US 10429217

I'll search for authoritative records on this specific patent number, including any litigation.

Let me check for litigation and confirm the claim set structure.

Let me pull the full claim set to identify the independent claims.

US 10,429,217 B2 — "Flow sensor system with connection assembly"

Sourcing note / confidence: I retrieved the patent's full text from Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10429217/en) plus family/bibliographic records (Justia, PubChem/EPO, Luxembourg and EP registers). I did not obtain a direct USPTO PatentCenter/Public-PAIR or CAFC docket record on this run. No litigation, IPR, or Federal Circuit appeal referencing 10,429,217 was found; the only court-adjacent hit was an assignment record (Crisi Medical Systems, Inc. / inventor Bochenko, Aug. 23, 2018) on PlainSite. Treat "no litigation found" as a negative search result, not a verified absence.

Bibliographic data

Continuity: this patent is a continuation of application 15/247,150 (filed Aug. 25, 2016), which claims benefit of provisional 62/211,287 (filed Aug. 28, 2015). Family members include WO 2017/040211 A1, EP 3341045 B1, EP 3804782 B1, US 11,519,768 B2 (from 16/541,273), and US 2023/0055072 A1 (from 17/981,616). Note: the PCT/EP publication of the same family is titled "Closed-loop flow control for IV fluid delivery," which differs from the US title.

Abstract

A system for sensing medicament delivery and transmitting an operation modification signal, having at least two separable components. A flow sensor has an inlet to couple to a fluid source, an outlet for delivering fluid to a patient, at least one sensor characterizing at least one attribute of the fluid, and at least one pin in electrical communication with the sensor. A base has a contact, a controller in electrical communication with the contact that generates an operation modification signal when an attribute matches a condition specified by a rule, a transmitter for transmitting the operation modification signal to a device (which, upon receipt, modifies an operating parameter), and a cross-component electrical circuit.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Caveat on claim-verification: I directly verified the text of claims 21–35 from the Justia claim listing and the Summary of Invention. The three disclosed embodiments in the specification map cleanly onto three independent "system" claims. I am inferring that independent claim 1 corresponds to the pin/contact embodiment reproduced in the Abstract and Summary; I could not individually re-verify the literal wording of claims 1–20 in this session.

• Claim 1 (inferred — separable two-part system with a cross-component electrical circuit). Claims a system made of (a) a disposable flow sensor: flow tube with an inlet that couples to a fluid source outlet, an outlet that delivers fluid toward the patient, at least one sensor characterizing an attribute of the fluid, and at least one pin; and (b) a reusable base: at least one contact, a controller that generates an "operation modification signal" when the sensed attribute satisfies a rule condition, and a wireless transmitter that sends the signal to an external device, which then changes one of its own operating parameters. The flow sensor mounts onto the base, and the cross-component electrical circuit is completed by the contacts engaging the pins. Practical effect: a disposable ultrasonic sensor pod that, once seated on the reusable base, (i) closes the electrical path for the piezos and (ii) drives a rule-based alert/modification signal to, e.g., a tablet ("Computer") or hospital system.

• Claim 21 (verified — auto-activation on mounting). A two-part system where the flow sensor carries the sensor(s), and the base carries a controller that generates the operation modification signal when an attribute matches a rule, plus a transmitter that sends it to a device that then modifies an operating parameter; the flow sensor is mountable onto the base and the controller is activated in response to mounting the flow sensor onto the base (i.e., docking auto-powers/arms the system). Dependents 22–29 add: a movable detector (e.g., a cantilevered beam with an outlet-engaging portion and an oppositely directed switch-engaging portion) that deflects when the syringe is coupled and trips a switch on the base; cantilevered wings with tabs engaging base lips; a follower-and-cam arrangement that pulls the sensor proximally for alignment; and an opening/protrusion feature, including the cam moving a pin aside as the protrusion enters.

• Claim 30 (verified — optical-axis alignment). A two-part system where the flow sensor has at least one sensor characterizing an attribute of fluid from a fluid source outlet that carries a target, and the base has a portal plus an optical sensor whose axis extends through the portal and feeds a controller; the key limitation is that when the flow sensor is mounted onto the base, the optical sensor axis is aligned with the target (dependent claim 31: the target is indicia on the fluid-source outlet — i.e., the 2-D barcode on the syringe's Luer collar). Dependents 32–35 add the cam/follower alignment and a wedge-like protrusion whose widest portion seats in the sensor opening, with final cam position producing optical-axis/target alignment. As listed, claim 30 itself does not recite the controller/transmitter/operation-modification-signal features; those appear in the other independent claims. (I verified this from a search-result excerpt of the claim listing, not from the granted printed claim page; wording may differ slightly from the official text.)

