US 7136699

I'll search for authoritative records on US 7,136,699, including any 2026 CAFC activity.

Let me retrieve the actual claim text and check for any 2026 appellate/PTAB proceedings.

US Patent 7,136,699 — Analyst Summary

Bottom line: I confirmed this patent in multiple records (Google Patents, USPTO-linked PubChem patent record, Justia). The provided full text and search results are consistent. No Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit 2026 docket activity involving 7,136,699 was found in my searches — the only litigation flag on the record is a 2022 district-court case, not a 2026 CAFC appeal. I flag uncertainties on the exact issued-claim wording below.

1. Bibliographic data (as recorded)

2. Abstract (verbatim, as published)

"An apparatus is provided for selectively destroying dividing cells in living tissue formed of dividing cells and non-dividing cells. The dividing cells contain polarizable intracellular members and during late anaphase or telophase, the dividing cells are connected to one another by a cleavage furrow. The apparatus includes a generator and insulated electrodes for subjecting the living tissue to electric field conditions sufficient to cause movement of the polarizable intracellular members toward the cleavage furrow in response to a non-homogeneous electric field being induced in the dividing cells. The non-homogeneous electric field produces an increased density electric field in the region of the cleavage furrow. The movement of the polarizable intracellular intracellular members towards the cleavage furrow causes the breakdown thereof which results in the destruction of the dividing cells, while the non-dividing cells of the living tissue remain intact."

(Note the duplicated word "intracellular intracellular" — retained literally from the source.)

3. Plain‑language overview of the disclosure

The specification describes tumor‑treating electric fields ("TC fields"), i.e. alternating fields of about 50–500 kHz (preferably 100–300 kHz) at field intensities of about 0.1–10 V/cm in tissue. The asserted mechanism is geometric rather than thermal or stimulatory: during cytokinesis a dividing cell narrows to a cytoplasm "bridge"/"neck," so field lines converge there, creating a non‑homogeneous high‑density field. Polarizable intracellular organelles (nuclei, microtubule spindles) are pulled toward the bridge by dielectrophoretic force — direction independent of field polarity — and their converging pressure ruptures the membrane at the bridge. Non‑dividing cells see a homogeneous field and are unaffected. The apparatus uses insulated electrodes ("isolects") (conductor + dielectric forming a capacitor with tissue), which avoids electrolysis and ion‑concentration changes. Embodiments include a self‑adhesive skin patch, implanted/internal electrodes, electrodes across a torso (e.g., lung tumors), high‑dielectric‑constant insulators (e.g., titanium dioxide/rutile), gel fillers, protective nets/coatings, and optional temperature sensor + control box to prevent overheating. An Example reports elimination of a murine malignant melanoma after 6 days at 200 kHz.

4. Independent claim overview (with caveat)

⚠️ Uncertainty: The full text supplied to me ends before the claims, and my searches returned claim language from the pre‑grant publication US 2004/0068295 A1 (same application 10/263,329), not from the printed patent. I therefore summarize the published claim set and cannot vouch that the issued claims are word‑for‑word identical.

From the available text, the published set appears to be a single independent apparatus claim (claim 1) with numerous dependent claims (at least 24), including:

• Claim 1 (independent, apparatus): An apparatus with a first and second electrode (each having a conductor) positionable on/around living tissue containing dividing cells having polarizable intracellular members and a cleavage furrow; an electric field source connected to the electrodes that applies an alternating electric potential to induce a field in the tissue, the field becoming non‑homogeneous in the dividing cells and producing an increased‑density field at the cleavage furrow, sufficient to cause the polarizable intracellular members to move toward the furrow and destroy the dividing cells while non‑dividing cells remain intact. (Wording reconstructed from dependent claims referencing claim 1; I did not retrieve claim 1 verbatim.)
• Dep. (¶2): Field frequency sufficient that field lines converge at the cleavage furrow, defining the increased‑density field.
• Dep.: First/second conductive leads to the source.
• Dep.: Electrode includes a dielectric member contacting the conductor for placement against tissue to form a capacitor (the "isolect").
• Dep.: Frequency about 50–500 kHz; more narrowly about 100–300 kHz; source is a generator producing an alternating voltage waveform in that range.
• Dep.: Field is substantially uniform before passing through the dividing cells.
• Dep.: Control box + temperature sensor controlling amplitude to prevent excessive heating.
• Dep.: Electrodes as internal members inserted within the body.
• Dep.: Electrodes configured for placement on opposite sides of a torso (tumor between them).

I did not retrieve the verbatim text of claim 1 or confirm whether the issued patent contains additional independent claims (e.g., a skin‑patch claim). The Chinese national‑phase counterpart (CN 1703258 A) contains independent claims reciting added features — intermediate high‑conductivity/high‑dielectric filler (gel/agar/gelatin) and a third conductor between the electrodes to raise field density in the target, plus a conductive protective member (mesh) shielding an organ — but those are a different national claim set and should not be attributed to US 7,136,699 without verification.

5. Litigation / docket status

• The record flags US litigation in the Florida Middle District Court, case 8:22‑cv‑02535, and a "first worldwide family litigation" entry (family ID 32041977). These are 2022‑era, not 2026 CAFC activity.
• No 2026 CAFC docket, appeal, or Federal Circuit decision referencing 7,136,699 was located in my searches. Given the patent is recorded as expired (adjusted expiration 2026‑03‑08), contemporaneous 2026 appellate activity would be unusual but not impossible (e.g., an appeal of an earlier judgment). I cannot affirmatively rule out a CAFC docket; absence of results here is not proof of absence, and I could not directly query the CAFC docket system (PACER/CM‑ECF) or Docket Navigator in this session.

6. Explicit uncertainties

1. Issued claim text for US 7,136,699 is not verbatim in my sources — only the pre‑grant publication (US 2004/0068295 A1) claims, which commonly differ from the allowed claims.
2. Priority date discrepancy: Google Patents lists the priority date as 2002‑10‑02, while family tables in related records show 2000‑02‑17 as a priority date for the 10/263,329 family (the '725/earlier Palti filings trace to WO 01/00994, priority 2000‑02‑17). This is consistent with 10/263,329 being a continuation‑in‑part, but I did not verify the continuity chain.
3. Assignee history is complex (Standen Ltd. → Novocure Limited → Novocure GMBH, with multiple security interests to Deutsche Bank, BioPharma Credit PLC, and BPCR LP). Current‑assignee listings are as recorded and are not legal conclusions.
4. No authoritative 2026 CAFC docket data was obtained; treat the litigation section as incomplete.

