf
• Reexam 90/019,679 order granting request: https://www.docketalarm.com/patentapps/US/90-19,679/BREAST_PUMP_SYSTEM/M4SRBMLUWFYGX60/
• Reexam 90/019,679 assignment notice (Sep. 27, 2024): https://www.docketalarm.com/patentapps/US/90-19,679/BREAST_PUMP_SYSTEM/M1JAREE0WFYBX97/
• U.S. patent front page/abstract (via PTAB filing): https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1557376](/patent/1557376)/download-documents?artifactId=XRIY3eVKaR2kukkin7mzUdhxPKa-fadMbTGYlOnHHyF98KuOLwQmMk8
• Claim 28 text: https://uspto.report/patent/grant/11,357,893
• IPR2024‑00953 institution decision ('380 patent): https://www.ptablitigationblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2025/01/PTAB-IPR2024-00953-18.pdf

I'll research litigation involving US patent 11357893 using the sources you specified.

I found a lead — a Washington Western District Court case. Let me dig into the specific case and related litigation.

I have strong leads. Let me verify the details of the key case, related cases, and outcomes.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 11,357,893

Important threshold point on scope: U.S. Patent No. 11,357,893 ("Breast Pump System," issued June 14, 2022; inventors O'Toole, Rollo, Carr; originally assigned to Chiaro Technology Ltd., current assignee Willow Blossom Holdco Ltd) was not the subject of a standalone infringement action. It appears as one patent within a multi-patent family dispute. My searches identified one district court case in which the '893 patent was directly at issue, plus related proceedings and a related case in which the same patent family was litigated. Details below, with confidence levels flagged.

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1. Shenzhen Root Technology Co., Ltd. et al. v. Chiaro Technology, Ltd. — THE case involving the '893 patent

Key procedural history:

• The case arose out of an Amazon APEX proceeding. In February 2023 Chiaro/Elvie initiated an APEX action; a Neutral Patent Evaluator found Elvie likely to succeed in showing Momcozy's S12/S12 Pro infringed claim 1 of the '893 patent, and Amazon delisted Momcozy's S12 Pro on April 25, 2023.
• May 17, 2023 — The court (Judge John H. Chun) denied Momcozy's motion for a TRO (Dkt. 43), but granted an order to show cause. Momcozy's TRO sought to compel Elvie to withdraw its Amazon infringement complaints. The court found it had declaratory judgment jurisdiction notwithstanding Elvie's argument that the named plaintiff was a differently-named corporate entity.
• August 2023 — Elvie filed counterclaims asserting the '893 and '380 patents against Momcozy's S9, S9 Pro, S12, S12 Pro, M1, and M5 products.
• April 30, 2024 — Court granted Elvie leave to amend its counterclaims to add the '381 and '454 patents (issued November 2023) and to name Xitao as a counterclaim defendant (Dkt. 113).
• March 12, 2025 — Amended scheduling order issued (Dkt. 152), resetting claim construction deadlines into mid-2025.
• Elvie's infringement contentions asserted all claims (1–28) of the '893 patent; Momcozy served invalidity contentions against all claims of the '893 patent. The parties disputed claim terms including "in-bra wearable device," "a pump," "external surface of the housing," "attached/attachable," "milk container," "close to a base of the housing," and "substantially rigid."

Outcome / Current Status:

• Resolved by consent judgment / dismissal with prejudice. On January 5, 2026, the parties filed a Joint Stipulated Motion for Approval of Consent Judgment (Dkt. 162) together with a proposed Consent Judgment and Otherwise Order of Dismissal With Prejudice (Dkt. 162-1), with each party bearing its own costs, fees, and expenses.
• The consent judgment recites the four Asserted Patents (including the '893 patent) and a long list of Accused Products (Momcozy S9, S9 Pro, S12, S12 Pro, M1, M5, V1, V2, MobileStyle (M6), Mobile Flow (M9), Paruu P3/P10/P15/P16/R10/R12/Y10/X1/X2, and Pibur P15).
• Status: concluded/settled (dismissal with prejudice via consent judgment). Note that Chiaro is referenced as being "in Administration," and the '893 patent was reassigned to Willow Blossom Holdco Limited in mid-2025.

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2. Related contested proceeding — no litigation, but note

• Ex parte reexaminations of the '893 patent: Reexamination Control Nos. 90/019,410 and 90/019,679, filed September 24, 2024, with a third-party requester correspondence address of Fish & Richardson, P.C. (Minneapolis). These are USPTO reexamination proceedings, not litigation, but they are a contested challenge to the '893 patent and are closely tied to the Momcozy/Elvie dispute. (Search results also referenced IPR petitions filed by Shenzhen Root Technology against breast pump patents in the same family, but I could not confirm a specific IPR directed to the '893 patent itself within my search budget — treat that as unverified.)

3. Related case in the same patent family (NOT confirmed to assert the '893 patent)

• Willow Innovations, Inc. v. Chiaro Technology, Ltd., U.S. District Court for the Eastern District of Texas (Marshall Division), Case No. 2:23-cv-00229-JRG, filed May 24, 2023. Willow Innovations sued Chiaro (Elvie) for patent infringement; Chiaro counterclaimed. According to a PTAB filing, U.S. Patent No. 11,413,380 ('380 patent — from the same family as the '893 patent) was "also involved in a second litigation" in this Texas case. A Markman order issued January 10, 2025, and the court granted a 30-day stay on January 31, 2025 after the parties reported an agreement in principle to settle. I could not confirm that the '893 patent itself was asserted in the Willow case — the family's '380 patent was the one identified to me as being involved there. Flagging this distinction so you do not conflate the two.

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Bottom line

The only identified litigation in which U.S. Patent No. 11,357,893 was directly asserted/adjudicated is Shenzhen Root Technology Co., Ltd. (Momcozy) v. Chiaro Technology, Ltd. (Elvie), Case No. 2:23-cv-00631-KKE, W.D. Wash., filed April 28, 2023 — a declaratory judgment action by Momcozy that was met with Elvie infringement counterclaims covering the '893, '380, '454, and '381 patents. It was concluded by a consent judgment and dismissal with prejudice (joint motion filed January 5, 2026).

Confidence caveats:

• The '893 patent's specific involvement in the Eastern District of Texas action (2:23-cv-00229) is not confirmed; the family's '380 patent is the one documented as being litigated there.
• I did not independently verify the court's final entry of the consent judgment (only the joint stipulated motion and proposed order filed January 5, 2026); the docket should be checked to confirm entry.
• I found no CAFC appeal involving the '893 patent in my searches. If appellate history exists, it would post-date these district court events and would require a direct PACER/CAFC docket check.

Primary sources: Google Patents for US11357893 (which itself links the W.D. Wash. case and a Darts-IP worldwide-family litigation reference); CourtListener docket 67291241 (Shenzhen Root Technology Co Ltd v. Chiaro Technology Ltd, 2:23-cv-00631); Justia/courtlistener RECAP PDFs of Dkt. 43 (May 17, 2023 TRO denial), Dkt. 113 (Apr. 30, 2024 amendment order), Dkt. 136 (joint claim construction statement), Dkt. 152 (scheduling order), and Dkt. 162/162-1 (Jan. 5, 2026 consent judgment motion and proposed order); USPTO PTAB/patent-center documents for reexamination control nos. 90/019,410 and 90/019,679; RPX Empower case overview.

I'll verify the structured block against live sources before writing anything up.

Reexamination activity surfaced. Let me dig into that and check for any IPR on the '893 patent specifically.