Key disclosure points (context)

• Two assemblies: single-use pre-sterilized flow sensor 210 and reusable base 220; described as an "intelligent injection port" attachable at a Y-site/stopcock for manual IV bolus injections.
• Ultrasonic measurement: first/upstream piezo element 150 and second/downstream piezo element 151 on a stainless-steel flow tube 100 (≈50 mm, 1.0 mm ID, 1.6 mm OD), spring contacts 750 on a single-sided circuit board 700 (no soldering to the silvered crystal faces); 4-pin or 6-pin connector options (2 pins per piezo, optionally 2 for a battery).
• Base electronics: controller circuitry 1802 with flow measurement circuit 1804, microprocessor 1806 (SAM 4-class), wireless transmitter 1808; external "Display and Data Processing Module" 1810 (tablet) and server/hospital systems 1812.
• Mechanical/electrical interface: wing tabs 280 with catch 389 engaging sensor tab 189; pin 188 riding pin cam 388; tongue 286/shoulder 486 with contacts 386 mating sensor pins 385; pin seal 384 and vault 485 (ribbed skirt) to keep liquids/adhesive residue/blood spatter off the reusable base and to ease disinfection.
• Syringe encoding: camera behind window 360 with light via window 370 reads a 2-D barcode on the encoded syringe's Luer collar (labeled syringes 800 with tip label 850, human-readable indicia 852, machine-readable indicia 854).
• Operational figures cited: ±5% accuracy for 1.0–55 mL boluses, ±20% for 0.4–1.0 mL, dead space <0.3 mL; up to ~100 injections per injection port; base reusable up to 500 times with rechargeable Li-ion; 2.4 GHz RF link; charger 900 with charging pins 950.

Uncertainty flags

1. Exact wording of claims 1–20 was not independently re-verified; my independent-claim-1 description is inferred from the Abstract, the Summary of Invention, and the three-embodiment structure.
2. Claim count/independence: verified claim text runs to claim 35, with independent claims at 21 and 30; whether claim 1 is the only other independent claim (giving 1, 21, 30) is a strong inference, not a confirmed citation to the printed claims. If a reexamination certificate exists, claim numbering could differ — I did not find one.
3. No litigation found for this patent; I cannot affirmatively state that none exists, only that my searches (USPTO-oriented, courtlistener, CAFC-oriented queries) returned nothing tied to 10,429,217.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 10,429,217 across patent litigation databases.

Initial searches returned mostly unrelated results. Let me search more targeted sources specific to this patent and its assignee.

Let me search the specific litigation databases directly.

Summary of Findings

Based on my searches, I was unable to identify any known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 10,429,217. No district court case, Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit appeal, ITC investigation, or PTAB proceeding naming this specific patent as an asserted or challenged patent appeared in any of the sources I searched.

Searches performed

I searched for the exact patent number in connection with litigation, and for the patent owner (Crisi Medical Systems, Inc.) as a party to infringement actions, across general web results and patent-litigation-oriented sources (including PTAB/USPTO petition documents, court filing repositories, and the Google Patents family/prosecution record).

What the searches actually returned

• The patent's own record — U.S. 10,429,217 B2 ("Flow sensor system with connection assembly"), inventor Walter John Bochenko, assignee Crisi Medical Systems, Inc. (Franklin Lakes, NJ; a Becton Dickinson affiliate). It is a continuation of Ser. No. 15/247,150 (filed Aug. 25, 2016), which claims benefit of provisional 62/211,287 (filed Aug. 28, 2015). The record shows only prosecution, assignment, and fee/status events — notably an assignment to Crisi Medical Systems, Inc. dated Aug. 23, 2018, and a grant/publication on Oct. 1, 2019. No litigation entries appeared.
• No case names naming the '217 patent as a patent-in-suit.

Important near-miss to flag (do NOT conflate)

One litigation result involved a similar but distinct patent number:

• OpenTV, Inc. v. Pinterest, Inc., Case No. 1:24-cv-01301 (D. Del., filed Nov. 27, 2024; Judge Colm F. Connolly). The patents-in-suit reported in that docket include U.S. 10,419,817 B2 — not U.S. 10,429,217. Plaintiff OpenTV, Inc. (Kudelski group); defendant Pinterest, Inc.

Per your strict rule, I am not treating this as litigation involving U.S. 10,429,217. It is a different patent number with different parties and subject matter (streaming/media, not flow sensing), and I flag it only so the number is not accidentally confused.

Confidence and caveats

• Not confirmed as zero: My searches did not exhaustively cover every litigation database (e.g., a full PACER/RECAP docket sweep, the Unified Patents litigation portal, or an ITC EDIS query did not return parseable results within my search). It is possible that a case exists that my queries did not surface.
• What I can say with reasonable confidence: If Crisi Medical Systems ever asserted the '217 patent, it does not appear in the readily indexed, high-visibility litigation sources I could reach; the patent's public record shows only prosecution and assignment activity, with no litigation-related filings identified.
• I did not find any PTAB petition (IPR/PGR), reexamination, or Federal Circuit appeal tied to this number.

Bottom line

No known litigation involving US 10,429,217 was found. For a definitive negative, a direct docket query should be run in PACER/RECAP, the Unified Patents litigation portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation), and the ITC EDIS system using the exact number. I'd recommend that as the next step rather than relying solely on the web searches above.

I'll verify the structured data's "no PTAB activity" default against live sources before reporting.

The first pass returned noise. Let me query more precisely against PTAB dockets and the patent's family.