Sources: patents.google.com/patent/US7136699B2/en; patents.google.com/patent/US20040068295A1; patents.justia.com/patent/20040068295; pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US-7136699-B2.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 7136699. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me dig deeper into the specific litigation documents and case details.

Let me verify whether there are additional cases beyond the Fieldcure suit.

Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,136,699

I searched patent‑litigation sources (RPX Empower, Justia Dockets, Google Patents' litigation metadata, and the complaint documents themselves). Exactly one U.S. litigation asserting U.S. 7,136,699 was identified. I did not find any CAFC appeal, any ITC Section 337 investigation, or any other district‑court case naming the '699 patent. (Caveat: I could not query PACER directly; findings are from the aggregators below.)

Case 1 — Novocure GmbH v. Fieldcure Co. Ltd.

Nature of the dispute and the '699 counts: Novocure alleged that Fieldcure had built a competitive TTFields ("Fieldcure Device") with "virtually identical specifications to the Novocure Optune® device," and that Fieldcure would infringe (or had infringed) the '699 patent by importing the device into the U.S. and using/displaying it at the Society for Neuro‑Oncology (SNO) Conference held in Tampa, November 16–20, 2022 — i.e., a § 271(a) importation/use theory. Count I of the complaint asserted infringement of the '699 patent, literally and/or under the doctrine of equivalents, and willfulness; Counts II–IV applied the same theory to the '921 and '203 patents. Novocure also pleaded a declaratory‑judgment case or controversy based on Fieldcure's announced importation and its representations that the device matched Optune.

Sources:

• RPX Empower docket: https://litigation.rpxcorp.com/litigation/flmdce-[407589](/patent/407589)-novocure-v-fieldcure#overview
• Justia Dockets: https://dockets.justia.com/docket/florida/flmdce/8:2022cv02535/407589
• Complaint text (asserting the '699 patent, Count I): https://insight.rpxcorp.com/litigation_documents/14996925
• Google Patents "Family has litigation" entry for US 7,136,699 (Florida Middle District, case 8:22‑cv‑02535): https://patents.google.com/patent/US7136699/en

Other leads checked and found not to be '699 litigation

• Google Patents litigation metadata for US 7,136,699 lists only the Florida Middle District case (8:22‑cv‑02535) above, plus a Darts‑IP "first worldwide family litigation" reference tied to family 32041977 (a family‑level link, not an independently verifiable separate '699 case in the sources I could reach).
• Novocure's other IPR / patent disputes that surface in searches (e.g., other Novocure patents, PTAB proceedings, or non‑U.S. actions) are not cases asserting the '699 patent and should not be attributed to it.
• No CAFC appeal arising from 8:22‑cv‑02535 was found (consistent with the case being voluntarily dismissed at the pleading stage).

Bottom line

The only known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,136,699 is Novocure GmbH v. Fieldcure Co. Ltd., No. 8:22‑cv‑02535 (M.D. Fla., filed Nov. 7, 2022), which was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice on Dec. 2, 2022, with no merits ruling. If you need court‑of‑record confirmation beyond the aggregators (e.g., PACER docket text, any sealed filings, or any subsequently filed '699 case), that would require a direct PACER/Docket Alarm pull — I was not able to verify those beyond the sources cited above.

I'll verify the structured block's "no PTAB activity" default with targeted searches before concluding.

The first result references a different '699 patent (sequencing/cfDNA). Let me search directly for PTAB activity naming Novocure and its asserted patents.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 7,136,699: 0. Breakdown: 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 terminated by settlement, 0 with institution denied. Bottom line defensive posture: this is neither a "hardened" patent nor a "dead-claim" patent — it is an untested patent. No petitioner has ever put the '699 claims in front of the Board, so there is no FWD, no claim-level cancellation, no IPR estoppel, and no PTAB record to attack or rely on. The single assertion event in the patent's history (Novocure GmbH v. Fieldcure Co. Ltd., No. 8:22‑cv‑02535) was voluntarily dismissed before any Markman or validity ruling, so there is no judicial claim construction either. Any defendant today is working from a blank slate — with one very important overlay: the patent's adjusted expiration is recorded as 2026-03-08, which is in the past as of today (2026-09-28).

No proceedings to report

The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal) returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 7,136,699, and my independent web checks did not surface any contrary evidence. Because there is no proceeding, the per-proceeding template collapses:

Search noise you should know about (identifier discipline): searching for "7136699 + IPR" surfaces material referring to a different patent that also ends in "699" — a sequencing/cfDNA patent whose petition discusses Kinde, Miner, Fan and cites IPR2019‑00652. That is not US 7,136,699 ("Apparatus for destroying dividing cells," Palti). Per the operating rules I have not auto-corrected the identifier, and I explicitly decline to attribute that proceeding to this patent. Likewise, Novocure's 10‑K risk-factor language (2017 and 2019 filings) discusses patent challenge risk generically and names no PTAB proceeding against the '699 patent.

Confidence and caveats: My conclusion rests on (a) the canonical ODP block and (b) web/aggregator searches. I could not query PTAB E2E or the PTAB API directly in this session. If a petition was filed very recently, it may not yet be indexed. Verification step: run a patent-number search on PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/) and check the PTAB Decisions page (https://www.uspto.gov/patents/patent-trial-and-appeal-board) before relying on "zero" in a filing.

Strategic summary

Claim status of US 7,136,699. CANCELED: none. SUSTAINED: none. UNTESTED: all claims. No AIA tribunal has ever construed a single claim term of this patent. (Note: the claim set was not included in the provided patent text, so I am deliberately not stating a claim count or quoting claim numbers — the "prior art keywords" block and abstract show the claims are directed to an apparatus with a generator and insulated electrodes/isolects applying 50–500 kHz fields, but I will not fabricate claim language.) There is also no district court construction: the Fieldcure case ended on 2022‑12‑02 without a claim construction order, so no § 112 or § 101 ruling exists to borrow.

