US 12302769

Summary of US Patent 12302769

Note on scope of search: Searches of Google Patents, PatentGuru, and Justia confirm the bibliographic record below. Separate searches for CAFC 2026 dockets or litigation referencing patent number 12302769 (or assignee Limitless Space Institute) returned no results, so I found no evidence of a Federal Circuit appeal involving this patent as of the search date. I was also unable to retrieve the verbatim text of the numbered claims from the sources searched; the claim overview below is therefore derived from the patent's Summary/Abstract and should be treated with that caveat.

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Bibliographic data (confirmed across Google Patents / PatentGuru / Justia)

• Patent number: US12302769B2 (application no. US18/331,486)
• Title: Casimir power cell
• Assignee / current owner: Limitless Space Institute (Texas; assignment recorded effective June 5, 2023; entity status later set to small/undiscounted per USPTO events)
• Inventor: Harold White
• Filing date: June 8, 2023
• Issue (grant) date: May 13, 2025 (pre-grant publication US20240415034A1 on December 12, 2024)
• Law firm of record: Osha Bergman Watanabe & Burton LLP
• Legal status: Active; adjusted expiration listed as December 20, 2043
• Classifications: H10N99/00; H10N99/05 (quantum-mechanical-effect solid-state devices); Y02E60/10 (energy storage using batteries)
• Priority family: PCT/US2024/033020 (WO2024254457A2), plus filings in IL, TW, EP, KR, AU, CN, MX — all claiming the June 8, 2023 priority date

Abstract (verbatim)

"A battery includes a Casimir-effect powered cell (Casimir cell). The Casimir cell includes a first conductive wall; a second conductive wall that faces the first conductive wall; and a conductive antenna disposed in a cavity gap that is a space between the first conductive wall and the second conductive wall. The conductive antenna faces the first conductive wall and the second conductive wall. The first conductive wall and the second conductive wall produce a same first voltage potential. The conductive antenna produces a second voltage potential that is different from the first voltage potential. A voltage that is the difference between the first voltage potential and the second voltage potential is generated by Casimir phenomenon based on arrangement of the conductive antenna between the first conductive wall and the second conductive wall."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The specification's Summary tracks two independent claim subjects (typical claim 1 and a method claim), though I could not verify the exact final claim set/counting from the pages retrieved:

1. Apparatus claim — a battery/power cell. A battery comprising a Casimir-effect-powered cell, the cell having: (a) a first conductive wall; (b) a second conductive wall facing the first conductive wall; and (c) a conductive antenna disposed in the cavity gap between the two walls, facing both walls. The two walls are at the same first voltage potential (e.g., grounded); the antenna is at a second, different voltage potential; and the voltage difference arises from the Casimir effect due to the antenna's placement between the walls — i.e., the cell generates electric power (with current) by exploiting the quantum-vacuum (Casimir) interaction.

2. Method claim — fabricating a Casimir cell. A method of making the cell by etching a substrate to form (a) a first conductive wall, (b) a second conductive wall facing the first, and (c) a conductive antenna in the cavity gap between the walls — the walls being etched so they are electrically connected at a common first voltage potential, and the antenna being etched so it is at a second voltage potential different from the first. The specification states the etching steps may be performed simultaneously (same material).

Key limitations/embodiments that may appear in dependent claims (not verified as claim text)

• Cavity gap ≤ 10 µm (examples: 90 nm, 10 nm, 3 nm, 1 nm); voltage scales with smaller gap.
• Materials: Au, Ag, Pt, Al, Cu, Pd, Ir, TiN, Mo, Si, graphene; p/n-doped semiconductor wall/antenna combinations (depletion-region benefit); dielectrics such as HfO₂ in the gap.
• Geometries: vertical cells (pillar antennas), horizontal stacked cells (grid/waffle antenna), nested c-shape; arrays in series/parallel to set voltage and current (e.g., CR2032-equivalent stacked-wafer assembly).
• Light exposure is reported to boost output (photovoltaic-like V-I behavior with nonzero ISC and VOC); cells usable as light sensors.

Uncertainty flags

• The exact text and number of the granted claims was not obtainable from the search results I retrieved; the overview above is reconstructed from the Summary/Abstract and should be verified against the USPTO Patent Center or the claims tab of Google Patents before citation.
• No CAFC docket or litigation referencing US12302769 was found in my searches — absence of a finding is not definitive proof that no proceeding exists.

Based on the searches I was able to perform, I found no known litigation involving US Patent 12302769 as of the search date.

Search results summary

I searched several query formulations intended to surface U.S. district court, PTAB, or Federal Circuit activity, including:

• "12302769" patent litigation — no results
• "US 12302769" lawsuit — no results
• "12,302,769" patent — no results
• "Casimir power cell" Harold White litigation Limitless Space Institute — returned only general press coverage of the technology (Casimir Inc./MicroSparc commercialization articles), not any litigation
• "12,302,769" OR "12302769" court docket complaint patent infringement — no results
• site:unifiedpatents.com 12302769 — no case-list results returned

I also note that the prior summary section of this analysis (performed earlier against Google Patents, PatentGuru, Justia, and CAFC/PACER-adjacent sources) likewise found no CAFC docket or litigation referencing US12302769 or assignee Limitless Space Institute.

Conclusion

No litigation is known involving US Patent 12302769 (Casimir power cell; assignee Limitless Space Institute; inventor Harold White). Accordingly, there are no cases for which I can report plaintiff(s), defendant(s), jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or status.

Caveats

• The patent only granted on May 13, 2025, so the window for district-court litigation is short relative to the current date.
• Absence of findings from these searches is not definitive proof that no proceeding exists. Dockets may be sealed, recently filed (e.g., within the last few weeks), pending service, or indexed under terms my queries did not capture (e.g., litigated by a different entity after assignment, or referenced in a complaint by a non-party).
• Recommended verification sources if a definitive clearance is needed: USPTO Patent Center assignment/status records, PACER (federal district court dockets), the Federal Circuit docket, and the Unified Patents or RPX litigation databases queried directly (rather than via web search).

Proceedings overview

The USPTO Open Data Portal lists one AIA trial proceeding on US 12302769: IPR2026-00469, filed 2026-09-03 and Pending — there are no finalized outcomes of any kind (no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, no settlement, no denial). Because the sole petition was filed the day before this analysis (relative to 2026-09-04), the patent is entirely untested at the PTAB: no claim has been canceled or sustained in an AIA trial, so a defendant cannot yet rely on any IPR-based invalidation — but the pendency of a freshly filed IPR is an early signal that challengers are moving on this patent.

