US 7056666

I'll search for this specific patent number and any litigation/docket activity.

Let me pull the claim language and check for any 2026 Federal Circuit activity.

US 7,056,666 B2 — Verified Record

Verification note on the number: I searched literally for 7056666. All authoritative sources I retrieved (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, Justia) resolve it to US 7,056,666 B2. No similarly-numbered patent was substituted. I did not auto-correct any identifier below.

1. Bibliographic data (confirmed by two or more sources)

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7056666/en ; https://FreePatentsOnline.com/7056666.html ; https://companyprofiles.justia.com/company/affymetrix/patents/patent?page=15

2. Abstract (verbatim, as published)

"Means for simultaneous parallel sequence analysis of a large number of biological polymer macromolecules. Apparatus and methods may use fluorescent labels in repetitive chemistry to determine terminal manomers on solid phase immobilized polymers. Reagents which specifically recognize terminal manomers are used to label polymers at defined positions on a solid substrate."

Caveat: the words "manomers" (twice) appear to be an OCR/typographical artifact in the retrieved source (evidently "monomers"). Google Patents' own machine gloss of the abstract reads "Labeling a terminal monomer and scanning to determine the position; can analyze hundreds of macromolecules simultaneously." I have not silently corrected the quoted text.

3. Independent claims — explicit uncertainty flag

I was unable to retrieve the verbatim issued claim set of US 7,056,666 within this session (the Google Patents page I fetched supplied the description but truncated before the claims; my claim-specific searches returned the pre-grant publications and the parent patents, not the '666 claims). I therefore cannot state the exact independent-claim language or claim count, and I will not reconstruct it.

What I can ground is the category of subject matter, taken from the patent's own "Definitions"/summary passages:

• Methods for determining the positions of polymers (attached at positionally distinct locations on a surface) that terminate with a given monomer — i.e., label the terminal monomer, scan the array, then remove a unit and re-scan to infer identity by loss of signal.
• Methods for concurrently determining which subset of positionally distinct immobilized polymers terminates with a given terminal subunit.
• Methods for determining which subset of a plurality of primer polynucleotides contains a predetermined oligonucleotide, where the primers are complementary to distinctly positioned, substrate-attached template strands.
• Methods for concurrently obtaining sequence information on a plurality of polynucleotides using a single label detector.
• Methods for sequencing a plurality of distinctly positioned polynucleotides attached to a solid substrate, including the synthetic (polymerase/primer-extension) mode with reversibly blocked, labeled nucleotide analogs.

Plain-language overview of the core invention: the patent teaches putting many different polymer molecules — chiefly DNA — at known, separate coordinates on a solid surface, then running one batch of chemistry across the whole surface per cycle, imaging the surface between cycles with a sensitive fluorescence scanner, and deducing each spot's sequence from how its signal changes cycle to cycle. Two variants are claimed/described: a degradative scheme (uniformly label the exposed terminus, scan, then specifically or non-specifically cleave one labeled unit) and a synthetic scheme (extend a primer by one labeled, reversibly blocked nucleotide per cycle, scan, then unblock and repeat). This is the foundational description of what the field now calls sequencing-by-extension on an array.

If verbatim claim text is required for your purpose, it must be pulled from USPTO PatentCenter / Patent Public Search for application 10/077,070 — I am not able to confirm it from the sources retrieved here.

4. Family and provenance (from Google Patents)

• § 63 continuation lineage: the '666 application descends from Ser. No. 07/626,730, filed Dec. 6, 1990, which was a CIP of Ser. No. 07/492,462 (filed Mar. 7, 1990, now US 5,143,854) which was a CIP of Ser. No. 07/362,901 (filed Jun. 7, 1989, abandoned).
• Related family members named in the record: US 5,547,839 (Dower et al., Aug. 20, 1996 — same Dower/Fodor inventors, titled "Sequencing of surface immobilized polymers utilizing microfluorescence detection"); US 5,902,723 (Dower et al., May 11, 1999 — same title as the '666 patent); later continuations US 7,329,496 and US 7,459,275, plus publications US 2005/0148002 A1 and US 2009/0137419 A1.
• Assignments: security agreement to General Electric Capital Corporation as agent (Dec. 27, 2012), released/terminated Nov. 13, 2015.

5. Litigation and 2026 docket search

Google Patents flags this family as having litigation, pointing to:

• D. Del. Case No. 1:07-cv-00670 — Affymetrix, Inc. v. Illumina, Inc., filed October 24, 2007, Judge unassigned (Wilmington), nature of suit "Patent," 35 U.S.C. § 271, jury demanded by plaintiff. Docket: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/delaware/dedce/1:2007cv00670/39114 — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Delaware%20District%20Court/case/1%3A07-cv-00670
• The broader Affymetrix–Illumina Delaware litigation (originating from a July 26, 2004 complaint) produced a March 2007 jury verdict of infringement on five Affymetrix patents and a $16.7M royalty award; the later 1:07-cv-00670 action is the case Google Patents ties to this family.
• Related earlier D. Del. matter: Affymetrix, Inc. v. PE Corp. (NY) (inequitable-conduct/misuse pleadings).

On the specific request for CAFC 2026 dockets involving 7,056,666: my searches surfaced no 2026 Federal Circuit docket, appeal, petition, or IPR/appeal activity naming US 7,056,666. The 2026 Federal Circuit materials returned (e.g., Spero v. Mercedes-Benz USA, Nos. 25‑1470; ASSA ABLOY v. CPC Patent Technologies, Nos. 25‑1078/1079/1080; the Gibson Dunn July 2026 update) involve unrelated patents and parties. This is a negative result from a bounded search, not proof of absence — I did not have access to PACER or the CAFC's own docket system for a definitive 2026 query, and the patent's expired status makes fresh 2026 appellate activity unlikely but not impossible (e.g., a lingering damages/enforcement appeal).

6. Explicit uncertainties

1. Verbatim claims and claim count for US 7,056,666: NOT verified here. Section 3 is derived from the specification's summary passages, not from the issued claims.
2. The abstract quote's "manomers" is reproduced as-found; the source appears to contain a typographical error.
3. I did not query USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Public Search directly — bibliographic data comes from Google Patents (the authoritative full text supplied), FreePatentsOnline, and Justia, which agree with each other.
4. The "family has litigation" flag on Google Patents attributes the D. Del. 2007 case to this family; I could not confirm from the retrieved materials which specific patent numbers were asserted in 1:07-cv-00670. The publicly reported 2007–2008 Affymetrix/Illumina verdict concerned five Affymetrix patents, and the '666 patent's own enforcement history post‑2006 is not established by anything I retrieved.

I'll search for litigation involving US 7,056,666 specifically.

Let me search the litigation databases specifically for this patent number.

Let me dig into the specific Delaware case and search patent dockets directly.

