US 5297288

I'll verify against live sources before summarizing.

Verification notes up front

I searched for litigation/appellate activity and for claim text. Findings:

• No Federal Circuit 2026 docket activity for US 5,297,288 was found. My searches returned unrelated matters (e.g., Woodway v. LifeCORE, Ascendis v. BioMarin, a Texas wireless case). I cannot confirm any CAFC appeal, IPR, or district-court case involving this patent, and I won't assert one.
• Two near-miss identifiers appeared in search results and are NOT this patent — I flag them so they are not conflated: (1) an IPR Final Decision discussing a different "'728 patent" about encoded molecule libraries ("well/reaction well" claim construction), and (2) JP 5297288 B2, a Japanese publication. Neither is US 5,297,288.
• The claim text was not available in the authoritative source I hold. The patent specification states "Other embodiments are within the scope of the claims which follow the appendices," and the Google Patents text I retrieved is truncated mid-DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT. So my claim overview below is derived from the patent's own SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION (which states the invention's independent aspects), not from verbatim claim language. Exact claim numbering cannot be verified and should be treated as uncertain.

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US Patent 5,297,288 — Data Sheet

Abstract (verbatim)

"Method for optically scanning an object comprising a flat support for holding the object; a linear optical sensor held in a fixed position on one side of the support; a light source held in a fixed position on the other side of the support for projecting light through the object toward the optical sensor; and a drive mechanism for moving the object along one direction to successive scanning positions. The user may create custom application computer programs for performing desired image scanning and analysis on an object. To enable this, the system stores software tools each capable of performing an image scanning or image analysis function, stores an interpreter program corresponding to a natural language identifiers for the functions, and provides an interactive computer environment for the user to specify a sequence of software tools using the natural language identifiers to be executed to perform the desired image scanning and analysis."

Overview of the independent aspects (per the patent's own Summary)

The patent frames itself as having three independent aspects. Read literally, these correspond to what the document presents as its independent claims:

1. Apparatus aspect — the optical scanner itself.
A flat support holds the object (e.g., an autoradiogram). A linear optical sensor is fixed on one side of the support; a light source is fixed on the other side and projects light through the object toward the sensor. A drive mechanism translates the object along one axis to successive scanning positions. The point is that the optics stay still and the sample moves. Preferred-embodiment features recited as part of this aspect include: an opaque support surface with a linear aperture; a variable shutter that shortens the aperture to match the sample's width (to prevent CCD saturation); a rotationally driven high-friction rod with a pivotally mounted idler wheel pressed against the sample; an eccentric cam shaft that engages/disengages spring tension so the clamps can slide freely and then be locked; ≥1/2-inch clearance for thick objects (Petri dishes, microtitre trays); and an index mark on the support so a controlled stepper motor can advance the sample a predetermined distance to the scan line.

2. Software-method aspect — user-built custom application programs.
A method for letting a user create a custom application program for image scanning/analysis, comprising: storing a set of independent software tools (each performing an image scanning or analysis function); storing an interpreter that maps natural-language identifiers to those functions; and providing an interactive environment in which the user sequences tools by their natural-language names. Preferred features: sessions — copying the application and the object data plus execution state so a run can be stopped and resumed later in the same state; context-sensitive, hierarchical-tree menus; numeric shorthand for intermediate files (e.g., HELLO.002); and status flags per tool allowing repeat/skip/update of individual steps.

3. DNA-sequencing method aspect — sequencing using a manganese buffer.
A method of determining the DNA sequence of a molecule, comprising: (a) performing a DNA sequencing reaction in a manganese-based buffer under conditions producing products synthesized in uniform amounts and radioactively labeled; (b) separating the products by size ("in a jar" — terminology as written); (c) producing an autoradiogram; (d) providing the scanner apparatus of aspect 1; (e) placing the autoradiogram on the flat support and driving it past the light source and linear sensor; and (f) analyzing the sensor signals, which are representative of the DNA sequence. The specification ties this to the Tabor & Richardson (1989) manganese-buffer work, noting the density of each band can encode which dideoxynucleotide terminated the fragment — allowing more than one base per lane.

Supporting technical detail worth noting: the scanner uses a Toshiba TCD106C 5,000-element linear CCD with a lens focusing a 12.5-inch line, giving ~400 dots/inch; an 80186-based CPU board, an SCSI host interface, and dedicated CCD, motor, and power boards; and the microcode/3710.ASM firmware is contained in Microfiche Appendix B (the patent carries a copyright notice covering the figures and Appendix B).

Explicit uncertainties

• Claim numbering and verbatim claim language are unverified. My source truncates before the claims (which the patent places after the appendices). The three "independent claim" descriptions above reflect the Summary of the Invention, not confirmed claim numbering. Anyone needing claim scope should pull the issued claim set from USPTO PatentCenter or the printed patent.
• Assignee/legal-status data are as listed by Google Patents, which itself disclaims accuracy; the expired-fee status and 2011 expiration are assumptions, not legal conclusions.
• No litigation or CAFC 2026 activity is confirmed for this patent; my searches found none.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 5,297,288. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me dig deeper with more targeted queries.

Let me check litigation-specific databases directly.

Litigation Search Report — U.S. Patent No. 5,297,288

Bottom line

I found no evidence of any U.S. patent litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 5,297,288. No district court case, Federal Circuit appeal, ITC action, or PTAB proceeding asserting or challenging this specific patent surfaced in my searches.

