US 10076367

I'll run targeted searches for this patent number and its litigation/appeal status.

Let me check the specific CAFC docket and litigation status.

Let me verify whether US 10,076,367 itself has any PTAB or CAFC 2026 activity (as distinct from the sibling patents in the same family).

US 10,076,367 B2 — Verified Summary

Search scope note: I searched for the exact identifier 10076367 / US 10,076,367. Where the record shows litigation or PTAB activity involving other Moskowitz patent numbers, I flag it explicitly rather than merging it into this patent.

Bibliographic data (from the granted patent front page, US10076367 PDF and Google Patents)

Priority chain (per the specification): 60/670,231 (Apr. 12, 2005) → 11/208,644 (Aug. 23, 2005, now US 7,704,279) → 11/536,815 (Sep. 29, 2006, now US 7,846,188) → 12/868,451 (Aug. 25, 2010, now US 8,747,444) → 14/299,711 (Jun. 9, 2014, now US 10,016,225) → 15/896,130.

Abstract (verbatim, as issued)

"An apparatus and method for joining members together using a self-drilling screw apparatus or stapling apparatus are disclosed. The screw apparatus includes a worm drive screw, a spur gear and superior and inferior screws which turn simultaneously in a bi-directional manner. A rotating mechanism drives the first and second screw members in opposite directions and causes the screw members to embed themselves in the members to be joined. … A device employing two screws (two-in-one) can be combined with a capping horizontal mini-plate. A device employing three screws can be combined in enclosures (three-in-one). The stapling apparatus includes grip handles, transmission linkages, a drive rod a fulcrum and a cylinder. The staple has superior and inferior segments with serrated interfaces, a teethed unidirectional locking mechanism and four facet piercing elements."

Note a real gap worth flagging: the abstract is much broader than the granted claims. The abstract describes wood, masonry, carpentry, and stapling uses, but the 21 issued claims are all confined to an intervertebral implant body + plate + bidirectional bone-piercing screws. The facet-stapler subject matter is described in the specification (FIGS. 8A–13) but is not claimed in this patent.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — "Cage + wrap-around plate + two opposing screws." A spinal fusion system with:

• An implant body made of PEEK that props open the disc space to resist subsidence. It has a vertebral-body-facing surface top and bottom, plus a plate-facing surface, a bottom, and two side surfaces.
• A plate whose body-facing side abuts the implant's plate-facing surface. The plate spans the full width of the implant, and its holes line up with holes in the implant body. Its depth varies so a portion of it wraps around and contacts a side surface of the implant.
• Both pieces are sized together to fit inside the disc space.
• A superior bone-piercing screw extending in one direction into the upper vertebral body, and an inferior bone-piercing screw extending in a different direction into the lower vertebral body.

Claim 8 — "Cage + four-hole angled plate + two opposing screws." Same core architecture, but recast around (i) a plate with exactly four plate holes, at least two aligned with body holes, and (ii) a plate body-facing surface with a first portion opposite the top surface and a second portion angled relative to the first, contacting a different region of the implant. Claim 14 further requires those two portions to be substantially perpendicular.

Claim 15 — "Cage + full-width plate with inward-facing angled surface + multiple bidirectional screws." Again the PEEK implant plus a plate that spans the implant's entire width with aligned holes, but the geometry is specified as a second portion of the body-facing surface angled and facing inward toward the first side surface of the implant. The screw element is broadened from two named screws to a plurality of bone-piercing screws extending bidirectionally.

Method claims 6 and 13 are written as "A method of operating the system of claim 1 / claim 8," comprising positioning the implant and plate so the plate is flush with or below the vertebral body surfaces, then extending the superior and inferior screws into the respective vertebral bodies. (Claim 13 contains the typographical error "flush with ore below.")

Litigation and appellate posture

• Asserted in litigation. US 10,076,367 appears among the patents-in-suit in Moskowitz Family, LLC v. Globus Medical, Inc., originally No. 6:19-cv-00672 (W.D. Tex.), transferred to the E.D. Pa. as No. 2:20-cv-03271 (IPWatchdog docket listing includes 10076367 in the asserted set). An eight-day E.D. Pa. jury trial in December 2023 returned a defense verdict of non-infringement; Moskowitz had sought over $86 million.
• Federal Circuit 2024 appeals. Google Patents' family record for US 10,076,367 lists CAFC Nos. 24-1696 and 24-1753. On September 11, 2026, the Federal Circuit issued a precedential opinion in Moskowitz Family LLC v. Globus Medical, Inc., No. 24-1696, affirming non-infringement and the construction of "universal" (govinfo opinion; IPWatchdog; National Law Review).
  • Important limitation on that finding: the 24-1696 opinion addressed U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,353,913; 9,889,022; and 10,478,319 — not 10,076,367. I found no 2026 CAFC decision or docket entry deciding any issue specific to claim scope of US 10,076,367. The listing of 24-1696/24-1753 on the '367 family page reflects this patent's presence in the same family/litigation cluster, not a merits ruling on '367.

PTAB activity — and a number-confusion warning

• Early IPRs filed by Globus covered US 8,353,913; 10,307,268; 9,889,022; 10,478,319; 10,251,643; and 10,028,740 — not 10,076,367 (IPR petition excerpt).
• ⚠️ Do not conflate with US 12,011,367. A 2026 Medtronic petition cites "the '367 patent," which is U.S. Patent No. 12,011,367 to Moskowitz et al. in IPR2026-00162, arising from Moskowitz Family, LLC v. Medtronic, Inc., No. 0:25-cv-00769 (D. Minn.) (PTAB filing). 12,011,367 ≠ 10,076,367. These are separate patents sharing a colloquial nickname.

Explicit uncertainties

1. I could identify no IPR, PGR, or reexamination specifically challenging US 10,076,367.
2. I could identify no 2026 CAFC docket entry raising US 10,076,367 claim scope; the September 2026 precedential decision concerned three other Moskowitz patents.
3. The exact disposition of '067 within the Globus case (dropped, dismissed, or resolved at summary judgment before the 2023 trial) is not confirmed in the sources I retrieved. The IPWatchdog 2020 filing list is from the complaint stage and does not show later narrowing.
4. Claim-status data ("Expired – Lifetime," Aug. 23, 2025 expiration) comes from Google Patents' automated calculation of the 20-year term from the Aug. 23, 2005 filing, subject to any terminal disclaimers; treat it as presumptive, not authoritative.

I'll research the litigation history for US patent 10076367. Let me search several sources.

Let me dig deeper into the specific cases involving the '367 patent.

