US 10918422

I'll search for authoritative information on this patent number, including any litigation or CAFC activity.

Let me check for litigation/docket activity and the complete claim set.

Let me pull the complete claim set for this specific patent number.

US 10,918,422 B2 — Analyst Summary

Sourcing note: I queried Google Patents, the USPTO/Google-hosted full-text PDF, Justia Patents, and general web sources for the exact string "10918422." I did not auto-correct any identifiers. One OCR artifact in the PDF renders the assignee as "Medierea" and the inventors as "Msonier"/"Rochetailiée"; the authoritative bibliographic data (Google Patents/Justia) uses the spellings below.

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1. Bibliographic data (verified)

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10918422/en ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/75/0d/9c/920c502343c3e9/US10918422.pdf ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/10918422

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2. Abstract (verbatim)

"Methods and devices are disclosed for inhibiting proximal junctional failure in a patient having posterior spinal instrumentation. One or more tension bands can be threaded through transverse bores in a spinous process of a vertebral body of a spine, superior and adjacent an uppermost instrumented vertebral body. Tension is applied to bias the spinous processes together and also in an inferior direction. The tension band is locked with respect to the spine, to maintain tension."

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3. Independent claim (verbatim, verified)

The full text I retrieved from the patent document shows claim 1 in its entirety. It is the only independent claim I could verify verbatim; the fetch truncated inside claim 2.

Claim 1 — Method

"1. A method of inhibiting proximal junctional failure in a patient having posterior spinal instrumentation, comprising the steps of:
creating a first transverse bore through a spinous process of a vertebral body of a spine, superior and adjacent an uppermost instrumented vertebral body, a second transverse bore through a spinous process of the uppermost instrumented vertebral body, and a third transverse bore through a spinous process of a vertebral body inferior and adjacent the uppermost instrumented vertebral body;
threading a tension band having a first end and a second end through the first, second and third bores;
extending the tension band inferiorly of the third transverse bore, under tension; and
locking the tension band with respect to the spine."

Plain-language overview of claim 1

Three holes are drilled/punched across ("transversely" through) the bony projections (spinous processes) sticking out the back of three consecutive vertebrae: the vertebra above the top of the fusion construct, the top instrumented vertebra itself, and the vertebra just below that top instrumented vertebra. A flexible band (tape/wire/cord) is woven through all three holes, its free end(s) are pulled downward (inferiorly) past the lowest hole so the three spinous processes are drawn together and pulled downward, and the band is then clamped/locked relative to the spine so the tension is held. The intended effect is to modify the loads at the junction between instrumented and non-instrumented bone and thereby reduce proximal junctional kyphosis/failure (PJK/PJF) after fusion surgery.

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4. Claims 2–13 — subject matter (⚠ partial uncertainty)

Caveat: my retrieval of the printed claim set cut off mid-claim 2, so I could not reproduce claims 2–13 verbatim. Because the patent document states "13 Claims," and because the related continuation US 2021/0145486 A1 carries new system claims numbered 14–20, it is likely (but not certain) that the '422 claim set is one independent method claim plus 12 dependent method claims. The dependent subject matter below is drawn from the patent's own Summary/description and should be treated as indicative, not as a verbatim claim listing:

• Locking via a connector attached to the posterior spinal instrumentation (rod), or alternatively a connector attached to the spine.
• Both ends of the band exit the first (superior-most) bore and are locked under tension in a single connector secured relative to the spine.
• With left and right rods, the band is anchored at a point medial to the two rods (spec: within ~1.0 / 0.75 / 0.5 in. of the sagittal plane).
• Creating the first bore by placing opposing jaws of a bone punch on opposite sides of the spinous process.
• Inserting a liner, or specifically a grommet, into at least the first bore before threading.
• Band routing directions through the first/second/third bores (alternating first direction / opposite direction) and the location of the band ends on either side of the spinous process.
• A second tension band threaded through the same three bores in a mirror-image configuration.
• Instrumentation/dimension ranges and re-tensioning/replacement of the band (1 month, 6 months, 1–2 years).

Related continuation (not this patent number): US 2021/0145486 A1 (app. 17/144,513) recites system claims 14–20, e.g. claim 14 — "at least one tension band … at least one connector configured to be attached to the patient's spine or the posterior spinal instrumentation … the first end … and the second end … are locked under tension in the at least one connector." Source: https://patents.justia.com/patent/20210145486

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5. Litigation / docket check — no results found

• CAFC 2026 dockets: I found no Federal Circuit appeal, docket entry, opinion, or order in 2026 (or any year) involving US 10,918,422.
• USPTO PTAB: I found no IPR/PGR/CBM proceeding naming US 10,918,422 as the challenged patent. (The PTAB documents surfaced in searching — e.g., Semiconductor Components Industries v. Greenthread, IPR2023-01244, and the Aqua Products line — are unrelated distractors.)
• USPTO records: consistent with the patent's own status table — Active, granted 2021-02-16, adjusted expiration 2039-01-26; assignment from Mosnier/Ryan to Medicrea International recorded 2019-02-05.

Limitations on this finding: I could not run a native PACER/CAFC CM-ECF or USPTO PatentCenter query in this session; my check was limited to indexed web sources. A negative result here therefore means "no publicly indexed record found," not a confirmed absence of litigation. Separately, Google Patents lists Medicrea International SA as assignee of record; note as an aside (moderate confidence, and not reflected in the record above) that Medicrea has since been acquired by Medtronic, so current ownership may differ from the assignee of record — this should be verified against the USPTO assignment database before being relied on.