Because my searches returned mostly unrelated matters, I want to be explicit: this is a "no known litigation" result based on the searches I was able to run, not a definitive negative clearance of every docket. I could not directly query PACER docket search, CourtListener's RECAP full-text docket index, or the Unified Patents litigation portal case lists (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) — my queries against those sources returned unrelated documents rather than anything keyed to this patent number.

Important disambiguation — do not confuse these "288" patents

Several look-alike identifiers appeared in search results and are not U.S. 5,297,288:

None of these involve U.S. 5,297,288. I am deliberately flagging them so that the "288" shorthand in other cases is not mistaken for litigation on this patent.

Patent profile (for context on why litigation is unlikely)

The following is drawn from the patent text on Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5297288](/patent/US5297288)/en):

• Title: "System for use with a high resolution scanner for scheduling a sequence of software tools for determining the presence of bands in DNA sequencing samples"
• Patent number: US 5,297,288 A
• Application number: US 07/897,606
• Inventors: Robert W. Hemminger; Robert J. Emery
• Original assignee: United States Biochemical Corp.
• Priority date: 1989‑11‑28
• Filing date: 1992‑06‑10
• Grant/publication date: 1994‑03‑22
• Continuity: Continuation of Ser. No. 07/640,471 (filed Jan. 15, 1991, abandoned), which was a divisional of Ser. No. 07/442,553 (filed Nov. 28, 1989, now abandoned)
• Legal status: Expired – Fee Related; anticipated expiration 2011‑03‑22

Two points bear on litigation likelihood:

1. The patent expired in 2011 (anticipating the 20-year term from the 1989 priority date). Even a maximum pre-AIA term extension scenario would have placed any assertion window roughly between 1994 and 2011.
2. The patent is a biotechnology/laboratory-instrumentation patent from a small reagent company (United States Biochemical Corp.), not an NPE-monetized software patent. No assertion campaign against this patent appeared in search results.

What I searched

• Queries for "US patent 5297288 litigation," "5,297,288," "5297288 case lawsuit district court"
• Queries tying the assignee ("United States Biochemical") to an infringement suit
• Queries aimed at the Unified Patents portal and CourtListener
• Queries for the patent subject matter combined with "asserted"

Recommended next steps to verify definitively

Since I could not fully clear this via the searches available to me, a definitive answer would require directly querying the sources below (each searches by exact patent number):

1. PACER / CourtListener RECAP — docket search for the patent number as a party attribute or in the "Patents" field.
2. Unified Patents litigation portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation (search by patent number).
3. USPTO Patent Center / Patent Assignment & litigation records — to confirm the exhausted status and any recorded assignments.
4. Westlaw/LexisNexis "Litigation History" report keyed to the patent number.
5. MaxVal / Lex Machina patent litigation dashboards.

Limitations and caveats

• I am not representing that this patent has never been litigated; I am reporting that my searches produced no known litigation involving U.S. 5,297,288.
• I did not auto-correct any identifiers. Notably, 4,879,288 and JP 5297288 are distinct from US 5,297,288 and are excluded from the litigation list.
• Any conclusions here are non-legal research findings, not a FTO or validity opinion, and no attorney–client relationship is created.

If you can confirm you want me to pursue a specific docket system (e.g., a PACER party search under "United States Biochemical Corp."), I can target that next.

I'll verify the structured data with targeted searches before finalizing.

Let me run a few more targeted checks to be thorough before concluding.

One more targeted pass to check for litigation, reexamination, or CAFC activity.

PTAB Proceedings — US 5,297,288

Verification note up front: I ran the structured ODP block against independent web searches (PTAB E2E/PTABTS, Docket Alarm, CourtListener, and general queries keyed to the patent number and the assignee). Searches surfaced only false positives — the ParkerVision "’528 patent" (a different, unrelated patent in WDTX/Realtek litigation), Japanese Patent JP 5297288 B2 ("Shock absorbing structure," Mitsubishi Heavy Industries), and an unrelated Florida corporate EIN ending in 5297288. None of these is US 5,297,288. No proceeding number can be reported, and I will not invent one.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 5,297,288: zero. Breakdown by status: active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0. There are no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings to summarize, so there are no proceedings to rank and no section-per-proceeding detail to render below. The bottom-line defensive posture is therefore unusual and is not "the patent survived and is hardened." It is the opposite: there is no PTAB record at all, because the patent expired on 2011-03-22 — roughly six months before the AIA trial regime even came into force — and its enforceable life closed without ever attracting a challenge. For a defendant today, the PTAB docket is not the operative fact. The expiry is.

(No proceedings to enumerate)

No petitioner ever filed. No institution decision, final written decision, settlement, or Federal Circuit appeal exists to describe. Any document purporting to be an FWD or IPR number for this patent should be treated as a citation error (most likely a confusion with the ParkerVision ’528 patent or the Japanese JP 5297288 registration) until an actual PTAB caption is produced.

