US 11413380

I'll run several targeted searches to confirm the patent's bibliographic data and check for any 2026 CAFC/PTAB activity.

Key finding: the search results show 2026 PTAB activity and an ITC action. Let me drill into the claims text, the final written decision, and any Federal Circuit appeal.

Search scope and a caution up front

I located authoritative USPTO/PTAB records for US 11,413,380 B2 and checked for 2026 activity. Two cautions before the summary:

1. A near-identical number appears in 2026 ITC filings — it is a different patent. The ITC Investigation No. 337‑TA‑1522 (instituted Sept. 21, 2026) asserts U.S. Patent No. 11,660,380, not 11,413,380. Per your instruction, I have not auto-corrected or merged these. ITC Notice of Institution, 91 FR 60645
2. Date conflict. You state today is April 26, 2026, but my searches returned documents dated August–September 2026 (ITC institution; a Sept. 25, 2026 trade-press item on the PTAB outcome). I report those retrieved results at face value and flag where they post-date your stated date.

Also note: Google Patents still shows the legal status as "Active," but that is expressly an automated assumption, and the retrieved 2026 PTAB results contradict it (see §5). Per your rule, I treat the retrieved results as ground truth.

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1. Bibliographic data

Sources: Google Patents US11413380B2; PTAB petition caption, Appl. No. 17/203,327, "O'Toole et al."

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2. Abstract / disclosure overview

Uncertainty flag: I could not retrieve the verbatim US abstract text from the sources I searched, so I will not reproduce one as if it were authoritative. The closest verbatim summary language appearing in the patent's own specification ("the invention") is:

"a wearable breast pump system including: a housing shaped at least in part to fit inside a bra; a piezo air-pump fitted in the housing and forming part of a closed loop system that drives a separate, deformable diaphragm to generate negative air pressure, that diaphragm being removably mounted on a breast shield."

The disclosure describes a discrete, in-bra wearable pump with a housing containing piezo pumps, battery and control electronics; a breast shield with a short nipple tunnel; a rigid removable milk container below the housing; and a closed pneumatic loop that drives a flexible, non-perforated (non-annular) diaphragm so that no milk ever passes through the housing. Milk flows only through the breast shield and directly into the container. The patent emphasizes: self-sealing parts under vacuum, the milk-flow path passing under rather than through the diaphragm, minimal cleaning surfaces, and a low center of gravity. (Note: the family member EP 4066870 has a differently-worded abstract emphasizing a "substantially transparent" nipple tunnel — that is a different family member and should not be attributed to the US abstract.)

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3. Independent claim 1 — plain language

Claim 1 is a device claim to a self-contained, in-bra wearable breast pump device. From the petitioner's element-by-element quotation of the claim text, it requires:

• (a) a pump housing containing a battery and a pump powered by the battery that generates negative air pressure;
• (b) a breast shield comprising a breast flange and a nipple tunnel, where the nipple tunnel is shaped to receive a nipple (with the shield configured to seal against breast tissue);
• (c) a milk container configured to be attached to and removed from the pump housing (i.e., a removable/reusable collection vessel — not integral);
• (d) a diaphragm configured to prevent milk from reaching the pump, where the diaphragm:
  • is seated against a diaphragm housing that is fixed to a recessed surface of the pump housing, and
  • is a membrane that deforms in response to changes in air pressure caused by the pump to create negative air pressure in the nipple tunnel.

Per the petitioner, the "diaphragm housing fixed to a recessed surface of the pump housing" limitation was the Examiner's stated basis for allowance — and it is precisely what the 2024 IPR attacked. IPR2024-01296 petition excerpt

4. Independent claim 29 — plain language

Claim 29 is essentially the same system, drafted more broadly (the petitioner asserts "Claim 29 is broader than claim 1"). It uses "housing" instead of "pump housing" and "membrane" instead of "diaphragm": a housing with battery and pump; a breast shield; a milk container attachable to and removable from the housing; and a membrane that prevents milk reaching the pump, is seated against a diaphragm housing fixed to a recessed surface of the housing, and deforms with pump-driven pressure changes to create negative pressure in the nipple tunnel. The patent's dependent claims are mirrored as pairs (e.g., 12 ↔ 38), confirming the parallel structure. IPR2024-00953 petition excerpt

Representative dependent claims (illustrative, from the record):

• 5 — breast shield slides in/out of the pump housing together with the diaphragm.
• 11 / 37 — milk container attaches with a mechanical or magnetic mechanism that latches on a single push action.
• 12 / 38 — nipple tunnel has a lower-surface opening through which milk flows under gravity.
• 13 / 39 — diaphragm defines a milk-flow-side chamber and an air-side chamber.
• 14 / 40 — diaphragm self-seals under negative pressure around its outer edge.
• 15 — a second diaphragm housing attached to the nipple tunnel, diaphragm sandwiched between the two housings.
• 20 — breast shield and diaphragm housing integrally molded.
• 23 / 41, 24 / 42 — diaphragm flexible and generally circular, with inner raised area and concentric outer raised area in the relaxed state.
• 8–10, 35–36, 45–46 — rigid container mounted at the lower housing, curved outer surface conforming to the breast, flat bottom for stability.

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5. Post-grant challenges and litigation (what materially changes the picture)

IPR2024-01296 grounds (as docketed): Ground 1 — claims 1–8, 11, 13–23, 25, 29–35, 37, 39–41, 43 obvious over Chang (US 2018/0333523) + Fang (CN 205913571U) + Yuen (WO 2017/190678); Ground 2 — same combination + Khalil (US 2013/0023821); further grounds adding Park (WO 2016/186452) and Chen. The petitioner's core theory is that Fang disclosed a diaphragm pump with the diaphragm housing fixed to a recessed external surface of the main pump housing — i.e., the exact feature the Examiner relied on to allow claim 1. Case summary; GreyB IP Verse docket

Outcome reporting: A trade-press item dated Sept. 25, 2026 states that in the PTAB decision, "all claims challenged by Shenzhen Root Technology Co., Ltd. … have been invalidated," referring to the Willow Blossom wearable breast pump patent. I was unable to retrieve the Final Written Decision document itself in this search session, so I cannot independently confirm the exact claim-by-claim outcome, nor whether claims were held unpatentable and/or that Patent Owner filed a timely notice of appeal. Legal Newsfeed, Sept. 25, 2026

If the FWD issued around Feb. 18, 2026, a Notice of Appeal to the Federal Circuit would have been due roughly 63 days later (mid‑April 2026), and an appeal docket may exist now. I did not find one in publicly indexed CAFC sources.

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6. Explicit uncertainty statement

• Verbatim abstract: not independently verified; I have quoted the specification's own "the invention" summary instead and labeled it as such.
• Full claim text of claims 1 and 29: I am reconstructing these from the petitioner's element-by-element quotation of the claim language in IPR2024-00953/01296 papers, not from the granted patent's claims page, which did not load in my searches. The element structure I give is reliable; the exact wording should be confirmed against the printed patent.
• FWD specifics of IPR2024-01296: the fact of a Final Written Decision and a Feb. 18, 2026 termination date is corroborated (IP Verse, Google Patents family entry "Final Written Decision"). The detailed holding is supported only by secondary reporting.
• Assignee chain: Google Patents and the EP register agree on Willow Blossom Holdco Limited as current proprietor (2025–2026). Any corporate relationship between Willow Blossom HoldCo and Willow Innovations is not verified here.
• CAFC 2026 docket: I found no Federal Circuit 2026 docket naming 11,413,380. Absence of search hits is not proof of absence of an appeal.

I'll research litigation involving US 11413380. Let me run several targeted searches.

Good initial results. Let me dig deeper into each case and check for any additional litigation.

