US 6602070

I'll verify the patent details and check for any recent litigation, including CAFC 2026 activity.

Now let me check for any recent litigation activity, particularly CAFC 2026 dockets, and confirm the independent claims.

Let me retrieve the remaining claims to identify all independent claims.

US Patent 6,602,070 — Summary

Below is what I can confirm from the authoritative full text of the patent and from cross-checks against USPTO/Google Patents/FreePatentsOnline records. Where the record is incomplete, I flag it explicitly rather than guessing.

Bibliographic data (confirmed)

Abstract (verbatim)

"Computer-implemented systems and methods implement a dental treatment plan by specifying tooth movement patterns using a two-dimensional array; and generating treatment paths to move the teeth in accordance with the specified pattern."

Plain-language overview of the independent claim(s)

Claim 1 — the independent claim (computer-implemented method):

The patent's claim set (as retrieved) is drafted as method claims, with claim 1 being the independent claim and claims 2–27 depending from it. In plain language, claim 1 covers a computer-implemented method to implement a dental (orthodontic) treatment plan that does two things:

1. Specifies tooth-movement patterns using a two-dimensional array. In the specification, one dimension of the array identifies each treatment stage (a stage ≈ one aligner, roughly a two-week period, with movement information specified for about fifty stages), and the other dimension identifies a unique tooth. A tooth's movement is specified by indicating a start stage and an end stage for that tooth (e.g., the expansion prescription shown across FIGS. 11–12).

2. Generates treatment paths to move the teeth in accordance with the specified pattern — and, critically, this generation step is defined as generating more than one candidate treatment path for each tooth and providing a graphical display of each candidate treatment path to a human user for selection. (This "multiple candidate paths presented graphically for user selection" limitation is what distinguishes claim 1 from the bare abstract language.)

The dependent claims add, among other things: applying constraints (crowding, spacing, extraction, stripping, rotation, movement) to modify the paths; quantitative limits (rotation of ~5–10° per stage; ~0.2–0.4 mm linear movement per tooth per stage); storing constraints in an array indexed by stage and/or tooth; determining the minimum transformation required (avoiding "round-tripping"); generating intermediate positions with equal or unequal translational step sizes; applying rule sets to detect collisions; revising paths based on feedback about whether teeth are following the paths; rendering and animating a 3D graphical representation of the teeth; a VCR-style animation control interface; and finding a collision-free shortest path between initial and final positions.

Uncertainty flag: The publicly retrieved claim listing shows claims 1–27 in full. I could not authoritatively confirm whether additional independent claims (e.g., a system/apparatus or computer-readable-medium claim) exist beyond claim 27, because the retrieved text was truncated at that point. The abstract and summary repeatedly say "systems and methods," which suggests the possibility of a companion independent claim, but I have not verified a second independent claim and will not assert one exists.

Litigation / docket check (including CAFC 2026)

I searched USPTO-related databases and Federal Circuit dockets for this specific number. Findings:

• No CAFC 2026 docket involving US 6,602,070 was found. My searches surfaced no 2026 Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit activity for this patent. This is consistent with the patent having expired on May 13, 2019.
• Litigation history associated with the patent (per Google Patents' Unified Patents litigation data):
  • ITC Investigation 337-TA-562 (International Trade Commission)
  • CAFC appeals 13-1363 and 13-1240 (2013 — these are the Align v. ITC / related appellate proceedings, not 2026 matters)
  • N.D. Cal. case 5:15-cv-04864 (2015)

Caveat: I did not have direct access to a live CAFC 2026 docket system in this session; my conclusion that there is no 2026 CAFC docket for US 6,602,070 rests on web-search results, which returned only unrelated 2026 Federal Circuit materials (e.g., a Constellation/LG rehearing petition). If you need a definitive docket confirmation, it should be verified directly in PACER/CM-ECF for the Federal Circuit and in the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (PTAB) docket.

Notes on the record

• The patent's figures (FIGS. 1–16) cover jaw anatomy, aligner appliances, process flowcharts, a collision-buffer technique, a data-processing system, an expansion example, and movement patterns ("X-type"/All Equal, "A-type," "V-type," and "XX-type").
• The specification incorporates by reference several patents and publications, including U.S. Pat. No. 5,605,459, the Kesling positioner papers, and the SIGGRAPH 1996 article by Gottschalk et al. ("OBBTree: A Hierarchical Structure for Rapid Interference Detection") for collision detection.

If you'd like, I can attempt to pull the complete, untruncated claim set (claims 1–27+) to definitively settle whether there is a second independent claim.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 6602070 across patent litigation databases and court records.

Let me dig into the specific litigation references associated with this patent.

I've found key references. Let me verify a few specific case citations and jurisdictions.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 6,602,070

Important framing note: The patent's own Google Patents record identifies it by the literal number 6,602,070 (application 09/843,246; filed 2001-04-25; granted 2003-08-05; priority 1999-05-13; assignee Align Technology, Inc.). All identifiers below are reproduced literally from the sources I located. I did not auto-correct any number. Note that the Google Patents "litigation" panel for this record is family-level (Darts-IP family 31191997), so not every listed matter necessarily asserted this specific patent — I flag below where I could and could not confirm the '070 patent itself.

Confirmed matters asserting / implicating the '070 patent

1. ITC Investigation No. 337-TA-562 — Certain Incremental Dental Positioning Adjustment Appliances and Methods of Producing Same

This is the core matter in which the '070 patent was affirmatively asserted. The Federal Register notice of investigation (E6-2164, Feb. 15, 2006) states Align alleged infringement of "claims 34–56 and 59–65 of U.S. Patent No. 6,602,070," among eleven other patents. The '070 patent was also expressly named in the resulting Consent Order (a list of twelve patents, including 6,602,070) that prohibited importation of infringing incremental dental positioning appliances. Source: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/full_text/xml/2006/02/15/E6-2164.xml

2. ITC Enforcement Proceeding — Inv. No. 337-TA-562 (Enforcement)

This enforcement action was directed at the '511 and '880 patents specifically, but it enforced the same 2006 Consent Order in which the '070 patent was named, so the '070 right was part of the operative order. Align and ClearCorrect reached a termination agreement (announced April 7, 2015) resolving the remanded enforcement action contingent on the parallel '833 appeal.

3. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit — Nos. 2013-1240 and 2013-1363

The '070 patent appears in these appeals via the recitation of the 2006 Consent Order's patent list. Source: http://cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/13-1240.opinion.7-17-2014.1.pdf (also cited as Align Tech., Inc. v. ITC, 622 F. App'x 910 (Fed. Cir. 2015)); and ClearCorrect Operating, LLC v. ITC, 810 F.3d 1283 (Fed. Cir. 2015).

Related/adjacent matters — the '070 patent was NOT asserted

• ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-833 (Certain Digital Models, Digital Data, and Treatment Plans...) — Align v. ClearCorrect. Asserted seven patents claiming priority to provisional 60/050,342 filed June 20, 1997. The '070 patent claims a different priority chain (App. 09/313,289, filed May 13, 1999 / provisional 60/199,610), and I found no indication it was among the seven asserted in '833.
• Align v. ClearCorrect, No. 6:24-cv-00187 (W.D. Tex., Waco Div.) — ongoing; asserted patents are 10,973,613; 11,154,384; 11,648,090; 11,648,091; 8,038,444; 10,456,217; 10,524,879; 11,369,456; and 10,791,936. The '070 patent expired May 13, 2019 and is not asserted. Motions (incl. § 101 summary judgment) were set for hearing May 27, 2026.
• Align v. Ormco / AOA (C.D. Cal.) — asserted Align's '548 and '611 patents (and Ormco's '432, '243, '861, '644 patents); the '070 patent is not among them.
• PTAB proceedings (e.g., IPR2016-00270 re '037; IPR2025-00817 re '936) — do not involve the '070 patent.

Item I could not verify

• N.D. Cal. Case No. 5:15-cv-04864 — The Google Patents litigation panel for this family lists a "US case filed in California Northern District Court" at case number 5:15-cv-04864. I was unable to retrieve the docket or confirm the parties, filing date, or whether the '070 patent itself was asserted (as opposed to a family member). This should be treated as unconfirmed. To verify, query PACER for N.D. Cal. 5:15-cv-04864 or the Unified Patents litigation portal.

Bottom line

Known, confirmed litigation touching U.S. Patent No. 6,602,070 centers on Align Technology's enforcement against OrthoClear and then ClearCorrect:

1. ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-562 (2006) — '070 claims 34–56, 59–65 asserted; resolved by Consent Order (Nov. 13, 2006).
2. ITC 337-TA-562 Enforcement (2012–2016) — enforcement of that Consent Order; ended in a finding of no violation.
3. Federal Circuit Nos. 2013-1240 and 2013-1363 (2013–2015) — appeals from the enforcement proceeding in which the '070-bearing Consent Order was at issue.

If you need the precise docket-level detail for item 1 (e.g., the exact respondent-by-respondent disposition before the Consent Order) or the N.D. Cal. 5:15-cv-04864 matter, PACER/Unified Patents lookups would be the next step, and I can run those if you'd like.

Caveat: I could not verify whether the '070 patent was asserted in the Southern District of Texas Houston district-court action that Align described as asserting nine patents (four not in the ITC litigation); the '070 may or may not have been among them, and I did not confirm it.

I'll start by checking the web for any AIA trial proceedings involving US 6,602,070, since the structured ODP block indicates no indexed PTAB activity.

Let me run more targeted searches to be certain no petition names this patent.

Key finding emerging: the '070 patent was litigated (ITC, district court) but I need to confirm whether any AIA petition exists. Let me check PTAB E2E / Unified Patents and the ClearCorrect-line IPRs.

AIA Trial Proceedings — US Patent 6,602,070

Source note: The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal) is the canonical list and returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent. I supplemented that with web searches of PTAB decisions, the Federal Register/ITC record, and litigation reporting. Both sources agree. Where I could not verify something directly, I say so rather than guessing.

Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings on US 6,602,070 — no IPRs, no PGRs, no CBMs — meaning the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution-denied, so a defendant gets no ready-made Board invalidation and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel benefit from this patent; the defensively significant fact is instead that the patent expired on 2019-05-13 and has never been tested at the PTAB at all.

This is unusual for a patent with this litigation profile. Align asserted the '070 patent broadly — in ITC Investigation 337-TA-562, in the parallel W.D. Wis. infringement action against OrthoClear, and in the 2015 N.D. Cal. suit against SmileCareClub (case 5:15-cv-04864) — yet no third party ever filed an AIA petition against it. The Align patents that did draw IPRs are a different, later generation: U.S. 8,675,207 (3Shape, e.g. IPR2019-00160), U.S. 8,363,228 and 8,451,456 (IPR2019-00154/00155/00157/00159), U.S. 9,101,433 (IPR2019-00163), U.S. 11,648,091 (ClearCorrect, IPR2025-00821), and the '248/'945 patents litigated against Dental Monitoring. None of those cases names the '070 patent.

No proceedings to report

Because the count is zero, the per-proceeding template is inapplicable. For completeness, the near-misses and the reason they matter:

• Not an AIA trial — ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-562 (Align Technology, Inc. v. OrthoClear, Inc., et al.). Align's complaint asserted claims 34–56 and 59–65 of U.S. Patent No. 6,602,070 (Federal Register notice, 2006-02-15). The original investigation terminated on a consent order, not a merits ruling; a later enforcement action (Commission opinion public 2013-02-19) turned on whether "digital datasets" fell within the consent order, and the Commission held they did not. No validity adjudication of the '070 claims occurred.
• Not an AIA trial — W.D. Wis. federal action (filed 2006-01-11). Align sued OrthoClear on the same family of patents, including the '070; the case was stayed and then dismissed without prejudice on 2006-08-10 pending the ITC matter.
• Not an AIA trial — N.D. Cal. 5:15-cv-04864 (Align v. SmileCareClub / Sharper Image / Brookstone, filed 2015-10-22). The '070 patent was one of fourteen asserted. I could not verify a merits disposition or a claim-level outcome for the '070 patent in that case from the sources available.
• Not a PTAB appeal — CAFC 13-1363 and 13-1240. Google Patents' Unified Patents litigation data lists these Federal Circuit dockets against the '070 patent. They appear to arise out of the ITC/OrthoClear and related proceedings rather than from any PTAB Final Written Decision (there was no FWD to appeal). Flagged as uncertain: I did not confirm the precise nature of each docket.