Let me check whether the referenced IPR2024-00953 targets this patent, and look for any IPR on the '893 patent family.

Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) on file against US 11,357,893 — total count 0, breakdown 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied — which matches the canonical ODP block in this prompt and is independently corroborated by the CRU examiner's own PTACTS/PDP search note dated 2024-02-16 in the reexamination file ("No prior/pending post grant proceedings") and by my searches, which surface no IPR or PGR naming the '893 patent.

Two consequences for a defendant being asserted against the '893 patent:

1. Nothing is canceled. There is no FWD, no certificate canceling claims, no estoppel-generating judgment. You cannot tell a court or a plaintiff "the PTAB already killed these claims."
2. Do not mistake the sibling-patent activity for this patent. Shenzhen Root / Momcozy has been litigating the Chiaro→Willow breast-pump family hard at the PTAB — but the IPRs (IPR2024-00953, IPR2024-01296, IPR2025-00554) are against US 11,413,380 and US 11,806,454, not the '893. The '893 is instead under attack in two merged ex parte reexaminations (90/019,410 and 90/019,679), where the patent owner has filed claim amendments — so the claims you would be sued on are presently in flux and are not the issued claims.

Defensive posture: the patent has not been PTAB-hardened, but it also has not been PTAB-scarred. Your best validity work product is currently being created at the Central Reexamination Unit, not the Board.

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Per-proceeding detail

No AIA trial proceedings exist — nothing to report under the standard template

I will not populate the IPR/PGR/CBM template with invented entries. Below I instead give you the four proceedings that actually touch this patent or its immediate siblings, in descending order of impact on a defendant facing the '893 patent.

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90/019,410 & 90/019,679 (merged) — Third-party requester (Shenzhen Root Innovation Technology Co., Ltd.) v. Chiaro Technology Ltd. / Willow Blossom Holdco Limited

• Type: Ex parte reexamination (35 U.S.C. §§ 301–307) — not an AIA trial; no PTAB panel, no § 315(e) estoppel.
• Filed: 90/019,410 — 2024-02-08 (initially anonymous third party requester); 90/019,679 — 2024-09-24 (filed by Fish & Richardson on behalf of Shenzhen Root Innovation Technology Co., Ltd.). The two proceedings were merged.
• Status: Active. Reexamination ordered in the '410 proceeding on 2024-03-05; ordered in the '679 proceeding on 2024-12-17; merged by a Central Reexamination Unit Decision Merging Reexamination Proceedings (37 C.F.R. § 1.565(c)). Art Unit 3993, Central Reexamination Unit; Examiner Laura L. Davison. Last event I could document is the patent owner's response of 2025-08-12; no reexamination certificate has been located, and I cannot confirm the outcome as of 2026-09-28.
• Judge panel: None — no APJs. CRU Examiner Davison; patent owner's counsel Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox P.L.L.C. (Michael K. Dixon, Denise Kinsman); requester's correspondence address Fish & Richardson P.C.
• Scope / grounds:
  • '410 request urged a substantial new question of patentability as to claims 1–28 (the patent has 28 claims; claim 1 is the sole independent claim charted in the request).
  • Non-final Office action mailed 2024-07-29: claims 1–3, 7–11, 13, 14 rejected as anticipated under 35 U.S.C. § 102 by Kurihara (US 2016/0271305); further § 103 rejections based on Kurihara alone or in combination; various double patenting rejections. Patent owner replied 2024-10-29 without proposing amendments.
  • '679 request (2024-09-24) raised a second SNQ and added foreign art; a PTO-892 copied into the merged file cites the English machine translation of RU-2441367-C2 (Brodskij) and the English translation of WO 2016/186452 A1 (Park).
  • Non-final Office action in the merged proceeding mailed 2025-05-12; patent owner obtained a one-month § 1.550(c) extension (petition filed 2025-06-26) and filed a response dated 2025-08-12 that includes amendments to the claims ("Amendments to the Claims begin on page 2; Remarks begin on page 11").
• Key claim-level fact: the request targets a claim 1 limitation — "a diaphragm holder that forms a recess or cavity at least in part with an external surface of the housing" — which the requester alleges was added by amendment during prosecution of application 17/203,050 and is not supported by the specification (a § 112 written-description / enablement attack raised in the parallel district court contentions). The examiner's § 102/§ 103 rejections, however, were on the recess/cavity claim language as issued.
• Settlement / termination: None. Adversarial, on the merits.
• Appeal: No PTAB or Federal Circuit appeal is possible yet. Note the asymmetry — ex parte reexamination gives the third-party requester no appellate rights of the kind available in an IPR; the requester's only recourse if the patent survives (or survives in amended form) is a separate IPR (subject to § 315(b)) or a district court invalidity case.
• Defensive value: This is the single most important fact about the '893 patent for a defendant. The examiner has already found Kurihara (US 2016/0271305) anticipatory of a swath of claims, and the patent owner has responded by amending claims. That gives you (a) a prosecution-history record of a hostile examiner action you can cite, and (b) a strong argument that the current claim scope is unknowable until the certificate issues. If your demand letter attaches the issued claim set, check whether it is still the operative claim set. Do not assume the amendments cure the art — and do not assume they will be entered.

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IPR2024-00953 — Shenzhen Root Technology Co., Ltd. v. Chiaro Technology Ltd.

(Different patent: US 11,413,380 B2 — same family, different claims.)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2024-05-31
• Status: Institution denied (status verbatim: "Institution Denied"). Terminated 2024-12-16.
• Judge panel: Amee Shah, Grace Karaffa Obermann, Meredith C. Petravick
• Petition grounds: claims 1–46 of the '380 patent (independent claims 1 and 29), chiefly § 103 — Chang (US 2018/0333523) in view of Weber (US 2012/0277728) and Guthrie (US 2016/0082166), with additional anticipation/obviousness theories.
• Institution decision: Denied 2024-12-16 (Paper 18), exercising § 314(a) discretion because petitioner filed a parallel petition (IPR2024-01296) against the same claims. Petitioner had tried to administratively dismiss 00953 to "hit the reset button"; the Board declined and denied institution. Panel reasoning as reported: parallel challenges to the same claims of the same patent are an inefficient use of Board resources. (Jones Day write-up)
• FWD: None (no institution).
• Settlement / termination: N/A.
• Appeal: No FWD to appeal.
• Defensive value: Limited as to the '893 — it is a § 314(a) procedural denial, not a merits win. But it is a roadmap: Shenzhen Root ran (and partly lost) this playbook against the family, and their § 325(d) arguments about art already before the examiner were litigated in the parallel proceeding.

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IPR2024-01296 — Shenzhen Root Technology Co., Ltd. v. Chiaro Technology Ltd. (parallel petition, US 11,413,380)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2024-08-14 (petitioner's notice ranking the two petitions is dated 2024-08-14; the petition was filed "after a first petition was recently filed in case no. IPR2024-00953")
• Status: The record I retrieved shows the Board declining to deny institution on the § 314(a) parallel-petition ground, i.e., the '1296 petition proceeded where the '953 petition did not. I flag the institution date and the ultimate FWD outcome as not confirmed in the sources I could reach.
• Judge panel: Not confirmed.
• Petition grounds: primary ground — Chang in view of Fang and Yuen (ranked #1 of the two petitions; the '953 petition used Chang/Weber/Guthrie).
• Defensive value: Confirms the family-wide pattern (see Strategic summary), but says nothing directly about the '893 claims.

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IPR2025-00554 — Shenzhen Root Technology Co., Ltd. v. Willow Blossom Holdco Limited and Willow Innovations, Inc.