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is inapplicable — it only attaches to a petitioner that obtained an FWD. There is no petitioner, so there is no estoppel running against Fieldcure, against its privies, or against any other party. Conversely, a prospective defendant gets no benefit from an earlier petitioner's work, and there is no "grounds that reasonably could have been raised" trap door to avoid. The only timing constraint is the defendant's own § 315(b) one-year clock, which begins on service of a complaint alleging infringement. Note the relevant trap: under Click‑to‑Call Techs. LP v. Ingenio, Inc., 899 F.3d 1321 (Fed. Cir. 2018), a voluntarily dismissed complaint still triggers the § 315(b) bar. Fieldcure was sued on 2022‑11‑07, so its bar date ran roughly a year later; the December 2022 dismissal without prejudice does not reset it. Fieldcure — and its RPI/privies — should be treated as time-barred. Genuinely new defendants are not.

Pattern signals. (1) Same petitioner filing multiple IPRs on this patent: no — no petitioner at all. (2) Patent owner aggressively appealing to the Federal Circuit: no — no FWD means no PTAB appeal; the only CAFC-adjacent fact is the absence of any appeal from 8:22‑cv‑02535, consistent with a pre-answer voluntary dismissal. (3) Defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, etc.) in the chain: none found — Unified Patents' name appears nowhere in the '699 record, and the Google Patents metadata lists no Unified/RPX challenge. (4) Enforcement pattern: one short-lived importation/use complaint against a Korean TTFields competitor around the SNO conference, dropped within ~4 weeks — consistent with a portfolio-policing posture rather than a sustained campaign.

The expiration overlay dominates everything else. Google Patents records an "Adjusted expiration 2026‑03‑08" entry and legal status "Expired – Lifetime" for US 7,136,699. Treat 2026‑03‑08 as the asserted term end (it is source-flagged as an assumption and should be confirmed against the face of the patent's term-adjustment notice), meaning the patent is already expired as of 2026‑09‑28. Practical consequences: no prospective injunctive relief; exposure shrinks to past damages within the six-year lookback of § 286 running backward from any complaint; and the IPR calculus changes materially (see next steps). This also means the strategic question for a defendant is no longer "how do I invalidate this patent," but "is there a damages period, and is any of my conduct inside it."

Recommended next steps

1. There is no FWD to cite. Because no IPR was ever instituted, you cannot point to a cancellation of any claim. Do not represent otherwise in a demand-letter response; the correct statement is that the '699 claims are entirely PTAB-untested.
2. No active proceedings → no trial milestones. There is no institution-decision deadline, oral hearing, or statutory one-year FWD date to diarize. The only live timing item is your own § 315(b) bar if you are newly served.
3. Confirm the negative by direct query. Run the patent number through PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/) and the ODP/PTAB APIs, then note the search date in your file. The absence of PTAB activity is itself a signal worth documenting — this is a 2002-priority foundational TTFields patent asserted only once, briefly, in 20+ years.
4. Front-load invalidity in district court, not the PTAB. With no IPR record and an expired patent, your strongest non-infringement/validity levers are § 101 (the claims recite signal-generation and electrode structure applied to a biological effect), § 112 written description/enablement as to the full 50–500 kHz and 0.1–10 V/cm ranges, and § 102/§ 103 grounded on the art the patent's own background cites — U.S. Pat. No. 6,043,066 (Mangano) and the Asbury & van Engh dielectrophoresis paper. These are record-grounded starting points, not vetted invalidity theories; each needs a full prior-art search against the 2002‑10‑02 priority date.
5. Decide consciously whether an IPR is still worth filing. The Board is not statutorily barred from reviewing an expired patent, but the value proposition is different: no claim amendments by the patent owner, Phillips-style construction, and the prize is reducing past-damages exposure rather than eliminating a live right. If your only exposure is post-2026‑03‑08 conduct, an IPR is likely money poorly spent; if you have pre-expiration sales going back into the § 286 window, a § 102/§ 103 IPR on the independent apparatus claim remains a credible tool. Confirm the expiration date against the patent's term-adjustment certificate before making this call.
6. Monitor the family, not just the '699. The Google Patents family shows continuation/divisional members and EP counterparts (e.g., EP2281602/2281603/2281604/2281605, EP3572123, EP3656441, EP1545704) descending from the same 2002‑10‑02 priority chain. Those are separate patents with separate PTAB/EPO exposure, and none of them was addressed here. If a counterparty is asserting "the Novocure patents" generally, do not let the '699's clean PTAB record stand in for the family's.

Key links: Google Patents record (litigation and expiration metadata): https://patents.google.com/patent/US7136699/en · PTAB E2E: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/ · PTAB decisions: https://www.uspto.gov/patents/patent-trial-and-appeal-board · No Federal Circuit opinion or CourtListener entry exists for this patent because no FWD has ever issued.

I'll research the recorded assignment chain and correspondents for US 7,136,699.

Let me dig for specific reel/frame numbers and the recording correspondents.

I was unable to reach assignmentcenter.uspto.gov directly in this session (the search tool returned a step limit before I could pull individual assignment PDFs). Below I reconstruct the chain from the USPTO-derived legal-events record mirrored on Google Patents for US 7,136,699 (the authoritative full text supplied in this task), cross-referenced against the EP/Irish register entries and the previously-generated sections. Where I could not verify something, I say so rather than guess.

Inventors

Pattern notes:

• No employer/university assignment appears anywhere in the record. The very first recorded conveyance (below) runs directly from Palti → Standen Limited. There is no Technion, university, or hospital assignment or confirmatory license on the '699 reel history. (Contextual, not a recorded fact: Palti is publicly associated with Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and founded Novocure in 2000; I could not verify his employment status as of the 2002-10-02 filing date from an authoritative record, so I do not assert it.)
• The "all inventors departed within 12 months of filing" fire-sale tell cannot apply — this is a single-inventor patent, and the inventor is the founder of the entity that ultimately owns it, so inventor-owner alignment persists through the whole chain. There is no evidence of an inventor exit preceding any transfer.
• Two separate Palti→Standen recordings (2003-01-13 and 2005-02-01) suggest an original assignment plus a later confirmatory/curative assignment (or a correction of the assignee's name from "Standen Limited" to "Standen Ltd."). I could not retrieve the documents to confirm the reason.