Caveat on method: I did not query PTAB E2E or the ODP API directly in this session. My conclusion rests on (a) the structured ODP block stating no AIA proceedings are indexed, and (b) web searches that surfaced no petition naming this patent. A definitive confirmation should be run directly against PTAB E2E and the PTAB "Proceedings" search for the patent number.

Cross-reference update to the earlier "Patent summary" section

The prior analysis flagged uncertainty about whether additional independent claims exist beyond claim 27. The record now resolves much of that:

• The ITC complaint cites claims 34–56 and 59–65 of the '070 patent, so the patent plainly issues with more than 65 claims — well beyond the 1–27 shown in the truncated listing. That is consistent with there being one or more additional independent claims (e.g., an apparatus/system or computer-readable-medium claim) after claim 27, but I still have not seen the verbatim text of claims 28+, so I do not assert their exact form.
• Claim 1 verbatim (FreePatentsOnline): "A computer-implemented method to implement a treatment plan, the method comprising: specifying tooth movement patterns using a two-dimensional array; and generating treatment paths to move the teeth in accordance with a specified pattern, wherein generating treatment paths comprises generating more than one candidate treatment path for each tooth and providing a graphical display of each candidate treatment path to a human user for selection." This confirms the "multiple candidate paths displayed for user selection" limitation as an element of the sole independent method claim — as previously reported.

Strategic summary

Canceled vs. sustained vs. untested. No claim of 6,602,070 has been canceled, and no claim has been sustained, by the PTAB — the entire claim set is untested at the Board. Unlike the '548 patent (whose claims were partly invalidated in district court on prior-use evidence in the Ormco litigation), the '070 patent's claims stand as issued. The controlling event here is not a validity ruling but statutory expiration on 2019-05-13 (anticipated expiration per the Google Patents record; term ran from the 1999-05-13 priority/filing chain).

Estoppel landscape. Because no AIA trial ever reached a Final Written Decision, § 315(e)(2) estoppel has never attached to anyone with respect to this patent. There is therefore no estoppel benefit to a defendant (no group of grounds is closed off to a past petitioner), and correspondingly no estoppel risk from a prior petitioner is available as a shield. Any invalidity position a defendant wants to run on the '070 patent — § 102/§ 103 over patents and printed publications, or § 112 — remains as available as it would be for any litigated patent, subject to district-court rules and the ordinary limits of the prior art.

Pattern signals. The absence of IPRs is itself the signal. This patent was heavily asserted between 2006 and 2015, across the ITC and two district courts, yet attracted no PTAB petition. Plausible reasons, in order of weight: (1) the AIA IPR regime did not exist until 2012-09-16, so the patent's peak assertion window (2006–2007) predated it; (2) by the 2015 SmileCareClub suit the patent had only ~4 years of term left, making an IPR a poor economic trade versus a district-court invalidity defense or settlement; (3) the ITC matter terminated on a consent order rather than producing a live, appealable validity fight that would have drawn a Board challenge. I found no evidence of a defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) in the chain — the Unified Patents entries that appear are citation pages, not litigation of the '070.

Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant facing an assertion of 6,602,070 today (2026): lead with expiration, not with PTAB history. The patent expired 2019-05-13. Post-expiration infringement is legally impossible, so the only exposure is past damages under the 35 U.S.C. § 286 six-year lookback. A complaint filed in 2026 reaches back only to 2020 — after expiration — leaving effectively no damages window unless an earlier-filed action already tolled it. An IPR would be a poor use of budget: the patent owner cannot amend (no live claims to narrow) and there is no injunctive leverage for either side. Confirm the expiration date and any PTA/terminal-disclaimer adjustments against the USPTO PatentCenter record before relying on it.
2. Verify the emptiness directly. Run the patent number through PTAB E2E (https://ptab.uspto.gov) and the PTAB "Proceedings" search, and cross-check the ODP structured output, to convert my "no activity" finding into a docket-confirmed statement suitable for a filing. The structured ODP block in this prompt is the baseline; nothing in my web searches contradicts it.
3. Confirm the claims beyond 27 before drafting any invalidity contentions. The ITC complaint shows claims 34–65 exist; obtain the full, verbatim claim set (USPTO PatentCenter / the printed patent) so that any § 112 or § 103 analysis addresses the actual independent claims, not just the method claim. Do not rely on the truncated 1–27 listing.
4. Mine the ITC and district-court record for prior art and admissions. Since the Board never developed a validity record, the richest invalidity material sits in ITC 337-TA-562 (consent-order record, expert reports) and N.D. Cal. 5:15-cv-04864 (SmileCareClub invalidity contentions). That is the practical substitute for what an IPR would have produced.
5. If you were hoping for a canceled-claim narrative: it does not exist for this patent. Do not represent to a court or an adversary that any claim of 6,602,070 has been invalidated by the PTAB — no such decision was ever issued.

Sources

• Google Patents, US6602070B2 (full text, litigation data, expiry 2019-05-13): https://patents.google.com/patent/US6602070/en
• FreePatentsOnline, US 6,602,070 (verbatim claim 1): https://www.freepatentsonline.com/6602070.html
• Federal Register, ITC complaint notice, Inv. No. 337-TA-562 (claim list incl. claims 34–56, 59–65 of the '070 patent), published 2006-02-15: https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/full_text/xml/2006/02/15/E6-2164.xml
• Align Technology Form 8-K (2006-08-10) re W.D. Wis. action and stay/dismissal: https://investor.aligntech.com/static-files/1c700b84-6ca7-495f-a112-3cc1de27de1d
• Align Technology press release (2015-10-22) listing the '070 among asserted patents (N.D. Cal. 5:15-cv-04864): https://investor.aligntech.com/news-releases/news-release-details/align-technology-files-patent-infringement-and-false-advertising?releaseid=[938030](/patent/938030)
• Martindale legal library summary of ITC 337-TA-562 enforcement opinion (2013-02-19, public version 2013-03-07): https://www.martindale.com/legal-news/article_oblon-mcclelland-maier-neustadt-llp_1692004.htm
• PTAB E2E (for direct confirmation of no proceedings): https://ptab.uspto.gov

I'll research the assignment record for US 6,602,070. Let me start with searches on the USPTO Assignment Center and cross-reference sources.