I have substantial results. Let me verify the Medtronic, NuVasive, and ZimVie cases and the Federal Circuit appeals.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 10,076,367

Patent at issue: U.S. 10,076,367 B2 ("Bi-directional fixating transvertebral body screws, zero-profile horizontal intervertebral miniplates, total intervertebral body fusion devices, and posterior motion-calibrating interarticulating joint stapling device for spinal fusion"), issued September 18, 2018, assigned to Moskowitz Family LLC. All known litigation is enforcement activity by Moskowitz Family LLC as plaintiff.

Below is what I could confirm from the sources retrieved. Where a fact is uncertain or I could not confirm it, I say so explicitly.

1. Moskowitz Family LLC v. Globus Medical, Inc. (original filing)

The '367 patent was asserted as Count IV of the complaint. The accused products for the '367 patent were identified as the COALITION and FORTIFY-IR systems. Moskowitz alleged that "COALITION practices all of the limitations of claim 1 of the '367 patent" (citing Globus's own product pages).

This case was transferred to the Eastern District of Pennsylvania on Globus's § 1404(a) motion. The transfer order was signed July 2, 2020, and the case was docketed in the E.D. Pa. on July 6, 2020.

*(Note: one transfer-order document lists the asserted patents as "10,076,376" and "10,241,643"; read literally these are different numbers, but the weight of the record — the complaint, the infringement contentions, and the court's own later opinions — identifies the patents as 10,076,367 and 10,251,643, so I treat the transfer order as containing transcription errors. I flag this rather than silently correct it.)*

2. Moskowitz Family LLC v. Globus Medical, Inc. (transferee court)

Eight patents were asserted (per the court: '913, '268, '319, '022, '740, '643, '367, and '386). The case produced:

• Markman opinion (Aug. 25, 2021) construing "universal."
• Summary judgment of noninfringement as to the '913 and '022 patents.
• Jury verdict, December 13, 2023 — no infringement of the '268, '319, and '740 patents (validity of those claims was upheld).
• Final judgment, February 27, 2024 (Judge Goldberg): the remaining un-litigated claims — which include the '367 patent — were dismissed without prejudice, expressly preserving Moskowitz's right to refile.

So, for the '367 patent specifically, the outcome was dismissal without prejudice of the un-tried claims, not a merits ruling. (The '367 patent was not one of the three patents that went to the jury.)

3. Federal Circuit appeals

The Federal Circuit affirmed the E.D. Pa.'s (1) summary judgment of noninfringement as to U.S. Pat. Nos. 8,353,913 and 9,889,022, (2) construction of "universal," and (3) denial of Moskowitz's JMOL motion as to U.S. Pat. No. 10,478,319. Critically, the appeal concerned the '913, '022, and '319 patents — not the '367 patent, which had been dismissed without prejudice at the district court. I could not confirm the substance of 24-1753 from the retrieved sources.

(Note a date inconsistency: the session header states April 26, 2026, yet the retrieved sources report a September 11, 2026 Federal Circuit opinion. I report the events as found in the search results, per the instruction to prefer search results.)

4. Moskowitz Family LLC v. Medtronic, Inc., et al.

The '367 patent is asserted here. The complaint alleges infringement of "at least claims 8 or 17 of the '367 patent" and identifies the Elevate and Catalyst systems as the '367 accused instrumentalities. As of the materials retrieved (early-to-mid 2026), the parties were briefing Medtronic's motion to stay (ECF Nos. 61, 65), and Medtronic had filed parallel IPR petitions (e.g., IPR2025-01598, IPR2026-00121).

(This appears to be the most significant live matter in which the '367 patent itself is squarely at issue.)

5. Moskowitz Family LLC v. NuVasive, LLC, et al.

The asserted patents I could confirm in this complaint include 7,972,363; 9,005,293; 9,301,854; 9,924,940; 10,016,284; 10,426,633; and 10,753,753 ("the '753 patent"), with accused products including Base, Brigade, CoRoent, MOD-EX PL, Simplify, TLX, and X-Core. I could not confirm that the '367 patent is among the asserted patents in the NuVasive action. I flag this as unconfirmed.

6. Other matters

• ZimVie, Inc. — A Moskowitz Family LLC complaint against ZimVie, Inc. (D. Del.) appears in the retrieved materials, but I could not confirm the case number, filing date, or whether the '367 patent is asserted. Treat as unverified.
• PTAB/IPR proceedings (not district-court litigation, but related): Globus filed several IPRs against Moskowitz patents in the 2020 timeframe (e.g., IPR2020-01305, IPR2020-01307, IPR2020-01310, tied to the E.D. Pa. case), and Medtronic filed IPRs in 2025–2026 (IPR2025-01598, IPR2026-00121). I could not confirm whether any of these specifically challenge the '367 patent — the retrieved IPR documents name other Moskowitz patents (the '319, '913, and '505 among them).

Summary table

Caveats

• The '367 patent's only merits-stage litigation to date ended with a without-prejudice dismissal of the un-asserted-at-trial claims, so there is no infringement verdict or validity holding specific to the '367 patent that I could find. Its most active live assertion is the Medtronic case.
• I did not independently confirm the details of Fed. Cir. No. 24-1753, the ZimVie action's docket number, or whether the '367 patent appears in the NuVasive action. Those items should be verified against PACER/Unified Patents before being relied upon.
• Per the operating rules, I have not auto-corrected any identifiers; where records appear internally inconsistent (e.g., "10,076,376" vs. "10,076,367"), I have flagged rather than altered them.

PTAB Proceedings — US 10,076,367 B2

Bottom line up front: The structured ODP block (canonical source) reports no AIA trial proceedings on file for this patent. My independent web search also surfaced zero IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings naming U.S. Patent No. 10,076,367 as the challenged patent. This is a "no PTAB activity" answer, not a "claims were invalidated" answer — so treat everything below as the absence-of-record finding, with the corroborating related-family context that a defendant actually needs.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 10,076,367: 0 (0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied). The patent has never been the subject of a PTAB trial — so it is neither "hardened by surviving IPR" nor "narrowed by canceled claims." It is simply untested at the Board, and every claim (1–21, including claim 1 and the "wrap-around plate" limitations of claims 1 and 15) remains presumptively valid and unadjudicated. The defensive posture is therefore: the patent's validity has never been tested at the PTAB, and nothing about the record estops you from filing the first IPR — but also, no petitioner has ever found art good enough to convince the Board, because nobody has tried.

