US 8337507

I'll search for US patent 8337507 across patent databases, including USPTO and any CAFC docket references.

Let me retrieve the claim text and check for any 2026 CAFC activity.

Search report — US 8,337,507 (literal identifier: US8337507 / US 8,337,507 B2)

Important framing note before the summary: I ran searches against Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, Justia Patents, patent family/bibliographic aggregators, and general web indices for litigation/appellate records. I was able to confirm the bibliographic data, abstract, and legal-status data below with good confidence. I was not able to retrieve the verbatim text of the issued claims from the sources returned, and I found no evidence of any Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket in 2026 involving this patent. I flag both gaps explicitly rather than filling them in — see the "Uncertainty" section.

1. Bibliographic data (high confidence)

Priority chain (from the cross-reference section of the related publication US 2009/0306676 A1): 12/317,472 is a continuation of 10/305,652 (filed Nov. 27, 2002), which is a continuation-in-part of 10/160,667 (filed May 28, 2002), which claims benefit of provisional 60/293,488 (filed May 25, 2001), 60/363,527 (filed Mar. 12, 2002), and 60/380,695 and 60/380,692 (both filed May 14, 2002). Google Patents separately records a "priority claimed from US10/305,652" event on 2002-11-27, consistent with this chain.

Classifications include A61F2/30756 (cartilage endoprostheses), A61F2/30942 (CAD/CAM custom prostheses), A61F2/389 (tibial components), A61F2/3859 (femoral components), A61B17/1662 (orthopedic cutting instruments for particular body parts), and G06F30/00 (CAD).

2. Abstract (verbatim, as published)

"Disclosed herein are methods and compositions for producing articular repair materials and for repairing an articular surface. In particular, methods for providing articular repair systems. Also provided are articular surface repair systems designed to replace a selected area cartilage, for example, and surgical tools for repairing articular surfaces."

This abstract is identical across the patent and its sibling publications (US 20090306676A1, US 20100303313A1, US 20100303324A1, US 20140303629A1), which is expected because they share the same specification.

3. CAFC 2026 docket check

• No 2026 Federal Circuit docket referencing US 8,337,507 was found. My searches for "Conformis v. Smith & Nephew CAFC 2026," "Conformis US8337507 Federal Circuit appeal," and "8337507 CAFC 2026 docket" returned no confirming record.
• This absence is consistent with the recorded legal status: the patent's adjusted expiration is October 3, 2022, so the asserted patent term had already run before 2026. A live 2026 appeal on this specific patent would therefore be unusual (though appeals can outlive a patent term in principle).
• Related but distinct enforcement activity surfaced in the results for other ConforMIS patents, not this one:
  • ConforMIS, Inc. v. Smith & Nephew, Inc., No. 1:16-cv-10420-IT (D. Mass.), with IPR2017-00510 filed by Smith & Nephew on U.S. Patent 7,981,158 (a different patent).
  • A District of Delaware filing (courtlistener, DED 75372, Doc. 84.1) raising invalidity contentions on the ConforMIS patents abbreviated '304, '161, '129, '482, '745, '780, '026 — the '507 patent is not among those listed.
• A third-party aggregator listing (szpa.org) records "诉讼案件数 0" (litigation case count: 0) for this specific patent, which conflicts with the Google Patents "family has litigation" flag; I note the conflict rather than resolving it.

4. Plain-language overview of the claims

I could not retrieve the verbatim issued claim text. What follows is an overview of the subject matter the independent claims are directed to, reconstructed from the specification (which is supplied in full in the patent record) and from Google Patents' statistically extracted claim-term fingerprint for this document. Treat this as directional, not as a literal claim reading.

Claim-term fingerprint published for US8337507 (most-frequent terms in the claim set): cartilage, implant, bone, subchondral bone plate, articular cartilage, manufacturing, ultrasonography, surgical procedure, mechanism, knee, optical coherence tomography, patella, ankle, hip, optical imaging, acetabulum, computer-aided design. The presence of "manufacturing," "computer-aided design," "ultrasonography," and joint-specific terms ("acetabulum," "patella," "ankle," "hip") is a strong signal that the independent claims are method claims (making/selecting an implant) with joint-specific dependent claims, plus at least one apparatus/system claim and likely a surgical-tool claim.

Based on the specification, the claimed subject matter divides into roughly four families:

(a) Method of providing/making an articular repair material. Measuring the dimensions of the intended implantation site and/or the surrounding articular surface — specifically cartilage thickness and curvature — and then producing or selecting a repair material that conforms to those measurements. The specification expressly states that step (a) may comprise measuring thickness and curvature, or size and curvature, or all three, and alternatively that it may comprise reconstructing the shape of the healthy cartilage surface at the intended implantation site. Measurement routes disclosed are imaging (MRI, CT, ultrasound, OCT, x-ray/tomosynthesis) and intraoperative probing (mechanical probe, ultrasound, laser, optical, deformable/hardening materials).

(b) Method of designing an articular implant from image data. Obtain an image of a joint containing both normal and diseased cartilage; reconstruct the dimensions of the diseased cartilage surface to correspond to normal cartilage; design the implant to match the reconstructed surface, or an area slightly larger than the diseased area. The specification gives two concrete reconstruction techniques: fitting a parametric surface (e.g., control points extending the normal contour, or a B-spline surface), and a morphological closing operation (dilation then erosion, 2-D or 3-D) on a binary cartilage image in which diseased cartilage appears as indentations.

(c) Articular surface repair system / prosthesis (apparatus). A system comprising a cartilage replacement material (superficial component) having curvature and thickness similar to the adjacent or surrounding cartilage, plus a second, non-biologic or structural component having curvature similar to the subchondral bone. Key express limitations disclosed: the system constitutes less than about 80% of the articular surface (e.g., a single femoral condyle or a tibia plateau); one or both components may be non-pliable; the device may be porous or porous-coated, may have grooves or flanges to resist rotation and control toggle, may have a flat bone-facing surface to control depth, and may include one or more anchoring pegs, screws, or pins (optionally bioresorbable) extending into subchondral bone and/or marrow. The interface with surrounding cartilage may be at a non-90° angle, and peripheral margins may be substantially non-perpendicular.

(d) Surgical tool / method of preparing the joint. A tool having one or more surfaces or members conforming to the articular surface (e.g., a femoral condyle or tibial plateau) with an aperture sized to control drill/saw depth and width and receiving an implant insertion. Disclosed variants include a reusable or single-use tool, a tool made of lucite and/or silastic, and a tool comprising an array of adjustable, closely spaced pins. Related disclosed methods include injecting a curable/hardening material through the tool aperture to take a negative impression of the articular surface, and intraoperative C-arm imaging during implant placement to position the implant accurately. The specification also emphasizes preparing the implantation site with a single cut and achieving a near anatomic fit/alignment with the surrounding cartilage and subchondral bone.

There is also a disclosed "evaluation" family (systems and methods for superimposing images of a joint and a candidate repair system in a common coordinate system to score fit), which may correspond to one or more independent claims given the 34-claim count, but I cannot confirm whether an evaluation claim is independent in this particular patent.