No direct hits yet. Let me target PTAB dockets and litigation involving the patent owner's family.

PTAB Proceedings Report — US 10,429,217 ("Flow sensor system with connection assembly")

Bottom line up front: I found no AIA trial proceedings — none. This is consistent with the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block, which reports that the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no AIA trial (IPR/PGR/CBM) records for this patent as of the most recent ingest. My independent web searches also surfaced nothing.

Proceedings overview

Total proceedings on file for US 10,429,217: 0 (0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied). The patent has never been subjected to an AIA trial challenge — so no claim has been canceled, and no claim has been adjudicated patentable by the Board. If you are a defendant, the patent arrives at the courthouse un-narrowed and un-hardened: there is no IPR estoppel map, no FWD to mine for admissions, and no claim-cancellation order to lean on. Equally, there is no defensive-aggregator victory here to free-ride on — any invalidity position you want at the PTAB, you will have to build from scratch.

Proceedings

None. No sections follow, because no proceeding number exists to report. I will not manufacture one.

What I checked, and the limits of that check:

• The structured ODP-derived block in this task: returns an empty AIA-trial set. That is the canonical list and it controls.
• Web search on the patent number (US10429217, 10,429,217), on the assignee ("Crisi Medical Systems" + IPR/PTAB), and on the inventor (Bochenko). Every AIA-related hit returned was a false positive keyed to unrelated patent numbers — e.g., U.S. Pat. No. 9,727,217 (a haptic-feedback/HMD patent, a different patent entirely), and unrelated IPR2022-01530 / IPR2021-00172 matters. I did not find any petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal naming U.S. Pat. No. 10,429,217.
• I was unable to run a direct structured query against PTAB E2E / PTAB Center for this patent in this session. That is the one residual verification gap, and it is why I frame this as "no activity found" rather than an absolute negative.

Verification step you should run before relying on this: pull the patent's PTAB tab on its Google Patents page (https://patents.google.com/patent/US10429217/en) and query PTAB Center (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) by patent number. Both would list any petition within days of filing; the ODP ingest can lag.

Strategic summary

Claim status. Because no AIA trial has ever been instituted, every claim of US 10,429,217 remains UNTESTED at the PTAB — not sustained, not canceled. "Untested" is materially different from "sustained": the patent owner has never had to defend these claims against a competent invalidity record, and no claim has been narrowed by amendment or estoppel. Treat the full issued claim set as live.

Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaching to this patent, because estoppel runs only against a petitioner (and its privies) that has instituted a proceeding. For a defendant being asserted against today:

• You are entirely free to file an IPR/PGR on any § 102/§ 103 ground over any prior art, and free to run a parallel § 112 or on-sale/public-use theory in district court that the PTAB cannot hear.
• No art has been "burned." No reference has been judicially characterized by the Board. Nothing in the prosecution history has been leveraged by an adverse expert.
• The flip side: no other party's petition exists to piggyback on via joinder (§ 315(c)), and no FWD exists to cite in a § 282 defense.
• One practical caution: the patent's priority chain runs to U.S. Provisional 62/211,287 (filed 2015-08-28), via App. Ser. No. 15/247,150 (filed 2016-08-25). Pre-AIA/IPR-eligibility is not an issue (post-AIA filing), but the priority date is worth validating for any art you intend to assert — if the provisional doesn't support a given claim, your art window opens up by a year.

Pattern signals. No petitioner has filed against this patent — not the same petitioner twice, not once. No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, etc.) appears anywhere in the chain. No PTAB appeal by the patent owner. What is visible is an aggressive continuation strategy by the patent owner, which matters more to a defendant than any PTAB history:

• US 10,429,217 is itself a continuation of Ser. No. 15/247,150.
• The family has continued to issue: US 11,519,768 (App. Ser. No. 16/541,273, filed 2019-08-15) and a pending continuation published as US 2023/0055072 A1 (App. Ser. No. 17/981,616, filed 2022-11-07).
• The broader Crisi/Becton flow-sensor family includes US 9,976,883; US 10,302,473; US 10,514,284; US 11,415,440; US 11,598,658; and US 12,422,287 (spring contacts), plus European counterparts EP 3,341,045 (granted) and EP 4,253,920 B1 (granted 2025-09-24).

Read that as: the patent owner's exposure-management tool is prosecution, not PTAB defense. A challenge that kills only US 10,429,217 may simply be routed around by the pending continuation. Any invalidity theory worth building should be built against the family, not the single patent.

Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the negative independently. Query PTAB Center by patent number and pull the PTAB tab on the Google Patents page. An absence of PTAB activity is itself a signal here: this is a commercially deployed Becton-family device (an "intelligent injection port" for IV bolus delivery), so the absence of IPRs most likely reflects a licensing/no-assertion posture or the absence of a well-funded commercial target — not an invulnerable patent.
2. Because there is no FWD to link, there is no dispositive document to quote. Do not expect one. Build your invalidity case first-hand: the patent's own cited art (US 8,347,731 / US 2011/0185821 to Genosar, "Flow rate meter incorporating reusable device"; US 9,588,934 to Atsuden; WO 2014/016316 to Titan Enterprises, "Disposable flow tube") is a reasonable starting point, since the Examiner evidently saw and allowed over it.
3. Time your petition around the statutory clock. If you file, § 316(a)(11) gives the Board a 1-year deadline from institution to reach an FWD. Pair that with the § 315(b) one-year bar from service of a district-court complaint — calendar both from day one, since the Fintiv/§ 325(d) discretionary-denial environment in 2025–2026 makes late filing a real risk.
4. Consider a PGR only if a continuation is fresh. Under § 321(c), a PGR must be filed within 9 months of grant of an eligible patent. For US 10,429,217 (granted 2019-10-01) that window is long closed; PGR is unavailable for this patent. It may still be open for the pending continuation once it issues.

Sourcing note: every statement above about filing dates, priority, and family lineage is drawn from the authoritative patent text supplied in the prompt and is stated at the precision that text supports. The claim that no AIA proceeding exists is sourced to the structured ODP block and my web searches, and is subject to the single verification gap noted above. I have deliberately not supplied proceeding numbers, judge panels, or FWD dispositions, because none exist to report.

I'll research the assignment record and ownership chain for US 10,429,217.

Let me dig into the specific assignment records and the correspondent of record.

Let me search for the specific assignment reel/frame and correspondent details.

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — US 10,429,217 B2

Verification entry point: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (legacy mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). Search by patent number or by application 16/109,908.

Data-integrity note up front: The Google Patents family/prosecution record exposes the fact of a single post-filing assignment (assignor Bochenko → assignee Crisi Medical Systems, Inc., recorded 2018-08-23) but does not expose the reel/frame number or the correspondent of record. My web sessions terminated before I could open the Assignment Center's per-patent detail view. Where metadata is missing below, I say so explicitly rather than infer it. No contradiction with the previously generated litigation section, which independently reported the same Aug-23-2018 assignment and Oct-1-2019 grant.

Inventors

• This is a sole-inventor patent. Bochenko is the dominant CRISI inventor, appearing on ~32 of the ~82 CRISI family filings (per GoodIP assignee profile), including the sibling flow-sensor patents (e.g., US 10,072,959; US 10,245,214; US 10,751,253).
• No "inventor departure" pattern. Bochenko continued as a named inventor on CRISI/BD filings well past 2018 — e.g., US 2024/0016702 A1, filed 2023-09-27. There is no evidence of inventors leaving the assignee within 12 months of filing, and therefore no fire-sale precursor signal.
• Note the address change on the face of the family: early CRISI filings list 4225 Executive Square, Suite 490, San Diego, CA 92037; by the time of this family the assignee address is 1 Becton Drive, Franklin Lakes, NJ 07417 (BD HQ). This reflects the BD acquisition / address update, not a separate recorded transfer.

Original assignee

Crisi Medical Systems, Inc. (original assignee per the printed patent; also current owner of record).

• Product shipped — yes, directly embodying the claims. The claimed subject matter is the BD Intelliport™ Medication Management System — an intelligent injection port + reusable reader/base that ultrasonically measures bolus volume, reads a 2-D barcode on the syringe Luer collar, and wirelessly transmits dose data to the EMR. FDA 510(k) clearance December 2014 (K141474); commercial availability spring 2015. This is a hardware-plus-software product, not a licensing vehicle.
• Primary line of business: medical devices — IV injectable-medication safety / medication management (ultrasonic flow sensing, injection-site identification, medication-information transfer).
• Corporate status: Operating, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Becton Dickinson and Company, which announced its acquisition of CRISI on March 2, 2015 ("BD Acquires CRISI Medical Systems," news.bd.com). CRISI is not dissolved, not in bankruptcy.
• Corroborating commercial/technical link: Titan Enterprises (UK) publicly states CRISI — "a subsidiary of Becton, Dickinson and Company" — miniaturized the disposable ultrasonic flow sensor used in the BD Intelliport, and that Titan "granted exclusive global rights to BD" for that technology in IV bolus injection. That is consistent with the flow-sensor claims at issue here.

Assignment timeline

The only ownership event surfaced for US 10,429,217 is the inventor→company assignment recorded at the time the continuation was filed. One link. No downstream transfers.

• 2018-08-23 (recorded; execution date not exposed in the sources reached) — Reel NNNNNN/NNNN — not retrievable from the sources accessed; retrieve via Assignment Center per-patent view
  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest — confirmatory inventor assignment)
  • Assignor: Walter John Bochenko
  • Assignee: Crisi Medical Systems, Inc.
  • Correspondent: Not exposed in the sources reached. For context only — and flagged as unverified for assignment-correspondence purposes — the prosecution attorney/agent of record on companion CRISI patents in this family (e.g., US 10,245,214; US 10,751,253) is The Webb Law Firm, Pittsburgh, PA. I am not asserting Webb filed the assignment recording; that must be confirmed from the reel itself. A single appearance would not be a "repeat correspondent" finding anyway.
  • Context: Ownership-perfecting / internal — the recording date coincides with the filing date of continuation application 16/109,908 (2018-08-23). This is the ordinary act of taking a confirmatory assignment from the inventor to the (already BD-owned) corporate applicant. It is not a third-party acquisition, fire-sale, or transfer-to-asserter.

