US 9060724

I'll search for this specific patent number and check for any litigation or CAFC docket activity.

Let me run more targeted searches on this specific patent number and check whether it appears in any court docket.

Let me check for any PTAB/IPR challenges or CAFC dockets specifically naming this patent.

Search scope and a candid caveat first

I ran the searches you asked for against public patent and court data. Two things must be stated up front, per your strict rule:

1. I could not retrieve the actual granted claim set or the filed abstract for US 9060724 from the sources returned. The authoritative full text I was given (Google Patents, https://patents.google.com/patent/US9060724/en) contains the specification, definitions, figures list, and classification data, but the fetcher stripped the "Abstract" block and the "Claims" block. Everything I say about the abstract and independent claims below is therefore either (a) traced to a closely-related, explicitly cross-referenced document, or (b) flagged as an inference. I am not fabricating claim text.
2. No CAFC 2026 docket naming 9060724 was returned. Every 2026 Magnolia v. Kurin result I found concerns other Magnolia patents — U.S. Patent Nos. 10,039,483 ('483), 9,855,001 ('001), 11,529,081 ('081), 11,653,863 ('863), and 11,903,709 ('709). Searches for "9,060,724" in an IPR/Federal Circuit context exhausted my search budget without a hit. I am not asserting that 9060724 was litigated, and I am not asserting that it was never litigated — I simply found no record identifying it as an asserted patent, and you should treat that as "not found," not "confirmed absent."

Bibliographic identification (from the authoritative fetched text)

Note the file history embedded in the page: US 14/712,437 (issued as US 10,433,779 B2), US 14/493,796 (US 9,022,950 B2), US 14/494,208 (US 9,022,951 B2), US 14/662,676 (US 10,292,633 B2), US 15/854,273 (US 10,736,554 B2), US 16/986,940 (US 10,912,506 B2) and others are continuations/continuations-in-part tracing to 13/904,691. The specification also incorporates U.S. Pat. No. 8,197,420 ("the '420 patent") by reference.

Abstract

The fetched page did not preserve an Abstract block, so I will not reproduce one as if it were quoted from 9060724. The abstract of US 10,433,779 B2, which the face of that patent states is a "[c]ontinuation of application No. 13/904,691, filed on May 29, 2013, now Pat. No. 9,060,724", reads:

"An apparatus includes a housing, a fluid reservoir, a flow control mechanism, and an actuator. The housing defines an inner volume and has an inlet port that can be fluidically coupled to a patient and an outlet port. The fluid reservoir is disposed in the inner volume to receive and isolate a first volume of a bodily-fluid. The flow control mechanism is rotatable in the housing from a first configuration, in which a first lumen places the inlet port in fluid communication with the fluid reservoir, and a second configuration, in which a second lumen places the inlet port in fluid communication with the outlet port. The actuator is configured to create a negative pressure in the fluid reservoir and is configured to rotate the flow control mechanism from the first configuration to the second configuration after the first volume of bodily-fluid is received in the fluid reservoir."

Because the '724 specification text I was given opens with an essentially verbatim paragraph in its "Definitions/Summary" material, this is very likely the '724 abstract or near-identical to it — but I am labelling it as derived from a sibling continuation, not confirmed for '724 itself.

Plain-language overview of the independent-claim subject matter

Important uncertainty note: the granted claims were not available to me, so I cannot tell you how many independent claims 9060724 has, nor their exact numbers or wording. What follows is a plain-language restatement of the distinct independent-claim concepts disclosed in the '724 specification's summary material. Treat these as descriptions of claimed embodiments, not as a claim chart.

Concept 1 — Rotating diverter with a dedicated pre-sample reservoir.
A device for drawing blood/body fluid from a patient has a housing with an inner volume, an inlet port that connects to the patient (via a needle or tubing), and an outlet port that connects to a sample bottle. Inside the housing is a fluid reservoir that captures and isolates a first "pre-sample" volume. A flow-control mechanism with two separate lumens rotates from (a) a first position where the inlet is connected through the first lumen to the pre-sample reservoir, to (b) a second position where the inlet is connected through the second lumen to the outlet port. A user-operated actuator both pulls a negative pressure on the pre-sample reservoir (drawing the waste volume in) and, once that first volume is collected, rotates the flow-control mechanism to the second position so the clean remainder flows to the sample reservoir. The point is to discard the contaminant-laden first aliquot before any of it can reach the culture bottle.

Concept 2 — Moving actuator that itself defines the pre-sample reservoir, plus a diverter.
The actuator slides within the housing and carries a sealing member; the sealing member and housing together define the fluid reservoir. A diverter has an inlet to the patient, a first outlet to that fluid reservoir, and a second outlet to an external sample reservoir. The two-lumen flow-control mechanism rotates inside the diverter between the pre-sample path and the sample path. Actuation creates the vacuum and drives the rotation.

Concept 3 — Housing-defined reservoir version.
Same functional arrangement as Concept 1, but the pre-sample reservoir is defined at least in part by the housing rather than by the actuator, with the actuator both creating the negative pressure and performing the rotation.

Concept 4 — Spring-driven actuator.
A seal member movable in the housing forms the fluid reservoir. A spring moves the seal member from a first position to a second position to generate the negative pressure in the reservoir. The actuator also moves the flow-control mechanism from its first configuration (inlet connected to reservoir) to its second (reservoir fluidically isolated from the inlet), after the first volume is received.

Concept 5 — Two-part flow-control mechanism.
The flow-control mechanism has a first control member and a second control member. The second control member defines the first and second lumens and rotates between the pre-sample configuration and the sample configuration; the first control member is the part that the actuator engages to drive that rotation.

Concept 6 — Diverter + flow controller + actuator mechanism as an assembly.
Described at the level of a diverter (inlet port, first outlet port to a first fluid reservoir, second outlet port to a second reservoir fluidically isolated from the first) with the flow-control mechanism sitting at least partially inside the diverter, and an actuator mechanism that moves the flow controller between a first configuration allowing fluid into the first reservoir and a second configuration allowing fluid into the second reservoir.

Shared inventive core across all of them: forced sequencing. Per the specification, the actuator is configured for uni-directional movement — it can go from first position to second but not back — so a clinician cannot fill the sample bottle without first having diverted the pre-sample volume. Flow to the second reservoir is automatically prevented until the first volume is sequestered, and in some embodiments a third configuration fluidically isolates the inlet from both outlets.

Litigation / docket status as searched

I did not find 9060724 identified as an asserted patent in any of these. It is heavily cited as prior art and appears in citation/inventor tables for other Magnolia patents (e.g., US 9,999,383, US 10,265,007, US 9,855,001, US D794,779, US 10,433,779), which is a different legal posture from being asserted.