Strategic summary

Claim status. No claim of 5,297,288 has been canceled, confirmed, or even construed in an AIA trial, because no trial occurred. Every claim is UNTESTED at the PTAB — not because it was vindicated, but because the proceeding never happened. The patent's legal status per the source record is Expired – Fee Related, anticipated expiration 2011-03-22. That date is the 17-years-from-grant term (granted 1994-03-22) available to pre-URAA applications, and it controls here: the application was filed 1992-06-10 as a continuation, tracing to a 1989-11-28 priority date, so the pre-AIA term election applies. Critically, the patent was already expired when the AIA trial provisions took effect in September 2012.

Why there are no IPRs (this is the real answer to the assignment). Three structural reasons, in order of force:

1. Expiry predates the forum. AIA trials became available 2012-09-16. This patent expired 2011-03-22. A defendant in, say, 2026 has no live infringement exposure and no damages tail to cut off — the classic economic driver for an IPR (killing or narrowing a patent being asserted for royalties) is absent.
2. Article III mootness risk and Board practice on expired patents. Although the Board has instituted on expired patents where a live controversy existed (e.g., Sony Corp. v. Yissum Research Dev. Co., IPR2013-00219), petitioners rarely spend six figures to invalidate a patent with no forward-looking injunctive or royalty value.
3. No assertion campaign. Nothing in the record — or in search results — shows United States Biochemical Corp. (or a successor) wielding this patent against scanners or sequencers, which is what would normally pull an IPR, a CBM, or a defensive-aggregator filing (Unified Patents, RPX) into the docket.

Estoppel landscape (§ 315(e)(2)). There is no estoppel on anyone, because no petitioner ever obtained an FWD. That cuts both ways: nothing is foreclosed, and nothing is decided. Every prior-art ground — including any art a future defendant would want to run — remains technically available in any forum that still has jurisdiction over the patent. But because the patent is expired, the practical question is not which art is left; it is whether there is any live claim to assert or defend at all.

Pattern signals. No repeat petitioner (there are no petitioners). No PTAB appeal history. No defensive aggregator in the chain. This is a one-shot, never-litigated-at-the-PTAB patent from a 1989 priority date.

Recommended next steps

• If a demand letter or complaint cites US 5,297,288 today, lead with the expiry, not the PTAB docket. The patent's term ran 1994-03-22 to 2011-03-22. Infringing acts occurring after 2011-03-22 cannot support a damages claim, and there is no live injunctive exposure. Confirm the term and any PTA/terminal-disclaimer adjustments against the face of the patent and the USPTO PatentCenter record before relying on it in a demand response or a Rule 12 motion.
• Verify the assignment chain. The patent issued to United States Biochemical Corp. (the source record lists that as original and current assignee). If a current "owner" is asserting it, make them prove the chain of title — a lapsed-fee patent asserted by a non-record owner is both defectively pleaded and, practically, unenforceable on these facts.
• If the patent's claims are being asserted despite expiry (e.g., a tolling or continuing-infringement theory for pre-2011 conduct, or a bald mis-citation), quote the source record verbatim: Status: Expired - Fee Related, Anticipated expiration 2011-03-22. That is public and non-controversial.
• Do not build an IPR on this patent. It would likely be dismissed as moot or denied as an inefficient use of Board resources given no live controversy; a pre-AIA patent expired before the AIA trial regime is not a viable IPR target.
• If you are actually looking for the "’528 patent" in PTAB litigation, you are almost certainly thinking of In re / IPRs on the ParkerVision patents (e.g., Realtek Semiconductor Corp. v. ParkerVision, Inc., involving WDTX Civil Action Nos. 6-23-cv-00374 / 00389 and related petitions) — an entirely different patent. Say the word and I will pull that record instead.
• Bottom line to hand a client: "There is no PTAB activity on US 5,297,288, and there is a structural reason for that: the patent expired on 2011-03-22, before AIA trials existed. Treat the PTAB question as closed and pivot to expiry, ownership, and standing."

Sourcing note: The absence finding is grounded in the structured ODP block ("no AIA trial proceedings for this patent") plus negative results across the searches above. Patent bibliographic data (filing, priority, grant, and expiry dates, assignee, and legal status) is taken from the Google Patents record at https://patents.google.com/patent/US5297288/en. I could not locate any PTAB E2E docket or CourtListener opinion for this patent to link, because none appears to exist. If you want a belt-and-suspenders confirmation, the definitive check is a direct query of PTAB E2E (https://ptab.uspto.gov) and the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board Decisions search at https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions — I was unable to query those systems directly within this session, and that limitation is disclosed rather than papered over.

I'll research this patent's ownership history across the sources specified.

The first searches returned noise. Let me target the assignment records and corporate history directly.

Solid corporate history. Now let me try to locate the actual USPTO assignment records and any litigation.

Ownership analysis — US 5,297,288

Patent: US 5,297,288 A — "System for use with a high resolution scanner for scheduling a sequence of software tools for determining the presence of bands in DNA sequencing samples"
Application: 07/897,606 (continuation of 07/640,471, filed 1991-01-15, abandoned; which was a divisional of 07/442,553, filed 1989-11-28, abandoned)
Priority date: 1989-11-28 · Filed: 1992-06-10 · Granted: 1994-03-22 · Anticipated expiration: 2011-03-22 · Status: Expired

Retrieval caveat, stated up front: I was not able to pull the recorded assignment records (reel/frame, correspondent) for this patent in this session. The USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) and its legacy mirror (assignment.uspto.gov) returned no retrievable record through the search tools available, and no third-party index surfaced reel/frame data. The Google Patents legal-events/assignee panel for this patent lists United States Biochemical Corp as both the original assignee and the current assignee, with no post-issuance assignment events indexed. Per the operating rules, I will not fabricate reel/frame numbers, execution dates, or correspondents. Everything below that is not a face-of-patent fact is explicitly labelled. Treat the absence of an assignment record as unverified, not as confirmed.