5. Uncertainty / caveats

1. Claim text not verified. I do not have the issued claim language of US 8,337,507 from a primary source in these results. The "independent claim" overview above is inferred from the specification and from metadata, not read verbatim from the claim set. Anyone relying on this for claim-charting, FTO, or validity work should pull the claim text directly from USPTO PatentCenter or the granted patent PDF.
2. Independent-claim boundaries unverified. The specification supports both method and apparatus claims, but I cannot state from these results which claim numbers are independent or what the exact transitional language is.
3. "1997-01-08" anomaly. One Google Patents family listing (US20100303324) shows US12/317,472 under "Related Parent Applications" with a date of 1997-01-08 and a "Continuation" relationship. This is almost certainly a database artifact (the 1997 date does not match any document in the stated priority chain, whose earliest member is the May 25, 2001 provisional). Per the operating rules I am not auto-correcting it, and I am not treating it as controlling — but flagging it in case it matters.
4. Assignee name normalization. The record variously renders the assignee as "ConforMIS, Inc.", "Conformis Inc", and "CONFORMIS, INC.," with addresses in Burlington, MA and Bedford, MA over time. A collateral-security reassignment chain involving Venture Lending & Leasing V/VI, Oxford Finance, Innovatus Life Sciences, and MidCap Financial Trust appears in the assignment history; those are security interests and releases, not transfers of title. ConforMIS was subsequently acquired by restor3d (announced 2023), though I did not verify the current recorded owner of this specific patent in these searches.
5. CAFC 2026: negative finding. My failure to find a 2026 CAFC docket is a negative result from web search, not an authoritative clearance of the Federal Circuit docket. If a 2026 appeal exists but is not well-indexed, I would not have surfaced it. Given the 2022 expiration, the probability is low, but that is an inference, not a confirmed fact.

I'll search for litigation involving US 8,337,507.

Let me search more specifically for this patent number in litigation databases.

Let me check litigation databases and other Conformis cases specifically.

Bottom line

Based on the sources I was able to retrieve (Google Patents, CourtListener/RECAP dockets, Justia, GovInfo, RPX Insight, and Conformis SEC/press filings), I could not confirm any litigation in which U.S. Patent No. 8,337,507 ("the '507 patent") was specifically identified as an asserted patent. I am not going to tell you it was never asserted — my search coverage was limited and the sources that would definitively resolve this (Darts-IP, Unified Patents' litigation portal, full PACER/RECAP docket text for each Conformis suit) were not fully retrieved. What I can give you is (a) the one affirmative signal I found that the family has been litigated, and (b) the complete set of Conformis patent suits I found, with the asserted patents identified where the sources stated them, so you can see that none of them named the '507 patent in the material I could read.

1. The one affirmative signal: family-level litigation flag

The Google Patents record for US8337507B2 carries a "Family has litigation" indicator, pointing to the Darts-IP global patent litigation dataset for family 27501594:

• https://patents.google.com/patent/US8337507/en
• Darts-IP link as reproduced on that page: https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=27501594...

Important nuance: that flag is family-level, not patent-level. It establishes that some member of the priority family (priority date 2001-05-25, from US10/305,652) has been litigated — it does not establish that the '507 patent itself was asserted. Conformis's family here is very large (see the long list of sibling patents in the "Also published as"/citation data, e.g., US8460304, US9186161, US8377129, US8083745, US8556983, etc.), and those siblings are the patents that actually appear in the Conformis complaints I retrieved.

Also relevant to any damages analysis: the '507 patent is recorded as Expired – Lifetime, with an adjusted expiration of 2022-10-03 on the Google Patents record. Its enforceability window has closed, which materially limits the value of any assertion.

2. Conformis patent litigation found, with asserted patents as stated in the sources

None of the following named the '507 patent as an asserted patent in the documents I could read.

Also found but not patent litigation (flagging so you don't include it by mistake): Conformis, Inc. v. Aetna Life Insurance Co., D. Mass. 1:20-cv-10890 (Judge Indira Talwani) — ERISA/coverage dispute over reimbursement for the Conformis knee system, not a patent case.

3. Post-grant proceedings (not litigation, but relevant)

• Smith & Nephew, Inc. v. ConforMIS, Inc., IPR2017-00373, on US 8,551,169 — Final Written Decision 2018-06-12 holding claims 29 and 30 unpatentable under § 103; Conformis noticed appeal to the Federal Circuit on 2018-08-13.
• Smith & Nephew filed fourteen IPR petitions against Conformis patents in the 2016–2017 period per the D. Mass. stay order; I did not retrieve any petition directed to US 8,337,507.

4. What I could not confirm, and where to verify

• No source I retrieved named US 8,337,507 as an asserted patent in any district court complaint, ITC complaint, or IPR petition.
• I could not retrieve: the Darts-IP family 27501594 litigation list; the Unified Patents litigation case list; the Conformis v. Zimmer Biomet docket; the Conformis v. Bodycad docket; or the full patent-in-suit lists for the Smith & Nephew, Exactech, Bodycad, and Wright Medical complaints.
• One search returned an unrelated patent document referencing a case about US 7,846,207 (Synthes v. Globus) — that is a different patent and a different dispute; I excluded it.
• One search return referenced a Spanish cadastral parcel number "8337507" — not a patent; excluded.

Recommended next verification steps (in priority order): (1) query Darts-IP for family 27501594; (2) query the Unified Patents litigation portal with the exact string 8337507 (not 8,337,507, and not sibling numbers); (3) pull the full docket and complaints in D. Del. 1:16-cv-10420 (D. Mass.), 1:19-cv-01528, 1:21-cv-00640, and the Zimmer Biomet and Bodycad dockets from PACER/RECAP and search the exhibit lists for "8,337,507."

Caveat: Everything above reflects search results retrieved today. Where the search results and my prior recollection conflict, I have deferred to the search results. Where I do not know something with confidence (e.g., the specific patents asserted in the Exactech, Bodycad, and Wright Medical complaints), I have said so rather than inferring.

I'll verify the structured ODP result against public records before writing anything.

A note on the source data before the analysis

The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO ODP) states: no AIA trial proceedings on file for US 8,337,507. I ran a targeted web sweep to check for older or unindexed filings, and the result is consistent with the ODP: I found no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming the '507 — not by number, not by petitioner, and not in the related-matters sections of any ConforMIS PTAB filing I could retrieve. The only litigation flag on the patent's Google Patents page is the family-level darts-ip entry ("Family has litigation," darts-ip family 27501594), which attaches to the ConforMIS family, not to a proceeding on this patent. See https://patents.google.com/patent/US8337507/en.

One reconciliation worth stating, because it is the strongest evidence the ODP result is right rather than merely incomplete: Smith & Nephew filed sixteen IPRs against ConforMIS between 2016-09-21 and 2017-03-01, covering nine patents — and the '507 is not one of them. Every one of the sixteen is accounted for by patent number elsewhere in the public record, so there is no "seventeenth petition" gap for the '507 to hide in. See the Patent Docs petition roundup at https://www.patentdocs.org/2017/04/ptab-life-sciences-report-part-iv.html and the exhibit-list enumeration in US 10,966,732 (column 6, "Other Publications"), https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/e1/6c/70/58c0979186c8cb/US10966732.pdf.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 8,337,507: 0 — zero active, zero claims invalidated, zero claims sustained by the Board, zero settlements, zero institution denials. The bottom-line defensive posture is unusual and needs to be stated precisely: a defendant cannot say "the PTAB killed these claims, so the assertion is sanction-bait" — no FWD exists on this patent, so no claim of the '507 has been adjudicated unpatentable by the Board, and every claim stands as issued (subject to whatever the district courts and any ex parte reexamination have done, which I could not verify). But the defendant's real leverage is different and, in my view, stronger than a typical IPR win: (i) the patent is expired — Google Patents' legal-status field reads "Expired - Lifetime," adjusted expiration 2022-10-03 — so there is no forward-looking exposure; and (ii) the '507's siblings in the same 2001-05-25 ConforMIS priority family were systematically invalidated in the same four-year window, handing a defendant a validated obviousness roadmap and a set of Board-approved prior-art combinations.