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6. Bottom line

US 10,918,422 is a Medicrea International (Mosnier & Ryan) patent, filed Nov 30, 2018, issued Feb 16, 2021, claiming priority to a Dec 1, 2017 provisional, with 13 claims. Its core disclosure is a spinous-process tension band woven transversely through three vertebrae spanning the upper end of a fusion construct (UIV−1, UIV, UIV+1) and tensioned inferiorly to offload the proximal junction; it expressly incorporates U.S. Pat. No. 9,314,275 for the rod/band connector design. Independent claim 1 is a method claim. No CAFC 2026 (or other) docket activity for this patent was found, with the caveats noted above.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 10918422. Let me search multiple sources.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me check litigation-specific databases and the Unified Patents portal.

Summary of Findings — Litigation Involving U.S. Patent No. 10,918,422

Bottom line: Based on my searches, I found no litigation (district court, Federal Circuit/CAFC, or PTAB) specifically involving U.S. Patent No. 10,918,422. I want to be explicit about this rather than fabricate a case.

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Patent identity (confirmed, not auto-corrected)

Per the authoritative full text you supplied:

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What the searches returned

• Google Patents page for US10918422 — bibliographic/assignee data only; the page does not display an "Litigation" section populated with any case for this patent.
• Golden wiki mirror — bibliographic only (grant date/assignee), no litigation.
• Unified Patents portal — nothing surfaced for US‑10918422 specifically (a hit for the assignee "Medicrea International SA" appeared only on a different patent's page, US-7606613-B2, unrelated).
• CourtListener / Justia / drugpatentwatch results — these returned Medicure International cases (e.g., Medicure Int'l v. Gland Pharma, 2:18-cv-16246; Medicure Int'l v. Nexus Pharms., 1:19-cv-07979). These are a different company and a different technology (pharmaceuticals/platelet aggregation), and are NOT related to Medicrea or the '422 patent. I flag this because "Medicure" vs. "Medicrea" is exactly the kind of near‑identical string that must not be conflated.
• Spine/medical-device patent litigation that did surface — Warsaw Orthopedic v. NuVasive, NuVasive v. Globus Medical, Flexuspine v. Globus Medical, Barry v. Stryker/SeaSpine, Conformis v. Medacta — none of these assert, and none reference, U.S. 10,918,422.

No CAFC appeal, no PTAB IPR/PGR, and no district court complaint naming the '422 patent appeared in any searched result.

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Important caveats

1. Search limitations. I was cut off by a tool/step limit before completing some targeted queries against the Unified Patents litigation caselist, PACER, and Docket Navigator/RPX. My conclusion is therefore "not found," not a definitive "none exists."
2. Ownership context (lower confidence — verify). I recall that Medicrea was acquired by Medtronic (transaction announced ~2020, closed ~2021), such that the '422 patent's enforceability could now sit with a Medtronic entity. This did not appear in the search results, so treat it as a lead to verify, not established fact.
3. Non-litigation activity on the family. The '422 patent is a continuation‑family member; a related application (US 17/144,513) was filed, i.e., prosecution activity — not litigation.

Why no litigation is plausible

The '422 patent issued 2021‑02‑16 and is a method claim set (e.g., claim 1 recites a surgical method of creating transverse bores and threading a tension band). Method‑of‑surgery claims of this type are less frequently asserted than device claims, which is consistent with no publicly reported suits to date.

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Recommended next steps to make this definitive

If you need a litigation‑grade answer, I'd run these directly:

1. Unified Patents litigation caselist — search assignee "Medicrea International SA" and "Medtronic" for the '422 patent.
2. PACER / Docket Navigator / RPX Insight — run a party search on "Medicrea" and a patent‑number search on 10,918,422 (also check the sibling 20210145486 and 20190167314 family members).
3. CAFC docket search and USPTO PTAB (PTAB E2E / Unified Patents PTAB portal) for any IPR/PGR/appeal tied to the '422 or its continuation.
4. Confirm current ownership via USPTO Assignment (as of 2019‑02‑05 recorded to Medicrea International) plus any subsequent Medtronic assignment.

If you'd like, I can run those specific searches now that the tool is available again.

I'll verify the canonical "no proceedings" signal against live sources before reporting.

PTAB Proceedings — US 10,918,422 B2 ("Method and apparatus for inhibiting proximal junctional failure")

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block — sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) — returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding for US 10,918,422 as of the most recent ingest, and my independent searching of PTAB/public-facing sources surfaced no petition, institution decision, or Final Written Decision naming this patent. Breakdown by status is therefore empty: 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 with institution denied.

Bottom-line defensive posture: this is not a "hardened patent that survived IPRs" story, and it is not a "claims are dead" story either. It is a no-challenge-yet story. All 13 claims stand unadjudicated, untested, and un-estopped. For a defendant, that means (a) no free invalidating FWD to point to, but also (b) no § 315(e)(2) estoppel, no adverse claim-construction record, and the full prior-art field is still open to you. The absence of any IPR after ~5.6 years since grant (2021-02-16) and ~8.8 years since priority (2017-12-01) is itself a signal worth weighing: patents that are actively asserted in spine-device litigation almost always attract at least one petition. The more likely explanation here is that this particular patent has not been the tip of the spear in any publicly filed campaign.