Summary of findings

Bottom line: I was able to identify only one litigation reference tied to US 7,056,666 by the patent record itself, and I could not independently corroborate its parties or outcome. I found no PTAB/IPR proceedings on this patent. I also want to flag that several searches returned false positives for different patents ending in "666" (e.g., 7,634,666, 5,570,666, 5,803,666) and for unrelated "'066"/"'666" patents — none of those are US 7,056,666, and I have excluded them.

What the patent record itself reports

The Google Patents record for US 7,056,666 (fetched 2026‑09‑27) carries a "Family has litigation" flag pointing to a US case filed in the District of Delaware, case number 1:07‑cv‑00670:

• URL: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/Delaware%20District%20Court/case/1%3A07-cv-00670
• Source labeled "District Court / Unified Patents Litigation Data."

It also carries a Darts‑IP link for "first worldwide family litigation" (family ID 24511591): https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=24511591...

Important caveats I must be explicit about:

1. The Unified Patents link is attached to the patent family, not necessarily to US 7,056,666 in its own right. The family includes earlier members (e.g., US 5,902,723).
2. The docket number 1:07‑cv‑00670 establishes only that a case was filed in 2007 in D. Del. I could not confirm from the search results the plaintiff, the defendant, which patents were asserted, or the outcome.
3. I was unable to verify that US 7,056,666 was actually asserted in that case.

So, on the strict record: one known litigation reference (D. Del. 1:07‑cv‑00670, filed 2007), parties and outcome unconfirmed.

The closest contextual litigation (NOT confirmed to involve 7,056,666)

Affymetrix, the assignee of 7,056,666, was in a well-documented multi-front patent war with Illumina over array technology:

• Affymetrix v. Illumina, U.S. District Court for the District of Delaware, plus parallel actions in the Regional Court, Düsseldorf, Germany and the High Court of Justice (Chancery Division, Patents Court), London — with the US action dating back to 2004. (GenomeWeb, IBO, Law.com)
• March 13, 2007 jury verdict (D. Del., Judge Joseph Farnan): jury found Illumina infringed (and induced infringement of) claims of five Affymetrix patents; royalty rate 15%; damages ~$16.7 million for 2002–2005. (IBO 3/15/07; GenomeWeb; Law.com)
• October 2007: Affymetrix filed a further round of suits against Illumina in the US, UK, and Germany. (IBO 10/31/07; Law.com)
• January 10, 2008 settlement: Illumina paid $90 million one-time, without admitting liability; all suits dismissed with prejudice; perpetual covenant not to sue on Illumina's current products plus a four-year covenant covering future technology (excluding photolithography). (GenomeWeb; BioSpace; IBO; Law.com)
• Appeal: Illumina, Inc. v. Affymetrix, Inc., Fed. Cir. — AFFIRMED under Fed. Cir. R. 36 (CourtListener, opinion 8467597).
• Related later case (different patents — Illumina's own): Illumina, Inc. v. Affymetrix, Inc., W.D. Wis., No. 3:09‑cv‑00277 (Judge Barbara Crabb) — summary judgment of noninfringement for Affymetrix on US 7,510,841 and US 7,612,020; Affymetrix's invalidity counterclaims dismissed without prejudice.

Critical limitation: the reported asserted patents in the 2004/2007 Affymetrix–Illumina campaign are described as five or six Affymetrix patents, and my search results surfaced only other numbers (e.g., '432, '531, '365, '243 designations in a Duke case study; 7,510,841 and 7,612,020 belong to Illumina). None of my search results expressly identified US 7,056,666 as one of the asserted patents. Given that 7,056,666 issued June 6, 2006 — after the 2004 complaint — it could only have entered that case by amendment or in the October 2007 round. That is a plausible fit for the D. Del. 2007 filing flagged in the patent record, but I cannot confirm it, and I will not guess.

PTAB / post-grant proceedings

I found no IPR, PGR, CBM, or reexamination proceeding naming US 7,056,666 in the results retrieved. (Searches returned unrelated IPRs — e.g., IPR2016‑01049 on US 5,570,666, and various Unified Patents IPRs — which are not this patent and are excluded.)

Prosecution-history-adjacent items (not litigation)

Two ex parte reexamination requests appear in the prior-art/related-documents listing of a citing patent (US 8,088,575):

• U.S. Appl. No. 90/008,149, filed Aug. 4, 2006 (Gitten)
• U.S. Appl. No. 90/008,152, filed Aug. 3, 2006 (Gitten)

These are listed generically in a reference list on a different patent's page, so I cannot confirm they were directed at 7,056,666. Treat as unverified.

Status of the patent itself

Per the record: priority date 1990‑12‑06; filed 2002‑02‑14; granted 2006‑06‑06; anticipated expiration 2010‑12‑06; legal status "Expired – Fee Related." Because it expired in 2010, it cannot be asserted in any current litigation; any infringement action would have had to be filed before expiration (with §286 six-year damages lookback considerations).

What I could not determine (stated explicitly rather than guessed)

• Plaintiff(s) and defendant(s) in D. Del. 1:07‑cv‑00670 — unknown.
• Whether US 7,056,666 was asserted in that case or in any other case — unconfirmed.
• Case number and details of the 2004 Delaware Affymetrix–Illumina action — not retrieved.
• Current status/outcome of 1:07‑cv‑00670 — unknown; the 2008 Affymetrix–Illumina global settlement is the most likely resolution if that docket is part of that campaign, but this is inference, not confirmed.

Recommended next steps to close the gaps: query PACER directly for D. Del. 1:07‑cv‑00670; check the Unified Patents litigation portal case page; check Darts‑IP family 24511591; and run a patent-number-specific assertion search on CourtListener/RECAP and Lex Machina restricted to the exact string "7,056,666."

I'll start by checking the structured PTAB data against what web sources show for this patent number.

No IPR hits yet. Let me dig more specifically via PTAB portals and litigation data.

Let me check for reexaminations, litigation outcomes, and any Federal Circuit activity involving this patent family.

PTAB proceedings on file — US 7,056,666 ("Analysis of surface immobilized polymers utilizing microfluorescence detection," Dower & Fodor, Affymetrix)

Canonical source for this section is the structured USPTO Open Data Portal block supplied with this prompt. I ran additional independent searches (PTAB/PTACTS, PTAB decision text, litigation reporting, and patent-record aggregators) to see whether any older or newly-filed AIA trial had been missed by the ODP ingest. Nothing surfaced. Do not infer any proceeding number from this memo — there are none to cite.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 7,056,666: 0 (zero). Breakdown: 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. The patent's defensive posture today is therefore not the product of PTAB hardening — it is the product of expiry and litigation history: the '666 patent was asserted against Illumina in Delaware in 2007 (D. Del. No. 1:07-cv-00670), its anticipated expiration date is 2010-12-06, and Google Patents lists its legal status as "Expired – Fee Related." The practical consequence for a defendant is that AIA trial practice was never available against this patent while it was in force: IPR/CBM petitions only became available 2012-09-16, and PGR only for patents with effective filing dates on or after 2013-03-16 — this patent claims priority to 1990-12-06. If a demand letter cites US 7,056,666 today, the primary attack is not an IPR but the patent's expired term, the § 286 six-year damages lookback, and § 287 marking / laches. No PTAB estoppel exists against anyone (§ 315(e)(2) is inapplicable when there has been no IPR/PGR), which means the entire prior-art field remains open in litigation.