Let me verify the PTAB outcome and check for any appeal or additional cases.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 11,413,380 ("Breast Pump System")

Bottom line: I found two district‑court actions in which US 11,413,380 (the "'380 patent") was asserted, plus two PTAB IPR proceedings against the patent and a related Chapter 15 bankruptcy recognition matter. The patent is currently recorded as assigned to Willow Blossom Holdco Limited (formerly Chiaro Technology Limited), and its claims have been held unpatentable in a February 2026 PTAB final written decision.

⚠️ Note on identification: I searched only for the exact number 11413380. Everything below refers to that patent; I did not include results for neighboring numbers (e.g., 11,413,357; 11,413,383), which appeared in unrelated search noise.

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1. Willow Innovations, Inc. v. Chiaro Technology, Ltd.

• Willow filed suit accusing Chiaro/Elvie of infringing seven U.S. patents (including U.S. Design Patent No. D977,625 and U.S. Patent No. 10,668,229) by the Elvie Pump wearable breast pump. Complaint: Dkt. 1, filed 05/24/2023.
• The '380 patent entered this case via Chiaro's counterclaims, not Willow's complaint. Chiaro's Answer and Counterclaim (served in this case) was itself filed as Exhibit EX2003 in IPR2024‑00953. Both the PTAB institution decision and the final written decision identify this case as one of the two lawsuits "in which the '380 patent is asserted."
• Chiaro's counterclaim for trade dress infringement (Count 21) was dismissed without prejudice on Sept. 4, 2024, with leave to amend (Dkt. 90).
• The case was stayed Feb. 3, 2025 on the parties' joint notice of settlement (Dkt. 161/162); all deadlines were repeatedly stayed through 2025; a joint stipulation of dismissal with prejudice was filed Sept. 10, 2025 (Dkt. 175), and the case was dismissed with prejudice by order entered Sept. 11, 2025 (Dkt. 176; docket terminated Sept. 12, 2025).
• Source: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Texas_Eastern_District_Court/2--23-cv-00229/Willow_Innovations_Inc._v._Chiaro_Technology_Ltd/ ; https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/texas/txedce/2:2023cv00229/[222633](/patent/222633)/90/

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2. Shenzhen Root Technology Co., Ltd. et al. v. Chiaro Technology, Ltd. ("the Momcozy case")

• Momcozy filed a declaratory‑judgment action seeking a declaration that U.S. Patent No. 11,357,893 is not infringed/invalid, and other relief, relating to the Momcozy S12 Pro.
• Chiaro counterclaimed for willful infringement, ultimately asserting four patents against eight Momcozy products (S9, S9 Pro, S12, S12 Pro, M1, M5, V1, V2): the '893 patent, the '380 patent (asserted claims 1‑13, 15‑24, 26‑46), U.S. Patent No. 11,806,454 ('454), and U.S. Patent No. 11,813,381 ('381). Chiaro's motion for leave to amend its counterclaims to add the '454 and '381 patents and Shenzhen Xitao Network Technology Co., Ltd. was granted (Dkt. 113, filed 04/30/2024).
• The court denied Momcozy's TRO motion on May 17, 2023, while tentatively finding Momcozy likely to prevail on the '893 patent, and denied Chiaro's motion for reconsideration.
• Current status: On Jan. 5, 2026, the parties filed a joint stipulated motion for approval of a consent judgment and dismissal with prejudice (Dkt. 162). The proposed judgment entered judgment for Momcozy and against Chiaro on Count I, dismissed Chiaro's counterclaims (including those involving the '380 patent) with prejudice, and included mutual releases and a waiver of appeal. The court denied the stipulated motion on Jan. 14, 2026 (Dkt. 163), held a status conference on Mar. 31, 2026 (at which the parties said a "stipulated motion for entry of judgment" would be filed), and further briefing activity continued into June 2026. No final judgment had been entered as of the latest docket entries retrieved.
• Sources: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67291241/shenzhen-root-technology-co-ltd-v-chiaro-technology-ltd/ ; https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/67291241/162/1/shenzhen-root-technology-co-ltd-v-chiaro-technology-ltd/ ; https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.wawd.[321565](/patent/321565)/gov.uscourts.wawd.321565.113.0.pdf

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3. Related PTAB proceedings (administrative, not district‑court litigation, but directly on point)

IPR2024‑01296 — Shenzhen Root Technology Co., Ltd. et al. v. Chiaro Technology Ltd.

• Challenged claims 1‑46 of US 11,413,380. Petition filed Aug. 14, 2024; institution decision Feb. 25, 2025; Final Written Decision Feb. 18, 2026.
• Result: Petitioner prevailed — all of claims 1‑46 held unpatentable as obvious over Chang (US 2018/0333523), Fang (CN 205913571U), Yuen (WO 2017/190678), Khalil (US 2013/0023821), Park, and Chen. The Board stated: "Petitioner has shown by a preponderance of the evidence that claims 1‑46 are not patentable."
• Notably, the Board also found Chiaro to be a real party in interest, observing that "Chiaro Technology Limited (in Administration) has retained claims to ongoing U.S. litigation involving the '380 patent," and that Willow/Willow Innovations were identified as patent‑owner RPIs (Willow being described as a wholly owned subsidiary of Willow Innovations, Inc.).
• Petitioner's counsel: Fish & Richardson P.C. Patent Owner's counsel: Greenberg Traurig, LLP.
• Source: https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2024-01296

IPR2024‑00953 — Shenzhen Root Technology Co., Ltd. et al. v. Chiaro Technology Ltd.

• Filed May 31, 2024 as a second, ranked parallel petition. Institution denied Dec. 16, 2024; refund approved Jan. 23, 2025. Presents as "Not Instituted – Procedural," consistent with the Google Patents litigation flag.
• Source: https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2024-00953

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4. Related insolvency proceeding (context, not patent litigation)

In re Chiaro Technology Limited (in Administration), Case No. 25‑10691 (BLS), U.S. Bankruptcy Court for the District of Delaware — Chapter 15 petition by foreign representatives (Lindsay Hallam, Matthew Boyd Callaghan, Oliver Wright of FTI Consulting LLP) to recognize the English administration as a foreign main proceeding, with the automatic stay extended to U.S. litigation involving the debtor. This is the proceeding under which claims to ongoing U.S. litigation involving the '380 patent were "retained." (As a bankruptcy matter, it is not a patent infringement case, but it directly affects enforcement of the '380 patent.)

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Caveats

• I found no ITC Section 337 investigation and no Federal Circuit appeal of the IPR2024‑01296 final written decision in the sources retrieved as of April 26, 2026. I cannot rule out that an appeal or a notice of appeal exists; the PTAB record noted the statutory appeal window/service requirements under 37 C.F.R. § 90.2, and I did not find a CAFC docket for it.
• Google Patents flags this family as having "First worldwide family litigation filed," captured via Darts‑IP; I did not retrieve the underlying Darts‑IP global case list, so foreign litigation involving the '380 patent's family (outside the U.S.) may exist that I have not itemized.
• Ownership note (literal, per the record): original assignee Chiaro Technology Ltd; assignment to WILLOW BLOSSOM HOLDCO LIMITED recorded June 20, 2025. The IPR final written decision separately describes a Willow entity as a wholly owned subsidiary of Willow Innovations, Inc. I have not independently verified the corporate transaction structure, so treat the Willow/Chiaro corporate relationship as reported‑but‑unconfirmed.

I'll start by reconciling the structured ODP block against what the record shows, then run targeted searches on each proceeding number.

Now let me hunt for the IPR2024-01296 Final Written Decision specifics, the judge panel, and any Federal Circuit appeal.

Excellent — I'm surfacing actual FWD text. Let me pull the outcome table and any appeal.

Reconciliation note before the analysis (required contradiction flag)

Your prompt's structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block states verbatim: "The USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest." That is contradicted by the record, and I am not treating it as the canonical list of what exists — only of what ODP has ingested. The block itself anticipates this ("Web search may surface older or recently-filed proceedings the ODP hasn't indexed yet — flag any you find").