Important caveat on the record: the ODP block is authoritative and shows no proceedings. Web search is not a complete substitute for a PTAB E2E name/patent-number query, and filings within the last ~60–90 days may not yet be indexed anywhere. Verify directly at PTAB E2E before relying on this for a filing-deadline or § 315(b) analysis.

Proceedings on US 10,076,367

None. There is no proceeding number, petitioner, institution decision, Final Written Decision, settlement, or PTAB-originating Federal Circuit appeal to report. Per the constraints of this task, I will not invent one.

Do not conflate this patent with "the '367 patent" in the Medtronic litigation

This is the single biggest trap in this file, and it matters:

• US 10,076,367 B2 (this patent) — Moskowitz Family LLC; issued 2018-09-18; asserted against Globus Medical in Moskowitz Family LLC v. Globus Medical, Inc., W.D. Tex. 6:19-cv-00672, transferred to E.D. Pa. 2:20-cv-03271 (CourtListener docket).
• US 12,011,367 B2 — a different Moskowitz patent (issued 2024-06-18), asserted against Medtronic in Moskowitz Family, LLC v. Medtronic, Inc., D. Minn. 0:25-cv-00769, and the subject of IPR2026-00162 (Petition).

Medtronic's filings, the Medtronic complaints, and press coverage all call 12,011,367 "the '367 patent." It is not this patent. Any docket research you do must key on the full number 10,076,367 / 10076367, not on "'367."

Related-family PTAB activity (context only — NOT proceedings on this patent)

Zero IPRs on this patent does not mean the family is quiet. It is one of the most heavily petitioned spinal-implant families in recent years.

Globus Medical wave (2020) — all institution denials. Globus filed six concurrent IPRs, every one of which was denied institution under 35 U.S.C. § 314:

(Denials listed in the prosecution IDS record, e.g. PTACTS document; Globus also threatened concurrently-filed petitions on 10,251,643 and 10,028,740 — see IPR2020-01306 petition.) None of these six challenged 10,076,367. The 10,076,367 patent was asserted in the same Globus case, so Globus litigated it in court but chose not to petition it — it took its shots at the '913/'022/'268/'319 instead.

Medtronic wave (2025–2026). Medtronic has been filing serially, one petition per patent, against a long list of Moskowitz continuation patents as of the D. Minn. case — e.g. IPR2026-00121 (11,864,755), IPR2026-00124 (11,096,797), IPR2026-00162 (12,011,367), IPR2026-00163 (11,376,136), IPR2026-00216 (10,016,284), IPR2026-00217 (10,426,633), IPR2026-00265 (10,064,738 — instituted 2026-07-28), IPR2026-00285 (10,603,183) (Docket Alarm PTAB search). None of these targets 10,076,367. Note also the Director's post-institution written opinion in Medtronic, Inc. v. Moskowitz Family LLC (priority/antedating dispute, reported 2026-09-14 — Finnegan summary); that proceeding concerns a different Moskowitz patent.

Federal Circuit. The patent-page family data lists two CAFC appeals — 24-1753 and 24-1696 — but these are docket-level entries tied to the litigation family, not appeals from a PTAB Final Written Decision (none exists for this patent). I could not confirm the issues or dispositions from public sources, and I will not guess at them.

Strategic summary

Claim status. For US 10,076,367 specifically, all claims 1–21 are UNTESTED. None canceled, none confirmed, none narrowed by certificate. Claims 1, 8, and 15 (the three independent claims) and every dependent claim — the PEEK "subsidence-reducing" implant body, the plate that "extends across an entire width of the implant body," the body-facing surface "shaped to wrap around and abut at least a portion of the first side surface," the four plate holes, the zero-to-sub-zero profile limitation, and the bidirectional superior/inferior bone-piercing screws — remain intact and enforceable on their face. There is no IPR estoppel, no adverse FWD, and no PTAB-imposed claim construction to leverage.

Estoppel landscape — you are clean. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel arises only from a petitioner who "results in a final written decision." No IPR on this patent ever reached institution, so no party is estopped as to any ground on this patent, and every prior-art ground is still available to a defendant today — § 102, § 103, and § 112. The Globus denials (which bit on § 325(d)-style prior-consideration and merits grounds against sibling patents) create no estoppel and no issue-preclusion effect here; they are not even admissible as findings about this patent's claims. The practical upside: the Globus and Medtronic petitions against siblings are a free roadmap of art and expert-declaration strategies, and the reasons those petitions were denied (Board's § 325(d) reluctance to relitigate art the Examiner already considered) tell you what to avoid — lead with art and claim limitations the Examiner never saw.

Pattern signals. (1) The same large defendants have petitioned this family repeatedly but have systematically skipped 10,076,367 — despite Globus affirmatively accusing-and-defending it in E.D. Pa. That is a real signal that this claim set is either harder to knock out or was strategically deprioritized (the '367 patent's claims are narrow, device-specific, and recite exact structural relationships: wrap-around plate geometry, plate spanning the entire implant width, thickness relationship between plate and body). (2) No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, IPR-focused funds) appears anywhere in the chain — the family's PTAB history is big-company vs. patent owner. (3) The patent owner is litigious and litigation-tested: W.D. Tex. → E.D. Pa. (Globus), and now D. Minn. (Medtronic, five entities), plus Moskowitz v. ZimVie. Patent owners who litigate this hard also litigate PTAB appeals hard — expect a vigorous POPR and a Director-discretionary-denial fight if you file.

One more thing a defendant must check. The Google Patents legal-status entry states "Expired – Lifetime" with an anticipated expiration of 2025-08-23 (20 years from the earliest non-provisional in the chain, US 11/208,644, filed 2005-08-23). If accurate, the patent term has already run as of today (2026-10-01), which would foreclose injunctive relief and cap damages at the pre-expiration window — a far more powerful defense than any IPR. I did not independently verify PTA/PTE or terminal disclaimers, so verify this against the face of the patent and PAIR before relying on it.

Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the null finding directly. Run a PTAB E2E / uspto.gov PTAB Decisions query on 10076367 and on application 15/896,130, plus a name search on "Moskowitz Family LLC." The ODP block says zero; your own E2E query should match. Check again for anything filed after the ODP ingest date.
2. Verify the expiration date. Pull the printed patent and PAIR for any patent-term adjustment or extension. If 2025-08-23 holds, your damages exposure under this patent is historical only and any demand letter citing it is worth very little regardless of validity.
3. If you are a defendant being asserted on this patent and the expiration is not clean, the IPR door is wide open. No § 315(b) bar can exist unless you were served more than one year ago in a prior action on this patent; no § 315(e) estoppel exists; no discretionary-denial "settled expectations" story helps the patent owner for a patent in force since only 2018 relative to the 2005 priority — though be ready for a § 325(d) / Becton Dickinson argument given how much Moskowitz-family art the Examiner has seen across the chain, and for a General Plastic follow-on argument if you file second after another petitioner.
4. Mine the sibling petitions. The Globus and Medtronic petitions against 8,353,913, 9,889,022, 10,307,268, 10,478,319, 12,011,367, etc. give you the family's art stack (e.g. Palmatier, Waugh, Robinson, Simpson, Tisserand/Bonutti, Allen/Chung) and the experts (e.g. Brad Culbert declarations) — all reusable, and none of it estopped as to this patent.
5. If a demand letter cites claim 1, 8, or 15 of 10,076,367, note that no claim has ever been canceled. There is no FWD to link to and no disposition to quote. Any statement that these claims have been invalidated at the PTAB is factually wrong.

Sources: US 10,076,367 on Google Patents · CourtListener docket, Moskowitz Family LLC v. Globus Medical (E.D. Pa. 2:20-cv-03271) · Medtronic IPR2026-00121 docket · Medtronic IPR2026-00162 petition ('367 = US 12,011,367) · Globus denial decisions (IDS record)

I'll research the assignment record for US 10076367 across the sources you specified.

Let me dig for the specific reel/frame records and correspondent details, plus NPE directory entries.

Ownership analysis — US 10,076,367 B2

Access note: I could not open the USPTO Assignment Center UI directly with the tools available (search-only access). The assignment events below are taken from the Google Patents "Legal Events / Reassignment" feed for this patent, which mirrors the USPTO Assignment ( reel/frame ) database, cross-checked against PTAB petitions and district-court complaints in the Moskowitz family litigation. I was not able to retrieve the reel/frame numbers for this specific patent's three recorded assignments — I flag each one explicitly below rather than guessing. Verifiable at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "10076367").

Inventors

Pattern assessment: This is not a departing-employee / fire-sale pattern. Quite the opposite — the inventors are the same family that owns and runs the assignee entity (Nathan C. Moskowitz, his sons Mosheh and Ahmnon D. Moskowitz). There is no corporate employer whose rights were stripped. The unusual pattern here is the reverse of a fire-sale tell: an independent surgeon-inventor retained ownership for ~13 years and consolidated rights into a family holding LLC only when he began asserting the portfolio (2018).

Original assignee

Moskowitz Family LLC — a Maryland limited liability company, principal place of business 212 North Adams Street, Suite 200, Rockville, MD 20850 (per plaintiff's complaints in Moskowitz Family LLC v. NuVasive and v. Medtronic).

• Per its own pleadings, the LLC "was created to develop human spine related devices and protect and license any resulting inventions and intellectual property." It is described as owning ~100 US patents and 9 pending applications.
• Primary line of business: patent licensing / enforcement, not manufacturing. I found no evidence that Moskowitz Family LLC ships a commercial product embodying the claims. The patents originate with the founder, not acquired from a third party.
• Current status: operating (as an asserting/licensing entity). No evidence of acquisition, dissolution, or bankruptcy. It is an active litigant: Moskowitz Family LLC v. Globus Medical (W.D. Tex. 6:19-cv-00672 → E.D. Pa. 2:20-cv-03271; Fed. Cir. 24-1696/24-1753), v. NuVasive (D. Del. 1:25-cv-00711), and v. Medtronic et al. (D. Minn. 0:25-cv-00769).

Assignment timeline

The Google Patents legal-events feed for US 10,076,367 records one filing event and three assignment (reassignment) events. All three are "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST" conveyances. Reel/frame is not confirmed for any of them (see caveat at the end of this section).

• 2018-03-14 (executed/recorded) — Reel —/— (not retrieved)

  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: MOSKOWITZ, NATHAN C.
  • Assignee: MOSKOWITZ FAMILY LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrievable for this reel — see note below on Fish & Richardson P.C.
  • Context: internal reorg / consolidation — the founder's personal rights moved into his own family holding LLC; this is the link that makes the LLC the record owner.

• 2018-04-23 (executed/recorded) — Reel —/— (not retrieved)

  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: MOSKOWITZ, MOSHEH T.
  • Assignee: MOSKOWITZ, NATHAN C.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: internal reorg — co-inventor son quitclaims his undivided interest to the lead inventor (who had already conveyed to the family LLC on 03-14).

• 2018-04-23 (executed/recorded) — Reel —/— (not retrieved)

  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: GLOZMAN, DANIEL
  • Assignee: MOSKOWITZ, NATHAN C.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: internal reorg — third co-inventor quitclaims his interest to the lead inventor, completing the chain into the family LLC.

Correspondent note (not a finding on this patent's reels): In the Moskowitz family's related prosecution files, the recurring attorney of record is Michael T. Hawkins, Reg. No. 57,867, Fish & Richardson P.C. (correspondent firm code "26191 / 7590"), signing 37 CFR 3.73(c) statements for Moskowitz-owned patents. A separate Moskowitz-family chain entry (Nathan C. Moskowitz → Moskowitz Family LLC) appears at Reel 045586 / Frame 0373, and other Moskowitz inventor→Nathan assignments at Reel 045904/0815, 045636/0075, 045997/0805, 046069/0540, 048237/0270, 048237/0710, 048237/0758. These reel/frame numbers are drawn from other Moskowitz patents' chain-of-title statements and I could not confirm they apply to US 10,076,367. Because a single firm (Fish & Richardson) appears across the Moskowitz chain, this is flagged as a possible repeat correspondent — but on a single present appearance it does not meet the recurrence threshold, and I am not treating it as a finding.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10076367
    2005 : Priority date established by Moskowitz family
    2006 : Parent application filed
    2018 : Continuation filed by Moskowitz Family LLC
         : Nathan C Moskowitz assigns to Moskowitz Family LLC
         : Mosheh T Moskowitz assigns to Nathan C Moskowitz
         : Daniel Glozman assigns to Nathan C Moskowitz
         : Patent issued Sep 18
    2019 : First infringement suit filed vs Globus Medical
    2020 : Case transferred to Eastern District of Pennsylvania
    2023 : Jury finds no infringement by Globus
    2024 : Appeals docketed at Federal Circuit
    2025 : Suits filed vs NuVasive and Medtronic
    2026 : Federal Circuit affirms noninfringement

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The patent was never held by an operating company and then flipped to a licensing LLC. It went inventor → (co-inventors) → lead inventor → Moskowitz Family LLC, all in 2018. There is no "IP Holdings / Ventures / Licensing" suffix on the LLC, no registered-agent service address (the address is a real Rockville, MD office tied to the founder), and the entity is not a faceless single-purpose shell — it is run by the inventors themselves (Nathan, Mosheh as CTO, Ahmnon as COO). No reel/frame evidence of a shell transfer exists.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Moskowitz Family LLC does not appear on the named public NPE lists you supplied (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). It is an originator/family PAE, not an acquirer from the troll dockets. (It does appear in Unified Patents' patent portal and as an IPR patent owner, but that reflects litigation frequency, not acquisition from an operating company.)

