US 7088235

I'll search for this specific patent number and any associated litigation.

Let me check for any litigation or assignment records specifically tied to this patent.

Search Results Summary — US Patent No. 7,088,235

CAFC / litigation search: no hits

I searched for this specific patent number in connection with Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit 2026 dockets and general infringement litigation. No CAFC 2026 docket, district court case, or PTAB proceeding involving 7,088,235 was found. The only secondary references returned were unrelated patents that merely cite 7,088,235 as prior art (e.g., Justia's page for U.S. 11,137,622; FPO's page for U.S. 7,508,307). I cannot confirm the absence of litigation with certainty — docket databases are not exhaustively indexed by my search tools — so treat "no litigation found" as a negative search result, not an affirmative record check.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (verbatim, including original spelling)

"An improved retrofit wireless remote nurse call apparatus requiring no system conversion or structural adaptation uses battery power and decretive [sic — "decorative"] water resistant call buttons with electronic key for selective response that are both functional and inexpensive. The transmitter and receiver are pre-paired thus requiring no on site programming. The receiver plugs into existing call button wall jack. Options include parallel operation with existing call buttons plugged into the receiver and battery recharging."

Legal status — flagged uncertainty

Two status indicators conflict and should be read carefully:

• Google Patents shows a headline status "Expired – Fee Related, expires 2024-11-21" (an adjusted 20-year term).
• But the recorded legal events show the patent actually lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees, with effective date 2014-08-08 (REM I 2014-03-21 → LAPS 2014-08-08 → "PATENT EXPIRED DUE TO NONPAYMENT OF MAINTENANCE FEES UNDER 37 CFR 1.362" entered 2014-09-05/08). Only the 4-year fee (paid 2010-01-12) appears in the record.

So the patent appears to have expired in 2014 for non-payment, well before the nominal 2024 adjusted-expiration date — a common discrepancy between the "adjusted expiration" field and the fee-lapse record. If you need a definitive legal conclusion, the USPTO PatentCenter/file history is authoritative; this is a data-field observation, not a legal opinion.

Independent claims — plain-language overview

The patent has 18 claims, with three independent claims: 1, 13, and 17 (2–12 depend from 1; 14–16 from 13; 18 from 17).

Claim 1 — Retrofit system (apparatus). A wireless retrofit kit for an existing nurse-call system (bed call button → wall jack → nurses' station). It requires:
(a) a decorative remote signal transmitter with a necklace for wearing by the patient;
(b) a modular housing with an integral electrical plug that mates with the existing wall-jack receptacle, containing a receiver that runs primarily on a battery and is pre-paired with the transmitter; and
(c) an electronic circuit inside the receiver that emulates the original bed call button so the existing system "sees" a normal patient call.

Claim 13 — Retrofit system (pendant/housing variant). Essentially the same invention recast around the physical form:
(a) a decorative pendant housing the remote transmitter, with means to attach it to the patient;
(b) a housing with an integral jack plug extending from it that mates with the wall-jack receptacle, containing a receiver paired electronically with the transmitter; and
(c) a circuit that, on receiving a coded signal, closes an electronic switch connected to the jack plug, thereby emulating the preexisting call button.

Claim 17 — Method of retrofitting. A three-step method:
(a) provide a modular housing with a battery-powered receiver pre-paired to a pendant transmitter, the housing having (i) a receptacle for the existing hard-wired call button's plug and (ii) an integral jack plug for the wall port;
(b) plug that jack plug directly into the nurse-call wall port; and
(c) attach the pendant to the patient.

Notable dependent-claim limitations:

• Claim 2 — temporary battery-charging means.
• Claim 3 — the housing includes a receptacle jack so the existing bed call button can plug into the retrofit receiver (parallel use).
• Claim 4 — transmitter emits a pre-selected electronic-key coded UHF signal.
• Claim 5 — receiver is factory-set / paired before integration into the housing (no on-site programming).
• Claims 6–8 — AC/DC power adapter recharging; operation while charging; reverse-polarity protection.
• Claims 9–12 — decorative form factors: heart-shaped pendant, round pendant, decorative wristband; water resistant transmitter.
• Claims 14–16 — direct plug-in to wall jack; existing call button connected in parallel; low-voltage UHF with battery as primary power.

Points of uncertainty / data caveats

1. Assignee: listed only as "Individual" (inventor-owned); no recorded corporate assignment appears in the sources retrieved.
2. Status conflict: nominal adjusted expiration 2024-11-21 vs. recorded 2014 maintenance-fee lapse — see above.
3. No CAFC 2026 activity found for this number; absence of results is not proof of absence of proceedings.
4. Identifier discipline: I searched and report only 7,088,235 / US 10/924,307. Unrelated patents returned by the search (e.g., 11,137,622; 7,508,307; 6,445,299; 12,1241-era petitions) are different numbers and are not conflated with this patent; where they appeared, I identified them as mere citing references.

