US 11067485

I'll search for the specific patent number and check for any litigation activity.

Summary: US 11,067,485 B2

Searches performed: Google Patents (full text, authoritative copy provided), Justia Patents, EPO publication server, and open-web searches for USPTO/PTAB/CAFC activity tied to the number 11067485. No CAFC 2026 docket entry, IPR, or district-court case was found that specifically names this patent. See the uncertainty note at the end.

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1. Bibliographic data

Prosecution chain (as recited in the patent): US 16/059,447 is a continuation of 15/884,601 (issued as US 10,048,174 B1), itself a continuation of 15/348,813 (US 9,903,794 B2) → 15/150,111 (US 9,493,147 B1) → 14/692,507 (US 9,335,334 B2) → 13/725,763 (US 9,011,773 B2, filed 2012-12-21) → provisional 61/581,032 (2011-12-28). Foreign family members include EP 2797698 B1, EP 3249381 B1, EP 3570000 A1, JP 6227556 B2, CN 103998147 B, ES 2645749 T3, ES 2734309 T3, and WO 2013/101777 A1. Abbott also holds a related design registration, USD 799055 S1 ("Smear tape cartridge").

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2. Abstract (verbatim, per the authoritative text)

"An automated smear making apparatus used to prepare and smear samples on glass slides. In one embodiment, there is provided a smearing subsystem that generally includes a smear cartridge having: an input reel; at least one roll bar; a take-up reel; and a smearing tape. The smearing tape is initially wound within the input reel and coupled to the take-up reel such that the smearing tape can be drawn from the input reel and into the take-up reel. The smearing tape may include a plurality of perforations formed therein. The smearing tape may then be wrapped around the roll bar such that each of the plurality of perforations forms a blade that extends from the smearing tape to expose a smear surface as the smearing tape is drawn into the take-up reel. Alternatively, the smearing tape may be bent such that an edge of the smearing tape forms a smear surface between two roll bars. A slide transport surface is also provided to move a slide across the smear surface."

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3. Independent claims — plain language

Claim 1 — apparatus (a "smearing subsystem" for an automated slide-preparation machine).
The claim recites a smear cartridge containing four cooperating elements:

1. an input reel;
2. a take-up reel;
3. a smearing tape whose smear surface is carried on a blade formed by a cut-out in the tape, where the blade extends outward from the tape to expose that smear surface as the tape is drawn from the input reel into the take-up reel; and
4. a deflection component (e.g., a roll bar) positioned to deflect the tape's cut-out so that the blade is erected/created.

Additionally, the subsystem requires a slide transport surface that moves a slide across the exposed smear surface.

In plain terms: a disposable tape loop on two spools, running past a roller that pops a pre-cut tab out of the tape; a fresh tab edge then acts as a squeegee that is drawn across a blood drop on a glass slide. Notably, the granted claim 1 does not require the tape to be "initially wound within the input reel" and recites a "cut-out" rather than the application's "perforation" — narrower/different wording than the pre-grant publication's claim 1.

Claim 8 — method (of automated slide preparation using a smear cartridge of a smearing subsystem).
Steps:

1. Moving a slide toward a smear surface of the cartridge's smearing tape, where the smear surface is on a blade of a cut-out of the tape;
2. Contacting the slide with that smear surface, the smear surface being exposed when the blade's position is extended by the deflection component as the tape is drawn from the input reel into the take-up reel; and
3. Transporting the slide across the smear surface, wherein the exposed blade smear surface forms a contact angle with the slide when the slide transport surface brings the slide into contact, such that the contact angle depends on a parameter of the sample.

In plain terms: a method of spreading a sample by pushing a slide past a tab-erected tape edge, with the smear angle set as a function of the sample (e.g., its viscosity/hematocrit/volume).

Drafting note (not a legal conclusion): claim 8's third clause refers to "the slide transport surface," which has no earlier antecedent in claim 8 — a potential indefiniteness/antecedent-basis issue worth flagging if the claim is ever construed.

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4. Dependent claims — overview

• Claims 2–3 (from claim 1): the blade's exposed smear surface forms a contact angle with the slide that depends on a sample parameter; claim 3 specifies the parameter as viscosity, hematocrit level, or sample volume. (This is the point of novelty relative to the earlier family members, which claimed the angle in fixed angular terms instead.)
• Claims 4–7 (from claim 1): an identifier for the tape's relative position, used with an optical imaging subsystem. Claim 5 = index openings on the tape edge; claim 6 = painted indicia; claim 7 = an optical sensor that senses the identifier and sets tape position.
• Claims 9 (from claim 8): same viscosity/hematocrit/volume dependency as claim 3.
• Claim 10: the cartridge is configured such that the distance between the front of the deflection component and the smear surface on the slide transport depends on the contact angle.
• Claim 11: the tape is initially wound in the input reel and coupled to the take-up reel.
• Claim 12: the tape comprises an identifier for its relative position.
• Claims 13–14: an angle-control mechanism to adjust the contact angle; claim 14 enumerates adjustment of the deflection component relative to the input reel, the deflection component relative to the take-up reel, the input reel relative to the deflection component, or the take-up reel relative to the deflection component.
• Claim 15: the contact angle is less than about 60°, 45°, 30°, or 15°.
• Claim 16: the deflection component is a roll bar.

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5. Litigation / administrative-review status

I found no district-court complaint, PTAB petition, or Federal Circuit 2026 docket naming US 11,067,485 (or its asserted claim set). Targeted searches for "11067485" plus litigation/CAFC terms returned only unrelated matters (e.g., a Keysight IPR appeal, a Uniloc case, and a UK company-number coincidence for "11067485"). Google Patents shows only routine prosecution/assignment/maintenance events for this patent, with no litigation or PTAB section populated.

Uncertainty / verification caveats:

• My litigation findings are based on public web sources (Google Patents, Justia, PTAB document repositories, govinfo CAFC opinions), not on a direct, live query of the authoritative USPTO Patent Center/Patent Public Advisory system or PACER/CM-ECF dockets. A complaint filed very recently, a sealed filing, or a non-indexed docket would not appear. If a definitive litigation clearance is needed, verify directly against USPTO Patent Center's "Litigation" tab and the CAFC CM/ECF docket.
• The "adjusted expiration 2034-01-19" figure is Google Patents' own estimate and carries Google's standard disclaimer; it is not an official term computation. Term runs from the earliest non-provisional filing (13/725,763, filed 2012-12-21), so a 2034 date implies a substantial PTA/delay adjustment that I have not independently verified against the face of the patent.
• The 4th-year maintenance fee payment on 2024-12-13 is confirmed in the provided record; one search snippet also displayed an "8th year" payment line, which most plausibly belongs to a different family member page rather than to this 2021-issued patent (an 8th-year fee would not be due until ~2029). Treat that snippet with caution.
• I have not independently verified the assignee's current ownership beyond the recorded assignment and Google's "Current Assignee: Abbott Laboratories" listing.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11067485.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me try more specific litigation databases and searches.

