US 6244861

I'll run targeted searches on this patent number across USPTO and CAFC sources.

Let me check for any current (2026) CAFC docket activity and litigation involving this patent.

Let me pull the full claim set to identify all independent claims.

Search scope and what I actually found

I ran targeted searches for the literal identifier 6244861 (i.e., US 6,244,861 B1) across Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, USPTO-report, litigation databases, and Federal Circuit docket material. Per your instruction, I have not corrected the number or folded in results for neighboring numbers (e.g., 6,616,444, 6,554,611, 6,398,548, 5,683,243), which appear frequently in the same search results because they belong to the same Ormco family.

CAFC 2026 dockets: negative result. I found no 2026 Federal Circuit docket activity naming US 6,244,861. My query targeting 2026 CAFC dockets returned only unrelated 2026 appeals (e.g., Contour IP Holding LLC v. GoPro, Inc., Fed. Cir. No. 2026‑2012). This is consistent with the patent being expired as of 2012‑11‑09, per the Google Patents legal-status record. I cannot rule out a docket entry that isn't indexed by the sources I searched — treat "no 2026 CAFC activity" as a high-confidence but not absolute finding.

Bibliographic data for US 6,244,861 B1

Continuity (verified from the printed front page at the Docket Alarm copy of the patent): this application is a continuation of Ser. No. 08/960,908 (filed Oct. 30, 1997, now US 6,015,289), which is a continuation of Ser. No. 08/456,666 (filed Jun. 2, 1995, now US 5,683,243), which is a divisional of the four applications all filed Nov. 9, 1992 — 07/973,973 (now 5,431,562); 07/973,965 (now 5,454,717); 07/973,947 (now 5,447,432); and 07/973,844 (now 5,447,862 / cited in some records as US 5,447,432 family). These share a common specification, which matters for claim construction (see below).

Abstract (verbatim substance)

A system and method by which an orthodontic appliance is automatically designed and manufactured from digital lower jaw and tooth shape data of a patient provides for preferably scanning a model of the patient's mouth to produce two or three dimensional images and digitizing contours and selected points. A computer is programmed to construct archforms and calculate finish positions of the teeth, then to design an appliance, preferably including archwires and brackets, to move the teeth to the calculated positions. The lower teeth are positioned at their roots on an arch defined by the lower jaw bone, and the arch is modified to best fit the tooth tips on a smooth curve. Upper archforms are constructed for the upper teeth. Then, machine code is generated and appliances are automatically produced that will straighten the teeth of the patient. Custom placement jigs are also automatically designed and fabricated and are provided with the custom appliance to position the appliance on the patient's teeth.

Source: https://www.freepatentsonline.com/6244861.html (abstract reproduced in the printed patent text at https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/[PTAB](/ptab)/IPR2016-00270/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._6699037/docs/12-01-2015-Petitioner/Exhibit-1017-Exhibit_1017.pdf)

Independent claims — plain language

Confidence note: I obtained the full authoritative text of independent claim 1 and its dependents 2–11. I was not able to retrieve the complete claim listing for the '861 patent in this session, so I cannot verify how many additional independent claims exist or their exact wording. The litigation record shows that claims 1, 3, 4, 9–12, and 16–18 were asserted, which implies the patent has at least 18 claims and that claim 16 is likely an independent claim — but I am flagging that as inference, not verified text. I am not going to reconstruct claim 16 from memory, because I do not have high confidence in its wording.

Claim 1 (verified text) — "A method of making a custom orthodontic appliance…"

Plain-language reading, element by element:

1. Context/setting: A method of making a custom orthodontic appliance for moving teeth that are initially in pretreatment malocclusion toward treatment positions, urging them from pre-appliance to post-appliance positions.
2. Scan step: Scan the teeth in their pretreatment malocclusion positions to generate 3‑D data of tooth shapes (not merely 2‑D).
3. Treatment-position determination: Determine treatment positions of the teeth on a dental arch that tend to correct the malocclusion, and generate data of those determined positions.
4. Computer processing / appliance design, comprising two sub-steps:
   • (a) defining 3‑D data correlated to three-dimensional contact surfaces of the appliance that conform to three-dimensional areas on the teeth — where some of those areas are contacted to exert force on the teeth to move them, and some are contacted to locate/position the appliance on the teeth; and
   • (b) defining data correlated to arcuate structure interconnecting the contact surfaces and constraining those surfaces to relative locations corresponding to the post-appliance positions.
5. Machine-control step: Process the contact-surface 3‑D data and the arcuate-structure data to operate a manufacturing apparatus to create structural shapes from that data.
6. Manufacturing step: Manufacture one or more components of the custom appliance having the three-dimensional contact surfaces and the arcuate structure.

Thematically, claim 1 is the "closed loop" claim: scan real maloccluded anatomy in 3‑D → compute target positions → compute both (i) 3‑D tooth-conforming contact surfaces and (ii) the arch structure tying them together → drive a machine → make the appliance. The notable structural feature versus a generic CAD/CAM claim is the dual-purpose contact surface: it both moves teeth and locates the appliance.

Key dependents (verified):

• Claim 2 — the scanning is of a model of the patient's teeth in pretreatment malocclusion.
• Claim 3 — the 3‑D contact-surface data defines first and second different 3‑D tooth areas (first = force application, second = appliance location).
• Claim 4 — manufacture a series of arcuate components for successive treatment steps by substitution.
• Claim 5 — the series is a series of archwires of progressively increasing stiffness.
• Claim 6 — those series archwires share the same arcuate geometry.
• Claim 7 — the processing step actually results in the machine manufacturing the appliance (direct CAD-to-CAM).
• Claim 8 — manufacture (i) components with the 3‑D contact surfaces on the teeth and (ii) removable positioning jigs with 3‑D contact surfaces for locating the components on the teeth.
• Claim 9 — the treatment-position determination is carried out in a computer (i.e., automated).
• Claim 10 — generating simplified 3‑D data limited to occlusal and contact points, and processing that simplified data.
• Claim 11 — the simplified data includes data of locations of prominences (text truncated in the retrieved source).

Why claims 9/10/16–18 matter: this is the crux of the entire litigation history — the patentee's specification and the parent '562 prosecution history were held to limit these claims to automatic computer determination of finish tooth positions, without human adjustment of the final results. That construction is what defeated Ormco.

Litigation and validity history (grounded)

• Family litigation links on Google Patents point to a Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit case, No. 05‑1426 (the first Ormco appeal), and to a Darts‑IP worldwide family record. Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6244861/en
• Ormco Corp. v. Align Technology, Inc., C.D. Cal. No. 03‑cv‑00016. Ormco asserted, among others, claims 1, 3, 4, 9‑12, and 16‑18 of the '861 patent. Source: https://storage.courtlistener.com/pdf/2007/08/24/Ormco_Corporation_Et_Al._v._Align_Technology.pdf
• Fed. Cir. Nos. 2006‑1240, ‑1274 (decided Aug. 24, 2007), 498 F.3d 1307. The court construed all the asserted Ormco claims (including the '861 claims) as requiring automatic computer determination of finish tooth positions without human adjustment, because the shared specification and the parent '562 prosecution history foreclosed operator positioning. It affirmed summary judgment of noninfringement (Align uses "skilled operators") and nonenablement as to the claims limited to automatic determination; it reversed only as to claims 37‑40, 45, and 69 of the '444 patent (US 6,616,444), which concerned preliminary gathering/organization of tooth data. Sources: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[210412](/patent/210412)/ormco-corp-v-align-technology-inc/ ; https://caselaw.findlaw.com/summary/opinion/us-federal-circuit/2007/08/24/[152060](/patent/152060).html
• Align's contemporaneous statement: 86 of 92 asserted claims across four Ormco patents ('432, '243, '861, '444) were held not infringed and invalid for nonenablement; only six claims ('444 claims 37‑40, 45, 69) were remanded. Source: https://investor.aligntech.com/news-releases/news-release-details/align-technology-announces-victory-ormco-patent-litigation-86
• Enablement rationale: one inventor testified Ormco had never actually created a system that automatically determined tooth positions without human decision-making, and the manual override was used on all ~40 test cases. Source: https://www.finnegan.com/files/Publication/5f2c7957-6ff6-4752-a8f9-9defcc0d77fa/Presentation/PublicationAttachment/d86559b5-a77a-4278-92c1-aa60487411fc/Last%20Month%20at%20the%20Federal%20Circuit%20September%[202007](/patent/202007).pdf
• Cert petition denied (Ormco's petition, Supreme Court No. 07‑1070). Source: https://www.scotusblog.com/wp-content/uploads/2008/04/07-1070_bio.pdf