Explicit uncertainties

• Claim set and claim count: unknown to me. The overview above restates disclosed independent-claim concepts; it is not a quotation of any claim.
• Abstract: derived from US 10,433,779 B2, the patent that states on its face that it is a continuation of 13/904,691 (now 9,060,724). High confidence it is at least near-identical, but not confirmed from the '724 document itself.
• Assignee discrepancy between "Magnolia Medical Technologies Ltd" (Google Patents field) and the March 2015 USPTO assignment to "Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc." Left unreconciled by design.
• No IPR or CAFC 2026 docket entry naming 9060724 was surfaced, and my last two queries returned a step-limit message rather than results. This is an absence of evidence, not evidence of absence. If you need a definitive docket answer, the reliable path is a direct USPTO PatentCenter / PTAB API lookup on application 13/904,691 and a Docket Navigator or PACER/CAFC query on "9,060,724" — which I could not complete here.

I'll research litigation involving US 9,060,724. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me dig deeper into specific cases and IPRs.

Let me verify whether the '724 patent itself was ever asserted, and check other potential defendants.

Litigation Search Report — U.S. Patent No. 9,060,724

Bottom line: I found no litigation (district court, Federal Circuit, ITC, or PTAB) in which U.S. Patent No. 9,060,724 ("the '724 patent") was itself asserted or challenged. I therefore cannot provide plaintiff/defendant/jurisdiction/case-number/filing-date/outcome for any case involving that specific patent number.

Per your instruction not to auto-correct identifiers, I have treated "9,060,724" literally and have not substituted the closely related Magnolia Medical continuation patents that are in suit. Below I separate (A) what I could verify about the '724 patent itself, and (B) the adjacent litigation that exists — clearly flagged as involving different patent numbers, for context only.

A. What I could verify about U.S. 9,060,724

Litigation record: none found. A search of the Unified Patents patent page and general litigation coverage surfaced the '724 patent only as a related patent / cited reference to sibling Magnolia patents (e.g., US 8,197,420, US 9,999,383, D794,779) — not as an asserted patent in any case caption.

One item I could not verify and am flagging rather than asserting: a PTAB petition document referenced "the '072 Patent" being in co-pending N.D. Cal. litigation with asserted claims 11–15 and a projected 1/25/2028 trial date, with prior art (Yamamoto, Mitsubishi, Lemelson, Wang, Aishin, Niles, Schmidt) and exhibits labeled "LG-10xx." I could not confirm that "the '072 patent" in that document is US 9,060,724; the reference set and claim count (claims through at least 86) do not match what I would expect for the Magnolia portfolio. I am not treating it as litigation involving 9,060,724.

B. Adjacent Magnolia Medical litigation (different patent numbers — context only)

Because the '724 patent shares the 2012-05-30 priority family with the patents Magnolia actually asserted, you may want these for the family-level picture. None of these cases asserted 9,060,724.

1. Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc. v. Kurin, Inc. — D. Del. No. 1:19-cv-00097-CFC

• Patents asserted: US 10,039,483 ('483), US 9,855,001 ('001), US 10,028,689 ('689) — not '724
• Accused product: Kurin Lock
• '001: "diverter" construed as means-plus-function under §112(f); parties stipulated to non-infringement
• '483: jury found infringement (trial July 2022); district court (Judge Connolly) granted Kurin's post-trial JMOL of non-infringement (separate "vent" and "seal" structures required)
• Appeal: Fed. Cir. No. 2024-2001 — affirmed (precedential, Mar. 6, 2026; Lourie, Hughes, Freeman)
• Related: ex parte reexamination of '483 claim 1 → final rejection; affirmed in In re Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2026, nonprecedential; claim 1 anticipated by US 6,013,037)

2. Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc. v. Kurin, Inc. — S.D. Cal., filed Mar. 4, 2024; transferred to D. Del. No. 1:24-cv-01124-CFC

• Patents asserted by Magnolia: US 11,529,081 ('081), US 11,653,863, US 11,903,709 — not '724
• Accused product: Kurin "Jet"
• Kurin counterclaim: US 12,138,052 ('052)
• Outcome: Dec. 16, 2025 jury verdict for Magnolia — all 12 asserted claims infringed; ~$1.6M ($40,000 + $1,547,531 royalty at $1.25/unit); no invalidity; Magnolia did not infringe the '052 patent; inequitable-conduct defense rejected next day
• Status: Kurin JMOL/new-trial motion denied (D. Del., Sep. 9, 2026); Magnolia's permanent-injunction motion remained under submission as of the Davis Polk report

3. IPR2026-00097, Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc. v. Kurin, Inc. (PTAB)

• Target: Kurin's US 12,138,052 — not '724
• Director Squires denied institution, precedential decision May 14, 2026

4. Ex parte reexamination of US 10,039,483 (third-party requester: Kurin) — claims rejected; affirmed on appeal, In re Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 2026).

C. Confidence and verification caveats

• High confidence: US 9,060,724 exists, is assigned to Magnolia Medical Technologies, and is in the same family as the asserted Magnolia patents.
• Moderate-to-high confidence that no litigation asserts the '724 patent: every case caption I retrieved named other patent numbers, and the aggregated litigation sources did not list a case for '724.
• Not verified: I could not complete docket-level confirmation in PACER/CourtListener/Unified Patents caselist for '724 specifically (my research run was truncated before I could pull the '724 caselist entry and confirm a negative). A "no litigation found" statement is not the same as a certified "no litigation exists" — litigation under a later-issued continuation of the same specification (as in case 2 above) is common for this patentee, and a dormant '724 assertion is conceivable.

Recommended next steps for a definitive answer: (i) pull the Unified Patents litigation caselist and CourtListener docket search filtered on "9,060,724"; (ii) search PACER for "9,060,724" in the "patent" nature-of-suit category; (iii) confirm via Magnolia's litigation counsel whether '724 was ever pleaded and later dropped, since pleadings often survive in amended complaints even when the case caption/public reporting focuses on later continuations.

I'll start by verifying the structured data against what's publicly findable, since the ODP block asserts zero AIA trials.

Let me probe specifically for known Magnolia litigation/IPR activity and check the PTAB E2E-style records.

Let me run a few final checks for any AIA petition that might target this specific patent or its sibling claims.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings on file for US 9,060,724. The USPTO ODP structured block supplied in this prompt returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and my web-search sweep surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal naming 9,060,724 — so the correct read is "the patent has never been through an AIA trial," not "the patent has been hardened by surviving one." Defensively this cuts both ways: nothing is canceled, so every claim remains presumptively valid, but there is also no § 315(e)(2) estoppel wall standing between a new defendant and the Board — the '724 patent is an open target for a first-filer IPR.

Caveat on sourcing, stated up front: I verified this by (a) the canonical ODP block and (b) targeted web search of PTAB/CAFC/litigation sources. I did not directly query PTAB E2E or the PTAB API in this session. A first-filer petition that was filed within the last few weeks and not yet indexed could be invisible to both. Treat the live E2E check as a pre-filing to-do, not a formality.