Litigation Search Results for US Patent No. 11,067,485

Bottom line: No litigation involving US Patent No. 11,067,485 was located. Based on my searches, I found no district court case, Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit appeal, ITC proceeding, or PTAB (IPR/PGR) challenge in which this specific patent is asserted, challenged, or at issue.

Searches performed

I ran searches against general web indices and litigation-oriented queries, including:

• Unified Patents litigation portal queries (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation)
• CourtListener / RECAP-style queries
• Google Patents / Patent Leaderboard
• Query strings combining the patent number and litigation terms ("11067485" patent lawsuit infringement, US11067485B2 PTAB inter partes review, Abbott "smear" patent lawsuit, etc.)

What the searches returned (and why it is not litigation)

All hits matching the string "11067485" were false positives unrelated to this US patent:

• A UK Companies House filing for "KLOSE & SOAN LIMITED," company number 11067485 — a UK company registration number, not a US patent.
• A UK IPO patent-renewal gazette listing (The Gazette, London issue 900470) in which "11067485" appears as a GB patent number in a renewal-fee list.
• Abbott Patent Leaderboard entry for inventor Koshy T. Chacko listing US 11,067,485 ("Automated smear making apparatus") — an asset/valuation listing, not a case.
• A WIPO/PCT international search report (PCT/US2022/051973) citing US 11,067,485 as a family member/citation, not litigation.

None of these are lawsuits.

Caveats on confidence

• I could not complete exhaustive queries against PACER (paywalled) or run a full docket-by-patent lookup before exhausting my search budget, so this should be treated as "no litigation found in the sources searched" rather than an absolute certification.
• This patent (US 11,067,485) is the sixth continuation in the Abbott Laboratories family (priority date 2011-12-28; parents include US 9,011,773; US 9,335,334; US 9,493,147; US 9,903,794; US 10,048,174). It belongs to an operating company (Abbott), which is less commonly a serial litigant than NPEs — consistent with, though not proof of, the absence of asserted litigation.
• The patent is currently recorded as Active with a (projected) expiration of 2034-01-19, and a 4th-year maintenance fee was paid 2024-12-13. No litigation-related "Change" or assignment events appear in the legal-events record.

Requested table

Since no litigation was identified, there are no entries for plaintiff(s), defendant(s), jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome/status.

Recommendation: To make this conclusive, the next step would be a paid/authenticated search of:

1. PACER docket search (or Docket Alarm / Lex Machina / Unified Patents portal with login) filtering by the exact patent number 11,067,485;
2. PTAB (Patent Trial and Appeal Board) proceeding search at the USPTO PTAB database; and
3. The ITC EDIS database for any Section 337 investigation.

If you can provide access to a paywalled docket platform, I can walk through the exact filters to confirm whether any case exists.

Note on identifier interpretation: I did not auto-correct any number. I interpreted "11067485" literally; because the unformatted 8-digit string collides with unrelated identifiers (a UK company number and a GB patent number), I verified each hit against the actual US patent rather than accepting surface matches.

PTAB AIA-Trial Analysis — US 11,067,485 B2 ("Automated smear making apparatus")

Source of record: the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied in the prompt, which reflects the USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) AIA-trial dataset as of the most recent ingest. That block returns zero proceedings. I ran supplemental web searches (patent number + "IPR"/"PGR"/"PTAB", petitioner names, and defensive-aggregator checks) and found no AIA trial proceeding of any type referencing this patent. I did not find any search result that I could positively identify as a petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal for US 11,067,485. If a proceeding exists that ODP has not yet ingested, I did not locate it — flag it if you have a case number, and I will pull the papers.

Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings on file for US 11,067,485 — no active trials, no claims invalidated, no claims sustained, no settlements, and no institution denials — which means the patent arrives at any current dispute completely untested at the PTAB and entirely un-estopped.

Bottom line for a defendant: you are not looking at a "hardened by surviving IPRs" patent, and equally you are not looking at a "claims already canceled" patent. You are looking at virgin claim scope. Every IPR ground — § 102, § 103, and (subject to the eligibility windows below) § 112 — is still on the table, no petitioner has burned it, and no § 315(e) estoppel attaches to anyone.

No proceedings on file

Because the structured data is empty and my searches corroborated that, I am deliberately not generating a per-proceeding section. Inventing a proceeding number, panel, or FWD disposition would be the single worst failure mode here. What I can state with confidence:

• No IPR, PGR, or CBM was located for US 11,067,485 in ODP or in web search.
• No Federal Circuit appeal flowing from a PTAB proceeding exists for this patent — there is nothing to appeal.
• The patent is not in Unified Patents' or any other aggregator's publicly reported challenge portfolio as far as I can determine from open sources.

Caveat on tooling: the ODP block is the canonical list and it is authoritative for this task. I could not independently query PTAB E2E from within this session; my corroboration is web-search based and therefore weaker than the ODP feed. Verify directly at PTAB E2E patent-number search and the PTAB Decisions page before relying on the null result in a filing.

Strategic summary

Claim status of US 11,067,485. The patent issued 2021-07-20 with 16 claims. As issued, claims 1–7 are apparatus/system claims ("A smearing subsystem for use in an automated slide preparation apparatus…"), with claim 1 the sole independent apparatus claim and claims 2–7 dependent; claims 8–16 are method claims, with claim 8 the sole independent method claim ("A method for automated slide preparation using a smear cartridge of a smearing subsystem…") and claims 9–16 dependent. Because no trial has ever been instituted, all 16 claims are UNTESTED. None are CANCELED; none are SUSTAINED by any adjudicative body. Anyone who tells you otherwise — including a plaintiff's demand letter implying validity has been "confirmed" — is mischaracterizing the record. The only validity determinations touching this family are the original ex parte examination, plus foreign outcomes (below).

Estoppel landscape — essentially none. With no IPR/PGR, § 315(e)(2) estoppel does not exist against any petitioner or privy. Any defendant can raise, in district court or in a new PTAB petition, any § 102/§ 103 ground supported by patents and printed publications, plus § 112 grounds (written description, enablement, indefiniteness) — the latter are only available in district court and in PGR, not in IPR. The corollary risk is smaller than usual: because nothing was previously presented to the Board, there is also no § 325(d) "same or substantially the same art" concern from a prior Board proceeding. Note, however, that the 14 references on the face of the patent (see below) were before the Examiner, so a petition built solely on those faces ordinary § 325(d) headwinds.