No proceedings to report on US 8,337,507

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner} entry to populate, and I will not manufacture one. Concretely:

• Type: n/a
• Filed: n/a
• Status: n/a (ODP: no AIA trial proceedings on file)
• Judge panel: n/a
• Petition grounds: n/a
• Institution decision: n/a
• Final Written Decision: n/a — no claim of the '507 has been canceled or confirmed by the Board
• Settlement / termination: n/a
• Appeal: n/a — the one ConforMIS Federal Circuit appeal in the record (2018-2027 / 2018-2054, ConforMIS, Inc. v. Iancu, Fed. Cir. Rule 36 judgment entered 2019-09-10, http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/18-2027.Rule_36_Judgment.9-10-2019.1.pdf) arose from IPR2016-01874 and IPR2017-00115, not from any proceeding on the '507
• Defensive value: Mixed, and I want to be blunt about both halves. The absence of PTAB activity is not exculpatory. Well-asserted patents in this family attracted IPRs immediately; the '507 did not, which suggests either it was never asserted against a well-funded competitor, or that it was asserted in contexts that settled before petition deadlines ran. Treat it as an untested patent, not a hardened one. But the expiration date and the family-wide invalidation record below mean a defendant today is fighting over a closed damages window, not an injunction.

Sibling-proceeding context (these are not proceedings on the '507 — they are the same ConforMIS family and the same challenger)

I am listing these only because they are the material a defendant will actually use. Every entry below is a different patent number.

IPR2017-00115 — Smith & Nephew, Inc. v. ConforMIS, Inc. (US 9,216,025)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2016-10-20
• Status: Final Written Decision; all challenged claims unpatentable
• Judge panel: as reported in the FWD (Tech Center 3700)
• Petition grounds: § 103(a) obviousness over the CAOS/Hafez reference material in view of Woolson, Biscup, Radermacher, Fell, and Alexander
• Institution decision: instituted as to claims 1–20 on four grounds
• Final Written Decision: entered 2018-04-19 — "Petitioner has shown by a preponderance of the evidence that challenged claims 1–20 of the '025 patent are unpatentable." Claims 1 and 15 were the independents. FWD copy: http://knobbemedical.com/wp-content/uploads/2017/05/Final-Written-Decision-8.pdf
• Appeal: Notice of Appeal filed 2018-06-07; consolidated as Fed. Cir. 2018-2054 with 2018-2027; affirmed by Rule 36 judgment, 2019-09-10
• Defensive value: Board-approved § 103 combination that killed patient-specific-instrument claims at a 2001/2002 priority date.

IPR2016-01874 — Smith & Nephew, Inc. v. ConforMIS, Inc. (US 9,055,953)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2016-09-21
• Status: FWD; challenged claims found unpatentable
• Final Written Decision: entered 2018-03-26
• Appeal: Notice of Appeal 2018-05-25; Fed. Cir. 2018-2027; affirmed (Rule 36), 2019-09-10
• Defensive value: Same. This is the earliest of the ConforMIS losses and the anchor of the affirmed-art set.

IPR2017-00373 — Smith & Nephew, Inc. v. ConforMIS, Inc. (US 8,551,169)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2016-11-30 (petition text: https://patentdocs.typepad.com/files/smithandnephew_ipr2017-00373.pdf)
• Status: FWD; claims 29–30 unpatentable; IPR certificate issued 2019-02-26, i.e., the cancelation was formalized
• Petition grounds: § 103(a) — claims 29–30 obvious over CAOS (Hafez) in combination with Radermacher and Woolson; second ground over Swaelens alone or with Woolson
• Final Written Decision: entered 2018-06-12, 65 pages
• Defensive value: Only two claims at issue, both method claims for building a patient-specific instrument from MRI + x-ray data. Canceled and certified.

IPR2017-00510 and IPR2017-00511 — Smith & Nephew, Inc. v. ConforMIS, Inc. (US 7,981,158)

• Type: Inter Partes Review (two petitions splitting the claim set: '510 = claims 1–65; '511 = claims 66–81)
• Filed: 2016-12-20 (both)
• Status: FWDs entered 2018-06-11; claims held unpatentable; IPR certificate issued 2019-02-22
• Petition grounds: § 103(a) — CAOS in combination with Woolson and Alexander, plus Radermacher/Fell/Kenna/Hofmann variants
• Defensive value: The '158 is the closest relative of the '507 in the record (same "methods and compositions for articular repair" lineage). Its total cancelation is the most transferable precedent, although I did not verify claim-by-claim correspondence between the '158 and the '507, and I would not assert one.

Other S&N petitions on family patents (dispositions not verified to the same depth)

• IPR2017-00307 ('025, second petition, filed 2016-11-21)
• IPR2017-00372 ('129, filed 2016-11-30; POPR 2017-03-15; S&N also filed an ex parte reexam request on the '129 on 2018-02-21)
• IPR2017-00487 and IPR2017-00488 ('482, filed 2016-12-14; S&N filed an ex parte reexam request 2017-10-16; reexam granted 2017-11-22, Control No. 90/014,036)
• IPR2017-00544 and IPR2017-00545 ('263, filed 2016-12-27; '544 was instituted and, after SAS, the Board modified institution to add all previously non-instituted grounds — see the 2018-05-18 Conduct of the Proceeding order at https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2017-00544/)
• IPR2017-00778, IPR2017-00779, IPR2017-00780 ('302, filed 2017-01-26)
• IPR2017-00983 and IPR2017-00984 ('827, filed 2017-02-28)

Settlement / termination (family level): the underlying district court case, ConforMIS, Inc. v. Smith & Nephew, Inc., No. 1:16-cv-10420-IT (D. Mass.), was stayed pending the IPRs and terminated by stipulated dismissal 2018-09-24; the parties settled in September 2018 after roughly 2.5 years. A parallel ConforMIS v. Zimmer Biomet action (D. Del. 1:19-cv-01528, filed 2019-08-15, asserting US 8,377,129 / 8,460,304 / 9,186,161 / 9,295,482) settled and licensed on 2020-05-28. Neither case asserted the '507. Settlement terms were not disclosed and I assume they are confidential.

Strategic summary

Claim status on the '507. There is no PTAB-blessed claim status to report: no claim is canceled, none is sustained, all are untested at the Board. I cannot give you the claim set — the authoritative full text supplied for this patent is truncated before the claims, and I did not independently verify the claim count or claim 1's text. Do not let anyone (including me) tell you "claim 1 of the '507 recites X" without pulling the patent. What I can say is directional: the '507's specification is directed to articular repair materials and prostheses — measuring cartilage thickness, size and curvature, selecting or growing a repair material to match, multi-component implants with a cartilage-like superficial component and a subchondral-bone-matched deep component — which is a different claim category from the patient-specific cutting-guide and imaging-method claims that S&N actually killed. The '507's exposure is therefore more likely to overlap with ConforMIS's implant claims and the '129/'304/'161/'482 set that settled with Zimmer Biomet than with the four patents that went to FWD.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR was ever filed on the '507, § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to nothing here. A defendant today is not restricted by any petitioner's prior grounds, is not in privity with S&N or Zimmer Biomet for estoppel purposes absent unusual facts, and can run any § 102/§ 103/§ 112 theory in district court. The practical constraint is one of relevance, not estoppel: the Board-tested art (Radermacher WO 93/25157; Alexander WO 00/35346; Woolson US 4,841,975; Fell WO 00/59411; Biscup US 2004/0117015; Hafez/CAOS; Swaelens; Kenna; Hofmann) is strongest against instrument-guide and image-method claims and may not map cleanly onto repair-material or prosthesis claims. Two other bars to keep in mind: § 315(b)'s one-year clock from service of an infringement complaint, and § 315(a)'s bar if the defendant already filed a DJ action. On the priority side, note that ConforMIS's priority dates were actively contested — defendants in the later Delaware case argued Conformis "recently disclosed ... that the priority dates set forth in its initial responses for the '304, '161, '129, and '482 patents were inaccurate" (see the invalidity contentions at https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ded.75372/gov.uscourts.ded.75372.84.1.pdf). The '507 claims a 2001-05-25 family priority date, but its own effective filing date may be later (application 12/317,472 filed 2008-12-22, claiming benefit of US 10/305,652 filed 2002-11-27) — worth pinning down, because it shifts the prior-art window.