Let me search for the specific USPTO assignment records and Align Technology's ownership history.

Let me get the specific reel/frame data and check for any security interests or later transfers.

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — US 6,602,070 B2

Source-access caveat (read first): My access in this session is web search, not a direct credentialed query to the USPTO Assignment Center API/PEDS. I retrieved the Google Patents legal events view (which is populated from USPTO assignment records) and corroborating court/ITC/SEC-adjacent documents. I was unable to pull the raw reel/frame number for the one recorded assignment before hitting my tool-call limit. I flag that as a confirmed data gap below rather than inventing a reel/frame. Verify at the USPTO Assignment Center (search by patent number 6602070 or application 09/843,246).

Inventors

Addresses are taken from the PCT counterpart publication WO 01/80765 (PCT/US01/13218), which lists Align Technology, Inc., 851 Martin Avenue, Santa Clara, CA 95050-2903 as applicant — i.e., all three named inventors were filing in the Align corporate context, consistent with employee/founder invention-assignment obligations.

Unusual pattern — flagged: This is a reverse-direction inventor-departure signal and is the single most notable ownership fact about this patent. Two of the three inventors (Miller and Chishti) left the original assignee and became principals of OrthoClear, a direct competitor that Align later sued:

• Court records from the Align v. OrthoClear proceedings (San Francisco Superior Court CGC 05-438361 and N.D. Cal. C-05-3418) name "ROSS J. MILLER, an individual, and ROSS J. MILLER DDS, A Professional Dental Corporation" as defendants/counterclaimants.
• The 2006 Settlement Agreement and Consent Order (Inv. No. 337-TA-562) bears the signature "MUHAMMAD ZIAULLAH CHISHTI /s/ ZIA CHISHTI" alongside Ross J. Miller's entity.
• Huafeng Wen appears to have stayed with Align — he recurs as an inventor on later Align patents (e.g., US 7,384,266, assigned to Align Technology, Inc., Santa Clara).

So the "inventors departing within 12 months of filing" tell does not apply here; instead the departure happened years later and produced a competitor spin-out whose entire IP portfolio was forced back to Align by consent order. That is the opposite of a fire-sale precursor.

Original assignee

Align Technology, Inc. (original and current assignee).

• Primary line of business: clear-aligner orthodontics — the Invisalign system (aligners plus the ClinCheck/Treat treatment-planning software). The patent's own specification describes scanning patient teeth, digitally segmenting them, and generating staged treatment paths to fabricate a series of polymer aligners — i.e., the Invisalign workflow itself.
• Ships a product embodying the claims: Yes. In ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-833 the ALJ found Align made "significant investment in plant and equipment" in its California facility and significant employment of U.S. labor/capital tied to the Invisalign System. Align has repeatedly asserted this patent family to protect a commercial product line, not a licensing revenue stream.
• Current status: Operating, publicly traded (NASDAQ: ALGN). No bankruptcy, no dissolution, no acquisition. Align is a going concern with a large internal patent portfolio.

Assignment timeline

The record contains exactly one post-filing transfer event, and it is the standard inventor→company assignment. No post-issuance assignments, security agreements, mergers, or changes of name appear in the chain.

• Executed: not confirmed (USPTO lists only the recording date) / recorded 2001-07-16 — Reel/Frame: NOT RETRIEVED (data gap; see note below)
  • Conveyance: Assignment — "Assignment of Assignors' Interest"
  • Assignor: Ross J. Miller; Muhammad Chishti; Huafeng Wen
  • Assignee: Align Technology, Inc., 851/881 Martin Avenue, Santa Clara, CA 95050
  • Correspondent: Not confirmed for this recording. Align's patent prosecution/recording address of record across its portfolio has been two mainstream firms: Townsend and Townsend and Crew LLP (James M. Heslin), Two Embarcadero Center, Eighth Floor, San Francisco, CA 94111 (the correspondent on the PCT counterpart WO 01/80765) and later Wilson Sonsini Goodrich & Rosati (WSGR), 650 Page Mill Road, Palo Alto, CA 94304 (the address of record on later Align filings). Neither is an NPE/asserter filing service; both are large general-practice IP firms. Recurrence signal is N/A — there is only one link in the chain.
  • Context: Formation-stage invention assignment — founders/employees conveying rights to the startup operating company. This is the textbook non-NPE pattern.

Note on the missing reel/frame: Google Patents' legal-events tab shows the single 2001-07-16 reassignment to Align Technology, Inc. with assignors = the three inventors, but the indexed view I retrieved does not expose the reel/frame. Separately, I found an Align recording at Reel/Frame 013235/0606 in the file history of a different Align patent (US 7,156,661) — that reel/frame is NOT attributable to US 6,602,070 and I am not asserting it is. Do not cite 013235/0606 for this patent.

Because there are post-filing records, I am not stopping here (the "no records → stop" rule does not apply).

Related (non-assignment) family event worth noting: As part of the August/October 2006 OrthoClear settlement, OrthoClear assigned its entire intellectual property portfolio to Align (confirmed in Align Tech., Inc. v. ITC, 771 F.3d 1317 (Fed. Cir. 2014), and the ITC Consent Order). That transfer concerns OrthoClear's own patents, not the '070 patent (which was already Align's), but it is a genuine ownership-flow data point in this family and it runs toward the operating company.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6602070
    2001 : Filed by Align Technology 25 Apr
         : Inventors assign rights to Align
    2003 : Patent issued 5 Aug
    2006 : Align asserts 070 at the ITC
         : OrthoClear assigns its IP to Align
    2014 : CAFC reverses ITC in Align v ITC
    2019 : Patent expires 13 May

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Cross-check — patent was actually asserted: Yes, by the owner. In Inv. No. 337-TA-562 (instituted 2006-02-09), Align asserted the '070 patent against OrthoClear, along with U.S. Patents 6,318,994; 6,471,511; 6,722,880; and 6,227,850. The Consent Order (2006-11-13) prohibited importation of infringing aligners "until the expiration of the last to expire" of the asserted patents, expressly including 6,602,070.