Timing and forum windows. Three clocks matter:

• IPR remains available for the life of the patent. Adjusted expiration is 2034-01-19 (per the ODP legal-status data), so IPR is open until then, subject to § 315(b).
• § 315(b) one-year bar runs from service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent (or a real-party-in-interest/privy complaint). If a defendant has already been served and the year is running, the petition deadline is hard.
• PGR window is closed. The patent issued 2021-07-20; the 9-month § 321(c) window expired 2022-04-20. Post-grant review is no longer available, which means the § 112 and § 101 arguments are now district-court-only.
• CBM is unavailable. Post-SAS/Unwired Planet, and given the § 18 sunset applicable to petitions filed after 2020-09-16, CBM is not a vehicle here — and in any event the claims recite a mechanical smearing apparatus, not a "financial product or service," so the "technological invention" exception would likely defeat CBM eligibility.

Pattern signals. There is no multi-petition pattern to read because there is no petitioner at all. What is notable is the prosecution architecture: US 11,067,485 is the sixth link in a deliberate continuation chain practicing the same 2011-12-28 priority — US 9,011,773 → US 9,335,334 → US 9,493,147 → US 9,903,794 → US 10,048,174 → US 11,067,485 — all assigned to Abbott Laboratories. That pattern (five successive continuations, each issuing with a fresh claim set) is a well-known claim-tailoring strategy: Abbott kept the family pending for roughly nine years and harvested a sequence of claims with incrementally different scope, very likely to position against a specific competitor product. A defendant asserting invalidity of the '485 must expect to face the same fight, on neighboring claim language, against the five sibling patents — which are all Active per ODP. Do not assume that invalidating or designing around the '485 resolves the family.

Foreign-prosecution signal worth mining. The search results reproduce the Spanish translation of the granted EP family member (ES 2734309 T3, corresponding to EP 3 249 381 B1, grant published 2019-12-05). That document states expressly that the granted invention is a method — "De acuerdo con la presente invención, se proporciona un método para la preparación automatizada de un portaobjetos utilizando un cartucho de frotis de un subsistema de preparación de frotis…" — and adds that "El cartucho de frotis y el subsistema de preparación de frotis por sí mismos no forman parte de la presente invención" (the smear cartridge and the smearing subsystem themselves are not part of the present invention). In other words, the European claim that survived prosecution is method-only, and the apparatus/subsystem claims — analogous to US claims 1–7 — apparently did not survive in that form. That is a meaningful obviousness signal for the US apparatus claims and worth pulling the full EP 2 797 698 B1 / EP 3 249 381 B1 prosecution history to see what art drove the narrowing. (Also note EP 3 570 000 A1 was withdrawn and EP 3 249 381 B1 is not-in-force per ODP's family data.) I have not verified the EP file wrapper directly in this session — treat this as a lead, not a finding.

Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant served with a complaint citing US 11,067,485: there is no FWD to link to and no canceled claim to quote — the defensive story here is "no PTAB challenge has ever been filed or instituted against this patent; no claim has ever been adjudicated invalid or valid." Confirm the null result yourself at PTAB E2E and the USPTO PTAB Decisions search before representing it. Cross-check district-court activity (including the sibling patents) via CourtListener.
2. Calendar the § 315(b) bar immediately. If the one-year window from service is open, an IPR petition on claims 1–7 (cut-out/blade + deflection component + slide transport) is viable and unencumbered by estoppel or Fintiv-forum overlap from a prior Board case. Budget for the possibility of discretionary denial under the Board's current workload-management practice; build the § 314(a) record accordingly.
3. Target the parameter limitations. Claims 2–3 and the parallel method limitation in claims 8–9 recite that the "contact angle … depends on a parameter of the sample" (viscosity, hematocrit, volume). That is a functional/result-oriented limitation with § 112(a) written-description and (potentially) indefiniteness exposure, and it is also a soft § 103 target — none of the pre-2011 references located on the patent face (US 3,871,895; US 3,991,705; US 4,027,623; US 4,269,139; US 5,854,075; US 6,319,470; US 4,137,866; US 8,591,436; JP 2003-279453; et al.) is a "blood-smear-angle-as-a-function-of-hematocrit" reference. This is the most attackable claim language in the set.
4. Expect § 325(d) friction on the face-of-patent art. The 14 cited references were before the Examiner. Any petition built on them needs an explicit § 325(d) narrative (new claim construction, art not actually applied, Examiner error) or should be built on art that was never of record.
5. Map the sibling continuations before choosing a target. US 9,011,773; US 9,335,334; US 9,493,147; US 9,903,794; and US 10,048,174 all share the 2011-12-28 priority. A design-around or validity win confined to the '485 may leave meaningful coverage in the siblings — and because these are all separate patents, invalidity findings are not collateral-estoppel-transferable across them.
6. Mine the EPO file wrapper. Pull EP 2 797 698 B1 and EP 3 249 381 B1 prosecution to identify the art that forced the European claims down to a method-only scope; that art (or an obviousness rationale drawn from it) is a candidate ground that has never been presented to the USPTO for the US apparatus claims.

I'll reconstruct the assignment record from the patent's legal events and cross-check the live assignment/litigation record before writing up.

Let me dig for the assignment correspondent of record and any litigation or transfer activity.

Ownership Analysis — US 11,067,485 B2

Verification note up front: I reconstructed this chain from the Google Patents legal-events extract for US 11,067,485 (which mirrors the Assignment Center record) plus cross-checks against the patent family and assignment data visible in the sources I could reach. One field the Assignment Center normally exposes — the correspondent of record — was not populated in any source I could retrieve, and I hit tool limits before I could pull the underlying assignment image. I flag that gap explicitly below rather than fill it in.

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Inventors

All three inventors executed an assignment of their interest to Abbott Laboratories with an effective (execution) date of 2013-01-08, which is 11 days after the 2011-12-28 priority date and 18 days after the 2012-12-21 filing of the first non-provisional (Ser. No. 13/725,763). That is the ordinary "employee-inventors sign for the company within weeks of filing" pattern.

Unusual-pattern check: Nothing anomalous. There is no record of any inventor assigning to a third party, no inventor departure-and-reassignment trail, and no re-issue or correction. The only inventor-side assignment in the entire six-application family is the original one to Abbott. This is the inverse of the "all inventors exit within 12 months" fire-sale tell.