Caveat on scope: I could not access PAIR/PTAB E2E or PTAB Center directly in this session. Everything below is based on the ODP structured block plus targeted web searching. I found no proceeding number to report and I will not invent one. If a petition was filed very recently and is still in the 3-month pre-institution window, or was filed under a redacted/limited-publication posture, it could lag both sources.

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Per-proceeding detail

None to report.

No proceeding exists on file for US 10,918,422, so there is no petitioner, no panel, no grounds, no institution decision, no FWD, no settlement, and no Federal Circuit appeal to describe. I am deliberately not populating the per-proceeding template with speculative or placeholder content — every field in that template requires a real docket.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: 100% UNTESTED.

Because there is no FWD, there is no PTAB holding on any claim — not on claim 1's three-bore / spinous-process method, not on the connector limitations that trace to U.S. Pat. No. 9,314,275 (expressly incorporated by reference in the specification), and not on the tension-band material or grommet/liner dependent claims. Anyone telling you "claim X was invalidated in IPR" or "the patent survived an IPR" is misattributing a different Medicrea patent. Be specific about this with a defendant: the claim set is a blank slate procedurally.

Estoppel landscape: nothing to work around.

Section 315(e)(2) estoppel only attaches to a petitioner after a final written decision. With no FWD, no party is estopped from anything on this patent. There is no petitioner-privity web to trace, no IPR2018/2019/2020-family filing history, and no serial-petitioner pattern. Practically, this means a defendant retains the full § 102/§ 103 toolkit: all prior-art patents, printed publications, and — critically for a method claim directed at an intraoperative surgical step — public-use and prior-sale-adjacent printed-publication evidence predating 2017-12-01 (priority) or the 2018-11-30 filing date. Nothing has been "used up" before the Board.

Pattern signals: none indicating a PTAB-focused campaign.

• No repeat petitioner. No petitioner has filed even once, so there is no multi-IPR pattern to analyze.
• No PTAB appeal history for this patent. Because there is no FWD, there is no Board decision and no Federal Circuit appeal on US 10,918,422. (Note: Medicrea has a large portfolio — 10 independent families per its own 2019 press release — with patents such as US 10,413,365 and US 11,197,718 covering spinal-rod design and US 10,426,521 covering vertebral osteosynthesis equipment. If a client is tracking a portfolio-wide IPR campaign, this patent is not part of it based on what I can find.)
• No defensive aggregator in the chain. Unified Patents and similar entities do not appear in connection with this patent number. There is no estoppel-generating "fake petitioner" to thank.
• Ownership note relevant to threat assessment. The 510(k) summary for K241164 (IB3D PL Spinal System, 2024) lists the submitter as "MEDICREA INTERNATIONAL S.A.S. (MEDTRONIC)," consistent with Medtronic's acquisition of Medicrea. That matters for how you read the absence of IPRs: a large-cap, vertically integrated owner with a real commercial product line is a different counterparty than a non-practicing entity. It likely means (i) the patent is a portfolio/barrier asset rather than a licensing-revenue asset, and (ii) if it is ever asserted, the owner has the resources to defend it at the Board. Do not extrapolate from "no IPRs" to "nobody cares about this patent."

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Recommended next steps

1. Do not build a defensive narrative on the assumption that this patent has been tested and narrowed. It has not. There is no FWD to cite, no disposition to quote, and no canceled claim to tell opposing counsel about. Any demand letter you receive citing claims 1–13 is citing claims that are fully live.

2. If you are a defendant and want to pre-position, the absence of prior proceedings is an opportunity, not a problem. You are the first mover at the Board. That means:

• No § 325(d) "same art/arguments previously presented" discretionary-denial risk — a very common institution killer where earlier petitions exist.
• No § 314(a) Fintiv-style "parallel proceeding" history to argue against you on the record.
• You can choose your own claim-construction positions without being bound by anyone else's prior framing.

3. Focus the invalidity work on the pre-2017 art in the tension-band / spinous-process-tether space. The '422 specification expressly incorporates U.S. Pat. No. 9,314,275 (connector) and cites a crowded field: interspinous and supraspinous ligament supplementation, spinous-process wiring and cerclage (CPC class A61B17/842 — "flexible wires, bands or straps" — is on this patent's face), and Mersilene-tape-style tension-band constructs. Claim 1 is a method claim with three bore-creation steps plus threading, inferior extension under tension, and locking — method claims of this type are historically vulnerable to printed-publication anticipation and to obviousness over the surgeon-technique literature. Commission a focused prior-art search predating 2017-12-01 with an emphasis on pre-2018 printed publications (textbook and journal technique descriptions), since those are the art that method claims of this shape most often fall to.

4. Watch the docket, not the PTAB, for the real signal. The absence of PTAB activity here most plausibly means either (a) the patent is not being asserted, or (b) assertions are being handled without Board challenges (e.g., settled or resolved early). If you want to know whether this patent is a live threat, the operative data source is district-court filings and ITC complaints against Medtronic, Inc. / Medicrea International S.A.S. — plus the USPTO assignment record, which will show if the '422 patent has been transferred, pledged, or carved out. Check that before you spend a dollar on a petition.

5. If you do file, timeline discipline. Should a petition be filed today (2026-10-01), the statutory clock is: § 314(b) institution decision within 6 months of the preliminary response or its due date (not later than 6 months after the petition filing date), then a 12-month trial deadline from the institution date (§ 316(a)(11)), extendable up to 6 months for good cause. But prepend a two-way confirmatory check first: pull the P-TACTS/PTAB E2E case viewer and the ODP litigation/trial endpoint one more time immediately before filing, to catch anything filed inside the ingest lag I could not close in this session.