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Inventors

• The application was assigned to United States Biochemical Corp on the face of the patent, which indicates both inventors executed an employment/assignment obligation to USB. Employment at filing is therefore highly likely but inferred from the assignee-of-record, not independently confirmed.
• Unusual patterns: none detectable. I found no evidence of inventors departing USB within 12 months of filing, and no evidence of inventor-side reassignment (inventors do not appear as assignors on any record I could retrieve). Because no assignment reel/frame data was retrievable, the "inventor departure precedes fire-sale" test cannot be run — mark as unclear, not as absent.

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Original assignee

United States Biochemical Corp. ("USB") — Cleveland, Ohio.

• Business: an operating life-sciences reagents company (founded in the 1970s), supplying biochemicals, enzymes and kits to research, pharmaceutical and educational customers. Its flagship product was Sequenase™ DNA polymerase — the market-leading enzyme for DNA sequencing, commercialised from a collaboration with Tabor & Richardson at Harvard. USB reported turnover of ~$35.7M and pre-tax profit of ~$2.2M for the year ended April 1992 (The Independent, 1993).
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? USB was unambiguously a product-shipping operating company. Whether the claimed scanner/software system itself was commercially shipped as a standalone instrument could not be confirmed from available sources — USB's documented commercial identity is reagents/kits, and the patent's own background cites third-party densitometers (UltroScan, BioRad, BioMed, Molecular Dynamics, Hitachi, BioImage) rather than a USB scanner product. Flag as unconfirmed.
• Current status: dissolved by absorption. USB was acquired by Amersham International plc (Amersham Life Science) in 1993 (announced ~March 1993, completion expected 2 April 1993; consideration up to ~$69M, largely in Amersham shares). Amersham merged with Pharmacia Biotech in 1997 (→ Amersham Pharmacia Biotech). Amersham plc was acquired by GE in 2004 (→ GE Healthcare Bio-Sciences; today Cytiva, after Danaher's 2020 acquisition of GE Biopharma). Separately, in 1998 the USB senior management team bought back three product lines (molecular biology enzymes, biochemical reagents, manual DNA sequencing reagents) from Amersham Pharmacia Biotech to form the new USB Corporation — a different legal entity from the original assignee — which Affymetrix acquired for ~$75M in 2008 (Affymetrix itself acquired by Thermo Fisher in 2016).

Critical ownership implication: because the 1993 Amersham deal was a share purchase of USB (the consideration substituted for share options held by management, who "are also the company's shareholders"), USB survived as a going subsidiary and no patent assignment need have been recorded. The 1998 management buy-back covered only three named product lines — a software/scanner patent is not among them, so on the documented facts the '288 patent would have stayed with the Amersham → Pharmacia → GE line rather than going to USB Corporation. This is inference from corporate history, not a recorded assignment, and is not verified.

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Assignment timeline

No assignment records could be retrieved for this patent. Google Patents lists United States Biochemical Corp. as the original and current assignee with no litigation or reassignment events, which is consistent with — but does not prove — there being no recorded post-issuance assignment.

I am therefore not going to present a fiction of reel/frame entries. What follows is the externally documented corporate succession for the original assignee, offered as context only and explicitly not claimed to be USPTO-recorded assignments:

• Correspondent of record: not obtainable — no recorded assignment documents were retrieved, so no prosecuting/recording attorney could be identified. This kills the single most useful shell-LLC detection tell for this patent.
• Conveyance types, assignors, assignees, reel/frame: no data. Do not treat the table above as a substitute.

To close this gap, query by patent number at the Assignment Center and check whether an entry exists around 1993–1998 in favour of Amersham Life Science / Amersham Pharmacia Biotech:

• https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

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Timeline diagram

Rendered from the documented corporate events above (not from reel/frame records), so it is context, not a proven chain of title.

timeline
    title Ownership context of US 5297288
    1989 : Application filed by United States Biochemical
    1993 : Amersham acquires United States Biochemical
    1994 : Patent issued to United States Biochemical
    1997 : Amersham merges with Pharmacia Biotech
    1998 : Management buys product lines back
    2004 : GE acquires Amersham
    2008 : Affymetrix acquires USB Corporation
    2011 : Patent reaches anticipated expiration

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

Every signal below is scored on retrieved evidence only.