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Original assignee

Abbott Laboratories (Abbott Park, Illinois) — the assignee named on the issued patent and, per Google Patents, still the current assignee. There is no intervening owner.

• Primary business: diversified healthcare — diagnostics (including hematology / blood-analysis and automated slide-preparation instruments), medical devices, nutrition, and branded generics. Publicly traded (NYSE: ABT). Large-entity patent owner (its 4th-year maintenance fee was paid 2024-12-13 as a large entity, per the legal-events record).
• Product embodying the claims: Strongly indicated, not independently confirmed by me as a commercial-sales fact. The claims cover a reel-to-reel smearing subsystem — a smear cartridge with an input reel, take-up reel, a perforated smearing tape whose cut-out forms a blade, a deflection component, and a slide transport surface. Abbott filed a design patent on the physical consumable, USD799055S1, titled "Smear tape cartridge," priority 2015-12-18, assignee Abbott Laboratories. The existence of a design patent on the cartridge strongly implies the cartridge was commercialized as part of Abbott's automated slide-preparation instrument line. I did not confirm unit sales or a specific instrument model in this session.
• Status: Operating, solvent, not acquired, not in bankruptcy. Contrast this with the size mismatch typical of NPE sales — here a $40B+ revenue operating company retained a 2011-priority consumable patent for ~14 years and is still paying maintenance fees on it.

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Assignment timeline

Chronological record:

• 2013-01-08 (executed) / recorded 2018-11-20 — Reel 047553/0685
  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: Shoffner, John Scott; Chacko, Koshy T.; Solomon, Roei
  • Assignee: Abbott Laboratories, Abbott Park, Illinois, United States
  • Correspondent: ⚠️ Not retrievable. The record as surfaced lists only the assignee name and state ("ABBOTT LABORATORIES, ILLINOIS"); no attorney/agent name or firm was exposed in the sources I reached. I will not guess. (For context only — not for this reel — older Abbott assignment records in the same USPTO dataset list the correspondent address "Abbott Laboratories Patent and Trademark Department, 100 Abbott Park Road, Abbott Park, IL 60064"; I could not confirm that this firm/address is the correspondent on 047553/0685.)
  • Context: Initial inventor-to-employer assignment (the sole ownership event in this chain). The document was executed in Jan 2013 alongside the original filing but recorded in Nov 2018 against this continuation's file (Ser. No. 16/059,447, filed 2018-08-09) — a routine practice of re-recording the original assignment in each continuation file so that the current application shows clean chain of title.

That is the entire recorded chain. No second assignment, no security agreement, no release, no change-of-name, no merger, no license. The five predecessor applications in the family (13/725,763 → US 9,011,773; 14/692,507 → US 9,335,334; 15/150,111 → US 9,493,147; 15/348,813 → US 9,903,794; 15/884,601 → US 10,048,174) each carry a parallel inventor-to-Abbott assignment recorded contemporaneously with their own filings; those individual reel/frames were not exposed in the extracts I could reach and I have not listed them to avoid fabricating numbers.

Because there is only the original assignment, I am stopping the ownership analysis at the inventor→Abbott step and the signal table below reflects that. There is no post-issuance chain to trace.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11067485
    2011 : Priority provisional filed by inventors
    2012 : First non provisional filed by Abbott
    2013 : Inventors assign rights to Abbott Labs
    2018 : Continuation filed as 16 059 447
         : Assignment recorded reel 047553 frame 0685
    2021 : Patent issued to Abbott Laboratories
         : Current assignee unchanged since 2013

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

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Verdict

Insufficient data — in the rubric's specific sense of "only the original assignment."

The entire recorded chain consists of one document: the inventors' 2013-01-08 assignment to Abbott Laboratories, recorded 2018-11-20 at Reel 047553/0685 against application 16/059,447. There is no post-issuance transfer, no LLC in the chain, no asserter, no litigation, and no bankruptcy — so none of the eight NPE tells can be marked present. The practical reading is that Abbott Laboratories, a large operating diagnostics manufacturer that commercialized the smear-tape cartridge (cf. its design patent USD799055S1), has held this patent continuously since filing; the absence of a chain is itself the finding. I stopped after the timeline section for that reason, and the two residual unknowns are (a) the correspondent of record on Reel 047553/0685 and (b) confirmation of commercial shipment of the cartridge.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — search patent number 11067485 (mirror: assignment.uspto.gov). Source record for the legal events cited above: Google Patents US11067485B2.

I'll search for the specific patent number and its cited references.

Let me verify a few of the key cited references to ground the descriptions.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 11,067,485 B2

Important framing. This is a technical prior-art mapping, not a legal opinion on validity, infringement, or patentability. I've flagged my confidence level for each item, and where I could not retrieve a reference's full text in this session I say so rather than guessing.

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1. Verification of the target patent (interpreted literally)

Note the identifier resolves exactly to 11,067,485 — no correction applied and no substitute number used. Note also that the "Related Parent" chain (15/884,601 → 15/348,813 → 15/150,111 → 14/692,507 → 13/725,763) and the corresponding family members (US 9,011,773; US 9,335,334; US 9,493,147; US 9,903,794; US 10,048,174) are not prior art to this patent — they share the same 2011-12-28 priority. Likewise the "Families Citing this family (23)" list on the Google Patents page is forward citation data (later art citing this family) and is not § 102 art; several entries there (e.g., Clarapath US 10,571,368 B2, priority 2015-06-30) post-date the '485 priority entirely.

Applicable § 102 regime — a caveat

The '485 patent sits in a chain rooted in a provisional filed 2011-12-28 and a non-provisional (13/725,763) filed 2012-12-21 — i.e., before the AIA first-inventor-to-file provisions took effect on 2013-03-16. The '485 itself was filed 2018-08-09 (after that date), but as a continuation entitled to the 2011 priority it would ordinarily be examined under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)/(b)/(e)/(g). Whether pre-AIA or AIA § 102 governs a given continuation is a fact-specific determination (it turns on whether the application ever contained a claim with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16). I flag this rather than assert it, because it changes how each reference is characterized (e.g., "printed publication" vs. "patented/published application").

The claims being tested (paraphrased)

• Claim 1 (independent, apparatus): smear cartridge with input reel + take-up reel; smearing tape whose smear surface is "included on a blade of a cut-out of the smearing tape," the blade extending as tape is drawn input→take-up; a deflection component configured to deflect the smearing tape cut-out to create the blade; and a slide transport surface to move a slide across the exposed smear surface.
• Claim 8 (independent, method): move slide toward smear surface on a blade of a cut-out; contact; transport across; contact angle depends on a sample parameter.
• Dependent claims: 2–3 and 9 (contact angle depends on sample viscosity/hematocrit/volume); 4–7 (identifier — index openings, painted indicia, optical sensor); 10 (distance from front of deflection component to smear contact depends on contact angle); 11–16 (tape wound on reels; identifier; angle-control mechanism and reel/deflection-component repositioning; contact angle < 60/45/30/15°; roll bar).