Nothing to report under the AIA-trial heading

Per your instruction not to invent proceeding numbers, I am not manufacturing sections for proceedings that do not exist. For completeness, here are the adjacent proceedings that do exist and that a defendant will inevitably be told about — none of them is an AIA trial on 9,060,724, and none of them cancels or narrows a single claim of 9,060,724:

Ex parte reexamination 90/019,177 (US 10,039,483) — not an AIA trial, not this patent

• Type: Ex parte reexamination (Central Reexamination Unit → PTAB appeal → CAFC). Not an IPR/PGR/CBM, so it appears in no AIA-trial count.
• Patent at issue: US 10,039,483 (the '483 patent) — not US 9,060,724. The two are relatives that share the same six-component device disclosure (housing / inlet port / flow control mechanism / first fluid reservoir / outlet port / actuator), which is why this matter gets conflated with the '724 patent in secondary coverage.
• Requester/art: a third-party requestor relied on US 6,013,037 (Brannon), a multi-sample syringe.
• Institution/Rejection: reexamination granted; examiner rejected claim 1 as anticipated under § 102 by Brannon.
• Board decision: Ex Parte Magnolia Med. Techs., Inc., No. 2025‑001039 (PTAB May 20, 2025) — Board affirmed the examiner's anticipation rejection of claim 1.
• Appeal: CAFC 2025‑1961, In re Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc., decided 2026‑07‑09 (Lourie, Prost, Subramanian (S.D.N.Y., by designation), per curiam, nonprecedential) — affirmed. Opinion: https://www.govinfo.gov/content/pkg/USCOURTS-ca13-25-01961/pdf/USCOURTS-ca13-25-01961-0.pdf
• Disposition quoted: "Magnolia appeals from a decision of the Patent Trial and Appeal Board in an ex parte reexamination affirming an examiner's rejection of claim 1 of U.S. Patent 10,039,483 as anticipated and therefore unpatentable. … We affirm." The court rejected Magnolia's venipuncture-timing argument on the "fluid reservoir limitation" (claim 1 contains "nothing … that require[s] the limitation … be met at the time of venipuncture") and its "bypass limitation" argument (the limitation requires only "an initial volume of blood" be sequestered, "not the full amount initially drawn").
• Defensive value for 9,060,724: None directly. Claim 1 of a different patent died. Do not let a demand letter or an expert report blur '483 into '724. The one genuinely useful takeaway is methodological: the Federal Circuit just read a Magnolia "fluid reservoir" / "bypass" limitation narrowly on plain meaning and declined to import a timing requirement — a construction the patent owner can be expected to fight again on the '724 claims.

District court litigation — D. Del. 1:19-cv-00097-CFC-CJB (Magnolia v. Kurin) — no AIA trial spawned

• Magnolia asserted the '483, '001, '689 and other patents against the Kurin Lock. Search consistently describes the asserted set as '483 / '001 / '689 / '863 / '709-family claims — not 9,060,724.
• Outcome: jury found infringement of the '483 patent; the district court then granted JMOL of non-infringement; CAFC 2024‑2001, decided 2026‑03‑06, affirmed (non-infringement of the '483 patent on a separate-structure construction of "vent" and "seal member"; and affirmed § 112(f) means-plus-function treatment of "diverter" in the '001 patent, which the parties stipulated Kurin's device did not meet). Opinion: https://business.cch.com/ipld/MagnoliaMedicalTechnologiesKurinFedCir20260306.pdf ; docket: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/14646223/magnolia-medical-technologies-inc-v-kurin-inc/
• Defensive value: High, and transferable in spirit if not in claim scope. Two Magnolia functional-claiming techniques — importing separate structures into separately recited elements, and functional terms collapsing into § 112(f) — have now been validated at the CAFC. That is the playbook to run against the '724 claims, which use the same "flow control mechanism" / "actuator" / "fluid reservoir" vocabulary. Note the § 315(b) one-year bar is long expired for Kurin and its real parties in interest on any patent Magnolia served on it in that case, so if a '724 petition were ever filed by Kurin it would need to be cleared against that bar.

IPR2026-00097 — Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc. v. Kurin, Inc. — Magnolia is the petitioner, and institution was denied

• Type: Inter Partes Review. Patent challenged: US 12,138,052 B1 — again not 9,060,724.
• Status: Institution denied by Director decision, Paper 17 (May 14, 2026); precedential. Reported as a "second bite at the apple" discretionary denial after Magnolia lost a district-court validity fight (jury found Kurin's patent not invalid; Magnolia's invalidity expert had been excluded).
• Defensive value: This is the inverse-signal case. It shows Magnolia will go to the Board when it is the accused party and cannot win elsewhere — and that the current Director will shut that down where the same §§ 102/103 theories were already litigated. It tells you nothing about the validity of 9,060,724, but it tells you a lot about how a Magnolia-versus-you validity dispute will be framed.

Strategic summary

Claim status on 9,060,724. All claims are UNTESTED. None canceled, none confirmed, none construed by the PTAB. The only claims in this patent family group that have actually been invalidated are claim 1 of US 10,039,483 (ex parte reexam, affirmed 2026‑07‑09) — a different patent, a different claim set, and a different procedural track. If anyone hands you a chart citing 9,060,724 claims 1–24 (or whatever the issued set is), remember that the '483 claim-1 death does not propagate. Conversely, if a demand letter leans on the '724 patent's independent claims, the entire claim set is live and presumptively valid, and the patent owner carries a 2013 filing date with a 2012‑05‑30 priority — which means the prior-art universe is unusually broad and the claims are worth attacking.

Estoppel landscape. Because there has never been an AIA trial on this patent, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is empty for every party. No petitioner is barred from anything. There is no instituted ground, no FWD, no "reasonably could have raised" backdrop. The practical consequence: the first defendant to file a competent IPR gets (a) a clean shot at the strongest art, and (b) the ability to choose which grounds to spend and which to hold back. The party with a clock, not the patent owner, controls timing here.

Pattern signals. No petitioner has ever filed against 9,060,724 — no serial-filer pattern, no Unified Patents or other defensive-aggregator IPR that I can find in this chain. The patent owner (Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc., Seattle; assignee-of-record history including a 2021 Fish & Richardson lien later released and a 2024 Symbiotic Capital security agreement) is a serial plaintiff, not a serial PTAB appellant on this patent: it has sued Kurin repeatedly in D. Del. and filed a new complaint in 2024 asserting the '863 and '709 patents (1:24-cv-01124), and it litigated the '483 reexam up to the CAFC. Its one IPR appearance was as a petitioner, and it lost institution. Read across: this is an operating-company patent owner with a genuinely commercial product (Steripath) behind the '724 patent, not an NPE. That matters for the discretionary-denial and real-party-in-interest posture you should expect, and it means the patent is being asserted and practiced, not warehoused. Well-asserted operating-company patents in crowded med-device art do attract IPRs eventually — the absence here is likely a function of the specific defendants Magnolia has chosen to sue rather than evidence that the claims are bulletproof.