No other recorded assignments appear — specifically, no assignment of the '217 patent from Crisi Medical Systems to any other entity, and no record of a transfer to Becton Dickinson and Company itself under a separate reel. Because BD acquired CRISI (the shareholder entity) rather than recording a patent-by-patent assignment, the patent chain remains "Crisi Medical Systems, Inc." throughout — this is expected and is itself the finding: the original operating-company assignee still owns the patent.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10429217
    2015 : Provisional filed by Crisi
         : BD acquires Crisi Medical Systems
    2016 : Parent application filed
    2018 : Continuation filed
         : Inventor assigns rights to Crisi
    2019 : Patent granted

NPE / troll-pattern signals

All eight signals are not present. This is a benign, single-step operating-company ownership chain.

Verdict

Insufficient data — in the narrow sense defined by the rubric: the chain consists of only the original (confirmatory inventor→company) assignment, so there is nothing post-issuance to classify.

Justification: The sole recorded event is Bochenko → Crisi Medical Systems, Inc., recorded 2018-08-23, contemporaneous with the filing of continuation 16/109,908 — an internal ownership-perfecting step by a company that had already been acquired by Becton Dickinson in March 2015. The current owner ships a product embodying the claims (the BD Intelliport™ system, FDA-cleared Dec-2014 / commercialized spring-2015), and no assignment to any NPE-type entity, no cascading LLC chain, and no defensive-aggregator endpoint is on record. Nothing in the chain supports an NPE or troll characterization; there is equally no assertion history to support an "operating-company assertion" call. Accordingly the correct bucket is Insufficient data / original-assignment-only, with the substantive finding being that this is a clean operating-company-owned patent with zero NPE signals.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center (search patent 10,429,217 or app 16/109,908): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Legacy Assignment Search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

Recommended next step for a definitive reel/frame + correspondent: run the per-patent view in Assignment Center (and confirm against the patent's front-page "(73) Assignee" and any recorded Change-of-Name/Address filings for the San Diego → 1 Becton Drive address change). That is the one metadata gap in this reconstruction.

I'll research the prior art citations for US 10,429,217. Let me search the USPTO and related patent databases.

Let me get the full citation list from the patent's front page and the Justia record.

Let me get the full reference citation list with titles and the claim set from Google Patents.

Scope and method

Per your instruction, I searched for the literal number 10,429,217 and did not substitute any similar number. The authoritative hit is the patent itself — US 10,429,217 B2, "Flow sensor system with connection assembly" (application 16/109,908, filed 2018‑08‑23, granted 2019‑10‑01; inventor Walter John Bochenko; assignee Crisi Medical Systems, Inc.; priority 62/211,287, 2015‑08‑28). I did not treat U.S. 10,419,817 (OpenTV v. Pinterest) as related (see the litigation section's near‑miss flag).

Important framing: The reference list below is the patent's "References Cited" — i.e., material cited on the face of the '217 patent (the examiner/applicant citations). This is not the same as the "Cited By" list on Google Patents (which is later patents citing the '217 — those are not prior art). I relied on the record reproduced by Justia (https://patents.justia.com/patent/10429217) and the Google Patents family page. I retrieved the bibliographic data (number, date, inventor/assignee where shown), but I was not able to open the full text of each cited reference within the search budget — so, per your rule, I flag descriptions I could not independently verify rather than fabricate them.

A. U.S. patent documents cited on the face of US 10,429,217

B. Foreign patent documents cited on the face of US 10,429,217

(34 total patent documents: 27 U.S. + 7 foreign.) I did not retrieve a non‑patent‑literature (NPL) list from the accessible record; the '217 face may include NPL items I could not confirm. Treat the above as the patent‑document subset only.

C. Brief descriptions

Caveat: The number, date, and inventor/party columns above are taken from the patent record and are reliable. The one‑line descriptions below are drawn from my subject‑matter knowledge of these references and are spot‑checked only at the title level; they should be verified against the actual documents before being relied on for any legal conclusion. I mark confidence explicitly.

Higher confidence (flow‑metering art — likely the structural core of the rejection):

• US 5,463,906 (Spani et al., 1995) — ultrasonic/flow‑metering device with a transducer arrangement; commonly cited for a tubular flow body with sensors mounted to it. Confidence: moderate.
• US 7,255,006 (Spanke et al., 2007) — flow‑measuring device with sensor/transducer mountings. Confidence: low–moderate.
• US 8,904,878 (Wiest et al., 2014) — ultrasonic flow‑measurement device. Confidence: moderate.
• US 9,541,431 (Nakano, 2017) — flow‑measurement/ultrasonic meter. Confidence: low.
• EP 0 897 102 (1999), DE 10 2008 055 167 (2010), WO 2011/126895 (2011), EP 2 857 803 (2015) — European/German/PCT flow‑measuring or fluid‑handling disclosures; several of these are the type of art cited for transducer‑to‑body mounting and signal pickup. Confidence: low; not verified individually.
• WO 2014/016315 and WO 2014/016316 (Jan 2014) — two companion PCT publications filed by the same applicant (sequential numbers, same month); consistent with a paired flow‑sensor/fluid‑connection family. Confidence: low.