Key narrow point: the two independent claims require a cut-out in the tape that becomes a projecting blade. This is narrower than the parent patents (which claimed "perforations") and narrower than the FIG. 8 "bent-edge" embodiment described in the specification but never claimed. That "cut-out blade" limitation is the crux of the § 102 analysis below.

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2. Cited references (all 14, as listed on the face of US 11,067,485 B2)

I mapped all fourteen patent citations shown on the Google Patents record. Two apparent duplicate pairs (same filing date + same applicant) are likely national-phase/priority counterparts of a single disclosure; I've grouped them but kept both listed so nothing is dropped.

Examiner-cited marker: in the "Citations (14)" table only US 4,137,866 A carries the asterisk indicating it was cited by the examiner (the other 13 are applicant/third-party citations in the Google Patents rendering). That is consistent with #6 being the reference the examiner found most pertinent.

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3. Where § 102 anticipation is genuinely arguable — and where it fails

(a) US 4,137,866 A (Heanley) vs. claim 1 / claim 8 — the best § 102 theory

Matching elements: input strip + take-up/indexing arrangement; a flexible tape; punched members at uniform intervals that, when the tape is bent over a pulley (a deflection component), project tangentially from the tape plane to form a tip of predetermined width that lays the blood trace. That is functionally the '485 "cut-out → blade projecting from the tape at a deflection component" mechanism, and the punched-member width element maps to the "critical edge dictates smear width" passage.

Gaps that likely defeat strict § 102 anticipation of the issued claims:

1. Substrate mismatch. In Heanley the article moved past the protruding tip is a second flexible strip (a "trace supporting base"), not a slide moved by a "slide transport surface" as claim 1 requires. Whether a flexible strip reads on "slide" is a claim-construction question; on the plain meaning of the '485 specification (glass/plastic/quartz microscope slide), it is a real difference.
2. "Cut-out" vs. "punched member." Heanley's members appear to be punched members projecting from the strip; whether the residual tape opening is a "cut-out … of the smearing tape" in the '485 sense (a 2.5 mm cut-out leaving a flat critical edge) is arguable but not self-evident from the abstract-level disclosure I retrieved.
3. No "smear surface on the blade" characterization of the kind claim 1 recites.

My assessment: Heanley is a strong § 103 combination anchor and a colorable but incomplete § 102(a)/(b) challenge to claim 1; it does not anticipate the dependent claims' specifics (claims 2–7, 10). Confidence: moderate — I retrieved the Google Patents summary text for US 4,137,866 but not the full patent drawings/specification, so the "input reel/take-up reel" recitation in that reference is not confirmed and I will not assert it.

(b) US 6,319,470 B1 (ABX) vs. the claims — near-miss on the pivotal limitation

This reference expressly discloses an input bobbin, a take-up bobbin, and a smear-preparing tape in a case (this is in fact how the '485 family's own EP/ES prosecution characterized it — see the Spanish translation of EP 3,249,381, which recites: "El documento US6319470 desvela un método automatizado de preparación de frotis, en el que un carrete de entrada, un carrete de recogida y una cinta de preparación de frotis, se guardan en un estuche que se puede cambiar cuando se acaba la cinta."). It also discloses an adjustable contact angle B of ~30°, an advance-between-smears anti-contamination strip, and optical measurement of the drop used to modulate the spreading operation.

That maps closely onto: input reel/take-up reel (claim 1/11), single-use smear surface advanced per slide (specification), adjustable contact angle (claims 13–14/15), a roll-bar-like ridge as the deflection/shaping element (claim 16 analog), and adjustment based on an optical sample measurement (claims 2–3, 9 and claims 4–7 optical sensor).

But ABX uses a continuous, un-perforated plastics strip stretched over a counter-block ridge — precisely the '485 FIG. 8 "bent-edge" alternative, not the "blade of a cut-out" that claims 1 and 8 both require. Consequently:

• ABX does not anticipate claims 1 or 8 of the '485 patent (missing the cut-out blade).
• ABX would anticipate the FIG. 8-style embodiment as described in the specification — but that embodiment is not claimed in the '485 patent, so it is not a § 102 hit against the issued claims.
• ABX is, however, a very strong § 103 reference against claims 2–3, 9, 10, and 13–15.

Confidence: high on the ABX disclosure content (I retrieved the full "Definitions"/summary text and the EP 0 984 263 A1 abstract).

(c) US 5,854,075 A (Alpha Scientific) — § 103, not § 102

Same field and same purpose (automated blood smear), but contamination control by cleaning a reusable spreader blade rather than a single-use indexed tape blade. This is a structural difference, and the cleaning approach can be argued as teaching away from a disposable-tape solution. It therefore supports the '485 patent's "low-cost, single-use, cross-contamination-free" framing rather than undermining it. No § 102 exposure. Confidence: high (full abstract retrieved).

(d) All remaining references (1–5, 7, 10–14)

These are either (i) older spreader-blade smear devices with no tape/reel architecture (US 3,871,895; US 3,991,705; US 4,027,623; US 4,269,139/JPS 52-77791), (ii) different-problem disclosures (US 2008/0193926 extraction; US 8,591,436 lancet tape), or (iii) references I could not fully retrieve (JPH 02-91541; US 2007/0140903). None discloses the combination of input reel + take-up reel + a tape cut-out whose blade is erected by a deflection component + a slide transported across the resulting smear surface. Therefore no claim of US 11,067,485 B2 is anticipated by these references under § 102; they are at most § 103 background.

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4. Bottom line

• Most relevant prior art, in order: US 4,137,866 A (Heanley) > US 6,319,470 B1 (ABX) > US 5,854,075 A (Alpha Scientific).
• § 102 anticipation candidates: only US 4,137,866 A presents a genuine (though incomplete) § 102 challenge, and only to claim 1 (and, by parallel reasoning, claim 8), because it is the only reference that shows a punched/tape-carried element being erected into a projecting tip by bending the tape over a rotating deflection element. Even there, the "slide transport surface" and "cut-out" limitations are not cleanly met.
• US 6,319,470 comes closest on the apparatus architecture (input bobbin/take-up bobbin/consumable strip/adjustable angle/optical feedback) but fails the "cut-out blade" limitation of every issued claim; it would have anticipated only the unclaimed FIG. 8 bent-edge embodiment.
• No other cited reference anticipates any claim. The remaining eleven are § 103 background art or (for two of them) not analyzable from the material available to me.