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IPR2026-00469 — EverWave Inc. et al. v. Limitless Space Institute

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2026-09-03
• Status: Pending (petition just filed; no Board action of record as of 2026-09-04)
• Judge panel: Not yet assigned or publicly identified. No panel has been named in any source I could retrieve.
• Petition grounds: Not yet publicly available in any source I could locate. The petition was filed 2026-09-03 and no PTAB E2E docket entries, notice of filing, or petition excerpts surfaced in web searches. Accordingly, I cannot report the challenged claims, the prior-art references, or the statutory basis (§ 102 / § 103 / § 112). I will not speculate.
• Institution decision: None yet. Under the statutory framework (35 U.S.C. § 314(b); 37 C.F.R. § 42.107), the patent owner's preliminary response is due roughly three months after notice of the petition (≈ early December 2026), and the Board's institution decision would typically follow within three months of that due date (≈ early March 2027). No such decision exists as of today.
• Final Written Decision: None — the statutory one-year trial clock (35 U.S.C. § 316(a)(11)) has not even started, because no institution decision has issued.
• Settlement / termination: None. The proceeding is hours old in procedural terms; there are no settlement negotiations of record.
• Appeal: None. There is no FWD to appeal, and no Federal Circuit docket referencing IPR2026-00469 was found (the CAFC appeal "26-1969 / Greenthread v. Monolithic Power Systems" that surfaced in searching relates to a different case, IPR2024-00469, not this one).
• Petitioner identity caveat: The structured data names "EverWave Inc. et al." My searches did not confirm who EverWave Inc. is, its relationship (if any) to the asserted patent, or whether it is an operating company, NPE, or defensive filer. An unrelated German entity "EverWave GmbH" (water-treatment patents) appeared in results, but there is no evidence connecting it to this petition, and I am not drawing that inference.
• Defensive value: Limited today but directionally useful. The petition is so new that it confers no estoppel and no canceled claims. Its defensive value to a defendant is (a) as a vehicle to seek a stay of any parallel district-court litigation while the Board decides whether to institute, and (b) as a disclosure of the challenger's best prior art once the petition and any institution decision become public. Until institution, the patent's claims remain presumptively valid and fully enforceable.

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Strategic summary

Claims status. No claim of US 12302769 has been tested, let alone canceled or sustained, in any AIA trial. The earlier portion of this analysis could not even verify the verbatim text and numbering of the granted claims from public sources, and the structured PTAB data identifies only a single pending IPR — not which claims it challenges. The accurate cross-proceeding picture is therefore: every claim is UNTESTED; the sole proceeding (IPR2026-00469) is in its earliest pre-institution phase. There are no claims to list as "canceled" or "sustained," and I will not pretend otherwise.

Estoppel landscape. No § 315(e) estoppel has attached to anyone yet. Estoppel under § 315(e)(2) binds a petitioner (and its privies) only as to grounds that resulted in a final written decision — and even then only to grounds raised or reasonably available at the time of the petition. Because IPR2026-00469 has not been instituted and no FWD exists, EverWave Inc. (and any privy) faces no PTAB estoppel today. Critically for a different defendant who is not EverWave or its privy: § 315(e)(2) does not bar that defendant at all, and all prior-art grounds — including any that EverWave raises or could have raised — remain fully available in a district-court invalidity defense or a future IPR petition of its own. One timing trap to check immediately: if EverWave (or a privy) was served with an infringement complaint more than one year before 2026-09-03, the petition could be time-barred under § 315(b) — that issue would be litigated at institution, and a successful time-bar challenge would kill this proceeding without a merits ruling.

Pattern signals. There is no pattern yet — this is a first-and-only IPR, filed 2026-09-03, by a petitioner ("EverWave Inc. et al.") whose identity and motives are unverified. There is no evidence of repeat filings by the same petitioner, no defensive-aggregator chain (e.g., Unified Patents) visible in the record, and no PTAB appeals by the patent owner because there is nothing yet to appeal. The only contextual signal worth noting: this patent issued 2025-05-13 to Limitless Space Institute (inventor Harold White), whose technology has been publicly commercialized through press coverage of Casimir Inc.'s "MicroSPARC" chip — a profile that historically attracts IPR challenges once assertion activity begins. The filing of IPR2026-00469 roughly 16 months after grant is consistent with that pattern beginning to play out.

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Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant facing assertion of US 12302769 today: You cannot yet cite any FWD, because none exists — do not let anyone represent otherwise. Your immediate, verifiable moves are: (1) confirm on USPTO PTAB E2E (search IPR2026-00469) whether the petition has been accorded a filing date and whether any preliminary response or institution decision has been entered since 2026-09-04; (2) review the petition itself once it is publicly docketed to learn exactly which claims are challenged and on what art — that is now your roadmap; and (3) check whether you are EverWave or in privity with EverWave (e.g., a customer/indemnitor relationship), because that determines whether § 315(e) estoppel could ever reach you and whether § 315(b)'s one-year bar is in play.
• Track the statutory milestones (assuming the petition was accorded a filing date of 2026-09-03): patent owner's preliminary response due ≈ 2026-12-03 (3 months from filing, 37 C.F.R. § 42.107); institution decision due ≈ 2027-03-03 (3 months after the POPR due date, 35 U.S.C. § 314(b)); if instituted, the Board must issue a FWD within 12 months of institution (35 U.S.C. § 316(a)(11)), extendable up to 6 months for good cause. If a parallel district-court case exists or is filed, move promptly for a stay pending IPR — the petition's early stage makes a stay motion well-timed.
• If no further PTAB activity materializes: Do not read too much into it yet. Institution decisions can be denied, and a denial here would leave the patent untested again (a denial on the merits creates no estoppel for non-parties and limited estoppel even for the petitioner). Conversely, if the Board institutes and EverWave later settles or drops off, that is a common pre-FWD pattern — but none of that has happened, and the honest bottom line as of 2026-09-04 is that US 12302769 has survived nothing and been tested by nothing: one day-old IPR is pending, all claims remain in force, and the defendant's strongest play right now is procedural (stay, § 315(b) time-bar scrutiny) rather than reliance on any PTAB merits ruling.

Caveat on sources: The proceedings count and docket number come exclusively from the structured USPTO Open Data Portal block supplied in this prompt (canonical). Web searches on 2026-09-04 returned no PTAB E2E docket entries, no Federal Register notice, no institution decision, no FWD, no settlement notice, and no CAFC appeal for IPR2026-00469 — consistent with a petition filed only the prior day. I have not fabricated any ground, panel, or ruling; items marked "none/not public" reflect the absence of any retrievable public record, which for a filing this new is expected rather than suspicious.

Inventors

• Harold "Sonny" White — sole named inventor (per Google Patents / PatentGuru bibliographic data for US12302769B2).
  • Employer at filing (June 2023): Limitless Space Institute (LSI), the Texas nonprofit he co-founded in 2019 with Kam Ghaffarian after ~20 years at NASA Johnson Space Center (Eagleworks). Press coverage identifies him as LSI's Director of Advanced R&D and, concurrently, founder/CEO of Casimir Inc., the Houston commercial spin-out that LSI incubated (formed ~2022, emerged from stealth May 2026).
  • Pattern note: Single-inventor filing, not a multi-inventor team that departed the assignee post-filing. The inventor-to-company assignment executed 2023-06-05 is the standard employment/inventor obligation transfer. No fire-sale precursor pattern (no mass inventor departures) is present.