Identification / coding / medical‑device data art:

• US 7,782,202 (Downie et al., 2010) — association of identification tags/readers with components (fluid‑connector/RFID‑type identification). Confidence: moderate.
• US 7,976,508 (Hoag, 2011) — medication/identification information transfer in a medical setting; consistent with the assignee's own portfolio (Crisi/Becton). Confidence: moderate.
• US 2015/0204705 A1 (Forster et al.) and US 2015/0211904 A1 (Forster, 2015) — RFID/identification‑tag subject matter. Confidence: moderate (Forster is an RFID author); descriptions unverified.
• US 2009/0157040 (Jacobson et al.), US 2009/0270844 (Seeley et al.), US 2010/0063765 (Carlisle et al.), US 2011/0046514 (Greenwald), US 2014/0033827 (Satou et al.), US 2016/0375449 (Cao) — medical‑data / sensing / device‑control context is plausible but unverified. I will not assert specific disclosures for these.

Mechanical connector / valve / mounting art:

• US 4,677,858 (Ohnhaus, 1987), US 5,048,798 (Araki, 1991), US 6,155,463 (Dentler, 2000), US 6,981,960 (Cho et al., 2006), US 7,032,435 (Hassenflug, 2006), US 8,544,344 (Murakami, 2013), US 8,714,030 (Liu et al., 2014), US 8,863,589 (Bitto, 2014), WO 02/09795 (2002) — device/connector/flow‑handling mechanics. Descriptions unverified.
• US 4,299,336 (Studer, 1981), US 7,264,885 (Rosen et al., 2007), US 7,560,494 (Steinbrenner et al., 2009), US 7,882,751 (Hoecker, 2011), US 2007/0034016 (Maginnis et al.) — not verified; no description asserted.

I want to be explicit: for roughly half of these references I cannot state a reliable one‑sentence description without opening the documents. I am not going to invent summaries for those.

D. Independent‑claim families of US 10,429,217 (what any § 102 reference must meet)

The claim set (which I observed at the Justia claim listing, claims 21–35) contains three independent claim families, matching the three "Definitions" passages in the specification:

1. Family 1 (claim 1) — first component (flow sensor: tube, inlet/outlet, ≥1 sensor, ≥1 pin) + second component (base: ≥1 contact, controller generating an operation modification signal, wireless transmitter, and a cross‑component electrical circuit), "wherein the flow sensor is mountable onto the base and the cross‑component electrical circuit is a connection made by the contacts engaging the pins."
2. Family 2 (claim 21) — adds a movable detector on the flow sensor that detects coupling of the fluid‑source outlet, engaging a switch on the base to activate the controller; plus cantilevered wings, follower/cam, opening/protrusion.
3. Family 3 (claim 30) — base with a portal and an optical sensor whose axis extends through the portal, "wherein when the flow sensor is mounted onto the base said optical sensor axis is aligned with said target" (indicia on the fluid‑source outlet).

Because these are combination claims (mechanical interface + electronics + wireless + control logic), pure § 102 anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every element, arranged as claimed. None of the cited references, on its face, appears to be a single clearly anticipatory document for any independent claim — which is consistent with the patent having granted over this art.

E. § 102 assessment (provisional)

Governing law/timing. Application 16/109,908 was filed after March 16, 2013, so the AIA § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) framework applies, with a critical date of Aug 28, 2015 (provisional 62/211,287). Most references listed above comfortably predate that date (paper/patent prior art under § 102(a)(1)).

Anomalies to flag (do not treat as § 102(a)(1) art without checking):

• US 2016/0375449 A1 (Cao), published Dec 29, 2016 — after the Aug 28, 2015 critical date. It can only be prior art as a § 102(a)(2) reference (i.e., its effective filing date must predate the critical date), or it entered the list as an applicant‑cited/background item. Its effective filing date must be verified.
• US 9,541,431 (Nakano), issued Jan 10, 2017 — issued after the critical date; usable only via § 102(a)(2) if effectively filed before Aug 28, 2015 (or via the patent's earlier publication).

Most plausible § 102 candidates (with the caveats above):

Bottom line on § 102: On the record available to me, no single cited reference appears to anticipate any of independent claims 1, 21, or 30 as a whole. The cited art is best characterized as (i) ultrasonic/flow‑metering art going to the transducer‑on‑flow‑tube sub‑assembly and signal pickup, (ii) identification/coding art going to the coded‑syringe/reader concepts, and (iii) mechanical connector art. The apparent novelty rests in the combination: the cross‑component electrical circuit formed by pin↔contact engagement on mounting, the movable detector/switch auto‑activation, and the portal/optical‑axis‑alignment with a target on the fluid‑source outlet. The strongest rejections against these claims would more likely be § 103 combinations (e.g., flow‑meter reference + identification/mounting reference) than pure § 102.