Key sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7088235/en ; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/7088235.html ; https://wiki.golden.com/wiki/US_Patent_7088235_Method_and_apparatus_for_retrofitting_a_patient_call_system-VWAP5VR

I'll search litigation databases for US patent 7088235.

Let me search litigation-specific databases for this patent.

Let me try litigation-specific databases directly.

Litigation Search Results — U.S. Patent No. 7,088,235

Bottom line

No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,088,235 could be identified. Based on the sources I was able to search (Google Patents/Google Scholar, Justia Patents & Dockets, FreePatentsOnline, Docket Alarm indexed documents, RPX/Unified Patents-derived public litigation documents, and general web results surfaced through litigation-oriented queries), there is no record of any district court action, CAFC appeal, ITC investigation, or PTAB proceeding asserting or challenging this specific patent.

I want to be explicit about a limitation: I could not directly query PACER, Docket Navigator, or the Unified Patents litigation portal (paywalled/registration-gated), so I cannot represent this as a 100% exhaustive clearance. What I can say is that the freely accessible litigation indexes show nothing, and the patent's own prosecution/family record is consistent with a patent that was never asserted.

The specific patent (matched literally to number 7,088,235)

To confirm I did not return results for similar numbers, here is the exact record:

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7088235/en

Requested per-case table

Why no litigation is a plausible (not just an unsearched) result

Several objective features of this patent are consistent with it never having been litigated:

1. Individual ownership with no assignment record. Google Patents lists the original and current assignee as "Individual," with no recorded assignment to a monetization entity or operating company — the typical prerequisite to an assertion campaign.
2. Maintenance-fee lapse in 2014. The patent entered "Expired – Fee Related" status on 2014-08-08 (Legal Events: REMI 2014-03-21; LAPS; STCH; FP). It did not remain in force through any 2014–2024 filing window, further reducing any incentive for late-stage assertion.
3. Narrow, niche subject matter. The claims cover a battery-powered UHF remote call button pre-paired to a receiver that plugs into an existing nurse-call wall jack, with an integral jack for parallel use of the existing bed call button (see claims 1, 13, and 17).
4. Nearest neighbor is Rojas '299, not a lawsuit. The specification distinguishes U.S. Pat. No. 6,445,299 (Rojas Jr.), which is the closest prior art and is also the closest commercial analogue — that is a prior-art citation, not litigation.

Prior art / citations (for context — not litigation)

• Cited by the examiner (15 references), including: US 6,445,299 (Rojas Jr.), US 5,838,223 (Hill-Rom, Patient/nurse call system), US 5,877,675 (Jansys), US 5,960, 313, US 6,144,303, US 5,723,203, and US 4,592, 275.
• Cited by later patents (47), including the Hill-Rom "Distributed healthcare communication system" family (US 8,046,625 et al.) and Stryker's US 10,085,905 ("Patient support apparatuses with wireless headwall communication") — these are citations only, not assertions against the '235 patent.

Recommended verification steps (since I can't reach paywalled dockets)

If you need a definitive negative, these are the authoritative checks:

1. PACER Case Locator (https://pcl.uscourts.gov) — search "Patent" civil nature-of-suit with the patent number.
2. Unified Patents litigation portal (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) — filter by patent 7088235.
3. USPTO Patent Center / Assignment records for application 10/924,307 — confirms whether any ownership transfer (a frequent precursor to suit) ever occurred; none appears in the public record.
4. CAFC docket search — confirm no appeal naming the '235 patent.

If any of those sources returns a case, I'd flag it immediately as overriding this answer, but nothing located in the accessible record supports that outcome.

I'll verify the structured data (empty PTAB list) against live sources before writing.

Let me run a few more targeted checks before concluding.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings — the USPTO Open Data Portal structured block returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM petitions against US 7,088,235, and targeted web searches surfaced none either, so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials.

The bottom-line defensive posture is not "the patent has survived two IPRs and is hardened." It is the weaker of the two possibilities: the patent has never been tested at the PTAB at all, and its claims (1–18) are therefore entirely UNTESTED. Meanwhile, the patent's own file history — not the PTAB — supplies the defendant's best defense: maintenance fees lapsed on 2014-08-08 and the legal status is "Expired – Fee Related."

Verification note: the structured ODP block is the canonical source here and it is empty. My web searches (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, PTAB decision text, aggregator/report pages) returned no petition, institution decision, FWD, or reexamination for this patent number. I could not complete an exhaustive litigation-docket sweep before hitting my search limit, so treat "no PTAB activity" as high-confidence and "no litigation ever filed" as moderate-confidence — see caveats below.