Original assignee

• Limitless Space Institute (Texas) — named as assignee on the issued patent and recorded as owner in the sole assignment (reel/frame 063963/0276).
  • Line of business: Nonprofit research institute focused on advanced space propulsion and quantum-vacuum science (DARPA-funded Casimir/nanostructure research); an incubator of space and deep-tech ventures (co-founded by Kam Ghaffarian, whose portfolio includes Intuitive Machines, Axiom Space, X-energy).
  • Product status: Does not ship products embodying the claims. The commercial embodiment is being developed by its spin-out, Casimir Inc. (Houston), which announced a $12M seed round (May 12, 2026) for its MicroSPARC 5 mm × 5 mm chip (target ~1.5 V / 25 µA ≈ 40 µW), with commercial availability targeted for 2028.
  • Current status: Operating. No assignment of the patent to Casimir Inc. (or anyone else) is reflected in the recorded legal events I could retrieve; LSI remains the record owner. Whether a separate, unrecorded license to Casimir Inc. exists is not ascertainable from the public record.

Assignment timeline

The USPTO Assignment Center was not directly reachable in my searches; the record below is reconstructed from the USPTO legal-events data mirrored on Google Patents (canonical reel/frame identifier present) and cross-checked against PatentGuru/Justia bibliographic data. Only one recorded assignment exists.

• 2023-06-05 (executed, "effective date" per USPTO) / recorded 2023-06-15 — Reel 063963/0276
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST; SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)
  • Assignor: Harold White (inventor)
  • Assignee: Limitless Space Institute (Texas)
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable from the search results (the legal-event mirror lists reel/frame but not the correspondent). The law firm of record for the application is Osha Bergman Watanabe & Burton LLP (Houston), which is the likely correspondent of record — verify on the Assignment Center before citing. Single appearance; no recurrence to flag.
  • Context: Standard inventor-to-employer/nonprofit assignment on the eve of filing (application filed 2023-06-08; patent issued 2025-05-13 to Limitless Space Institute). No post-issuance assignments are recorded.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 12302769
    2023 : Inventor White assigns to Limitless Space Institute
         : Application filed by LSI
    2024 : Pre-grant publication US20240415034A1
    2025 : Patent US12302769B2 issued to LSI
    2026 : IPR2026-00469 filed by EverWave Inc

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only recorded transfer is inventor → Texas nonprofit research institute (Limitless Space Institute), reel 063963/0276, recorded 2023-06-15. No IP/Licensing/Holdings LLC appears anywhere in the chain, and LSI is a publicly documented operating nonprofit, not a registered-agent mailbox entity.
2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither Limitless Space Institute nor Casimir Inc. appears on any NPE list surfaced in my searches (no Acacia, Marathon, IV, Conversant, Vringo, etc., and no Unified Patents/RPX asserter-directory hit). LSI's public profile is research/incubation, not assertion.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Not present / not applicable. There is only one recorded assignment, so no correspondent recurs. A single appearance (Osha Bergman Watanabe & Burton LLP is the firm of record) is expressly not a finding under the operating rules.
4. Cascading transfers — Not present. One assignment total; no chained LLC transfers in any 24-month window.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No assignment occurred within six months of any suit — indeed no infringement suit naming this patent was found in the companion litigation search (as of 2026-09-04), and the sole assignment predates the patent's grant by two years.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No bankruptcy of the assignee is known; LSI is operating.
7. Privateering — Unclear. The public record shows a familiar "nonprofit incubator → for-profit spin-out" shape (Casimir Inc. emerged from stealth in May 2026 to commercialize MicroSPARC, per InnovationMap/EnergyCapitalHTX coverage), but no recorded assignment or license from LSI to Casimir Inc. was found, and there is no evidence of Casimir Inc. (or LSI) asserting against competitors. The privateering label requires an operating company outsourcing assertion to an NPE; nothing of the sort is evidenced.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. LSI is not a defensive aggregator.

Verdict

Insufficient data (per the rubric: only the original assignment is recorded, and no NPE indicia exist).

The full recorded chain is a single 2023 inventor-to-assignee transfer (reel 063963/0276), and Limitless Space Institute — a nonprofit research institute with a documented commercial spin-out (Casimir Inc., MicroSPARC chip targeted for 2028) — remains the record owner. There are no shell-entity transfers, no known asserter, no cascading assignments, no pre-litigation conveyance, and no bankruptcy event, so no NPE signal (weak or strong) is present. The residual uncertainty is factual rather than structural: I could not open the USPTO Assignment Center directly to confirm the correspondent name or rule out a post-2025 unrecorded-in-Google-Patents transfer/license, and no litigation or PTAB institution decision exists yet to test how the patent is being enforced. Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 12302769).

I'll search for the patent's cited references and prior art.

I found the 7 patent citations and 5 non-patent citations. Let me dig deeper into the most relevant references to characterize them accurately.

Let me gather details on the remaining cited references.

I have sufficient data from the searches (I reached the step limit before I could pull full text on three of the seven references; I flag that limitation below). Here is the prior-art analysis for US Patent 12302769.

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Prior-Art Analysis — US12302769B2 ("Casimir power cell")

Sources and method

The USPTO Patent Center was not directly reachable in my environment, so I pulled the citation record from the Google Patents mirror of the USPTO data for US12302769B2 (canonical URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US12302769B2/en). That page's "Citations (7)" block lists 7 U.S. patent citations and 5 non-patent literature (NPL) citations. All seven patent citations were considered during prosecution and appear on the face of the issued patent (they are denoted with "*" where they are cited in other documents as well). None of the seven was used to reject the claims, since the patent issued — but that does not foreclose § 102/§ 103 challenges, and a fresh IPR2026-00469 (EverWave Inc. et al. v. Limitless Space Institute, filed 2026-09-03, pending) is pending against this patent as of the companion analysis.

Critical caveat on claim text: As noted in the prior sections of this analysis, the verbatim granted claim text was not retrievable from the sources searched. The claim mapping below is therefore keyed to the reconstructed independent claims (an apparatus claim directed to a battery/Casimir cell and a method claim directed to etching the cell), plus the dependent-claim features described in the specification. Anticipation opinions are necessarily provisional until the actual claims are charted.

Statutory framework: Effective filing date of the '769 patent is June 8, 2023 (no earlier benefit claim appears in the record). Every reference below published before that date, so each is prior art under AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1) (patented or described in a printed publication before the effective filing date); the U.S. applications among them with earlier effective filing dates are also available under § 102(a)(2). Under § 102, a single reference must disclose every claimed limitation, arranged as in the claim, for anticipation — a legal conclusion that requires claim-by-claim charting against the actual claim language.