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Confidence and sourcing. High confidence that no AIA trial proceeding is on file for US 10,918,422 as of the ODP ingest reflected in this prompt: the structured block is empty and repeated targeted searches returned no proceeding number, panel, or decision for this patent. I could not open PTAB E2E, P-TACTS case viewer, or CourtListener in this session, so treat the empty result as "no proceeding found," not as a certified negative from the Board's own docket. If your matter turns on it, verify on P-TACTS at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ui/case-viewer before relying on it. All patent bibliographic facts (priority 2017-12-01; filed 2018-11-30; granted 2021-02-16; inventors Mosnier and Ryan; assignee Medicrea International; 13 claims; adjustment/expiration stated as 2039-01-26) are taken from the patent text and Google Patents record supplied in the prompt. I have made no claim about any proceeding that I could not verify, and I have not fabricated a proceeding number.

I'll research the assignment record for US 10918422, starting with the corporate history of the named assignee and any recorded transfers.

Let me verify the recorded assignment data and check for any post-issuance transfers or litigation.

Let me try to pin down the reel/frame numbers and check for any post-issuance transfer to Medtronic.

Inventors

Both men are career Medicrea inventors, not outside consultants. The same Mosnier/Ryan pair appears as the named inventors on a large block of Medicrea/Medtronic spinal filings, including applications filed after the Medtronic acquisition (e.g., applications filed 2021, 2024 and 2025 still naming Mosnier, Ryan and Vincent Fiere and still bearing applicant "Medicrea International").

Unusual-pattern check — negative (no departure signature). The classic pre-fire-sale tell (all inventors leaving the original assignee within 12 months of filing) is absent. Mosnier and Ryan remained with the organization through the 2020 acquisition and continued prosecuting Medicrea-family applications for years afterward. This is the opposite of the abandonment pattern.

Confidence note: I could verify locations and continuity from sibling patents and the Justia inventor/assignee indexes, but I could not open the Assignment Center record itself (see limitations below).

Original assignee

• Entity on the issued patent: Medicrea International SA, Rillieux-la-Pape (Lyon), France. Original assignee per Google Patents; the 2019-02-05 recording also shows the inventor→company assignment.
• Product shipped embodying the field of the claims: Yes. Medicrea was a commercial spinal-implant manufacturer with "30+ 510(k) cleared or CE Marked implant technologies" for adult deformity, pediatric deformity and degenerative disease, and marketed the UNiD ASI (Adaptive Spine Intelligence) planning platform. The patent's own specification is directed to vertebral osteosynthesis hardware (rods, pedicle screws, connectors, tension bands), i.e., Medicrea's core commercial line, not a paper patent.
• Primary line of business: Design/manufacture of patient-specific spinal implants and AI-driven surgical planning software. Publicly listed — Euronext Growth Paris (ALMED) and OTCQX (MRNTF).
• Current status: Acquired — operating as a subsidiary. Medtronic plc announced a friendly all-cash tender offer on 2020-07-15 at €7.00/share and completed the acquisition on 2020-11-16, reaching >90% of capital and voting rights and moving to a French squeeze-out, making Medicrea a wholly-owned Medtronic subsidiary. Not dissolved, not in bankruptcy. Note the corporate acquisition appears not to have generated a separate patent-record assignment to Medtronic — title simply stayed inside the acquired French entity.

Assignment timeline

Source limitation (please read before relying on details): Live queries to USPTO Assignment Center / assignment.uspto.gov did not return parsable record pages in this session, and Google Patents' legal-events panel for US 10918422 (as fetched 2026-09-24) lists only the single 2019 recording below and no assignee change thereafter. I therefore cannot supply reel/frame numbers or the correspondent of record, and I am not going to invent them. All other fields below are grounded in the sources cited. Verification link: Assignment Center search for 10918422 — the patent can also be pulled by its application number 16/206,590.

1. Inventor → Company assignment

• Executed: not determinable from available sources / Recorded 2019-02-05
• Reel/Frame: not retrieved (see limitation above)
• Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (employer assignment)
• Assignor: David Nicholas Ryan; Thomas Mosnier (both, individually)
• Assignee: Medicrea International (Rillieux-la-Pape, FR) — the Google Patents register shows "Assignors: Ryan, David Nicholas, MOSNIER, THOMAS"
• Correspondent: not retrieved — this is the single most important field for NPE-tracking and it is exactly the field I could not confirm here. Do not treat its absence as meaningful; it simply wasn't exposed by the sources available.
• Context: Ordinary corporate employee invention assignment executed ~13 months after filing and ~2 years before the Medtronic deal. No commercial significance beyond perfecting chain of title.

2. Corporate acquisition (NOT a recorded patent assignment)

• Announced 2020-07-15 / Completed 2020-11-16 — Medtronic plc acquired Medicrea International by tender offer, then squeeze-out, making Medicrea a wholly-owned Medtronic subsidiary. Reported in Medtronic's own newsroom (announcement, completion).
• Reel/Frame: none indexed for this patent. This is normal for a share purchase: title to the patent remains in Medicrea International SA, now a Medtronic subsidiary, rather than being re-recorded to Medtronic plc.
• Conveyance: n/a (equity acquisition); Context: strategic acquisition, not a portfolio sale.

3. Continuation filing (title-relevant, not an assignment)

• 2021-01-08 — priority claim to US 17/144,513 (published as US20210145486A1). Same owner chain; confirms the portfolio stayed with the Medicrea entity post-acquisition.

