Invalidity dossier
US 6419643
Central venous catheter with heat exchange properties
Current assignee: Zoll Circulation Inc
Added 9/23/2026, 7:21:23 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US 6,419,643 B1
Title: Central venous catheter with heat exchange properties
Patent number: US6419643B1 | Application number: US09/376,524 | Filing date: 1999-08-18 | Publication/grant date: 2002-07-16 | Priority date: 1998-04-21 (claimed from US09/063,984)
Inventors: Lynn M. Shimada; William J. Worthen; Scott M. Evans; Xia Luo; Robert Pecor; Blair D. Walker
Original assignee: Alsius Corp. Current assignee listed: Zoll Circulation Inc. Legal status listed: Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2018-04-21).
Purpose and plain-language scope (based only on the supplied text): The patent concerns a central venous catheter that also functions as a heat exchanger. The vocabulary of the document centers on a catheter with a lumen and a sheath, a coolant, and a membrane acting as a barrier, with heat transfer between the coolant and the body. The listed classifications place it as a device for heating or cooling internal body cavities, specifically "using a flexible balloon containing the thermal element" (A61F7/12, A61F7/123), and as a catheter/hollow probe (A61M25/00). Associated description terms include cooling, hypothermia, fever, blood, dialysis, infusion, drug delivery, and hemostasis. In short, the disclosed device is intended to be placed in a central vein to exchange heat with blood, i.e., to cool or warm a patient, while retaining catheter functions such as infusing fluids/drugs.
Family/litigation data shown in the source: the source displays a "Family has litigation" indicator and a link to a global patent litigation dataset (Darts-ip, family 23485361). No case details are provided in the excerpt.
What the excerpt does not establish: it contains no claim language, no abstract text, no written description, and no drawings content, so the precise claimed scope, claim count, and dependencies cannot be determined. It also does not establish the inventor/assignee chain of title, validity, enforceability, or the content of any prior art. The listed assignee and legal status are expressly assumptions in the source, not legal conclusions.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:42:09 PM
Cases on file (0)
Specific litigation cases in our database that name US patent 6419643. The free-form analysis below may also discuss cases beyond this list.
No cases on file mention this patent. Upload a CSV or add a case manually in Admin → Manage litigation cases.
Litigation summary
Past and pending lawsuits — plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, outcomes, and notable rulings.
Proceedings on file (0)
All PTAB activity →AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) filed at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board against this patent. Sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and refreshed every six hours; each proceeding number deep-links to the PTAB E2E docket.
No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.
Obviousness
Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.