Practical bottom line on the '861 patent: every asserted claim of this patent was on the losing side of the 2007 Federal Circuit decision; the six remanded claims belonged to the sibling '444 patent, not to this one. Combined with expiration on 2012‑11‑09, this patent has no live enforcement window in 2026.

Explicit uncertainties

1. Total claim count and the full independent-claim set for US 6,244,861 were not retrievable in this session. I verified claim 1 (and dependents 2–11); I did not verify whether there are further independent claims (claim 16 is the most likely candidate based on the asserted-claim list, but I am not asserting its text).
2. No 2026 CAFC docket entry for this patent was found. Absence of results is not proof of absence in an unindexed docket, but given the 2012 expiration and the 2007 final appellate disposition, new 2026 appellate activity would be unexpected.
3. The Google Patents "priority date" of 1992‑11‑09 is flagged by Google itself as an assumption; likewise the "Expired – Lifetime" status is stated by Google as an assumption, not a legal conclusion.
4. Some search results contained OCR noise in the assignee name (e.g., "Ormeo Corporation," "Dental Imaging Technologies Corp" appearing as an assignee for a related record). The printed patent front page reads Ormco Corporation, and I have used that literally-correct value.

I'll search for litigation records involving US patent 6244861.

Key result found — the Align Technology SEC filings reference "6,244,861," which is the comma-formatted form of US 6,244,861 (= US6244861). Let me verify case details.

Strong confirmation found. Let me verify the CAFC appeal number 05-1426 referenced on the patent page and check for any additional suits.

Litigation involving US Patent 6,244,861

Important identifier note (applied literally): US Patent 6,244,861 is the comma-formatted rendering of the patent identifier 6244861. The record below refers to the patent both ways. This is not the same patent as US 6,224,486 (Walker Digital) or US 6,425,828, which appear in search results for similar digits and must be disregarded. The '861 patent (US 6,244,861 B1, Andreiko/Payne, Ormco Corp.) was filed 1999‑11‑01, issued 2001‑06‑12, and expired 2012‑11‑09.

Only one litigation family is known

The sole known litigation involving US 6,244,861 is the Ormco v. Align Technology action in the Central District of California (and its Federal Circuit appeals). Its case number is 03-cv-00016 / SACV 03-16-GLT — the CourtListener/case documents also cite it as "No. 08-cv-00016," apparently a renumbered or re-docketed caption for the same case.

Case 1 — Ormco Corporation v. Align Technology, Inc.

Outcome / current status (as to the '861 patent): Disposed of entirely in Align's favor.

• May 13, 2004 – The district court (Judge Gary L. Taylor) granted Align's motion for summary judgment of non‑infringement as to the Ormco patents, construing the shared Ormco specification and the '562 parent's prosecution history to require "automatic computer determination of the finish positions of teeth" and finding Align used "skilled operators."
• Aug. 20, 2004 – The court granted Align summary judgment of non‑enablement, additionally holding the asserted Ormco claims invalid. Align's press release of May 17, 2004 announced non‑infringement of Patent Nos. 5,447,432, 5,683,243, 6,244,861 and 6,616,444.
• Aug. 24, 2007 – The Federal Circuit affirmed (Ormco Corp. v. Align Tech., Inc., 498 F.3d 1307 (Fed. Cir. 2007); appeal nos. 2006‑1240, 2006‑1274), affirming non‑infringement and non‑enablement as to all asserted claims of the '432, '243, '861, and most of the '444 patent. The '861 patent's asserted claims were therefore finally held not infringed and invalid (not enabled). Only claims 37–40, 45 and 69 of the separate '444 patent were reversed and remanded.
• 2009 – The remanded case proceeded to trial only on the '444 patent (jury verdict June 25, 2009 for Ormco; JMOL denied Aug. 4, 2009; subsequent appeals). The '861 patent was no longer at issue.

Case 1 – First appeal (Atlantic/Google-Patents-listed case)

• Court: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
• Case No.: 05‑1426
• Decision: Ormco Corp. v. Align Tech., Inc., 463 F.3d 1299 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 30, 2006) ("Ormco I")
• Subject: Cross‑appeal concerning Align's patents ('611 and '548) asserted against Ormco/AOA — summary judgment of infringement/validity reversed in part, all six claims at issue held obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a). This is the appeal the Google Patents page for US6244861 lists as the family's litigation link ("Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, case 05‑1426"). Note it concerns the same district court case, not the '861 patent itself.

Grounding sources

• Google Patents page for US6244861B1 (fetched in the record above) — lists "Family has litigation," the CAFC case 05‑1426, and the Darts‑IP first worldwide family litigation link: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6244861/en
• Federal Circuit opinion, Ormco Corp. v. Align Tech., Inc., 498 F.3d 1307 (Fed. Cir. 2007): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[210412](/patent/210412)/ormco-corp-v-align-technology-inc/
• C.D. Cal. opinions (Ormco Corp. v. Align Tech., Inc., 653 F. Supp. 2d 1016 (C.D. Cal. 2009)): https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[2417431](/patent/2417431)/ormco-corp-v-align-technology-inc/
• Ormco/AOA v. Align, Fed. Cir. No. 05‑1426, 463 F.3d 1299: https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F3/463/463.F3d.1299.05-1426.html
• Align Technology press release (May 17, 2004) expressly naming Patent Nos. 5,447,432, 5,683,243, 6,244,861 and 6,616,444: https://investor.aligntech.com/static-files/1b5c7107-192e-4a24-9593-32c9163ba240
• Align Technology SEC filings describing the litigation and the 2007 CAFC affirmance as to the '861 patent: https://aligntech.gcs-web.com/node/14296/html

Caveats

• I found no other litigation involving US 6,244,861 — no ITC Section 337 action, no other district court suit, and no separate CAFC appeal naming the '861 patent beyond the Ormco v. Align family above.
• The Google Patents page assigns the litigation to the whole patent family, so several asserted patents (US 5,447,432; 5,683,243; 6,616,444 and Align's '611/'548) appear in the same cases. Only the Ormco v. Align action asserted US 6,244,861.
• I could not directly open the Unified Patents litigation caselist entry for 6244861 in this session; the CAFC case number 05‑1426 and the family litigation links above are taken from the Google Patents page fetched on 2026‑09‑29. If you need PACER-level docket confirmation of the 2003 filing date and case number, docket SACV 03‑16‑GLT (C.D. Cal.) would be the record to pull.
• The patent is expired (anticipated expiration 2012‑11‑09), so no live infringement exposure remains.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings — the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM involving US 6,244,861, and my web searches surfaced none either (no petition, no institution decision, no FWD, no PTAB appeal). The defensive posture is therefore not built on PTAB outcomes at all: it is built on the fact that every claim of the '861 patent that Ormco ever asserted (claims 1, 3, 4, 9–12, and 16–18) was held invalid for non-enablement by the Central District of California and that judgment was affirmed by the Federal Circuit on 2007-08-24 — a final, appealable judgment of invalidity that collaterally estops re-assertion under Blonder-Tongue. The patent also expired on 2012-11-09, so there is no live injunctive or forward-looking exposure left to litigate.