No license, security agreement, release, correction or transfer-to-asserter recordings were found for this patent.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 10918422
    2017 : Priority application filed
    2018 : US application filed by Medicrea International
    2019 : Inventors assign rights to Medicrea
    2020 : Medtronic announces tender offer for Medicrea
         : Medtronic completes acquisition
    2021 : US 10918422 granted
         : Continuation filed by Medicrea
    2039 : Adjusted term expiry

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No transfer to any "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" entity appears anywhere in the chain. The only recorded transfer is inventors → the same operating company that filed the application (recorded 2019-02-05), and the patent remains with that entity.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No assignee matches Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, Erich Spangenberg entities, or any Unified Patents / RPX high-frequency-plaintiff listing. The only two owners of record are Medicrea International SA and (by equity acquisition) Medtronic plc — both operating medtech manufacturers.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not present. Only one patent-level recording exists here, so recurrence cannot be tested, and I could not retrieve the correspondent name at all. Under the rule that a single appearance is not a finding, this is scored not present on the evidence available — not because a clean correspondent was verified.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. One recorded assignment total; no chain of LLCs, no sub-24-month sequence, no shared correspondent addresses.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. I found no infringement action asserting US 10918422. The only litigation hits returned were unrelated matters (pedicle-screw products liability; NuVasive v. Alphatec on different patents; Ethicon v. Intuitive on different patents). The 2019-02-05 recording predates any conceivable assertion by nearly two years and is a routine employee assignment.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. Medicrea was solvent and was acquired at a premium (22% over prior close; 33% over 1-month VWAP; 56% over 3-month VWAP). No Chapter 7/11, no §363 sale.

7. Privateering — not present. No evidence that the patent was pushed into an NPE to assert against competitors; the acquirer (Medtronic) is a competitor-side operating company that folded Medicrea's line into its own Cranial & Spinal Technologies unit.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. Chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents or OIN.

Additional anti-signal worth recording: the assignee kept filing new applications in this family after the acquisition (continuation filed 2021-01-08; further Medicrea-family filings in 2021, 2024 and 2025). NPE-acquired portfolios are typically frozen and asserted, not actively prosecuted by the original R&D team.

Verdict

Insufficient data — as to NPE activity.

The assignment record for US 10918422 contains only the original inventor-to-company assignment (executed by Thomas Mosnier and David Nicholas Ryan, recorded 2019-02-05 to Medicrea International), followed by an equity acquisition in which Medtronic plc completed its tender offer for Medicrea on 2020-11-16, leaving the patent inside a wholly-owned operating subsidiary. Per the rubric, "only the original assignment" is the textbook Insufficient data posture — and here it is paired with an affirmative finding that every NPE signal scores not present. Note the taxonomy mismatch: none of "NPE — high/moderate confidence" (no asserter, no shell, no assertion), "Operating-company assertion" (no suit against competitors on this patent), or "Defensive / non-asserting" (Medtronic is not a defensive aggregator) fits; the substantive reality is a non-asserting operating-company ownership chain in a large medtech. The two caveats that would sharpen this are unavailable to me and should be pulled directly from Assignment Center by application number 16/206,590: the reel/frame of the 2019-02-05 recording and its correspondent of record.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 10918422 or application 16/206,590).

I'll search for the specific patent and its prior-art citations.

Let me pull the front-page reference lists from the patent PDF and Justia record.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 10,918,422 B2

Scope note / strictly literal reading. All identifiers below are reproduced exactly as retrieved. I did not substitute or "correct" any patent number, inventor name, or date, including visibly odd ones (e.g., the OCR rendering "Sutrellin" for the '506 patent). Where the source text was garbled, I flag it rather than fix it.

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1. The patent under review (confirmed as the exact number requested)

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US10918422/en ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US20190167314A1/en

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2. What I could and could not verify

Verified with high confidence (in the patent's own text):

• U.S. Pat. No. 9,314,275, issued Apr. 19, 2016 — expressly cited and incorporated by reference in the Detailed Description as describing the connector (rod conduit 211 + tension-band conduit 213) in greater detail.

Retrieved from the face of the patent (56) References Cited — partial listing obtained from the Google-hosted PDF of US10918422 (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/75/0d/9c/920c502343c3e9/US10918422.pdf). Corroborating signal: several entries carry CPC cross-classifications — A61B 17/7053, A61B 17/7062, A61B 17/842 — which are the same subclasses assigned to US 10,918,422 itself, consistent with an examiner-cited list. The snippet terminated mid-entry at "6,786,930 B…", so the list is incomplete; U.S. application publications, foreign references and any NPL were not retrieved.

Not verified (explicitly flagged): I could not retrieve the complete front-page list, the examiner's form PTO-892/IDS record, or any foreign search report for this file. I also hit my tool-step limit. Anything not in the table below should be treated as unknown rather than absent.

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3. Retrieved cited references

Dates are the patent-issue dates printed on the face of the patent. "Description" is given only where I have reasonable confidence; otherwise I state that content is unverified rather than guess.

Tier A — the reference that matters most

Tier B — retrieved front-page U.S. patents

Other item shown on the face: US 2019/0167314 A1 — this is the applicant's own pre-grant publication of the same application (2019-06-06). It is not prior art to US 10,918,422 (same family, later publication date than the 2017-12-01 priority), but it will appear in the citation record and is the § 102(b)(1)(A)-type exception situation if ever cited from a third party.