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear. Fish & Richardson P.C. (Michael T. Hawkins, Reg. No. 57,867) appears as attorney-of-record on Moskowitz-family filings, but I could not tie it to the specific reel/frame entries for this patent, and a single/multiple appearance by a large general-practice firm is not by itself a signal.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Only one transfer of substance (inventors → family LLC, 2018). No chained LLCs, no <24-month daisy chain, no shared-correspondent address pattern.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The last assignment executed 2018-04-23. The first suit naming this patent (Globus, 6:19-cv-00672) was filed 2019-11-20 — roughly 19 months later, well outside the 6-month window. The chain was consolidated long before litigation, not bolted together on the courthouse steps.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11, no §363 sale, no Kodak/Nortel-style auction. The inventor never lost the portfolio.

7. Privateering — not present. No operating company is transferring patents to the LLC to have it assert on the operating company's behalf. The LLC asserts the founder's own patents against companies (Globus, NuVasive, Medtronic) that the complaints allege absorbed his disclosures.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN. Moskowitz Family LLC is the current asserting owner.

Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

Justification: The current owner, Moskowitz Family LLC, is by its own pleadings a non-practicing licensing entity (created to "protect and license … intellectual property") with no demonstrated product in commerce, and it has asserted US 10,076,367 against three separate spine-implant manufacturers (Globus 6:19-cv-00672 filed 2019-11-20; NuVasive 1:25-cv-00711; Medtronic 0:25-cv-00769). That is concrete evidence of non-practicing assertion. However, it does not fit the classic troll-acquisition profile: there is no shell-entity transfer from an operating assignee, no known NPE acquirer, no cascading LLC chain, no pre-litigation transfer (the 2018-03-14 and 2018-04-23 assignments precede the first suit by ~19 months), and no bankruptcy or privateering. The chain shows an inventor-controlled family PAE consolidating original rights — a single strong signal, not two — which maps to moderate, not high, confidence.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — search patent number 10076367
• Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10076367/en
• Moskowitz Family LLC v. Globus Medical docket: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/Texas_Western_District_Court/6--19-cv-00672/MOSKOWITZ_FAMILY_LLC_v._GLOBUS_MEDICAL_INC/
• Moskowitz Family LLC v. NuVasive docket: https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/70476467/1/moskowitz-family-llc-v-nuvasive-llc/

Confidence caveats: (a) The three reel/frame numbers for this patent's assignments were not retrievable with the tools available and should be confirmed by opening each record in Assignment Center; (b) employer-of-record for Daniel Glozman was not determinable; (c) the Fish & Richardson / Michael T. Hawkins correspondent attribution is drawn from other Moskowitz patents' 3.73(c) statements and is presented as indicative only, not as a finding on this patent's reels.

I'll research US patent 10076367 and its prior-art citations. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me pull the front-page references and any backward citations for this patent.

Let me try to retrieve the front-page reference list (56) for this patent and its family.

Preliminary note on scope and sourcing

I ran multiple targeted queries against the patent record for US 10,076,367 B2. Before giving the citation analysis, one important limitation must be stated up front, because it changes what a proper § 102 analysis can conclude:

The authoritative record I retrieved for US 10,076,367 B2 does not contain a backward "(56) References Cited" list. The text extracted from Google Patents for this patent includes only:

• the forward citation table — "Cited By (11)" (documents that cite this patent), and
• "Families Citing this family (165)" (forward citations to the whole family).

It does not reproduce the examiner's/ applicant's backward citations (the "U.S. Patent Documents," "Foreign Patent Documents," or "Other Publications" normally printed in box (56) on the front page). I was not able to retrieve that (56) list within my search budget. Accordingly, I will not invent a (56) list. What follows is (A) what is verifiably in the record, analyzed correctly under § 102, and (B) clearly flagged, unverified older references that would be the proper candidates for a § 102 challenge.

(Per the strict rule: all identifiers below are reproduced literally as found — e.g., app. no. 15/896,130; US 10,076,367 B2; priority 2005‑04‑12 — with no auto-correction.)

1. The patent being analyzed (from the authoritative text)

Claim scope relevant to anticipation. The independent claims are directed to a bidirectional fixating intervertebral implant system comprising (i) a PEEK implant body "configured to act to reduce subsidence," with opposed vertebral-body-facing surfaces, a plate-facing surface, a bottom and two side surfaces; (ii) a plate whose body-facing surface abuts the implant body, extends across the full width, has plural holes aligned with body holes, and (in claim 1) is shaped to wrap around a side surface; (iii) a superior bone-piercing screw and (iv) an inferior bone-piercing screw extending in different directions. Claim 8 adds four plate holes and a two-portion (angled) body-facing surface; claim 15 recites a plurality of bidirectionally extendable bone-piercing screws.

Because the claims emphasize the PEEK body + wrap-around/angled plate geometry, any § 102 reference would have to disclose that combination in a single document.

2. The only citations actually captured in the record — and why they are NOT § 102 prior art

These are the 11 entries in the "Cited By" table (i.e., documents citing US 10,076,367). Per the record header, entries marked with "†" are third-party citations.

§ 102 conclusion for these 11: None can anticipate any of claims 1–21 under 35 U.S.C. § 102. Every one of these documents has an earliest priority date later than 2005‑04‑12 (the earliest priority relied on) and a publication date later than both the 2005 priority date and the 2018‑02‑14 filing date. A reference cannot be § 102 prior art if it postdates the priority date. The only conceivable use of such documents would be as later-developed-art background, or — for the three with 2013 priority (US 11,986,398 and US 12,193,948) and the 2017 ones — as § 102(a)(2)/§ 102(e) art against a different, later-filed application, not against this patent. The "Furniture fitting" reference (US 11,306,522, Julius Blum) is a non-analogous-art citation at best. Similarly, the 165 "Families Citing this family" entries are forward citations and cannot be § 102 art against US 10,076,367.

Bottom line: the citations actually present in the retrieved record are unusable as anticipation art, and I therefore cannot honestly assign them to claims 1–21.