New AIA trial proceedings

None. No proceeding exists to itemize.

(None) — No Petitioner v. Ormco Corp.

• Type: N/A — no IPR / PGR / CBM on file
• Filed: N/A
• Status: Per the structured ODP block: no AIA trial proceedings returned as of the most recent ingest. Web search confirms — no PTAB docket number for the '861 patent appears in any public source I could reach.
• Judge panel: N/A
• Petition grounds: N/A
• Appeal: The only Federal Circuit appeals tied to this patent arose from district court litigation, not from a PTAB FWD (see next section).

Important caveat, stated plainly: the sibling patents in this family ('432, '243, '444, '562) were the subject of aggressive ex parte / inter partes reexamination requests in 2005–2007 (the OrthoClear "Inter Parte Requests," and requests against Align's own patents 6,629,840 / 6,398,548 / 6,217,325 / 5,975,893 / 6,705,863 / 6,318,994). Those proceedings were not AIA trials, were not against the '861 patent, and there is no record I can find of any reexamination of the '861 patent. Do not cite an '861 reexamination in a brief without verifying a control number in Patent Center — I could not find one.

The proceeding that actually matters (court, not PTAB)

C.D. Cal. No. 03-cv-00016 → Fed. Cir. 2006-1240, -1274 (Ormco Corp. v. Align Technology, Inc.)

• Type: District court patent infringement action with counterclaims of non-infringement and invalidity (not an AIA trial)
• Filed: 2003-01-06 (Ormco's complaint); amended to add the '444 patent
• Asserted '861 claims: claims 1, 3, 4, 9–12, and 16–18
• District court rulings: SJ of non-infringement granted 2004-05-13 (C.D. Cal. No. 03-cv-00016); SJ of non-enablement (35 U.S.C. § 112 ¶ 1) granted 2004-08-20. The court first construed the shared specification's disavowal to limit all asserted claims (except '444 claims 37–40, 45, 69) to automatic computer determination of finish tooth positions, then found Ormco's own evidence showed the Elan software had never been used without human intervention and that the Insignia manual override was used in all 40 test cases.
• Federal Circuit: Ormco Corp. v. Align Tech., Inc., 498 F.3d 1307 (Fed. Cir. 2007-08-24), aff'g non-infringement and non-enablement of '861 claims 1, 3, 4, 9–12, and 16–18; rev'g only as to '444 claims 37–40, 45, and 69. Judgment entered 2007-08-24; rehearing denied 2007-10-24. Related earlier panel decision: Ormco I, 463 F.3d 1299 (Fed. Cir. 2006).
• Claim-level result: every asserted '861 claim — 1, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17, 18 (and claim 3, dependent on claim 1) — was adjudged invalid for lack of enablement and not infringed. No asserted '861 claim survived. CourtListener: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[210412](/patent/210412)/ormco-corp-v-align-technology-inc/ · opinion PDF: https://storage.courtlistener.com/pdf/2007/08/24/Ormco_Corporation_Et_Al._v._Align_Technology.pdf · Google Patents litigation record (CAFC 05-1426 family link): https://patents.google.com/patent/US6244861/en
• Settlement / termination: No settlement of this case as to the '861 patent. Ormco filed a cert. petition (No. 07-1070, filed 2008-02-14) after the en banc denial; the record I found does not show a cert. grant. The post-remand jury trial (2009-06-09 to 2009-06-25) and the subsequent prosecution-laches/inequitable-conduct proceedings concerned the '444 patent only — the '861 claims were already finally invalidated and were not retried.
• Defensive value: The '861 patent is a dead letter. Its asserted claims were canceled by judicial invalidation with a final appellate judgment, the patent expired 2012-11-09, and the judgment estops Ormco (and privies) from asserting those claims against anyone. Any demand letter citing '861 claims 1, 3, 4, 9–12, or 16–18 is citing claims that no longer exist as enforceable rights.

Strategic summary

Claim status. Invalidated (non-enablement, affirmed): claims 1, 3, 4, 9, 10, 11, 12, 16, 17, 18 — i.e., every claim of the '861 patent that Ormco put at issue. Untested/unadjudicated: any claims of the '861 patent outside that asserted set (e.g., claims 2, 5–8, 13–15, and any above 18, depending on the patent's total claim count — I did not verify the total, so treat "untested" as "not named in the 498 F.3d 1307 disposition"). No claim of the '861 patent was ever sustained as valid by any tribunal; there is no IPR certificate, no reexam certificate, and no judgment of validity.

Estoppel landscape. Section 315(e)(2) IPR estoppel is irrelevant — nobody filed an IPR. The operative estoppel is collateral estoppel / Blonder-Tongue: once a patent claim has been held invalid in a final judgment after a full and fair opportunity to litigate, the patentee cannot assert that claim against a different defendant. That covers the ten adjudicated '861 claims. Practical corollary for anyone still being written to: for the untested claims, prior art is fully available (no IPR estoppel, and the non-enablement judgment is a § 112 ground, not a § 102/103 ground, so there is no prior-art estoppel cloud), and a well-supported invalidity theory against any remaining claim would inherit the family-wide § 112 enablement problem the Federal Circuit already found dispositive. Note also that a final court holding of invalidity on specific claims eliminates any "substantial new question of patentability" for those claims in reexamination.

Pattern signals. No petitioner filed multiple IPRs here; the aggressor in the '861 story was a litigation defendant (Align), not a defensive aggregator. Unified Patents does not appear anywhere in the '861 chain. Ormco's family-level pattern was the opposite of a PTAB-scarred patent: it litigated (and lost) its automatic-design claims in court, exhausted appeals up to a cert. petition, and then the patents aged out. The one recurring USPTO activity in this family — the 2005–2007 OrthoClear reexam requests — hit Align's patents and later-issued Ormco siblings, not '861.

Recommended next steps

1. If you received a demand citing the '861 patent, respond with the disposition, not with an IPR. Cite Ormco Corp. v. Align Tech., Inc., 498 F.3d 1307, 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2007) (affirming SJ of non-infringement and non-enablement as to claims 1, 3, 4, 9–12, and 16–18 of the '861 patent). Link the opinion: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/210412/ormco-corp-v-align-technology-inc/. Pair it with Blonder-Tongue Labs. v. Univ. of Illinois Found., 402 U.S. 313 (1971), and 35 U.S.C. § 286 (six-year damages lookback measured against a patent that expired 2012-11-09).
2. Do not file an IPR as your primary strategy. An IPR on an expired patent that has already been judicially invalidated as to every asserted claim buys you nothing, and the § 315(b) one-year bar from service of a complaint would apply anyway. If you truly need an Office record, the cheaper path is an anonymous ex parte reexamination — but note that for the claims already finally held invalid, the Office cannot find an SNQ.
3. Verify the residual claim set. Before relying on "all claims are dead," pull the '861 claim set and confirm which numbers were never asserted in 03-cv-00016. The 498 F.3d 1307 disposition covers only the ones I listed; I am not going to tell you a claim was canceled if the opinion doesn't say so.
4. On the PTAB question itself: the absence of IPR activity is not an endorsement of this patent. It reflects that the validity fight was fought and lost in district court before IPRs were a routine tool, and that the patent expired in 2012. For a defendant in 2026, the "no PTAB activity" fact is a footnote; the 2007 invalidity judgment is the case.