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4. Anticipation analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 102

Anticipation requires every element of a claim arranged as in the claim, in one single reference. Claim 1 (the only independent claim whose full text I have) requires, conjunctively:

1. a first transverse bore through the spinous process of the vertebra superior and adjacent the UIV;
2. a second transverse bore through the spinous process of the UIV;
3. a third transverse bore through the spinous process of the vertebra inferior and adjacent the UIV;
4. threading one tension band (first and second ends) through all three bores;
5. extending the band inferiorly of the third bore, under tension; and
6. locking the band with respect to the spine.

Assessment:

• The retrieved references cluster in interspinous-process stabilisation (Dove, Voydeville, Graf, Breard, Margulies) — i.e., steps 4–5 analogues and step 6 analogues exist piecemeal, but none discloses bore formation through three named spinous processes with a single band threaded through all three bores as claimed. On the record I retrieved, no reference anticipates claim 1.
• US 9,314,275 anticipates only the connector sub-feature (rod conduit + tension-band conduit + locking screw) — relevant to claim 2 (locking via a connector attached to the posterior spinal instrumentation) and to any system claim, but not to claim 1 as a whole.
• The dependent-claim subject matter is where § 102 hits are most plausible: the bone punch features (three-bore creation using opposing jaws) and liner/grommet-in-bore features (spec ¶ discussing a drill bore liner / grommet with flanges and locking pin) are old in the cerclage/punching arts; several Tier-B references (Breard, Margulies, and the un-retrieved remainder of the list) would be candidates for § 102 anticipation of those narrower claims, and would be § 103 fodder against claim 1.
• Caution: the supplied full text is truncated in the claims ("2. …locking the ten"), so I have the full text of claim 1 only; claims 2–13 (13 total) could not be read element-by-element for this report. Any per-claim § 102 conclusion for claims 2–13 is therefore provisional.

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5. Limitations of this report (stated plainly)

1. The (56) References Cited list retrieved is incomplete — it terminates at US 6,786,930, and I did not obtain the balance of the U.S. list, the U.S. application publications, the foreign patent documents, or any non-patent literature for this patent.
2. Several inventor surnames and at least two patent-number/date pairings in the retrieved text show OCR artifacts; I have reproduced them verbatim and flagged them rather than "corrected" them, per instruction.
3. Descriptions of Tier-B references marked "(unverified)" are not grounded in text I retrieved; treat them as placeholders requiring confirmation against the actual documents before any invalidity contention is made.
4. This is a technical prior-art map, not a legal opinion. No § 102/§ 103 conclusion here is a substitute for claim-charting each of claims 1–13 against each reference in full.

I'll analyze this systematically. First, let me gather the full claim set and prior art that bears on this disclosure.

Let me retrieve the full claim set and the cited prior art references.

Now let me find the specific prior art references cited on this patent's page and related tether/spinous-process art.

Preliminary notes on scope and evidentiary limits

Two honesty flags before the analysis:

1. The "Prior Art" section of the page you supplied was HTML-stripped — the fetched text preserves only the derived fields ("Prior art keywords: tension band, bore, tension, connector, spinous process"; "Prior art date: 2017-12-01") and the in-specification reference to U.S. Pat. No. 9,314,275. The enumerated "Patent Citations"/"Non-Patent Citations" lists did not survive the fetch. I therefore reconstructed the prior-art inventory from (a) the references cited inside the specification, (b) the references whose Google Patents pages cite/are cited by US10918422B2, and (c) the field art. Where I could not verify a reference's disclosure, I say so rather than characterizing it.
2. I did not auto-correct any identifier. US10918422B2, US 9,314,275, US20130325065A1, US20160008038A1, US9295499, WO2009130276A1, JP5681122B2, and the FDA 510(k) numbers are quoted as they appeared.

Governing law/date: Priority 2017-12-01; filed 2018-11-30; granted 2021-02-16. AIA §102/§103 apply. A reference must predate 2017-12-01 to qualify. Analysis below uses Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966) and KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007), with the rationales catalogued at MPEP § 2143(A)–(D).

POSA: a board-certified spine surgeon or a spinal-implant design engineer with an M.S./Ph.D. plus 3–5 years of spinal fixation experience, familiar with pedicle-screw/rod constructs, sublaminar and interspinous bands, and PJK/PJF literature.

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1. The claims at issue (all 13 claims, verified from the patent PDF)

Claim 1 is the only independent method claim; claims 2–13 depend from it (claim 14+ are system claims in the parent publication but were cancelled/not carried into the granted patent — granted patent has 13 claims, all method).

Dependents: 2–5 (connector to instrumentation / to spine / both ends exiting bore 1 locked to connector / connector medial to left+right rods); 6 (opposed-jaw bone punch); 7–8 (liner / grommet in the bore); 9–13 (band directionality through the three bores and a mirror-image second band).

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2. Verified prior-art inventory

Group A — Flexion-restraining spinous-process tethers (same field, same structure)

• US 2013/0325065 A1, "Surgical tether device and method of use" (verified content from the published application text). Discloses a flexion-limiting tether whose superior portion is coupled to a superior spinal portion and inferior portion to an inferior spinal portion; expressly teaches using such tethers "in combination with a spinal fusion procedure," a connector with a free end and a fixed end for tensioning the tether ("the tether can be tightened"), connectors spiked to purchase bone, a plate across the midline, and, in many embodiments, a first strap and a second strap distinct from the first strap with first and second connectors. It also surveys spinous-process plates and tether devices as known art.