(Different patent: US 11,806,454 B2.)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2025-03-06 (per PTAB docket summary)
• Status: Trial instituted — institution granted 2025-10-14
• Judge panel: Barry L. Grossman (writing), Meredith C. Petravick, Grace Karaffa Obermann
• Petition grounds: claims 17–19 and 21–33 of the '454 patent; all challenged claims and all grounds instituted.
• Institution decision: Instituted under § 314(a). Notably, patent owner filed no preliminary response but did move for discretionary denial under §§ 325(d) and 314(a); that request was denied by the Acting Director (Paper 9), who referred the case to the Board "to handle [it] in the normal course." Real parties-in-interest on the petitioner side include Shenzhen Root, Hong Kong Lute Technology, Shenzhen Conglin E-Commerce, Shenzhen Jinruihang Technology, Shenzhen Xitao Network Technology and ROOT Technology Ltd. — a co‑ordinated Momcozy/affiliate group.
• FWD: None yet at the time of the institution decision; note the statutory 1-year trial clock ran from 2025-10-14, so an FWD would be due on or about 2025-10-14 + 12 months ≈ 2026-10-14, extendable up to 6 months for good cause (35 U.S.C. § 316(a)(11)).
• Caution — a news story you may have seen: A piece dated 2026-09-25 ("PTAB Ruling Invalidates Key Patent Claims in Wearable Breast Pump Case") reports that all claims challenged by Shenzhen Root Technology in a Willow Blossom wearable breast pump patent were invalidated. That article does not name the patent. On the dates, it cannot be the '893 (no IPR exists on the '893). It most plausibly concerns the '454 patent or the '380 patent. Do not cite that article as invalidating any claim of US 11,357,893.

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Strategic summary

Claim status of US 11,357,893. No claim of the '893 patent has been canceled by the PTAB — there is no IPR, so there is no certificate canceling claims, no "claims 1–5 are dead" story. Claim 1 and its 27 dependents (claims 1–28) issued 2022-06-14 and remain the presumptively valid claims. However, every claim 1–28 is currently under reexamination in CRU Art Unit 3993, the examiner has rejected claims 1–3, 7–11, 13 and 14 as anticipated by Kurihara (US 2016/0271305) with further § 103 and double-patenting rejections, and the patent owner has proposed amendments that are not yet entered. So the honest characterization is: no claim canceled; no claim adjudicated patentable; all claims pending in reexam with amended claims on the table. Treat the issued claims as the scope of the patent only after you confirm the reexamination file's current status (PTO PatentCenter / PTAB E2E, control numbers 90/019,410 and 90/019,679).

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR or PGR has ever been instituted against the '893 patent, § 315(e)(2) estoppel has never attached to anyone on this patent. No petitioner, no privy, no real party-in-interest is barred from running any IPR ground against the '893 claims. Ex parte reexamination is a Title 35 Chapter 30 proceeding; it creates no § 315(e) estoppel and confers no PTAB appeal rights on the requester. Practically, for a defendant currently facing assertion of the '893 patent, the IPR whiteboard is completely blank — every § 102 and § 103 ground is available to you, including art that Shenzhen Root already put in front of the examiner (there is no § 325(d) "same art" handicap unique to you, though the Director can weigh § 325(d) at its discretion). The one structural constraint to check is § 315(b): if you (or a privy/RPI) were served with a complaint alleging infringement of the '893 more than one year ago, an IPR on the '893 is time-barred — which is very likely why the '893 was attacked by reexamination (no time bar) while the siblings were attacked by IPR. Run that date calculation before you strategize.

Pattern signals. (i) The same adverse party — Shenzhen Root / Momcozy and its affiliates — has filed two ex parte reexaminations against the '893 (the first anonymously, with the requester's Power of Attorney revealing Shenzhen Root only on 2024-10-09) and at least three IPRs against family members ('380 ×2, '454 ×1), plus a petition involving US 11,024,292 in which Willow-related interrogatory responses appear. That is a sustained, multi-front campaign, not a one-off. (ii) The patent owner side changed hands mid-stream: Chiaro Technology Limited → Willow Blossom Holdco Limited (assignments recorded 2025-06-12 and 2025-06-20), and the reexam file reflects a "New Patent Owner (Willow Blossom Holdco Limited)" taking over the response from Chiaro, with Sterne Kessler continuing as counsel. Post-acquisition, Willow has defended aggressively — it filed a preliminary-response-equivalent discretionary-denial request in IPR2025-00554 and litigated § 325(d)/§ 314(a) — rather than settling. (iii) No defensive aggregator: I found no Unified Patents (or comparable) IPR against the '893. The Google Patents litigation block for this patent points to W.D. Wash. 2:23-cv-00631 (Shenzhen Root Technology Co., Ltd. v. Chiaro Technology Ltd. — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Washington%20Western%20District%20Court/case/2%3A23-cv-00631), and the '893 patent is also in play in the parallel Momcozy/Elvie disputes; the docket reflects claim-construction activity into 2025 and a stay in at least one related action pending expected settlement. The '893 has also been asserted in an EDTX action (Willow Innovations, Inc. v. Chiaro Technology, Ltd., filed 2023-05-24).

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Recommended next steps

1. Do not present the '893 as PTAB-challenged. It isn't. If a plaintiff's demand letter or complaint relies on a PTAB "invalidation" of this patent, that representation is wrong; the correct statement is that the '893 has never been to the Board.
2. Pull the live reexamination file before doing anything else. Both control numbers, 90/019,410 and 90/019,679 (merged, Art Unit 3993, Examiner Laura L. Davison), are the operative validity record. Retrieve the 2025-05-12 merged non-final Office action, the 2025-08-12 patent owner response with amendments, and any subsequent action or Notice of Intent to Issue Ex Parte Reexamination Certificate (NIRC). USPTO PatentCenter is the reliable source; the file is also mirrored on Docket Alarm at https://www.docketalarm.com/patentapps/US/90-19,679/BREAST_PUMP_SYSTEM/. Cite the amendments, not the issued claims, if the certificate has not yet issued — and check whether the amendments narrowed claim 1's "recess or cavity" limitation, since that limitation was the sole basis for allowance over the prior art.
3. Freeze your § 315(b) date. Compute the service date on any complaint alleging infringement of the '893 (including counterclaims — Chiaro served counterclaims in the W.D. Wash. action). If you are inside the one-year window, an IPR on the '893 is available and is your fastest route to an estoppel-bearing validity judgment; if you are outside it, plan on the reexamination record plus district court invalidity, and consider whether a new ex parte reexamination request (the § 315(b) bar does not apply) is a better vehicle than a § 282 defense.
4. Mine the sibling IPRs as free prior-art work product. The IPR2024-00953 petition (filed 2024-05-31) and IPR2024-01296 against US 11,413,380, and IPR2025-00554 against US 11,806,454, contain full claim charts on Chang (US 2018/0333523), Weber (US 2012/0277728), Guthrie (US 2016/0082166), Fang and Yuen — all breast-pump art in the same technical space and highly relevant to the '893's diaphragm-housing and milk-container limitations. The '893 reexam request itself also relies on Kurihara (US 2016/0271305), and the district court invalidity contentions add US 2013/0023821, US 2016/0271305, US 2007/0219486, US 2009/0281485, US 2015/0157775, US 4,673,388, US 2016/0325031, US 2016/0220743 and WO 2015/120321.
5. Calendar the only date-certain PTAB milestone in the family. IPR2025-00554 (US 11,806,454) was instituted 2025-10-14; under § 316(a)(11) an FWD is due on or about 2026-10-14 (subject to a possible 6-month extension). A merits outcome there will tell you how the Board reads this specification family and the shared prior art, and a published FWD — if it does invalidate '454 claims — will be usable context even though it says nothing about the '893.
6. If any AIA trial on the '893 is filed after the ODP ingest, treat the institution decision as the trigger: the Board must decide within 6 months of the petition's filing, and the trial must conclude within 12 months of institution. Track it on PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/) and docket it on CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67291241/shenzhen-root-technology-co-ltd-v-chiaro-technology-ltd/) for the parallel district court posture.