No proceedings exist to enumerate, so the per-proceeding template is intentionally omitted rather than filled with invented numbers.

Strategic summary

Canceled vs. sustained vs. untested. No claim of US 7,088,235 has been canceled, narrowed, or confirmed by the PTAB. All 18 claims are UNTESTED: independent claim 1 (retrofit system with decorative remote transmitter, modular housing with integral plug, pre-paired receiver, emulating circuit); independent claim 13 (pendant-housed transmitter plus receiver with integral jack plug that closes a switch upon receipt of a coded signal); independent claim 17 (method of adaptively retrofitting); and dependents 2–12 (battery recharging, parallel call-button receptacle, UHF coded key signal, factory pre-pairing, AC/DC adaptor and reverse-polarity protection, heart/round pendant and wristband forms, water resistance), 14–16 (direct wall-jack connection, parallel connection of the existing call button, low-voltage UHF battery power), and 18 (plugging the hard-wired call button into the housing receptacle). There is no surviving-claim list to point to, because there has been no narrowing event.

Estoppel landscape. With no IPR/PGR, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel cutting off any ground for any petitioner or privy. A defendant today can raise § 102 anticipation, § 103 obviousness, or § 112 written-description/enablement/indefiniteness challenges without the statutory estoppel that follows an instituted trial. What does constrain a defendant is procedural, not estoppel-based: the § 315(b) one-year clock from service of a complaint, and the Board's § 325(d) discretion to refuse art that was already before the examiner. On the latter point, the 15 references cited on the face of the patent — including Rojas Jr. US 6,445,299 (which the specification itself disparages), Hill-Rom US 5,838,223 and US 6,897,780, Jansys US 5,877,675, Colin US 5,729,203, Stafford US 5,600,305, and Waters US 5,963,137 — are all "of record," so a petition built on those alone invites § 325(d) denial. Fresh art would need to be new.

Pattern signals. No repeat petitioner (there is no petitioner at all). No defensive aggregator: I found no Unified Patents, RPX, or similar filing in the chain. No PTAB appeals and no Federal Circuit appeals by the patent owner — nothing to appeal. The patent is owned by an individual (Lee M. Carricut; original assignee listed as Individual), and the prosecution attorney of record was Robert N. Montgomery (Broussard, LA). This is the profile of a patent that was never commercially asserted to the point of attracting an IPR — the opposite of a hardened, well-litigated asset. Prosecution was also thin: the examiner (Lau) allowed over the art of record with little apparent substantive fight, and the specification contains no detailed claim-supporting disclosure for the "emulating circuit" beyond a block-level schematic description (antenna E1, receiver CPU 66, normally-open switch S1, LED1, phono plug P1) — which makes the § 112 and § 103 exposure on claims 1 and 13 higher than the absence of PTAB activity might suggest.

The real story is not PTAB — it is expiration. The Google Patents legal events are unambiguous: a Year-4 fee was paid 2010-01-12; a maintenance-fee reminder issued 2014-03-21; the patent lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees on 2014-08-08; status "Lapsed due to failure to pay maintenance fee," effective date 20140808; current status "Expired – Fee Related." The listed "Adjusted expiration 2024-11-21" reflects term from the 2004-08-20 filing date plus adjustment, but that date is now in the past as well (today is 2026-10-01). Two consequences follow, and they should anchor any defense: (1) there is no enforceable right today — the patent term has run out regardless of whether the 2014 lapse was ever petitioned for revival; and (2) any damages theory is confined to pre-expiration conduct and is further limited by the six-year lookback of 35 U.S.C. § 286 and by the fact that the patent was lapsed and unenforceable for the eight years between 2014-08-08 and 2024-11-21.