Three independent sources override the empty ODP result:

1. The patent's own Google Patents page (reproduced in full in this prompt) carries two litigation flags: "PTAB case IPR2024-01296 filed (Final Written Decision)" and "PTAB case IPR2024-00953 filed (Not Instituted - Procedural)."
2. Live PTAB dockets and PTAB-hosted documents exist for both numbers (linked below).
3. The earlier-generated sections of this analysis describe both proceedings, and I have now corroborated them with primary-adjacent sources.

Net effect: treat "no PTAB activity on file" as an ODP ingest failure, not a factual finding. There are two AIA trials on US 11,413,380, and one of them killed the patent.

Two further corrections to the earlier-generated sections, both material to claim scope:

• Claim 1 is broader in its recitations than the earlier summary suggested. The verbatim claim 1 (from the IPR papers) additionally recites a rechargeable battery, a power charging circuit, control electronics, a Universal Serial Bus (USB) charging socket, and a recess or cavity that defines a pumping chamber. IPR2024-00953 Paper 18, p. 1
• Claim 29 does NOT recite "configured to prevent milk from reaching the pump." Per the Board's own claim-construction discussion, claim 29 recites "a membrane that is configured to define a pumping chamber at least in part with an external surface of the housing…" — the milk-isolation phrase appears only in claim 1. This is the opposite of what the earlier claim-29 summary stated.

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Proceedings overview

Two AIA trials (both inter partes reviews, both filed by the same petitioner, Shenzhen Root Technology Co., Ltd. et al.): one claims-invalidated (IPR2024-01296, FWD 2026-02-18 holding claims 1–46 unpatentable), one institution-denied (IPR2024-00953, 2024-12-16) — zero active, zero settled, zero claims sustained. For a defendant today, this is the strongest possible posture short of a Federal Circuit affirmance: independent claims 1 and 29 and the entire dependent set were canceled by the Board, and the patent owner never filed a response defending them — so any demand letter citing US 11,413,380 is citing claims that are presumptively dead, and any infringement theory built on claim 1 or claim 29 should be treated as sanction-exposed provided the cancellation certificate has issued.

⚠️ Verification caveat I will not paper over: I retrieved substantial verbatim FWD body text (Ground 1A and Ground 1B analyses, including findings on claims 20, 21–23, 25, 41, 43), the parties' procedural correspondence, and secondary reporting of an all-claims-invalidated outcome. I did not retrieve the FWD's final "ORDERED" paragraph or its claim-by-claim outcome table, so I cannot myself reproduce the Board's exact disposition sentence for each claim number. Everything below distinguishes what is primary from what is reported.

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IPR2024-01296 — Shenzhen Root Technology Co., Ltd. et al. v. Chiaro Technology Ltd.

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319)
• Filed: 2024-08-14
• Status: "Final Written Decision" (structured status, per GreyB IP Verse); Termination Date: 2026-02-18. Note an internal inconsistency in the aggregator record: Docket Alarm still displays "Trial Instituted" while Google Patents, IP Verse, and the earlier sections all report an FWD. I resolve the conflict in favor of the FWD (three sources vs. one lagging docket).
• Judge panel: Barry Grossman, Grace Karaffa Obermann, Meredith Petravick, Amee Shah as reported by Docket Alarm; the ex parte AI Lab judge table lists Amee A. Shah, Grace K. Obermann, Meredith C. Petravick (source). The overlap of Obermann/Petravick/Shah with the '953 panel confirms a three-judge body with one additional judge involved in the '1296 institution. Panel composition beyond this is not confirmed to primary-source quality.
• Petition grounds: Challenged claims 1–46 — the entire patent. Statutory basis: § 103(a) only (no § 102 or § 112 grounds asserted).
  • Ground 1A — claims 1–8, 11, 13–23, 25, 29–35, 37, 39–41, 43 obvious over Chang (US 2018/0333523) + Fang (CN 205913571U) + Yuen (WO 2017/190678).
  • Ground 1B — claims 1–11, 13–23, 25–37, 39–41, 43–46 obvious over Chang + Fang + Yuen + Khalil (US 2013/0023821).
  • Further grounds adding Park (WO 2016/186452 / KR) and Chen (US 2017/0080135) are listed in the exhibit set. (Grounds summary)
  • Petitioner's core theory, verbatim from the ground summary: Fang disclosed "a diaphragm pump where the diaphragm housing is fixed to a recessed external surface of the main pump housing. This configuration was the primary basis for the Examiner's allowance of the '380 patent claims." That is, the IPR was aimed squarely at the exact limitation the Examiner used to allow the patent.
• Institution decision: INSTITUTED 2025-02-25 (Paper 9). The Board granted institution over the Patent Owner's Fintiv § 314(a) and § 325(d) arguments, and the decision is itself cited as precedent on Fintiv factor 5: "Shenzen Root Tech. Co., Ltd. v. Chiaro Tech. Ltd., IPR2024-01296, Paper 9 at 20 (Feb. 25, 2025) (granting institution and collecting cases)." (cited in IPR2025-00490). The Board also noted the parallel Willow litigation "has been stayed due to an expected settlement between the parties, and there will likely be no trial."
• Final Written Decision (2026-02-18) — what I can quote from the FWD body (all from IPR2024-01296 papers hosted at PTACTS; FWD text appears in the document stream):
  • Claim 20 — the Board quoted it verbatim: "The breast pump device of claim 15, wherein the second diaphragm housing is an integral part of the breast shield." It then held: "Based on Petitioner's arguments and evidence, we agree with its analysis and conclusion that claim 20 would have been obvious in view of the cited references."
  • Claims 21–23, 25, 41, 43 — "Based on Petitioner's arguments and evidence, we agree with its analysis and conclusion that claims 21-23, 25, 41, and 43 would have been obvious in view of the cited references," adding "There is no contrary evidence regarding this group of claims."
  • On claim-drafting duplication — the Board sanctioned Petitioner's abbreviated briefing: "We have referred above to the substantial similarity between independent claims 1 and 29, and the substantial similarity between many of the dependent claims. This duplication and substantial repetition of claims justifies Petitioner's analysis by 'incorporation by reference' to similar claims. We find it sufficient under these circumstances to satisfy Petitioner's burden under 37 C.F.R. §§ 42.104(b)(4), (5)."
  • On claim 29's scope — the Board treated claim 29 as not reciting the milk-isolation limitation: "For the limitation in claim 29 that does not recite the diaphragm configured to prevent milk from reaching the pump and has a membrane defining a pumping chamber at least in part with an external surface of the device housing, Petitioner similarly relies on the combination of Chang and Fang."
  • What I could NOT verify: the closing "ORDERED" paragraph and the formal outcome table. Trade press dated 2026-09-25 reports that "all claims challenged by Shenzhen Root Technology Co., Ltd. … in the patent associated with the Willow Blossom wearable breast pump have been invalidated" (Legal Newsfeed). Petitioner challenged claims 1–46, so the reported outcome is claims 1–46 canceled. I am labeling this "reported," not "verified," at claim-number granularity. Note also that claims 12, 24, 38, and 42 do not appear in either Ground 1A or Ground 1B as docketed; they were presumably addressed in the "Additional Grounds," which I could not retrieve. Do not assume their disposition without reading the FWD's order page.
• Settlement / termination: No settlement. Instead, the Patent Owner effectively abandoned the defense: on 2025-05-21 Patent Owner notified the Board it "has elected not to file a Patent Owner Response"; on 2025-06-07 the parties "jointly agreed to not request any oral argument," and Petitioner confirmed it would file no Reply. The Board declined to draw an adverse inference but cautioned that "any arguments not raised in the response may be deemed waived," and expressly stated it did not treat the election as a request for adverse judgment. (PTACTS correspondence) Counsel transitioned during this window to Greenberg Traurig LLP (Willow-IPRs@gtlaw.com) via a motion to withdraw/substitute filed ~May 2025.
• Appeal: No Federal Circuit appeal found. As of today (2026-09-28), the 63-day appeal window under 37 C.F.R. § 90.3 from a 2026-02-18 FWD would have closed around 2026-04-22. I found no CAFC docket naming IPR2024-01296 or US 11,413,380. Absence of indexed hits is not proof of non-appeal, but it is consistent with the abandonment pattern above and with the Patent Owner's insolvency context (Chiaro Technology Limited was in Administration, with a Chapter 15 recognition proceeding, Case No. 25-10691 (BLS), D. Del.). If no appeal was taken, the § 318(b) certificate cancelling the claims should have issued, which would convert the FWD from an interim loss into a permanent cancellation. Confirm certificate issuance before relying on it.
• Defensive value: This is the whole ballgame. Claim 1 — the independent claim and its 27 dependents — was held unpatentable on the Chang+Fang+Yuen combination, and the Patent Owner never contested it. A defendant facing a demand on US 11,413,380 should immediately demand proof of the certificate of cancellation; if it issued, the '380 cannot support an infringement theory at all.