Recommended next steps

1. Do the live check before you rely on the zero count. Pull PTAB E2E for US 9,060,724 at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ and, if your matter is live, consider a freedom-to-file timeline analysis. Petitions filed in the last several weeks may not appear in ODP or in search. The ODP block is canonical but can lag.
2. If you are defending against 9,060,724 specifically: you have a fully open IPR window subject only to the § 315(b) one-year service bar. There is no estoppel traffic to navigate. Build the petition around Brannon (US 6,013,037), which the Office has already accepted as § 102 art against an almost identical "initial volume / bypass" limitation in this same family — a road-tested starting reference. Note, however, that the '724 claims use "flow control mechanism" and "actuator" rather than the '483 patent's "seal member"/"vent"/"bypass" vocabulary, so a Brannon-only theory will need a second reference on the actuator/negative-pressure limitation.
3. Import the CAFC's construction wins into your invalidity and non-infringement contentions now. Magnolia v. Kurin, No. 2024‑2001 (Fed. Cir. 2026‑03‑06), holding that separately recited "seal member" and "vent" require separate structures, and that "diverter" is a § 112(f) means-plus-function term limited to the disclosed structure and equivalents, is directly usable against the '724 specification's functionally described components. Institute a § 112(f) mapping of "flow control mechanism" and "actuator" in the '724 claims.
4. Do not accept the '483 reexam as dispositive of anything about '724. If opposing counsel cites Ex Parte Magnolia Med. Techs., No. 2025‑001039 (PTAB May 20, 2025), aff'd, No. 2025‑1961 (Fed. Cir. 2026‑07‑09), ask for the claim-by-claim mapping to 9,060,724. There is none.
5. If you are on the patent-owner side: the fact that no IPR has ever been filed means you cannot rely on an earlier survival to chill a challenge, and your family's one adjudicated patent claim (the '483 patent's claim 1) is dead. Consider whether the '724 claims are worth pre-emptively fortifying or whether your assertion strategy should shift to the newer continuations ('863, '709, '139) whose claims have not yet been construed.

Confidence and limits: High confidence that there are no AIA trial proceedings on US 9,060,724 as of 2026‑09‑22, based on the canonical ODP block plus three independent searches (patent-number queries, Magnolia/PTAB queries, and Kurin-litigation queries), none of which returned an IPR/PGR/CBM naming this patent. Medium-high confidence on the adjacent-matter details above, which rest on secondary sources (law-firm articles, IPwatchdog, courtlistener-hosted filings, and a govinfo CAFC PDF that I quote directly). I did not retrieve the underlying PTAB FWDs or E2E records for IPR2026-00097 or reexam 90/019,177, so treat judge panels, exact paper numbers, and brief quotations as sourced from the reports cited rather than from the primary PTAB file.

I'll start by gathering the assignment and litigation record from multiple sources.

Let me dig into the specific assignment reel/frame records and litigation history.

US 9060724 — Assignment Record Reconstruction

Method note / limitation (read first): I could not open assignmentcenter.uspto.gov or assignment.uspto.gov directly in this session — my tooling is web search only, and the query budget was exhausted before I could pull the USPTO Assignment Abstract of Title for this patent. The chain below is reconstructed from (a) the Google Patents legal-events table for US 9060724 and its family members, and (b) search-indexed assignment data. Reel/frame values are given only where I actually surfaced them; two links in the chain are marked reel/frame not retrieved. Verify all of it at the Assignment Center search page: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/

Inventors

All four appear as Assignors on the 2015-03-12 recorded assignment of inventors' interest to Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc. (Washington). Note that this is a single inventors→company assignment covering all four — not the staggered/individual assignments you often see when a founding team fractures.

Unusual-pattern check: no departure pattern identified. I found no evidence in the surfaced record of inventors leaving the original assignee within 12 months of filing, and unlike a fire-sale precursor there is no follow-on assignment of the inventors' residual rights to a third party. I cannot confirm current employment status for any inventor — that is not determined, not "clean."

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9060724/en

Original assignee

• Entity named on the issued patent (Google Patents normalization): Magnolia Medical Technologies Ltd — this wording appears in the Google Patents assignee field.
• Entity named in the recorded USPTO assignment: Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc., Washington.

Per your instruction to interpret identifiers literally and not auto-correct, I flag this as a discrepancy in the data, not a discrepancy I have resolved: the recorded assignment and the later recordings all name the Inc., while the patent's front-page assignee field as rendered by Google Patents says Ltd. The likely explanation is a normalization artifact on the aggregator side, but I have not verified which string is on the printed face of the patent.

• Primary line of business: single-use blood-culture collection hardware. The commercial product is the SteriPath initial specimen diversion device (ISDD) — a diversion mechanism that sequesters the first aliquot of a blood draw before culture bottles are filled. That is precisely what this patent claims (a diverter with first/second lumens routing the first volume to a pre-sample reservoir).
• Product embodying the claims: Yes. Magnolia's own patent-marking page lists 9060724 among the patents protecting its products — https://magnolia-medical.com/patents/
• Current status: Operating. Privately held, Seattle/Washington, actively filing (its portfolio shows continuing activity into 2026 per IPqwery) and actively litigating its patent family. Not dissolved, not in bankruptcy, no Chapter 7/11 proceeding surfaced.

Assignment timeline

Chronological, from the Google Patents legal-events tables for 9060724 and its family members:

• Executed date not shown / recorded 2015-03-12 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (AS / Assignment)
  • Assignor: Miazga, Jay M.; Bullington, Gregory J.; Patton, Richard G., M.D.; Gaw, Shan E. (individually)
  • Assignee: Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc. (Washington)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — I did not surface the correspondent of record field for this entry.
  • Context: founding-team assignment — the inventors' rights vest in the operating company; ordinary pre-commercialization capitalization, not a transfer of a business.

• Executed 2021-03-18 / recorded 2021-03-30 — Reel 057204/0676

  • Conveyance: Lien (recorded under the Assignment branch as "LIEN")
  • Assignor: Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc.
  • Assignee: Fish & Richardson P.C., Minnesota
  • Correspondent: not retrieved. Note only that Fish & Richardson is itself the assignee on this link — a law firm recording against its own client — so the "repeat correspondent" inquiry for this chain would require the correspondent field for the other three links, which I do not have. Flagging the firm's appearance, not a recurrence.
  • Context: creditor's/attorney's charging lien by Magnolia's outside patent counsel. This is a fee-security filing, not a title transfer, and it is the single most interesting event in the chain because it implies a ~2021 dispute or arrears with counsel.

• Executed date not shown / recorded 2021-12-14 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Release by secured party
  • Assignor: Fish & Richardson PC
  • Assignee: Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: lien satisfaction — the F&R lien recorded eight months earlier was extinguished; title never left Magnolia at any point in this pair.

• Executed 2023-12-29 / recorded 2024-01-02 — Reel 066178/0969

  • Conveyance: Patent Security Agreement
  • Assignor: Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc.
  • Assignee: Symbiotic Capital Agency LLC, as Administrative Agent (California)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: securitization / venture-debt collateral — a collateral agent taking a security interest across the portfolio to secure a financing. Again, not a title transfer.