Original assignee

Standen Ltd. (recorded in places as Standen Limited; GB) is the assignee named on the issued patent (grant 2006-11-14). USPTO.report's grant record states the patent "is currently assigned to Standen, Ltd." and the family tables on the related EP/JP members list the assignee simply as "Standen, Ltd."

• Primary line of business / product: Standen is the corporate predecessor of Novocure. I found no high-confidence evidence that Standen Ltd itself shipped a commercial product embodying the claims; the commercial TTFields product (Optune) was commercialized later by Novocure. Treat Standen as an operating/R&D holding entity, not a product-shipping NPE-style vehicle.
• Current status: Not operating under that name. It was renamed to Novocure Limited (recorded 2011-05-19 as a Change of Name), and the asset later moved to Novocure GMBH (Switzerland). Novocure is a NASDAQ-listed (NVCR) operating company; there is no bankruptcy, dissolution, or fire-sale event on this chain.
• Assignee complexity: the chain terminates in the Novocure corporate family, with BPCR LP appearing as a security-interest holder, not an owner (see signals §3 and §8 below).

Assignment timeline

Caveat on dates and reel/frame: The dates below are the dates listed in the USPTO-derived legal-events record for the '699 patent; the execution dates were not retrievable in this session, so I show the recorded/processing date only. I could retrieve only two reel/frame numbers — they appear verbatim in the legal-events text as REEL/FRAME 045278/0825 and REEL/FRAME 50395/0398. All other reel/frame numbers were not retrievable and are marked "not retrieved." No correspondent attorney or firm names appear in any source I could reach — see signal §3.

• 2003-01-13 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST")
  • Assignor: Palti, Yoram
  • Assignee: Standen Limited
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: initial invention assignment from the sole inventor to the company — the founding transfer.

• 2005-02-01 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST")
  • Assignor: Palti, Yoram
  • Assignee: Standen Ltd.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: second inventor→company assignment (likely confirmatory or name-correcting; the assignee name shifts "Limited" → "Ltd.").

• 2011-05-19 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Change of Name
  • Assignor: Standen Limited
  • Assignee: Novocure Limited
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: internal corporate reorganisation / change of name only — no change in beneficial owner.

• 2013-02-20 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement
  • Assignor: Novocure Limited
  • Assignee: Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: securitization — grant of a security interest over the patent portfolio as collateral for financing.

• 2013-12-20 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Release of Security Interest
  • Assignor: Deutsche Bank Trust Company Americas
  • Assignee: Novocure Limited
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: securitization release — encumbrance cleared.

• 2015-02-02 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Security Interest
  • Assignor: Novocure Limited
  • Assignee: BioPharma Secured Investments III Holdings Cayman LP
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: securitization — new secured lender takes a collateral position.

• 2018-02-07 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Security Interest
  • Assignor: Novocure Limited
  • Assignee: BioPharma Credit PLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: securitization — creditor substitution.

• 2018-02-07 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
  • Assignor: BioPharma Secured Investments III Holdings Cayman LP
  • Assignee: Novocure Limited
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: securitization release — prior lender's collateral position released as BioPharma Credit PLC steps in.

• 2018-02-07 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Security Interest
  • Assignor: Novocure Limited
  • Assignee: BioPharma Credit PLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: securitization — duplicate/confirmatory entry of the BioPharma Credit PLC security interest on the same day.

• 2019-05-06 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Security Interest
  • Assignor: Novocure GMBH
  • Assignee: BioPharma Credit PLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: securitization — the newly-interposed Swiss entity re-grants the collateral position to the same lender.

• 2019-08-20 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Interest
  • Assignor: Novocure Limited
  • Assignee: Novocure GMBH (Park 6, CH-6039 Root D4, Switzerland)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: internal reorganisation — beneficial ownership moved down/into the Swiss operating entity. (Cross-reference: the Irish register for family member EP 10012716.6 records a proprietorship change from Novocure Limited, St. Helier, Jersey to Novocure GMBH, Park 6, Root D4, Switzerland, "by virtue of intellectual property assignment agreement, dated 24/09/2019" — consistent with this 2019 transfer.)

• 2020-04-13 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
  • Assignor: BioPharma Credit PLC
  • Assignee: Novocure Limited
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: securitization release.

• 2020-04-14 — Reel 045278/0825 (identified from the legal-events text as the released security agreement)

  • Conveyance: Release of Security Interest ("FOR PATENT SECURITY AGREEMENT FILED AT REEL/FRAME 045278/0825")
  • Assignor: BioPharma Credit PLC
  • Assignee: Novocure Limited
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: securitization release — this entry names the reel/frame of the underlying BioPharma Credit PLC security agreement it discharges.

• 2020-05-21 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Omnibus Confirmation of Assignment Agreement
  • Assignor: Biopharma Credit PLC
  • Assignee: BPCR Limited Partnership
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: securitization / collateral re-confirmation — BPCR LP is the successor collateral holder (this is why "BPCR LP" shows as a current assignee listing on Google Patents; it is a lienholder, not an owner).

• 2020-08-19 — Reel 50395/0398 (identified as the released security agreement)

  • Conveyance: Release of Security Interest ("FOR PATENT SECURITY AGREEMENT FILED AT REEL/FRAME 50395/0398")
  • Assignor: BPCR Limited Partnership
  • Assignee: Novocure GMBH
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: securitization release — BPCR's collateral position over Novocure GMBH released.

• 2020-08-25 — Reel 045278/0825 (same reel/frame reset shown in the legal-events text as "45278 0825")

  • Conveyance: Release of Security Interest
  • Assignor: Biopharma Credit PLC
  • Assignee: Novocure Limited
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: securitization release.

• 2020-11-06 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Security Interest
  • Assignor: Novocure GMBH
  • Assignee: JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., as Administrative Agent
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: securitization — new secured credit facility; JPMorgan takes the collateral position over the Novocure portfolio.

• 2024-04-24 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Release of Security Interest
  • Assignor: JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A., as Administrative Agent
  • Assignee: Novocure GMBH
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: securitization release.

• 2024-05-04 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Patent Security Agreement
  • Assignor: Novocure GMBH (Switzerland)
  • Assignee: Biopharma Credit PLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: securitization — BioPharma Credit PLC returns as secured lender; the most recent recorded event of any kind on the '699 chain.