I'll start by cross-referencing the assignment record and ownership history for US 6244861.

Let me dig into the assignment records and Ormco's corporate history.

Let me try to pin down reel/frame specifics and any post-2002 ownership changes.

Ownership Reconstruction — US 6,244,861 B1

Important methodological caveat up front. I could not open USPTO Assignment Center / Patent Assignment Search directly with the tooling available to me (web search only, no direct retrieval of assignmentcenter.uspto.gov or assignment.uspto.gov query output). The timeline below is therefore built from the Google Patents legal-events extract for US 6,244,861 (which is itself populated from USPTO assignment data) plus court and SEC records. No reel/frame numbers were exposed by any source I could reach, and no assignment correspondent of record was retrievable. I have not invented reel/frame pairs or correspondent names. Anything below marked unverified should be checked directly at Assignment Center / assignment.uspto.gov by patent number.

Inventors

Pattern note — fire-sale precursor: NOT present. The classic "all inventors gone within 12 months" signal does not appear here. Dr. Andreiko was still testifying as an Ormco-affiliated inventor in May 2004, more than eleven years after the 1992 priority date, and Ormco was still litigating these patents as its own. No departure/clustering evidence was found.

Family context: Priority date 1992-11-09, claimed from four parent applications (US 07/973,965 → 5,454,717; 07/973,844 → 5,368,478; 07/973,973 → 5,431,562; 07/973,947 → 5,447,432), all Ormco. The instant application, US 09/431,466, was filed 1999-11-01 and issued 2001-06-12. A continuation (US 09/878,801) issued as US 6,616,444 — the '444 patent was asserted alongside the '861 patent in the same litigation.

Original assignee

Ormco Corporation (Orange, California) — named as assignee on the issued patent and still shown as current assignee by Google Patents.

• Business: orthodontic products — brackets, archwires, tubes, adhesives, and the Insignia Advanced Smile Design / Elan custom-appliance CAD/CAM system, plus the AOA orthodontic lab (Allesee Orthodontic Appliances, Inc., a wholly-owned Ormco subsidiary that was co-plaintiff in the Align suit).
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Partially, and this was adjudicated. Ormco shipped Insignia/Elan software and the "Red, White & Blue" (RW&B) appliance. On enablement, the Federal Circuit affirmed summary judgment against Ormco, relying on inventor testimony that Ormco "had never attempted to create a computerized system that automatically determined tooth positions without human decision making" and that the manual override was used in all of the ~40 cases treated with Insignia. (2007 Fed. Cir. opinion)
• Current status: Operating. Corporate chain: Ormco joined Sybron Dental Specialties (1997) → Danaher Corporation acquired Sybron (May 2006, ~$2B) → Envista Holdings Corporation spun out of Danaher (2019-12-18, NYSE: NVST), with Ormco as one of Envista's operating companies. Ormco today sells Damon brackets and the Spark clear aligner.
• Litigation posture: On 2003-01-06, Ormco (with AOA) sued Align Technology in C.D. Cal. (SA CV 03-16-GLT) asserting, inter alia, US 6,244,861. Asserted claims of the '861 patent were held not infringed (2004-05-14) and invalid (2004-08-26), affirmed in relevant part by the Federal Circuit — 86 of 92 asserted claims across the '432, '243, '861 and '444 patents held invalid and not infringed (498 F.3d 1309 (Fed. Cir. 2007)). The parties settled 2009-08-17: Align paid Ormco $13M and granted Danaher an equity stake of ~10% of Align, plus a joint Align/Insignia collaboration (Danaher press release).

Assignment timeline

The Google Patents legal-event record for US 6,244,861 contains only three recorded post-issuance events, all of them secured-lending instruments — no ownership transfers whatsoever. Reel/frame numbers were not exposed by any source I could retrieve; correspondent of record likewise unavailable. I flag both gaps rather than fill them.

1. 1992-11-09 (parent filing) / recording date not surfaced — Reel not available

   • Conveyance: Assignment (inventors → Ormco) — expected but not present in the accessed event list
   • Assignor: Andreiko, Payne
   • Assignee: Ormco Corporation
   • Correspondent: not retrievable
   • Context: Original corporate assignment of the 1992 priority applications; the instant '861 application is a 1999 continuation, so any such recording is on the parents, not on 09/431,466. Unverified — check Assignment Center for Ormco as assignee pre-1994.

2. executed date not surfaced / recorded 2000-12-22 — Reel not available

   • Conveyance: Security Interest (liEN, not a transfer of title)
   • Assignor: ORMCO CORPORATION
   • Assignee: ABN AMRO BANK N.V.
   • Correspondent: not retrievable
   • Context: Securitization — Ormco's assets pledged under a secured credit facility during the Sybron Dental Specialties era (Sybron was spun out of Apogent/Sybron International in 2000; Ormco was folded into Sybron in 1997). No ownership change.

3. executed date not surfaced / recorded 2002-06-13 — Reel not available

   • Conveyance: Security Interest (recorded as an assignment back to Ormco, i.e., release/termination)
   • Assignor: "ABN MARO BANK N.V." — this spelling appears exactly as recorded in the legal-events data; it is almost certainly a typo for ABN AMRO, but I am reporting it literally per operating rules
   • Assignee: ORMCO CORPORATION
   • Correspondent: not retrievable
   • Context: Release of the 2000 lien — same-day as the successor financing below, i.e., a refinancing transaction.

4. executed date not surfaced / recorded 2002-06-13 — Reel not available

   • Conveyance: Security Agreement
   • Assignor: ORMCO CORPORATION
   • Assignee: CREDIT SUISSE FIRST BOSTON
   • Correspondent: not retrievable
   • Context: Securitization / refinancing — replacement lien securing the Sybron-family credit facility. Again, no transfer of title.

5. 2009-08-17 — Not an assignment. Litigation settlement and collaboration agreement with Align Technology; Align issued Danaher ~10% of Align common stock and paid Ormco $13M. Context: operating-company settlement, not a patent transfer.

6. Corporate events of record (no patent assignment recorded in the event list): Danaher's 2006 acquisition of Sybron Dental Specialties (stock deal; title would pass by operation of law through subsidiary mergers) and the 2019-12-18 Envista Holdings spin-off from Danaher. Both are reorganizations, not arm's-length patent sales.

Bottom line on the record: the chain begins and ends at Ormco Corporation. The only recorded instruments touching this patent are the two liens and one release. If Assignment Center shows nothing further, that is the finding: the original operating assignee still owns the patent, and the patent expired 2012-11-09 (20 years from the 1992-11-09 priority date).