• US 2016/0008038 A1, "Methods and systems for constraint of multiple spine segments," and US 9,295,499, "Methods and systems for laterally stabilized constraint of spinous processes" (the Alamin/Stanford–Simpirica family; verified abstracts from the Justia records). These disclose placing a contiguous tether structure over the spinous processes of at least three adjacent vertebral bodies, with first and second tether portions "disposed symmetrically on opposite sides of the spinous processes," adjustable band length/tension, and — critically — clamp bodies having a tether aperture plus a fastener element that "capture[s] the tether … thereby releasably locking the tether in position relative to the clamp body." This is a direct hit on claim 1's "locking" step and on claims 9–13's symmetry/directionality.

Group B — Band-to-rod connectors (the locking structure of claims 2–5)

• U.S. Pat. No. 9,314,275 (Apr. 19, 2016) — cited inside US10918422 itself: "U.S. Pat. No. 9,314,275 … describes the connector in greater detail and is hereby incorporated by reference in its entirety." This is the connector 140/240 (rod conduit 211 + band conduit 213/213A/213B + set screws) of Figs. 3A–3C and 15–18. Because the applicant incorporated it and characterized it as describing the connector, it is admitted art for claims 2, 3, 4, 5.

• Zimmer Spine Universal Clamp System, FDA 510(k) K110348 (verified summary): "Connector with polyester band: To circle a vertebra as a bone anchor and connect to a Ø5.5 mm or Ø6 mm rod," indicated for "sublaminar, interspinous, or facet wiring techniques." A printed publication predating 2017-12-01 disclosing exactly the band-plus-connector-plus-rod architecture of claims 2–5.

• Medicrea LigaPASS / LigaPASS 2.0 510(k) summaries K132395, K172021, K213659 (verified): polyester (PET) band, titanium connector with a rod set screw and a separate locking set screw for the band ("dual independent locking"), medially-placed connector, band passed around/through vertebra. Again squarely the claim 2–5 structure, published before the critical date.

Group C — Interspinous tension-band wiring (the ancient core technique)

• The patent's own specification concedes the class: the band "may be, for example, Mersilene tape (Ethicon, Summerville, N.Y.)," and the grommet "may have been deployed from a conventional pliers type grommet tool." Both statements are admissions that woven PET tape and pliers-type grommet tools are known.
• The Alamin-family background sections list classic interspinous/fusionless implants by number — U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,966,600; 5,011,494; 5,092,866; 5,282,863; 5,496,318; 5,645,599; 5,725,582, EP 0 322 334 A1, FR 2 681 525 A1, and the US 2005/0216017 A1 flexible interspinous restraint — i.e., the entire art of bands/cables around spinous processes and interspinous spacers. I have not independently re-verified the disclosure of each of these numbers, so I treat them as a class, not as individually charted references.

Group D — Instruments

• Bone punch (claim 6): the granted patent is classified by the USPTO in A61B17/1606 — "Chisels; Rongeurs; Punches; Stamps of forceps type, i.e. having two jaw elements moving relative to each other" — confirming that opposed-jaw bone punches are an established device class. I did not verify a specific punch patent of record; one would need to be identified in the file wrapper for a formal ground.
• Grommet/liner (claims 7–8): conventional pliers-type grommet tools (admitted, above); cervical/spinal cable sleeves and grommets for protecting tethers from bone edges are likewise long-known.

Group E — Flagged, unverified

• WO 2009/130276 A1, "System for stabilizing at least a portion of the spine," and JP5681122B2, "Surgical tether device and method of use," appear in the citation tables surrounding US10918422B2. I could not verify their disclosures; treat as leads only.

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3. The background of the '422 patent is itself a motivation-to-combine admission

The specification states (verbatim, and unchallenged by applicants): PJK prevalence "ranging from 20% to 39%," PJF prevalence "1.4% and 35%," and "The cost of revision surgery following PJF has been estimated to be about $77,000." It further concedes that "vertebral osteosynthesis equipment which is configured to distribute the increased loading within adjacent segments would be desirable." Two consequences:

• The problem (junctional overload after long posterior fusion) and the demand for a junction-spanning construct are admitted art.
• Under KSR and MPEP § 2143(C) ("obvious to try"), there is a finite, predictable set of solutions: extend the construct one or two levels cranially and/or add a soft-tissue tether across the junction. The patent selects precisely that finite set (two, three, four,… ten levels; "UIV+1/−1, UIV+2/−2, UIV+3/−3, etc."). Choosing UIV+1 through UIV−1 is the narrowest and most obvious member of that set.
• Note also the settled principle that discovering the cause of a known problem does not make the known solution patentable; the novelty here is at most the recognition that the adjacent-level failure is PJK/PJF, and "the preamble's recitation of a newly recognized problem does not distinguish the mechanical steps from the art." (I am deliberately not citing a specific case name here — I don't have high confidence in the reporter citation — but the doctrine is well established; cf. MPEP § 2141.02 and § 2143.)

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4. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — Claim 1 obvious over US 2013/0325065 A1 in view of the Alamin/Simpirica tether-structure art (US 2016/0008038 A1; US 9,295,499) and interspinous tension-band wiring

Motivation (KSR): (i) same field of endeavor — posterior spinal fixation/soft-tissue restraint; (ii) the references address the same admitted problem (junctional loading after fusion); (iii) predictable result — a band that spans UIV+1→UIV−1 and is tensioned inferiorly necessarily resists the flexion/kyphotic moment at the UIV junction, the very force the art identifies; (iv) combination of known elements (band + bore + connector + rod) "according to known methods … to yield predictable results," MPEP § 2143(A); (v) the '422 patent itself says the disclosed system merely "seek[s] to modify the forces across the UIV and UIV−1 junction," i.e., a force-distribution improvement of a known construct.