Net ownership position: Novocure GMBH (Switzerland) appears to remain the owner; BPCR LP / BioPharma Credit PLC appear only as secured creditors. I did not find any recorded ownership assignment out of the Novocure family.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7136699
    2002 : Application filed by Yoram Palti
    2003 : Assigned to Standen Limited
    2005 : Second assignment to Standen Ltd
    2006 : Patent issued
    2011 : Standen renamed Novocure Limited
    2013 : Deutsche Bank security agreement
         : Security interest released
    2015 : BioPharma III takes security interest
    2018 : BioPharma Credit security interest
         : Prior lender position released
    2019 : Ownership to Novocure GMBH
         : Novocure GMBH grants security interest
    2020 : Security interests released
         : BPCR LP confirms collateral
         : JPMorgan takes security interest
    2022 : Novocure sues Fieldcure
    2024 : JPMorgan release
         : BioPharma Credit security agreement

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The chain moves only among operating-company names: Standen Ltd → Novocure Limited → Novocure GMBH. None carries an "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix, and none is a registered-agent-address single-purpose LLC. BPCR LP / BioPharma Credit PLC / JPMorgan are recorded as secured creditors under Security Interest / Release / Omnibus Confirmation agreements (e.g., 2015-02-02, 2018-02-07, 2020-11-06, 2024-05-04), i.e., collateral positions — not ownership transfers. Google Patents' "current assignee" field listing BPCR LP is an artifact of those collateral recordings and should not be read as ownership.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. No assignee in the chain matches the listed NPE directories (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). The terminating owner, Novocure GMBH, is the opposite of an NPE: it is the manufacturer/owner of the Optune TTFields product line and it sued a direct competitor (Fieldcure, M.D. Fla. 8:22-cv-02535, filed 2022-11-07) asserting the '699 patent alongside the '921 and '203 patents.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / INSUFFICIENT DATA. I could not retrieve a single correspondent of record (attorney or firm) for any of the ~19 entries. The Google Patents legal-events mirror does not carry the correspondent field, and my attempts to pull the underlying assignment PDFs from the USPTO's legacy assignment host returned only an unrelated document. I am therefore not able to say whether one attorney/firm handled every recording, and I will not infer it. This must be closed out with a direct USPTO Assignment Center pull (see verification link below); the correspondent field is the single highest-value item still missing from this reconstruction.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT (as an NPE pattern). There is a dense cluster of recordings in 2018-02-07 (×3), 2019 (×2), and 2020 (×4), which superficially resembles cascading transfers. On inspection these are all security-interest grants and releases among the same financing parties plus two intra-Novocure ownership steps (2019-08-20 Novocure Limited → Novocure GMBH) — not chained unrelated LLCs, and no two assignees share an anonymous registered-agent address. Signal does not fire.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. The suit was filed 2022-11-07. The closest preceding assignment is the 2019-08-20 Novocure Limited → Novocure GMBH transfer (≈38 months before filing), and all 2020 activity is financing-related. No ownership transfer sits inside the 6-month window before the Fieldcure complaint, so there is no evidence the chain was re-arranged to manufacture standing or venue.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11, no receiver, no sale-of-assets recording. Novocure is a going concern (NASDAQ: NVCR) that is still recording new security agreements on this patent as recently as 2024-05-04 — the opposite of a distressed liquidation.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. Novocure asserts the '699 patent in its own name against a competitor (Fieldcure), not through a proxy NPE. There is no transfer to a third-party assertion vehicle that then sues on Novocure's behalf.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at the operating company Novocure GMBH, with BPCR LP / BioPharma Credit PLC holding only collateral. This is the inverse of a defensive-aggregation outcome.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Justification: Every ownership link in the recorded chain is an operating-company transaction — Standen Limited → Novocure Limited (Change of Name, 2011-05-19) → Novocure GMBH (Assignment of Interest, 2019-08-20) — with no shell LLC and no NPE in the chain (signals 1, 2, 4, 6, 7, 8 all negative). The intervening recordings are secured-financing events, not transfers (security interests at 2013-02-20, 2015-02-02, 2018-02-07, 2019-05-06, 2020-11-06, 2024-05-04; releases at 2013-12-20, 2018-02-07, 2020-04-13, 2020-04-14 [045278/0825], 2020-08-19 [50395/0398], 2020-08-25 [045278/0825], 2024-04-24), and the omnibus confirmation at 2020-05-21 merely re-papered BPCR LP's collateral. The current owner, Novocure GMBH, ships the Optune TTFields product embodying the claims and used the '699 patent to sue a direct competitor (Fieldcure) in 2022 — the definition of an operating-company assertion, not NPE activity.

Residual uncertainty to close: (i) no correspondent-of-record data was obtainable this session (signal 3 unresolved); (ii) reel/frame numbers other than 045278/0825 and 50395/0398 were not retrievable; (iii) execution dates were not retrievable. None of these, if filled in, is likely to change the verdict, but signal 3 should be confirmed directly before any final NPE determination is certified.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 7136699) · legacy interface https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

I'll search for the USPTO record and the cited prior art references for US 7,136,699.

Let me pull the actual front page (References Cited) of the '699 patent PDF.

Let me try to surface the actual citation list on the '699 patent's Google Patents page.

Prior Art Analysis — US 7,136,699 B2

⚠️ Critical methodological caveat (read first)

My task was to "look at each patent citation for 7136699." I attempted direct retrieval of the "References Cited" block on the front page of US 7,136,699 itself, via Google Patents' Patent Citations data, the issued-PDF patentimages scan, and USPTO-linked records (PubChem patent record, patents-review.com, Justia). I could not retrieve the '699-specific front-page citation list in this session. The search index surfaced the citation lists of closely related family members — US 7,016,725 B2 ("Method and apparatus for destroying dividing cells," issued 2006-03-21) and US 7,333,852 B2 — rather than the '699 front page.

Per the operating rules, I will not fabricate the '699 cite list. Below I separate (A) references I can verify belong to the '699 disclosure, from (B) the family-proxy citation list, from (C) the §102 analysis — each clearly labeled by evidentiary strength.

1. USPTO-record confirmation for literal patent number 7136699

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7136699B2](/patent/US7136699B2)/en ; https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US-7136699-B2 ; https://www.patents-review.com/a/[10263329](/patent/10263329)-apparatus-destroying-dividing-cells.html

2. (A) References verifiably cited within the US 7,136,699 disclosure

These come from the authoritative full text supplied for this analysis — they are cited in the '699 description itself, so they are unambiguous "references cited in" the patent.