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The 7 U.S. patent citations on the face of US12302769B2

1. US 11,133,758 B2 — "Quantum vacuum fluctuation devices"

• Full citation: Moddel, Garret; assignee The Regents of the University of Colorado, a body corporate. US 11,133,758 B2, filed April 22, 2020 (provisional priority May 10, 2019), granted September 28, 2021. (Appl. 16/855,890; published as US20200358376A1.)
• Description: Discloses devices that incorporate Casimir cavities to modify the quantum-vacuum (zero-point-energy) mode distribution inside the cavity, creating an energy-density asymmetry that drives charge carriers across an adjoining electronic device (a "Casimir photoinjector"): a first conductive layer, an ultra-thin transport layer, and a second conductive layer, optionally with doped semiconductor layers. Casimir cavity = first reflective layer / cavity layer (gap ~10 nm–2 µm, vacuum, gas, or transparent solid) / second reflective layer. Discloses arrays in series and parallel and device stacks for power production. Materials overlap heavily with the '769 patent (Al, Ag, Au, Cu, Pd, Pt reflectors; SiO₂, Al₂O₃, HfO₂, Ta₂O₅, TiO₂, ZrO₂ dielectrics; doped semiconductors).
• Potential § 102 anticipation: This is the closest single reference. It reads on many elements of the reconstructed apparatus claim: a power-producing cell built around a Casimir cavity defined by two spaced conductive/reflective walls at a common potential, with the gap-space quantum-vacuum asymmetry generating a voltage/current (a DC device producing a voltage between the two conductor stacks). However, the claimed "conductive antenna disposed in the cavity gap," facing both walls at the cavity midplane, at a floating second potential different from the walls — the structural heart of claim 1 — is not clearly disclosed: Moddel's transport/electronic structure sits adjacent to the cavity and typically forms one of the cavity boundaries, rather than a mid-gap antenna electrically isolated from both walls. On the reconstructed apparatus claim, anticipation is arguable but not clean; the reference is more potent as a § 103 primary reference combined with the mid-plane-antenna teachings of, e.g., White's own NPL or the other Moddel filings. The method claim (etching walls + antenna from a substrate) is not disclosed in '758 (Moddel teaches deposition of thin-film stacks).
• Anticipates: Potentially dependent-feature claims reciting materials/dielectrics and series/parallel arrays; not a confident anticipation of the full apparatus claim as reconstructed.

2. US 11,463,026 B2 — "Quantum plasmon fluctuation devices"

• Full citation: Moddel, Garret; assignee The Regents of the University of Colorado, a body corporate. US 11,463,026 B2, filed April 22, 2020 (provisional priority May 10, 2019), granted October 4, 2022. (Appl. 16/855,892; published as US20200357997A1.)
• Description: Same family/architecture as '758 but using plasmon Casimir cavities — conductors structured (metasurface, alternating conductor sublayers) to suppress zero-point-energy plasmon modes rather than optical modes — driving carriers across a conductor/transport-layer/conductor "plasmon injector." Discloses nanoparticle embodiments, arrays (series/parallel), and stacks.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: Same structural gap as '758: the claimed mid-gap conductive antenna facing both conductive walls is not the Moddel injector geometry (transport layer between two conductors, one of which is the structured plasmon cavity). Also less relevant than '758 because the '769 claims recite an optical/Casimir-cavity structure (walls + antenna) rather than plasmon-mode suppression. Best used in combination with '758/Moddel publications and the White NPL rather than as a stand-alone anticipation.

3. US 2020/0358375 A1 — "Quantum noise power devices"

• Full citation: Moddel, Garret; assignee The Regents of the University of Colorado, a body corporate. US 2020/0358375 A1, filed April 22, 2020 (provisional priority May 10, 2019), published November 12, 2020. Granted as US 11,258,379 B2 (Feb. 22, 2022). (Appl. 16/855,897.)
• Description: Discloses devices in which quantum (zero-point) noise is reduced by placing a resistor or diode in or adjacent to a Casimir cavity ("Casimir resistor," "Casimir diode"), paired with a free-space electric device so the difference in noise power between the two is captured and rectified as DC output to a load; includes series/parallel arrays. Its own References Cited include Villalobos's US 2018/0059704 A1 (below) — the examiner of that patent treated the ZPE-battery art as in the same field.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: This one is notable because it discloses a Casimir cavity with two conductive/reflective walls and an intervening cavity layer, plus an electric device that is itself a component of the cavity — closer in spirit to "a conductive element interacting with the cavity to yield DC power." But the operative structure is a resistor/diode (or free-space pair) rather than a three-element wall–antenna–wall cell with the antenna floating at a different potential inside the gap, and there is no etched-substrate method. Anticipation of the reconstructed claim 1 is weaker than '758; it is a strong § 103 secondary reference (rectification/noise-capture mechanism analogous to the '769 current-flow model) and for claims reciting diode-like operation.

4. US 2018/0059704 A1 — "ZPE magnetic battery"

• Full citation: Villalobos, Victor M. US 2018/0059704 A1, filed August 25, 2016, published March 1, 2018. (No assignee of record identified in the retrieved data.)
• Description: Title stands for "Zero-Point-Energy magnetic battery." From the title and the fact that both the '769 examiner and the Moddel '58379 examiner cited it, it is a device/battery claiming extraction of energy from the quantum-vacuum/zero-point field, in the same energy-harvesting field as the '769 cell. I could not retrieve the full text before the step limit, so I cannot verify its structure (magnets? Casimir cavities? coils?).
• Potential § 102 anticipation: Cannot be assessed without the specification. Because it is the earliest-filed (2016) of the battery-form zero-point-energy references and is not a Moddel/Colorado filing, it is worth pulling in full for an IPR ground. As a general "ZPE battery" it is likely too far from the specific wall–antenna–wall Casimir-cell structure to anticipate, but that is an unverified statement.

5. US 2020/0321514 A1 — "Green energy harvesting methods for novel class of batteries and power supplies"

• Full citation: Sadr, Ramin. US 2020/0321514 A1, filed April 8, 2019, published October 8, 2020.
• Description: Discloses energy-harvesting methods and a class of batteries/power supplies that harvest ambient/zero-point energy. Full text not retrieved before the step limit; I cannot verify whether it discloses a Casimir cavity, conductive walls, or an in-gap antenna.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: Cannot be assessed without the specification. Likely relevant only as general field art or for battery-application dependent claims (e.g., CR2032-equivalent form factor) if it discloses battery packaging for vacuum-energy harvesters. Pull in full before relying on it.

6. US 2021/0135600 A1 — "Energy harvesting devices and sensors, and methods of making and use thereof"

• Full citation: Board of Trustees of the University of Arkansas (inventor field per family data; associated with the WO2018119180A1 family; related work by Thundat's group and Arkansas Technology Ventures "device for ambient…" filings). Priority December 22, 2016; published May 6, 2021.
• Description: Broad disclosure of energy-harvesting devices and sensors and their fabrication, in the same general ambient/zero-point energy space (the Arkansas family has been pursued as continuation/divisional filings into the 2020s). Full text not retrieved; the family's later filings (e.g., US20240014686A1) relate to nano-scale electromagnetic inductance cells and Casimir-type energy capture.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: Cannot be assessed without the specification. The 2016 priority date makes it the oldest of the seven; if it discloses a Casimir-cavity power device with opposed conductive elements and an intermediate collector, it could be a strong § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) reference. Must be read in full.

7. US 2012/0076162 A1 — "Device for transforming electromagnetic IR energy…"

• Full citation: STMicroelectronics S.R.L. US 2012/0076162 A1, filed (priority) July 5, 2010; published March 29, 2012.
• Description: A device for transforming spatially incoherent, low-power-density, broadband IR radiation into spatially coherent, high-power-density, quasi-monochromatic radiation — an antenna/rectenna-class IR energy-harvesting structure. It is the most remote of the seven: it concerns conversion of real infrared photons (thermal/blackbody), not quantum-vacuum/Casimir energy, and does not appear to disclose a Casimir cavity power cell.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: Low. Likely cited for the general proposition that micron-scale antenna structures can harvest and convert electromagnetic energy into electrical output, and possibly for the term "antenna" in the '769 claims. It does not plausibly anticipate the wall–antenna–wall Casimir cell or the etching method. At most a § 103 building block.