Explicit limitations of this analysis: (1) I did not retrieve full texts of JPS 52-77791 A, JPH 02-91541 A, JP 2003-279453 A, or the full specifications of US 4,137,866 and US 2007/0140903, so those characterizations rest on titles/abstracts — treat them as provisional. (2) I have not performed a claim-chart against the full text + drawings of each reference, which is what a formal § 102/§ 103 opinion would require. (3) This is a technical prior-art mapping only; it is not legal advice.

Sources used: https://patents.google.com/patent/US11067485/en ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/11067485 ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US4137866 ; https://patents.google.com/patent/US6319470 ; http://data.epo.org/gpi/EP0834065A4 ; http://www.oepm.es/pdf/ES/0000/000/02/73/43/ES-2734309_T3.pdf

I'll research the cited prior-art references to ground the obviousness analysis.

Let me gather details on the remaining key references.

Obviousness analysis — US 11,067,485 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Identification of the patent and the operative claim set

US 11,067,485 B2 ("Automated smear making apparatus"), App. No. 16/059,447, filed 2018‑08‑09, granted 2021‑07‑20, assignee Abbott Laboratories; earliest priority 2011‑12‑28 (Prov. 61/581,032); sixth continuation in a six-member family (US 9,011,773 → 9,335,334 → 9,493,147 → 9,903,794 → 10,048,174 → 11,067,485). Per the patent's own prosecution record, a Response to a Non-Final Office Action was entered 2021‑02‑13 and a Notice of Allowance mailed 2021‑03‑15 — i.e., the claims below were allowed after amendment over the art of record. That is important context for the § 103 analysis, because the "[c]laims (16)" reproduced on the page differ in emphasis from the broad summary text in the Description (the issued claims recite the cut-out blade and, in claims 2–3 and 8–10, a contact angle that depends on a sample parameter).

Note on the Prior Art section and cross-reference to the prior work product. The litigation summary generated earlier found no litigation. That does not contradict anything here; it simply means there is no case-derived record of objective indicia (commercial success, copying, unexpected results) to weigh in a Graham v. John Deere analysis. The only prior art available to me is the fourteen references listed in the "Citations (14)" table of this page plus the patent's own cited background, which is what I use below.

One caveat on the record. Only US 4,137,866 (Heanley) carries the "cited by examiner" asterisk in the table on this page. I could retrieve full text for Heanley '866, Technicon US 3,991,705 and US 4,027,623, Alpha Scientific US 5,854,075, and ABX US 6,319,470. For US 3,871,895, US 4,269,139, JPS 52‑77791, JPH 02‑91541, US 2003/0138355, JP 2003‑279453, US 8,591,436 and US 2008/0193926 / US 2007/0140903 I could not obtain full text within my search budget; I use them only at the level of their titles/abstracts and the citation table, and I flag every inference as an inference.

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1. The person of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

A PHOSITA here would be a mechanical or biomedical engineer (B.S. plus ~2–5 years, or equivalent experience) in the field of automated hematology instrumentation — specifically automated slide preparation/smearing and staining systems. That person would know: (a) the manual wedge-smear technique and its variables (drop volume, smear angle, speed, pressure); (b) that reusing a smearing edge causes cross-contamination; and (c) the standard machine elements for moving webs — supply/take-up reels, capstans, guide rollers, sprocket/detent indexing, and optical index marks on film/tape. Critically, all fourteen references sit in exactly this field, so the "analogous art" threshold is satisfied a fortiori.

2. What the claims actually require

3. The prior-art landscape (as listed in the Prior Art section)

• Technicon family — US 3,871,895; US 3,991,705; US 4,027,623; US 4,269,139; JPS 52‑77791. The Technicon/Adler work is the field's foundational "web-based smear" art.
• US 4,137,866 (Heanley) — examiner-cited; the single most on-point reference.
• JPH 02‑91541 (Ichikoh, "film smear device") — a film-based smearing device.
• US 5,854,075 (Alpha Scientific) — automated blood-film device with bar-code read/print.
• US 6,319,470 (ABX) — automated smear device whose spreading counter-block is covered by a wound/unwound plastic strip with optical feedback.
• US 2003/0138355 (Tamura) + JP 2003‑279453 (Sysmex) — smear-preparing apparatus/device with controlled spreading parameters.
• US 8,591,436 (Roche) — bodily-fluid lancets supplied on a tape.
• US 2008/0193926 (Abraham-Fuchs) and US 2007/0140903 (Ying Jin) — smear sample extraction / blood smear preparation devices.

3.1 Heanley US 4,137,866 — discloses the "cut-out → blade over a deflection component" element almost verbatim

From the reference itself (Google Patents; PDF):

"a plurality of trace laying members is punched axially at equal intervals and which, when flexed over a sprocketed pulley projects the said trace laying members along their planes tangent at their points of attachment to the said flexible support."

"It is the width of the rectangular member 20 that relates to the ultimate width of the blood trace produced."

"a given trace laying member by means of a large diameter detent wheel… a standard double perforated strip, e.g. a 16mm film base making the detent positions coincide with the eight sprocket index teeth of the pulley carrying the punched trace laying members."

That is, in substance: a flexible tape perforated with cut-outs; the cut-out becomes a protruding blade only because the tape is flexed over a sprocketed pulley (roller); the protruding tip is the smearing edge whose width defines the smear width; and the tape is indexed member-to-member so each smear uses a fresh member. Heanley also expressly frames the problem solved as avoiding "inadvertent transfer of cells from one sample to another" and "cross-contamination."

The differences from claim 1 are: (i) Heanley lays the trace on a moving flexible substrate strip rather than on a slide carried by a transport surface; and (ii) Heanley does not emphasize a housed supply/take-up reel pair as a disposable cartridge.

3.2 Technicon US 3,991,705 / US 4,027,623 — supply the reel-to-reel cartridge and the slide-transport elements

US 3,991,705 (Google Patents; PDF) discloses the web over a roller plus a disposable cartridge:

"the ribbon 42 is supplied from a suitably supported supply spool 50 … a motor-driven take-up spool 56 is provided for the ribbon 42 and the spool is preferably housed in a box cover 58 and is disposable therewith to very effectively inhibit contamination to the user by an infectious disease which may be carried by that portion of each blood specimen remaining on the ribbon."

"the platen 44 … has an arcuate surface over which the ribbon 42 runs when driven … the platen may take the form of a stationary rod."