The '699 full text I was given does not contain a "References Cited" front-page block (it truncates at the end of the description). That is a limitation of the supplied document, not evidence that no citations exist.

3. (B) U.S. patent citations appearing on the family-proxy front pages (NOT verified for '699)

The searches returned the full "(56) References Cited" lists for US 7,016,725 and US 7,333,852. Because these are same-field Palti family patents, their cite lists are almost certainly a superset/overlap of the '699 list — but I cannot confirm any individual entry appears on the '699 front page. Presented literally, including OCR garbling:

US 7,016,725 B2 front page (as retrieved):
2,220,269 (11/1940) Patzold et al.; 4,016,886 (4/1977) Ross et al.; 4,121,592 (10/1978) Walsh et al.; 4,263,920 (4/1981) Tasio [Tasto] et al.; 4,467,809 (8/1984) Brighton; 4,472,506 (9/1984) Liburdy; 4,622,952 (11/1986) Gordon; 4,626,506 (12/1986) Arnold [Zimmermann] et al.; 4,676,258 (6/1987) Inokuchi et al.; 4,622,470 [sic] />4,822,470 (4/1989) Chang; 4,846,178 (7/1989) Funke et al.; 4,846,196 (7/1989) Wiksell et al.; 4,923,814 (5/1990) Marshall; 4,936,303 (6/1990) Derwiler et al.; 4,971,991 (11/1990) Umemura et al.; 5,099,756 (3/1992) Franconi et al.; 5,158,071 (10/1992) Umemura et al.; 5,236,410 (8/1993) Granov et al.; 5,312,843 (5/1994) Costerton et al.; 5,386,837 / 5,389,069 (2/1995) Sterzer / Weaver; 5,441,532 (8/1995) Fenn; 5,441,746 (8/1995) Chagnon; 5,468,223 (11/1995) Mir; 5,606,971 (3/1997) Sarvazyn; 5,674,267 (10/1997) Mir et al.; 5,718,246 (2/1998) Vona; 5,807,257 (9/1998) Bridges; 5,964,726 (10/1999) Korenstein et al.; 5,976,092 (11/1999) Chinn; 5,984,882 (11/1999) Rosenschein et al.; 6,027,488 (2/2000) Hofmann et al.; 6,043,066 (3/2000) Mangano et al.; 6,055,453 (4/2000) Hofmann et al.; 6,068,650 (5/2000) Hofmann et al.; 6,096,020 (8/2000) Hofmann et al.; 6,319,901 B1 (11/2001) Bernard et al.; 6,413,255 B1 (7/2002) Stern; 6,447,499 B2 (9/2002) Gray.

US 7,333,852 B2 front page additionally shows 6,096,060 (8/2000) Anderson and foreign EP 0 330 797 A2 (9/1989), plus non-patent Hofmann et al., "Electronic Genetic-Physical and Biological Aspects of Cellular Electromanipulation," IEEE Eng. in Med. and Biology Mag., Dec. 1986, pp. 6–23.

⚠️ OCR caution: several entries above are garbled (e.g., "Tasio/Tasto," "Sarvazyn/Sarvazyan," "Derwiler," the 4,622,470 ↔ 4,822,470 duplication, and 5,839,069 vs 5,389,069). I am reproducing them literally as retrieved and not auto-correcting them. Verify each number before relying on it.

Sources: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/dc/db/ff/545e217cb71112/US7016725.pdf ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/97/c6/f0/09862beab54546/US7333852.pdf

4. (C) §102 anticipation assessment

Claim scope used. From the prior analysis, claim 1 (as reconstructed from the pre-grant publication US 2004/0068295 A1) recites an apparatus with: first and second electrodes each having a conductor, positionable on/around living tissue containing dividing cells having polarizable intracellular members and a cleavage furrow; a source applying an alternating electric potential to induce a non-homogeneous field in the dividing cells producing an increased-density field at the cleavage furrow; sufficient to move the polarizable members toward the furrow and destroy the dividing cells while non-dividing cells remain intact.

⚠️ Funding caveat: The issued claim text is not verbatim in my sources (only the pre-grant publication claims). Any anticipation verdict below is provisional pending confirmation of the issued claims.

Verdict: no cited reference anticipates under §102.

Family-member note (not prior art): US 7,016,725 and (per the US 7,519,420 page) the parent/related filings trace to the same inventor/family. A same-family Palti patent is not §102(a) prior art against the '699; at most it raises §102(e)/§102(a)(2) or double-patenting/obviousness-type-double-patenting questions.

Source confirming the family relationship and the 2000-02-17 priority tie: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7519420 ("Related Parent Applications … US10/263,329 Division US7136699B2 | 2000-02-17").

5. Priority-date consequence for §102 (important)

The earlier-generated section flagged a priority discrepancy: Google Patents lists the '699 prior-art date as 2002-10-02, while family tables (and the US 7,519,420 "Related Parent Applications" line) indicate an effective priority of 2000-02-17. If the 2000-02-17 benefit chain holds, then any reference published after 2000-02-17 but before 2002-10-02 is not §102(a)/(b) prior art against the '699 — which could exclude several late-1990s/2000–2002 items from consideration. Conversely, if the benefit claim fails, the 2002-10-02 date governs and the late references become available. I could not verify the continuity chain (whether 10/263,329 is a CIP, continuation, or division, and from which application).

6. Explicit uncertainties

1. The '699 front-page "References Cited" list was not retrieved. Sections 2–3 are (A) specification-internal citations and (B) a family-proxy list — not a confirmed '699 citation list. Any statement implying these appear on the '699 front page would be unsupported.
2. Issued claim text unverified — §102 claim-mapping uses the pre-grant publication claims (US 2004/0068295 A1), which may differ from the allowed claims.
3. Priority/continuity unverified (2000-02-17 vs 2002-10-02).
4. OCR errors in the family-proxy reference list were preserved literally, not corrected.
5. Adjusted-expiration discrepancy (2026-03-08 per Google Patents vs 2024-04-18 per patents-review.com) unresolved.
6. No live USPTO full-text query succeeded — I could not run a direct patft/Patent Public Search or PatentCenter fetch; results are from the aggregators cited.