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6244861
    1992 : Filed by Ormco inventors
    1999 : Continuation application filed
    2000 : Security interest to ABN AMRO
    2001 : Patent US 6244861 issued
    2002 : Security interest released
         : Security pact with Credit Suisse
    2003 : Ormco sues Align Technology
    2006 : Appeal to Federal Circuit
    2007 : Align wins claims invalid
    2009 : Ormco and Align settle
    2012 : Patent expires
    2019 : Ormco spun into Envista

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present.
No assignment out of Ormco appears in the legal-event record for US 6,244,861. The three recorded instruments (2000-12-22 ABN AMRO; 2002-06-13 release to Ormco; 2002-06-13 Credit Suisse First Boston) are all liens, not conveyances. No "IP/Holdings/Ventures/Licensing" entity ever appears as assignee. Reel/frame unverified, but the assignee names themselves are operating lenders and Ormco.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present.
Neither assignee of record (Ormco Corporation; then Envista Holdings through corporate succession) matches any of the listed NPEs (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, DGC, Spangenberg entities). Every link is a manufacturer that sells braces/aligners to dentists.
One unresolved lead, offered as unclear: a Unified Patents portal page for a different application (US 2016/0295191 A1) displays the title "Custom Orthodontic Appliance Forming Method and Apparatus" with an assignee field reading "Dental Imaging Technologies Corp," which does not match the Google Patents assignee for the '861 patent. I could not verify whether this relates to the '861 family, and the Google Patents legal events for US 6,244,861 show no transfer to such an entity. Flag for manual follow-up; not counted as a signal.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear.
No correspondent of record was retrievable for any of the three recorded instruments, so recurrence cannot be tested. Note for completeness that the litigation counsel of record were Michael Best & Friedrich LLP (Ormco/AOA) and Townsend and Townsend and Crew LLP (Align) per 463 F.3d 1299 — these are trial/appellate counsel and are not assignment correspondents; conflating the two would be an error. Signal cannot be assessed on available data.

4. Cascading transfers — not present.
Zero ownership transfers in the chain, so no chained-LLC pattern exists. The two 2002-06-13 recordings are a same-day release-and-replace refi, not a cascade.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present.
Ormco asserted US 6,244,861 on 2003-01-06 in its own name as the original assignee. The nearest recorded event is the 2002-06-13 Credit Suisse security agreement, ~7 months prior, but it is a lien securing a corporate credit facility, not an assignment enabling assertion, and Ormco needed no transfer to sue. No standing-creating transfer exists to flag.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present.
No Chapter 7/11 proceeding for Ormco, Sybron Dental Specialties, Apogent, or Danaher is reflected in the record. Sybron's path was a 2000 spin-off from Apogent and a 2006 cash/stock acquisition by Danaher; neither is a bankruptcy patent sale. Contrast with the Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid exemplars.

7. Privateering — not present.
The opposite pattern appears: Ormco asserted directly against a competitor (Align) on 2003-01-06. No operating company parked this patent with an NPE to assert on its behalf. The eventual 2009 outcome (Align paying Ormco $13M and granting Danaher a ~10% Align equity stake plus a joint collaboration) is a settlement of first-party, product-market litigation.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present.
The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at Ormco Corporation within Envista Holdings.

Additional neutralizer (not on the checklist but dispositive for assertion risk): the asserted claims of the '861 patent were held invalid and not infringed, with the Federal Circuit affirming 86 of 92 claims across the Ormco family invalid on 2007-08-24, and the patent expired 2012-11-09. Whatever residual assertion value existed was extinguished before expiration.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

This patent was never assigned away from its original owner: the Google Patents legal-event record for US 6,244,861 shows exactly three recorded instruments — a 2000-12-22 security interest to ABN AMRO, its 2002-06-13 release back to Ormco (assignor spelled "ABN MARO" as recorded), and a 2002-06-13 security agreement with Credit Suisse First Boston — all liens against an operating orthodontic manufacturer, with no change of title. Ormco asserted the patent itself against a direct product-market competitor (Align Technology, complaint filed 2003-01-06, C.D. Cal. SA CV 03-16-GLT; appeals at Fed. Cir. 05-1426, 463 F.3d 1299, and 498 F.3d 1309), and the current owner is Ormco Corporation within Envista Holdings, a company that ships brackets, wires and the Spark aligner. Because no ownership transfer occurred and the chain never reached a licensing entity or defensive aggregator, "Insufficient data" is not available; the correct call is first-party assertion by the original operating assignee — now moot, since the patent expired 2012-11-09 and its asserted claims were invalidated in 2007.

Verification links: USPTO Assignment Center search by patent number · assignment.uspto.gov · Google Patents US6244861 (legal events) · Ormco v. Align, 463 F.3d 1299 · 2007 Fed. Cir. opinion · Danaher/Align 2009 settlement

Open items I could not close (do not treat as findings): (a) reel/frame numbers for all three recorded instruments; (b) correspondent of record for each; (c) any inventor→Ormco assignment on the 1992 parent applications; (d) whether the "Dental Imaging Technologies Corp" entry on a Unified Patents page for US 2016/0295191 A1 has any connection to this family.

I'll search for the prior-art citations listed on US 6,244,861 (the "References Cited" section), since the fetched Google Patents text provided above does not include that front-page citation list.

I have a partial citation list. Let me pull the complete front-page reference list and the "cited by" data from additional sources.

Let me try to retrieve the full front-page reference list and the Google Patents citation table.

1. Scope, method, and a hard caveat up front

I searched for the literal identifier 6244861 only (no folded-in neighbors such as 6,616,444 / 6,554,611 / 6,398,548 / 5,683,243). What I could verify in this session:

• Verified: the "References Cited" section as rendered on the FreePatentsOnline copy of the patent, https://www.freepatentsonline.com/6244861.html — U.S. patent documents, foreign documents, and "Other References."
• Not retrievable in this session: the Google Patents "Patent Citations" table for US6244861, and the printed front page (PDF) itself. My search budget was exhausted before I could cross-check the citation list against a second source.

Two honesty flags that shape everything below:

1. The U.S. reference list I retrieved begins at US 4,360,341 and descends. I cannot rule out that additional entries exist above 4,360,341 (i.e., higher numbers, later-issued patents) that were truncated out of the snippet I received. Treat the U.S. list below as verified-as-far-as-it-goes, not certified complete.
2. I have not read the full text of the cited references. I verified bibliographic data (number, title, issue/publication date, inventor, class) and, where noted, filing dates. My statements about what each reference discloses are limited and are explicitly hedged. A real §102 anticipation analysis requires element-by-element comparison to each reference's actual disclosure, which I have not performed here.

2. Pre-AIA §102 framework (why the dates matter)

US 6,244,861 is a pre-AIA patent (filed 1999-11-01 as a continuation carrying §120 benefit to 1992-11-09). Pre-AIA §102 governs. Because benefit is claimed to the 1992 applications, the critical dates are:

Every reference retrieved below predates 1991-11-09, so all of them are §102(b) art. None of them falls in the narrow §102(a)/(e) window. That is itself a meaningful analytical result: the entire cited art is statutory-bar art, i.e., the strongest category.

3. Prior art of record — full bibliography

3.1 U.S. patent documents (as rendered on the '861 FPO page)

Filing dates are not printed in this list and I did not verify them individually — flagged as "not verified."

3.2 Foreign patent documents

Secondary grounding for F2: a Unified Patents citation listing records WO 1990008512 A1, filed 1989-01-23, Dolphin Imaging Systems Inc., "A Method of Producing an Orthodontic Bracket" — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-[9107722](/patent/9107722)-B2. That source is a third-party aggregation, not the official register, so treat the English title and filing date as secondary.

3.3 Other references (printed publications) — §102(b) art

4. Reference-by-reference analysis

For each I give: the §102 category, the technical thrust, and claim exposure. Recall claim 1's six elements: (1) scan teeth in pretreatment malocclusion for 3-D shape data; (2) determine treatment positions on an arch; (3) computer-process to define (3a) 3-D data correlated to 3-D contact surfaces, some force-exerting, some appliance-locating, and (3b) data correlated to arcuate interconnecting structure; (4) process that data to operate a manufacturing apparatus; (5) manufacture a component having those contact surfaces and arcuate structure. Dependents 2–11 add: model scanning (2), first/second distinct 3-D areas (3), series of arcuate components (4–6), direct CAD-to-CAM (7), removable positioning jigs (8), automated computer determination (9), simplified data limited to occlusal/contact points (10), prominences (11).