Pattern signals. One competitor ran a coordinated sixteen-petition, nine-patent campaign (Smith & Nephew, via Knobbe Martens), with the patent owner (ConforMIS, via Finnegan) litigating hard through to the Federal Circuit and losing on Rule 36. There is no defensive aggregator in the chain — no Unified Patents, no RPX-filed challenge that I found. The '507 was a bystander to all of it. That pattern cuts both ways: the family was aggressively asserted and broadly invalidated, but this particular patent was never picked, which means its validity is genuinely open and its claims are genuinely untested.

Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant and the demand letter cites the '507, do not negotiate from the premise that the patent is "hardened" — and do not claim otherwise either. Confirm the claim set first. The full text provided for this analysis was truncated before the claims; before you draft anything, pull US 8,337,507 B2 from USPTO PatentCenter and read claims 1 and the independents. If the asserted claims look like the repair-material/prosthesis claims described in the specification, the S&N FWDs are useful analogues but not dispositive.
2. Lead with the expiration date, not with PTAB. The patent is flagged "Expired - Lifetime," adjusted expiration 2022-10-03. Post-expiration: no injunctive relief, no ongoing royalty; past damages under 35 U.S.C. § 286 are limited to six years before the complaint, and here the infringement period itself closed in 2022, so the recoverable window is narrow and shrinking daily. This is a stronger and simpler defense than any IPR-based argument.
3. Mine, but do not over-claim, the family FWDs. The four all-claims-unpatentable decisions — IPR2016-01874 ('953, FWD 2018-03-26), IPR2017-00115 ('025, FWD 2018-04-19), IPR2017-00373 ('169, FWD 2018-06-12), IPR2017-00510 / -00511 ('158, FWD 2018-06-11), affirmed at Fed. Cir. 2018-2027 / 2018-2054 (Rule 36, 2019-09-10, http://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/sites/default/files/opinions-orders/18-2027.Rule_36_Judgment.9-10-2019.1.pdf) — give you a pre-vetted obviousness template and a compelling narrative about the family's breadth versus the prior art. Quote them for what they decided: those specific patents, not the '507.
4. No trial-stage monitoring is required. With zero pending proceedings, there is no institution deadline, no oral hearing, and no statutory one-year § 316(a)(11) FWD clock to track on this patent.
5. Verify anything before relying on it. I could not confirm from available sources whether the '507 was ever asserted in the D. Mass. 2016 action, the earlier D. Mass. 2013 action (No. 13-12312), or any other case; nor whether any ex parte reexamination was filed against it. The absence of PTAB activity is real and I am confident in it. The absence of litigation activity is not something I can affirm — the Google Patents family-level litigation flag suggests otherwise somewhere in the family. Check PACER and the USPTO reexamination database before you tell a client the patent has never been asserted.

Confidence statement: High confidence that there are no AIA trial proceedings on US 8,337,507 (ODP says so, and the arithmetic of the S&N campaign independently corroborates it). Moderate confidence in the sibling-proceeding details above, which come from petition captions, exhibit lists, and secondary summaries rather than from direct review of each FWD. Low confidence on the '507's claim text, claim count, and litigation history — I did not verify those.

I'll research the ownership chain for US 8,337,507 across the sources you listed. Let me start with several parallel searches.

I have strong context on the entities. Now let me look for the recorded assignment details (reel/frame, correspondent) and confirm the litigation/assertion history.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 8,337,507 B2

"Methods and compositions for articular repair" · App. 12/317,472 · Filed 2008-12-22 · Issued 2012-12-25 · Priority 2001-05-25

Sourcing note up front. The authoritative Google Patents record for this patent lists the post-issuance legal events / reassignment entries (conveyance type, assignor, assignee, date) but does not surface reel/frame numbers or the correspondent of record for this patent. USPTO Assignment Center and the Google Patents legal-events feed were not fully retrievable for this specific patent number during this run. Where I quote reel/frame numbers below, they come from a Conformis family-member record and are flagged as unverified for '507. I have not fabricated any assignment, reel/frame, or correspondent.

Inventors

Unusual-pattern check — not present / not determinable. I found no evidence that all three inventors departed the assignee within 12 months of the 2008-12-22 filing. The only inventor-side event is a normal assignment of assignors' interest from all three inventors to Conformis (recorded 2009-12-04) — routine for a continuation filing, not a fire-sale precursor. Two of three inventors are co-located in Lexington, MA; the third in Sunnyvale, CA — a dispersion consistent with a large, distributed R&D organization (Conformis, not a shell).

Original assignee

• Named on the patent: ConforMIS, Inc. (Burlington, MA; later Billerica, MA). Front page carries a terminal disclaimer, i.e. commonly-owned with a related patent — consistent with a large single-owner family.
• Predecessor / name history: The 2001 priority application was filed under the applicant name Imaging Therapeutics (EP1389980A2, 2004), with the same family later listed to Conformis Inc (EP1389980A4, 2007) — consistent with a corporate name change Imaging Therapeutics → Conformis. This is a corporate-level event, not a recorded USPTO assignment I can cite for '507.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes. Conformis was a commercial orthopedic implant maker whose flagship products are directly on-point for this specification: iFit, iTotal, iUni, iDuo, iPoly patient-specific knee implants and patient-specific instrumentation (PSI), sold via its Image-to-Implant program. Revenue ≈ $68.8M in 2020 (per Med Tech Dive / General Counsel News coverage of the Stryker settlement).
• Primary line of business: Patient-specific orthopedic implants and single-use patient-specific surgical instrumentation. NASDAQ: CFMS (IPO July 2015).
• Current status: Acquired. Stock-for-cash merger with restor3d, Inc. (Durham, NC) at $2.27/share (≈96% premium to a depressed price), announced 2023-06-22, shareholder approval 2023-08-31, close consummated 2023-09-05; Conformis is now a wholly-owned subsidiary / product line of privately held restor3d. Conformis entered the deal financially distressed (accumulated deficit $603.9M as of 2023-06-30). No Chapter 7 / Chapter 11 filing was found — this was a distressed merger, not a bankruptcy liquidation.

Assignment timeline

Every entry below is a recorded reassignment event on this patent per the Google Patents legal-events feed. Critically: none of these transfers title away from Conformis — they are inventor-to-company confirmations and lien grant/release cycles with lenders acting as collateral agent / secured party, never as owner.

• 2009-08-20 (recorded same) — Reel/frame not surfaced for '507

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement
  • Assignor: Conformis, Inc.
  • Assignee: Venture Lending & Leasing V, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved (not exposed on the patent-level record obtained)
  • Context: Securitization — venture-debt lien over the portfolio; lien only, no title transfer.

• 2009-12-04 (recorded same) — Reel/frame not surfaced for '507

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignors: Tsougarakis, Konstantinos; Lang, Philipp; Steines, Daniel
  • Assignee: Conformis, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved (prosecution counsel of record is Sunstein Kann Murphy & Timbers LLP / predecessor Bromberg & Sunstein LLP, Boston — but this is the prosecution firm, not necessarily the recording correspondent)
  • Context: Inventor→company title perfection (routine).

• 2011-02-23 (recorded same) — Reel/frame not surfaced for '507

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement
  • Assignor: Conformis, Inc.
  • Assignee: Venture Lending & Leasing V, Inc. and Venture Lending & Leasing VI, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — flag: Venture Lending recurs as secured party across two security agreements (2009, 2011) plus two releases (2019); recurrence here is a lender pattern, not an NPE-attorney pattern.
  • Context: Securitization (second facility).

• 2014-07-31 (recorded same) — Reel/frame not surfaced for '507

  • Conveyance: Release of Security Interest
  • Assignor: Venture Lending & Leasing V, Inc.
  • Assignee: Conformis, Inc.
  • Context: Lien discharge (facility repaid/refinanced).

• 2014-08-01 (recorded same) — Reel/frame not surfaced for '507

  • Conveyance: Release of Security Interest
  • Assignors: Venture Lending & Leasing V, Inc. & Venture Lending & Leasing VI, Inc.
  • Assignee: Conformis, Inc.
  • Context: Lien discharge.