Recommended verification steps (outside this session's tool capability): open the US 7,136,699 "Patent Citations" tab on Google Patents, pull USPTO Patent Public Search (ppubs.uspto.gov) for the '699 "References Cited," and confirm the front page in the issued PDF at patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/.../US7136699.pdf.

Sources cited: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7136699B2/en ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US20040068295A1 ; https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US-7136699-B2 ; https://www.patents-review.com/a/10263329-apparatus-destroying-dividing-cells.html ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/dc/db/ff/545e217cb71112/US7016725.pdf ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/97/c6/f0/09862beab54546/US7333852.pdf ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US7519420

I'll research the prior-art references cited on this patent and related obviousness challenges before constructing the § 103 analysis.

Let me pin down the actual cited prior art on the '699 patent's face and check for any validity challenges/PTAB proceedings.

Let me verify the issued claim text (for proper claim-by-claim mapping) and check for any IPR/reexam validity proceedings.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,136,699 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note / caveat (read first). The Google Patents full text supplied to me ends before the printed claims, so I do not have verbatim issued-claim language for U.S. 7,136,699. My claim reconstruction below draws on (a) the '699 specification/abstract, (b) the co-pending pre-grant publication US 2004/0068295 A1 (same application 10/263,329), and (c) the EPO Board of Appeal decision on the EP family member, which quotes the counterpart claim in the amended form (field intensity 0.1–10 V/cm; "passage of the electric field through the dividing cells in late anaphase or telophase transforms the electric field into a non-homogeneous electric field that produces an increased density electric field in a region of a cleavage furrow"). Where I state claim language, treat it as reconstructed from family documents, not verified against the U.S. printed patent. I also could not directly retrieve the '699 front-page "(56) References Cited" list; the prior art below is drawn from references the '699 specification itself cites, plus references the immediate Palti family cites, and independent literature. This analysis is a technical/analyst assessment, not a legal opinion.

1. Legal framework applied

Obviousness is assessed under Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966) (scope/content of claims; differences over prior art; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations), as refined by KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007):

• A combination is obvious where prior-art elements "work the same way" as claimed and the combination is "a predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."
• Motivation to combine may come from the references themselves, the nature of the problem, or "common sense"; the "obvious to try" standard applies where there is a finite number of identified, predictable solutions.
• Reasonably expected to succeed is required (but the expectation need not be that the result works perfectly — Allergan v. Sandoz).
• Inherent disclosure counts if the feature is "necessarily present" (In re Oelrich; In re Kageyama); a result-of-application property that is the inherent physical consequence of a disclosed step is not a patentable distinction.
• Range limitations that optimize a result-effective variable are obvious (In re Aller; In re Applied Materials).
• Fact issues: teaching away, unexpected results, long-felt need, commercial success, failure of others, industry praise are weighed but require a nexus to the claimed invention (Polaroid v. Konica).

The '699 is an expired patent (record: adjusted expiration 2026-03-08; status "Expired – Lifetime"). That does not change the § 103 analysis, and no IPR/PGR or validity ruling on the '699 was found in my searches — the identified litigation, Novocure GmbH v. Fieldcure Co. Ltd., No. 8:22-cv-02535 (M.D. Fla.), was voluntarily dismissed without prejudice (Dec. 2, 2022) with no merits decision.

2. Reconstructed claim 1 and element breakdown

Element 6 is the crux for § 103. It recites what happens to any imposed field when it crosses a cell whose geometry has narrowed to a bridge — i.e., field-line convergence at a constriction. That is a consequence of Maxwell/Ohmic field behavior in a structured medium, not a separately added structure. Likewise Element 7 is asserted as a result of that inherent convergence. Both are vulnerable to an inherency attack if any reference discloses applying a comparable AC field across tissue containing dividing cells.

3. Prior-art landscape (as of the 2002-10-02 filing; effective § 102(b) window = before 2001-10-02)

Important date bracket: Kirson et al., Cancer Res. 64:3288 (2004) and Kirson et al., PNAS 104:10152 (2007) are after the '699 filing and are not prior art to the '699. They are useful only as objective-indicia/mechanism-confirmation evidence (frequency- and cell-size-dependence), not as § 103 art.

4. Primary combination — Mangano '066 + dielectrophoresis art (Pohl/Pohl '934/Asbury) [+ Darnell] [+ insulated-electrode art]

This is the strongest § 103 combination. Element-by-element:

Motivation to combine (KSR-satisfying):

1. Same field of endeavor and same problem — Mangano and the DEP references all address selective destruction/manipulation of cells by applied electric fields, with Mangano expressly seeking selectivity based on cell geometry/size and expressly naming cancer-cell purging.
2. Complementary functions, no change in principle — Mangano supplies "field → membrane breakdown, selective by geometry." DEP supplies "in a non-uniform field, polarizable intracellular matter is driven up the gradient." Combining them merely adds the directionality mechanism to Mangano's destruction — a "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."
3. The '699's own specification frames the invention as supplying what Mangano lacked — "What is needed in the art … is an apparatus for killing dividing cells [that] better discriminates between dividing cells … and non-dividing cells." That is the design incentive KSR treats as motivation.

Reasonable expectation of success: DEP forces on cells/macromolecules were quantitatively characterized (Pohl 1978; Asbury 1998), and the geometry-driven field concentration at a constriction is a deterministic, computable effect. A PHOSITA would expect the DEP mechanism to operate wherever a non-uniform field exists — precisely the condition the cleavage furrow creates.

Anticipated defenses to this combination:

• Mangano uses high fields to irreversibly electroporate and is directed to suspensions in a separation device, not in-vivo tissue — a PHOSITA might not look to a cell-sorting reference for therapy.
• DEP art is micro-scale (electrode chips, µm particles) and non-thermal but not "tissue field" art; scaling to bulk tissue with insulated electrodes is not shown.
• The specific frequency window (50–500 kHz / 100–300 kHz) is asserted as a non-obvious intermediate range with a specific functional justification (Ohmic behavior, no stimulation, no heating).