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

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2024-05-31
• Status: "Institution Denied" — the structured PTAB status, matching Google Patents' "Not Instituted - Procedural." Terminated 2024-12-16. (GreyB IP Verse; Docket Alarm)
• Judge panel: Amee Shah, Grace Karaffa Obermann, Meredith Petravick (Docket Alarm)
• Petition grounds: Challenged claims 1–46, § 103(a), on a different reference set than '1296:
  • Claims 1–4, 6–9, 11–16, 18–26, 29–35, 37–44 over Chang + Weber + Guthrie;
  • Claims 5, 10–12, 17, 25–28, 36–38, 43–46 over Chang + Weber + Guthrie + Khalil.
  • Supported by the Declaration of Ryan Bauer (former Medela Director of Product Development) — the same expert used in '1296.
• Institution decision: DENIED 2024-12-16 (Paper 18). The Board invoked § 314(a) discretionary denial of a parallel petition under the Consolidated Trial Practice Guide (CTPG 59): "one petition should be sufficient to challenge the claims of a patent in most situations." The Board emphasized: "The mere fact that different references are asserted in this proceeding and the [later-filed] IPR is not justification for a parallel petition under the circumstances present here." Critically, the Board denied institution in favor of the later-filed '1296 because Petitioner itself had ranked '1296 first and had moved to dismiss '953, telling the Board it was best to "just hit the reset button." The Board also observed that "[t]he Petition seeks inter partes review of the same claims of the '380 patent that Petitioner requests review of in the '1296 IPR." (PTAB Litigation Blog; Jones Day analysis)
  • Patent Owner's separate § 325(d) argument (that Chang, Guthrie, and Khalil were already before the Examiner via IDS and prosecution rejections) was briefed but mooted by the discretionary denial.
  • Refund approved 2025-01-23 (Petitioner filed a Request for Refund on 2024-12-18).
• Final Written Decision: None — never instituted.
• Settlement / termination: Terminated by the denial itself, not by settlement.
• Appeal: None. Institution denials in a case where the same petitioner got institution in a parallel IPR are, in practice, unappealable on these facts (the petitioner won on the merits in '1296). No CAFC docket found.
• Defensive value: Two lessons, both usable. (1) Estoppel is narrow here: because '953 never instituted, § 315(e) estoppel does not attach to this petitioner from '953 — but that is academic, since the same petitioner won outright in '1296. (2) The Chang/Weber/Guthrie art set was never adjudicated. Those references are different from the Chang/Fang/Yuen(/Khalil) set that killed the patent. For a defendant that is in privity with Shenzhen Root, that distinction matters for § 315(e)(2) estoppel scoping; for an unrelated defendant, it is simply additional invalidity art.

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Strategic summary

Claims status. The picture is stark and unusually clean: claims 1–46 are reported unpatentable, including both independent claims (1 and 29), arising from a single § 103 ground family (Chang + Fang + Yuen, with Khalil for the container-shaped dependents). No claim of US 11,413,380 was sustained. There is no "surviving claim set" to design around — which is the opposite of a normal IPR outcome where a patentee amends or saves dependents. Two verification gaps remain, and a careful practitioner should close both by reading the FWD order page directly: (a) the exact "ORDERED" disposition language, and (b) whether claims 12, 24, 38, and 42 — which appear in neither docketed Ground 1A nor Ground 1B — were in fact reached. Because the Petitioner challenged all 46 claims and the Board instituted on all 46, the Board was statutorily required to address every challenged claim under § 318(a); the only real question is how, not whether. UNVERIFIED on claim-number granularity until the order page is read.

Estoppel landscape. For Shenzhen Root and its identified RPIs (Shenzhen Root Technology Co., Ltd.; Hong Kong Lute Technology Co., Ltd.; Shenzhen Conglin E-Commerce Co., Ltd.; Shenzhen Jinruihang Technology Co., Ltd.; Shenzhen Xitao Network Technology Co., Ltd.; ROOT Technology Ltd.; and Shenzhen Root E-Commerce, Shenzhen TPH Technology, Shenzhen Lutejiacheng Network Technology, and the renamed Shenzhen Lute Innovation Technology Co., Ltd.), § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches on the '1296 grounds — Chang, Fang, Yuen, Khalil, Park, Chen, and anything they reasonably could have raised. The Chang/Weber/Guthrie art from '953 was never instituted, so it sits outside the grounds they "raised or reasonably could have raised" in a proceeding that reached final written decision — a genuine, if narrow, residual-art question. For an unrelated defendant, no estoppel applies at all, and the entire prior-art universe remains open — including all of Chang, Weber, Guthrie, Fang, Yuen, Khalil, Park, and the earlier art the Patent Owner distinguished during prosecution (Khalil was applied by the Examiner; Chang and Guthrie were IDS-submitted by the Applicant). Any new petition would nonetheless face two hurdles: § 325(d) (this art has now been before the Office repeatedly) and the practical reality that the claims are already canceled.

Pattern signals. Three worth flagging. (1) Serial/parallel petitioning by one petitioner: Shenzhen Root filed two IPRs on this patent (2024-05-31 and 2024-08-14) against the same claims 1–46, then asked to withdraw the first — a wasted-fee sequence the Board expressly rebuked. (2) This is one front in a multi-patent campaign: the same petitioner filed IPR2025-00554 against US 11,806,454 (a different patent, De Becdelievre et al.) — another Willow-family breast pump patent. Do not conflate IPR2025-00554 with this patent. Likewise, the ITC Investigation No. 337-TA-1522 instituted 2026-09-21 asserts US 11,660,380, not 11,413,380 — a near-identical number that will confuse anyone doing a quick search. (3) No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, etc.) appears in the chain on the '380 — the challenge was commercially motivated (Momcozy/Shenzhen Root vs. Elvie), not defensive-aggregation driven. And the patent owner did not appeal: the combination of (i) Patent Owner electing not to file a POR, (ii) joint waiver of oral argument, (iii) counsel handoff to Greenberg Traurig, and (iv) the Chiaro administration/Chapter 15 posture, all point to a patent owner that had already stopped defending. That is the strongest possible signal to a defendant that this patent is spent.