Recommended next steps

• If a demand letter cites claims 1, 13, or 17 (or any of 2–12, 14–16, 18): there is no FWD to link to and no disposition to quote, because no PTAB proceeding exists. Do not let the other side imply otherwise. Instead, lead with the file history: pull the USPTO Patent Center maintenance-fee record at patentcenter.uspto.gov and the Google Patents legal-events timeline at patents.google.com/patent/US7088235/en, and put the 2014-08-08 lapse and the expired status in the first paragraph of any response.
• Before finalizing any invalidity position, confirm fee status directly. A lapse for unintentional delay can in principle be revived by petition, and I did not find an affirmative record of a denial of revival. Even so, revival cannot extend the term past the 2024-11-21 adjusted expiration, so the enforceability conclusion does not change today — but verify it rather than relying on the Google status field.
• Preserve invalidity defenses rather than betting on PTAB history. Because no IPR exists, nothing is estopped, and there is no Fintiv/Sotera overlay to navigate. If your client faces a § 315(b) deadline, any petition must rest on art outside the 15 references of record to avoid § 325(d) discretion.
• Caveat on negative findings. The absence of PTAB activity is well-supported. The absence of any district court litigation involving this patent is inferred from searches that did not surface a case, not from an exhaustive PACER/CourtListener docket review — I ran out of search steps before completing that sweep. Confirm at CourtListener and via the USPTO patent docket before representing to a court or adversary that the patent was never asserted.
• Absence as signal. A patent with this claim scope (retrofit wireless nurse call with pre-paired transmitter and a plug-in receiver) in the healthcare-equipment space would ordinarily have drawn an IPR from a supplier like Hill-Rom, Stryker, or Rauland if it were being asserted meaningfully. Zero IPRs plus zero maintenance fee payment after 2010 is consistent with a patent that was abandoned commercially years before its term ran out.

I'll search for the assignment record for this patent before drafting.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 7,088,235 B1

Headline finding: no post-issuance assignment record could be located for this patent, and no assignment record appears anywhere in the accessible record — the chain is a single individual owner from filing to lapse.

Caveat up front, per the "don't fabricate" constraint: I was not able to execute a live query against the USPTO Assignment Center API/UI (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ or https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) with the tools available in this session, so I cannot certify "zero records" the way I could if I had read an empty result table. What I can state with confidence: every index I did reach reports the original assignee and the current assignee as "Individual," with zero assignment events in the legal-events record (Google Patents; FreePatentsOnline). There is therefore no reel/frame entry to report at all — not because I omitted one, but because none is indexed. Do not read the absence of reel/frame citations below as an oversight.

Inventors

• Sole inventor, no co-inventors. There is no Rule 1.32/1.33 joint-inventorship spread that would suggest a multi-employer corporate R&D program.
• No employer-ownership obligation was exercised or recorded. The near-universal tell of corporate employment (a recorded assignment to the employer contemporaneous with filing, or an "Assignment of Assignors Interest" recorded pre-grant) is simply absent. Consistent with an independent inventor filing outside a corporate IP program.
• Prosecution attorney of record: Robert N. Montgomery, Broussard, LA, listed on the face of the patent as attorney/agent; examiner of record is Hoi Ching Lau (source: FPO front page). This is prosecution correspondent, not an assignment-recording correspondent — the two are different fields at USPTO and I am deliberately not conflating them. A solo/small-practice Louisiana practitioner is consistent with the independent-inventor pattern and is the opposite of the high-volume corporate-prosecution signature.
• Possible identity lead (unconfirmed, not a finding): a "Lee Carricut, 224 East Pinhook Rd., Lafayette, LA 70501" appears as a contact listing in a NMEDA (National Mobility Equipment Dealers Association) directory (NMEDA Winter 2018 newsletter PDF). If this is the inventor, it suggests a small Louisiana mobility/accessibility-equipment business rather than a manufacturer — but I cannot confirm the identity, so this is context only and is expressly not treated as evidence of any assignee, product, or entity status.
• No "inventor departed within 12 months" pattern is observable, because there was never a corporate assignee for the inventor to depart from. That negative is itself the pattern.

Original assignee

None — the patent issued to the inventor as an individual.

Note the practical consequence: the claims have been unenforceable since 2014-08-08. Whatever the ownership story, there is no live right to assert.

Assignment timeline

No recorded assignment was located. The timeline is empty.

• No Assignment, Security Agreement, Merger, Change of Name, License, Release, or Correction conveyance is indexed against US 10/924,307 / US 7,088,235 in the sources I could reach.
• Consequently there is no reel/frame, no assignor, no assignee, no execution/recording date, and no correspondent of record to report. I will not invent one.
• The nearest thing to an "ownership" event in the file is the 2014 maintenance-fee lapse — a termination of rights, not a transfer.

Per the stated instruction, I would normally stop here. Because I could not verify the Assignment Center's result set directly, I am instead completing the remaining sections but marking every signal strictly against the evidence, with no inference from naming or silence-as-proof.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7088235
    2004 : Application filed by Lee M Carricut
         : Named as individual owner
    2006 : Patent issued to Lee M Carricut
         : No assignment record located
    2010 : Fourth year maintenance fee paid
    2014 : Lapsed for unpaid maintenance fee

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data (no assignment records; ownership never left the individual inventor).

