Prior art — US Patent 12576080

The USPTO Patent Public Search tool (PPUBS) is the primary resource for identifying prior art cited against a patent. To identify the most relevant prior art for US patent 12576080, I will use the USPTO Patent Public Search to find the patent and then review its "Cited References" section.

I will search the USPTO Patent Public Search (PPUBS) for patent number 12576080. Once located, I will examine the "Cited References" or "References Cited" section, which lists the prior art considered by the patent examiner during prosecution. For each reference, I will extract the full citation, publication/filing date, a brief description (if readily available from the citation itself or general knowledge), and identify which claims of US12576080 it potentially anticipates under 35 U.S.C. § 102.

Since the patent document provided in the prompt is already the full text, I should be able to find the references cited within the document itself. I need to look for a "References Cited" section.

Upon reviewing the provided full patent text (US12576080), the "References Cited" section is not explicitly present in the format usually seen on a patent front page (i.e., a list of U.S. Patents, Foreign Patent Documents, and Other Publications). However, the "CROSS-REFERENCE" section mentions several U.S. patent applications and issued U.S. patents from which US12576080 claims benefit or is a continuation. These are:

U.S. patent application Ser. No. 18/423,908, filed Jan. 26, 2024
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 17/543,505, filed Dec. 6, 2021, now issued as U.S. Pat. No. 11,903,941
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 16/566,237, filed Sep. 10, 2019, now issued as U.S. Pat. No. 11,224,598
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 15/422,382, filed Feb. 1, 2017, now issued as U.S. Pat. No. 10,456,396
U.S. patent application Ser. No. 14/887,248, filed Oct. 19, 2015, now issued as U.S. Pat. No. 9,597,284
U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/066,280, filed Oct. 20, 2014
U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/100,844, filed Jan. 7, 2015

These are family members and not typically considered "prior art" under 35 U.S.C. § 102 in the same way as external references. Rather, they establish the priority date and continuity of the invention.

The "DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION" section also references several International (WO) patent publications as sources for nicotinic acetylcholine receptor agonists:

WO 2008/057938
WO 2009/111550
WO 2010/028011
WO 2010/028033

These WO documents are explicitly incorporated by reference for disclosing compounds, but the patent text does not describe them as prior art that anticipates the methods of treatment or formulations claimed in US12576080.

To fulfill the request of identifying "the most relevant prior art," I need to specifically look for references cited by the examiner in the issued patent. Since this information is not directly presented in the provided patent text, I would typically access the full patent document from the USPTO or Google Patents, which includes the examiner-cited prior art. The provided patent text is from Google Patents, but it's presented in a simplified format that often omits the formal "References Cited" section at the end.

Therefore, I will reiterate that the provided patent text itself does not contain a "References Cited" section listing external prior art documents. I cannot invent or assume these citations. The patent only lists its own family members and a few WO publications incorporated by reference for specific compounds.

If I were to perform this task in a real-world scenario with full access to patent databases, I would use the Patent Public Search (PPUBS) on the USPTO website to retrieve the official issued patent document for 12576080. This document would contain the "References Cited" section, which lists all patents and non-patent literature considered by the examiner.

Since the instruction is to use the provided authoritative text and to search the USPTO database for the specific patent number 12576080, and the provided authoritative text does not include a "References Cited" section, I must report on what is present and what is missing.

The prompt also states "Look at each patent citation for 12576080." This implies such citations are expected to be found. Given the prompt structure and the initial authoritative patent text provided, it seems the expectation is that the "References Cited" section would have been part of the full patent text if it were a typical presentation. However, as it is not in the provided text, I cannot generate specific citations from it.

I will state that the provided patent text does not contain a "References Cited" section and therefore I cannot list specific prior art as requested from the document itself. I will acknowledge the family members and the WO publications mentioned, but clarify their role.

Re-reading the prompt: "Search the USPTO database for the specific patent number 12576080. Do not return results for similar numbers." This means I should try to access USPTO directly to find the citations, as the provided text from Google Patents is a simplified view.

Let's try to simulate this using Google Search as a proxy for accessing the USPTO database to find the full patent document and its citations. My previous search results confirm that USPTO Patent Public Search is the correct tool. Since I cannot directly interact with a live USPTO database in this environment, I must rely on a search result that presents the USPTO citations for US12576080 if available, or state that I cannot find this information through the provided search capabilities.

A new search query will be USPTO patent 12576080 cited references to specifically target the citations section.To identify the most relevant prior art for US patent 12576080, I consulted the patent text, specifically looking for a "References Cited" section, which typically lists prior art considered during prosecution. However, the provided authoritative patent text for US12576080 does not include a formal "References Cited" section.

The patent text does mention other patent documents in two contexts:

Cross-referenced applications and issued patents (family members): These are applications and patents from which US12576080 claims benefit as a continuation. These documents establish the priority date and continuity of the invention, rather than serving as prior art under 35 U.S.C. § 102 against the current patent. They include:
- U.S. patent application Ser. No. 18/423,908, filed Jan. 26, 2024
- U.S. Pat. No. 11,903,941 (from Ser. No. 17/543,505, filed Dec. 6, 2021)
- U.S. Pat. No. 11,224,598 (from Ser. No. 16/566,237, filed Sep. 10, 2019)
- U.S. Pat. No. 10,456,396 (from Ser. No. 15/422,382, filed Feb. 1, 2017)
- U.S. Pat. No. 9,597,284 (from Ser. No. 14/887,248, filed Oct. 19, 2015)
- U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/066,280, filed Oct. 20, 2014
- U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/100,844, filed Jan. 7, 2015
Incorporated by reference for compound disclosure: The patent's "DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE INVENTION" section refers to several World Organization (WO) publications as sources for nicotinic acetylcholine receptor agonists, stating they are "incorporated herein by reference." These are:
- WO 2008/057938
- WO 2009/111550
- WO 2010/028011
- WO 2010/028033

Without an explicit "References Cited" section listing patents and non-patent literature considered by the examiner during the prosecution of US12576080, I cannot provide a list of prior art that potentially anticipates its claims under 35 U.S.C. § 102 based solely on the provided patent text. A comprehensive prior art analysis would typically require accessing the full official patent document from the USPTO, which would include the examiner's cited references.