⚠️ Contradiction to flag against the prior section

The previously generated summary states the claim set is claims 1–27 with claim 1 independent. The ITC institution notice for 337-TA-562 (Feb. 9, 2006) states Align asserted "claims 34-56 and 59-65 of U.S. Patent No. 6,602,070." If that notice is accurate, the patent contains at least 65 claims, not 27, and necessarily includes additional independent claims beyond claim 1. These two statements cannot both be correct. This should be reconciled against the granted claim listing (the claim text was truncated in the authoritative full-text fetch), because it materially affects the "single independent method claim" characterization used in the earlier summary.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Align Technology, Inc. is both the original and current assignee, with the sole recorded transfer being the founders'/employees' invention assignment to Align (recorded 2001-07-16); there is no post-issuance assignment, no security interest, and no change of name in the record. Align is a NASDAQ-listed operating company that ships the Invisalign product embodying the claims and asserted the '070 patent against a real competitor in ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-562. Every NPE/troll signal above resolves to not present; the only remarkable fact is a counter-signal — two inventors left to found a competitor whose IP was later assigned to Align by consent order.

Verification links: USPTO Assignment Center · Google Patents legal events — US6602070 · ITC 337-TA-562 institution notice · Align Tech. v. ITC, 771 F.3d 1317 (Fed. Cir. 2014).

I'll research the specific patent's citation record (front-page references and cited-by data), verify its claim structure, and resolve a contradiction I spotted between the two prior sections.

Let me pull the patent's front-page citation record directly from FreePatentsOnline and the USPTO full-text record, and verify the claim count.

I found the FPO claim listing (which shows at least 30 claims and resolves a contradiction). Now let me retrieve the front-page "References Cited" list precisely.

I hit the tool-call limit before I could pull the front page's verbatim "References Cited" block. Here is my analysis from the authoritative full text plus the searches that did return.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 6,602,070 (application 09/843,246)

0. Identifier check (no auto-correction)

The number searched, 6602070, maps literally to US 6,602,070 B2, "Systems and methods for dental treatment planning," application US 09/843,246, filed 2001-04-25, granted 2003-08-05, priority 1999-05-13, Align Technology, Inc. I found no similarly-numbered patent in the results other than unrelated chemistry/genomics hits (e.g., "Chr3:6602070–6602295" in a plant-genomics supplementary file, and "15/660,207" US application serial numbers) — those are false positives and are excluded.

1. CONTRADICTION FLAGGED — claim structure (do not skip)

The earlier Patent summary section stated that claim 1 is the sole independent claim, that claims 2–27 depend from it, and that "I could not authoritatively confirm whether additional independent claims … exist beyond claim 27."

That is contradicted by the record. The FreePatentsOnline claim listing I retrieved shows claim 30 ("The method of claim 1, further comprising dividing a path for one or more teeth into the series …") — i.e., the claim set runs well past claim 27 — and the previously generated Litigation summary reports that Align asserted "claims 34–56 and 59–65 of U.S. Patent No. 6,602,070" in ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-562. A claim set reaching claim 65, asserted in two non-contiguous blocks (34–56 and 59–65), strongly implies at least two additional independent claims (around claim 34 and around claim 59), not the single independent claim 1 the earlier summary asserted.

Per the operating rule, I flag this rather than repeat it. Practical consequence for this task: a § 102 mapping must eventually cover those independent claims too, and I have not retrieved their text. I therefore confine my § 102 mapping below to claim 1 and the dependent claims I can read (claims 2–30), and I explicitly do not assert what claims 31–65 require.

2. What I could and could not verify

• Verified from the authoritative full text (provided): the body's "Description of the Background Art," which lists the applicant's cited technical references, and the several incorporations by reference (related Align applications and the SIGGRAPH article).
• NOT retrieved verbatim: the front-page "References Cited" block (the printed "U.S. Patent Documents / Foreign Patent Documents / Other Publications" lists) and the full claims 31–65. My searches returned the Google Patents and FPO pages but the citation block itself did not render in the results. I will not reconstruct that block from memory — to do so would risk fabricating dates/citations. The list in §3 below is drawn from citations literally present in the '070 specification text, which is a reliable subset of what the examiner/applicant cited but may not equal the printed front-page list.

3. Patent citations appearing in the '070 specification

The specification groups these as "Other patents of interest," "Description of the Background Art," and express incorporations by reference. Descriptions are the patent's own characterizations where given. Dates marked ✱ are from search snippets/uncertain; unmarked dates are my best-confidence dates and should be re-verified against the printed front page.

Note on US 09/313,289 → US 6,318,994: because the '070 patent is a continuation-in-part claiming priority from that application, the '994 patent shares the '070 priority date and cannot be § 102 prior art against '070 for common-subject matter. The earlier Patent summary correctly identified the 09/313,289→6,318,994 link; I'm reinforcing it here so it is not mistakenly listed as anticipating art.

4. Non-patent literature cited (all § 102/§ 103-capable printed publications)

5. Bottom line on § 102

Reading the record I could actually verify:

1. No single cited reference appears to be a clean § 102 anticipation of independent claim 1. Claim 1 requires the concurrence of (a) specifying tooth movement patterns using a two-dimensional array and (b) generating treatment paths in which generating comprises generating more than one candidate treatment path for each tooth and providing a graphical display of each candidate treatment path to a human user for selection. The cited art divides cleanly into (i) positioner-manufacture references, (ii) scanning/milling references, and (iii) digital tooth-contour-manipulation references (Ormco, Andersson). None of them, as characterized, discloses the tooth-×-stage array combined with multiple user-selectable candidate paths.
2. Best § 102 candidates (worth full-text pulls of the printed front page and the references themselves): US 5,607,305 and US 5,587,912 (Andersson, digital manipulation/organizing of tooth models) — for the rendering/animation and model-manipulation dependent claims; and Gottschalk et al. (SIGGRAPH 1996) — for the collision-detection claims (21, 27), since the specification incorporates it as the operative algorithm.
3. Best § 103 combination candidates for claim 1: the Ormco digital-manipulation family (US 5,139,419; 5,368,478; 5,395,238; 5,431,562; 5,447,432; 5,454,717; 5,474,448; 5,533,895) in view of a dental-staging reference (US 5,607,305 / Warunek et al. 1989).
4. Do not cite as prior art: US 09/313,289 / US 6,318,994 (same priority, family) and the other expressly-incorporated Align applications share the '070 priority chain.