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present (evidence-thin). No licensing-only LLC appears anywhere in the retrievable chain; Google Patents' current-assignee field still reads "United States Biochemical Corp." No "IP/Patents/Holdings/Ventures" successor, no registered-agent address, no single-purpose Delaware/Texas LLC surfaced. Caveat: because no Assignment Center records were retrieved, this is a no-evidence call, not an affirmatively disproven one.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. I checked the assignee names that did surface (United States Biochemical Corp, Amersham International/Amersham Life Science, Pharmacia Biotech, GE Healthcare, Affymetrix, USB Corporation) against the named NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). None match. Every entity in the documented chain is an operating company.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / no data. No recording documents were retrieved, so no correspondent name, firm or address exists to test for recurrence. This is the principal unresolved signal.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. No chained LLC-to-LLC sequence in under 24 months appears. The documented events are 4–11 years apart, all involving large operating companies, and are corporate-control transactions rather than patent-level conveyances.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. No infringement suit naming US 5,297,288 was identified, so there is no pre-suit assignment window to test. The patent reached its anticipated expiration on 2011-03-22 (17 years from the 1994-03-22 grant — the pre-URAA term, which is longer than 20 years from the 1991-01-15 parent filing) and carries Google's status flag "Expired – Fee Related." Either way, the patent has been unassertable for well over a decade.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding involving USB or the successor entities was identified. USB's exit was a negotiated acquisition (Amersham, 1993) followed by a management buy-back (1998) and a later strategic sale (Affymetrix, 2008) — none of these is a distressed sale.

7. Privateering — not present. No evidence that any operating assignee transferred this patent to an NPE to assert against competitors, and no Patent Progress / EFF / SEC coverage ties the '288 patent to an assertion campaign.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents or OIN. (Defensive aggregation would have been a neutralising finding; it is absent here.)

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Verdict

Insufficient data (no assignment records retrievable; only the original assignment to United States Biochemical Corp. is established, and that is established only from the face of the patent and Google's assignee field).

Justification: I could not retrieve a single reel/frame entry, so every link in the chain is unsupported at the level the assignment standard requires — the assignee names, execution dates and correspondents that drive signals 1, 3 and 5 are simply not in evidence, and I decline to manufacture them. What is affirmatively documented points away from an NPE reading: every entity in the corporate succession is an operating company, none appears on any asserter list, and the patent itself is expired as of 2011-03-22 (Google Patents status "Expired – Fee Related"), making it unassertable regardless of who holds title. The single highest-value open item is the correspondent of record on any 1993–1998 Amersham-related recording, which requires a direct Assignment Center lookup that I was unable to complete.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 5297288) · legacy: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

I'll search for the patent's citation record and prior-art references, keeping the identifiers literal.

The first pass didn't surface the citation list itself. Let me target the front page and citation databases directly.

Bottom line up front

I could not retrieve the front‑page "References Cited" list for US 5,297,288. My searches against Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, and citation-bearing mirrors did not return the patent's own cited‑references block, and the authoritative full text I hold is truncated in DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT — it contains neither the front page (References Cited) nor the claims (which this patent places after the appendices). I therefore cannot give you a verified list of the patent citations for 5,297,288, and I will not fabricate one. What I can do is (a) report exactly what I did and did not find, (b) list the references that do appear inside the patent text I hold, and (c) give you the correct §102 framework plus the precise route to obtain the citation list.

Per the strict rule, I treated every identifier literally. Note that my searches surfaced two near‑identifiers again — JP 5297288 B2 ("Shock absorbing structure," a Japanese publication by Mitsubishi Heavy Industries; app. JP2009‑169301) and an unrelated IPR about a different "'728 patent" on encoded molecule libraries. Neither is US 5,297,288, and neither is prior art to it.

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What I searched, and what came back

The only citation-bearing results Google Patents surfaced were pages where 5,297,288 appears as a cited reference in later patents — i.e., forward citations:

• US5297288A listed among citations on US 5,795,716 ("Computer-aided visualization and analysis system for sequence evaluation") — https://patents.google.com/patent/US5795716
• US5297288A (§ asterisked) listed on EP 0 834 575 ("Methods using target nucleic acid hybridization patterns on a matrix of oligonucleotides") — https://patents.google.com/patent/EP0834575
• US5297288A listed on US 2001/0001035 A1 ("Multi-well rotary synthesizer") — https://patents.google.com/patent/US20010001035

These are not prior art against 5,297,288; they post-date it (1996–2001) and merely show the patent's influence. Do not treat them as §102 references.

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References actually appearing in the patent text I hold

These are drawn from the authoritative specification (Background/Summary), not from the unretrievable front page. I label them precisely.

A. Non-patent literature expressly identified in the Background

The patent states: "There follow references to machines designed to aid analysis of products of a DNA sequencing reaction… These machines are not admitted to be prior art to the present application." That disclaimer matters for any §102 analysis — it is an applicant's express refusal to concede prior-art status.

Key structural point: every one of these Background references is undated trade literature. For an anticipation analysis under pre-AIA §102(a) or §102(b) you need a provable publication date and public accessibility; the patent supplies none, and simultaneously disclaims them as prior art. On the face of the document, none of these can independently anticipate.

B. The one dated prior-art reference in the specification

C. Commercial/vendor identifications in the specification (not prior art)

For completeness, the specification also names: Toshiba TCD106C 5000-element CCD (Toshiba, 9775 Toledo Way, Irvine, Calif., 92178); Microsoft C compiler v5.1 and Microsoft Macro Assembler v5.1 (Microsoft Inc., 16011 NE 36th Way, Box 97017, Redmond, Wash. 98073-9717); FoxBase+ 2.00 (Fox Software, 27493 Holiday Lane, Perrysburg, Ohio 43551). These are tool/part identifications, not cited prior art, and are not §102 references.

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Why I can't map references to claims (§102 limitation you must know)

The request asks which claim(s) each reference "potentially anticipates under 35 U.S.C. § 102." I cannot answer that reliably, and I want to be explicit about why rather than give you plausible-looking claim numbers.