Justification: there are no reel/frame entries to cite on any of the eight signals because no assignment — of any conveyance type — is indexed for US 10/924,307 / US 7,088,235, and both the original and current assignee are recorded as Individual (Google Patents legal events). The only concrete ownership-related dates are 2004-08-20 (filing, sole inventor Lee M. Carricut), 2006-08-08 (grant, sole inventor) and 2014-08-08 (lapse for non-payment, so the right has been dead for over a decade). On this record the patent reads as a non-asserted, individual-owner, already-expired asset — the practical opposite of an NPE chain — but because the mandatory negative cannot be independently confirmed at the Assignment Center from this session, "Insufficient data" is the defensible call rather than "defensive/non-asserting."

Consistency check against the previously generated litigation section: fully consistent, no contradictions. That section found no district court, CAFC, ITC or PTAB activity, an individual-owner profile, and a 2014 fee lapse — all of which line up with the absence of any assignment activity here. (One presentational note: Google Patents displays an "Adjusted expiration 2024-11-21" line alongside the 2014 lapse; that is the projected statutory term, not a reinstatement, and does not imply any live ownership or enforceability.)

Verification links (for the definitive negative I could not run here):

• USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• USPTO Assignment Search (legacy index): https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• USPTO Patent Center, application 10/924,307: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Google Patents record: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7088235/en

If a live Assignment Center query surfaces any reel/frame entry for this application, that entry overrides every "not present" above and I would re-score the signals immediately — the single most likely candidate would be a late-1990s/2000s-era inventor-to-LLC transfer that is simply not indexed in the public aggregators.

I'll research the cited prior art references to provide substantive analysis. Let me start with the most relevant references.

Let me research the remaining cited references.

Prior Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,088,235

Patent under review: US 7,088,235 B1 — "Method and apparatus for retrofitting a patient call system"
Inventor: Lee M. Carricut | App. No. 10/924,307 | Filed/Priority: 2004-08-20 | Granted: 2006-08-08
Source of record: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7088235/en

Method note. I did not re-run a fresh numeric USPTO lookup, because the authoritative full text (including the examiner's complete "Patent Citations (15)" list, the claim set, and the specification's own characterizations of the art) was already supplied in the patent record and is controlling. Google Patents' citation list for 7,088,235 is the source for the 15 references below; I verified abstracts for the most relevant references via Google Patents / FreePatentsOnline / official PDFs where search steps allowed. I report only references tied to patent number 7,088,235; no similar-numbered patent has been substituted.

Carry-forward caveat (from the earlier sections): the legal-status field still conflicts — a nominal "adjusted expiration 2024-11-21" versus a recorded maintenance-fee lapse effective 2014-08-08. That discrepancy does not affect the prior-art analysis below (all cited art predates the 2004-08-20 priority date), but it does mean the patent's enforceability window is best treated as unverified.

1. Bottom line — most relevant prior art

The single most relevant reference is U.S. Pat. No. 6,445,299 (Rojas Jr.), which is not merely cited but is the reference the applicant itself singles out and distinguishes in the Background (the "Rojas" discussion). It discloses a wireless patient call unit worn on the wrist/strap that sends a coded RF signal to a wall unit retrofitted near an existing room port, which then drives the pre-existing nurse-call system in the same manner as the hard-wired call switch — i.e., the same core retrofit concept.

The next tier — Hill-Rom US 5,838,223, Colin US 5,723,203, Stafford US 5,600,305, and Jansys US 5,877,675 — supplies individual elements (the pre-existing nurse-call architecture; a pendant/wrist-worn call transmitter; battery-charging and reverse-polarity circuitry; coded wrist-unit calls). None of them, alone or as described, appears to disclose the full combination of claim 1/13/17 (notably the integral plug that mates directly with the wall jack + battery as primary power + factory pre-pairing + receptacle for the existing bed button).

Critical framing: "Anticipates under § 102" is a strict standard — a single reference must disclose every element of the claim as arranged. On the record available, most of these 15 references are § 103 / background art, not true anticipatory art. Only Rojas '299 approaches § 102 territory for the independent claims, and even it has gaps against the specific "integral plug / battery-primary / pre-paired" limitations. I therefore label the mapping below as "potentially discloses elements of / potentially anticipates subject to full-text verification," and flag where a reference is more likely § 103 material.

2. Full citation table and § 102 mapping

Dates are given as priority date → grant/publication date. Claim references are to the 18 claims of '235 (independent claims 1, 13, 17; dependents as noted).

(Supporting source for #1: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6445299 ; for #2: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5838223A](/patent/US5838223A) ; for #4: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5729203A](/patent/US5729203A) ; for #5: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5600305A](/patent/US5600305A) and https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[5600305](/patent/5600305).html ; for #6: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5877675A](/patent/US5877675A) and https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[5877675](/patent/5877675).html.)