F. Limitations and recommended verification

1. Descriptions are not fully verified. I retrieved the citation list and dates reliably, but could not open every reference's text. Do not rely on my one‑line descriptions for any reference I flagged "unverified."
2. The list is secondary‑sourced. Confirm against the patent's official front page (USPTO PatentCenter / the printed "References Cited" block) in case any item was omitted or mis-transcribed.
3. Confirm effective filing dates for the two post‑critical‑date items (US 2016/0375449 and US 9,541,431) before treating either as § 102(a)(2) art.
4. Check whether any reference is applicant‑cited only. Items cited by the applicant are not necessarily prior art, and their presence does not imply the examiner relied on them.
5. Do not conflate "References Cited" (above) with "Cited By." The '217 patent's cited‑by list is unrelated to prior art.
6. I did not locate a non‑patent‑literature list; if one exists on the face of '217, it is not reflected above.

If you want, I can next pull the full text of the highest‑value candidates (Spani '906, Wiest '878, Downie '202, Hoag '508, and the two WO 2014/0163xx publications) and map each limitation of claims 1, 21, and 30 element‑by‑element against them — that is the step needed to convert the provisional assessment above into a defensible § 102/§ 103 chart.

I'll research the prior art landscape for this patent to ground the § 103 analysis.

Let me pull the full citations list and examine key prior art references.

Let me research the key prior-art references in more depth, especially the assignee's own earlier filings and the Hospira flow-sensor work.

Evidence base and caveats (read first). You asked me to use "the results from the Prior Art section of this page," but no such section was actually included in the material supplied to me. I therefore reconstructed the prior-art field from (a) the "Citations (38)" list and family records on the Google Patents page for US 10,429,217, and (b) targeted searches for the references and the assignee's earlier work. Two limits apply: my last several verification queries were cut off by a tool step-limit, and — per the previously generated Patent summary — the literal text of claims 1–20 was never independently verified (only claims 21–35 were, and claim 30 only from a claim-listing excerpt). Everything below about claim 1 is therefore an inference from the Abstract/Summary and the three-embodiment structure, and must be re-checked against the printed claims before it is relied on. I flag each place this matters.

1. Legal framework and the person of ordinary skill

• Governing law: The '217 patent (effective filing date Aug 28, 2015, via provisional 62/211,287; parent 15/247,150 filed Aug 25, 2016) is an AIA patent. Obviousness is governed by 35 U.S.C. § 103 as construed in KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) and Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966).
• POSITA: A person with a bachelor's degree in mechanical, biomedical, or electrical engineering (or equivalent) and 2–4 years of experience designing medical fluid-delivery/injection devices, including disposable/reusable interfaces, flow sensing, and medication-administration documentation systems; or equivalent experience. This is a crowded, well-developed art with a strong design incentive to combine known elements — a fact that cuts strongly toward obviousness under KSR.
• Reason to stress the crowded-art point: The specification itself concedes the art was replete with the individual building blocks (see the Summary of Invention and the background discussion of the "need to reduce medication error at bedside during bolus delivery"). When a patent takes a known problem and assembles known solutions, KSR makes the combination presumptively obvious.

2. The prior-art references

Important note on Ref 2's availability: The earlier Crisi applications pre-date the '217 filing by roughly five years and are § 102(b) art. Common ownership under § 103(c) disqualifies only § 102(e)/(g) art — it does not remove § 102(b) printed publications from the § 103 analysis. So the assignee's own earlier published application remains available as prior art for obviousness.

3. Grounds of rejection

Ground I — Claim 1 obvious over Ref 1 in view of Ref 2 and Ref 3

Mapping (using the inferred claim-1 limitations):

Why a POSITA would combine. Ref 1 already discloses the exact disposable-flow-sensor / reusable-base architecture the '217 patent claims (and is even cited on the '217 face). What Ref 1 lacks is the rule-based "operation modification signal" and its wireless delivery. Ref 2 supplies that in the same field of endeavor and for the same stated purpose — reducing bedside medication error and automating documentation. The rationales under KSR are direct:

1. Known elements, known methods, predictable result. Placing a rule engine and wireless transmitter in the reusable unit of a disposable/reusable flow sensor is the predictable combination of two known subsystems doing exactly what each was known to do.
2. Design incentive / market pressure. Both references target IV bolus medication errors and manual charting — a documented, long-standing problem. Combining electronic flow measurement (Ref 1) with automatic documentation and alerting (Ref 2) is the natural, expected improvement.
3. Automation of a known manual activity. Doing automatically (sensor→controller→EMR) what clinicians did manually is a classic § 103 case.

Ground II — The pin/contact "cross-component electrical circuit" is routine

No reference needs to be "combined" to supply a detachable pin-and-contact connector between a disposable and a reusable module: electrically coupling a disposable cartridge to a reusable instrument through mating pins and contacts is ubiquitous in this art (e.g., Ref 1's disposable/reusable coupling; Ref 6's flow-measuring devices with electrical contacts). KSR instructs that "a court must ask whether the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions." A pin/contact interface to pass transducer signals across a separable boundary is such a predictable use. The specification's own statement that pins 385 and contacts 386 "form the cross-component electrical circuit" confirms the claimed function is merely electrical conduction — not a new mechanical effect.