1. The claim set is not in my authoritative source. The patent's own text says: "Other embodiments are within the scope of the claims which follow the appendices." The Google Patents text I retrieved is truncated mid-Description. Claims are the only thing §102 operates on — you cannot anticipate the specification.
2. The earlier-generated sections already flagged this. They marked claim language and numbering as unverified and derived the "three independent aspects" from the Summary, not the claims. That remains true and I am not overriding it.
3. Anticipation requires every element of a claim arranged as in the claim (§102 "single reference" rule), plus the reference must be a proper prior-art document with an established date. Undated vendor literature fails both prongs.

What I can say with confidence about the shape of the §102 exposure, tied to the three aspects the patent itself recites:

• Apparatus aspect (fixed linear sensor + fixed light source + object translated past an aperture; variable shutter; driven high-friction rod with pivoting idler; eccentric cam clamp; index mark + stepper). The BioRad video-densitometer description in the Background is the closest single-reference §102 candidate for a broad apparatus claim, because it discloses a CCD linear array, a transmission/reflectance source illuminating a slot, and a stepper-driven platten moving the sample. Whether it anticipates depends entirely on claim breadth — a claim requiring, e.g., a variable shutter or an eccentric-cam idler would survive on those added elements.
• Software-method aspect (stored tools + natural-language-identifier interpreter + interactive sequencing environment). No reference in the Background addresses this; the Background concentrates on hardware. On the record I hold, the §102 exposure for this aspect is low.
• DNA-sequencing-method aspect (manganese buffer + uniform synthesis + autoradiogram + the scanner + analysis). Tabor & Richardson (1989) is the only genuine §102(a) candidate, and it maps only to the manganese-buffer/uniform-termination step — a claim combining that with the specific scanner and autoradiogram workflow would not be anticipated by Tabor & Richardson alone.

Each of those is a framework, not a verification. Do not cite them as established anticipations.

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How to get the actual list (what my search could not reach)

To produce the verified §102 table you asked for, the front-page References Cited block must be pulled from an authoritative source:

1. USPTO PatentCenter — https://patentcenter.uspto.gov (search 5,297,288; the "References Cited" / "Patent and Non-Patent Citations" panel is authoritative). The Google Patents page also links a "USPTO PatentCenter" record.
2. Google Patents — https://patents.google.com/patent/US5297288/en → "Citations" tab → Patent Citations + Non-Patent Citations sub-lists. (My searches hit the cited-by mirrors, not this tab.)
3. FreePatentsOnline / Espacenet ("Global Dossier" / INPADOC) for corroboration.

Once that block is in hand, the references map cleanly onto the three aspects above, and the §102 column can be filled in against the issued claim set (also in PatentCenter).

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Explicit uncertainties

• The patent-citation list for US 5,297,288 is unrecovered and unverified. I have no grounded basis to name specific US patent numbers as cited prior art, and I have not done so.
• Claim numbering and verbatim claim language remain unverified (consistent with the earlier section). No claim-level anticipation can be asserted.
• The Background references are undated trade literature, expressly not admitted as prior art by the applicant; their §102(a)/(b) status cannot be resolved without external publication evidence.
• Tabor & Richardson, 86 PNAS 4076 (1989) is a genuine, dated printed publication and the strongest §102 candidate on the face of the text, but its precise publication date relative to the 1989‑11‑28 priority date needs independent confirmation.
• JP 5297288 B2 and the unrelated "'728 patent" IPR are different documents and must not be conflated with US 5,297,288.
• Minor: the request header says "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while my operating date is 2026‑09‑30. This does not affect the substance above.

I'll first try to pull the actual cited prior art on the face of US 5,297,288, since the "Prior Art" section of the patent page is what I'm asked to rely on.

Let me try to retrieve the front-page cited references and check for related imaging/scanning prior art.

Let me try once more for the face-of-patent references and any obviousness-relevant companion art.

Obviousness Analysis — US 5,297,288 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Sourcing caveats (read first)

Three limits constrain everything below, and I will not paper over them:

1. I could not retrieve the literal "References Cited" lists from the face of US 5,297,288. I searched repeatedly for the front-page U.S. Patent Documents / Other Publications tables and got no result for them. So the "Prior Art section of this page" I am working from is the Background of the Invention as reproduced in the full text (the trade-literature survey plus the Tabor & Richardson citation), not the examiner-cited art. If the issued patent's face carries examiner references, they are not in the material I hold.
2. The claim text is still unverified (carried forward from the prior section, and I found nothing to change that). The patent itself places the claims after the appendices, and my source truncates before them. My analysis therefore maps to the three independent aspects recited in SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION, not to verbatim claim language. Claim numbers below are structural placeholders, not confirmed numbering.
3. Do not conflate identifiers. My searches surfaced JP 5297288 B2 — a Japanese shock absorbing structure grant to Mitsubishi Heavy Industries (reg. 2013-06-21, 特願2009-169301). It has nothing to do with this patent. Likewise the "'728 patent" appearing in an IPR about encoded-molecule libraries is a different instrument. Neither is US 5,297,288.

Also note the page's own "Prior art keywords" field (user, image, resistors, fixed, sample) is an algorithmic extraction from the circuit tables — it is not a legal prior-art listing and has no § 103 significance.