Tier 1 — closest of the cited art (still not anticipatory)

O1 — Rekow 1987 review

• Citation: Rekow, D., J. Prosthetic Dentistry, vol. 58, Oct. 1987, pp. 513–516. §102(b).
• Description: a state-of-the-art survey of CAD/CAM in dentistry — the general "digitize a dental structure, compute, then machine a dental object" paradigm.
• Claim exposure: Potentially relevant to elements (4)–(5) (computer data → machine → object) and by extension to claim 7's direct CAD-to-CAM. It is a review article, not an orthodontic-appliance disclosure; on its face it lacks elements (1)–(3) (real malocclusion 3-D scan, finish-position computation, force-exerting vs. locating contact surfaces). My assessment: strong §103 background, not a §102 anticipation of claim 1 or any dependent claim.

O2 — Leinfelder et al. 1989

• Citation: Leinfelder, K.F. et al., JADA, vol. 118, Jun. 1989, pp. 703–707. §102(b).
• Description: a specific chairside CAD/CAM ceramic-restoration system.
• Claim exposure: same structural gap as O1. Relevant to elements (4)–(5) and claim 7 only. Not anticipatory of any '861 claim as drafted, because no '861 claim is limited to "make a dental object from digital data" without the orthodontic finish-position/contact-surface elements.

F2 — WO 1990/008512 A1

• Citation: WO 1990/008512 A1, Procédé de production d'un appareil d'orthodontie (secondary source gives English: "A Method of Producing an Orthodontic Bracket," Dolphin Imaging Systems Inc., filed 1989-01-23), published 1990-08-09. §102(b).
• Description: production of an orthodontic appliance (bracket) from data.
• Claim exposure: This is the one cited reference whose subject matter overlaps the '861's core ("appliance produced from data"), so it is the most likely candidate for a §102 argument — but only against a claim narrowly drawn to appliance fabrication. Claim 1 additionally requires the 3-D scan of the pretreatment malocclusion and the automatic computation of treatment positions; I cannot verify that F2 discloses those. Do not treat this as an anticipation finding; it is a "check this first" pointer.

F1 — WO 1989/011257 A1

• Citation: WO 1989/011257 A1, "Method and system for making prosthetic device," published 1989-11-30. §102(b).
• Description: system-level method of making a prosthetic (i.e., restorative, not orthodontic) device.
• Claim exposure: elements (4)–(5), and arguably (3) insofar as "3-D data correlated to contact surfaces" appears in restorative CAD/CAM. Not anticipatory of the orthodontic claims; a prosthetic-device system does not disclose malocclusion scanning, finish tooth positions, or an archwire constraining brackets.

US 4,324,546 — Heitlinger et al.

• Citation: US 4,324,546, "Method for the manufacture of dentures and device for carrying out the method," issued 1982-04-13. §102(b).
• Description: optical/mechanical capture of a dental model and machine manufacture of the denture.
• Claim exposure: element (1) as narrowed by claim 2 ("scanning a model") and elements (4)–(5). Claims 2 and 7 are the only '861 claims where Heitlinger is even arguably on point, and even then Heitlinger lacks the orthodontic computation and the dual-purpose force/locating contact surfaces. No anticipation of claim 1.

Tier 2 — orthodontic custom-appliance and bracket-placement art

US 3,660,900 — Andrews

• Citation: US 3,660,900, "Method and apparatus for improved orthodontic bracket and arch wire technique," issued 1972-05-09. §102(b).
• Description: the foundational straight-wire concept — positioning brackets on teeth at predetermined heights/orientations derived from tooth anatomy so a plain, unbent archwire produces the desired tooth positions.
• Claim exposure: the closest thing in the record to element (3b) (an arcuate structure whose geometry is derived from computed bracket positions), and a §102(a)/(b) reference against any claim drawn solely to "position brackets from tooth landmarks and interconnect with a pre-shaped archwire." The '861's claims, however, are computer/CAD-CAM claims; Andrews teaches a geometric/manual technique with no scanning and no computer. No anticipation of any claim of the '861.

US 3,477,128 — Andrews

• Citation: US 3,477,128, same title, issued 1969-11-11. §102(b).
• Description: the earlier Andrews bracket/archwire disclosure in the same line.
• Claim exposure: same as '900. Background art on bracket geometry only; no anticipation.

US 4,360,341 — Dellinger

• Citation: US 4,360,341, "Orthodontic method for treating malocclusion," issued 1982-11-23, class 433/24. §102(b).
• Description: an orthodontic method for treating malocclusion (title-level only; I did not verify the disclosure).
• Claim exposure: I can only say the title places it in the "method of treating malocclusion" space, which overlaps claim 1's preamble. I will not assert it discloses the scanning/computing/fabricating elements. No verified anticipation.

US 4,284,405 — Dellinger et al.

• Citation: US 4,284,405, "Orthodontic appliance method of treatment and manufacture," issued 1981-08-18. §102(b).
• Description: appliance treatment and manufacture — the title's "and manufacture" is the reason this is arguably the most on-point orthodontic citation after the WO documents, because claim 1 is a method of making an appliance.
• Claim exposure: potentially elements (3)–(5) at a conceptual level. No verified anticipation of claim 1, because the automation chain (scan → compute finish positions → generate machine code) is the heart of the claim.

US 4,183,141 — Dellinger et al.

• Citation: US 4,183,141, "Method and apparatus for treating malocclusion," issued 1980-01-15. §102(b).
• Description: method/apparatus for malocclusion treatment.
• Claim exposure: preamble-level overlap only. No anticipation.

US 4,014,096 — Dellinger

• Citation: US 4,014,096, "Method and apparatus for orthodontic treatment," issued 1977-03-29. §102(b).
• Description: orthodontic treatment method/apparatus.
• Claim exposure: preamble-level overlap only. No anticipation.

Tier 3 — bracket-fitting, jig, and archwire-marking art (relevant to claim 8)

US 4,160,322 — Frazier

• Citation: US 4,160,322, "Method of constructing an orthodontic appliance," issued 1979-07-10. §102(b).
• Claim exposure: claim 1's "method of making" preamble and, at most, a generic appliance-construction step. No anticipation.

US 3,949,478 — Schinhammer

• Citation: US 3,949,478, "Process and apparatus for fitting orthodontic brackets to teeth," issued 1976-04-13. §102(b).
• Claim exposure: the closest cited art to claim 8 (removable positioning jigs with tooth-conforming 3-D surfaces) and to claim 1 element (3a)'s "locating" surface. Schinhammer is bracket-fitting, not scan-and-compute. No anticipation of claim 8, which requires the jigs to be manufactured from the scanned 3-D data.

US 3,906,634 — Aspel

• Citation: US 3,906,634, "Method of marking archwire with tooth width measurements," issued 1975-09-23. §102(b).
• Claim exposure: element (2)/(3b)-adjacent (using measured tooth widths to shape/mark an archwire). Manual, not computerized. No anticipation.

US 3,738,005 — Cohen et al.

• Citation: US 3,738,005, "Method and apparatus for applying orthodontic brackets and the like," issued 1973-06-12. §102(b).
• Claim exposure: bracket-application methodology; claim 8 adjacency. No anticipation.

US 3,686,762 — Sutter

• Citation: US 3,686,762, "Orthodontic applicator tool," issued 1972-08-29. §102(b).
• Claim exposure: hardware for applying brackets; claim 8 adjacency. No anticipation.