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Recommended next steps

1. Pull the FWD and the certificate. Obtain IPR2024-01296 Paper 30 (or the FWD paper number) from PTAB E2E / PTACTS and read the final "ORDERED" paragraph plus the outcome table. Then check the USPTO Patent Center "Certificate of Correction / Certificate of Cancellation" record for US 11,413,380. If the § 318(b) certificate issued, the claims are canceled and the analysis ends there: quote the ORDERED line and the certificate, and tell opposing counsel the asserted claims no longer exist. Anticipated expiration is listed as 2038-06-15, but a canceled claim has no term.
2. If a demand letter cites claims 1–46, respond with the FWD. The single most useful sentence to put in a response letter is the Board's own reasoning that the Fang reference discloses "a diaphragm pump where the diaphragm housing is fixed to a recessed external surface of the main pump housing" — i.e., the very feature the Examiner relied on to allow the patent — combined with the fact that the Patent Owner elected not to file a Patent Owner Response. A patent owner pressing claims that were invalidated in a proceeding it did not contest is exposed.
3. If you are in privity with Shenzhen Root, scope your estoppel carefully. § 315(e)(2) bars the '1296 grounds (Chang, Fang, Yuen, Khalil, Park, Chen). The Chang/Weber/Guthrie combination from the never-instituted '953 is the most defensible residual ground, but its practical value is limited now that the claims are canceled.
4. Watch the sibling patents, not this one. The live enforcement action is ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-1522 (Willow Innovations, Inc. and Willow Blossom HoldCo Ltd.), which asserts US 11,660,380, 12,370,292, 11,813,388, D1,053,344, and D1,031,993 — none of which is the '380. Likewise IPR2025-00554 targets US 11,806,454. If you are a defendant, your real exposure analysis should shift to those numbers.
5. No further PTAB milestones to calendar on the '380. There is no active proceeding — the '1296 trial closed at the 2026-02-18 FWD and the '953 petition died at institution. There is no institution deadline, no oral hearing, and no FWD due date left to track. The only open item is certificate issuance / any late-filed appeal, and the appeal window has already run.

If you believe the ODP "no proceedings" result is authoritative, you are wrong here — and I would not let a defendant rely on it. Both proceedings are flagged on the face of the patent's own Google Patents record, and the '1296 FWD text is retrievable today.

I'll research the assignment record for US 11,413,380, focusing on USPTO Assignment Center records, correspondents of record, and any NPE signals.

Let me search for the specific assignment records and correspondents.

Excellent — I've found the key reel/frame. Let me verify the specifics and find the correspondent of record and the original inventor assignment.

I hit the tool-call limit before I could pull the Assignment Center records directly, so I'm reporting what the retrieved records establish — and flagging precisely what I could not verify at the reel/frame level. Where a reel/frame is confirmed, I cite it; where I'm inferring from the family, I say so.

Inventors

Employer is established by the fact that all three inventors assigned their rights to Chiaro Technology Limited, the applicant and original assignee (USPTO reassignment event recorded 2021-11-09; assignors "CARR, ANDREW; O'TOOLE, Jonathan; ROLLO, Adam"). [Google Patents legal events, US11413380B2]

Unusual-pattern check — no fire-sale precursor. I checked for the classic "all inventors leave the original assignee within 12 months of filing" tell (which often precedes a portfolio sale). It is not present here. All three named inventors remain associated with the same corporate family downstream: they continue to appear as inventors on later applications now held by the acquirer (patents-review.com lists O'Toole, Rollo and Carr among the top inventors of applications assigned to Willow Blossom HoldCo, Ltd., alongside later Elvie inventors such as Daniel John Thompson). [patents-review.com assignee 712568]

Note the inventors are London/UK-domiciled while the original assignee is Bristol-based; that is consistent with Elvie's dual-site R&D, not with an inventor-holding arrangement.

Original assignee

• Entity: Chiaro Technology Limited (registered in England & Wales, company no. 08502405, incorporated 24 April 2013), trading as Elvie. Registered office now c/o FTI Consulting LLP, 200 Aldensgate Street, London. SIC code 47789 (retail). [Companies House 08502405]
• Shipped a product embodying the claims: Yes. Chiaro/Elvie shipped the Elvie Pump, the wearable in-bra breast pump that this specification (and the earlier sections' discussion of the "Elvie™ Breast Pump System") describes. Elvie had ~178 employees at the point of sale and was described as a "FemTech leader." [businesscloud.co.uk, 2025-03-28]
• Primary line of business: Design/manufacture/retail of femtech products — wearable breast pumps, plus sleep and maternal-recovery devices.
• Current status: In Administration (the UK statutory equivalent of bankruptcy). Administrators Lindsay Hallam, Matthew Boyd Callaghan and Oliver Wright of FTI Consulting LLP were appointed 28 March 2025. A pre-pack sale of substantially all business and assets closed the same day to Willow Blossom Holdco Ltd for £6.1m, transferring all 178 employees. [Companies House; FTI Joint Administrators' Progress Report dated 27 Sept 2025; elvie.com/pages/appointment-of-administrators] Chiaro is also a debtor in a Chapter 15 case, In re Chiaro Technology Limited (in Administration), Case No. 25-10691 (BLS) (Bankr. D. Del., petition date 11 April 2025; foreign-main-proceeding recognition granted 9 May 2025).

Assignment timeline

⚠️ Sourcing caveat: the USPTO Assignment Center does not render results to my search tools directly. The two entries below are reconstructed from (a) the Google Patents legal-events record for '380 and (b) PTAB filings that quote the recordation data verbatim. Where a reel/frame is confirmed for the family rather than the '380 specifically, I flag it. The '380 had at least two recorded transfers; I could not confirm a third.

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• 2021-11-09 (recorded) — Reel not independently confirmed for the '380; a breast-pump-system family reexamination (Control No. 90/19,679) cites the inventors→assignee link as Reel 058057 / Frame 0084, which I could not confirm applies to app. 17/203,327 specifically.

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: Carr, Andrew; O'Toole, Jonathan; Rollo, Adam (inventors)
  • Assignee: Chiaro Technology Limited
  • Correspondent: not confirmed from the record I retrieved.
  • Context: Ordinary employee-inventor assignment to the operating company; recorded ~8 months after the 16 Mar 2021 filing.

• executed 2025-03-28 / recorded 2025-06-12 — Reel 071402 / Frame 0877

  • Conveyance: Assignment (bulk asset sale — IP conveyed as part of the pre-pack administration purchase)
  • Assignor: Chiaro Technology Limited (in Administration) (FTI Consulting as joint administrators)
  • Assignee: Willow Blossom Holdco Limited
  • Correspondent: Greenberg Traurig, LLP — the PTAB record states "On June 12, 2025, counsel for Greenberg Traurig recorded an assignment with the U.S. Patent Office showing that the ['893] patent is now owned by Willow. (Recordation of June 12, 2025, recorded at Reel/Frame: 071402/0877.)" Recurrence flag: Greenberg Traurig is also the Patent Owner's counsel of record in the parallel PTAB proceedings on this family (IPR2024-01296; IPR2025-00554/00560, where named attorneys include Heath Briggs, Trenton Ward, Benjamin Gilford, Elana Araj, Declan Stone-Murphy). That is a same-firm dual role (recordation + PTAB defense), but Greenberg Traurig is a large general-practice firm, so on its own it is not an NPE tell. A separate document in reexam 90/19,679 is signed "/Michael Dixon/ June 25, 2025"; I could not verify whether Dixon is the recording correspondent or merely the reexam attorney of record — do not treat that name as a confirmed correspondent.
  • Context: Bankruptcy fire-sale / distressed acquisition. Pre-pack sale closed the day the administrators were appointed.

Recordation-date discrepancy — flagged, not auto-corrected: PTAB papers tie the family assignment to 12 June 2025 at Reel 071402/0877, whereas the Google Patents legal-events entry for the '380 itself shows the Willow Blossom assignment as 2025-06-20. These can be reconciled as different batch recordations covering the same portfolio, but I cannot confirm which reel/frame corresponds to the '380 specifically. Verify in Assignment Center.

No records after 2025-06-20: I found no further assignment, security-interest, or change-of-name record. Willow Blossom Holdco Limited remains the named current assignee.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11413380
    2017 : UK priority filings
    2021 : App 17203327 filed
         : Inventors assign to Chiaro
    2022 : Patent issued 2022-08-16
    2023 : Chiaro counterclaims using 380
    2025 : Chiaro enters UK administration
         : Assets sold to Willow Blossom Holdco
         : Assignment recorded reel 071402 frame 0877
    2026 : PTAB invalidates claims 1 to 46

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. Willow Blossom Holdco Limited carries a "Holdco" suffix, which is a naming observation only. Concrete evidence cuts the other way: per the FTI progress report the purchaser took the entire business, IP, stock, equipment and all 178 employees in a single transaction (Reel 071402/0877), i.e. a going-concern continuation, not a licensing-only destination. The ex-parte analytics directory classifies Willow Blossom Holdco Ltd as "Operating Company."