Bottom line on the record: across four recorded events spanning 2015–2024, title to US 9060724 has never left Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc. Two of the four events are encumbrances (lien, security agreement) and one is the release of an encumbrance.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 9060724
    2012 : Priority date 30 May
    2013 : Application 13904691 filed 29 May
    2015 : Inventor assignment recorded 12 March
         : Patent issues 23 June
    2021 : Attorney lien to Fish and Richardson
         : Lien released by secured party
    2023 : Security agreement to Symbiotic Capital
    2024 : Security agreement recorded

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. Every recorded assignee is the same operating entity, Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc., or an encumbrance holder (Fish & Richardson P.C.; Symbiotic Capital Agency LLC as administrative agent). No "IP/Holdings/Ventures/Licensing" successor appears. Reels 057204/0676 and 066178/0969 are a lien and a security agreement respectively — neither conveys title.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. I checked the chain against the named list (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). None appears. Magnolia is an operating device maker and an aggressive plaintiff in its own right — it litigated Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc. v. Kurin, Inc., No. 1:19-cv-00097 (D. Del.), including a § 112 ¶ 6 means-plus-function fight over the "diverter" limitations. That is competitor-vs-competitor assertion, which is the opposite of the NPE pattern. I could not confirm from my searches that 9060724 itself was among the specifically asserted claims in that case; the patents briefed in the surfaced decision are referred to as "the '001 patent."

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear, leaning not present. I was unable to retrieve the correspondent-of-record field for any of the four links, so I cannot test recurrence. What I can say: Fish & Richardson P.C. (Minnesota) appears as the assignee on reel 057204/0676 and as assignor on the 2021-12-14 release, meaning the firm is on both sides of one encumbrance pair. A single firm appearing twice on the same lien and its release is not the NPE signal described — the NPE tell is one lawyer shepherding title through unrelated LLCs, which does not occur here.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Four recorded events over roughly nine years, with no chained LLCs and no shared-address cluster. The two-year window 2021–2023 contains an encumbrance and its release, not consecutive title assignments.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. The only title conveyance (2015-03-12) predates the 2019 Kurin filing by roughly four years. Nothing was moved into a litigation vehicle in the six months before suit.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding involving Magnolia surfaced. The 2021 Fish & Richardson lien is a fee-security filing, and it was released in December 2021 — the opposite trajectory from a liquidation.

7. Privateering — Not present. No transfer to a third-party assertion vehicle on a manufacturer's behalf; Magnolia asserts its own patents under its own name.

8. Defensive aggregator — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent has not been neutralized.

Caveat on signal 2 and the overall read: Magnolia has a reputation in some industry commentary as a serial enforcer in the blood-culture-diversion space. That sentiment is not a finding under your rubric, and I am not treating it as one. On the evidence in the record, it is an operating-company patent plaintiff, which is a different animal from an NPE.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Justification: title to US 9060724 has remained continuously with Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc. across all four recorded events (inventor assignment recorded 2015-03-12; Fish & Richardson lien reel 057204/0676 executed 2021-03-18 and released 2021-12-14; Symbiotic Capital security agreement reel 066178/0969 executed 2023-12-29). Magnolia ships the SteriPath device that practices the claims and lists 9060724 on its own patent-marking page, and it has asserted its family against a direct competitor in Magnolia v. Kurin, No. 1:19-cv-00097 (D. Del.). The two 2021–2024 encumbrances are a law-firm lien and a venture-debt collateral arrangement — evidence of financing activity, not of a shell-entity or asserter chain.

Verification links

• USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Patent record and legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US9060724/en
• Magnolia patent-marking page: https://magnolia-medical.com/patents/
• Magnolia v. Kurin claim-construction decision: https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/delaware/dedce/1:2019cv00097/67483/74/

Open items you should close against the live Assignment Center before relying on this: (1) reel/frame and execution date for the 2015-03-12 inventor assignment; (2) reel/frame for the 2021-12-14 release; (3) the correspondent of record on all four links — that field is the whole point of signal 3 and I could not obtain it; (4) resolve the Ltd vs. Inc. assignee-string discrepancy.

I'll search for the specific reference citations associated with US 9060724 and related prior-art records.

I have partial reference data. Let me pull the full "References Cited" list and the examiner-cited (102/103) subset from authoritative copies.

I have a substantial citation list. Now let me isolate the examiner-cited art and the PCT search-report art that maps to §102/§103.

I hit the tool-call limit mid-search, so this answer is built strictly from what I actually retrieved. I will not fill gaps with plausible-looking citations.

Prior-art analysis for US 9,060,724 B2

1. What I retrieved, and the one hard limit

Hard limit — restated and material to this task: I still could not retrieve the granted claim set of '724. The fetcher supplied the specification, the definitions/summary material, the figure list and the classification data, but stripped the Claims block. Therefore I cannot give you claim numbers for §102 anticipation. Any answer that recited "claim 1," "claim 7," etc., for this patent would be fabricated. What I can do — and do below — is map each reference to the disclosed independent-claim concepts established in the prior section (Concepts 1–6), and state which concept(s) a reference could reach.

2. The most important legal caveat before the tables

Being listed in column (56) of a U.S. patent is not a finding that the reference anticipates under §102. Column (56) on '724 is dominated by a very long applicant IDS list (the classic "crowd the examiner" filing — note the run of 1950s–1990s patents). Only references carrying an examiner's asterisk / "X" or "Y" category in the file wrapper or the parallel PCT search report were actually applied. My OCR of the '724 face column did not capture the asterisks, so I cannot tell you which of the listed items the examiner substantively relied on. I flag this rather than guess.

Second caveat: '724 is a post-AIA patent. Application 13/904,691 was filed 2013-05-29, after the 2013-03-16 changeover. So §102 here means AIA §102(a)(1) (patented/described/published before the effective filing date) and §102(a)(2) (U.S. patents and published applications with an earlier effectively-filed date). Pre-AIA §102(e) terminology, and pre-AIA §102(b) "more than one year before" bars keyed to a 2012-05-30 date, do not control. For a reference to be §102(a)(2) art it must have an effectively filed date before 2013-05-29 (or before the 2012-05-30 provisional date if the provisional supports the relied-upon disclosure in the later claim).

3. Table A — U.S. patent documents appearing on the face of US 9,060,724 (partial, as OCR'd)

These are transcribed exactly as the OCR presented them. Where the OCR differs from what the sibling patent US 9,060,725 shows for the same reference, I note it rather than silently correct it.

Table A is incomplete by the source's own truncation. I do not know how many further references follow 6,016,712, nor what the foreign-patent and non-patent-literature legs of column (56) contain. Treat Table A as an accurate prefix, not a complete list.

4. Table B — The most relevant prior art for '724, with §102 mapping

I have grouped these by how likely each is to be the art that actually matters. Provenance is labelled honestly: items marked [Face] were OCR'd from '724's own column (56); items marked [Family-list] came from a sibling's citation set (US 8,864,684 via FreePatentsOnline, or US 9,999,383 via Justia) and are likely but unverified members of '724's list; items marked [Spec] are cited inside the '724 specification text itself.

Practical bottom line on Table B: no single reference I can verify discloses the combination recited across '724's independent-claim concepts — namely, (i) a pre-sample reservoir, plus (ii) a rotatable flow-control member with a first lumen and a second lumen, plus (iii) an actuator that both creates negative pressure and rotates the member, plus (iv) forced uni-directional sequencing. The '420 family (B1–B4) supplies the concept but not the rotating mechanism; the Mathias/Kraus predonation art (B5–B9) supplies diversion valving but not the specific two-lumen rotatable member. The realistic attack on '724 was almost certainly a §103 combination (predonation diversion + a rotary multi-lumen flow controller), not a clean §102 anticipation — which is consistent with the family's long continuation chain and the lengthy IDS filings.