5. Alternative / secondary combinations

Combination B — Hyperthermia/RF-EM tumor art (Sterzer '837; Umemura; Franconi) + insulated/capacitive-electrode art + DEP art + Darnell.
Motivation: improve selectivity and reduce collateral heating of existing electric-field tumor therapy. Because RF-hyperthermia art was explicitly thermal, the move to a non-thermal, frequency-selective, capacitively coupled regime would be a predictable refinement motivated by the known side-effect problem. Weakness: hyperthermia art teaches away from a non-thermal mechanism and gives no furrow-based selectivity rationale.

Combination C — Electroporation-threshold art (Mangano + Weaver + Hofmann) + cell-geometry art (Darnell).
Motivation: Mangano's own premise — geometry (size) determines threshold — makes it obvious to look at other geometry differences, including the telophase bridge, as a still-stronger discriminator. Weakness: none of these references teaches that a bridge concentrates the field or that DEP (rather than dielectric breakdown voltage) is the operative mechanism.

Combination D — Palti's own earlier family as § 102/§ 103 prior art (self-collision).
Because the '699 record lists filing 2002-10-02 while the family traces an earlier priority (records in related Palti filings show 2000-02-17; earlier sections flagged this "priority discrepancy" and hypothesized a continuation-in-part), it is material whether the '699 claims are supported by the earlier priority document. If the claims are not entitled to the earlier date, earlier published Palti applications (e.g., WO 01/00994, published Jan 2001) become § 102(b)/§ 103(a) art usable against the claims — a classic "applicant's own prior publication" obviousness scenario. Flag: I did not verify the continuity chain, and I did not retrieve the WO 01/00994 disclosure to confirm it teaches the furrow-specific mechanism. This avenue should be confirmed from the file wrapper before being relied on.

6. Dependent-claim obviousness (reconstructed dependents)

The dependent claims therefore add little independent inventive weight; if claim 1 falls, most dependents fall with it. The control-box/temperature-sensor and gel/rim dependents are the most clearly obvious.

7. Secondary considerations and teaching-away (the patentee's best case)

The strongest nonobviousness arguments available to the patentee:

1. Teaching away / contrary expectation. The '699 spec states the art "widely accepted that the meaningful effects of such fields on living organisms are only those due to their heating effects." If accepted, the prior art taught that intermediate-frequency AC fields do nothing except heat — i.e., would dissuade a PHOSITA from using them to destroy cells non-thermally.
2. Unexpected mechanism. The claim's operative effect is dielectrophoretic organelle migration toward the furrow — a non-thermal, geometry-selective mechanism not recognized in Mangano (electroporation) or the hyperthermia art.
3. Long-felt need / failure of others. Mangano's own admissions (size/threshold differences "significant only in certain types of cells"; risk of damaging normal cells) evidence an unmet need that the patent claims to solve.
4. Commercial success / industry recognition. The Novocure story (basement-lab discovery; skepticism; EF-11 and EF-14 trials; FDA approval 2011/2015; NCCN Category I recommendation) supports objective indicia — provided a nexus is established between Optune's success and the '699 claims specifically (not merely the later '921/'203 electrode and later IP). Careful: much of the commercial success post-dates and may be attributable to other patents and later developments; the Fieldcure complaint itself frames the '699 as the foundational "discovery" patent, which supports nexus.
5. Skepticism of the field ("Nobody understood what I was actually doing there") — evidence the solution was not "obvious to try" to contemporaneous PHOSITAs.

Counter: These are fact-dependent and must be weighed against a strong inherency/optimization case on Elements 4 and 6. Also, teaching away requires the art to "criticize, discredit, or otherwise discourage" the solution — general skepticism about mechanism is weaker than an express statement that non-thermal intermediate-frequency fields are ineffective.

8. Bottom line and confidence

• Prima facie § 103 case is credible, particularly against any broad reading of claim 1. The most dangerous combination is Mangano U.S. 6,043,066 (geometry-selective membrane breakdown of cancer cells) + the dielectrophoresis art (Pohl 1978; Pohl 4,326,934; Pohl & Hawk 1966; Asbury & van den Engh 1998) + Darnell (cleavage-furrow biology) [+ insulated-electrode art], with motivation supplied by Mangano's own express goal of selectivity and KSR's "predictable use of prior-art elements according to their established functions."
• The claim's weakest links are the inherency of Elements 6–7 (non-homogeneous field and furrow-density increase are physical consequences of a converging geometry) and the frequency/intensity ranges (routine optimization of a result-effective variable).
• The claim's strongest defenses are the specific intermediate frequency window tied to a functional (non-thermal, non-stimulatory) result, the furrow-specific dielectrophoretic mechanism, contrary teaching in the prior art that these fields act only thermally, and objective indicia — but these are genuine fact questions and, on the record available to me, not established.
• Two open items materially affect the analysis and should be verified from the file wrapper / PACER before reliance:
  1. Verbatim issued-claim text of U.S. 7,136,699 (I reconstructed it; I did not retrieve it).
  2. The priority/continuity chain (2000-02-17 vs. 2002-10-02) — determinative of whether earlier Palti publications are § 102/§ 103 art ("self-collision").
• No IPR/PGR/reexam or merits invalidity ruling on the '699 was found; the only identified litigation was voluntarily dismissed. No 2026 CAFC activity on the '699 was located (consistent with the earlier sections; absence of results is not proof of absence — I could not query PACER directly).

Identifiers interpreted literally as supplied: U.S. 7,136,699 B2; U.S. 10/263,329; US 2004/0068295 A1; U.S. 6,043,066 (Mangano); WO 99/11771; U.S. 4,326,934; U.S. 5,389,069; U.S. 5,386,837; U.S. 6,027,488 / 6,055,453 / 6,068,650 / 6,096,020 (Hofmann); U.S. 6,319,901; U.S. 6,856,839; WO 01/00994; Case 8:22-cv-02535 (M.D. Fla.).

Sources consulted: Google Patents US7136699B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7136699](/patent/US7136699)/en), US20040068295A1, PubChem patent record US-7136699-B2; EPO Board of Appeal decision (T 1323/09-style document at legacy.epo.org) on the EP counterpart; Espacenet/patenthub records for US 6,043,066 / WO 99/11771 and US 4,326,934; Pohl (1978) Dielectrophoresis; Pohl & Hawk, Science 152:647 (1966); Asbury & van den Engh, Biophys. J. 74:1024 (1998); Darnell et al., Molecular Cell Biology (1986); RPX/Justia Novocure v. Fieldcure docket (8:22-cv-02535).