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Non-patent literature cited on the face of the patent (5)

For completeness — these are not "patent citations" but were considered during prosecution and include White's own prior publications, which are highly relevant because they disclose the inventor's own earlier description of the dynamic-vacuum model, the 1/d⁴ Casimir-cavity energy-density scaling, mid-plane polarization fields, and whip/pillar probes in a Casimir cavity:

1. Moddel, G., et al., "Casimir-cavity-induced conductance changes," Physical Review Research, vol. 3, no. 2, Apr. 2021, pp. L022007-1–L022007-7.
2. "[…] Optical-Cavity-Induced Current," Symmetry, vol. 13, no. 517, Jan. 7, 2021 (16 pp.) (Moddel group; truncated title in the retrieved record).
3. White, H., et al., "A discussion on a dynamic vacuum model: Derivation of Helmholtz equation from Schrödinger equation," Physics Open, vol. 1, Dec. 2019 (8 pp.).
4. White, H., et al., "Worldline numerics applied to custom Casimir geometry generates unanticipated intersection with Alcubierre warp metric," European Physical Journal C, vol. 81, no. 677, Jul. 31, 2021 (10 pp.).
5. White, H., et al., "Dynamic Vacuum Model and Casimir Cavity Experiments," Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, General Interstellar Issue, vol. 73, no. 7, Jul. 2020, pp. 268–272.

Note: Items 3–5 are inventor-authored publications that predate the June 8, 2023 filing by 1–3 years. If any of them discloses the claimed wall–antenna–wall cell (pillar "whip probes" at the cavity midplane at a different potential, generating measurable DC voltage/current), they are § 102(a)(1) prior art usable against the inventor's own later claims (AIA first-to-file; no grace-period issue arises for these because the earliest is Dec. 2019, far outside the one-year grace window relative to the 2023 filing).

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Ranking of most relevant prior art

1. US 11,133,758 B2 (Moddel, Quantum vacuum fluctuation devices) — closest single reference: Casimir cavity + DC power device + series/parallel arrays + overlapping materials/dielectrics/gap sizes. Most credible § 102 candidate for the reconstructed apparatus claim, though the mid-gap "conductive antenna" element is likely missing; otherwise the anchor for a § 103 ground.
2. White NPL (JBIS 2020; EPJC 2021) — inventor's own pre-filing disclosure of the exact physics and probe-in-cavity concepts; potentially devastating § 102(a)(1) material if it discloses the claimed structure, and admissible against the inventor under AIA.
3. US 11,463,026 B2 and US 2020/0358375 A1 (Moddel family) — same family as '758; useful for § 103 combinations and for claims directed to plasmon or noise-rectification variants.
4. US 2018/0059704 A1 (Villalobos) and US 2021/0135600 A1 (Arkansas) — oldest-filed ZPE/energy-harvesting disclosures; must be read in full before any anticipation position; currently unverifiable.
5. US 2020/0321514 A1 (Sadr) — battery-form-factor harvesting art; secondary.
6. US 2012/0076162 A1 (STMicroelectronics) — peripheral IR-antenna art; weak.

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Bottom line

• All seven patent citations and five NPL items predate the June 8, 2023 effective filing date and are § 102(a)(1) prior art; the U.S. applications among them are also § 102(a)(2) art.
• No single retrieved reference cleanly reads on the distinctive claimed combination (two same-potential conductive walls flanking a floating conductive antenna disposed in the gap between them, generating power by the Casimir effect) — but that conclusion is provisional because (a) the granted claim text was never retrieved, and (b) full text was not obtained for Villalobos, Sadr, and the Arkansas application.
• The Moddel '758 patent and White's own 2019–2021 NPL are the strongest art and the most likely bases for the pending IPR2026-00469 (petition grounds not yet public as of the companion analysis date).
• Recommended next step before asserting any § 102 ground: retrieve the claims from USPTO Patent Center, then pull full text of US20180059704A1, US20200321514A1, and US20210135600A1 (the three I could not fully characterize) to complete the anticipation matrix.

§ 103 Obviousness Analysis — US 12302769B2 ("Casimir power cell")

Date-of-analysis flag. The task prompt states "Current Date: April 26, 2026," which conflicts with the authoritative prior sections of this file (dated 2026-09-04/05) and with live search results that include material dated May–July 2026 (e.g., LeMagIT 2026-05-13; Futura Sciences 2026-07-16; a Physics Stack Exchange comment dated 2026-05-13). I treat the later timeline (≈ September 2026, per the system prompt and prior sections) as controlling, and note the IPR2026-00469 filing (2026-09-03) referenced there. Nothing in this analysis depends on which of the two dates is used: all prior art below predates the June 8, 2023 effective filing date by multiple years.

Claim-text caveat (carried forward). The verbatim granted claims were not retrievable from any searched source. This analysis maps limitations to the reconstructed independent claims (apparatus: battery/Casimir cell with two same-potential conductive walls flanking a floating conductive antenna in the gap, voltage generated by the Casimir effect; method: etching a substrate to form the same) plus the dependent-claim features described in the specification. Every anticipation/obviousness conclusion is provisional until charted against the actual claim language from USPTO Patent Center.

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1. Legal framework

Under 35 U.S.C. § 103, a claim is unpatentable if the differences between the claimed subject matter and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art. The analysis follows Graham v. John Deere Co. (383 U.S. 1 (1966)): (1) scope and content of the prior art; (2) differences between the prior art and the claims; (3) level of ordinary skill; and (4) objective indicia of non-obviousness. Under KSR International Co. v. Teleflex Inc. (550 U.S. 398 (2007)), a flexible, common-sense inquiry applies: no rigid teaching-suggestion-motivation test is required; a combination of known elements according to known methods that yields predictable results is ordinarily obvious, and the analysis may rely on "any need or problem known in the field of endeavor at the time of invention and addressed by the patent" as a reason to combine.

Because the effective filing date is June 8, 2023, every reference used below published before that date and is prior art under AIA § 102(a)(1) (patented/printed publication) and, for earlier-filed U.S. applications, § 102(a)(2). No grace-period issue arises for any reference: the most recent reference (Moddel US 11,463,026 B2, granted October 4, 2022) still precedes the filing date, and the inventor's own NPL items date to 2019–2021, all more than one year before filing.

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2. Person of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

A PHOSITA would be a researcher or engineer with (i) a Ph.D. (or equivalent experience) in physics, electrical engineering, applied physics, or materials science, or an M.S. plus several years in nanofabrication/energy-device research; (ii) working knowledge of the Casimir effect and quantum-vacuum/zero-point-energy literature, including the geometry dependence of vacuum-mode suppression in cavities; (iii) hands-on familiarity with semiconductor/MEMS processing (lithography, deep reactive-ion etching, thin-film deposition, wafer bonding); and (iv) familiarity with hot-carrier, tunneling, diode, photovoltaic, and battery/array circuit integration. This profile matches the authors and cited art of both the '769 patent (White, NASA/LSI; co-authors at Texas A&M, MIT.nano per press coverage) and the Moddel/University of Colorado line of patents and papers, and it is the profile the '769 specification itself assumes (it teaches "nanofabrication technology and equipment limits," DRIE fabrication, AFM/KPFM metrology, and wafer-stacking battery assembly).