5. Explicit uncertainties and contradictions to carry forward

1. Claim numbers: unavailable. I cannot map any reference to "claim 1," "claim 7," etc. The §102 mappings above are to claim concepts, not claims. Do not cite Table B as a claim chart.
2. Table A is a truncated prefix. The OCR ended at 6,016,712. The remainder of '724's U.S. column, its entire foreign column, and its entire NPL column are unretrieved.
3. Provenance split. Only Table A items are confirmed to be on '724's face. B1 is confirmed via the '724 specification's incorporation-by-reference sentence. B2–B15 are drawn from sibling patents' citation sets and are likely-but-unverified for '724. I have labelled each.
4. Examiner-applied vs. applicant-listed: unresolved. The asterisks that would identify examiner-cited art did not survive OCR. This is the single biggest gap in a true §102/§103 analysis.
5. OCR identifier conflicts, left uncorrected per your rule: 3,382,865 / 3,338,865; 4,444,203 / 4,444,205; 4,865,583 vs "4,686,555"; Vadher / Vacher; Dorn / Dion; Cinqualbre / Cinquabre. At least one member of each pair is an OCR artifact, not a real second patent.
6. Assignee discrepancy carried forward from the prior section: the fetched page shows "Magnolia Medical Technologies Ltd," while the 2015-03-12 USPTO assignment runs to "Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc." Unreconciled by design.
7. Sibling-name trap. US 9,060,724 and US 9,060,725 are different applications that issued on the same day with the identical title "Fluid diversion mechanism for bodily-fluid sampling" and overlapping inventor lists. Search results conflate them constantly. Both are in the same family and commonly owned, so neither is §102(a)(2) art against the other (AIA §102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership exception, assuming the 2015 assignment).
8. Forward citations are not prior art. Results surfaced '724 as cited by US 10,292,633, US 10,433,779, US 11,395,611 and others, and as a reference in later Magnolia filings (e.g., EP 3,733,067 and EP 4,555,929 list "US 9060724 B" in their descriptions). These are descendants, not anticipatory art, and must not appear in a §102 table.

To close the gap properly, the next step is a direct file-wrapper pull on application 13/904,691 (USPTO PatentCenter / PTAB API) to get the PTO-1449 forms, the examiner's asterisks on the (56) list, and any §102/§103 rejections in the office actions — plus the international search report for PCT/US2013/043289 (published as WO 2013/181352 A1), which will show the X/Y-categorized art for the same claims. I could not complete those lookups within this session.

I'll research the prior-art references cited on the face of this patent before building the § 103 analysis.

Let me pull the actual claim set and the reference list printed on the face of this patent.

Obviousness Analysis — US 9,060,724 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Scope, sources, and a correction to the earlier sections

Two housekeeping items before the analysis, because they change what I can and cannot assert.

(a) The "Prior Art" block of the Google Patents page was not retrievable. The authoritative fetched text you gave me (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9060724/en) contains the specification, Definitions, Figure listing, and CPC data, but the fetcher stripped the Abstract, the Claims, and both prior-art blocks ("Citations" — art cited against/within '724 — and "Cited By"). So I did not have the page's own prior-art section. To avoid fabricating a citation list, I recovered the "(56) References Cited" material from the front page of the printed patent and from siblings that share the '724 specification:

• Front page of US 9,060,724 itself: http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/37/9a/b6/4a0d279086c29b/US9060724.pdf (partial — the U.S. patent list, A-column through ~5,922,551)
• Reference lists of the same-specification sibling US 9,204,864: https://patents.justia.com/patent/9204864 and https://www.freepatentsonline.com/8864684.html
• Abstract/claim fragments for '724: https://patents.justia.com/patent/9060724

Where a reference's content is unverified and I have only its number/title/date from a (56) list, I say so.

(b) Correction / update to the earlier-generated sections. Those sections stated that the granted claims were unavailable and that the abstract was "derived from a sibling continuation." That is now partially resolved, from a Justia claim snippet (https://patents.justia.com/patent/9060724) that surfaced in this session:

• '724 has at least 29 claims; claim 25 is an independent claim; claims 22–24 and 26–29 are fragments I can now quote (below).
• The abstract text the earlier section inferred from US 10,433,779 is now confirmed verbatim as the '724-family abstract via the later family member listing at https://patents.justia.com/patent/20260151061.

I still do not have claim 1, the number of independent claims, or the file wrapper. Everything below that maps claim language is therefore flagged as either (i) quoted from the fragmentary claim text I recovered, or (ii) inferred from the Summary/Detailed Description paragraphs that the specification presents in claim-like terms. I have not invented claim language.

Also flagging a date inconsistency: the earlier sections are dated 2026-09-22; this task is dated 2026-04-26. I use 2026-04-26 as "today" for this section but note that the earlier section's docket search was run under the later date.

1. Governing legal framework and the critical date

• The application (13/904,691) was filed 2013-05-29, i.e., after the AIA first-inventor-to-file provisions took effect on 2013-03-16. AIA § 102/§ 103 applies, with the benefit of provisional 61/652,887 (2012-05-30).
• Because the earliest effective filing date is 2012-05-30, any reference that was publicly available or effectively filed before that date is prior art under § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2). That comfortably covers every item in the (56) list except the '724 family's own later members.
• **The controlling obviousness standard is KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007)**, applied through the Graham v. John Deere factors: scope and content of the prior art, differences between the claims and the prior art, PHOSITA level, and secondary considerations. The rationales I rely on below map to MPEP 2143 (combination of known elements; predictable variation; obvious to try among a finite number of identified solutions; design incentives).
• Common ownership does NOT save the key reference. US 8,197,420 (Patton) is Magnolia/Patton family art, but its publication US 2008/0145933 A1 published 2008-06-19 — more than one year before 2012-05-30 — so it is § 102(a)(1) art notwithstanding any § 102(b)(2)(C) common-ownership exception. It is also admitted prior art, because the '724 specification expressly incorporates it: "The first reservoir 170 can be any suitable reservoir for containing a bodily-fluid, such as a pre-sample reservoir described in detail in U.S. Pat. No. 8,197,420 ('the '420 patent'), the disclosure of which is incorporated herein by reference in its entirety." An applicant cannot simultaneously build on a reference and deny it is prior art.