Confidence note: I could not confirm (a) the current status/outcome of merged reexaminations 90/019,410 / 90/019,679 after 2025-08-12, (b) the outcome of IPR2024-01296, or (c) which patent the 2026-09-25 "PTAB invalidates Willow breast pump claims" report concerns. I am stating these as unresolved rather than inferring a result. The zero-AIA-trial count for US 11,357,893 itself is well supported.

I'll research the assignment chain for US 11,357,893, focusing on recorded reel/frame data, correspondents, and any NPE-related signals.

Excellent — I've found key reel/frame data. Let me verify the remaining links and the correspondents of record.

Assignment-Chain Reconstruction — US 11,357,893 B2 ("Breast pump system")

Method note / source limitation: I could not execute a live, interactive query against the USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov / assignment.uspto.gov) from this environment. The reel/frame data below is instead taken from USPTO filings that quote the Assignment Center records directly — principally the 37 CFR 3.73(c) chain-of-title statement filed in merged ex parte reexamination 90/019,679 (signed June 25, 2025 by Michael Dixon, Reg. No. 46,665) and the Petition for Extension of Time filed in the same proceeding (June 26, 2025) — cross-checked against the Google Patents legal-events feed for this patent. Those are authoritative secondary reproductions of the Assignment Center abstracts, but any reel/frame not expressly quoted in those filings is flagged as unverified rather than filled in by inference. Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "11357893").

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Inventors

All three are consistently listed as Chiaro/Elvie personnel across the patent family, and all three are assignors of record to Chiaro on the same reel (see timeline). I found no evidence of an inventor departure-within-12-months-of-filing pattern, and no data source that establishes departure dates — so I am explicitly not making that call. Note that the record does show a delay in perfecting the inventor assignment: executed July 18, 2018 but not recorded until late 2021 (nearly 3.5 years later), contemporaneous with Chiaro's November 2021 wave of continuation filings. That is a chain-perfection/timing artifact, not a departure signal.

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Original assignee

Chiaro Technology Limited (registered in England & Wales; trading as Elvie), Bristol, UK — named as assignee on the face of US 11,357,893 B2.

• Product embodying the claims: YES. Chiaro/Elvie designed, manufactured, and sold the Elvie Pump, a self-contained in-bra wearable breast pump — the commercial embodiment described throughout the specification as "the Elvie™ Breast Pump System." The patent's claims (self-contained in-bra wearable device; battery + pump in housing; detachable milk container; diaphragm seated on a housing-external diaphragm holder) map to that shipped product.
• Primary line of business: consumer femtech hardware (wearable breast pumps, pelvic-floor trainers, infant products) — an operating manufacturer, not a licensing vehicle.
• Current status: INSOLVENT / ASSETS SOLD. Chiaro entered the UK administration procedure (the UK analogue of Chapter 11) in March 2025. Joint administrators Lindsay Hallam, Matthew Boyd Callaghan and Oliver Wright of FTI Consulting sold substantially all of the business and assets — including the '893 patent — to Willow Blossom Holdco Limited on March 28, 2025, transferring all 178 employees. Chiaro is identified in the W.D. Wash. consent judgment as "Chiaro Technology, Ltd. (in Administration)."

Current assignee of record: Willow Blossom Holdco Limited, a wholly owned subsidiary of Willow Innovations, Inc. (Mountain View, California) — a competing wearable-breast-pump manufacturer.

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Assignment timeline

Two recorded assignments touch this patent (plus a second 2025 recording whose reel/frame I could not verify). The chain is short: inventors → Chiaro → Willow.

1. Inventors → Chiaro

• Executed 2018-07-18 / recorded 2021-11-09 — Reel 058057/0084
  • Conveyance: Assignment (assignment of assignors' interest)
  • Assignors: Jonathan O'Toole; Adam Rollo; Andrew Carr (joint inventors)
  • Assignee: Chiaro Technology Limited (United Kingdom)
  • Correspondent: Not established from the records available to me. The Google Patents legal-events entry for reel 058057/0084 (reproduced on sibling family member US 11,813,388 B2's page) shows the record but omits the correspondent field; the reexam chain-of-title statement reproduces only the reel/frame and the parties. This field requires direct confirmation in Assignment Center.
  • Context: Routine founder/inventor-to-company assignment; recorded late (2021) to perfect the chain across the continuation family rather than as part of any transaction.

2. Chiaro → Willow Blossom Holdco

• Executed 2025-03-28 / recorded 2025-06-12 — Reel 071402/0877
  • Conveyance: Assignment (transfer of substantially all business and assets in a UK administration sale)
  • Assignor: Chiaro Technology Limited
  • Assignee: Willow Blossom Holdco Limited
  • Correspondent: Greenberg Traurig, LLP — recorded by Greenberg Traurig as counsel; Michael Dixon, Reg. No. 46,665 signed the 37 CFR 3.73(c) chain-of-title statement in reexam 90/019,679 on June 25, 2025, expressly authorized to act for the assignee. Flag: Greenberg Traurig / Michael Dixon appear once in this chain as the recorder — a single appearance, not a recurrence pattern across multiple links (see Signal 3 below). Note the other firms visible in the surrounding record are counsel of different roles, not recorders: Sterne, Kessler, Goldstein & Fox was Chiaro's prosecution/reexam counsel, and Fish & Richardson filed the Shenzhen Root reexam requests (adverse party).
  • Context: Bankruptcy/insolvency fire-sale — the UK-administration asset sale to a competitor-affiliated holding company. Expressly described in the record: "On March 28, 2025, a sale of substantially all of Chiaro's business and assets, including the '893 patent, were sold to Willow Blossom Holdco Limited … This sale was due to the United Kingdom equivalent of bankruptcy (called Administration in the UK)."

3. Second 2025 recording (unverified)

• 2025-06-20 — Google Patents legal events for US 11,357,893 lists two reassignment entries (2025-06-12 and 2025-06-20), both "Assigned to WILLOW BLOSSOM HOLDCO LIMITED … Assignors: CHIARO TECHNOLOGY LIMITED."
  • Reel/frame: NOT VERIFIED. I did not locate a source quoting the reel/frame, conveyance type, or correspondent for this second record. The most likely readings are (a) a corrective/duplicate recording of the same March 28, 2025 sale, or (b) a supplemental recording covering additional family properties in the same transaction. I am not asserting either — this is a gap to close at Assignment Center.

There is no evidence of any security agreement, merger, change of name, license, or release recorded against this patent.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11357893
    2017 : Priority filings by Chiaro Technology
    2018 : Inventors assign to Chiaro Technology
    2021 : Assignment recorded at Reel 058057
         : Application 17203050 filed as continuation
    2022 : Patent issued 14 June
    2023 : Shenzhen Root declaratory suit filed
    2025 : Chiaro enters UK administration
         : Assets sold to Willow Blossom Holdco
         : Assignment recorded at Reel 071402
         : Second Willow recording dated 20 June
    2026 : Willow files ITC complaint 337 TA 1522

(Note: mermaid strips punctuation from node text; exact dates and reel numbers are in the timeline section above.)