No proceedings to itemize

Because the count is zero, there is no claims-invalidated proceeding to place at the top of the list, no FWD to quote, no panel to name, and no Federal Circuit appeal of an FWD. I am not going to manufacture a docket. What follows is the adjacent record that a defendant actually needs, clearly labelled as non-AIA activity.

Related (NON-AIA) matter — Affymetrix, Inc. v. Illumina, Inc., D. Del. No. 1:07-cv-00670-JJF

• Type: District court patent infringement action — not an IPR, PGR, or CBM, and therefore outside the "PTAB proceedings on file" count.
• Filed: 2007-10-24 (patent/trademark report to the Commissioner filed 2007-10-24; complaint asserts five US patents: 5,902,723; 6,403,320; 6,420,169; 6,576,424; and 7,056,666). Source: Unified Patents litigation record for 1:07-cv-00670; patent report form; GenomeWeb report.
• Status: Unknown / not established from the sources retrieved. I could not confirm a final judgment, settlement, or disposition date.
• Judge panel: Presiding judge identified in the case number's suffix as JJF (Judge Joseph J. Farnan, Jr., D. Del.). I have not verified this from a docket entry.
• Petition grounds: Inapplicable (no petition). Illumina's responsive pleading asserted non-infringement, prosecution history estoppel, invalidity under 35 U.S.C. §§ 102, 103 and 112, laches/prosecution laches, claim preclusion, issue preclusion, failure to mark under § 287, and adequate remedy at law — plus a declaratory judgment counterclaim that the `666 patent is invalid and not infringed. Source: Illumina's Answer and Counterclaims, filed 2007-12-14, Case 1:07-cv-00670-JJF.
• Institution decision: N/A.
• Final Written Decision: N/A.
• Settlement / termination: Unknown. Reporting in the same period indicates the parties were in parallel, long-running litigation — a March 2007 D. Del. jury found Illumina infringed the patents in the earlier 2004 Affymetrix suit, awarding more than $16.7 million plus a 15% royalty, with a validity phase scheduled for 2008-02-11 (instrumentbusinessoutlook.com). I did not locate a public disposition of the '666 count specifically.
• Appeal: None identified for the '666 patent. Any Federal Circuit activity I found relates to other Affymetrix/Agilent and Affymetrix/Illumina patents, not to an appeal of a PTAB decision on '666.
• Defensive value: The 2007-08 record is a source of admissions, claim-construction positions, and prior-art collections on the '666 claims, and it shows the patent is old, well-litigated, and drawn to technology (sequencing by synthesis / microfluorescence detection on immobilized polymer arrays) with a deep pre-1990 art field. It is not a validity determination you can rely on.

Related (NON-AIA) matter — ex parte reexamination activity reported by Illumina/Affymetrix

• Reporting contemporaneous with the 2007 suit states that Illumina requested USPTO reexamination of the five patents at issue in that action (which include '666), and that in December 2007 the USPTO ordered re-examination of two of the patents in the Illumina/Affymetrix litigation (IBO; siliconinvestor reproduction of the 2007-12-21 announcement).
• I could not confirm which two patents were ordered reexamined, whether '666 was among them, or the outcome. The '666 record at Google Patents and the full-text version I retrieved do not carry a reexamination certificate annotation. Verify this before relying on it via USPTO Patent Public Search (reexamination certificates appear on the face of the patent) and the reexamination file history.
• Ex parte reexamination is a Central Reexamination Unit process, not an AIA trial, and it does not create § 315(e) estoppel.

One misreading to avoid

The Google Patents page for '666 carries a "Family has litigation" panel with links to Unified Patents and Darts-IP. Those are litigation-data providers whose attribution appears on the page — they are not evidence that Unified Patents (the defensive aggregator) filed an IPR or PGR against this patent, and there is no IPR/PGR on file. Do not argue a Unified Patents IPR in a brief without pulling the actual paper from PTAB E2E.

Strategic summary

Claim status on 7,056,666: no claims CANCELED, no claims SUSTAINED, and — critically — no claims TESTED in any AIA trial. The claim set is untested at the PTAB. Because there is no IPR, PGR, or CBM, there is likewise no claim that has been narrowed by statute on which you can point to a surviving "hardened" set. The only USPTO-side narrowing risk would come from an ex parte reexamination certificate, which I have flagged as unverified. The patent's operative constraint is temporal: priority date 1990-12-06, grant 2006-06-06, anticipated expiration 2010-12-06, and legal status "Expired – Fee Related." Family members in the same lineage include US 5,547,839 (1996-08-20), US 5,902,723 (1999-05-11), US 7,329,496, and US 7,459,275.

Estoppel landscape: there is nothing to be estopped by. § 315(e)(2) attaches only to a petitioner (and its real parties in interest/privies) in an instituted IPR or PGR. With zero AIA proceedings, no party — Illumina, any aggregator, or anyone else — is barred by statute from raising § 102/§ 103 art against '666. For a defendant being asserted against today, all prior-art grounds remain available, including art that was available when Illumina counterclaimed in 2007 and art that has never been considered by any tribunal. The two non-§ 315 constraints to check are (a) issue preclusion against Illumina or its privies, if the '666 validity counterclaim was actually litigated to judgment in D. Del. 1:07-cv-00670 (confirmed unknown here), and (b) § 315(b) one-year time bars or General Plastic/Fintiv discretionary denials if you ever do file an IPR against a related, still-live family member — noting that IPR on '666 itself would be of marginal practical value given expiry.

Pattern signals. No serial-petitioner pattern exists because there are no petitions at all. No defensive aggregator appears in the chain of title or the AIA record. The patent owner (originally Affymetrix; assignee-reassignment history shows a 2012-06-27 security agreement with General Electric Capital Corporation as agent and a 2015-11-13 release) has not pursued any PTAB appeal on this patent, because there has been no PTAB decision to appeal. The substantive signal is not "the patent is hardened"; it is "the patent is old, expired, and its assertion history is a 2007-era Affymetrix/Illumina fight over sequencing-by-synthesis and BeadArray technology."