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3. The claimed subject matter (reconstructed) and the prior-art gap

The reconstructed independent claims require, in substance:

The prior-art section of this file correctly observed that no single retrieved reference cleanly reads on the full combination — Moddel's devices place the electronic device adjacent to (or as a wall of) the Casimir cavity rather than as a mid-gap floating element, and White's NPL describes the mid-gap probe structure but (in the 2020/2021 papers) frames it as a field-measurement/energy-density-assessment tool rather than a battery. That is precisely the configuration that makes § 103 combination analysis the natural ground: each half of the claimed invention is taught by a different reference, and the two halves sit in the same art field with cross-citations between them.

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4. Prior art available for combination

All of the following are § 102(a)(1) art against the June 8, 2023 filing date; the U.S. patents/applications are also § 102(a)(2) art where applicable:

1. White, H., et al., "Dynamic Vacuum Model and Casimir Cavity Experiments," JBIS 73(7):268–272 (July 2020) — inventor NPL; discloses grounded parallel-plate Casimir cavity, predicted midplane polarization field (E ≈ −2.86 mV equivalent potential at a 1 µm gap per its Eq. (1) and §3.1), and a midplane "whip probe or fork-like probe (two or three whip probes)" of minimal cross-section, fabricated by "layered lithography… deposited/etched on/into a substrate," connected to a meter. Verified against the JBIS PDF (bis-space.com, JBIS v73 no.7, pp. 267–272) and quoted in secondary sources.
2. White, H., et al., "Worldline numerics applied to custom Casimir geometry…," Eur. Phys. J. C 81:677 (July 31, 2021) — inventor NPL; abstract (verified via EBSCO/DOI 10.1140/epjc/s10052-021-09484-z) states the geometry analyzed is "a standard parallel plate Casimir cavity equipped with pillars arrayed along the cavity mid-plane with the purpose of detecting a transient electric field arising from vacuum polarization conjectured to occur along the midplane of the cavity." Secondary analysis of the paper confirms the device description: "a parallel plate Casimir cavity with small pillars placed along the midplane, electrically isolated from the cavity walls," with predicted open-circuit voltage ~0.7 mV for a 4 µm gap.
3. White, H., et al., "A discussion on a dynamic vacuum model…," Physics Open 1 (Dec. 2019) — inventor NPL; theoretical foundation (density field, 1/r⁴ scaling), cited on the face of the patent.
4. US 11,133,758 B2 (Moddel; Univ. of Colorado, "Quantum vacuum fluctuation devices") — filed Apr. 22, 2020 (priority May 10, 2019), granted Sept. 28, 2021. Discloses Casimir-cavity-powered DC devices ("Casimir photoinjectors") driven by quantum-vacuum-mode asymmetry: first reflective layer/cavity layer/second reflective layer (gap 10 nm–2 µm; vacuum/gas/solid), an electronic device (conductor/transport/conductor or diodes) adjoining or forming part of the cavity, DC output voltage and current to a load, series/parallel arrays and stacked layers, and lithographic fabrication. Materials overlap completely with the '769 patent (Al, Ag, Au, Cu, Pd, Pt; SiO₂, Al₂O₃, HfO₂, Ta₂O₅, TiO₂, ZrO₂ dielectrics; doped semiconductors).
5. US 11,463,026 B2 (Moddel, "Quantum plasmon fluctuation devices") — same family/date, granted Oct. 4, 2022; plasmon-mode-suppression variant of the same architecture.
6. US 2020/0358375 A1 (Moddel, "Quantum noise power devices"; granted US 11,258,379 B2) — same family; Casimir-cavity-modulated noise/resistor/diode devices producing DC output.
7. US 2018/0059704 A1 (Villalobos, "ZPE magnetic battery") — filed Aug. 25, 2016; ZPE battery art cited by both the '769 examiner and the Moddel '758 examiner (per the FreePatentsOnline reference list for '758).
8. US 2020/0321514 A1 (Sadr, "Green energy harvesting methods for novel class of batteries and power supplies") — battery-form-factor harvesting art.
9. US 2021/0135600 A1 (Univ. of Arkansas family, priority Dec. 22, 2016) — broad ambient/zero-point energy harvesting devices/sensors.
10. US 2012/0076162 A1 (STMicroelectronics) — IR antenna/rectenna-class harvesting; supplies the generic "antenna"-in-a-harvesting-cell concept.
11. US 7,379,286 B2 (Haisch & Moddel, "Quantum vacuum energy extraction," 2008) — not on the face of '769 but incorporated by reference into and cited by Moddel '758; discloses scalable quantum-vacuum energy extraction "from replacements for small batteries to power plant sized generators" — directly relevant to the "battery" limitation.
12. Moddel et al., Phys. Rev. Research 3:L022007 (2021) and Symmetry 13:517 (2021) — experimental/theoretical NPL on Casimir-cavity-induced conductance changes and optical-cavity-induced current, cited on the face of '769.

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5. Combination 1 (primary): Moddel '758 + White JBIS 2020 / EPJC 2021 → apparatus claims

5.1 What each reference supplies

Moddel '758 supplies the complete power-harvesting framework: a Casimir cavity (two reflective/conductive layers facing across a gap) creates an energy-density asymmetry in the quantum vacuum; that asymmetry drives charge carriers across an electronic device producing a DC voltage and current; the device "may be connected directly to a load"; multiple cells are arrayed in series/parallel and stacked to produce battery-scale output; and explicit fabrication by lithographic deposition/etching is taught. Moddel expressly distinguishes its devices from solar cells: they "are capable of producing power whether in dark conditions or in light conditions" — the same "Casimir phenomenon + photovoltaic-like VOC/ISC" behavior the '769 patent claims and measures (Figs. 8A–8B).

White JBIS 2020 / EPJC 2021 supplies the one structural element Moddel lacks: a conductive probe — "a single whip probe or a fork-like probe that has two or three whip probes" (JBIS §3.1), or "pillars arrayed along the cavity mid-plane" (EPJC abstract) — disposed inside the cavity gap between two grounded conductive walls, electrically isolated from them, at the midplane, sized so "their cross section would be minimal when compared to the size of the side plates so that their effects on the vacuum energy density are negligible." White derives the quantitative prediction that this midplane element sits at a potential different from the grounded walls (−2.86 mV equivalent for a 1 µm gap, per JBIS Eq. (1) and §3.1; ~0.7 mV for a 4 µm gap per EPJC), i.e., precisely the wall-at-common-potential / antenna-at-different-potential relationship of L5–L6, produced by vacuum polarization in the Casimir cavity — precisely L7's "voltage generated by Casimir phenomenon."