3. What the patent's own specification identifies as prior art (admissions usable under § 102(b)/§ 103)

The specification contains explicit prior-art admissions that are citable art by admission:

• Pedicle-screw fixation + posterolateral on-lay fusion / ALIF / PLIF / TLIF — described as the prevailing technique the invention improves upon (all pre‑2005).
• Interbody cages/dowels: "cylindrical threaded titanium interbody cages, cylindrical threaded cortical bone dowels, vertebral interbody rings or boxes, carbon fiber cages, or femoral ring allograft" (pre‑2005).
• Anterior vertical titanium plates secured with perpendicular vertebral-body screws (pre‑2005).
• Grob D., Benini A., Mannion A.F., "Clinical experience with the Dynesys semirigid fixation system for the lumbar spine," Spine, Vol. 30, No. 3, Feb. 1, 2005 — cited in the background as the flexible-rod pedicle-screw system. This is a genuine printed publication with a date that may fall before the patent's 2005‑04‑12 priority (same month/year — verification of the exact print date is required before relying on it under § 102(b)).
• Applicant-incorporated applications: US 11/208,644 (now US 7,704,279), US 11/536,815 (now US 7,846,188), US 12/868,451 (now US 8,747,444), US 14/299,711 (now US 10,016,225), and provisional 60/670,231. These share the same inventive entity/priority chain and generally are not § 102 art against this continuation.

4. Unverified leads — older references that would be the correct § 102 candidates

Because the (56) list was not retrievable, I flag the following older documents that surfaced in the family's art landscape during my searching. I am explicitly marking these as UNVERIFIED as citations on the face of US 10,076,367, so you must confirm them against the actual front page before relying on them:

• US 5,405,391 A (priority 1993‑02‑16) — "Fusion Stabilization Chamber."
• US 5,192,327 A — Brantigan — intervertebral implant.
• US 6,106,557 A — Robioneck et al. (2000‑08‑22).
• US 6,533,818 B1 (priority 2000‑04‑26) — "Artificial Spinal Disc."
• US 7,033,394 B2 — "Interbody Spinal Fusion Implants with End Cap for Locking Vertebral Body Penetrating Members" (a bone-piercing-member locking concept).
• US 7,776,093 B2 (priority 2003‑10‑20, Orthofix US LLC) — "Vertebral Body Replacement Apparatus and Method."
• US 8,403,986 B2 (priority 1999‑05‑05) — "Push-in Interbody Spinal Fusion Implant with Multi-lock for Locking Opposed Screws."
• US 8,137,405 B2 (priority 2008‑10‑08, K2M).
• US 2004/0088054 A1 (2002‑11‑01) — "Laterally Expandable Cage."
• US 2007/0198089 A1 (priority 2004‑05‑13) — "Artificial Total Lumbar Disc … Removable Bifunctional Screw …"
• US 2007/0167678 A1 (2004‑05‑14) — tools for posteriorly placed lumbar artificial discs.
• US 2009/0221002 A1 (2008‑02‑20, Thalgott) — "Orthopaedic Implants and Prostheses."

How they map to the claims if confirmed as cited art (analysis only, not a finding): The anticipation exposure for claims 1, 8 and 15 is concentrated in the combination of a PEEK body with a wrap-around/angled plate having aligned holes. Most of the above references are single-feature art — e.g., expandable cages, vertebral-body replacement, locking end caps, or spine plates — and would more realistically support a § 103 combination than a clean § 102 anticipation, because none that I can verify discloses the full "PEEK body configured to reduce subsidence + plate wrapping a side surface + bidirectional bone-piercing screws" combination in one document. The Moskowitz-family references (US 2009/0224023 A1; US 2012/0010714 A1; US 2013/0053962 A1; US 2015/0025637 A1) are same-family/related and would not be § 102 art against this continuation.

5. Litigation context (from the record)

The record shows US 10,076,367 is in a litigated family: Moskowitz Family LLC v. Globus Medical — Texas Western District Court case 6:19‑cv‑00672; Pennsylvania Eastern District Court case 2:20‑cv‑03271; and two Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit appeals (24‑1753 and 24‑1696). PTAB materials concerning related Moskowitz patents recite constructions of "universal, intervertebral bone fusion spacer" and discuss "caudal/rostral screws passed through built-in screw guides." If you need the actual asserted § 102 art, the petitions/claim-construction papers in these matters would be the authoritative source — I could not retrieve the specific prior-art exhibits within the search budget.

6. Honest bottom line

1. I could not retrieve the examiner's (56) "References Cited" list for US 10,076,367 B2; the authoritative text I pulled contains only forward "Cited By (11)" citations and forward family citations.
2. The 11 "Cited By" documents cannot anticipate claims 1–21 under § 102 — each postdates the 2005‑04‑12 priority date.
3. A correct § 102/§ 103 analysis requires the front-page (56) list and, if relevant, the IPR/PGR exhibits; without them, any per-reference claim mapping I produced would be speculation, which I will not do.
4. The verifiable specification-level prior art (pedicle screws, ALIF/PLIF/TLIF, cylindrical threaded cages, carbon-fiber cages, anterior vertical plating, and the Grob et al. Spine 2005 Dynesys paper) supports § 103 more than § 102, and the PEEK-body + wrap-around-plate limitation of claims 1/8/15 is the crux of any anticipation argument.

If you can supply the (56) list from the patent's front page (or the litigation/IPR exhibits), I can produce the exact citation-by-citation table with dates and claim-by-claim § 102 anticipation findings you're looking for.

I'll pull the front-page prior-art citations and related art for this patent before building the obviousness analysis.

Let me pull the actual US 10,076,367 front-page references and the recent IPR art against this family.

Obviousness Analysis — US 10,076,367 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Preliminary: source scope and a flagged date contradiction

Date contradiction (flagged per operating rules). This task is captioned "Current Date: April 26, 2026," but the system date given to me is 2026‑10‑01, and the previously generated summary in this workspace relies on a September 11, 2026 Federal Circuit opinion (Moskowitz Family LLC v. Globus Medical, Inc., No. 24‑1696). Those two are irreconcilable. I treat 2026‑10‑01 as controlling and note that if the April 26, 2026 date were instead correct, the prior section's September 2026 events could not have occurred yet. Nothing in this § 103 analysis turns on the difference.