6. Explicit gaps (stated, not guessed)

• Not retrieved: the printed front-page "References Cited" lists (U.S. Patent Documents / Foreign / Other Publications) and the complete claim set (claims 31–65). My searches surfaced the Google Patents and FPO pages but the citation block did not render. I have therefore not enumerated the front-page list and did not invent dates for it.
• Consequent limitation: if you want a defensible anticipation chart, the next steps are (a) pull the OCR'd front page from the USPTO PatentCenter/patentimages PDF for 6,602,070 to get the verbatim reference list with examiner strike-throughs, and (b) pull claims 34 and 59 (the probable additional independent claims per the ITC assertion of claims 34–56 and 59–65) so the § 102 mapping can cover them.

Sources relied on: the authoritative full text you supplied (patents.google.com/patent/US6602070/en); the FPO claim listing (freepatentsonline.com/6602070.html); Google Patents' family/litigation panel; and the Unified Patents snippet confirming US 3,860,803 = Diecomp, "Automatic Method and Apparatus for Fabricating Progressive Dies."

I'll verify the content of the key §103 candidate references before building the combinations, since the earlier Prior Art section flagged that their full text was never pulled.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 6,602,070 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Builds on: the prior Patent summary, Litigation, PTAB, Assignment and Prior Art sections. I do not repeat their content. Where I depart from them, I flag it.

Two housekeeping notes before the analysis:

1. Date discrepancy (flagged, not corrected). This task header states Current Date: April 26, 2026. The full-text fetch header used in the Prior Art section states Fetched: 2026-09-29. I treat April 26, 2026 as the operative date for this task and note the conflict rather than resolving it.
2. Claim-scope contradiction (already flagged upstream — cross-referenced, not repeated). The Prior Art section correctly flagged that the earlier Patent summary claim of "claims 1–27, single independent claim" cannot be reconciled with the ITC assertion of claims 34–56 and 59–65. Consequently, this §103 analysis is written against claim 1 and the dependent claims 2–30, whose text I can read. I do not opine on claims 31–65, whose text has not been retrieved. Any §103 conclusion that omits the probable independent claims near 34 and 59 is provisional by construction.

1. Governing law and its consequences here

2. Level of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

For a 1999–2001 priority date, the PHOSITA is a person with a bachelor's degree in mechanical/electrical/computer engineering or computer science plus 2–4 years of experience in three-dimensional dental CAD or computer-aided orthodontic treatment planning, or a D.D.S./D.M.D. with orthodontic training plus working familiarity with 3D modeling software. That person is charged with knowledge of: (a) orthodontic tooth movement biology and safe movement limits, (b) the Kesling/Warunek positioner art, (c) polygonal mesh modeling, quaternion interpolation, and spline fitting, and (d) collision/interference detection in CAD. This is the level the PTAB record itself supports — in IPR2016-00270, Patent Owner's own expert asserted that "3D digital images of teeth were not even commonly used by practicing orthodontists" in 1997, which cuts against a high skill level being imputed but does not negate the CAD-engineer-plus-orthodontist team that the claims actually implicate.

3. Claim 1 decomposed into elements

Claim 1 verbatim (from FreePatentsOnline, as reported in the PTAB section):

"A computer-implemented method to implement a treatment plan, the method comprising: specifying tooth movement patterns using a two-dimensional array; and generating treatment paths to move the teeth in accordance with a specified pattern, wherein generating treatment paths comprises generating more than one candidate treatment path for each tooth and providing a graphical display of each candidate treatment path to a human user for selection."

Practical conclusion up front: any defensible §103 attack has to reach 1D+1E. Element 1B alone is likely insufficient because a data structure is a predictable design choice (MPEP 2143(B), "simple substitution of one known element"), but 1D/1E require a reference or combination actually presenting alternative per-tooth paths to a clinician for selection.

4. The prior-art corpus available for combination

Tier 1 — verified in the '070 specification itself (§ 102(b)/(a) art unless flagged):

• US 6,318,994 (parent 09/313,289) — not art: same priority, family member.
• US 5,607,305 A, Andersson et al., Mar. 4, 1997 ("System for organizing dental aligners") — existence, date and inventor confirmed via Justia's reference list; also cited as a reference in Align's own later patents (e.g., US 10,022,204). Title/characterization is carried over from the Prior Art section and is not independently verified here.
• US 5,587,912 A, Andersson et al., Dec. 24, 1996, Nobelpharma AB — "Computer aided processing of three-dimensional object and apparatus therefor." Title/assignee/date confirmed in this session.
• US 5,533,895 A, Andreiko et al., Jul. 1996 — existence/date confirmed; Ormco family.
• US 5,139,419; 5,368,478; 5,395,238; 5,431,562; 5,447,432; 5,454,717; 5,474,448 — Ormco digital-manipulation family (per Prior Art section).
• US 5,011,405 (Lemchen) — digital imaging + optimum bracket positioning.
• Gottschalk, Lin & Manocha, "OBBTree," SIGGRAPH 1996 — expressly incorporated by reference into the '070 specification as the collision algorithm actually used. This is the single most dangerous reference in Tier 1: it is admitted art for element 1C's collision sub-steps and for the collision-dependent dependent claims.
• Kesling, Am. J. Orthod. Oral Surg. 31:297–304 (1945), 32:285–293 (1946) and Warunek et al., J. Clin. Orthod. 23:694–700 (1989) — staged/sequential positioner therapy.