"the ribbon 42 is then advanced again to present a fresh surface portion and to advance a used portion of the ribbon 16 to the [ ] collection spool."

US 4,027,623 (Google Patents; PDF) adds the slide transport and the ribbon/slide contact angle:

"a support in the nature of an elongated track 40 for the sliding therealong of a series of microscope slides 42 … a pusher 44 advances the slides intermittently … the ribbon 16 is in contact with one such slide 42 forming an angle therebetween into which a sample … is dispensed."

"the ribbon 16 is then advanced again to present a fresh surface portion and to advance a used portion of the ribbon 16 to the [ ] collection spool."

"a strip of tape 12 is trained over a non-translatory roller 14 … advanced intermittently by [ ] pinch rollers."

So Technicon supplies: (a) reel-to-reel disposable web cartridge; (b) a roller/rod over which the web is deflected; (c) a slide transport surface that moves slides across the web; and (d) web advance to present a fresh surface per slide.

3.3 ABX US 6,319,470 — the reel-to-reel smearing strip with optical feedback

From the reference (Google Patents; PDF):

"the spreading unit comprises a counter-block which can be applied at a predetermined angle against the surface of the plate … this counter-block is covered with a flexible strip of plastics material, which is supported by means for winding and unwinding, such that the said strip has a part which is in contact with the blood, which strip is displaced between two successive spreading operations, thus making it possible to avoid any risk of contamination."

"These means for winding and unwinding advantageously comprise a first bobbin, from which the new strip is unwound, and a second bobbin, onto which the strip which is soiled by the blood is wound, these bobbins preferably being contained in a case."

"The spreading unit advantageously comprises a measuring unit, which can measure the optical transmission of the drop of blood … in order to deduce a measured value, which can be used in order to adjust the spreading speed, and thus the thickness."

ABX therefore discloses the reel-to-reel single-use smearing element (input bobbin/take-up bobbin, optionally in a case), a predetermined smear angle, and optical measurement of a sample property used as feedback to control the smear.

3.4 Alpha Scientific US 5,854,075 — automated smear device with optical read/print identification

From the abstract as reproduced (Google Patents/EP 0834065; Justia):

"The carriage then moves to a position permitting contact between the blood and a spreading blade mounted on a flexible member … creating the blood smear… The device includes a bar code reader and printer, making it possible to read a bar code located on a specimen container, and to print indicia onto the slide."

That places optical identification/sensing squarely inside an automated blood-smear instrument.

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4. Combinations that render the claims obvious

Combination A — Heanley '866 + Technicon '705 + Technicon '623 → claims 1, 8, 11, 16

• Heanley '866 teaches every functional element of the "cut-out → blade" limitation: perforated tape, members "punched axially at equal intervals," projecting tangentially when "flexed over a sprocketed pulley," the projecting tip being the smear edge whose width sets the smear width, and indexing to a fresh member per smear.
• Technicon '705 teaches the missing claim-1 packaging: a supply spool and a motor‑driven take‑up spool for the web, contained in a disposable cover to prevent cross-contamination, with the web trained over an arcuate platen/stationary rod (the "deflection component").
• Technicon '623 teaches the missing claim-1 slide transport surface: a track 40 with microscope slides 42 advanced intermittently by a pusher 44, with the web forming an angle with the slide and a fresh web portion presented per slide.

Motivation (KSR rationales): all three are in automated hematology smear preparation and address the same two problems — (i) preventing cell carry-over between specimens and (ii) obtaining uniform, reproducible smears. Technicon '705 states the cross-contamination objective expressly ("inhibit contamination to the user by an infectious disease which may be carried by that portion of each blood specimen remaining on the ribbon"), and Heanley states the same objective ("eliminates the danger of inadvertent transfer of cells from one sample to another"). Combining a known cut-out-on-a-roller blade with a known reel-to-reel disposable web cartridge and a known slide pusher/track is the predictable arrangement of known elements with no change in their respective functions — the classic KSR "predictable variation." A PHOSITA would further be motivated by the simple desire to make the smear surface disposable and indexed, which Technicon already does.

Combination B — ABX '470 + Heanley '866 (+ Tamura '355 / Sysmex JP '453) → claims 1, 2, 3, 8, 9, 10

• ABX '470 supplies: input bobbin/take-up bobbin ("first bobbin… second bobbin") for a single-use plastics strip, optionally "contained in a case"; a counter-block applied to the plate "at a predetermined angle"; strip "displaced between two successive spreading operations… to avoid any risk of contamination"; and an optical measuring unit (electro-luminescent diode + photo-diode) measuring the transmission of the blood drop to adjust the spreading — i.e., feedback from a sample-dependent optical parameter.
• Heanley '866 supplies the blade-of-a-cut-out structure and its deflection over a pulley.
• Tamura US 2003/0138355 / Sysmex JP 2003‑279453 (smear preparing apparatus/device) are cited to show that smear‑preparing instruments of this class conventionally exposed control inputs for spreading parameters; I flag that I could not verify their internal disclosures beyond the title/abstract/citation record.

Motivation: ABX expressly frames its invention around "controlled" spreading and avoiding contamination from a previous spreading — the identical problem statement to Heanley's and to the '485 patent. Substituting Heanley's cut-out blade for the smooth leading edge of ABX's strip is a simple substitution of one known smearing edge for another to obtain the known benefit (a defined, sharp leading edge; Heanley even teaches that the tip width sets smear width). For claims 2–3, ABX's own measuring unit — which measures a property of the drop of blood optically and changes the spreading condition in response — supplies both the technical mechanism (optical sensing → adjust smear geometry) and the motivation (to obtain a regular smear "irrespective of the quantity of cells present in the blood," per ABX's own summary). Applying that feedback to the contact angle rather than the speed is, at most, an obvious choice among a small number of known smear-control variables (the patent's own Description lists angle, velocity profile, wicking time, pressure, and centering as the tunable parameters — a list a PHOSITA reading ABX and Heanley would already have).

Combination C — Heanley '866 (or Technicon '705) + Alpha Scientific '075 (+ Roche '436) → claims 4, 5, 6, 7 and 12

• Heanley '866 teaches accurate web/blade positioning by a "detent wheel" whose "detent positions coincide with the eight sprocket index teeth of the pulley," with the flexible supports being punched with "location holes" and "trace numbers." That is an identifier for the relative position of the tape/blade for registration purposes.
• Alpha Scientific '075 teaches that the same class of instrument already uses an optical reader (bar-code reader) and a printer for identification in an automated blood-smear device.
• Roche US 8,591,436 teaches a tape carrying discrete consumables/features with indexable positioning, supporting the general practice of optically indexing a tape. (Caution: the citation table lists US 8,591,436's grant date as 2013‑11‑26 against a 2004‑04‑30 priority, and does not give its application-publication date; its availability as § 102(b) art as of the 2011‑12‑28 priority date is therefore uncertain and would need the actual pre‑2011 publication date to confirm. I would not rest claims 4–7 on it alone.)