• 2016-10-20 (recorded same) — Reel/frame not surfaced for '507

  • Conveyance: Corrective Assignment (correcting prior release records)
  • Assignors: Venture Lending & Leasing V, Inc.; Venture Lending & Leasing VI, Inc.
  • Assignee: Conformis, Inc.
  • Context: Administrative cleanup of the 2014 releases (corrects a serial-number error in the recorded release).

• 2018-07-31 (recorded same) — Reel/frame not surfaced for '507

  • Conveyance: Security Interest
  • Assignor: Conformis, Inc.
  • Assignee: Oxford Finance LLC, as Collateral Agent
  • Context: Securitization (new senior lender).

• 2019-06-25 (recorded same) — Reel/frame 049588/0288 [reel/frame from a Conformis family member; not independently confirmed for '507]

  • Conveyance: Security Interest
  • Assignors: Conformis, Inc.; ImatX, Inc.; Conformis Cares LLC
  • Assignee: Innovatus Life Sciences Lending Fund I, LP, as Collateral Agent
  • Context: Securitization — Innovatus LSA credit facility (disclosed in Conformis SEC filings).

• 2019-06-26 (recorded same) — Reel/frame not surfaced for '507

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
  • Assignor: Oxford Finance LLC
  • Assignee: Conformis, Inc.
  • Context: Prior lien discharged on refinancing.

• 2019-09-12 (recorded same) — Reel/frame not surfaced for '507

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party (Venture Lending V and VI)
  • Assignor: Venture Lending & Leasing V, Inc.; Venture Lending & Leasing VI, Inc.
  • Assignee: Conformis, Inc.
  • Context: Lien discharge.

• 2019-09-12 (recorded same) — Reel/frame not surfaced for '507

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party (Venture Lending V)
  • Assignor: Venture Lending & Leasing V, Inc.
  • Assignee: Conformis, Inc.
  • Context: Duplicate/companion lien discharge.

• 2021-11-22 (recorded same) — Reel/frame 058219/0346 [from a family member; not confirmed for '507]

  • Conveyance: Security Interest
  • Assignors: Conformis, Inc.; ImatX, Inc.
  • Assignee: MidCap Financial Trust, as Agent
  • Context: Securitization (MidCap credit facility, Nov-2021).

• 2021-11-23 (recorded same) — Reel/frame 058234/0292 [from a family member; not confirmed for '507]

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
  • Assignors: Conformis Cares LLC; Conformis, Inc.; ImatX, Inc.
  • Assignee: Innovatus Life Sciences Lending Fund I, LP
  • Context: Innovatus lien discharged on MidCap refinancing.

• 2023-09-06 (recorded same) — Reel/frame 067679/0713 [from a family member; listed to RESTOR3D, INC.; CONFORMIS, INC.; IMATX, INC.; not confirmed for '507]

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
  • Assignor: MidCap Financial Trust, as Agent for Lenders
  • Assignees: ImatX, Inc.; Conformis, Inc.
  • Context: MidCap lien discharged, consistent with the restor3d merger close (2023-09-05).

Bottom line for this section: there is no recorded assignment of title to restor3d, Inc. or to any holding/licensing LLC. The restor3d deal was a stock merger in which Conformis, Inc. survived as a wholly owned subsidiary, so title to '507 stayed inside Conformis, Inc. The lien cycle (4 lenders over 14 years) is ordinary secured-financing activity for a capital-intensive device maker, not an NPE aggregation chain.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8337507
    2001 : Priority date
    2008 : Filed by Conformis Inc
    2009 : Inventors assign rights to Conformis
         : Venture Lending security interest
    2011 : Venture Lending security interest
    2012 : Patent issued
    2014 : Venture Lending liens released
    2018 : Oxford Finance security interest
    2019 : Innovatus security interest
         : First infringement suits filed
    2021 : MidCap security interest
    2023 : MidCap lien released
         : Conformis acquired by restor3d

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Concrete-evidence discipline applied: a suggestive name alone is not scored.

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. No link in the chain moves title from Conformis, Inc. to any "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" LLC. The only non-operating names in the record are lenders acting as collateral agent / secured party (Venture Lending & Leasing V/VI, Oxford Finance, Innovatus, MidCap) — they appear only in Security Interest and Release by Secured Party conveyances (2009-08-20, 2011-02-23, 2018-07-31, 2019-06-25, 2021-11-22 and their releases). Lien interests ≠ ownership.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. None of the named public NPEs (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, etc.) appears as assignee or secured party at any date. Note: Conformis is itself an asserting entity, but it is the operating manufacturer, not an NPE.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (no finding). The correspondent of record was not retrievable for this patent. The only recurrence in the record is Venture Lending & Leasing V as secured party across two agreements (2009-08-20, 2011-02-23) plus releases (2019-09-12) — a lender recurrence, which is not the "same NPE lawyer running the shells" signal. Prosecution counsel of record is Sunstein Kann Murphy & Timbers LLP (successor to Bromberg & Sunstein LLP), Boston — a general-practice IP firm doing both operating-company and other patent work; a single/ordinary appearance is not scored (per your recurrence rule).

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. No sequence of consecutive assignments through chained LLCs within 24 months. The 14-year record is a grant → release → refinance lien cycle, with the assignee of record remaining Conformis, Inc.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. Conformis filed its first infringement suits in its own name as owner (e.g., Conformis v. Zimmer Biomet / Medacta, D. Del. C.A. No. 1:19-cv-01528, 2019; Conformis v. Bodycad/Exactech, M.D. Fla., 2021). No ownership-change assignment precedes any suit. Claim of ownership is pleaded directly: "Conformis is the owner of all rights, title, and interest in and to the Patents-In-Suit" (RPX litigation document).

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT (distress present, bankruptcy absent). No Chapter 7/11 proceeding found. There was a distressed outcome — the 2023-09-05 restor3d merger at $2.27/share, after a $603.9M accumulated deficit — but it was a corporate merger, and the patent stayed with Conformis, Inc. rather than being auctioned. (One related wrinkle: the merger agreement gave restor3d a non-exclusive license to Conformis patents in specified termination scenarios — a deal-protection term, not a transfer.)

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No transfer to an NPE to assert on Conformis's behalf. Conformis asserted against direct competitors (Zimmer Biomet, Medacta, DePuy Synthes, Exactech, Bodycad, Wright/Tornier) in its own name, and monetized via operating-company settlements/licenses (e.g., reported $15M Stryker/Wright settlement; 2023 Bodycad settlement-license; a 2015 Wright license for PSI with off-the-shelf foot/ankle implants).

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates inside an operating company (Conformis, now a restor3d subsidiary).

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Justification: the assignee of record is Conformis, Inc. at every link of the chain — the 2009-12-04 inventor-assignment perfects title to Conformis, and every subsequent entry (2009/2011 security agreements, 2014/2016/2019/2021/2023 releases, 2018 and 2019 and 2021 security interests) is a lien grant or discharge with lenders as collateral agents, never a title transfer to a holding or licensing entity. Conformis shipped the claimed technology (iFit/iTotal/iDuo patient-specific knee implants and PSI; ~$68.8M 2020 revenue) and sued actual competitors in its own name (Zimmer Biomet and Medacta, D. Del. 2019; Bodycad/Exactech, M.D. Fla. 2021), which is the textbook operating-company-assertion fact pattern rather than NPE conduct. The current owner is restor3d, Inc. by the 2023-09-05 stock merger; no NPE, no shell LLC, and no defensive aggregator appears anywhere in the record.

Verify at:

• USPTO Assignment Center (search patent number 8337507): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US8337507/en#legalEvents

Open items I could not close (state plainly, do not assume): (a) exact reel/frame for each event as recorded against '507 specifically — the four numbers I surfaced (049588/0288; 058219/0346; 058234/0292; 067679/0713) come from a Conformis family member, not '507 itself, and omnibus security agreements are commonly recorded once against many patents, so treat those reels as likely but unconfirmed for this patent; (b) the correspondent of record on each recording, which was not exposed in the patent-level data retrieved and is the single most useful NPE tell you asked for — it remains unknown for this chain.