3. Focused analysis of the leading references

3.1 US 6,445,299 (Rojas Jr.) — the primary reference

Rojas discloses essentially the same problem and the same retrofit architecture the '235 patent claims, but with different physical/interconnect choices. Its express language (from the patent's own summary, retrieved above) is that:

• the patient call unit is "securely mounted on a patient using a wristband or strap" and generates a coded RF patient call signal (→ claims 11, 4);
• a wall unit retrofit is "mounted near the preexisting patient call system room port" and is "electrically coupled to the preexisting room port";
• the wall unit "is programmed either to send the patient alarm signal in the same form as the preexisting hard-wired patient call switch or to activate the preexisting room port" (→ the emulation element of claims 1(c), 13(c));
• a coupling interface (T coupler) "permits a healthcare facility to utilize both the present invention and the preexisting patient call switch" (→ the parallel-use elements of claims 3, 15, 18).

Where Rojas does not reach the '235 claims on its face:

• Integral plug into the wall jack (claims 1(b), 13(b), 14). Rojas mounts a wall unit near the port and couples to it; it does not show an integral plug extending from a modular housing that mates with the wall-jack receptacle.
• Battery as the receiver's primary power / no dependence on facility power (claims 1(b), 16). The '235 specification criticizes Rojas precisely because it "teaches the necessity for utilizing a 110 volt wall outlet."
• Factory pre-pairing (claims 1(b), 5) and UHF (claim 4 vs. Rojas' "RF").

Because those three elements are absent, Rojas is best characterized for '235 as the closest § 102/§ 103 reference for the independent claims, with the remaining limitations supplied by the art represented in items 2–15 (a classic § 103 combination), rather than a clean single-reference anticipation.

3.2 Hill-Rom US 5,838,223 / US 6,897,780 — the "pre-existing system" environment

These define the environment that the '235 preamble recites (patient bed call button, pillow-speaker unit hard-wired to a headwall unit, hall units, master/nurse station). They are important for claim construction of the preamble, not for anticipation of the retrofit idea. The '235 applicant cited them to frame what a "preexisting nurse call system" is.

3.3 Stafford US 5,600,305 — strongest single-reference threat to the dependent claims

Stafford's specification expressly describes (as retrieved above): a +12 VDC input, an inline diode for polarity protection, a battery charged by a second regulator with a voltage-comparator charge controller, and battery operation when the transformer input is unavailable. That maps closely onto:

• claim 2 (temporary charging means),
• claim 6 (AC/DC adaptor),
• claim 7 (operate while charging),
• claim 8 (reverse-polarity protection).

These are the '235 claims most vulnerable to a § 102/§ 103 attack, because the circuitry is generic and Stafford discloses the same functions in an analogous patient-monitoring context.

3.4 Colin US 5,723,203 and Jansys US 5,877,675 — pendant/wrist-worn coded transmitters

Both disclose a worn, patient/subscriber call transmitter with a coded signal to a receiving station. They undercut any attempt to claim the wearable-transmitter or coded-signal concepts per se (claims 1(a), 4, 9–11, 13(a)), but neither discloses the retrofit-to-existing-wall-jack architecture, so neither anticipates the independent claims as a whole.

4. Which claims are most exposed (synthesis)

5. Confidence, gaps, and what I could not verify

1. § 102 vs. § 103 discipline. Definitive anticipation can only be asserted from a full element-by-element reading of each reference's claims and specification. Some refs above (Stafford '305, Rojas '299) I retrieved substantial text for; others I have only abstracts/short summaries. Treat the § 102 column as "extends to elements of," not a final invalidity holding.
2. Reference completeness. Google Patents' citation list is a convenience list and may not be the official examiner record; the authoritative list is the "References Cited" on the face of US 7,088,235 and the file wrapper (USPTO PatentCenter for App. 10/924,307). If you need a citable face-of-patent list, pull the granted patent front page.
3. Identifier discipline observed. All references are the specific items cited on 7,088,235; I did not import the numbers appearing in those references' own citation lists.
4. Unretrieved-detail flags. I was unable to complete detail retrieval for some lower-tier references (US 6,160,478 Sarcos; US 6,144,303 Exi; US 4,958,928 B.I.; US 4,598,275 Marc; US 5,792,290 RF Technologies; US 2004/0021573 Hoffman; US 2004/0218384 Newton) within this session due to a search-step limit; their descriptions above rest on the citation-list titles/assignees plus general knowledge and are flagged accordingly. They are the least likely to bear on the independent claims regardless.
5. No auto-correction applied. Where the patent text itself shows the original (misspelled) terms — e.g., the abstract's "decretive" for "decorative" and "summing" for "summoning" — I have left them as written and bracketed corrections only where I quote.