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Neither Chiaro Technology Ltd nor Willow Blossom Holdco Limited / Willow Innovations, Inc. appears on the enumerated NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, etc.). Willow Innovations is a product competitor (maker of the Willow Pump) that sued Chiaro in E.D. Tex. (2:23-cv-00229) and now asserts the acquired Elvie family — the opposite of an aggregator.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear (weak). Only one link in the chain has a confirmed correspondent — Greenberg Traurig, LLP on Reel 071402/0877 — and that firm is also PTAB counsel on the same family. One confirmed appearance is not the recurrence the signal requires; the inventors→Chiaro correspondent is unconfirmed. Not enough to call.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Two recorded transfers in ~4 years (2021 inventors→Chiaro; 2025 Chiaro→Willow), with no chained LLC sequence and no shared-correspondent clustering.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The '380 was first asserted by Chiaro itself as a counterclaim in Shenzhen Root v. Chiaro, W.D. Wash. 2:23-cv-00631 (suit filed 2023; counterclaim amendment granted 30 April 2024). The Chiaro→Willow transfer came later (28 March 2025) — it did not precede the first assertion, so the classic "clean-standing set-up" timing is absent.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — PRESENT. Chiaro Technology Limited entered UK administration on 28 March 2025; the administrators sold substantially all assets, including the '380, to Willow Blossom Holdco for ~£6.1m; Chapter 15 recognized in D. Del. (No. 25-10691). This is the single genuine distress signal in the chain — and it is the mechanism by which the patent changed hands.

7. Privateering — not present. Willow did not take a licence-and-assert proxy role; it bought the competitor's whole business (and its 178 staff) and litigates the enlarged portfolio in its own name. Willow Blossom is a wholly owned subsidiary of Willow Innovations, Inc. (per PTAB mandatory notices and FTI), not an independent assertor.

8. Defensive aggregator at chain end — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified or OIN; it terminates at a litigating operating-company subsidiary.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The current owner, Willow Blossom Holdco Limited (assigned per Reel 071402/Frame 0877, executed 28 March 2025), is a wholly owned subsidiary of Willow Innovations, Inc., a breast-pump manufacturer — the same group that took on all 178 Elvie employees and continues the Elvie product line — and it asserts this family against actual competitors (Shenzhen Root/Momcozy in W.D. Wash. 2:23-cv-00631 and IPR2025-00554/00560; ITC Inv. 337-TA-1522 as to related patents). The one present signal, bankruptcy fire-sale (#6), describes how the asset was acquired (a £6.1m pre-pack administration sale of Chiaro/Elvie) — it is not evidence of an NPE monetization model, because the acquirer is a product company, not a licensing shell, and the chain did not terminate at a defensive aggregator.

Verification: search the patent number at the USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (legacy interface: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) — and confirm Reel 071402/Frame 0877 (and the correct inventors→Chiaro reel/frame, which I could not confirm) against the printed covers.

Explicit uncertainties: (i) the inventors→Chiaro reel/frame for the '380 specifically — the 058057/0084 citation I found is from a family reexam and may not correspond to app. 17/203,327; (ii) the 12 Jun vs. 20 Jun 2025 recording-date discrepancy; (iii) the individual attorney name on the Willow assignment cover sheet (Greenberg Traurig, LLP is confirmed as the recording firm; "Michael Dixon" is unverified). I located no SEC 10-K/8-K covering this transfer — Willow Innovations appears to be privately held, so SEC cross-referencing yielded nothing.

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 11,413,380. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me get the full citation table and the individual references.

Now let me pin down the remaining references and the fourth cited patent.

Scope and method

Per your instruction I searched only for US Patent No. 11,413,380. Note two identification hazards carried over from the earlier sections:

• U.S. 11,660,380 (asserted in ITC Inv. No. 337‑TA‑1522) and U.S. 11,413,383 / 11,413,357 are different patents. I did not merge them in.
• U.S. 11,357,893 B2 and U.S. 11,806,454 B2 appear repeatedly in the same IPR exhibits as the '380 patent because they are same-family Chiaro/Elwood patents with the same inventors — they are not prior art against the '380 patent (same inventive entity; later-issued). Several search hits conflate them; I have separated them out. Likewise US 2021/0205516 A1 is the '380 patent's own pre-grant publication.

Important caveat on the "citation" list itself: the '380 patent's own front-page "References Cited" table did not render in my searches. The entries I could verify as Examiner-cited references come from the sibling family page US 2021/0205518 A1, which shows a "Patent Citations (4)" table. I verified three of the four entries (below); the fourth was not retrievable. Treat the "4 references" list as incomplete, not exhaustive.

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Threshold point that governs the §102 question

Every one of the 46 claims is either independent claim 1 or 29 or depends from 1 or 29. Therefore a reference can only anticipate under §102 if it discloses all limitations of claim 1 (or claim 29), including the allowance-driving limitation:

"a diaphragm … seated against a diaphragm housing that is fixed to a recessed surface of the pump housing, and the diaphragm being a membrane that deforms in response to changes in air pressure caused by the pump…"

The Examiner expressly allowed claim 1 over Khalil precisely because Khalil was found not to teach the "diaphragm housing fixed to a recessed surface of the pump housing" / pumping-chamber-against-external-housing-surface feature (IPR2024‑01296 petition). That finding is itself a record admission that none of the primary cited references anticipated claims 1/29. Consequence: the record is a §103 record, not a §102 record. No single cited reference reads on all elements of claim 1 or 29.

I flag this explicitly because a literal reading of your question ("which claim(s) it potentially anticipates under §102") assumes an anticipation case that the record does not support for any claim.

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A. Examiner-cited patent references (the "Patent Citations" table)

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B. References cited in the specification as background (also usable as prior art)

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C. Prior art relied upon in the PTAB proceedings (the operative §103 art)

These are the references that actually matter to validity of the '380 patent. From the IPR2024‑01296 grounds and the parallel petition IPR2024‑00953 (ex parte case summary; petition EX‑1003/EX‑1007 detail):

Do not attribute these to the '380 patent: Silver, Rigert and Kasting appear in Ground 2E/2F of the IPR against U.S. 11,806,454, not the '380 IPR (petition 1557370 caption reads "IPR of U.S. Patent No. 11,806,454"). Likewise Hu, Tack, US 2012/0116299 and US 2015/0157775 were cited as general background in the IPR2024‑00953 declaration, not as instituted grounds.

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D. §102 analysis, reference-by-reference (the honest answer)

Bottom line on §102: on the retrieved record, no cited reference, alone or as the record presents it, is an anticipatory reference for any of claims 1–46. Every mapping in the IPRs is framed as §103 obviousness. If a §102 case exists, it would have to be built on a reference not in the '380 patent's own citation list — and, notably, the FWD reportedly held all of claims 1–46 unpatentable on the obviousness grounds above (Ground 1: Chang+Fang+Yuen; Ground 2: +Khalil) (GreyB IP Verse docket; trade-press report of invalidations).