5. Synthesis: what the §102 record actually shows

1. No reference of record alone anticipates claim 1. Claim 1 is a closed-loop claim requiring all of: 3-D scanning of the teeth in pretreatment malocclusion → determination of treatment positions on an arch → computer definition of 3-D contact-surface data split between force-exerting and locating surfaces → definition of the arcuate interconnecting structure → machine control → manufacture. The cited art splits cleanly into (a) pre-computer orthodontic geometry (Andrews, Dellinger, Frazier, Schinhammer, Aspel, Cohen, Sutter), and (b) dental/restorative CAD-CAM (Rekow, Leinfelder, Heitlinger, WO '257, WO '512). Neither group alone bridges the gap; the claim sits at their intersection. That intersection is exactly why these references read as a §103 combination rather than a §102 anticipation.

2. The two WO documents are the earliest "appliance/prosthesis produced from data" disclosures of record and are therefore the citations a §102 challenge would have to lead with (F2 especially, if its English subject matter really is orthodontic-bracket production). I am not asserting they anticipate — I have not verified their disclosures.

3. The two printed publications (Rekow, Leinfelder) are the only cited art that teaches the CAD-to-machine workflow generally, and neither is orthodontic.

4. Historical cross-check (from the earlier sections of this analysis): the '861 claims were not lost on §102. The Federal Circuit's 2007 decision in Ormco v. Align Technology affirmed noninfringement and nonenablement as to the claims requiring automatic computer determination of finish tooth positions — not anticipation. So the record is consistent with my reading: no cited reference was ever held to anticipate, and the patent's problem was enablement, not novelty. (Sources already cited: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[210412](/patent/210412)/ormco-corp-v-align-technology-inc/ ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US6244861/en)

5. Forward citations are not prior art. The many Align/3M/Ormco references I retrieved (e.g., US 6,309,215, US 6,554,611, US 6,729,880, US 7,854,515, US 2002/0006597) are citing documents — they post-date 1992-11-09 and are §102-ineligible against the '861. I mention them only to prevent them being mistaken for prior art; they belong in a separate "impact/forward-citation" section, not here.

6. Explicit uncertainties

1. The U.S. citation list may be incomplete (possible entries above US 4,360,341 were truncated in the snippet I received). I could not reach the Google Patents "Patent Citations" table or the printed PDF front page before my search budget ran out. Re-verify against the PTO-892 of record or the granted PDF before relying on the list as complete.
2. I have not read the full text of any cited reference. All disclosure statements above are restricted to titles, classes, and dates, and are labeled as such. No claim of actual §102 anticipation should be made without element-by-element comparison to each reference.
3. Filing dates were not verified for the twelve U.S. documents; only issue dates are confirmed. For pre-AIA §102(b) purposes this is immaterial here, since every one of them issued well before 1991-11-09.
4. The English title and 1989-01-23 filing date for WO 1990/008512 A1 come from a third-party aggregation (Unified Patents), not from the official register — treat as secondary.
5. I did not verify the '861's prosecution history (i.e., whether any of these references was actually applied in a rejection that was overcome). I can state only that the patent issued 2001-06-12, meaning no §102 rejection survived.
6. §102(e) art was not assessed. US patents/applications of others with pre-1992-11-09 effective filing dates that are not on the '861's citation list (e.g., the 1980s–1990s dental CAD/CAM line) are not analyzed here, because the task was limited to "each patent citation for 6244861." A §102(e) sweep is a separate exercise.

I'll first pull the actual prior-art references cited on the '861 patent's face (the section the task directs me to use), then build the §103 combinations.

I have the front-page reference list partially. Let me pull the rest of the cited-art list to make the §103 analysis fully grounded.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,244,861 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Builds on the previously generated Patent summary and Litigation summary; bibliographic and litigation details are not repeated except where they bear on the § 103 analysis.

A. Preliminary: what the "Prior Art" section of this page actually shows

I have to flag a sourcing problem before I analyze anything, because it materially affects how much weight this opinion can carry.

The Google Patents "Prior Art" section for US6244861B1, as fetched 2026-09-29, does not contain a reference list. It contains only:

• Prior art keywords: teeth, appliance, positions, tooth, patient
• Prior art date: 1992-11-09 (which Google itself labels an assumption)
• Four "Priority claimed from" links to the same-inventor 1992 Ormco applications (US 07/973,965 → US 5,454,717; 07/973,844 → US 5,368,478; 07/973,973 → US 5,431,562; 07/973,947 → US 5,447,432)

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6244861/en

The keyword tags are machine-generated and, in my view, carry no substantive prior-art content — they are just corpus-extracted terms ("teeth," "appliance," "positions"). So to do a real § 103 analysis I went to the "References Cited" block on the printed face of the patent, which Google Patents does not render in the fetched page but which is reproduced in a full copy of the patent filed as Exhibit 1017 in IPR2016-00270. That is the list I use below.

References of record recovered from the '861 front page (partial — OCR of the block was truncated in my retrieval):

Non-patent literature cited:

• Rekow, D., "Computer-Aided Design and Manufacturing in Dentistry; A Review of the State of the Art," Journal of Prosthetic Dentistry, vol. 58, Oct. 1987
• Leinfelder, K.F. et al., "A New Method for Generating Ceramic Restorations: A CAD-CAM System," J. Am. Dental Ass'n, vol. 118, Jun. 1989

Source: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/[PTAB](/ptab)/IPR2016-00270/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._6699037/docs/12-01-2015-Petitioner/Exhibit-1017-Exhibit_1017.pdf

⚠️ Two caveats I will not paper over: (1) the front page also appears to list foreign references and additional US patents that my retrieval did not capture, so this is a partial list; (2) I have not read the full text of Lemchen '405, Rekow '281, or Dellinger '341 in this session. My characterizations of Lemchen are drawn from secondary sources that quote it (the ITC determination and the Align/Chishti patent record), not from the reference itself. Treat the mapping below as an analyst's prima facie case, not a claim chart verified against primary text.

B. Governing law and the critical date

• The '861 issued from an application filed 1999-11-01, but it is a continuation in a chain reaching the four 1992-11-09 applications. Because the '861 specification is the same specification, its claims are entitled to a 1992-11-09 effective filing date, and pre-AIA § 103 governs (AIA § 3 applies only to applications filed on or after 2013-03-16).
• Prior art cut-off: 1992-11-09 (with the 1991-11-09 § 102(b) one-year-bar date).
• This has a sharp consequence for the list above: the earlier section's item noting Robertson '309 (8/1994) and Deshayes '202 (8/1994) — which appear in same-family search results — are post-priority and cannot be § 103 art against claims entitled to the 1992 date.
• Likewise, the Andreiko-family patents cited on the face (5,139,419 and the four 1992 siblings) are same-inventive-entity documents. They are not § 102(a)/(e) prior art ("by another") and are not § 102(b) art against a 1992 date. They may be consulted only as evidence of the level of ordinary skill. Any § 103 theory built on Ormco's own family patents is legally defective.
• The genuinely usable art is therefore: the pre-Nov-1992 patent references listed in § A excluding 5,139,419, the two Rekow/Leinfelder NPL items, plus Kesling to the extent it is incorporated into Lemchen (the ITC record finds Lemchen incorporates Figs. 1 and 3 of Kesling by reference).

C. Person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

A POSITA as of November 1992 would be a person with a degree in dentistry, mechanical engineering, or computer science (or equivalent), with 2–3 years of experience in orthodontic appliance design plus familiarity with dental CAD/CAM — i.e., someone who could read Lemchen '405 and the Rekow review article and understand both. That combination of skills existed in 1992; the Rekow NPL reference on this very patent's face is itself a state-of-the-art survey showing the two fields had already merged.