What the page actually contains. The fetched Google Patents page for US 10,076,367 does not include a backward "References Cited" (PTO‑892) list. Its prior‑art‑style sections are:

Because the page lacks a backward citation list, I supplemented with (a) the IDS references of record in the same family (visible on sibling US 10,016,284) and (b) the references actually applied against this family in litigation/IPR. That is the closest available analogue to "the Prior Art section," and I label each reference by its provenance.

Notably, the single furniture‑fitting citation (Julius Blum, US 11,306,522) is a live echo of the '367 specification's own statement that the bidirectional screw "may indeed have applications in general commercial, industrial and carpentry industries" — but that subject matter is not claimed, so it has no bearing below.

1. Governing framework and level of ordinary skill

Law. Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966) (scope/content of art, differences, PHOSITA level, secondary considerations); KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (predictable variation, known technique applied to a known device, design incentives, "obvious to try" where a finite number of predictable solutions exist); In re Keller (combining references for what each teaches). Because the '367 application was filed February 14, 2018, the AIA § 102/103 framework governs priority and prior‑art status, even though the specification is pre‑AIA in origin.

POSA. A person having ordinary skill in this art would be a mechanical/biomedical engineer (B.S. or M.S.) with 3–5 years of spinal implant design experience, or a spine surgeon, familiar with (i) interbody fusion cages and their materials (titanium, carbon‑fiber, PEEK), (ii) anterior cervical and lumbar plating, (iii) bone screw fixation and back‑out locking, and (iv) the PLIF/TLIF/ALIF/ACDF surgical approaches described in the '367 specification.

Claim construction notes. The "Prior Art" sections of the '367 front matter recite the preamble term "bidirectional," and the Federal Circuit's September 2026 precedential opinion in this family held that such preambles are limiting where they supply antecedent basis or state a fundamental characteristic of the invention (Moskowitz Family LLC v. Globus Med., Inc., No. 24‑1696, addressing the '913, '022 and '319 patents). By parity of reasoning, "bidirectional fixating intervertebral implant system" in claims 1, 8 and 15 should be treated as limiting — which matters because references disclosing opposed, oppositely‑angled bone screws then meet it.

Two ambiguities I flag rather than resolve:

1. Claims 1 and 15 require the plate to "extend across an entire width of the implant body from the first surface to the second surface," but the claim earlier defines "first/second surface" as the vertebral‑body‑facing (i.e., superior/inferior) surfaces. Read literally, the plate spans the cage height; read purposively, it spans the lateral width. The specification's FIGS. 6A–6C plate "traverses the diameter of the disc space," i.e., the width. This ambiguity materially changes the obviousness mapping and should be resolved before any validity opinion is relied upon.
2. Dependent claim 3 requires body thickness greater than plate thickness, while claim 20 requires plate thickness similar to body thickness. They depend on different independents, so they are not strictly contradictory, but the drafting pulls in opposite directions and underscores how unconstrained the plate‑thickness limitation is.

2. Threshold issue that dominates the analysis: the effective filing date

The '367 claims (filed 2018, claiming priority to Apr. 12, 2005) are entitled to the 2005 priority only if the 2005–2006 applications provide § 112 written description and enablement for what is now claimed. Several limitations look thinly supported in the 2005 text:

• "implant body made of polyether‑ether‑ketone (PEEK)" — the '367 specification says PEEK applies to the gear box 101 ("made either of PEEK (polyethylene‑ketol) or titanium"), not to a plate‑receiving implant body.
• A plate whose "depth ... varies at different portions" and "wrap[s] around and abut[s] ... the first side surface" — the 2005 disclosure describes a flat "horizontal linear mini‑plate" with four perforations (two for worm‑drive access, two for plate screw caps) and says nothing about a hook‑ or wrap‑around cross‑section.
• "four plate holes" (claim 8) and "first and second portions ... substantially perpendicular" (claims 14, 18) — not described as such.

Consequence — two prior‑art universes:

Under Scenario B the case is substantially stronger for a challenger, because zero‑profile cage‑plus‑plate assemblies became a crowded, well‑documented art between 2005 and 2018. Under Scenario A the challenger must rely more heavily on the KSR rationales (design choice, predictable variation, known mechanical expedients) for the wrap‑around and four‑hole geometry.

A caveat in the patent owner's favor: the Moskowitz family's own intervening publications (US 2011/0137349; US 2012/0010714; US 2013/0053962; etc.) are commonly owned, so AIA § 102(b)(2)(C) would likely disqualify them as art. Do not count them in a ground.

3. Candidate prior‑art references

The '367 specification's own admissions are independently usable: it concedes that "recent advances in cervical plating have therefore concentrated on the creation of lower profile plates," that pedicle screws rigidly fix all three columns with known adjacent‑segment consequences, and that low‑profile/zero‑profile is a recognized objective. These are applicant admissions about the state of the art.

4. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — Claims 1, 3–7, 15–17, 19–21

Michelson (push‑in implant with opposed locking screws, 1999 priority) in view of Frey.

• Implant body: Michelson's cage spans the disc space and resists subsidence (Brantigan supplies the polymer‑cage material teaching; PEEK cages were a known, commercially available substitution for carbon‑fiber cages by the mid‑2000s — KSR "simple substitution of a known element").
• Plate abutting the plate‑facing surface, spanning the implant width, holes aligned with body holes: Frey's plate 6 covers the trailing end 5 of implant 1, with openings 8 receiving bone screws 9 into the adjacent vertebrae. Alignment of plate holes with implant holes follows directly from Frey's purpose (covering the implant's trailing end).
• Two screws extending in different directions into the two vertebral bodies: Michelson's opposed screws.
• "Plate longer than the entire width" (claim 7): Frey's trailing‑end coverage.
• Wrap‑around of a side surface (claim 1): weakest element under Scenario A. The challenger should rely on KSR — a hooked, lipped, or stepped plate edge that laps a side wall of an implant is a familiar mechanical expedient (blade/hook plates, dovetailed and keyed plate‑implant interfaces) used to resist plate rotation and shear, applied to a known device ready for improvement. Under Scenario B, US 8,137,405 and EP 3,788,973 make this element a straightforward design choice.

Motivation to combine. (i) Frey expressly frames the plate's function as covering the implant's trailing end and screwing into the adjacent vertebrae — the same anti‑migration/anti‑extrusion problem Michelson's locking screw addresses; (ii) both references are in the identical field and classification (A61F 2/44 and A61B 17/70); (iii) the combination uses prior‑art elements according to their established functions with no change in principle of operation; (iv) design incentive: eliminating a separate, vertically oriented anterior plate reduces plate profile, dysphagia and esophageal/vascular risk — the exact problem the '367 background section identifies; (v) KSR: applying a known technique (a screw‑retained cover plate) to a known device (a screw‑retaining interbody cage) to improve it in the same way.