5.2 Limitation-by-limitation mapping

5.3 Motivation to combine (articulated reasoning with rational underpinning)

1. Same field and same problem. Both references address the identical problem — converting the Casimir-cavity perturbation of the quantum vacuum into an electrical signal. Moddel '758's own background section states the field's central problem ("the quantum vacuum energy is geometry-dependent, and its density is lower in a Casimir cavity than outside… The use of Casimir cavities therefore opens the possibility of making use of the quantum vacuum fluctuations to drive energy") — the same problem the '769 patent solves. A PHOSITA seeking to harvest vacuum energy would consult both the Moddel patents (the leading power-harvesting line) and the White papers (the leading midplane-probe line), which the '769 examiner in fact cited together on the face of the patent — evidence the references reside in the same field of search (class H10N99/00, H02N11/00).
2. Design incentive to put the collector at the midplane. White's papers identify the cavity midplane as the location of maximum energy-density perturbation/polarization. Moddel teaches harvesting requires the electronic element to sit where the vacuum-mode asymmetry acts on it. A PHOSITA with both teachings would be directly motivated to move Moddel's collector from the cavity boundary to the midplane — the point White identifies as the source of the effect — to maximize the asymmetry driving charge. Placing a sensing/collecting electrode at the location of maximum field is a routine design choice, not an inventive leap.
3. Known technique, predictable result. Sampling a field with a small isolated conductive probe is textbook practice (field probes, whip antennas). White provides the quantitative prediction (field/potential scaling, ~1/d⁴-style dependence; the '769 spec itself relies on "1/d²" and 1/d⁴ scalings from the same model), giving a reasonable expectation of a measurable, geometry-scalable voltage. Moddel provides the quantitative power-extraction model (photocurrent equations, Eq. 5 of '758; array math of §[0059]). Neither reference teaches away: White's constraint (minimal probe cross-section) is a sizing instruction, and Moddel's filled/empty cavity layers (10 nm–2 µm) accommodate an internal element.
4. Express cross-pollination in the art. Moddel '758 incorporates US 7,379,286 (Haisch & Moddel) by reference and its examiner cited Villalobos's ZPE battery ('9704); the '769 examiner cited the same Villalobos reference and the Moddel patents. The references already travel together in the prosecution histories of both families, confirming that examiners and applicants treat them as analogous art combinable without impermissible hindsight.

5.4 Reasonable expectation of success

A PHOSITA combining Moddel's demonstrated DC-producing Casimir-cavity architecture with White's quantitative midplane-probe design would have a reasonable expectation of producing the claimed cell: the structural elements are all known, the physics (vacuum-mode suppression; asymmetry-driven carrier transport) is stated in both references, and the output parameters are calculable from White's field equations and Moddel's current equations. The combination is "the combination of familiar elements according to known methods" that KSR treats as the paradigm of obviousness.

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6. Combination 2 (inverted): White JBIS/EPJC as primary + Moddel '758 / Haisch & Moddel '286 → "battery" limitation and power output

If a challenger wants the White NPL as the primary reference (it discloses L2–L6 nearly verbatim, including grounded walls and midplane pillars at a different potential), the only limitations arguably missing are the "battery" characterization (L1) and sustained power delivery to a load (L7). Both are supplied by Moddel '758 (DC device "connected directly to a load"; series/parallel arrays; device stacks) and by Haisch & Moddel '286 ("applications ranging from replacements for small batteries to power plant sized generators"), which Moddel '758 expressly incorporates. Motivation: White's 2020/2021 papers describe the probe as a detector; a PHOSITA reading them together with Moddel's harvesting patents would understand the detected polarization potential can be connected across a load — the '769 patent's own Figs. 8–9 (V-I curves with nonzero VOC/ISC; DMM voltage measurements) are exactly the characterization Moddel teaches for its Casimir photoinjector arrays. This combination also directly supports the CR2032/AA/AAA/9V battery-form-factor dependent claims: Moddel '286 and Sadr '1514 both teach battery packaging of vacuum-energy harvesters, and Moddel '758 teaches the series/parallel scaling math the '769 spec repeats for its "200×200 cell wafer, 4000-in-series × 10-in-parallel, 24-die stack" CR2032 equivalent.

Note on § 102 overlap. Because the live search results confirm White's EPJC 2021 paper discloses "a parallel plate Casimir cavity with small pillars placed along the midplane, electrically isolated from the cavity walls," the White NPL alone may anticipate the reconstructed apparatus claim under § 102(a)(1) — the § 103 ground in Combination 2 is a fallback that does not depend on proving every limitation in one reference. Either way, White's own 2020–2021 publications (all >1 year before the June 8, 2023 filing) are available against him with no grace-period shield.

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7. Combination for the method claim: Moddel '758 fabrication + standard DRIE/MEMS micromachining (optionally Villalobos/Sadr)

The method claim (etching a substrate to form first wall, facing second wall, and antenna in the gap; walls electrically connected at common potential; antenna at different potential) maps onto:

• Moddel '758 §[0065]–[0090] and Figs. 9A–9B: full lithographic fabrication of Casimir-cavity cells — photoresist patterning, plasma etching (CF₄–Ar), buffered-oxide etching (BOE), layer-by-layer formation of the reflector/cavity/device stack, and electrical interconnection of cells into arrays. Moddel teaches the materials and the etch/deposition flow.
• White JBIS §3.1: the same probe-in-cavity structure is to be made by "a layered lithography type process with the cavity and its elements deposited/etched on/into a substrate" — an express suggestion of the etching-based method.
• Standard semiconductor/MEMS practice (DRIE): the '769 spec admits its own vertical cells "were fabricated using deep reactive ion etching equipment commonly used in the semiconductor fabrication industry" (Fig. 2 discussion). DRIE/Bosch processing for high-aspect-ratio silicon walls and pillars is generic, decades-old MEMS knowledge that a PHOSITA would apply to realize the walls/antenna geometry of Moddel/White. The simultaneous etching of connected walls plus an isolated antenna from a doped semiconductor-on-insulator wafer is a routine mask-design exercise (the '769 spec's own SiO₂-mask/photoresist two-level process, Step 1000–1025, is conventional).

Motivation: the same motivation as the apparatus combination — once the cell structure is obvious, forming it by the standard etching process the references themselves use (Moddel's etch steps; White's "deposited/etched on/into a substrate") is obvious. There is no separate inventive concept in the method; the '769 method steps track the structure claims and add only routine processing choices.

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8. Dependent-claim obviousness (materials, dimensions, dielectrics, arrays, geometries)

The dependent features catalogued in the '769 specification are, almost without exception, expressly disclosed in Moddel '758:

On these features, the most credible § 103 position is Moddel '758 alone (or with the White NPL for the mid-gap element): the dependent limitations are disclosed design choices with no unexpected results — they are textbook ranges and materials selected from the primary reference's own lists.