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT (as an NPE tell); one formal feature noted.
The 2025 transfer did move the patent from an operating company (Chiaro/Elvie) to an entity with a classic IP-holding name — "Willow Blossom Holdco Limited" — whose stated address is 107 Cheapside, 9th Floor, London EC2V 6DN (a multi-tenant serviced-office building, i.e., consistent with a registered-office/virtual-office footprint) per the ITC notice. On naming and address alone this looks like the classic shell-transfer tell. It does not survive the evidence test: the assignee is a wholly owned subsidiary of an operating manufacturer (Willow Innovations, Inc., Mountain View), the two entities appear jointly as co-complainants, and customs/trade data indexes Willow Blossom Holdco as an actual shipper of breast-pump goods ("breast pump … HS 841381") to Willow Innovations and to Chiaro — i.e., it is an operationally integrated group entity, not a licensing-only vehicle with no products. Signal: not present as an NPE indicator (the trade-data source is a commercial aggregator and should be treated as corroborative only, not dispositive).

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT.
Neither Chiaro Technology Limited nor Willow Blossom Holdco Limited nor Willow Innovations, Inc. appears on the enumerated NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Erich Spangenberg entities) or on RPX/Unified high-frequency-plaintiff directories, per the sources retrieved. Willow Innovations is a consumer-products competitor in the same market, not an assertion-only entity.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — NOT PRESENT.
The only recorder identifiable in the chain is Greenberg Traurig LLP (Michael Dixon, Reg. No. 46,665) on reel 071402/0877 and on the June 25, 2025 3.73(c) statement. That is a single appearance in this chain. The correspondent on reel 058057/0084 is not established. There is no repetition of a single lawyer/firm across multiple links (only two links exist), and Greenberg Traurig is a general-practice firm with substantial operating-company patent work — a single appearance is expressly not a finding under the stated rule.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT.
The entire chain is two links (2018 inventor assignment; 2025 insolvency sale), spanning ~7 years. There is no <24-month cascade through chained LLCs and no common-principal pattern beyond the ordinary parent/subsidiary relationship. The 2025-06-12 and 2025-06-20 recordings (if distinct) are simultaneous same-transaction recordings, not sequential transfers.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT.
The Chiaro→Willow assignment (executed 2025-03-28, recorded 2025-06-12) post-dates the first infringement/declaratory action by ~23 months — Shenzhen Root Technology Co., Ltd. v. Chiaro Technology Ltd., W.D. Wash. No. 2:23-cv-00631, filed April 28, 2023. The chain was therefore not arranged to enable an assertion; it was forced by insolvency after litigation had already begun. (It did precede the ITC complaint by ~17 months, but the ITC action is a continuation of the same competitor dispute, not a freshly manufactured assertion.)

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — PRESENT (the dominant signal in this file).
Chiaro Technology Limited entered UK administration in March 2025; administrators from FTI Consulting sold substantially all business and assets, including the '893 patent, to Willow Blossom Holdco on March 28, 2025, recorded at Reel 071402/0877 on June 12, 2025. This is a genuine, documented insolvency-driven portfolio disposition — the same pattern as Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid-type sales. Critically, the buyer is an operating competitor, not an NPE, which is what distinguishes this from the classic fire-sale-to-asserter fact pattern.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT.
Privateering requires an operating company to hand patents to an NPE that asserts on the operating company's behalf against competitors. Here the operating company (Chiaro) did not transfer voluntarily at all — it was in administration and had no assertion strategy to outsource. Moreover, the acquirer (Willow) asserts on its own behalf and in its own name, alongside its parent, in the ITC and district court. No third-party hidden principal is evident.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. To the contrary, the chain terminates at a plaintiff that filed ITC Investigation No. 337-TA-1522 (instituted September 21–22, 2026; 91 FR 60645) against five-plus Chinese respondents (Shenzhen Root Innovation Technology; Hong Kong Lute; Root Technology Ltd.; Share Info; Shenzhen TPH; Guangdong Horigen; Anker Innovations; Fantasia Trading; Power Mobile Life; TPH Technology Malaysia; Foshan Shunde Ruiteng; Guangdong Youmeng) on the '380, '292, D'344, '388 and D'993 patents.

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion

Willow Blossom Holdco Limited did acquire the '893 patent via a real insolvency fire-sale — Chiaro Technology Limited's UK administration, with the FTI Consulting sale executed 2025-03-28 and recorded at Reel 071402/0877 on 2025-06-12, with Greenberg Traurig (Michael Dixon, Reg. No. 46,665) as recorder — and the "Holdco" name plus the London Cheapside registered-office address are the kind of formal features that superficially resemble an NPE shell.

They do not convert this into an NPE assertion, because the acquirer is a wholly owned subsidiary of a product-shipping competitor (Willow Innovations, Inc.), the patent was asserted in the name of the operating group against actual market competitors under Investigation No. 337-TA-1522 and in the parallel district-court and PTAB campaigns, and no NPE-list entity, repeat NPE correspondent, cascading LLC chain, pre-litigation transfer, privateering arrangement, or defensive-aggregator terminus is present anywhere on the two-link chain (Reel 058057/0084 inventors→Chiaro; Reel 071402/0877 Chiaro→Willow).

Two open items to confirm directly at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ before treating the chain as fully reconstructed: (i) the correspondent of record on Reel 058057/0084 (unreported in the sources I could reach), and (ii) the reel/frame, conveyance type and correspondent for the second 2025-06-20 Willow recording (Google Patents shows the event; no source I found quotes the reel/frame). I have deliberately left both unmapped rather than supplying a plausible-looking number.

Sources

• Reel/frame chain and Michael Dixon 3.73(c) statement: https://www.docketalarm.com/patentapps/US/90-19,679/BREAST_PUMP_SYSTEM/MCCIN2F1X103X88/
• Reel/Frame 071402/0877, March 28, 2025 sale, UK administration, Greenberg Traurig recording: https://www.docketalarm.com/patentapps/US/90-19,679/BREAST_PUMP_SYSTEM/MCDR7VG0191X199/
• Google Patents legal events (reel 058057/0084; O'Toole/Rollo/Carr; effective 2018-07-18): https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11813388B2](/patent/US11813388B2)/en
• Google Patents US 11,357,893 legal events (double 2025 reassignment to Willow Blossom Holdco): https://patents.google.com/patent/US11357893/en
• ITC Investigation No. 337-TA-1522, institution notice (Sept. 21–22, 2026; 91 FR 60645; Willow address 107 Cheapside 9th Floor): https://regulations.justia.com/regulations/fedreg/2026/09/24/2026-19586.html
• Chiaro/Elvie acquisition out of administration, FTI Consulting, 178 employees: https://businesscloud.co.uk/news/elvie-acquired-out-of-administration-by-us-firm-which-sued-it/
• Willow Blossom Holdco trading/shipping record: https://www.52wmb.com/supplier/211547117
• W.D. Wash. 2:23-cv-00631 (first suit, filed 2023-04-28) and consent judgment: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67291241/shenzhen-root-technology-co-ltd-v-chiaro-technology-ltd/

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 11,357,893 (application 17/203,050), starting with its front-page references and the references cited during prosecution and the reexaminations.

Let me retrieve the actual cited-reference tables from the patent front page and the reexamination record.

Let me pull the full front-page reference lists and the examiner's applied art.