Motivation: the very purpose of Heanley's detent/index system is to position the correct member for the next smear; replacing a mechanical detent with an optical mark + optical sensor is a recognized, routine substitution in web-handling (film, tape, and printer transports), especially where a disposable cartridge must self-register to the host instrument. Alpha Scientific confirms that optical identification hardware was already integrated into an automated blood-film instrument. Claims 5 (index openings on the edge) and 6 (painted indicia) are the two ordinary alternatives for such marks; claim 7's "optical sensor … set the position of the smearing tape" is the express function Alpha Scientific's optical reader performs.

Note on claim language: claim 4 recites "an identifier to identify the relative position of the smearing tape and an optical imaging subsystem," while claim 7 refers to "the optical imaging system" — a shift from "subsystem" to "system" with no express antecedent. If challenged, claim 7 must be read as referring to the claim-4 subsystem; the different wording does not change the § 103 analysis, but it is a § 112(b) vulnerability worth recording.

Combination D — the Technicon family (US 3,871,895 + US 3,991,705 + US 4,027,623 + US 4,269,139 + JPS 52‑77791) as a single-art-unit line → claims 1, 8, 11, 15, 16

The five Technicon/JPS references are a single corporate family line of "web/ribbon smear-transfer" apparatus. Read together they disclose, cumulatively: depositing a sample on/against a web, drawing the smear by relative movement of web and substrate, advancing the web to present a fresh portion, housing supply/take-up spools in a disposable cartridge, contacting web and slide at an angle, and (in US 4,269,139 / JPS 52‑77791) transfer of substances to a substrate. They do not, on the material I could verify, disclose the cut-out blade — hence the need for Heanley. This line is best used to establish the state of the art and the motivation, rather than as an independent anticipation-style combination.

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5. Why a PHOSITA would have been motivated — the express rationales

1. Same field, same problem. Every reference is automated hematology smear/slide preparation. Heanley, Technicon '705, and ABX '470 each state, in their own words, that the point of the invention is to avoid transfer of cells/contamination from one specimen to the next and to improve smear uniformity.
2. Known elements, unchanged function. Reels, take-up spools, rollers, cut-out/punched tape, detent/sprocket indexing, bar-code optics, and a pusher/track moving slides are each old and each performs in the combination exactly what it performed before.
3. Explicit teachings supply the missing pieces. Technicon '705 literally teaches a disposable supply-spool/take-up-spool cartridge for a smear web; Heanley literally teaches a cut-out that protrudes into a blade when passed over a roller and that the tip width sets smear width. The '485 claim 1 is the arithmetic sum of those two teachings plus a slide transport (Technicon '623).
4. The functional claim 2/3 is the natural next step. ABX '470 already measures a sample property optically and feeds it back to change the spreading. Once the smear geometry includes a "contact angle" (as Technicon '623 makes explicit and as the manual wedge-smear technique always had), applying the ABX feedback to the angle is a design choice within a small, known set of smear-control variables.
5. Regulatory/market pressure. Automated hematology platforms must produce slides that are interchangeable with manually prepared ones; that pressure favors standardizing smear geometry programmatically, which is precisely what claims 2–3 and 8–10 recite as a result.

6. Counterarguments the patentee would raise, and their weight

• "Heanley lays a trace on a moving strip, not a smear on a slide." True, and that is why the slide-transport element must come from Technicon '623, Alpha Scientific '075, or ABX '470. This is a combination point, not a non-obviousness point.
• "ABX's strip is a counter-block cover, not a blade." True as to ABX alone; Heanley supplies the blade. Again a combination point.
• "Heanley's openings are for retarding cells, not for making a blade." The reference itself contradicts this: it says the punched members "project … along their planes tangent" and that the tip's width "relates to the ultimate width of the blood trace." The projecting member functionally is the blade.
• "The contact angle depends on a sample parameter" is a result, not a structure. Functional result language is judged by whether the result would have been obvious from the prior art; ABX's optical measuring unit gets there. This claim language is also highly susceptible to a § 112(b) indefiniteness/enablement attack, which weakens its weight as a § 103 distinction.
• Secondary considerations. The earlier litigation search found no litigation, and the page shows no evidence of commercial success, copying, unexpected results, or industry praise tied to these claims. There is therefore no Graham factor 4 evidence to rebut the prima facie case. (The 2024‑12‑13 4th‑year maintenance fee and continued assignee interest establish only that Abbott values the family — not nexus-bearing objective indicia.)

7. A related risk worth flagging (not § 103, but adjacent)

Because this is the sixth continuation in a family that also issued as US 9,011,773, 9,335,334, 9,493,147, 9,903,794, and 10,048,174 with closely related disclosure, obviousness-type double patenting (OTDP) is the more likely invalidity theory to be pressed against the specific claim wording added in this continuation (the cut-out-blade and sample-parameter-dependent-angle limitations) if any of the earlier family members claim overlapping subject matter without a terminal disclaimer. I did not verify the presence or absence of terminal disclaimers in this file, so I state this as a risk to be checked, not as a conclusion.

8. Bottom line

On the art of record, claims 1, 8, 11, 15 and 16 are the most vulnerable: Heanley US 4,137,866 (examiner-cited) supplies the cut-out-to-blade-by-deflection teaching, Technicon US 3,991,705 supplies the reel-to-reel disposable web cartridge and the roller/platen, and Technicon US 4,027,623 supplies the slide transport and the web/slide angle — a three-reference combination that maps to claim 1 essentially element-for-element, with strong, expressly stated motivations (avoiding cross-contamination; presenting a fresh smear surface; reproducible smears) in each reference. Claims 2, 3, 9 and 10 are additionally suggested by ABX US 6,319,470's optical measurement of a sample property used as smear-control feedback, and claims 4–7 and 12 by Heanley's detent/index positioning in combination with Alpha Scientific US 5,854,075's optical bar-code reader/printer in the same instrument class. The principal practical gaps in my analysis are the references for which I could not retrieve full text (US 3,871,895, US 4,269,139, JPS 52‑77791, JPH 02‑91541, US 2003/0138355, JP 2003‑279453, US 8,591,436, US 2008/0193926, US 2007/0140903) and the absence of any objective-indicia record, since no litigation was located.