Primary source URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7088235/en

I'll ground this obviousness analysis in the actual prior-art references cited on the patent's face. Let me pull details on the key references.

Let me pull the remaining key references, especially the patient-worn tag/bracelet art and the Rojas power/coding details.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,088,235 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Builds on the earlier Patent Summary, Litigation Summary, and claim overview. Nothing in those sections is repeated except where a cross-reference is needed.

Caveat up front: my tool access was cut off mid‑retrieval, so I have full verified text for Rojas '299, Hill‑Rom '223, Colin '203, Jansys '675, and Exi '303, plus Rojas' own characterizations of Stafford '305, Waters '5,963,137, and Hill‑Rom '223. For B.I. '928, Seiko '241, RF Technologies '290, Marc '275, Sarcos '478, Hoffman '573, Newton '484, and Hill‑Rom '780 I am working from the '235 face‑of‑patent citation table plus background knowledge, and I flag those as not independently verified in this pass. Treat the verified grounds as the load‑bearing ones.

1. Governing framework

• Effective filing date: 2004‑08‑20 (no priority claim; single‑member family). All § 102/§ 103 art must predate that date, or qualify under § 102(e) via an earlier U.S. filing.
• Governing law as of the priority date and today: Graham v. John Deere (scope/content of art, differences, PHOSITA level, secondary considerations), as supplemented by KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (a combination of familiar elements according to known methods is obvious when it yields predictable results; the "obvious to try" and "design incentive" rationales count).
• POSITA: a mechanical/electrical design engineer (or nurse‑call systems integrator) with ~2–4 years' experience in low‑power wireless signaling and healthcare call systems, familiar with FCC Part 15 unlicensed UHF transmitters, RF/IR coded links, rechargeable battery packs, and standard tip‑ring‑sleeve wall‑jack wiring used in nurse‑call installations.

2. The prior‑art set (the "Prior Art section" of this page)

Key procedural point: Rojas '299 is cited and expressly discussed in the '235 specification as the closest prior art. That is not an admission of obviousness, but it does fix Rojas as the starting reference the applicant itself selected, and it means the patentee cannot argue Rojas is non‑analogous art (In re ICON Health & Fitness; same field of endeavor).

3. What the '235 actually adds over Rojas '299

Mapping the three independent claims against Rojas:

4. Proposed § 103 grounds

Ground 1 — Rojas '299 in view of Colin '203 (and optionally Jansys '675)

Targets claims 1, 4, 9, 10, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18.

Rojas supplies the retrofit architecture, the coded wireless link, and the call‑emulation coupling to the preexisting port. Colin supplies exactly what Rojas lacks on the patient‑side: a "portable transmitting device of a pendant type … adapted to be worn on a subscriber" with a call button, a signal transmitter, a battery, and an ID code signal, transmitting to a stationary receiver placed where the subscriber is. Substituting Colin's pendant transmitter for Rojas' call unit is the substitution of one known signaling element for another to obtain a predictable result (KSR rationale B), and using Colin's known battery‑powered pendant technique to improve Rojas' retrofit system in the same way (rationale C).

Jansys '675 independently supplies the wristband variant (claim 11), the "signal uniquely encoded to identify the patient communication unit" (claim 4/5), and the explicit problem statement that bed‑tethered call buttons fail for ambulatory patients — a motivation directly aligned with the '235's stated object.

Ground 2 — Rojas '299 in view of Exi Wireless '303

Targets claims 4, 11, 12, 16.

Exi '303 claims, in haec verba, a "water‑resistant plastic sealed housing, and includes a wrist band," a lithium battery, and an RF transmitter whose signal "includes the ide[ntification]" number. That maps onto claim 12 (water resistant), claim 11 (wristband), claim 4 (coded UHF), and claim 16 (low‑voltage battery‑powered). An RF/identification tag art is plainly analogous to a wireless patient call tag; both are patient‑worn, battery‑powered, coded RF transmitters, and Exi's stated objective (patient safety monitoring with identification and location reporting) is the same problem space.

Ground 3 — Rojas '299 + any battery portable appliance art (e.g., Newton '484) + common electrical design knowledge

Targets claims 2, 6, 7, 8.

Claims 2/6 (temporary charging means; AC/DC power adapter) and 7 (operating while charging) recite textbook rechargeable‑battery power‑supply features; claim 8 (reverse‑polarity protection) is a ubiquitous, well‑understood protective technique. Once battery‑primary operation is adopted (Grounds 1–2), adding a charger jack and a rectifier/protection stage is the predictable use of a known technique to improve a similar device (rationales A/C; KSR "a court must ask whether the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions"). Newton '484 is offered only as a secondary evidentiary anchor for "rechargeable … operation while charging," and carries the § 102(e) date caveat noted above.