Recommended next steps

1. Lead with expiry, not with PTAB. Confirm the expiration and lapse facts on the face of the patent and in USPTO records (maintenance-fee status; any terminal disclaimer; any PTA). Google Patents records "2010-12-06 Anticipated expiration" and status "Expired – Fee Related" — see patents.google.com/patent/US7056666/en. If expired/lapsed, damages exposure is limited to pre-expiration conduct within the § 286 six-year lookback, subject to laches and prosecution laches arguments.
2. Verify the reexamination question at the source. Pull the '666 file wrapper and reexamination certificate status via USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter, and check PTAB E2E at ptacts.uspto.gov directly. If a certificate issued narrowing or cancelling claims, that, not an FWD, is your claim-level disposition — and you must quote it exactly as issued.
3. Pull the full D. Del. 1:07-cv-00670 docket (PACER) for: the disposition of the '666 count, any stipulated dismissal, any judgment, and whether Illumina's invalidity counterclaim was ever adjudicated. That determines issue preclusion for Illumina/its privies and whether there is a prior claim construction you are stuck with.
4. Screening and marking. The Answer in the 2007 case pleaded failure to mark under § 287 as an affirmative defense. Test whether the licensed product(s)/practice were marked; unmarked practice can cut off pre-notice damages. Also test prosecution laches — the '666 application was filed 2002-02-14 as an application in a chain claiming 1990-12-06 priority, and granted 2006-06-06; the delay profile is the kind that supports a laches defense.
5. Do not tell a court or an adversary that the patent "survived IPRs" or that "claims were canceled." Neither is true. The accurate statement is: no AIA trial proceeding has ever been instituted against US 7,056,666; the patent is expired; and the only contested record is 2007-08 district court litigation.

Confidence and limitations. (i) I could not complete the last round of targeted searches (docket dispositions, reexamination outcomes, Federal Circuit activity), so those items are expressly flagged as unverified rather than stated as fact. (ii) I found no IPR, PGR, or CBM for US 7,056,666 in any source, consistent with the ODP block — but a null result from public search is not the same as a certified clearance; run PTAB E2E and Patent Public Search directly before relying on it in a filing. (iii) All dates above are YYYY-MM-DD; the 2007 litigation dates are the filing-report dates as published, not PACER docket-entry dates.

I'll start by pulling the authoritative assignment and legal-events records for this patent.

Good — I found reel/frame data in INPADOC. Now let me verify which records specifically attach to US 7056666 and identify the litigation.

Now let me pin down the reel/frame for this specific patent, the Thermo Fisher merger, and the inventor history.

I hit the tool-call ceiling while cross-checking, so the report below is grounded in what I could actually retrieve and is explicit about the two things I could not verify for this patent specifically.

US 7056666 — Ownership Reconstruction

Patent: US 7,056,666 B2 — "Analysis of surface immobilized polymers utilizing microfluorescence detection"
App. No.: 10/077,070 · filed 2002-02-14 · granted 2006-06-06 · priority 1990-12-06
Google Patents legal status: Expired – Fee Related; "anticipated expiration" listed as 2010-12-06

Sourcing note (important): Google Patents surfaces only two recorded post-issuance assignment events for this patent — a 2012-06-27 record to General Electric Capital Corporation, as Agent (security agreement) and a 2015-11-13 record to Affymetrix, Inc. (release by secured party). I was able to retrieve reel/frame numbers for those two instruments only from INPADOC legal-event records of sibling Affymetrix patents (US 6,410,229; US 6,584,410; US 6,715,500; US 8,628,918), which carry the identical instruments. I could not directly open this patent's own Assignment Center abstract of title before hitting the tool limit, so treat the reel/frame figures below as highly probable but not independently confirmed for '666 itself.

Inventors

• Both are career-long Affymetrix-lineage inventors; neither is a one-off name. This is not a "founders departed within 12 months" pattern.
• Caveat / data gap: the '666 application is a continuation claiming priority to 1990-12-06 (the automated-VLSIPS application Ser. No. 07/624,120 that the specification repeatedly cites). I could not retrieve the front page of that 1990 parent to confirm the original applicant of record at the priority date. Early VLSIPS work was done at Affymax, Inc. (Palo Alto), and I could not verify whether an Affymax → Affymetrix recordation exists in the chain. This is the single largest hole in the ownership chain and should be checked in Assignment Center. If an Affymax→Affymetrix assignment exists, it is almost certainly a pre-issuance corporate spin-out transfer, not an NPE event — but it must be documented, not assumed.

Original assignee

Affymetrix, Inc. (Santa Clara, CA), a Delaware corporation.

• Primary business: DNA microarrays ("GeneChip"), reagents, and the scanners/fluidics instruments to read them — i.e., this patent's subject matter (surface-immobilized polymer arrays read by microfluorescence) is squarely in Affymetrix's core product line.
• Shipped a product embodying the claims: Yes. Affymetrix commercialized GeneChip arrays and array scanners throughout the 1990s–2000s; the asserted products against Illumina were BeadArray/Infinium arrays and the Genome Analyzer (per Illumina's Answer).
• Current status: Affymetrix was acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific (announced Jan 2016, ~$1.3B, closed 2016-03-28). The Affymetrix brand/site continues within Thermo Fisher's Life Sciences Solutions segment. Affymetrix is not dissolved and never filed bankruptcy.
• Note on term: per Google Patents the patent is Expired – Fee Related, with anticipated expiration 2010-12-06 — i.e., it lapsed on maintenance fees well before the suite of security-interest recordations, which nonetheless sweep in the whole Affymetrix portfolio.

Assignment timeline

The chain contains only collateral instruments. There is no assignment of title out of Affymetrix at any point.

• 2012-06-25 (executed) / recorded 2012-06-27 — Reel 028465/0541

  • Conveyance: Assignment (Security Agreement)
  • Assignor: Affymetrix, Inc.
  • Assignee: General Electric Capital Corporation, as Agent (address of record listed in INPADOC as Maryland — consistent with GE Healthcare Financial Services, Two Bethesda Metro Center, Bethesda, MD, the Life Science Finance group acting as collateral agent in this era; corroborating address seen in comparable GE Capital life-science loan forms, e.g. the Plus Therapeutics security documents)
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved. I could not access the correspondent-of-record field. GE Capital's collateral agent counsel typically files these portfolio-level § 3.11 recordings, but I have no name to cite and will not guess.
  • Context: Securitization — portfolio-wide collateral grant under an Affymetrix credit facility. Title does not move.

• 2015-10-28 — Reel 036988/0166

  • Conveyance: Security Interest
  • Assignor: Affymetrix, Inc.
  • Assignee: (secured party; name not retrieved — the INPADOC string reads "SECURITY INTEREST; … AFFYMETRIX, INC.; REEL/FRAME:036988/0166")
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved.
  • Context: Securitization/successor collateral filing in the window of the Thermo Fisher transaction. Flag: this instrument is unreconciled — it may be a successor-agent recording rather than a new lien. Verify direction and parties in Assignment Center.

• 2015-11-13 (executed) / recorded 2015-11-13 — Reel 037109/0132

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
  • Assignor: General Electric Capital Corporation, as Agent
  • Assignee: Affymetrix, Inc. (California)
  • Correspondent: Not retrieved.
  • Context: Release of the 2012 GE Capital lien — clean-up, not a transfer. Title remains with Affymetrix.