Prior Art for US 11,357,893 B2 — Cited References and § 102 Analysis

Preliminary notes on method and reliability

• Document identified: US 11,357,893 B2, "Breast pump system," O'Toole et al., App. No. 17/203,050, filed 2021‑03‑16, issued 2022‑06‑14, Chiaro Technology Limited (now Willow Blossom Holdco Limited). Nothing below concerns a different number.
• Effective filing date for prior‑art purposes: The '893 is a continuation of 17/181,057 ← 16/009,547; earliest priority is the three GB applications of 15 June 2017 (GB 1709561.3 / 1709564.7 / 1709566.2), plus GB 1809036.5 (1 June 2018). Because the application chain was filed after 16 March 2013, AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2)/(b)(2) governs. The practical critical date for printed publications is 15 June 2017; U.S. applications qualify as § 102(a)(2) art only if effectively filed before that date.
• ⚠️ Source‑quality caveat (important): I could obtain the '893 front page only through OCR'd reproductions (the reexamination papers on Docket Alarm and the district‑court claim‑listing exhibits). Several numerals in those copies are demonstrably garbled (e.g., "7048519" for 7,048,519; "TE6C2O1I8" for 7,662,018; "SLIS,772" for 8,118,772). I have transcribed only numerals I could corroborate against a second source, and I flag every entry I could not. This is a list, not a certified copy — the USPTO PatentCenter "References Cited" page for 11,357,893 and the printed front page should be treated as controlling.

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A. The reference that carries the § 102 (anticipation) burden

US 2013/0023821 A1 — Khalil et al. ("Breastshield unit"), published 24 January 2013; also cited in its granted form as US 9,033,913 B2 (Khalil et al., 19 May 2015).

Claims Khalil is asserted to anticipate (§ 102(a)): the reexamination request identifies claims 1, 3, 7–11, 14–21, 23 and 25 as anticipated by Khalil alone. The requester's lead argument is that Khalil's Figure 10 shows the diaphragm holder mating with a "shallowly recessed portion of the housing," thereby meeting the "recess or cavity at least in part with an external surface of the housing" limitation that the examiner had relied on to allow claim 1. (See the reexam request text at archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.wawd.321565/gov.uscourts.wawd.321565.121.0.pdf.)

Critical counter‑point — the examiner disagreed: during prosecution of the parent, the examiner expressly found that Khalil's diaphragm is "shown to be fully positioned within the housing so that it is enclosed by the housing and cannot be considered to form a recess or cavity with an external surface of the housing" (Final Rejection, 4 Nov. 2021). So the only reference seriously advanced as anticipatory is Khalil, and its § 102 status as to claim 1 is contested and unresolved on this record.

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B. Front‑page U.S. patent documents (examiner‑cited "References Cited")

Verifiable entries recovered from the OCR'd front page (U.S. patents):

(Additional front‑page U.S. patents exist beyond this list — the OCR copy is truncated mid‑column.)

C. Front‑page U.S. patent‑application publications

Caution on Myers: I found two distinct Myers publications referenced in different papers — US 2007/0219486 A1 (20 Sep 2007) and US 2008/0275386 A1 (6 Nov 2008). The "Myers '386" family was used as a primary reference in the sibling '380 IPR and in prosecution of other family members. I cannot confirm from my sources which of the two sits on the '893 front page; both should be checked.

D. Front‑page foreign patent documents

E. Non‑patent literature on the front page

• "Whisper Wear Hands‑Free Breast Pump, Model: WWPMP01, User Guide" — cited in the '893 References Cited (visible in the Dkt. 101‑1 reproduction). This is a product user guide relied on as printed publication art; because it is undated on the face of what I retrieved, its § 102(a)(1) status turns on when it was publicly accessible relative to 15 June 2017 — worth independent verification.

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F. References actually applied in prosecution and reexamination

This is where the substantive art lives. The examiner's rejections were § 103 (obviousness), with Khalil as the base reference throughout — not § 102.

During prosecution of the '050 application (which issued as the '893):

• Non‑final Office Action: originally‑filed claim 1 rejected as obvious over Khalil "in view of a number of other references"; all dependent claims likewise rejected over Khalil + others.
• Final Rejection, 4 Nov. 2021: maintained the Khalil‑based rejection; the examiner's stated reason for the allowance that followed was that Khalil's diaphragm is enclosed and cannot form a recess/cavity with an external surface of the housing.
• 23 Sep. 2021 examiner interview; applicant amended claim 1 to add the "diaphragm holder that forms a recess or cavity at least in part with an external surface of the housing" limitation → allowance.
  • Source: https://insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation_documents/15241433 (W.D. Wash. 2:23‑cv‑00631 complaint) and Dkt. 1.

In reexamination (90/019,410 and 90/019,679, requester's 8 Feb. 2024 request):

Note on a closely related but distinct record: the rejection narrative citing Chang (US 2018/0333523), Weber, Makower '794 (US 2016/0206794), Takeuchi (US 2017/0043065), Tanaka (US 2017/0035951), Phillips (US 2016/0296682), Thompson (US 7,662,018) and Guthrie '743 — with claim numbering up to 32 — belongs to the sibling '380/related family prosecutions and IPR2024‑00953, not to the '893's own 28‑claim set. Do not attribute those grounds to the '893.

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G. § 102 anticipation — bottom line

Applying the strict test (a single reference disclosing every limitation), the only reference on this record seriously asserted to anticipate any claim of the '893 is Khalil (US 2013/0023821 A1), and only for claims 1, 3, 7–11, 14–21, 23 and 25:

Two things to keep straight:

1. No reference other than Khalil has ever been positioned as an anticipatory (§ 102) reference against the '893. Every other citation — Yodfat, Bauer, Toth, Vischer, Garbez, Felber, Chen, Lobdell, Perinet, the Murata/JP and WO documents — is either mere background/formal citation or a § 103 secondary reference.
2. The Khalil anticipation theory was rejected at the examination stage as to claim 1, on the express ground that Khalil's diaphragm sits inside the housing and so cannot form a recess or cavity with an external surface of the housing. That is precisely the limitation the patentee added by amendment and later relied on against the Momcozy S12 Pro. The reexam requester attacks that finding by pointing to Khalil's Figure 10; whether Khalil in fact discloses the limitation is the live § 102 question, and I cannot resolve it from the record available to me.

Because claim 1 is the sole independent claim and claims 2–28 all depend from it, the entire claim set rises or falls with claim 1: a successful § 102 showing on claim 1 would put the whole patent at risk, and an unsuccessful one leaves only the narrower § 103 combinations in play.

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H. Explicit uncertainty flags

• Verbatim front‑page list not obtained. US 11,357,893's References Cited section is reproduced here from OCR'd court and reexam copies; several U.S. patent numbers and publication numbers are garbled in those copies and are marked as uncertain above. Confirm against USPTO PatentCenter → 11,357,893 → "References Cited."
• Numbers I could not verify at all: the full foreign list may be longer than the ~25 entries I recovered; EP 2210628 B1 appears in a reproduction that may belong to the sibling '380 patent rather than the '893, so I have excluded it from the '893 list.
• "Kurihara," "Hu," "Baker," "Alvarez" identifiers: described in the reexam papers by inventor surname with paragraph citations. I recovered Alvarez = US 2014/0288466 A1 and Baker = US 2009/0281485 A1 from a secondary reproduction; the full published numbers for Kurihara and Hu, and the paragraph‑level citations, should be read off the reexam request itself (archive.org Dkt. 121).
• Date/§ 102 status qualification: references published or effectively filed on or after 15 June 2017 (e.g., US 2018/0333523 (Chang)) can only be § 102(a)(2) art if their own effective filing predates that date — the "Chang" citation appears in the '380 record, not the '893's, and I have not verified its effective filing date.
• The "Whisper Wear" user guide is cited on the '893 face but its publication date is not evident from what I retrieved; its § 102(a)(1) status is unverified.