2. The prior-art record I can actually stand behind

Tier 1 — content verified in this session

Tier 2 — on the (56) list; number/date/title verified, substance not verified here

These are the references a § 103 analysis would ordinarily reach for. I list them because they are on the face, but I have not verified their disclosures in this session and will not assert what they teach:

US 7,044,941 Mathias — "Method and apparatus for collecting blood samples prior to a blood collection procedure" (2006); US 7,087,047 and US 6,692,479 Kraus — "Predonation blood sampling apparatus"; US 6,626,884 Dillon — "Sampling in blood collection"; US 6,387,086 and US 6,520,948 Mathias — "Blood processing set including an integrated blood sampling system"; US 6,403,381 Mann; US 6,364,890 Lum — "Extraction and transportation of blood for analysis"; US 6,746,420 Prestidge — "Parenteral apparatus"; US 6,913,580 Stone — "Method of body fluid specimen collection"; US 7,335,188 Graf — "Lumbar puncture fluid collection device"; US 7,744,573 Gordon — "Closed blood sampling system with isolated pressure monitoring"; US 2008/0108954 Mathias — "Flow Controllers"; US 2006/0287639 Sharp — "Safety fluid transfer cannula"; US 5,269,317 Bennett; US 5,122,129 Olson; US 4,657,160 Woods; EP 0608985; EP 0761173; EP 0727187; WO 2005/068011; WO 2008/077047.

Do not use lapsed-equivalent time here. Where I reason about rotating multi-lumen valves generically, I label it as field-level ordinary skill, not as a citation.

Explicitly excluded from the § 103 case

US 9,060,725, US 9,022,950, US 9,022,951, US 10,292,633, US 10,433,779, US 11,395,611, US 11,395,612, US 11,983,332, US 12,186,080, US 12,551,150, US 12,564,341 are all same-family, later-filed members. They appear throughout the Google Patents "Citations/Cited By" tables but are not prior art to '724 and cannot support a § 103 rejection. They are useful only to confirm what the '724 disclosure says.

3. The claim concepts to be tested, and their limitations

From the abstract (confirmed) plus the Summary paragraphs the specification presents in claim-like form, an independent claim of the '724 type requires at least:

• (L1) a housing with proximal and distal end portions defining an inner volume;
• (L2) an inlet port configured to be fluidically coupled to a patient;
• (L3) an outlet port configured to be fluidically coupled to a sample reservoir;
• (L4) a fluid reservoir disposed within the inner volume, configured to receive and isolate a first volume of bodily-fluid;
• (L5) a flow control mechanism defining a first lumen and a second lumen and disposed in the housing for rotational movement;
• (L6) first configuration: inlet → first lumen → fluid reservoir;
• (L7) second configuration: inlet → second lumen → outlet port;
• (L8) an actuator configured to create a negative pressure in the fluid reservoir when actuated;
• (L9) the actuator is operably coupled to the flow control mechanism and configured to rotate it from the first to the second configuration after the first volume is received.

And, quoted from the recovered fragments:

22. "…the flow control mechanism includes a first control member and a second control member, the second control member defining a first lumen and a second lumen, the flow control mechanism configured for rotational movement between the first configuration … to a second configuration…"

23. "…the first control member includes a protrusion movably disposed in a grove [sic] defined by the second control member, the protrusion configured to move in the grove as the spring moves the seal member from the first position to the second position."

24. "…the protrusion is configured to rotate the second control member when the spring moves the seal member from the second position to a third position."

25 (independent) "…a flow control mechanism … including a first control member and a second control member, the second control member defining a first lumen and a second lumen and configured for rotational movement … and an actuator … configured to create a negative pressure in the fluid reservoir when actuated by a user, the actuator further configured to rotate the second control member from the first configuration to the second configuration after a first volume of bodily-fluid is received…"

28/29. "…the actuator is further configured to rotate the second control member from the first configuration to the second configuration when the actuator is moved from the second position to a third position by the user… an activation mechanism … including a protrusion configured to operably engage the actuator when the actuator is moved from the second position to a third position."

Note something important structurally: because claim 25 (independent) recites only "a first control member and a second control member," the two-part split is itself a claimed requirement, not merely an embodiment. That is the narrowest independent claim I can see, and it is the one most exposed to a § 103 attack, because the two-part split is a conventional way to separate a drive member from a lumen-defining seal body.

Source for the above fragments: https://patents.justia.com/patent/9060724 (third-party database; the authoritative Google Patents fetch stripped the claims block). Confidence: medium-high on the quoted strings, low-medium on completeness/numbering.

4. Proposed § 103 combinations

Combination A — Patton '420 + a rotary multi-lumen valve reference + a vacuum-generating syringe/diverter reference

Targets: L1–L9 (the abstract-level independent claim).

Motivation to combine (why a PHOSITA would do this):

1. Same field, same problem, same starting point. The '724 specification does not merely cite the '420 patent — it incorporates it by reference and adopts its "pre-sample reservoir" terminology. Under In re Kahn / In re Huston and the "leadings of the prior art" doctrine, art that the applicant identifies as the starting point is the most natural combination partner.
2. The problem the '724 spec itself states is a compliance problem — "the health care practitioner is prevented from including (whether intentionally or unintentionally) the first amount of bodily-fluid … in the bodily-fluid sample." The '420 patent's manual sequence (remove pre-sample reservoir, insert second needle into sample vessel) is exactly the "complex series of steps … difficult to ensure being followed" that the Kurin background later describes as the deficiency of conventional diversion. Eliminating discretionary practitioner steps is a recognized design incentive (KSR, "design incentives"; In re Kemps: simplicity of a known design is a legitimate § 103 rationale).
3. Express alternative-to-rotation is in the applicant's own text. The specification states the actuator moves the flow control mechanism "in a translational motion," and that "in other embodiments, the actuator … can be actuated to move the flow control mechanism in a rotational motion." Under KSR, where the patentee's own disclosure treats translation and rotation as interchangeable alternatives for the same function, substituting one for the other is a "predictable variation" and, at most, an "obvious to try" among a finite number of identified, predictable solutions." This is a strong rhetorical point: the applicant characterized rotation as an ordinary alternative.
4. The rotary two-lumen diverter is not the point of novelty. '420's pivoting valve 602 and the field-wide three-way/two-lumen stopcock make the direction of L5/L9's "rotational" recitation a design choice in a known mechanical idiom.
5. Reasonable expectation of success is high — the subject matter is deterministic mechanical valving and syringe-type vacuum generation; there is no unpredictable biology or chemistry in the claims.

Weakness of Combination A: the '420 references I verified put the pre-sample volume in an external vacuum-sealed tube, not a reservoir "disposed within the inner volume" of a housing with a plunger-type actuator (L4 + L8 + L9). Combination A therefore needs the Tier-2 integrated-reservoir art to close that gap, and the § 103 case is only as good as those references' actual disclosures, which I have not verified. If they are as their titles suggest, the combination is strong; if not, the case for that element rests on '420's own integration teachings, which I could not verify for an in-housing reservoir.

Combination B — Predonation-syringe art (Kraus '047/'479) as primary + Patton '420 + a rotary multi-lumen diverter

Targets: the same claim set, but supplies L4/L8 (reservoir inside the housing, plunger-created vacuum) instead of relying on external vacuum tubes.

The theory: a predonation syringe draws a first aliquot into an on-board chamber and then routes the remainder to the collection container; substitute the '420 diversion logic into the syringe body and replace the flow-block with a pivoting two-lumen valve, actuated by a traveling plunger arm.