• 2016-03-28 — Notice of Release (per INPADOC on sibling Affymetrix patents)

  • Conveyance: Notice of Release
  • Context: Administrative termination of the remaining security interest, coincident with the Thermo Fisher Scientific acquisition closing. No assignment of the '666 patent to Thermo Fisher is surfaced as a standalone record; operating subsidiaries frequently remain the record owner post-acquisition, which is the likely explanation here (Affymetrix, Inc. persists as a Thermo Fisher subsidiary).

If Assignment Center returns nothing beyond these collateral records for 7056666, that is itself the finding: Affymetrix (now Thermo Fisher) has been the record owner continuously since issuance.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7056666
    1990 : Priority application filed
    2002 : Continuation application filed
    2006 : Patent issued to Affymetrix
    2007 : Affymetrix sues Illumina in Delaware
    2008 : Case dismissed with prejudice
    2012 : GE Capital security interest recorded
    2015 : GE Capital releases security interest
    2016 : Affymetrix acquired by Thermo Fisher

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. No assignment of title to any "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" entity appears anywhere. The only recordations are Reel 028465/0541 (lien grant) and Reel 037109/0132 (lien release); both run to and from General Electric Capital Corporation, as Agent, which is a lender, and both leave Affymetrix, Inc. as owner.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. No assignee in the record matches Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation, or any Spangenberg entity. The asserted plaintiff was Affymetrix, Inc. itself (see below).

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT ESTABLISHED. I could not retrieve correspondent-of-record for any of the three recordings. This signal cannot be scored either way — I will not infer an NPE filing firm from the lender's identity. Recommend pulling the correspondent field for 028465/0541, 036988/0166 and 037109/0132 in Assignment Center; expect a GE-side secured-party filer, which would be unremarkable.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. There is no chain of LLCs. The only multi-step sequence is grant-of-lien → release-of-lien, which is a single economic event, not a cascade, and it spans three years rather than <24 months.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. Affymetrix, Inc. v. Illumina, Inc., C.A. No. 1:07-cv-00670-JJF (D. Del.), filed 2007-10-24, asserted the '666 patent (Count 5) together with the '723, '320, '169 and '424 patents. The plaintiff was the original assignee and operating company, not an acquirer. No assignment precedes the filing; the first recorded assignment post-dates it by ~5 years. The case was dismissed with prejudice by stipulated order on 2008-01-14 (per D. Del. Dkt. 15).

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding, no court-ordered transfer, no "COURT ORDER" or "BANKRUPTCY" conveyance type appears in the record for Affymetrix.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. Affymetrix sued a direct competitor (Illumina) on its own patents, on its own behalf, while selling GeneChip arrays and scanners. That is classic operating-company assertion, the inverse of privateering. Caveat: the case settled/dismissed within ~3 months, so I cannot confirm from the docket alone whether the dismissal reflected a cross-license — but nothing in the assignment record supports a back-channel NPE.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. (Note for completeness: Thermo Fisher is not a defensive aggregator; it is an operating buyer.)

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Basis: The record shows Affymetrix, Inc. — a company that manufactured and sold the GeneChip arrays and scanners embodying this patent's claims — as the continuous owner of title. The only recorded instruments are Reel 028465/0541 (executed 2012-06-25, recorded 2012-06-27), a portfolio-wide security agreement naming General Electric Capital Corporation, as Agent as secured party, and Reel 037109/0132 (recorded 2015-11-13), the release by secured party returning all rights to Affymetrix. The sole assertion of the '666 patent was Affymetrix, Inc. v. Illumina, Inc., 1:07-cv-00670-JJF (D. Del., filed 2007-10-24), brought by the owner-operating company against a direct competitor on the same technology, and dismissed with prejudice on 2008-01-14 — there was no pre-suit assignment and no asserter entity. The patent has since lapsed on maintenance fees (Expired – Fee Related; anticipated expiration 2010-12-06) and its former owner is now a Thermo Fisher Scientific subsidiary, so there is nothing left here to assert.

Two items to close out before treating this as final:

1. Confirm whether an Affymax → Affymetrix assignment exists for the 1990-12-06 parent application (Ser. No. 07/624,120). That is a normal spin-out transfer, but it should appear in the abstract of title.
2. Retrieve the correspondent-of-record for 028465/0541, 036988/0166 and 037109/0132 to score Signal 3 properly.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "7056666"); mirror index at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7056666/en. Docket: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/delaware/dedce/1:2007cv00670/39114.

I'll start by pulling the authoritative record for this patent and its citation lists.

The initial results are polluted with unrelated patents sharing similar digits. Let me target the actual document and its front-page citation list.

FreePatentsOnline appears to host the full citation list. Let me pull that record plus the Google Patents front-page citations.

Search execution and integrity note

I searched for the literal string 7056666. The searches returned several false positives produced by substring matching on "6666"/"705666", which I have excluded and did not substitute for the target:

• US D717,666 S (design patent, Lorscheidt et al. line of art) — unrelated subject matter
• EP 0 521 666 A (Calgon Corporation, cosmetics) — unrelated
• US 7,034,706 / US 7,572,766 — different patents entirely

Those were not treated as the requested document, per the instruction not to auto-correct or conflate identifiers.

1. Document identified

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7056666/en (fetched 2026-09-27) and the authoritative full text supplied in the prompt.

2. Threshold point that governs the entire §102 question

This is a continuation with an asserted 1990-12-06 priority date. That single fact determines which cited references can anticipate at all:

• Only references published or patented before 1990-12-06 are available under §102(a)/(b); only patents filed before that date and "by another" are available under §102(e).
• Consequently, the large block of references printed on the face of the patent dated 1993–2000 (e.g., 5,202,231 Drmanac 1993; 5,547,839 1996; 5,907,723's siblings; 5,807,522 Brown 1998; 5,795,714 Cantor 1998; 5,972,619 Drmanac 1999; 6,007,987 Cantor 1999; 6,018,041/6,025,136 Drmanac 2000; 6,054,270 Southern 2000) cannot anticipate the claims as issued, because their dates postdate the critical date.
• They become legally live only if the 1990 benefit claim fails or is narrowed (e.g., if intervening claims are held unsupported by the 1990 disclosure, moving the effective date toward 2002-02-14). That is precisely the attack posture a litigant in 1:07-cv-00670 would use, and it is why the examiner-facing citation list is dominated by post-1990 art.

Caveat I must flag: the citation list below is taken from the patent's own front-page/reference listing as mirrored by FreePatentsOnline and uspto.report. Those listings give dates of patent (issue dates), not filing dates. I could not verify the underlying filing dates of most pre-1991-issued U.S. patents from the sources retrieved, so my §102(a) vs. §102(b) vs. §102(e) characterizations of those items are provisional and should be confirmed against each front page (USPTO PatentCenter).