Sources: Google Patents https://patents.google.com/patent/US11357893/en · '893 reexam request and front‑page reproduction, https://archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.wawd.321565/gov.uscourts.wawd.321565.121.0.pdf and https://www.docketalarm.com/patentapps/US/90-19,679/BREAST_PUMP_SYSTEM/M1H09425WFYBX96/ · PTO‑892 Notice of References Cited (12 May 2025), https://www.docketalarm.com/patentapps/US/90-19,679/BREAST_PUMP_SYSTEM/MAL4K6NFX94X195/ · '893 claim/front‑page listing, https://archive.org/download/gov.uscourts.wawd.321565/gov.uscourts.wawd.321565.101.1.pdf · W.D. Wash. 2:23‑cv‑00631 Dkt. 1, https://insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation_documents/15241433 · IPR2024‑00953 petition (sibling '380), https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1556499](/patent/1556499)/ and https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1557376](/patent/1557376)/ · WO 2018229504 A1 citation table, https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2018229504A1/en

I'll ground the obviousness analysis in the actual prior-art references identified for this patent. Let me pull details on the key references.

Let me verify the identity of the secondary references (Kurihara, Hu/Bauer, Alvarez, Baker, Schlensog) used in the reexamination grounds.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,357,893 B2 (35 U.S.C. § 103)

Building on the claim-1 reconstruction and the reexamination/litigation record already established in the prior sections of this page. I do not repeat that material except where needed for the § 103 reasoning.

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0. Two corrections to the earlier sections (flagging per instructions)

While verifying the prior art I found the following contradictions with the earlier-generated sections, and I flag them rather than silently reconciling:

1. Reexamination control-number dates were transposed in the earlier "Patent summary." The earlier section attributed the "February 8, 2024" request date to 90/019,679. The Patent Owner's own June 26, 2025 petition (filed by Willow Blossom Holdco) states: "On February 8, 2024, an anonymous third party requested ex parte reexamination … 90/019,410 ('the first reexamination')" — ordered March 5, 2024 — and "On September 24, 2024, the law firm of Fish & Richardson filed a second request … 90/019,679 ('the second reexamination') on behalf of Shenzhen Root Innovation Technology Co., Ltd." The two proceedings were merged on February 26, 2025. (Docket Alarm, 90/019,679, Paper MCDR7VG0191X199)
2. Status is "pending in final rejection," not merely "pending." A Final Rejection was mailed September 10, 2025 in the merged proceeding. (Docket Alarm track docket, 90/019,679) The earlier section's bare "pending" is not wrong, but it understates how far the challenge has progressed.

Everything else in the earlier sections is consistent with what I found.

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1. Framework and level of ordinary skill

Legal standard. Obviousness asks whether the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious to a person of ordinary skill at the effective filing date, considering (i) the scope and content of the prior art, (ii) the differences between the prior art and the claims, (iii) the level of ordinary skill, and (iv) objective indicia (Graham v. John Deere). The claimed elements must be found in the art, and there must be an articulated reason to combine — which may be "any need or problem known in the field" or "the mere fact that the prior art contains the elements in the same field," and which may rest on "design incentives and other market forces" (KSR Int'l v. Teleflex). Where a patent discloses a narrow structural limitation, that limitation may be the only thing left standing after the general architecture is removed; that is precisely the posture of the '893 patent.

AIA applies. Application 17/203,050 was filed March 16, 2021; the earliest claimed priority is June 15, 2017. Both post-date March 16, 2013, so § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) and § 103 as amended govern.

Level of ordinary skill (proposed). A bachelor's degree in mechanical, electrical, or biomedical engineering (or equivalent), with 2–4 years of experience in the design of small electromechanical consumer or medical fluid-handling devices, including breast pumps or comparable diaphragm/vacuum systems; or a master's degree with less experience. This skill level is appropriate because the asserted advances are ones of packaging, arrangement, and component selection rather than of new physics, and the record's own expert (the "Bauer" declaration in reexam 90/019,679) applies the art at essentially this level.

Critical framing point. Issued claim 1 (as reproduced in the earlier summary) does not require:

• a piezo pump (that is claim 2);
• a rigid milk container (claim 16);
• a continuous, opening-free diaphragm, or a milk path that runs beneath rather than through the diaphragm (specification-only subject matter);
• self-sealing (claims 15, 19).

Claim 1 is therefore directed to an architecture (self-contained in-bra wearable, housing with battery + pump, two-part breast shield, removable milk container, diaphragm seated on a holder that forms a recess/cavity with an external housing surface). The obviousness case against claim 1 is materially stronger than against several dependents — the key asymmetry in this file.

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2. Prior art landscape (as identified in the record for this patent)

Source for Khalil's disclosure: US 2013/0023821 A1 full text; for the reexam grounds and the mappings: W.D. Wash. 2:23-cv-00631, Dkt. 121 (the 90/019,679 request with the Bauer declaration); for the merge/appeal chronology: Docket Alarm 90/019,679; for the Office's own SNQ findings: 90/019,679 order, Dec. 17, 2024.

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3. Claim 1 — element-by-element analysis

Ground 1 (primary): Khalil, alone or in view of Kurihara

Motivation to combine Khalil and Kurihara (as articulated in the 90/019,679 request and confirmed as an SNQ by the Office):

1. Same field of endeavor. Both are compact, electrically driven breast pumps; both are classified in A61M 1/06 (milking pumps). No field-crossing leap is required.
2. Same components, same problem. Both comprise a breast flange, a milk container, a housing containing an electric pump, and a diaphragm/diaphragm-holder assembly. Both address the same problem: releasably attaching the breast-flange/milk-container assembly to the housing.
3. Same solution, same way. Both solve it by providing a recess in the housing into which a portion of the breast flange assembly is received.
4. Design incentive recognized in the art. Seating the diaphragm holder in a recess in the external housing surface minimizes the dead air volume the pump must evacuate, yielding faster pressure response and a smaller, quieter, more compact device. Khalil itself states the object is a unit that "can be made extremely small and compact" with "dead volume … minimized" and a "small stroke."
5. Predictable result / mere rearrangement. Recessing a holder into a wall of a housing is a mechanical packaging change with a predictable outcome — the paradigm KSR case of applying a known technique to a known device.

Why the prosecution's distinguishing rationale is vulnerable. The '893 was allowed because the Examiner concluded that Khalil's diaphragm was "fully positioned within the housing so that it is enclosed by the housing and cannot be considered to form a recess or cavity with an external surface of the housing." The requester's rebuttal is that (a) Khalil's Fig. 10 shows the holder mating with a recessed portion of the housing's external surface, and (b) in any event, Kurihara removes all doubt by expressly showing a diaphragm holder in a recess of the external housing. This is a factual dispute about a figure — but the Kurihara leg does not depend on resolving it.

Ground 2: Khalil + Chang + Fang (wearable architecture with a rigid container and a diaphragm)

Chang supplies an in-bra wearable breast pump with a housing/outer shell 12 + chassis 35, and expressly contemplates a rigid container in alternative (including lower) locations. Fang supplies the elastic diaphragm separating pump from milk path and a one-way/diaphragm valve. Motivation: (i) both are wearable breast pumps addressing hygiene and spillage; (ii) a rigid container avoids the bag-capillary waste the '893 specification itself criticizes; (iii) positioning the container at the bottom of a wearable device is dictated by gravity, a predictable and recognized expedient; (iv) Khalil itself supplies the suggestion for a rigid milk container in an in-bra device. Result: the Chang–Fang–Khalil device is a self-contained in-bra wearable with battery, pump, flange + nipple tunnel, removable rigid container, and a diaphragm seated on a holder in the housing wall.

