Invalidity dossier
US 4917929
One piece adhesive bandage and package unit
Current assignee: 3M Co
Added 9/23/2026, 3:18:11 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 4,917,929
Title: One piece adhesive bandage and package unit
Patent number: US 4,917,929 A
Inventor: Steven B. Heinecke
Original assignee: Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Co. (current assignee listed as 3M Co.)
Application number: US 07/298,628
Priority/filing date: 1989-01-18
Publication (grant) date: 1990-04-17
Legal status: Expired – Lifetime; anticipated expiration 2009-01-18
Purpose and plain-language scope (per supplied text): The patent describes a "one piece adhesive bandage and package unit" — an adhesive composite serving as a wound-covering film layer without a fluid retention layer, supplied in a package unit. The source excerpt also lists related materials/keywords appearing in the claims and description: adhesive and pressure-sensitive adhesive, backing, polyethylene, polysiloxane, polyurethane, and a separation method. Classifications place it under A61F13/023 (adhesive bandages or dressings; wound covering film layers without a fluid retention layer) and A61F15/001 (packages or dispensers for bandages and dressings).
What the supplied excerpt does not establish:
- It does not reproduce the actual claim language, so the precise metes and bounds of the claimed subject matter cannot be stated.
- It does not identify any specific prior-art references; no prior-art analysis is included.
- It does not establish the factual accuracy of the assignee listing or legal status (the source labels both as assumptions/not legal conclusions).
- It does not provide the specification text, figures, or examples; therefore structural details of the "one piece" bandage-package combination and the "separation method" cannot be verified.
- It does not establish inventorship accuracy, ownership transfers, validity, enforceability, or litigation history.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4917929/en (fetched 2026-09-23).
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:51:40 PM
Cases on file (0)
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Litigation summary
Past and pending lawsuits — plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, outcomes, and notable rulings.
Proceedings on file (0)
All PTAB activity →AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) filed at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board against this patent. Sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and refreshed every six hours; each proceeding number deep-links to the PTAB E2E docket.
No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.
Obviousness
Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.