3. References cited — full citation, date, description, §102 exposure

Group A — U.S. patents with pre-critical-date issue dates (genuine §102 candidates, subject to filing-date confirmation)

Group B — Foreign/PCT publications (these are the most date-sensitive items)

Group C — Same-family references that must be excluded from §102

Group D — Post-1990 references listed on the patent face (not §102 art against a 1990 priority date)

US 5,202,231 Drmanac (4/1993, SBH); US 5,492,806 Drmanac et al. (2/1996); US 5,503,980 Cantor (4/1996, positional SBH); US 5,525,464 Drmanac et al. (6/1996); US 5,527,681 Holmes (6/1996, immobilized molecular synthesis); US 5,631,134 Cantor (5/1997); US 5,667,972 Drmanac et al. (9/1997); US 5,695,940 Drmanac et al. (12/1997); US 5,753,439 Smith et al. (5/1998); US 5,795,714 Cantor et al. (8/1998, array replication); US 5,807,522 Brown et al. (9/1998, microarray fabrication); US 5,849,878 Cantor et al. (12/1998); US 5,972,619 Drmanac (10/1999); US 6,007,987 Cantor et al. (12/1999); US 6,013,431 Söderlund et al. (1/2000, primer extension with labeled nucleotides and terminators — classified 435/5); US 6,018,041 Drmanac (1/2000); US 6,025,136 Drmanac (2/2000); US 6,054,270 Southern (4/2000).

Legal status of Group D: these are not §102 references for the claims as issued. Two of them deserve special annotation because they are the closest in subject matter to the synthetic/extension claim family:

• US 6,013,431 (Söderlund et al.) — primer extension with labeled nucleotides plus terminators, i.e., the "single-base extension + detection" idea. Its 2000 issue date puts it well after the critical date.
• US 6,007,987 / US 5,503,980 (Cantor) — "positional sequencing by hybridization."

Non-patent literature listed on the face includes Chidgeavadze et al. (1984) Nuc. Acids Res. 12(3):1671–1686 and (1985) FEBS Letters 183(2):275–278 (3′-amino- and 3′-fluoro-dideoxynucleoside triphosphates as chain terminators) and Prober et al. (1987) Science 238 — these, together with US 4,889,818 (Taq) and the Sanger references cited in the specification (Sanger & Coulson (1975) J. Mol. Biol. 94:441–448; Sanger et al. (1977) PNAS 74:5463–5467), are the art most directly on the irreversible terminator limitation. Note that Chetverin et al. (1994) and Dower & Fodor (1991) listed on the face are at or after the critical date.

4. §102 claim mapping — with an explicit caveat

Caveat (important): the authoritative full text supplied to me is truncated before the claims — the description ends mid-sentence at "…anneal the template to an oligonucleotide attached to the sur." I therefore could not read verbatim claim language from the record I was given, and I will not invent claim numbers. Instead I map to the claim families recited in the patent's own Summary of the Invention, which is in the supplied text:

Bottom line on §102: on the record retrieved, no single cited reference fully anticipates any of the claim families F1–F5. The most dangerous individual references are:

1. WO 1989/010977 A1 (1989-11-16) — the earliest, cleanly §102(b)-available disclosure of ordered polynucleotide analysis with positional detection. It is the reference a challenger would lead with, but it must be combined (probe-hybridization detection ≠ terminal-monomer labeling).
2. US 4,962,037 (Jett et al., 10/1990) — §102(a)-available, and structurally closest to the degradative claim family, but solution-phase.
3. The §102 post-1990 wall: the Group D references (esp. US 6,013,431 Söderlund, US 5,503,980 / 6,007,987 Cantor, US 5,807,522 Brown) are far closer to the claimed combinations — and every one of them is post-critical-date. The entire §102 exposure of '666 therefore collapses to a priority-date question: if the 1990-12-06 benefit claim holds, these are not prior art; if it does not, they become the real anticipatory art.

5. Confidence and limitations — stated explicitly

• High confidence: patent identity, dates, inventors, assignee, status, family members, litigation flag, and the priority-date-dominated §102 framework (all directly from the Google Patents record and the supplied full text).
• High confidence: the specific pre-1991 WO publication dates (from the patent's own front-page citation listing) and the post-critical-date status of the 1991+ WO documents.
• Medium confidence: the subject-matter descriptions of the U.S. patents in Group A; several I have characterized from their titles plus their role in '666's own specification (e.g., '102, '326, '789 are expressly cited by '666 for crosslinking chemistry; '818 is Taq; '188 is PCR). Titles/dates come from the citation listing; I did not open each reference's own specification.
• Not verified / stated as such: the underlying filing dates of US 5,002,867, 5,026,840, 5,075,216, 5,126,239, 5,143,854, and 5,202,231. My §102(a)/(b)/(e) labels for those are therefore provisional. Likewise the descriptions I marked "unverified" (4,656,127 Mundy; 4,855,225 Fung).
• Not performed: a direct USPTO PatentCenter / PTActs query. I reached USPTO-derived data through the Google Patents mirror, FreePatentsOnline, and uspto.report. The citation list I retrieved was partial — the FreePatentsOnline listing is cut off at US 5,002,867 in the retrieved excerpt, and the non-patent-literature list runs to dozens of entries (Amit 1974, Bains 1988, Barinaga, Baum 1990, Carrano 1989, Chatterjee 1990, Chidgeavadze 1984/1985, Chien 1976, Cimino 1985, Corbett 1980, Coulson 1986, Craig 1990, and following). A complete face-of-patent citation pull should be re-run on PatentCenter to close those gaps.

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7056666/en · https://FreePatentsOnline.com/7056666.html · https://uspto.report/patent/grant/7056666 · https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/[PTAB](/ptab)/IPR2013-00518/.../Exhibit-1013.pdf (front page of the '839 parent) · https://patents.google.com/patent/WO1990000887A1 (showing US7056666B2 in the cited-by table).

I'll start by grounding this analysis in the actual claim text and the cited prior art for US 7,056,666, since the fetched page text omitted the "Prior Art"/citations tables.

Let me get the exact granted claims of the '666 patent and pin down some key prior-art references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent 7,056,666 (Dower & Fodor, Affymetrix)

Scope/grounding note. The fetched page text for US 7,056,666 does not include a verbatim "Prior Art" table — its machine-indexed prior-art material consists of the Prior art date (1990‑12‑06) and the Prior art keywords: polynucleotides, labeled, monomer, polymers, sequencing. I therefore grounded this analysis in (a) those page fields, (b) the claim-support paragraphs in the page's own "Summary of the Invention," and (c) the cited-reference lists of the '666's own family (US 5,547,839, US 5,902,723, US 2003/0008302 A1), which I retrieved via search. I was not able to retrieve the verbatim granted claim set of the '666 in this session, so the claim categories below are proxies drawn from the specification's summary. Any conclusion here should be re-verified against the actual claims and their file history.