Tier 2 — newly surfaced in this session, not in the Prior Art section (flagged as new; full text not verified):

• Sachdeva, "Method and Apparatus for Simulating Tooth Movement for an Orthodontic Patient" — quoted in a 2025 ClearCorrect IPR petition (Ex. 1007): "On a tooth-by-tooth basis, a three-dimensional direct path of movement is determined from an actual tooth position in relation to a desired tooth position… A determination is made whether a conflict in movement arises between teeth during the simulation… If a conflict arises, it is resolved by selecting a priority tooth… and the simulation is adjusted…" Source: ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1557671/...
• Snow (cited as Ex. 1003 in IPR2016-00270, ClearCorrect v. Align, re US 6,699,037) — "a mapping from the position of each individual tooth in the 3D individualised model to the corresponding position of the tooth in the 3D standard model is determined by means of a series of interpolation steps between the two models, with the distance between interpolation steps being preferably a user defined parameter… The computer system is then programmed to 'animate' the movement of teeth… through the series of steps from one model to the next model, rendering each step in turn for the specialist or patient to view." Source: Docket Alarm, IPR2016-00270 Patent Owner demonstrative exhibits.
• US 5,278,756 A, Lemchen et al., Jan. 1994 — existence confirmed (cited in US 10,022,204). Disclosure not verified; do not rely on it until pulled.
• Kesling patent (filed July 23, 1943), quoted in the IPR2016-00270 record as teaching: generating a plaster model → sectioning teeth → resetting in desired positions → generating a new model → forming a tray used to make the removable positioner.

Explicitly not art: WO 2006/050452 A2 and US 2006/0097422 A1 surfaced in my search and both teach the "generate several candidate models → clinician reviews → selects one" paradigm — but both post-date the '070 filing and cannot be cited. I note them only because that paradigm is exactly what limitation 1D/1E needs, and it is worth running a pre-2001 search for the same teaching.

5. Proposed § 103 grounds

Ground 1 — Andersson '305 + Ormco/Andreiko + Warunek/Kesling + Gottschalk (broad-method attack)

Assessment: Ground 1 is a credible § 103 rejection of the dependent claims (staging, collision, appliance-per-stage, 3D-model-per-stage) and a weak-to-marginal rejection of claim 1. It fails on 1D/1E.

Ground 2 — Sachdeva + Snow + Kesling/Warunek (+ Gottschalk) — the strongest ground against claim 1

This is the combination I would actually run:

• Sachdeva supplies 1C and its per-tooth granularity: a tooth-by-tooth three-dimensional direct path derived from actual vs. desired tooth positions, plus conflict determination and resolution — functionally the '070's FIG. 5 "push vector"/"bounce," arrived at independently.
• Snow supplies 1A/1C/1E's display layer: interpolated multi-step tooth paths with a user-defined number of steps, animated and "render[ed] each step in turn for the specialist or patient to view."
• Warunek 1989 / Kesling supply the orthodontic motivation to stage movement across a series of appliances rather than one jump.

Motivation to combine (this is the heart of the ground): Both Sachdeva and Snow are in the same field (computer simulation of orthodontic tooth movement for treatment planning) and address the same problem the '070 identifies — that unaided clinicians cannot see, validate, or intervene in a proposed multi-stage movement. A POSITA combining a tooth-by-tooth path simulator (Sachdeva) with a step-wise visual renderer (Snow) would be doing no more than "arranging old elements with each performing the same function it had been known to perform" — the third KSR illustration — to arrive at a clinician-reviewable, stage-indexed treatment plan. Rendering each stage is the KSR "predictable variation" of rendering one: if one interpolated step is useful to show, showing the sequence, and letting the clinician set the step count (Snow's express "user defined parameter"), is routine.

Where Ground 2 still strains: Snow renders the path for each tooth; it does not expressly render "more than one candidate treatment path for each tooth" and invite selection among them. The gap is narrow but real. Two ways to close it:

1. A pre-2001 reference teaching plural treatment options selected by a clinician. My search surfaced this paradigm only in post-2001 documents (WO 2006/050452 A2; US 2006/0097422 A1) — not usable, but strong evidence the search should be re-run with a 2001 cut-off (keywords: "alternative treatment plan," "plurality of treatment options," "clinician selects," virtual articulator planning UIs).
2. Recharacterization under KSR: "generating more than one candidate" is a search-mode limitation (the '070 spec itself calls it a "stochastic search technique"). Where the art teaches a user-defined parameter governing the number of generated steps (Snow) and a conflict-driven re-planning loop (Sachdeva), generating several alternatives and letting the user pick is the predictable, design-choice-level extension. This argument is serviceable but is the weakest link and should be corroborated with art rather than asserted.

Ground 3 — Lemchen '405 / Ormco + Snow (+ conventional CG practice) for the GUI and rendering dependent claims

Covers the 3D-graphical-representation, animation, VCR-style control, level-of-detail, tooth-selection-and-information-display, and orthodontic-viewing-angle claims. Rationale: MPEP 2143(D) — applying a known technique (interactive 3D CAD visualization) to a known device ready for improvement (a digital dentition model); MPEP 2143(F) — design incentive/consumer demand for clinician review of aligner plans; MPEP 2143(G) — In re Harza / In re Kuhle: animation-control conventions (VCR buttons) and viewing presets are design choices with no unexpected result. A level-of-detail compression claim is met by any reference teaching LOD in 3D rendering, which is squarely conventional computer graphics.

One caveat worth stating: the "3D gyroscopic input device" claim is a hardware limitation and may survive these grounds absent an explicit mouse-alternative-input reference. Do not assume it falls.

6. § 103 mapping of the readable dependent claims (2–30)

Reading this table as a whole: the dependent claims are, in my assessment, materially more vulnerable than claim 1, and the range claims (rotation/translation per stage) are the most vulnerable of all.

7. The gap I want to state plainly

Limitations 1D and 1E ("more than one candidate treatment path for each tooth" + "graphical display … for selection") are the reason this patent is hard to invalidate on the art I can verify. Everything else in the '070 claim set is either conventional dental practice, conventional CAD, or an algorithm the applicant adopted and incorporated by reference (Gottschalk). The patent's defensible monopoly sits almost entirely in a user-interaction/workflow limitation: show the clinician several per-tooth route options and let the clinician choose.

That characterization also supplies a coherent, non-speculative explanation for the PTAB section's finding that no IPR was ever filed against the '070 patent even during 2006–2015: an invalidity case that reaches only the dependent claims and the range claims leaves the independent claim standing, and the '070 was already near the end of its term by the time the AIA IPR regime existed (Sept. 16, 2012) — an unattractive spend. I present that as a hypothesis, not a finding.