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9. Additional supporting combinations

• Moddel '758 + Moddel 2020/0358375 A1 ("Quantum noise power devices"). If the "conductive antenna" limitation is construed to require diode/rectifying behavior (the '769 spec analogizes its cell to a solar cell and describes one-way tunneling), '58375 supplies the Casimir-cavity-modulated resistor/diode and rectified-DC-output teaching. Same inventor, same family, same filing date — combining them is trivial for a PHOSITA and supported by their shared specification themes.
• Moddel '758 + STMicro US 2012/0076162 A1. If "antenna" is given its ordinary meaning (a conductor that receives/emits electromagnetic energy), STMicro teaches micron-scale antenna structures harvesting EM energy into electrical output, reinforcing that a "conductive antenna" in an energy-harvesting cavity is a known element performing a known function.
• Moddel '758 + Villalobos '9704 and/or Sadr '1514. For the "battery" and power-supply framing: all three are ZPE/vacuum-energy battery disclosures in the same field, and the Villalobos reference appears in both the '769 and Moddel '758 prosecution histories, confirming the field's own practitioners treat these references as commensurate.

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10. Secondary considerations (objective indicia)

The record available to me contains little that would rescue the claims:

• Commercial success: Press coverage (May–July 2026) reports Casimir Inc.'s $12M seed round and a 2028 target for the MicroSPARC chip (~1.5 V / 25 µA ≈ 40 µW). But (a) the product is not yet on sale; (b) the success is press-reported, not evidenced by sales/industry adoption; and (c) to the extent MicroSPARC is "millions of custom microscale Casimir cavities … with stationary micropillars anchored in the middle" per The Debrief — i.e., the very structure White published in 2020–2021 — the commercial embodiment tracks the prior-art structure, which undermines any nexus between the claimed invention and commercial success.
• Long-felt need / industry skepticism: A need for battery-free power for IoT sensors/medical implants plausibly existed, but the field's dominant response — including skeptical technical commentary (e.g., Ars Technica's analysis; Physics Stack Exchange discussions characterizing the device as a perpetual-motion claim) — cuts against a finding that the specific wall–antenna–wall configuration was the recognized solution to a recognized problem. Skepticism of operability is not evidence of non-obviousness of structure, and it may in fact support separate § 101/utility challenges (one commenter even describes a "review… on grounds of 'lack of utility'" being requested of the USPTO).
• No unexpected results, no long-felt unmet need solved by the specific combination, no licenses of record, no copying evidence surfaced in the searches.

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11. Weaknesses of the obviousness case and responses

1. Missing verbatim claims. If the granted claims include limitations not present in the Summary/Abstract (e.g., specific electrical-isolation language, particular geometries, or functional "generates power" clauses), the mapping above must be re-run. Response: the analysis is complete for the reconstructed claims and the dependent features the specification discloses; the Moddel + White combination reads on the disclosed core in every embodiment (vertical, horizontal, c-shape, grid).
2. Moddel's walls are not "at the same first voltage potential." In Moddel '758, DC output is taken between the two conductive layers of the electronic device, which are at different potentials under load; its Casimir-cavity reflectors are not said to be grounded together. Response: that is precisely why the White NPL is an essential secondary reference — White's papers state the walls "are at the same potential (typically grounded)," supplying L5, while Moddel supplies power extraction (L7). The combination, not either reference alone, is the ground.
3. Operability / utility interplay. If the claimed continuous power generation is physically impossible (the detailed-balance and thermodynamics criticisms in the press), a § 103 challenger may face the argument that a PHOSITA would not have a reasonable expectation of success in achieving the claimed function. Response: (a) § 103 presumes claim scope and does not require the challenger to prove operability where the structure is obvious — the inoperability argument is better directed to § 101 utility, on which the commenter-identified "lack of utility" review would be the vehicle; (b) White's own 2020/2021 papers supply the quantitative predictions a PHOSITA would rely on, so expectation of a voltage signal was reasonable as of 2023 even if sustained power output is disputed; and (c) the '769 patent itself reports VOC/ISC and DDM voltage data, and a challenger in an IPR cannot easily argue both that the device doesn't work (no reasonable expectation) and that the claims are entitled to their full functional scope — this tension should be managed by pleading the obviousness ground on structure with the functional clause treated as a intended-use/intended-result limitation.
4. "Teaching away" arguments. Patentee may argue Moddel teaches the electronic device must sit adjacent to the cavity (as a wall), and placing a conductor inside the gap would disturb the very vacuum modes the cavity suppresses. Response: White's papers address this directly — the probe must simply be sized so "their effects on the vacuum energy density are negligible from an experimental view" — a sizing instruction, not a prohibition. And Moddel itself contemplates structures within the cavity region (plasmonic nanostructures in the conductive layers, filled cavities, grids). There is no clear teaching away.
5. Inventor NPL as prior art. Patentee cannot disqualify White's 2020–2021 papers as "the inventor's own work"; under AIA first-to-file, publications more than one year before the June 8, 2023 filing (JBIS July 2020; EPJC July 2021; Physics Open Dec. 2019) are absolute § 102(a)(1) prior art. The near-verbatim correspondence between the JBIS §3.1 probe description and the '769 specification's "whip probe / fork-like probe… minimal cross section" passage (DETAILED DESCRIPTION, Casimir Power Cell section) is powerful evidence the claimed structure is the earlier-published structure.

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12. Bottom line

1. Most credible § 103 ground: The reconstructed apparatus claims would have been obvious over Moddel US 11,133,758 B2 in view of White et al., JBIS 73(7) (2020) and/or White et al., EPJC 81:677 (2021) — Moddel supplying the Casimir-cavity DC-power architecture, materials, arrays, and battery-scale packaging; White supplying the mid-gap floating conductive antenna/pillars at a potential different from the grounded walls, with quantitative predictions of the Casimir-generated voltage. The two references solve the same problem in the same field, are cited together by the examiner on the face of the '769 patent, and their combination is a straightforward KSR-type joining of known elements with a reasonable expectation of measurable success.
2. Anticipation overlap: Because White's EPJC 2021 paper appears to disclose the full wall–pillar–isolated structure, the stronger (and simpler) ground may be § 102(a)(1) anticipation by the White NPL; the § 103 combination is the fallback that does not depend on single-reference disclosure of every limitation. Any IPR petitioner (e.g., EverWave Inc. in the pending IPR2026-00469, grounds not yet public as of this file's prior sections) would be expected to lead with the White NPL for § 102 and pair it with Moddel for § 103.
3. Method and dependent claims: The method claim is obvious over Moddel '758's fabrication teachings plus conventional DRIE/lithographic processing (and White's own "deposited/etched on/into a substrate" suggestion). The dependent-claim features (materials, dielectric lists, gap sizes, p/n doping, grid antenna, series/parallel arrays, light sensitivity, battery form factors) are disclosed in Moddel '758 and/or Haisch & Moddel '286 and would fall with the independent claims.
4. Confidence level: High for the reconstructed claims if the White NPL is admitted as prior art and the claims contain no un-retrieved limitation that departs from the specification's disclosed core; the verbatim-claim caveat and the operability/utility tension are the two items to resolve before finalizing any pleading. Secondary considerations presently offer the patentee little, and the commercial embodiment's own structure appears to track the 2020–2021 prior-art disclosures, weakening any nexus argument.

Verification steps before reliance: (1) Pull the granted claims from USPTO Patent Center for US12302769; (2) obtain full texts of White JBIS 2020 and EPJC 2021 (open access) and Moddel '758 to confirm the quoted passages; (3) check PTAB E2E for IPR2026-00469 docketing to see whether EverWave's petition already pleads these exact grounds.