1. Governing law and the critical date

• The application (10/077,070) was filed 14 Feb 2002 as a continuation of 08/829,893 (2 Apr 1997), itself in a chain from 07/626,730 (6 Dec 1990) → US 5,547,839, and 08/679,478 → US 5,902,723. The page assumes a 1990‑12‑06 priority date (and an anticipated expiration of 2010‑12‑06, consistent with a pre‑URAA 20‑year-from-earliest-priority term).
• Because the application was filed before 16 Mar 2013, pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103 governs. The controlling question is what a person of ordinary skill in the art ("POSITA") would have found obvious as of the filing date of the claim's supporting disclosure.
• Two important dates matter. To the extent claims are supported by the 1990 disclosure, the critical date is 1990‑12‑06. If any claim (e.g., a "reversibly blocked," single-molecule, or scanning-detector limitation) is not supported by the 1989/1990 text and only appears in the 1996/1997 continuation, its effective date slides to 1996–1997, and the entire 1991–1995 literature becomes available (see §6).
• Family-reference wrinkle. Much of the "array/scanning" disclosure sits in the same family (VLSIPS: Ser. No. 07/362,901; 07/492,462 → US 5,143,854). Under pre‑AIA § 102(e)/§ 103(c) principles, same-family documents are poor "prior art" candidates ("by another"/common-ownership issues). Strong § 103 grounds should therefore rely on third‑party art for the immobilization/array and scanning elements.

2. Level of ordinary skill

A POSITA here would be a Ph.D. or M.S. molecular biologist/biochemist (or equivalent) with several years of hands‑on experience in: dideoxy chain‑termination sequencing (Sanger), Maxam–Gilbert chemistry, fluorescent labeling and laser‑scanning fluorescence detection, solid‑phase oligonucleotide synthesis and surface attachment chemistry, and the use of modified nucleotides/polymerases. This is a mature, highly articulated, and predictable art area as of late 1990 — consistent with the page's prior-art keywords and the breadth of the '666's own background section.

3. What the claims cover (categories, from the page's Summary)

4. Prior art available before 1990‑12‑06

Stepwise single-base incorporation + detection (core of Categories A/C/D):

• Melamede, US 4,863,849 (filed 18 Jul 1985; issued 5 Sep 1989; NY Medical College) — "Automatable process for sequencing nucleotide." Discloses determining whether a specific one of the four nucleotides is incorporated by a polymerase at the residue 3′ of the primer terminus, avoids radioisotopes and gel electrophoresis, and describes apparatus for automation. This is squarely the "one labeled base per cycle, detected at the primer terminus" concept. (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/42/be/85/5874c716207b87/US4863849.pdf)
• Mundy, US 4,656,127 (1987) — determining the identity of a nucleotide at a specific site by polymerase-mediated incorporation of a labeled nucleotide (single-base "minisequencing" logic).

Terminating/labeled nucleotide analogs and their distinguishability:

• Sanger et al., PNAS 74:5463 (1977) — dideoxy chain termination (a blocked 3′ hydroxyl terminates extension).
• Prober et al., Science 238:336–341 (1987) — four spectrally distinguishable fluorescent dyes on chain-terminating dideoxy terminators, with laser detection.
• Smith et al., NAR 13:2399–2412 (1985) and Nature 321:674–679 (1986) — fluorescent labeled nucleotides/primers and automated fluorescence detection.

Reversible/removable 3′ blocking chemistry:

• Chidgeavadze et al., NAR 12:1671 (1984) and FEBS Lett. 183:275 (1985); Kutateladze et al. (1986) — 3′-modified (e.g., 3′-amino/3′-azido/3′-fluoro) nucleotides that terminate polymerase extension; also cited in the '666 family's own IDS (https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/[PTAB](/ptab)/IPR2013-00518/.../Exhibit_1013-Exhibit_1013.pdf).
• Gait, Oligonucleotide Synthesis: A Practical Approach (1984) — acid/base-labile 3′-OH protecting groups.

Solid-phase positional arrays + optical readout (Category A/B/D substrates and scanners):

• Southern, WO 89/10977 (pub. 16 Nov 1989) and EP 0 373 203 (pub. 20 Jun 1990) — "Analyzing polynucleotide sequences"/"Method and apparatus for analysing polynucleotide sequences": ordered arrays of immobilized polynucleotides queried by labeled complements.
• Khrapko et al., FEBS Lett. (1989) and Bains, J. Theor. Biol. 135:303 (1988) — sequencing-complementary hybridization on fixed-position supports (the latter is cited in the family IDS).
• Grunstein & Hogness (1975)/Benton & Davis (1977) colony/plaque lifts — transferring spatially arrayed clones to a filter while preserving coordinates (directly supports the '666's FIG. 3 coordinate-mapping teaching).

Degradative/terminal-analysis claims:

• Maxam & Gilbert, Methods Enzymol. 65:499 (1980) — base-specific chemical cleavage.
• Cantor et al., Biopolymers 2:51 (1964) and Jett et al., US 4,962,037 — single-nucleotide liberation by exonuclease and fluorescence-based identification of the released nucleotide.
• Tsugita et al., J. Biochem. 106:60–65 (1989) — fluorescent Edman reagent (4‑aminofluorescein) for terminal amino-acid analysis (cited in the family IDS) — the direct analogue for "terminal monomer–specific labeling."
• Catalytic antibodies (Tramontano/Pollack, Science 1986): the specific-cleavage-reagent concept the '666 itself proposes.

Automation/handling (Categories B/E):

• Frank et al., Bio/Technology 6:1211–1213 (1988) — automated workstation for micromanipulation of liquids (cited in the family IDS); microtiter/replica-plating practice.

5. Combinations that would have rendered the claims obvious

Ground 1 — Category C (blocked, labeled single-base extension on immobilized primers), and the A/D scanning claims:
Melamede '849 in view of Prober '87 (and Smith '85/'86), further in view of Southern WO 89/10977/EP 0 373 203 (or Khrapko/Bains).

• Motivation: Melamede expressly addresses the same problem recited in the '666 background — eliminating gels, radioisotopes and single-molecule purification by determining incorporation at the primer terminus one base at a time. Prober supplies exactly the "labeled nucleotide identifiable after incorporation" element, with four distinguishable fluorescent dyes and laser detection. Southern/Khrapko/Bains supply the "many positionally distinct polynucleotides fixed at separable locations, queried and read optically" element. Each reference is in the same technical field, addresses the same problem (high-throughput, non-gel sequencing), and each element (labeled terminator, polymerase, addressable array, fluorescence scanner) was known to cooperate with the others. Under KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, combining a handful of known, mutually compatible elements to improve throughput is the paradigm of predictable combination with a reasonable expectation of success.

Ground 2 — the "blocked and labeled" / "reversibly blocked" dependent limitations:
Ground 1 further in view of Chidgeavadze '84/'85 (and Gait '84).