One more thing the patent says about its own cited machines, verbatim: "These machines are not admitted to be prior art to the present application." That disclaimer does not immunize them — trade literature describing on-sale systems is § 102(a)/(b) printed-publication and possibly public-use/on-sale art, and all of it is available for § 103. It only means the applicant declined to concede the point.

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1. The prior art actually on this page

Note the structure of the disclosure itself. The Background is a catalogue of commercially available machines that already do most of aspect 1 and much of aspect 2. That is an unusually unfavorable posture for a 1994 patent whose independent claims are drafted at this level of generality.

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2. Legal framework applied

Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966): scope/content of the prior art; differences; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations. KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007): the test is obviousness, not "obvious to try"; a combination of known elements is obvious where it yields no more than predictable results; market demand, design incentives, and "a finite number of identified, predictable solutions" support motivation; design/mechanical choices are not patentable. PHOSITA here: a B.S./M.S.-level engineer or computer scientist with ~2 years in instrument design for bio-analytical imaging, working with a molecular biologist collaborator.

Priority date at the earliest is 1989-11-28 (parent filing); the application on file was filed 1992-06-10. Everything cited above predates one or both.

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3. Aspect 1 — the optical scanner apparatus

Independent-element mapping against P1 (BioRad video densitometer):

P1 thus discloses or renders obvious the core of the apparatus. The residual differences are:

• Direct optical path vs. P1's two-mirror fold. A fold-mirror vs. straight path is a layout choice driven by packaging. KSR — predictable variation. Obvious.
• Opaque support surface with a linear aperture. P1's "narrow 20 cm slot" is the same structure; making the platen surface opaque around the slot is inherent to a slot.
• Variable shutter shortening the aperture to the sample width, "to prevent saturation of the CCD array." This is the one element I cannot map to a specific reference on this page. That said: (i) the anti-saturation rationale is self-supplying — a 1660/1728-element array with an 20 cm aperture and a narrow sample will over-illuminate the extreme elements, an immediately apparent problem; (ii) adjustable/iris slits in optical instruments were ancient and ubiquitous. I would expect an examiner to reach either a secondary reference in slit/optical-attenuation art or an "obvious solution to a recognized problem" rationale (KSR). Confidence: moderate. This is where an obviousness case is least airtight on the record I hold.
• Rotationally driven high-friction rod + spring-loaded pivotally mounted idler wheel, with an eccentric cam to apply/remove spring tension. This is a pinch-roller friction drive — the standard paper-feed architecture in copiers, printers, fax machines, and sheet scanners of the era. P5 (Hitachi; "appears similar to a desk top copier") makes the copier/sheet-handling analogy express. An eccentric cam to engage/disengage a pinch roller is a textbook mechanical expedient. Obvious.
• ≥1/2" clearance for thick objects (Petri dishes, microtitre trays). Pure design choice, and P4's stated whole-gel / reflective-scanning breadth plus the patent's own admitted laundry list of sample formats push toward accommodating varied carriers. Obvious under KSR (mere design choice).
• Index mark + controlled motor advancing a predetermined distance. P1 already uses a stepper motor; home/index referencing is the standard way to give a stepper absolute position. Obvious.
• Toshiba TCD106C 5,000-element CCD + 12.5" lens → ~400 dpi. Sensor selection and lens scaling are routine engineering; P6's 13,000 measurements/cm² shows that increasing densitometry resolution was an active, well-understood design axis. No unexpected result is claimed for 400 dpi per se. Obvious.

Conclusion, Aspect 1: A prima facie § 103 case exists over P1 alone (plus P2/P4/P5/P6 as corroborating art and for the drive/clearance/resolution details), with P1 + P5 as the cleanest two-reference combination for the friction-drive and copier-form-factor elements.

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4. Aspect 2 — the user-buildable application-building software

The independent aspect is: store software tools (each doing a scan/analysis function); store an interpreter mapping natural-language identifiers to those functions; provide an interactive environment letting the user sequence tools by their natural-language names. Preferred features: sessions (copy application + object data + execution state; stop and resume in the same state), context-sensitive hierarchical-tree menus, numeric intermediate-file shorthand, per-tool status flags (repeat/skip/update).

What the page gives me:

• P3 (IntelliGenetics) and P2 (BioRad sequence reader) each disclose a software pipeline of image-processing operations applied to a DNA autoradiogram to detect/decipher bands and correct smiles/artifacts. That establishes tools for the image-scanning/analysis functions.
• P9 (Applied Biosystems) establishes automated, software-driven readout of sequencing gels.

What the page does not give me: any reference disclosing the interpreter/natural-language-identifier layer, the session/copy-and-resume-state mechanism, or context-sensitive tree menus. Those are the genuinely software-centric limitations.

My honest § 103 position — this is the strongest of the three aspects for the patent owner, but still vulnerable on common-knowledge grounds:

• Command/script interpreters over a set of named commands were standard by 1989 (shell scripts, dBASE/FoxBase command files, Lotus 1-2-3 macros, batch/macro facilities in CAD and instrument software). Note the disclosure itself names FoxBase+ 2.00 as the pixel-data store and uses .CLF "command language files" and .MPL "menu parameter list" files — i.e., the "interpreter + named commands" architecture is presented as ordinary infrastructure, not as the inventive contribution.
• Checkpointing / suspend-and-resume with state was routine database and job-control practice; the limitation recites the result (resume in the same state), not an algorithm.
• Context-sensitive, hierarchical (tree) menus were conventional GUI design by the late 1980s.