D. Claim 1 — element-by-element prima facie case

Claim 1 (as parsed in the earlier section) has six elements. The mapping below uses two primary references plus the knowledge of a POSITA:

Primary reference — US 5,011,405 (Lemchen), "Method of Determining Orthodontic Bracket Placement" (Apr. 30, 1991). Multiple independent sources characterize Lemchen as disclosing: digitally imaging a tooth; determining optimum bracket positioning for orthodontic treatment by calculation; three-dimensional digital modeling; computing bracket positions on the teeth; transferring digitized information to a dental lab "where the digitized information is utilized in the process of providing the practitioner with the required dental appliances for the correction of the malocclusion"; and that "repositioning is done mathematically by appropriate software programs which may be derived by conventional means." It is also limited to a single set of fixed brackets/archwires used for the whole treatment.

Secondary reference — Rekow, "CAD and CAM in Dentistry: A Review of the State of the Art" (1987), and Rekow '281, which put dental CAD/CAM (digitize → compute → machine the restoration) in the same field and the same skilled hands.

Combination A (primary theory): Lemchen '405 + Rekow 1987 NPL / Rekow '281, in view of Andrews and the ordinary skill in dental CAD/CAM.
Combination B (alternative): Lemchen '405 + Dellinger '341/'141/'909 + Andrews '128/'900 — replaces the CAD/CAM references for elements (b) and (d) with the orthodontic archform/programmed-appliance art, and relies on Rekow only for element (e).

E. Motivation to combine — the crux

Motivation here is unusually well documented, and it comes from three independent directions:

1. From the secondary references themselves. The Rekow NPL review's stated purpose is that "the time consuming manipulation of plaster casts to model orthodontic treatment options was replaced by systems that modeled multiple combinations of tooth movement, permitting the clinician to choose the most ideal" and that "labor-intensive design and fabrication of dental restorations was replaced by computer-aided design and manufacturing systems to speed delivery." That is a textbook motivation — the problem to be solved (labor-intensive, imprecise manual setup and bracket placement) and the known solution (digitize → compute → machine) are stated in the art of record.
2. From Lemchen itself. Lemchen expressly contemplates that the mathematical repositioning be done "by appropriate software programs which may be derived by conventional means" and that digitized information be sent to a lab for manufacture of the appliance. A reference that names the automation and the downstream manufacture makes the further step of driving that manufacture from the same digital data an obvious design choice, not an inventive leap.
3. From the problem itself. Every reference in the field addresses the same deficiency: manual placement produces finish positions that are "less than ideal," and the orthodontist must then rebend wires over many visits (this is the '861's own statement of the problem). KSR: where a technique has been used to improve one device and a POSITA would recognize it would improve similar devices in the same way, the combination is obvious. KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398, 417 (2007).

Two KSR-adjacent doctrines reinforce the conclusion for this particular claim set:

• Automation of a manual process. Reducing a known manual workflow (plaster setup → bracket placement → wire bending) to a programmed general-purpose computer is obvious absent something more. Muniauction, Inc. v. Thomson Corp., 532 F.3d 1318 (Fed. Cir. 2008) (en banc). Rekow's own report frames the field exactly this way: the ideas explored "included opportunities where manual manipulations were automated."
• Applying modern electronics/computation to older mechanical devices. Leapfrog Enters. v. Fisher-Price, Inc., 485 F.3d 1157 (Fed. Cir. 2007).

No teaching away. The strongest non-obviousness argument in the record — that Lemchen is limited to a single set of fixed brackets and "teaches away" from intermediate arrangements — was made by Align in the ITC litigation and applies only to Align's aligner claims, not to the '861 claims. The '861 claims are bracket-and-archwire claims; Lemchen is squarely in that field. Indeed, Align's expert in the earlier Ormco case characterized Lemchen as disclosing precisely the acquire-data → automatically-determine-ideal-position → design-conforming-configuration → use-NC-systems-to-shape methodology (RX-0102C at 6, quoted at https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2016-00270/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._6699037/docs/03-11-2016-Patent_Owner/Exhibit-2005-Exhibit_2005.pdf).

F. Dependent claims 2–11

G. Claims 16–18 — cannot be analyzed here

The earlier section correctly flags that the full text of claims 16–18 is unavailable in this analysis. Those claims were asserted by Ormco in Ormco v. Align and therefore matter. I will not construct an obviousness theory against claim language I have not read. If claim 16 is independent and directed at the appliance/apparatus (as opposed to the method of claim 1), the same Combinations A and B would likely apply, but with the additional Graham-factor analysis of ordinary mechanical skill for the bracket/archwire structure — and that is a claim-text-dependent question.

H. Cross-check against the litigation record — and why § 112 does not rescue § 103

There is a tension worth stating plainly, and it is my main analytical caveat:

• The Federal Circuit in Ormco Corp. v. Align Tech., Inc., 498 F.3d 1307 (Fed. Cir. 2007), construed the asserted '861 claims narrowly — requiring "automatic computer determination of the finish positions of teeth" without human adjustment — and affirmed non-infringement because Align's process used skilled operators. It then affirmed non-enablement of that scope because Ormco had never built such a system.
• A narrow construction cuts both ways for § 103. To invalidate claim 1 as construed, the prior art must disclose automatic determination. Lemchen's "mathematically by appropriate software programs" supports that reading, but I cannot verify from primary text how fully automated Lemchen's disclosure is. If Lemchen requires human intervention at the position-determination step, an obviousness attack that mirrors the court's narrow construction gets harder, and the primary theory would need to lean on proof of what a POSITA would consider routine automation of Lemchen's computation.
• The § 112 and § 103 inquiries are independent. A claim can be non-enabled and obvious; the non-enablement holding does not immunize the claims from § 103, and it actually undercuts the objective-indicia case: an inventor's testimony that the claimed automatic system was never built and that manual override was used in all ~40 test cases (per the Ormco record summarized in the Finnegan Sept. 2007 review) leaves no nexus evidence for unexpected results.

Secondary considerations / objective indicia: I found no evidence of an unexpected-results nexus in the recovered record; the only "long-felt need" evidence is the field-wide desire to eliminate manual wire bending, which the references themselves articulate — a need that supports obviousness rather than rebutting it. I acknowledge I have not searched for objective indicia (commercial success, licensing, industry praise) specifically tied to the '861 claims, and that is a gap in this opinion.

I. Bottom line

1. Strongest § 103 theory: Lemchen '405 + Rekow 1987 (or Rekow '281), in view of Andrews '128/'900 and Dellinger '341/'909/'141. This combination discloses or renders obvious every element of claim 1, including the dual-purpose 3-D contact surface (bracket base + placement jig) and the arcuate structure tying the surfaces to post-appliance positions (Andrews/Dellinger's programmed-appliance concept).
2. Motivation is documented, not merely inferred — supplied by the Rekow review's express automation rationale, by Lemchen's own "software programs … derived by conventional means" and lab-transmission language, and by the shared problem statement across the field.
3. Dependent claims 4–6 and 10–11 are the most vulnerable, being closer to conventional orthodontic practice (wire-stiffness sequences, staged archwires, landmark-parameter data) than to any point of novelty.
4. Caveats that materially limit confidence: (a) partial/OCR-truncated front-page reference list; (b) my characterizations of Lemchen and Rekow '281 rest on secondary quotations, not primary text; (c) claims 16–18 unanalyzed for want of their text; (d) no objective-indicia search performed; (e) the Federal Circuit's narrow construction of "automatic determination" constrains any real-world § 103 attack and must be verified against Lemchen's actual disclosure.
5. Practically, as noted in the Litigation summary, this is a retrospective exercise: the patent expired 2012-11-09 and its asserted claims were finally held not infringed and invalid, so there is no live enforcement posture for the analysis to affect.