I'll research the patent citations for US 8,337,507. Let me run several searches.

Let me pull the citation lists from additional sources.

Let me try to retrieve the front-page citation list from the patent PDF and other databases.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 8,337,507 B2 ("Methods and compositions for articular repair")

Date note / flag. This task header says "Current Date: April 26, 2026," while the system date is 2026-10-01. I am not reconciling these; I note the discrepancy per the operating rule against silent correction. Nothing in the analysis below turns on it.

Search-coverage flag (read first). My retrieval budget was exhausted mid-task. I was not able to pull the front-page (56) References Cited table (U.S. Patent Documents / Foreign Patent Documents / Other Publications) of US 8,337,507B2 in text form from Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, Espacenet, or PatentCenter. The Google Patents and FPO page text returned in search results contained the bibliographic header, abstract, classifications and claim-term fingerprint, but not the citation table. The one FPO fragment I did retrieve lists documents dated 2011–2012 (Bojarski, Tsougarakis, Alexander, Lang et al.), which cannot be § 102 prior art against a December 2008 filing and is therefore almost certainly FPO's "Referenced By" column, not its "US Patent References" column — I am not treating it as the cited-art list.

Consequently, the reference list below is drawn from the one source I can verify against the authoritative document: the specification of US 8,337,507 itself (the full text supplied as the authoritative record). Those are applicant-disclosed prior-art references appearing in the description. I mark clearly where I am reconstructing rather than quoting.

1. Document confirmation (literal identifier check)

The search returned material for the literal number 8337507 / US 8,337,507 B2 only:

Numbers excluded as near-misses, not substituted: US 8,330,710 (a Hisense/PTAB exhibit that surfaced in one result), US 8,087,745, US 8,083,745, and the family members listed in the szpa.org simple-family record. None of these was treated as 8337507.

2. Governing § 102 framework for this patent

Because 12/317,472 was filed 2008-12-22 — before the 2013-03-16 AIA date — pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs (§ 102(a), (b), (e), and § 103 as the obviousness backstop).

Critical complication for any anticipation analysis: this is a continuation of 10/305,652 (filed 2002-11-27), which is itself a continuation-in-part of 10/160,667 (filed 2002-05-28), claiming provisonals 60/293,488 (2001-05-25), 60/363,527 (2002-03-12), and 60/380,695 / 60/380,692 (both 2002-05-14). New matter added in the CIP does not get the 2001 date. So the effective § 102 date is claim-dependent and can be any of 2001-05-25, 2002-05-14, 2002-05-28, 2002-11-27, or 2008-12-22. Any reference dated between the 2001 priority date and the 2008 filing date is only § 102 art against those claims that lack earlier support.

Second critical point: I do not have verbatim claim text for this patent (the earlier section flagged the same gap). Anticipation requires that a single reference disclose every limitation of a claim, arranged as in the claim. I therefore map references to the claim families (a)–(d) reconstructed in the earlier section, and I label each mapping provisional. Where a reference discloses only a subset, I say so and identify it as § 103-flavored rather than a § 102 anticipation. I will not invent claim numbers.

3. References cited on the face of / in US 8,337,507

All entries below are quoted or paraphrased from the specification text of US 8,337,507 as supplied. Dates are printed as they appear in the patent text; where a printed date is internally inconsistent with the patent number I flag it rather than correcting it. Titles marked "not verified" were not retrievable and I am not fabricating them.

Group A — Cell-seeded matrices / scaffolds / carriers for cartilage repair

(Cited in the specification's background discussion of "matrices, tissue scaffolds or other carriers implanted with cells.")

Group B — Cartilage / joint imaging and compositional assessment

Group C — Optical / topographic surface-measurement devices (Placido disks, laser interferometers)

Group D — Sterile probe covers

Group E — Orthopaedic implants, bone anchoring, porous coatings

Group F — Meniscus and graft/biologic material

4. Which references are the most relevant prior art, ranked

On the record I can verify, my ranked view (with the reasoning, not a conclusion):

1. WO 02/22014 — highest textual overlap with the invention's core (3-D cartilage maps, GAG/content imaging, joint-motion/weight-bearing determination). But likely disqualified as "by another" if the inventive entity overlaps; verify before citing.
2. US 6,203,576 / US 6,322,588 — bone-anchored joint prostheses; the most plausible § 102(a)/(e) structural art against family (c).
3. US 5,769,899 / US 5,842,477 / US 5,283,980 — pre-1999 cartilage repair implants/scaffolds; § 102(b) art against family (a)/(c).
4. US 6,382,028 / 6,057,927 / 5,523,843 / 5,847,804 / 5,684,562 — surface-topography metrology; the closest art to the measure-curvature-and-shape-the-implant method concept of family (a)/(b).
5. WO 02/34310 — deformable/hardening impression materials; close art for family (a), but § 102(a) only and priority-sensitive.
6. US 6,373,250 + Vandeberg 2002 — cartilage thickness imaging; family (a)/(b).
7. US 3,605,123, US 3,808,606, US 3,843,975 — porous-coating element only; § 103 background, not anticipation.
8. WO 99/51719, WO 01/91672, WO 01/17463, WO 99/08598, US 2002/0022884 A1, WO 97/27885 — peripheral; § 103 background.

Realistic posture. The examiner allowed 34 claims, which means no single one of these references disclosed every limitation of any allowed claim — otherwise the claim would not have issued. On the face of the specification citations, none is a clean § 102 anticipation. The defensible § 102 arguments, if any, run against the narrower dependent claims (e.g., an "anchoring peg/porous coating" claim, or a "meniscal repair system" claim), while the independent method and system claims are realistically § 103 targets built from combinations (topographic measurement + implant CAD/CAM + bone-anchored prosthesis).

5. Mapping to § 102 categories (provisional, claim-family level)

6. Gaps, contradictions, and what must be verified before relying on any of this

1. Front-page (56) citation table not retrieved. The groups above are the references the specification cites. The examiner-cited art — which is usually the more probative § 102 art — is missing from my dataset. Resolve by downloading the granted PDF from patentimages/USPTO PatentCenter and reading column 1.
2. No verbatim claims. Every claim mapping above is provisional and keyed to claim families, not claim numbers. Pull claims 1–34 from PatentCenter.
3. Priority-date allocation per claim is unresolved. Because 12/317,472 is a continuation of a CIP, references dated 2001-05-25 → 2002-11-27 (notably WO 02/34310, WO 01/91672, US 6,373,250) are prior art only against claims lacking earlier written-description support. A claim-by-claim priority chart is a prerequisite.
4. WO 02/22014 same-family question. The earlier section noted the litigation/assignee history and the large ConforMIS–Imatx family (RE43,282; US 8,112,142; US 8,036,729; US 8,077,950 all appear in the FPO fragment). If WO 02/22014 shares the inventive entity, it is not § 102(e) art. I have not verified inventorship overlap — flagging, not resolving.
5. Anomalies reproduced, not corrected, per the operating rule:
   • US 5,283,980 printed as "issued Sep. 4, 2001" (implausible for that number; "Sep. 4" matches a 1994 date).
   • "U.S. Pat. Publication No. b 2002/0,022,884A1" — stray character.
   • "International Publications WO; 99/51719" — stray semicolon suggesting a missing number.
   • "Smith U.S. Pat. No. …" — truncated; cannot be cited.
6. FPO fragment conflict. The 2011–2012 documents (Bojarski, Tsougarakis, Alexander, Lang) appearing under an FPO heading that reads "US Patent References" conflict with the December 2008 filing date if read as cited art. I treat them as "Referenced By." This conflicts with a literal reading of the FPO page; I flag the conflict rather than resolving it.
7. No 2026 CAFC activity on this patent was found (consistent with the 2022-10-03 adjusted expiration), and no source retrieved named '507 as an asserted patent. That negative result is carried forward from the earlier section and is not a clearance of the Federal Circuit docket.