Reasonable expectation of success. High — the mechanical integration of a plate onto an interbody implant with aligned holes was routine, and both references are single‑stage interbody fusion constructs.

Ground 2 — Ground 1 further in view of the low‑profile ("zero‑profile") anterior plating art

Claims 2, 9, 16.

The applicant's own specification admits that the art was moving toward lower‑profile and resorbable plates. Combined with Ground 1, making the plate flush with or below the vertebral body surfaces is at most a predictable design variation driven by a recognized clinical need (dysphagia, esophageal compression, iliac vessel injury) that the '367 specification itself recites as the motivation for the invention. Under Scenario B, Synthes EP 1,988,855 A2 ("Intervertebral implant with fixation geometry"), K2M US 8,137,405, and Warsaw US 8,088,062 show exactly this geometry integrated with a spacer.

Ground 3 — Ground 1 further in view of US 6,824,564 (two‑part intersomatic implant) and the four‑hole plate art

Claims 8, 10–12, 14, 18, 20.

• "Four plate holes": (a) KSR "obvious design choice" — hole count follows from the number of fasteners and drive‑access apertures; (b) the '367 specification's own FIGS. 6A–6C disclose a plate with exactly four perforations (601/602 for worm‑drive entry, 603/604 for plate screw caps), which is itself evidence that four holes was the natural, and the applicant's own, configuration; (c) Frey's "pair of openings" plus Michelson's multi‑lock combine to at least four.
• Volume requirement: "at a portion of the body‑facing surface ... angled with respect to the first portion" and (claims 14, 18) "substantially perpendicular": US 6,824,564's two‑part implant teaches a separate plate component intimately engaging the implant body. Stepped, rebated and right‑angled plate‑to‑body interfaces are ubiquitous in orthopedic plating; KSR covers "[t]he combination of familiar elements according to known methods." Motivation: keying the plate to the body to prevent rotation/pivoting and to distribute load — the same anti‑rotation concern that motivates plate locking generally.
• Claim 11: "at least one of the plate holes extends ... orthogonally" — orthogonality is a prima facie design choice; Frey uses a pair of openings through a cover plate.
• Claim 20 / claim 3 thickness relationship: plate thickness is an unclaimed‑in‑scope, result‑effective variable; both a thin plate (claim 3) and a plate "similar" to body thickness (claim 20) are routine choices within the art.

Ground 4 — Method claims 6 and 13

Michelson's implant and surgical teaching + Frey, in view of the conventional ACDF/ALIF/PLIF/TLIF technique. The '367 specification itself recites the methods as conventional ("previously described ... techniques"). Positioning an interbody implant and its plate flush with or below the vertebral surfaces, then driving screws into the two vertebral bodies, is the inherent and intended use of the Ground 1–3 apparatus. Where the apparatus is obvious and the recited steps are the conventional manner of using it, the method claims are obvious as a matter of law. (Claim 13 contains the typographical error "flush with ore below," which I take to mean "or.")

Ground 5 — Alternative to Ground 1's wrap‑around element, under Scenario B

US 8,137,405 (K2M) or EP 3,788,973 B1 (Synthes "Vertebral interbody spacer and coupled plate assembly") in view of Michelson + Frey. A "coupled" spacer‑plate assembly with a plate wrapping the spacer is disclosed squarely; under Scenario B, claim 1's wrap‑around limitation is met or rendered obvious directly.

Ground 6 — Family‑specific art reused against the '367

The Gutlin + Barber (+ Sutcliffe) combination (applied by Globus against the sibling '643) and the Moskowitz screw box + Steffee combination (applied in IPR petition 1556988) can both be adapted here: Gutlin/Barber supply a spacer‑plus‑fixation architecture, and Steffee supplies the express motivation ("minimiz[e] potential migration of the screw box after implantation") that a POSA would have had to add a fixation structure to an interbody implant. I flag that I have not verified Gutlin's or Barber's specific disclosures in this record.

5. Secondary considerations

The patent owner's likely rebuttal is commercial success, industry praise, copying, and long‑felt need (the "flexible fusion" and esophageal‑injury framing). Two cautions:

1. Nexus. The family's own litigation history cuts against it: the jury found non‑infringement in E.D. Pa. in December 2023, and the Federal Circuit affirmed in September 2026. Absent an adjudicated infringing product, there is no proven copying or commercial‑success nexus to the asserted claims.
2. Claim scope. The claims as issued (a PEEK body + plate + two opposing screws) are far narrower than the specification's thesis, and are precisely the kind of KSR‑vulnerable, commercially familiar combination that secondary considerations rarely rescue.

6. Bottom line and honest limitations

Assessment. Independent claims 1, 8 and 15 are, on this record, more likely than not obvious under § 103. The strongest combination is Michelson's push‑in interbody implant with opposed locking screws + Frey's trailing‑end cover plate with bone‑screw openings, with Brantigan supplying the cage constancy and the applicant's own specification admissions supplying the zero‑profile motivation. Every remaining limitation is either a KSR design choice (four holes, orthogonal hole, plate thickness) or a known mechanical expedient (stepped/wrap‑around plate edge, with US 6,824,564 as the closest support).

The single decisive question is the priority date. If the '367 claims are held to lack § 112 support in the 2005–2006 applications, the 2006–2018 zero‑profile cage‑plate art (Synthes, K2M, Warsaw, DePuy Synthes) makes the case against claims 1, 8 and 15 substantially stronger, including for the wrap‑around and angled‑surface limitations. If priority is perfected, the wrap‑around limitation in claim 1 is the pivot point and the challenger must carry it on KSR rationales rather than a documentary disclosure.

Explicit uncertainties.

1. I could not retrieve a PTO‑892 "References Cited" list on the face of US 10,076,367; reference numbers I attribute to Frey, Steffee, Hess, Jacobson, Leu, McAfee and Berry are drawn from IPR petition text and are not independently verified as to patent number.
2. The exact disclosures of US 6,558,622 and US 6,716,247 are inferred from the same family's IDS listing (numbers and dates verified; titles/subject matter not).
3. I identified no IPR, PGR or reexamination challenging US 10,076,367 itself; the grounds above are constructed by analogy from the family's litigation/IPR record.
4. I have not performed a claim‑chart‑level element‑by‑element mapping against any physical reference; a formal invalidity contention would require the full text of each reference.
5. The preceding section's September 2026 materials are inconsistent with this task's stated "current date" of April 26, 2026 — flagging again, as instructed.