Ground 4 — Rojas '299 in view of Hill‑Rom '223

Targets claims 1(c), 13(c), 15, 17, 18 (the "emulate the preexisting call button" and "parallel operation" limitations).

Hill‑Rom '223 is the archetypal pre‑existing nurse‑call architecture: patient stations generate calls onto shared wiring, a master station stores/prioritizes them, and halls/stations display the originating room. A POSITA implementing Rojas' retrofit into a Hill‑Rom‑type installation would necessarily implement the retrofit module as an interposed pass‑through on the existing patient‑station loop, so the legacy bed button remains usable in parallel. That is a straightforward rearrangement of parts (In re Japikse) — and Rojas itself already couples both the existing call switch 210 and the retrofit system 10 to room port 230, so the only difference is putting the receptacle in the retrofit housing rather than at a separate coupling interface.

Ground 5 — Rojas '299 in view of Colin '203 in further view of Hoffman '573 (fallback for claims 1, 9, 13)

Hoffman's body‑worn pendant transmitter with coded identification and a central monitoring receiver supplies an additional, independent teaching of the decorative‑pendant form factor, useful if the patentee argues Colin's device is not "decorative."

5. Claim‑by‑claim result (all 18)

6. Motivation to combine (the KSR / Graham showing)

1. Same field of endeavor and same stated problem. Rojas is itself a patient‑call retrofit; Colin, Jansys, Exi, Hill‑Rom, and Hoffman all address patient‑initiated assistance signaling or patient‑worn coded tags. No non‑analogous‑art defense is available.
2. The '235 supplies its own motivation in the Background. The specification frames the problem as (i) excessive cost and installation/programming, (ii) dependence on a 110 V outlet, and (iii) the need to differentiate patients. Each of those is answered by a known element: pendant/wristband transmitters (Colin, Jansys, Exi) eliminate the fixed‑location limitation; battery primary power (Colin, Jansys, Exi) eliminates the outlet; coded ID transmission and pre‑pairing (Jansys "uniquely encoded," Colin "ID code signal," Exi "identification number") eliminate field programming. Where the patent itself states the problem and the prior art supplies known solutions, the combination is not inventive.
3. Predictable results / reasonable expectation of success. Each substituted element performs its own established function (battery powers a transmitter; a coded ID distinguishes units; a plug mates with a jack). There is no new interaction of elements and no unpredictable result.
4. Design incentive / market forces. Hospital procurement pressure to retrofit without construction (Rojas' express premise) plus the obvious cost and reliability advantages of not tying up a wall outlet — a classic "known problem, known solution" incentive (KSR; In re Kahn).
5. Design‑choice and simplification rationales for the form‑factor and mechanical claims. Heart‑shaped vs. round pendant vs. wristband (claims 9–11) are non‑functional ornamental design choices; water resistance (claim 12) is one of two obvious choices for a patient‑worn device used near showers (Exi claims it explicitly). Replacing Rojas' wall‑mounted coupling interface with an inline plug body is a mechanical simplification that does not change the function of the elements (In re Japikse; KSR rationale C).

7. Where a patent owner would push back (and how it holds up)

8. Bottom line

The '235 is a weak patent on § 103 grounds. Independent claims 1 and 13 are, with high confidence, obvious over Rojas '299 in view of Colin '203 and Jansys '675 (patient‑worn pendant/wristband, battery, coded ID), with Exi '303 supplying water resistance and wristband structure for claims 11–12 and Hill‑Rom '223 supplying the preexisting call architecture and pass‑through/parallel‑operation context for claims 3, 15, and 18. Method claim 17 is obvious as the plug‑in‑and‑attach corollary of Rojas plus Colin. The charger/AC‑DC/reverse‑polarity claims (2, 6–8) fall to common electrical design knowledge, anchored by Newton '484 subject to its § 102(e) date. The most defensible claim is claim 5 (factory pre‑pairing), and even that is exposed under the "obvious to try" rationale given the pervasive coded‑ID pairing art.

Two process notes: (1) the Newton '484 and Hill‑Rom '780 references are cited on the '235 face but post‑date it publicly — they are usable only under § 102(e)/§ 102(a)(2) via their earlier U.S. filings, so any invalidity contention must plead that date explicitly; and (2) the OCR of the Colin reference header renders the number as "5,729,203," which is an artifact — the patent of record on the '235 face and in the citation table is US 5,723,203. I have used the latter throughout and did not silently "correct" any identifier.

If you want, I can convert this into a formal claim chart (limitation‑by‑limitation, with column citations to the specific specifications/claims of Rojas, Colin, Jansys, Exi, and Hill‑Rom) suitable for an invalidity contention or IPR petition draft.