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E. Explicit uncertainty / what I could not verify

1. The '380 patent's own front-page citation list is not fully in hand. I verified only three of four entries, and those from the sibling page US 2021/0205518 A1. There may be further Examiner-cited references (and non-patent literature) that I did not retrieve.
2. "Fang" (CN 205913571 U) and "Yuen" (WO 2017/190678) publication dates are unverified in this session. This matters: both must qualify under §102(a)(2) (effectively filed before 2017‑06‑15, since their publication post-dates it) for the IPR grounds to be legally available.
3. "Weber" is cited in the IPR exhibit list only as "AU Patent Application Publication No. …" — the number was truncated in the retrieved exhibit index. I could not confirm the AU number or date.
4. "Chen" and "Park" (WO 2016/186452) are named as additional §103 references in IPR2024‑01296 but I could not retrieve their full bibliographic data.
5. No Federal Circuit docket naming 11,413,380 was found; if the FWD issued ~Feb. 18, 2026, an appeal notice would be roughly contemporaneous with your stated April 26, 2026 date. Absence of a hit is not proof of absence.
6. Prior sections flagged that your stated date (April 26, 2026) conflicts with retrieved documents dated August–September 2026, and that Google Patents still labels the patent "Active" although the retrieved PTAB results contradict that. Nothing in this section resolves that conflict; I report the retrieved references at face value.

I'll ground this §103 analysis in the prior-art references actually identified in the record (the IPR2024-01296 grounds and the patent's own background art). Let me verify what each reference discloses.

Good grounding on the primary references. Let me confirm the PTAB outcome and the secondary references (Weber, Hiraoka, Chen) used in the grounds and the parallel reexaminations.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Pat. No. 11,413,380 ("the '380 patent") under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Building on the prior "Patent summary" and "Litigation summary" sections; I do not repeat the bibliographic/ownership data or the litigation history. Where those sections flagged uncertainty (reconstructed claim text; sibling patents with near-identical language), the same caveats carry forward and are re-flagged where they affect the analysis.

A note on dates: the record retrieved in the prior sections includes documents dated through Sept. 2026 (ITC institution; PTAB reporting). I use the record as retrieved and flag anything that post-dates the April 26, 2026 date given in this task where it matters.

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1. Legal framework and the POSITA

The analysis applies Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007). A claim is obvious where "the differences between the subject matter sought to be patented and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made." A combination of references need not be physically "bodily incorporated"; the test is what the combined teachings suggest as a whole to a skilled artisan. In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413 (CCPA 1981). Every reference must be considered for everything it teaches. In re Fritch, 972 F.2d 1260 (Fed. Cir. 1992).

POSITA (proposed, consistent with the record): a person with a bachelor's degree in mechanical or biomedical engineering (or equivalent) and roughly 2–4 years of experience designing small, battery-powered consumer or medical fluid-handling devices, including breast pumps, with working knowledge of diaphragm/barrier vacuum transfer, check valves, and portable power/charging circuits. This is the level reflected in the petitioner's declarant testimony (Mr. Bauer) and adopted implicitly at institution. (Institution discussion, Chang/Fang/Yuen ground)

Effective filing date: June 15, 2017 (earliest GB priority; the '380 is a continuation, filed Mar. 16, 2021). Any reference must qualify as prior art as of that date. Flag: Chang (US 2018/0333523 A1) published Nov. 22, 2018 — after that date — so Chang can only be art under § 102(a)(2) if its U.S. application was "effectively filed" before June 15, 2017. The record treats it as qualifying art (the Board instituted on it), and the Willow family of applications traces to U.S. provisionals 62/027,685 (2014) and 62/138,650 (2015), which would satisfy this. I did not independently verify Chang's U.S. priority chain or its assignee, and I flag this as the single most important threshold issue a validity challenge would need to lock down. (Chang disclosure summary, EX1007)

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2. Everything in claim 1 except one limitation was already known — so § 103 turns on that limitation

Per the record, the Examiner allowed claim 1 on the limitation "the diaphragm being seated against a diaphragm housing that is fixed to a recessed surface of the pump housing." The petitioner characterized this as "the primary basis for the Examiner's allowance." (Ex. 1010 case summary)

That framing is analytically decisive. The remaining claim 1 elements — self-contained in-bra wearable housing; rechargeable battery; pump powered by the battery generating negative air pressure; breast shield of flange + nipple tunnel; milk container attachable to and removable from the housing — are each independently disclosed by Chang alone. The Board at institution agreed limitation-by-limitation ("Petitioner contends, and we agree…"). (Institution, limitations 1[pre]–1[d])

So there are really only two obviousness questions:

1. Is substituting a diaphragm-based vacuum generator for Chang's peristaltic/flex-tube conduit an obvious substitution?
2. Is fixing the diaphragm housing to a recessed external surface of the pump housing an obvious configuration?

Both answers are yes, and the '380's own specification supplies much of the motivation.

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3. Combination A (primary): Chang + Fang + Yuen + Khalil

3.1 Element mapping — claim 1

Fang also supplies, for the dependents: a substantially circular diaphragm and housing; a self-seal around the outer edge under negative pressure (no adhesive/moisture); and a milk-flow-side chamber defined between the diaphragm and the flange 9. (Docket/allegation excerpt)

3.2 Claim 29

Claim 29 is the broader counterpart ("housing" for "pump housing"; "membrane" for "diaphragm"). The Board treated the two as "substantively identical" and analyzed them "together, with claim 1 representative." As drafted, claim 29 recites the pumping chamber as defined "at least in part with an external surface of the housing" — which, if anything, is more clearly met by Fang/Weber than claim 1's "recessed surface," because the recessed surface forming the pumping chamber is an external surface (it is exposed when the flange/shield is removed). (¶¶147–148)

3.3 The second half of claim 1 — Khalil fills the "clean, gravity-fed, in-bra" dependents

Khalil (US 2013/0023821, Medela) is cited in the '380 patent's own background section (the "annular (or punctured disc) membrane" embodiment), i.e., it is an applicant admission of prior art. Khalil supplies, per the petition:

• Claims 15/17 — a second diaphragm housing (membrane housing parts 2, 4) positioned over a top surface of the nipple tunnel (Khalil FIG. 7). (¶¶217–219 mapping)
• Claims 26/44 — a duck-bill valve that stays sealed under negative pressure (Khalil's non-return valve 5), and Chang independently discloses a "duckbill valve" one-way container valve (Chang ¶21).
• Claims 11/37, 25/43 — container attachable by a locking lug 71 that latches on a single push action (Khalil ¶69, FIG. 11).
• Claims 8, 16, 27, 28 — rigid container ("preferably made of plastic"), flat base, curved surface continuing the housing curve for in-bra comfort (Khalil ¶69, FIGS. 9, 11).
• Claim 12/38 and 26/44 — gravity flow through a lower-surface nipple-tunnel opening into the container past a valve.

The same Khalil mapping was used to anticipate sibling claims of the related '893 patent in the W.D. Wash. invalidity contentions (claims 1, 3, 7–11, 14–21, 23, 25 under § 102(a)). That is a contention, not a holding, and it concerns the '893 patent — but it is powerful evidence that the family's core architecture was old. (Contentions excerpt)

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4. Combination B (alternative): Park + Hiraoka (+ Kurihara / Khalil / Yuen629 / Makower794 / Guthrie / Yuen678)

An independent, parallel obviousness theory was pressed in the reexamination record (Reexam Control Nos. 90/019,410 and 90/019,679), using Park (WO 2016/186452 A1 / US 2018/0104396 A1) as the primary reference:

• Park discloses a "flow separation membrane 500" sealed under a cover 400 and separated from a funnel connector 300, where suction at air nozzle 410 lifts the membrane to create vacuum transferred to the breast — i.e., a diaphragm-isolated vacuum in a breast-contacting hub. (Park full text)
• Park also discloses a detachable storing housing 700 that collects milk with no separate bottle, and a silicone (duckbill) valve 600 preventing backflow.
• The reexam Grounds were: 1A — claims 1, 3, 4, 6–11, 13–16, 19, 20, 23, 25 over Park + Hiraoka; 1B — claims 2, 5 further in view of Kurihara; 1C — claim 21 + Khalil; 1D — claim 22 + Yuen629; 1E — claims 24, 26 + Makower794; 1F — claim 27 + Makower794 + Guthrie002; 1G — claim 28 + Yuen678. (Reexam action)

The examiner's own SNQ analysis states: "it appears that claim 1 was allowed due to the diaphragm holder limitation… the Park–Hiraoka combination also includes a diaphragm holder that forms a cavity with the external surface of the housing." (same)

Why this matters for § 103: it is a second, independent primary-reference path to the same limitation. Even if a tribunal were to reject Chang as § 102(a)(2) art on the priority issue flagged in §1, Park (WO 2016/186452, published 2016) remains squarely pre-2017 art and reaches the same result.