8. Anticipated patent-owner rebuttals, and how they fare

9. Two filters that will kill otherwise-good grounds (do not skip)

(a) Pre-AIA § 103(c) — common ownership disqualifies Align's own 102(e) art.
U.S. Pat. No. 6,318,994 (the parent), the '034 and '036 applications expressly incorporated by reference into the '070 spec, and Align's other pre-2001 filings (e.g., the '511 family) are commonly owned by Align Technology, Inc. Because the '070 was filed 2001-04-25 — after the 1999-11-29 effective date of the AIPA amendment extending § 103(c) to § 102(e) art — that art qualifies as prior art only under § 102(e)/(f)/(g) and is therefore excluded from use in a § 103 combination under pre-AIA § 103(c)(1). Any invalidity contention that stacks Align's own earlier applications as § 103 art is defective on its face. (The assignment section's emphasis on Align as sole owner is directly relevant here.)

(b) The CIP priority trap — the challenger's best friend.
The '070 is a continuation-in-part of 09/313,289 (priority 1999-05-13) and also claims provisional 60/199,610 (2000-04-25). Claim-by-claim, the effective filing date is only the 1999-05-13 date for subject matter actually disclosed in the parent. If the two-dimensional array and the candidate-path-display subject matter were added as new matter in the 2001 CIP, then for the claim(s) reciting those elements the effective date shifts to 2001-04-25 (or 2000-04-25 at best), which:

• converts Snow (and any 1999–2000 publication) from § 102(a) art into § 102(b) art, and
• opens the window to a large body of 1999–2001 published art that is invisible as of the 1999 date.

Given that the asserted independent claims (34 and 59, unread) may recite yet different subject matter, a claim-by-claim priority determination against the 09/313,289 and 60/199,610 disclosures is the highest-value next step in the entire analysis.

10. Bottom line

1. Claim 1 is not clearly obvious on the art I can presently verify. Limitations 1D and 1E — generating more than one candidate treatment path per tooth and graphically displaying each for user selection — defeat every combination I can build from the Tier-1 record. My strongest claim-1 ground (Ground 2: Sachdeva + Snow + Warunek/Kesling) reaches elements 1A–1C squarely and reaches 1D/1E only by a KSR predictable-variation argument that I would want corroborated by a pre-2001 reference disclosing clinician selection among alternative treatment plans.
2. The dependent claims are the real target, and the range claims are the softest. The rotation (5–10°/stage) and translation (0.2–0.4 mm/stage) claims encompass the applicant's own stated clinical norms (0.25–0.33 mm; 5–10°; 0.5 mm aligner limit) and fall to In re Aller/In re Peterson. The collision claims fall to Gottschalk (SIGGRAPH 1996), which the specification incorporates by reference as the algorithm it uses. The staging/appliance-per-stage claims fall to Kesling ('430s patent; 1945/46 papers) and Warunek 1989.
3. Every ground must be screened against pre-AIA § 103(c). Align's own earlier, commonly owned applications cannot be used in a § 103 combination. This is a fatal defect if ignored.
4. The priority-date determination is the single highest-leverage move. If array/candidate-path matter is CIP-only, the effective date moves to 2000/2001 and a whole new art window opens for exactly the limitations that currently block claim 1.

Recommended next steps (in priority order)

1. Pull claims 31–65 verbatim (USPTO PatentCenter / printed patent) — the asserted independent claims near 34 and 59 are unanalyzed here and may be far weaker than claim 1.
2. Map the '070 claims onto 09/313,289 and 60/199,610 to fix the effective date claim-by-claim.
3. Retrieve full texts of Andersson '305 and '912, the Ormco '419/'478 family, Lemchen '405 and '756, and Sachdeva — the Prior Art section flagged that these were characterized but never pulled. No chart should be filed on characterizations alone.
4. Run a pre-2001 search specifically for "plurality of candidate/alternative treatment plans presented for clinician selection." This is the missing limitation. Sources worth mining: the ITC 337-TA-562 record, the N.D. Cal. 5:15-cv-04864 invalidity contentions, the W.D. Wis. Align v. OrthoClear papers, and 1990s CAD/VR surgical-planning literature.
5. Do not cite US 6,318,994, 09/169,034, 09/169,036, or any commonly owned Align filing in a § 103 combination (§ 103(c)).

Sources relied on in this section

• Google Patents, US6602070B2 (full text): https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6602070](/patent/US6602070)/en
• FreePatentsOnline, US 6,602,070 (claim 1 verbatim, per the PTAB section): https://www.freepatentsonline.com/6602070.html
• Justia Patents — confirmation of 5,607,305 / Mar. 4, 1997 / Andersson et al. in Align's own citation lists: https://patents.justia.com/patent/[7819659](/patent/7819659)
• Google Patents citation record — confirmation of US 5,587,912 A, Dec. 24, 1996, Nobelpharma Ab, Andersson: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US10835349B2](/patent/US10835349B2)/en
• Confirmation of US 5,533,895 A (Jul. 1996, Andreiko et al.) and US 5,587,912 A as cited references: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/73/c2/2a/9e43583eafe34f/[US10722332](/patent/US10722332).pdf
• ClearCorrect IPR petition quoting Sachdeva, "Method and Apparatus for Simulating Tooth Movement for an Orthodontic Patient" (Ex. 1007): https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1557671](/patent/1557671)/download-documents?artifactId=BwlmOVVWn7Rcyq9iGchpukF5QR3b4J4TCavLBFBl6tFT9dfVp6FjEEE
• IPR2016-00270 (ClearCorrect v. Align, re US 6,699,037) — Patent Owner demonstratives quoting Snow (Ex. 1003) and Kesling: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2016-00270/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._6699037/docs/01-30-2017-Patent_Owner/Other_Not_for_motions-40-Patent_Owners_Demonstrative_Exhibits.pdf

Verification caveat: Sachdeva's and Snow's patent/publication numbers remain unidentified in this session; I cite them by title and by the exhibit designations in the PTAB record, and I have not assigned them a number I have not seen.