So the software aspect is obvious as a combination of P2/P3 (tools + automation-of-band-reading motivation) with the general knowledge of interpreter/scripting and GUI menu design. But because I have no specific reference for the interpreter/session features, I rate this moderate-to-low confidence on the record I hold, and I flag that a real § 103 rejection here would want an actual scripting/macro or workflow-management reference, which is not on this page. I will not manufacture one.

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5. Aspect 3 — DNA sequencing in a manganese buffer, read on the scanner

This is the cleanest obviousness case, because the motivation is express in the prior art itself.

The aspect requires: (a) sequencing reaction in a manganese-based buffer producing uniformly-amounted, radioactively-labeled products; (b) size separation; (c) autoradiogram; (d) the scanner of aspect 1; (e) translating the autoradiogram past a fixed source and linear sensor; (f) analyzing signals representative of the sequence.

• (a) is P10, verbatim. Tabor & Richardson disclose the manganese buffer and its signature result — uniform terminations, adjacent-band intensity varying <10% — and, critically, state that this property "should be of use for DNA sequencing, particularly by automated procedures." That is an express teaching, suggestion, or motivation to pair the chemistry with an automated reader. Under KSR this is close to dispositive on motivation.
• (b)–(c) are the standard Sanger dideoxy workflow the specification itself describes as "the most commonly used method."
• (d)–(f) are satisfied by any of P1–P5, all of which existed to read autoradiograms.

Combination: P10 + P1 (or P2 / P5). Motivation: same field (DNA sequencing), same problem (reading a sequencing autoradiogram), and P10 supplies the express pointer to automation. Reasonable expectation of success: high — P10's uniform intensities are exactly what simplifies automated band detection, and the densitometers of P1/P2 were already commercially reading sequencing films.

On the "density encodes which base / more than one sample per lane" refinement: the specification uses Mn-buffer uniformity plus mixed dideoxy terminators at different concentrations so that band density identifies the base. That is the predictable exploitation of P10's disclosed uniformity combined with standard Sanger terminator chemistry and standard densitometry. Intensity-as-identifier is a natural, if not compelled, use of the very property P10 advertises. Obvious under KSR (finite number of predictable uses of a newly-available property), though this particular sub-point is argued rather than squarely pre-taught on this page — confidence: moderate-to-high on the broad method, moderate on the density-encoding refinement.

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6. Motivation-to-combine summary (the KSR factors)

1. Same field of endeavor — every reference is directed to scanning/densitometry of electrophoretic gels and autoradiograms, or to DNA sequencing chemistry. KSR factor 1 satisfied.
2. Express teaching/suggestion — P10's "particularly by automated procedures" is an explicit pointer; P2's software is expressly "designed to correct for smiling and other electrophoretic artifacts," which is the very problem P3 and the specification identify.
3. Predictable results, no more than expected — combining a CCD linear densitometer (P1) with a sample-translation stage (P1 already has it) and a known sequencing chemistry (P10) yields nothing beyond the sum of the parts.
4. Market demand / design incentive — the Background documents at least six competing commercial systems (IntelliGenetics, UltroScan/LKB, BioRad ×2, BioMed, Applied Biosystems, Molecular Dynamics, Hitachi, BioImage). Dense commercial rivalry is classic KSR motivation, and the patent's own stated goal — "high resolution at low cost with readily available relatively cheap replaceable components" — is a cost/design optimization, which KSR and In re Rose treat as obvious.
5. Finite, predictable design space — fixed sensor + moving sample vs. moving optics was a binary choice; P1 and P4 (reflective scanning possible) show the alternatives were known and each had predictable trade-offs.

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7. Where the obviousness case is weak (be candid)

• The variable shutter with the aperture matched to sample width is the one apparatus limitation I cannot map to the art on this page. If the independent apparatus claim requires it, the rejection needs a secondary reference (adjustable slits / optical masking) or a "recognized problem, obvious fix" rationale. Unverified.
• The interpreter + natural-language identifiers + resume-in-state session limitations have no specific reference here. They are obvious on common-knowledge grounds, but common knowledge must be proved (e.g., by a scripting/macro reference or inventor admissions), not assumed. The specification's own reliance on .CLF "command language files" is itself usable evidence that the architecture was conventional.
• No claim text. If the issued claims are narrower than the SUMMARY (e.g., if the shutter or the session mechanism is in the independent claim), the case weakens materially. I cannot assess this without the claims.
• I found no secondary-considerations evidence (no unexpected results, no licensing program, no long-felt-need narrative) in the material I hold. Absence of evidence is not evidence of absence here.

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8. Bottom line

If I had to stake the invalidity theory on what is actually on this page, it would be Aspect 3, P10 + P1, followed by Aspect 1 over P1 alone. Aspect 2 is the patent owner's best bunker absent a scripting/workflow reference I do not currently have.

Unverified / to confirm before anyone relies on this: the issued claim language and numbering; the face-of-patent "References Cited" list; and the precise status of each trade-literature item as a § 102(a)/(b) printed publication (the patent denies they are prior art, which is a conclusory denial, not proof of date).