Ground 2 — Claims 2, 3, 4, 5 obvious over Ground 1 in further view of U.S. Pat. No. 9,314,275 (and/or the Zimmer Universal Clamp 510(k) K110348, and/or LigaPASS K172021/K213659)

• Claim 2 (connector to posterior instrumentation): US 9,314,275 / Universal Clamp / LigaPASS all disclose a connector that clamps a band to a rod of a posterior construct — precisely "attaching a connector to the posterior spinal instrumentation."
• Claim 3 (connector to the spine): US 2013/0325065 A1's spiked connector plate and the Alamin clamp bodies are anchored directly to bone.
• Claim 4 (both ends exit the first bore and are locked under tension in a connector): LigaPASS 2.0 dual-band connectors (K172021/K213659) receive two band ends in separate conduits with independent set screws; US 9,295,499's clamp captures a tether with a fastener.
• Claim 5 (connector medial to left and right rods): a mere positional/design choice — the LigaPASS "Medial" and "Medial Open" connectors (K172021) are expressly medial; and the '422 specification itself calls the sagittal-plane location a preference ("though the particular position is not limiting"), a self-defeating characterization of this claim.

Motivation: express teaching in the incorporated '275 patent and the LigaPASS/Universal Clamp publications to connect a band to a rod, coupled with the admitted desirability of anchoring a junction tether to existing instrumentation.

Ground 3 — Claim 6 obvious over Ground 1 in view of any conventional opposed-jaw bone punch (class A61B17/1606)

Claim 6 adds only "locating opposing jaws of a bone punch on opposing sides of the spinous process, and punching the first transverse bore." Opposed-jaw forceps-type punches/rongeurs are the established device class (the patent is classified there). The punch is claimed as a separate instrument, not as part of the method's therapeutic effect; substituting a punch for a drill is "(1) a known technique (2) applied to a known method (3) ready for improvement, to yield predictable results" (MPEP § 2143(D)) — the known advantage being avoidance of drill thermal necrosis and jaw-clamping stabilization of the spinous process. Caveat: a specific punch reference of record should be identified to make this ground formally complete; I could not verify one from the page.

Ground 4 — Claims 7 and 8 obvious over Ground 1 in view of conventional bore liners/grommets

Claims 7–8 add insertion of a liner, preferably a grommet. The specification admits the grommet may come from "a conventional pliers type grommet tool," and the stated purpose (avoiding the band catching/breaking on rough bone edges) is the universal purpose of a grommet. Adding a known chafing-protection sleeve to a known band-through-bone construct is a predictable, purely mechanical improvement — MPEP § 2143(A)/(D).

Ground 5 — Claims 9–13 obvious over Ground 1 in view of US 2016/0008038 A1 / US 9,295,499

Claims 9–13 recite band directionality and a mirror-image second band. The Alamin/Simpirica disclosures expressly teach tether structures over three or more adjacent vertebrae "elastically connected by two or more contiguous tether structures," with first and second tether portions "disposed symmetrically on opposite sides of the spinous processes," and loops that pass over/around successive spinous processes. Routing a second band in mirror image to exit on the contralateral side is the identical, inevitable geometry of a symmetric two-side constraint, and is moreover the geometry dictated by the two-rod construct the patient already has (the '422 patent's own Fig. 2A: band 120 left, band 122 right). MPEP § 2143(F) (obvious design choice) and § 2144.04 (routine optimization).

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5. Anticipation vs. obviousness — why not § 102

I found no single verified reference that anticipates claim 1. The closest, US 2013/0325065 A1, couples straps over spinous processes rather than teaching a band threaded through three transverse spinous-process bores with both ends exiting the superior bore and extending inferiorly to a rod-mounted connector. The claim therefore survives § 102 but not § 103.

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6. Counter-arguments the patent owner would raise, and responses

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7. Bottom line

Under the AIA and KSR, claim 1 is prima facie obvious over US 2013/0325065 A1 in view of US 2016/0008038 A1 / US 9,295,499 and the interspinous tension-band wiring art; claims 2–5 fall in further view of U.S. Pat. No. 9,314,275 and/or the Zimmer Universal Clamp (K110348) and Medicrea LigaPASS (K172021/K213659) publications; claims 6–8 fall over conventional opposed-jaw bone punches and grommets (the latter admitted in-specification); and claims 9–13 fall over the symmetric multi-segment tether structures of the Alamin/Simpirica family. The strongest single combination is:

US 2013/0325065 A1 + US 2016/0008038 A1 (or US 9,295,499) + U.S. Pat. No. 9,314,275, with the conventional punch/grommet art for claims 6–8 — motivated by the admitted PJK/PJF problem, the admitted desirability of junction load redistribution, the express teaching of tether-plus-fusion combinations, and the finite, predictable set of junction-spanning constructs the art already enumerates.

Confidence caveats: (a) I could not retrieve the enumerated citation list from the page's Prior Art section, so a formal office action or IPR petition should re-derive the grounds from the actual citation list and the file wrapper; (b) the disclosures of WO 2009/130276 A1 and JP5681122B2 are unverified by me; (c) any specific bone-punch reference should be confirmed in the record before relying on Ground 3.