Minimum verification sequence: (1) granted-PDF front page → full (56) list; (2) PatentCenter → claims 1–34 verbatim; (3) claim-by-claim priority/support chart against the 2001/2002 provisional and parent filings; (4) inventorship comparison between '507 and WO 02/22014 / US 2003/0055502 A1 to settle the "by another" question. Only after (1)–(4) can a defensible § 102 chart be produced — anything before that is, and should be labeled as, provisional.

I'll ground the obviousness analysis in the actual prior-art record for this patent. Let me pull the front-page references and the most-cited prior art.

Let me verify the specific front-page references and the EPO search-report art for the family member EP1389980.

Obviousness Analysis — US 8,337,507 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Provenance and scope — read this first

Two process facts constrain everything below, and per the operating rules I am stating them rather than papering over them.

1. No "Prior Art section" with results was supplied in this task. I searched for the patent's front-page citation record, its European family member's search report (EP1389980 / WO2002096268), and specific candidate references. Some searches returned useful primary content (notably Radermacher 1998 and the US 6,203,576 record); others were cut off by a tool-step limit and returned nothing. So this is not an analysis "using the results from the Prior Art section" — no such section exists in my inputs. I have instead built the analysis from (a) the prior art the patent's own Background section cites (available in the supplied full text) and (b) references I actually retrieved. Where I fall back on training-data recollection, I label it.
2. The verbatim claim text of US 8,337,507 was never retrieved (flagged as a gap in the previously generated Patent summary). Everything below therefore operates at the claim-family level — the four families reconstructed in that summary: (a) measure-and-conform method, (b) image-based design method, (c) multi-component prosthesis apparatus, (d) surgical tool + site preparation. Anyone using this for invalidity contentions must first obtain the literal claim language from USPTO PatentCenter.

A useful proxy for what the claims actually recite is Google Patents' claim-term extraction for this document, which I retrieved: "subchondral bone plate" appears ~54 times, "manufacturing" ~26, "ultrasonography" ~15, "surgical procedure" ~12, "mechanism" ~11, "knee" 9, "optical coherence tomography" 7, "patella" 6, "ankle" 3, "hip" 2, "acetabulum" and "computer-aided design" 1 each. That distribution strongly implies independent method claims framed around measuring/imaging the subchondral bone plate and manufacturing an implant, with joint-specific dependent claims. This matters because the strongest prior art below (Radermacher) is specifically about deriving a customized, exactly-fitting contact structure from the 3-D reconstruction of bone surfaces.

1. The date problem is the single largest lever

Because the '507 patent is a continuation of 10/305,652, the § 103 window is bounded by whether each claim limitation is supported by the 2001 provisional. Any limitation first disclosed in the November 2002 CIP pushes the effective date to 2002-11-27. That would make available as § 102(a)/(e) art a substantial second wave of references that are not prior art against a May 2001 date — including Vandeberg et al., Radiology 222:430-436 (2002), WO 02/22014 (the inventors' own application), WO 02/34310 (deformable/hardening mold materials), and US 2002/0022884 A1 (Mansmann) — all of which the specification itself cites as describing the state of the art. A priority challenge here is therefore not a side issue; it is the core of the invalidity case.

Explicitly not prior art (post-date even the 2002 date): US 8,086,336 B2 (Christensen, filed 2004-09-30) — retrieved in my searches and superficially on point for custom-fit prosthesis design, but unusable; WO 2009/129067; and the ConforMIS sibling patents themselves (US 8,460,304, 9,295,482, etc.), which are all in the same family.

2. The prior art landscape, grouped by function

(A) Cartilage/osteochondral repair materials and scaffolds — cited in the patent's own Background:
WO 99/51719, WO 01/91672, WO 01/17463; US 5,283,980; US 5,842,477; US 5,769,899; US 4,609,551. These establish that implanting cartilage replacement or regenerating material (including cell-seeded matrices) into a cartilage defect was old. Caveat: I did not verify publication dates; the "WO 01/…" series publishes in 2001 and may straddle the priority date. Anomaly flagged literally: the specification cites "U.S. Pat. No. 5,283,980 B1, issued Sep. 4, 2001" — a date that post-dates the asserted 2001-05-25 priority date. Either the number or the date is wrong in the source; I am not correcting it.

(B) Bone-anchored joint prostheses — cited in the Background: US 6,203,576 and US 6,322,588. I retrieved the US 6,203,576 record: title literally "Complete knee joint prosthesis" (femoral element + intermediate plate + tibial element, with congruent condylar/glenoid curvatures and a "third condyle" postero-stabilization). Note the mismatch with the specification's characterization of it as an example of a repair system "anchored into the underlying bone" — it is a total knee prosthesis. I could not verify US 6,322,588 in this session.

(C) Porous coatings / bone ingrowth — cited in the specification: US 3,605,123 (Hahn); US 3,808,606 (Tronzo); US 3,843,975 (Tronzo). These are the classical porous-coated orthopaedic implant references and cover the "porous or porous-coated," "grooves to facilitate tissue in-growth," and "flanges to prevent rotation/control toggle" concepts.

(D) Surface-curvature measurement devices — cited in the specification: US 6,382,028; US 6,057,927; US 5,523,843; US 5,847,804; US 5,684,562 — identified in the text as Placido-disk and laser-interferometer references. These are principally ophthalmic corneal-topography instruments. They are the key obviousness engine for the "measure the curvature of the articular surface with a Placido disk / interferometer / optical probe" aspect.

(E) Cartilage imaging: WO 02/22014 (inventors' own); US 6,373,250; Vandeberg 2002 — dates noted above.

(F) Image-based individualized surgical templates — verified this session:

Radermacher K, Portheine F, Anton M, Zimolong A, Kaspers G, Rau G, Staudte H-W, "Computer Assisted Orthopaedic Surgery With Image Based Individual Templates," Clin Orthop Relat Res 354:28-38 (Sept 1998), PMID 9755761; abstract at https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/9755761/.

Retrieved content confirms Radermacher discloses: (i) CT-image-based 3-D preoperative planning; (ii) a template whose contact faces are milled from the shape of small reference areas of the bone surface, so that "the location of exact fit to the bone" reproduces the planned position; (iii) "mechanical tool guides for drills, saws, chisels or milling tools are adaptable or integrated into these individual templates"; (iv) a copying surface that limits cutting depth to the dorsal tibial contour, with the cut plane reproduced to <1 mm and 1° accuracy on a plastic bone model; and (v) explicit knee / total-knee-arthroplasty application including a reference tibial cut. A parallel 1997 Helmholtz handout (https://www.meditec.hia.rwth-aachen.de/wp-content/uploads/2022/06/IGOS-Handout97.pdf) confirms clinical and lab use in spine, hip, knee (TKA clinical study), and acetabular/pelvic osteotomy, with "desktop computer-controlled milling device used as a 3-D printer."

This is, element-for-element, extremely close to claim family (d) and to the "single cut / near anatomic fit / aperture controlling drill depth" disclosure.

(G) Computer-implemented custom implant design (Eufinger): A PTAB petition I retrieved (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1544982](/patent/1544982)/...) describes "Eufinger" as "a computer implemented method and apparatus for constructing complex custom-fit 3D medical devices," describing superimposition of a patient data model with a "should-be" shape model to define deformation of the implant, and describing geometric adaptation of an endoprosthesis to the patient's bone as "extremely important." I did not verify the underlying document number or date, so I use this only as evidence that this body of art (Eufinger/Wehmöller, mid-1990s craniofacial CAD/CAM implant design) was recognized prior art, not as a cited exhibit.

3. Obviousness combinations

Combination 1 — the multi-component prosthesis (claim family (c))

US 6,203,576 (complete knee prosthesis) + US 5,842,477 / WO 99/51719 (cartilage repair scaffolds/matrices) + Tronzo/Hahn porous-coating art + Radermacher 1998 (image-based exact-fit customization).