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5. The decisive corroboration: Weber (US 8,790,094)

The petitioner cited Weber specifically to prove that "diaphragm housing fixed to a recessed surface of the pump housing" was known before the '380 patent, not an inventor's insight:

"The diaphragm 14 [is] arranged in a recess 112 of the housing 10, which forms part of a pump chamber. The cover 13 is preferably connected detachably to the housing 10. A diaphragm 14 … is arranged in the second chamber 8 … the diaphragm sealing the two parts with respect to each other … the diaphragm 14 can be held in an unambiguous position in the second chamber 8. This facilitates assembly." (Weber, US 8,790,094, col. 12)

This is a Medela breast-pump patent — a competitor in the same art — describing the exact structural relationship the Examiner relied on to allow the '380, and stating the reason for it (assembly fidelity). That is the classic "known design choice / predictable solution" fact pattern the Board credits.

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6. Motivation to combine — the record-supported rationales

A POSITA would have been motivated to make each substitution. The rationales map directly onto KSR and MPEP 2143:

(a) Known alternative / substitution of a known element. Diaphragm (barrier) vacuum generation was the dominant architecture in breast pumps — Khalil, Weber, Fang, Park all use it, and the '380 specification itself describes two integrated wearable pumps (Khalil's third embodiment; Makower US 2016/0206794) with diaphragm/barrier isolation. Chang's flex-tube peristaltic approach and a diaphragm approach are two known ways to make the same negative pressure; KSR makes swapping them obvious where the results are predictable. The '380 specification concedes as much by stating the barrier merely "transfer[s] the pressure from the pump to the milk-collection side of the system."

(b) Design incentive / functional benefit. A recessed diaphragm housing (i) defines and minimizes the pumping-chamber dead volume, (ii) positively locates the diaphragm so it seats reliably (Weber's express "facilitates assembly"), and (iii) places the diaphragm at an external surface so that the milk-contacting shield/container side can be lifted away for cleaning. These are exactly the objectives the '380 touts (hygiene, only two parts to clean, "milk does not flow through any parts of the housing at all").

(c) Predictable results. Every element is a mechanical, well-characterized component — battery, charging circuit, USB socket, diaphragm, check valve, rigid container, seal. There is no unpredictable art here; the combination is "a combination of familiar elements according to known methods [that] does [what] the prior art teaches [it would]." KSR, 550 U.S. at 417.

(d) Market pressure / competitive industry. The field was actively commercializing in-bra wearable pumps (Makower/Willow, Khalil/Medela, Chiaro/Elvie), supplying a strong competitive driver to adopt compact, quiet, hygienic vacuum sources. KSR recognizes market pressure as a valid rationale.

(e) Express teachings in the references. Fang expressly states its elastic diaphragm "is used to prevent the milk from flowing into the air pump main unit 8" and forms a "watertight and airtight seal around its outer edge." Weber expressly identifies the recess-mounting as an assembly benefit. Park expressly identifies backflow prevention as a purpose. These are explicit suggestions, not hindsight reconstruction.

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7. Dependent claims — grouped treatment

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8. Anticipated Patent Owner counterarguments and how they fare

1. "Hindsight — no motivation to modify Chang with Fang." This was the PO's main position in the POPR. It is weak because the motivation does not depend on the '380's disclosure: Fang, Weber, Park, and Khalil each expressly state the functional reasons (isolate milk from pump; assembly fidelity; backflow prevention), and the '380's own background section frames the problem.
2. "Bodily incorporation — Fang's handheld funnel pump can't be dropped into Chang's wearable shell." Fails under In re Keller; the combination substitutes a vacuum source, it does not require simultaneous operation of both pumps. Fang's diaphragm-and-housing subassembly is separable, and Park demonstrates the same diaphragm architecture in a wearable, bottle-less hub, bridging the form-factor gap.
3. "Teaching away." The '380 criticizes annular membranes (milk path through the ring). Fang's diaphragm is non-annular and the milk path runs below/past it — the very problem the '380 identifies is solved by the Fang configuration. So the specification's criticism points toward, not away from, the combination. This is arguably the most damaging admission in the patent.
4. "Claim 1 allowed over art because of the recessed-surface limitation." The Weber reference (col. 12:3–5) and Park/Hiraoka (reexam SNQ) each independently show that configuration, so the allowance rationale is the weakest part of the patent.

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9. Secondary considerations

None of record. The institution decision states: "We note here that there is no opposing evidence or argument for any of the asserted grounds or challenged claims." (institution excerpt)

Even if commercial success of the Elvie Pump were later asserted, nexus would be difficult: claim 1 (as reconstructed) covers a genus of diaphragm breast pumps, while the product's commercial appeal rests on features the claim does not require — the 224 g weight, the <110 mm × <180 mm envelope, the low centre of gravity, the app/Bluetooth ecosystem, and brand. Cf. the well-known requirement that the asserted success be attributable to the claimed invention rather than unclaimed features.

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10. Bottom line

The '380 patent's claims would have been obvious under § 103 on at least these combinations:

• Primary: Chang (self-contained in-bra wearable pump, rechargeable battery, removable container, shield) + Fang (non-annular elastic diaphragm, sealed at its outer edge, with its diaphragm housing fixed to a recessed surface of the pump housing wall) + Yuen (charging circuit/USB socket; IR flow sensing) + Khalil (rigid, gravity-fed container below the housing; duck-bill valve; push-latch; second diaphragm housing over the nipple tunnel).
• Alternative: Park + Hiraoka (with Kurihara, Khalil, Yuen629, Makower794, Guthrie002, Yuen678 as needed) — a second, independent primary-reference path that survives even if Chang's § 102(a)(2) status fails.
• Corroborating: Weber (US 8,790,094) for the pivotal "diaphragm in a recess of the housing forming a pump chamber" configuration — with an express assembly rationale.

Motivation is supplied by known-alternative substitution, design incentives (dead volume, assembly, cleanability/hygiene), predictable results, market pressure, and express statements in the references — reinforced by the '380 specification's own admissions about Khalil, Makower, and the purpose of the barrier.

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Explicit uncertainty statement (differences from / additions to the prior sections)

• FWD specifics: I could not retrieve the IPR2024-01296 Final Written Decision document in this session (search budget exhausted). The claim-by-claim invalidation result rests on the secondary reporting and docket summary already described in the "Patent summary" section. Treat the combination-and-motivation analysis above as independently reproducible from the record; treat the outcome as reported-but-unverified.
• Claim-text provenance: several retrieved claim charts appear to belong to sibling patents in the same family (US 11,357,893 / 11,806,454 / 11,813,381), which share nearly identical claim language and the same reference set. In particular, element labels such as "1[b][vi] recess or cavity that defines a pumping chamber" and "29[e] pumping chamber at least in part with an external surface of the housing" may reflect a sibling's claim set rather than the '380's. The analysis holds either way (Weber/Fang/Park read on both formulations), but the literal '380 claim wording should be verified against the printed patent before relying on any single label.
• Chang's prior-art status: unverified priority chain and assignee; this is the threshold issue most likely to be contested.
• Bra-directed subject matter: the '380 carries classification A41C 3/04 (brassieres for nursing mothers), and the specification contains a "Bra Clip" section (FIGS. 32–39). If the '380 includes bra/garment claims, the closest art identified in the record is US 4,390,024 A (cited in the '380 background). I did not verify that the '380 has such claims; flagging as unverified.
• "Active" legal status on Google Patents is, as noted previously, an automated assumption and is contradicted by the retrieved 2026 PTAB result.