Ground 3: Park–Hiraoka (recess/cavity limitation)

The Office's December 17, 2024 order found that the Park–Hiraoka combination discloses a "diaphragm holder that forms a cavity with the external surface of the housing" — i.e., the very limitation that carried the allowance — and that this raised a substantial new question of patentability as to claims 1–11, 13–16, and 19–28. This is the Office's own, on-the-record assessment that claim 1's distinguishing feature is met by a reference not previously considered.

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4. Dependent claims 2–28 — mapping and rationale

Caveat on dependent claims. Claims 23, 25, 26, and 27 could not be verified verbatim in the earlier sections, and the mappings above for claims 23 and 25 are taken from the request's claim charts rather than from the patent's own text. Treat the dependent-claim chart as indicative but requiring verification against the USPTO full-text claim listing before being relied upon.

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5. Objective indicia (and why the nexus is contested)

The patentee has real equities, but each is weaker than it first appears:

• Commercial success — strong factually, weak on nexus. The Elvie Pump is regarded as the first genuinely wearable in-bra pump to achieve broad consumer adoption. But the '893 specification admits that fully integrated wearable pumps were already on the market ("Fully integrated wearable breast pump systems have begun to enter the market, such as described in US 2016 0206794 A1"). Success therefore may be attributable to brand, industrial design, app ecosystem, and first-mover marketing rather than to the claimed recess/cavity feature. Absent proof tying sales to that limitation, the presumption of nexus fails.
• Copying — double-edged. The Momcozy S12 Pro is alleged by the patentee to copy the design. But the requester's own analysis emphasizes that the S12 Pro's external pump-housing surface is flat, with no recess, and its diaphragm holder sits entirely within the milk container. So the accused product does not obviously practice the very limitation that carried the allowance. Either (a) the claim is construed broadly, in which case the prior art (Khalil's Fig. 10 shallow recess; Kurihara; Park–Hiraoka) meets it, or (b) the claim is construed narrowly, in which case the copying evidence is uninformative because the copy does not include the feature. The patentee is caught between the two constructions — the requester expressly made this point ("Claims may not be construed one way in order to obtain their allowance and in a different way against accused infringers").
• Long-felt need / praise. The need for discrete, quiet pumping existed; but it was being addressed (Kurihara's piezo pump; US 2016/0206794's integrated wearable; Myers' low-noise balanced drive). The gap was one of engineering integration, not of a missing insight.
• Awards/industry recognition for the product are only probative if causally linked to the claimed structure.

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6. Anticipated rebuttals

1. "Teaching away" / the annular-membrane argument. The specification argues that annular membranes with milk flowing through the annulus are bulky and wasteful. That is an argument about one Khalil embodiment. Khalil also discloses a three-part membrane and a kidney/partial-circle membrane that only partially surrounds the receiving part — and, critically, claim 1 does not recite a continuous opening-free membrane or a milk path that bypasses the diaphragm. The disclosed advantage therefore lives in the specification, not the claim.
2. "Khalil's pump is inside a separate housing." Claim 1 only requires "a housing that includes: a battery, and a pump." Khalil's housing 6′ is that housing.
3. "No express battery in Khalil." Not fatal: a cordless, hands-free, in-bra device necessarily needs an on-board power source, and Kurihara ¶ 54 supplies the express teaching.
4. "The recess/cavity limitation was added by amendment and defeated the art." Amendment-based allowance is not evidence of non-obviousness. The Office itself has since found a SNQ on that exact limitation three separate ways (Kurihara's recess; Park–Hiraoka's cavity; the applicant's own litigation claim chart against the Momcozy device), and the merged reexamination issued a Final Rejection on September 10, 2025.

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7. Real-world corroboration from the reexamination file

This is the most important practical takeaway: the Office's own actions largely track the analysis above.

1. 90/019,410, first action (July 29, 2024): claims 1–3, 7–11, 13, 14 rejected under § 102 as anticipated by Kurihara (US 2016/0271305), with further § 103 rejections over Kurihara alone or in combination, plus double-patenting rejections. That is not a close-call obviousness case — it is anticipation of claim 1.
2. 90/019,679 order (Dec. 17, 2024): SNQ found as to claims 1–28, expressly reasoning that (a) the Park–Hiraoka combination appears to disclose the diaphragm-holder cavity limitation, and (b) Fang "appears to disclose the diaphragm holder limitation," and that "claim 1 was allowed due to the diaphragm holder limitation."
3. Merger (Feb. 26, 2025) of the two proceedings.
4. Second action (May 12, 2025): the Kurihara-based rejections were overcome, but the Office issued entirely new rejections based on Chang, Fang, and Park.
5. Final Rejection mailed September 10, 2025.

In short, the Office has now rejected claim 1 on three distinct theory families (Kurihara anticipation; Park–Hiraoka on the cavity limitation; Chang/Fang/Park on the architecture), and the exam history shows the sole allowance-driving limitation being repeatedly met.

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8. Confidence and verification caveats

• Claim 1 text is taken from the earlier sections of this page (court/reproduction sources). The analysis depends on that text; if the issued claim 1 differs in any respect, the mapping shifts.
• Full identifiers not established by my searches: the specific patent numbers for Alvarez, Baker, Hu, Schlensog, Park, and the reference the record calls "Myers '255" (cited for the <250 g limitation). I saw these applied in the reexam request/declaration but did not confirm their numbers or publication dates. Kurihara is identified as US 2016/0271305 in the Patent Owner's petition.
• Chang's prior-art date needs checking. US PGPub 2018/0333523, if it published in late 2018, would post-date the '893's June 15, 2017 priority. Its applicability as prior art would then depend on an earlier effective filing date under § 102(a)(2), or on the challenged claims not being entitled to the 2017 priority. The Office nevertheless applied it, which implies it qualified — but I did not verify the § 102 basis and it should be confirmed, since a priority failure would also raise separate § 112/enablement issues.
• Reexamination status as of this writing. I confirm a Final Rejection mailed September 10, 2025 in the merged 90/019,410 + 90/019,679 proceeding. I have not verified whether Patent Owner filed a response/after-final, whether an appeal to the PTAB has been taken, or whether the merged proceeding has since terminated; if an appeal exists it would go to the PTAB first and only then potentially to the Federal Circuit. This is consistent with — and does not contradict — the earlier finding that no CAFC 2026 docket for this patent was verified.
• The litigation outcome (consent judgment, dismissal with prejudice, W.D. Wash. 2:23-cv-00631) does not constitute a final holding of validity or invalidity and therefore carries no estoppel effect on the § 103 analysis here.

Bottom line. Claim 1 — the sole independent claim — is, on this record, vulnerable to a § 103 challenge on at least four independent combinations: Khalil alone (with the Fig. 10 recess), Khalil + Kurihara, Khalil + Chang + Fang, and the Park–Hiraoka combination. Claims 2–22 and 28 are vulnerable to further obviousness-type rejections over routine design choices and small secondary references (Baker for noise, Hu for rigidity and rechargeable batteries, Schlensog for sliding engagement, Alvarez for indicators/notifications). The strongest patentee positions are the narrower dependents reciting self-sealing behavior (claims 15, 19) and single-push latch actuation (claim 20), which require a more specific factual showing — though even those are addressed by Khalil's duckbill valve 5 and locking-lug/recess coupling.