• Motivation: The Background itself supplies the problem statement — conventional arthroplasty "require[s] surgical resection of the entire or the majority of the articular surface," "the marrow space is reamed," resulting in "loss of the patient's bone stock," osteolysis, and a finite number of revisions. A POSA facing that problem has an express design incentive (KSR's "design incentives and other market forces" rationale) to (i) reduce resected surface area, (ii) preserve the subchondral plate, and (iii) match remaining anatomy. US 6,203,576 supplies a joint prosthesis with congruent articulating geometry; the cartilage-scaffold art supplies the idea of a soft-tissue cartilage replacement layer over a rigid support; Tronzo/Hahn supply bone-ingrowth fixation; Radermacher supplies the method of making the device fit the individual bone exactly from imaging.
• Predictability: each element performs its known function; the combination is an arrangement of known elements yielding a predictable result — the KSR standard.
• Targets: the "superficial component with thickness and curvature similar to surrounding cartilage" + "deep component with curvature similar to subchondral bone" limitations; the porous/porous-coated limitation; the pegs/flanges/groove anti-toggle limitations; and the "<about 80% of the articular surface" limitation (a partial rather than total resurfacing — a quantitative range that, if it reads on unicondylar/partial devices known in the art, is vulnerable as a mere result-effective-variable boundary).

Combination 2 — measure thickness/curvature then conform the repair material (claim family (a))

A Placido-disk/keratoscope patent (e.g., US 5,684,562 or US 6,057,927) + a cartilage imaging reference (US 6,373,250; and, if the 2002 date governs, Vandeberg 2002) + the cartilage-scaffold references of group (A).

• Motivation: The specification itself concedes the measurement toolbox: it cites the Placido-disk and interferometer patents as the devices for "generat[ing] a topographical map of the surface," and states that a mathematical model of the topographical map "can be used to determine the ideal surface topography to replace any cartilage defects." A POSA seeking to characterize the curvature of an articular cartilage surface would look to the established instruments for characterizing a curved, cartilage-like biological surface. Under In re Bigio, 381 F.3d 1320 (Fed. Cir. 2004), corneal topography is analogous art: it is from the same field of endeavor (optical measurement of a biological tissue surface) and is reasonably pertinent to the problem of mapping a curved cartilaginous surface. The only remaining step — feeding the measured contour into a fabrication step — is the "In re Schreiber" situation, 128 F.3d 1473 (Fed. Cir. 1997): a new use of an old measuring apparatus, patentable only if it produces a structural difference.
• KSR hook: "the improvement is [no] more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions." Applying a keratoscope to cartilage instead of cornea, and machining the measured contour, is a predictable substitution.

Combination 3 — the surgical tool and the single-cut preparation (claim family (d))

Radermacher 1998, alone or in view of the general orthopaedic cutting-guide art.

• Radermacher expressly discloses a tool with a customized contact face conforming to bone surface geometry derived from 3-D image data, integrated guides for drills and saws, and a copying surface that limits cutting depth — i.e., the specification's own tool limitation ("an aperture therein… capable of controlling drill depth and width of the hole," FIG. 13; "apertures through which a surgical drill or saw can fit and which guide the drill or saw," FIG. 15) and the "single cut" preparation (FIGS. 10B–C). Radermacher's stated application to knee/TKA reference tibial cut removes any argument that the reference is non-analogous.
• The "array of adjustable, closely spaced pins" variant is a well-known contour-gauge/moldable-profile device; combining it with Radermacher's template is a predictable mechanical substitution supported by the same motivation (obtain a conforming contact surface). Neither Keller (the test is what the combined teachings suggest, not bodily incorporation) nor the "reusable or single-use"/"lucite and/or silastic" limitations supply patentable weight — those are material and durability choices within the ordinary skill level, and the specification itself offers no asserted criticality.

Combination 4 — image-based design with reconstruction of the healthy surface (claim family (b))

General medical-image segmentation/CAD art + mathematical morphology (closing = dilation followed by erosion, Serra, Image Analysis and Mathematical Morphology, 1982).

• The specification's own disclosure gives away the two techniques: fitting a parametric surface / B-spline to the normal contour and extending it across the defect, and performing a morphological closing operation on a binary cartilage image in which diseased cartilage "appears as indentations." Morphological closing is the textbook operator for exactly that task. The combination is "a known technique… to improve [a known device] in the same way," which KSR makes per se obvious. This is the weakest of the four combinations in evidentiary terms — I did not retrieve the specific morphology reference in this session, and I have not verified what image-processing art the examiner actually applied.

Combination 5 — the joint-specific and modality-specific dependent claims

Dependent claims adding "knee," "hip," "patella," "ankle," "acetabulum," and the imaging modalities "ultrasonography," "optical coherence tomography," "optical imaging," and "computer-aided design" (per the claim-term fingerprint) are vulnerable independently. Substituting one known imaging modality for another to obtain the same morphological information is a predictable variation with no unexpected result, and reciting a new anatomical site for an old measuring/manufacturing method is the classic Schreiber new-use problem.

4. What would defeat this analysis

I am obligated to give the counter-case with equal weight.

1. The claim text gap is fatal to a confident conclusion. If the independent claims require a specific combination of steps — e.g., obtaining a thickness map of residual cartilage (not bone), reconstructing the cartilage surface rather than bone, and manufacturing an implant whose external surface is curvature-matched to adjacent cartilage while the bone-facing surface is matched to subchondral bone — then the case turns on whether Radermacher (a bone-surface reference) can be combined with cartilage-imaging art to reach a cartilage-matched external surface. Radermacher matches bone contact faces, not cartilage surfaces. That is a real gap, and it is precisely where the ConforMIS family's inventive contribution (the "iFit" concept) sits.
2. Priority date uncertainty cuts both ways. A November 2002 effective date helps the invalidity case (more art available). A successful claim to the May 2001 provisional date hurts it. I cannot resolve this without the file wrapper.
3. Secondary considerations. The Background states the long-felt need in the inventors' own words (bone stock loss, finite revisions, poor congruity). ConforMIS's commercial products (iTotal CR, iUni, iTotal PS — per the 2016 Q3 statement I retrieved) and the reported clinical superiority of iTotal CR over off-the-shelf implants would be offered as objective indicia. The rebuttal is nexus: the commercial embodiment may practice sibling patents (US 8,460,304; 9,295,482; 8,377,129; 9,186,161 — the ones actually asserted in ConforMIS v. Medacta and v. DePuy Synthes per the previously generated Litigation summary) rather than the '507 claims. Note also that a plaintiff bears the burden of establishing nexus, and the '507 patent's own family-level "597 forward citations" (per the szpa.org aggregator record I retrieved) is as consistent with a crowded field as with a pioneering invention.
4. Prosecution history is unknown to me. I did not retrieve the file wrapper or any examiner's citation list for 12/317,472. A prior-art-based § 103 attack that succeeds on paper can fail against the actual record of what was overcome. Before relying on any of the above, pull the file wrapper and, if the family member's search report is available, the EPO's cited-documents list for EP1389980 / WO2002096268 — I attempted the latter and the tool budget ran out before I could confirm it.

5. Reference-confidence ledger

Bottom line: the strongest, cleanly verified § 103 attack is against claim family (d) (the conforming surgical tool with depth-controlling aperture and single-cut preparation), where Radermacher 1998 is close to anticipatory in substance, and against family (c) (the two-component prosthesis), via US 6,203,576 + cartilage-scaffold art + porous-coating art + image-based customization. Families (a) and (b) require stitching together a measurement reference (ophthalmic topography) with an imaging reference and a fabrication step, and family (b) in particular may survive on the specificity of its reconstruction algorithm. The analysis is conditional on claim text I could not obtain and on a priority-date determination I could not make — those two items, not the strength of the art, are the gating issues.