Motivation: both references address the same clinical objective (discard/divert the initial aliquot to protect the diagnostic specimen), and the syringe form factor is the ordinary vehicle for controlled aspiration and for modulating suction — which the '724 specification itself treats as desirable ("it can be desirable to limit the amount of suction force … to reduce … vein collapse and/or one potential source of hemolysis"). Combining a suction-modulating syringe actuator with a diversion valve is two known elements performing their known functions.

Confidence note: I have verified only the titles of the Kraus/Mathias/Dillon references in this session. I flag this as the single largest evidentiary gap in this analysis, and it is exactly the gap a real office action would be built on. The file wrapper of 13/904,691 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US9060724/en → USPTO PatentCenter link) would show whether the examiner actually made a § 103 rejection over these references and what the applicant argued.

Combination C — Any of the above + a two-part valve-actuator reference, for claim 25 and claims 22–24

Targets: the two-control-member limitation (claim 25), the protrusion-in-groove follower (claim 23), and the spring moving the seal member from second to third position (claim 24).

Once claim 25 is on the table, the remaining question is whether a PHOSITA would have (i) split the diverter into a rigid driver and a lumen-defining, deformable sealing member, and (ii) used a cam-and-follower (protrusion riding in a groove) to convert the actuator's linear stroke into rotation of that member.

• (i) The two-part split. This is the standard architecture of any plug/valve assembly: a rigid or non-sealing drive member that the mechanism grabs, and a compliant sealing body that actually defines the ports. The '420 patent's flow-control blocks are lumen-defining bodies driven relative to one another — a two-member flow controller. And the '724 specification itself says the second control member "can be any suitable elastomer configured to deform when disposed within the inner volume," forming a friction fit — i.e., the applicant is claiming an elastomeric plug, which is the classic valve-seal construction. Selecting silicone for a sealing plug is not an inventive act.
• (ii) The cam follower. Converting reciprocating actuator motion into indexed rotation by means of a protrusion traveling in a groove is among the oldest and most predictable mechanisms in mechanical engineering. Under KSR, "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious." The applicant's own Figure 10/15 description (activation protrusions meshing with protrusions of the activation extension) demonstrates the claimed "protrusion engages protrusion" is a design choice, not a discovery — and claims 23/24 merely relocate the engagement interface into a groove.
• The "third position" (claim 24 / claim 28). The specification itself justifies a third, fully-isolated configuration on safety grounds — a "locked," self-contained state preventing exposure to blood-borne pathogens (HIV, Hepatitis C). Closing a valve to a fully-off position upon completion of a draw is a recognized safety motivation driven by needlestick/blood-exposure regulation and by the '420 patent's own teaching that the diversion mechanism may have more than two positions.

Predicted applicant rebuttal and my assessment: the applicant would argue that the two-part interlock is a specific, non-obvious mechanical design because the same spring-driven stroke both (a) draws the pre-sample vacuum and (b) at a later stroke position releases the interlock to rotate the valve. That is a genuinely tighter claim. But it is a packaging/sequencing argument, not a new-function argument: the spring, the plunger, the groove and the follower each perform exactly their known function, and KSR forecloses "combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results."

Combination D — Illustration used by the record itself: Kurin's Background + '420 (for motivation only)

I mention this because the court record shows how the parties framed the field. In the D. Del. Magnolia v. Kurin papers (https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.ded.67483/gov.uscourts.ded.67483.59.0.pdf), Magnolia described the '483/device family — same architecture as '724 — as having six core components: a housing; an inlet port; a flow control mechanism; a first fluid reservoir; an outlet port to a second fluid reservoir; and an actuator to change the configuration of the flow control mechanism. That is a helpful statement of what the parties themselves treated as the conventional decomposition of the device. It is not § 102 art (it post-dates '724), and I present it only as context on the level of ordinary skill and the accepted architectural vocabulary.

5. What is not obvious (the defensible core), and secondary considerations

A candid § 103 analysis has to identify where the claims likely survive, because that is what determines whether a rejection is sustainable.

1. The forced-sequencing/unidirectional interlock as claimed. The specification states the actuator "is configured for uni-directional movement" so that the flow control mechanism "is prevented from being moved to its second configuration before its first configuration." Claim 25's "actuator further configured to rotate the second control member … after a first volume … is received" is a structural enforcement of the sequence, not merely a capability. The strongest nonobviousness argument is that the prior art discloses diversion and automation but not a single actuator whose stroke reconfigures the same flow-control member only after the sequestration volume is filled. That is the classic "combination achieves more than the sum of its parts" position — but note KSR's caution that such an argument requires evidence, not attorney characterization.
2. Secondary considerations. The '724 family has real indicia: the documented, decades-old, unresolved clinical problem (Hall 2006; Wagner 2000; CLSI); the inventors' own 2010 clinical publication; commercial adoption (the litigation record ties the family to Magnolia's Steripath product, and the amended expiration to 2034-02-12 shows substantial term adjustments for PTA). But nexus is the weak point: the commercial product and the clinical evidence tie to the initial specimen diversion concept, which is the '420 patent's contribution, not necessarily to the '724-specific features of rotational actuation and two-part interlocks. Secondary considerations tied to the broader genus, unattended by proof of nexus to the claimed structure, will not rebut a prima facie case.

6. Bottom line

• No single reference of record that I could verify discloses every limitation of an '724 independent claim, principally because the verified '420-family art places the pre-sample volume in an external vacuum-sealed vessel and manual sequencing, not in an in-housing reservoir driven by a rotational actuator. '724 therefore looks like a combination patent, not an anticipation case.
• The strongest § 103 theory is Combination A/B: US 8,197,420 (Patton) as the primary reference — which is expressly incorporated by reference into the '724 specification itself, making it admitted prior art and the natural starting point — in view of (i) integrated on-board reservoir/predonation-syringe art (Mathias/Kraus/Dillon, titles verified only) for the in-housing reservoir and plunger-generated vacuum, and (ii) rotary multi-lumen valve art (including '420's own pivoting switchable valve 602 and the ubiquitous two-lumen stopcock) for the rotational recitation. The applicant's own specification reciting rotation and translation as alternatives for the identical function is the single most damaging admission and supplies the KSR "predictable variation" rationale.
• For claims 22–29, the attack is the mechanical-equivalents attack: rigid driver + elastomeric lumen-defining plug + protrusion-in-groove cam follower + spring-returned plunger are each known elements performing their known functions, producing a predictable result.
• Confidence: moderate. It would improve materially with (a) the actual claim 1 text and full claim count, (b) the verified disclosures of the Tier-2 references (particularly Dillon '884, Mathias '941/'086/'948, Kraus '047/'479, and the '317/'129/'160 valve art), and (c) the prosecution history of 13/904,691, which would reveal whether the examiner already made a § 103 rejection and, if so, over what. I did not retrieve the file wrapper and I am not asserting no such rejection exists.
• Consistency check against the earlier sections: those sections reported no prior art retrieved and no claim set. This section adds prior art and partial claim text but does not contradict them; the assignee discrepancy ("Magnolia Medical Technologies Ltd" vs. the 2015-03-12 assignment to "Magnolia Medical Technologies, Inc.") remains unresolved and is left as-is per the literal-interpretation rule.