• Motivation: Sanger already taught that a 3′-blocked nucleotide halts extension; Chidgeavadze taught that 3′-modified nucleotides are polymerase-compatible to the extent they can be incorporated and that they terminate further synthesis; Gait taught that 3′-OH protecting groups are removable under mild conditions. Using a removable analog of the Sanger terminator so that cycling can continue is the natural, expected next step once a non-gel readout is desired — a design choice with a finite number of known options (photolabile, weak-acid, weak-base blocking groups).

Ground 3 — Category B ("marking reagent" + detection at separable locations):
Mundy '127 (or Melamede) in view of Southern/Khrapko and Frank et al. '88.

• Motivation: selective marking of the polymers that terminate with a given subunit is just a label-based readout of a known base-specific discrimination event; the only change is doing it at addressable, spatially separated positions ("wells"/spots), which microtiter/array practice made routine.

Ground 4 — degradative claims (nonspecific removal + distinguishably labeled termini):
Maxam & Gilbert '80 and Cantor '64/Jett '037 in view of Tsugita '89, further in view of Southern/Khrapko and the standard fluorescent detection art (Smith '86; Prober '87).

• Motivation: Maxam–Gilbert establishes base-specific chemical discrimination at a terminus and labeling at a fixed end; Cantor/Jett establish enzymatic single-nucleotide removal and fluorescence identification of the released base; Tsugita establishes fluorescence-based terminal-monomer analysis of an immobilized polymer (peptide). Combining them to run the degradative cycle in parallel at arrayed positions is a straightforward aggregation of known chemistries with a known readout.

Ground 5 — terminal-monomer-specific cleavage reagents (catalytic-antibody aspect):
Antibody/catalytic-antibody art (Tramontano/Pollack 1986) in view of the Ground 4 combination.

• Motivation: the '666's own specification treats generation of base-specific cleavage reagents as an alternative route to the same goal — evidence that the inventors viewed it as an available design option rather than an unexpected one. Screening antibodies against labeled donor–quencher substrates was conventional.

Ground 6 — Category D/E (replica substrates, single detector, beads/wells):
Melamede '849 (automation) in view of Grunstein/Hogness and Frank et al. '88, and the array-readout art.

• Motivation: replica plating to produce parallel, identically ordered substrates, and serial readout of compartments with one detector, are the standard ways to parallelize and economize an assay; the '666 background itself acknowledges that only homogeneous samples had previously been used.

6. The strongest non-obviousness counter-arguments (and how they fare)

1. No reasonable expectation of success in reversible 3′ blocking. As of 1990, 3′-modified nucleotides were known chiefly as terminators/poor substrates; it was not established that a polymerase would efficiently incorporate a reversibly blocked, dye-bearing nucleotide and then continue after deblocking. In unpredictable arts, the Federal Circuit requires more than a "mere" obvious-to-try showing. Note the historical corroboration: practical, commercially successful reversible-terminator sequencing-by-synthesis did not emerge until the mid‑2000s (Metzker's 3′-modified dNTP work; the Solexa/Illumina platform). This is the single best argument, and it is strongest where claim language requires reversible blocking/deblocking rather than merely "blocked."
2. Melamede's teaching was arguably not enabling/practically workable, and its method was not adopted; a reference whose approach failed may not supply a reasonable expectation of success. (Later art — e.g., Gautsch, US 6,162,602 — acknowledges Melamede eliminated labor but that its apparatus was limited.)
3. Teaching away: the mainstream art (Sanger, Prober) routed detection into gels/capillaries; a POSITA seeking sequence data in 1990 was arguably steered toward electrophoresis improvements, not toward solid-phase cyclic single-base reads.
4. Family-art problem: any ground that relies on the VLSIPS '854/co-pending applications is weakened by the fact that those documents are the '666's own family (same assignee, overlapping inventors), not "by another."
5. Secondary considerations (long-felt need from ~1985 to ~2005; failure of others; the Affymetrix assertion record noted on the page — D. Del. case 1:07‑cv‑00670, and the Darts‑ip family litigation link) would be argued as objective indicia of non-obviousness, though their nexus to the claimed subject matter (as opposed to the later commercial platforms) would be contestable.

7. Bottom line

• Individually, the broadest genus claims (terminal-monomer-specific labeling/incorporation at positionally distinct surface sites, followed by optical detection) are the most vulnerable, and a Melamede + Prober/Smith + Southern/Khrapko (or colony-lift/microtiter) + optional Chidgeavadze/Gait combination gives a coherent § 103 case with a strong motivation narrative (gel-free, parallel, non-radioactive sequencing) and a predictable-elements rationale under KSR.
• The claims' best survival prospects lie in limitations requiring an operable reversible 3′-blocking/labeling nucleotide, single-cycle-per-base synchronization, and specific scanning/detector architectures, where the 1990 state of the art did not provide a reasonable expectation of success.
• Dependent claims drawn to beads, wells, replica substrates, and automation are comparatively weak, since they rest on well-established laboratory and instrument-handling art (Frank '88; microtiter/replica practice).
• Strategic caveat: if any claim's effective date is 1996–1997 rather than 1990‑12‑06, the 1991–1995 literature (Fodor et al., Science 251:767 (1991); Khrapko; Strezoska et al. (1991); Ulmer, US 5,674,743; Metzker (1994)) becomes prior art and the obviousness case becomes substantially stronger.

Confidence and verification notes (please read before relying on this):

• High confidence: the legal framework, the priority/family chain (from US 2003/0008302 A1 and the page), the existence and dates of Melamede '849, Prober '87, Sanger '77, Smith '85/'86, Maxam–Gilbert '80, and the Southern WO 89/10977/EP 0 373 203 references (confirmed by search results).
• Medium confidence, verify against primary documents: (i) whether Melamede '849 expressly discloses reversible/removable blocking as opposed to chain-terminating incorporation generally; (ii) the precise content and scope of Chidgeavadze's teachings on polymerase compatibility; (iii) the exact content of WO 90/13666, WO 90/15070, WO 91/07087 and WO 91/06678 cited in the family IDS — several of these appear to be the applicant's own co-pending applications and should not be treated as third-party prior art without checking inventorship/ownership.
• Unverified: the verbatim granted claims of US 7,056,666, and the details of the Delaware docket 1:07‑cv‑00670 identified on the page. My claim-category mapping is derived from the specification's Summary and must be replaced with the actual claim text before this analysis is filed or relied upon.

Sources consulted: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7056666/en ; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/7056666.html ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US20030008302 ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/[5902723](/patent/5902723) ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/42/be/85/5874c716207b87/US4863849.pdf ; https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2013-00518/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._7566537/docs/08-19-2013-Petitioner/Exhibit-1013-Exhibit_1013.pdf ; https://medicaldevices.fitzpatrickcella.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/Illumina-[IPR](/resources/cost-of-inter-partes-review)-Decision.pdf ; https://g.casetext.com/case/affymetrix-inc-v-pe-corp-ny ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US20040029115A9/en ; https://patents.google.com/patent/WO1990000887A1 (citing table listing US 7,056,666 B2).