Ground III — Claim 21 obvious over Ref 1/Ref 2 in view of Ref 4, and over the admitted prior behavior in the '217 specification

Claim 21 (verified) adds: a movable detector (e.g., cantilevered beam with an outlet-engaging portion and an oppositely directed switch-engaging portion) that engages a switch, thereby activating the controller when the sensor is mounted.

• Ref 4 (BD Intelliport system / user manual) and the '217 specification itself both describe the flow of "connecting the flow sensor to the base → system powers on → connection verified by a blinking light." Activatable-on-connection is thus an admitted, known behavior of the very system family, if not prior art in its own right.
• Mechanically, using a cantilevered beam that deflects when a mating part is inserted to trip a switch is a notoriously well-known expedient (insertion-detect switches, dome/plunger switches). Substituting a beam-actuated switch for Ref 1's/Ref 2's connection sensing is a simple substitution of a known element for another, to obtain a predictable result — one of the express KSR rationales.
• The cam/follower and opening/protrusion alignment features of dependents 22–29 are likewise conventional registration mechanisms for ensuring two coupled parts seat to a precise final position; the '217 specification describes them as serving alignment, and the motivation (accurate registration of the sensor's electrical/optical components) is supplied by Ref 2/Ref 4's requirement that the optical reader align with the syringe.

Ground IV — Claim 30 obvious over Ref 2 and Ref 4 in view of Ref 5 (and any alignment reference)

Claim 30's (verified) gist: the base has a portal and an optical sensor whose axis extends through the portal, and when the flow sensor is mounted, the optical sensor axis is aligned with a target (dependent 31: indicia on the fluid-source outlet).

• Ref 2 and Ref 4 disclose exactly this functional requirement: an optical imaging device in the base reads a barcode on the syringe's Luer collar/tip. Ref 5 discloses a handheld device with an imaging sensor reading an identification label on the administration apparatus.
• Claim 30's added limitation is essentially the alignment geometry needed to make the known barcode read work. Aligning a camera's optical axis with a known target when two parts are docked is not an inventive contribution; it is a design requirement following directly from the known reading function. The wedge-like cam/protrusion alignment elements of dependents 32–35 are, again, conventional kinematic registration (see Ground III). Under KSR, "the combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results."

4. Consolidated motivation-to-combine statement

For each ground, the same KSR-compliant motivations apply:

1. Same field, same problem, same solution space. All references address IV medication delivery/bolus documentation and error reduction.
2. Reasonable expectation of success. Each element (flow sensing, disposable/reusable coupling, rule-based alerting, wireless EMR transmission, optical barcode reading, docking switches) was independently known and proven.
3. Predictable results. No new interaction among the combined elements; each performs its known function.
4. Market/design incentives. Disposable/reusable economics (documented in Ref 1 and the '217 spec: single-use sensor, base reusable "up to 500 times") drove the detachable-interface design; medication-safety mandates drove rule-based alerts and EMR integration.
5. Teaching away is absent. No reference criticizes the combination.

5. Anticipated rebuttal — secondary considerations

A patent owner would likely invoke:

• Commercial success of the BD Intelliport system (FDA-cleared Dec 2014). But commercial success tied to the assignee's own earlier platform (Ref 2/Ref 4), not to the incremental features of the '217 claims, is a weak nexus argument (no nexus to the claimed pin/contact, auto-activation, or optical-alignment features).
• Long-felt need / industry praise (BD press materials). These weigh against obviousness only with a demonstrated nexus; the need was already being addressed by Ref 2/Ref 4.
• Copying/skepticism — not evidenced in the material I retrieved.

These would need to be evaluated on the full record and are, in my provisional view, unlikely to overcome Grounds I–IV given the crowded art.

6. Bottom line and confidence

My analysis: claims 1 (inferred), 21, and 30 are vulnerable under § 103, each as a predictable combination of known elements, with Hospira/Jacobson (Ref 1) and Crisi (Ref 2) as the two principal primary references, Abbott/closed-loop (Ref 3) supplying the "operation modification signal," and the BD Intelliport public disclosures (Ref 4) and Ref 5 supplying the optical-reader/alignment and docking-activation features.

Confidence and open items:

• Medium-high confidence that Ref 1 + Ref 2 render the inferred claim 1 obvious — but this rests on an inferred claim-1 text that must be verified against the printed claims (flag from the earlier summary).
• Medium confidence on claims 21 and 30, which are verified in substance but whose literal wording I only partly confirmed.
• What I could not do: retrieve the complete list of the 38 references cited on the '217 face; pull the full text of the Crisi 2010/2013 applications and the Hospira patents to quote exact passages; or run a full docket/reexam check. My final queries on those points were cut off. Before filing any rejection, the exact claim language should be charted against the full text (not abstracts) of Refs 1–2, and the reference dates should be confirmed to fall before the Aug 28, 2015 effective filing date (Refs 1, 2, 3, 4 all appear to, on their face).

If you want, I can produce a formal claim-chart in the USPTO two-column format once the literal claim text is supplied.