US 11150245

I'll search for information on US patent 11150245, including any 2026 litigation activity.

Let me search more specifically for litigation and the assignee's patent activity.

Let me do one final targeted search for any 2026 litigation or PTAB activity.

US Patent 11,150,245 B2 — Analyst Summary

Sources: Google Patents full text (fetched 2026‑09‑24, provided as authoritative); cross‑checked against FreePatentsOnline, Patents‑Review.com, and patent‑family records surfaced by live search. Where the record is silent, I flag it explicitly.

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1. Bibliographic data

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2. Abstract (verbatim)

"Circulating tumor cells (CTCs) are associated with metastasis of malignant solid tumors in a patient. Presented here is evidence that CTCs exhibit cell cycle phase variability and that there is a strong correlation between the number of CTCs in a mitotic cell cycle phase and the prospects for long term survival of the subject from which the cells were obtained. Also presented herein are methods of determining the mitotic cell cycle phase of CTCs from a patient having cancer and using the information in grading malignant solid tumors and predicting the likelihood of survival of the patient."

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3. Plain‑language overview of the independent claims

⚠️ Caveat on source: The fetched Google Patents extract provided to me contains the abstract, description, and examples but not the granted claim set (the "Claims" block was not included in the text supplied). The nine "embodiments" reproduced below are the BRIEF SUMMARY OF INVENTION embodiments, which in this family track the independent claims closely but are not a verbatim quote of the issued claims. Treat the following as a faithful summary of the claimed subject matter, not as certified claim text.

The patent is directed to four families of diagnostic/prognostic methods, each with a "basic" version and a "size‑isolation" version (isolating cells 7–25 µm in diameter, then identifying CTCs):

A. Determining the mitotic index (MI) of a CTC population (Embodiments 1–3)

• Determine the cell‑cycle phase of each CTC in a population, then calculate an MI for the population.
• Variant adds "obtaining the CTC population from a biological sample of a subject."
• Variant adds a front‑end step of isolating cells 7–25 µm in diameter and identifying CTCs among them.
• MI is defined as mitotic CTCs ÷ non‑mitotic CTCs, or mitotic CTCs ÷ total CTCs. Mitotic = prophase, prometaphase, metaphase, anaphase, telophase, or cytokinesis; non‑mitotic = resting phase or interphase.

B. Predicting likelihood of survival (Embodiments 4–5)

• Obtain a CTC population from a cancer patient and screen for mitotic‑phase cells.
• If ≥1 mitotic CTC is found, the subject is predicted to have a lower likelihood of survival than a same‑cancer subject with no mitotic CTC.
• Variant adds the 7–25 µm size‑isolation/identification steps. A dependent aspect recites a two‑year survival window.

C. Grading a malignant solid tumor (Embodiments 6–7)

• Obtain a CTC population from a patient with a malignant solid tumor and screen for mitotic CTCs.
• If ≥1 mitotic CTC is found, the tumor is graded "aggressive" (the specification also contemplates grading as Grade III or Grade IV).
• Variant adds the 7–25 µm isolation steps.

D. Monitoring treatment effectiveness (Embodiments 8–9)

• Obtain a first CTC population, screen for mitotic cells, administer a cancer treatment, then obtain a second CTC population post‑treatment and screen again.
• An increase in the number of mitotic CTCs (or in the calculated MI) in the second sample relative to the first indicates the treatment is ineffective.
• Variant adds the 7–25 µm isolation/identification steps at both time points.

Supporting limitations appearing across the families (from the specification, likely reflected in dependent claims): identification of CTCs via size (7–25 µm, and numerous sub‑ranges), morphology (e.g., lack of nuclear segmentation into granules), and marker expression/absence — for epithelial tumors notably EpCAM⁺ and CK 8/18/19⁺ with CD45⁻; nuclear/colorimetric staining (DAPI, Hoechst, Sytox, propidium iodide; H&E, hematoxylin, etc.) to read cell‑cycle phase; sample types including peripheral blood (preferably 5–15 mL, e.g. 7.5 mL); and size‑exclusion isolation using a microfilter (CellSieve™).

Note on claim scope: The worked example is a 36‑patient stage III/IV breast cancer cohort (7.5 mL blood), where ≥1 mitotic CTC gave a hazard ratio of 11.1 (95% CI 3.1–39.7; p<0.001) vs. 5.17 for the conventional ≥5 CTC/sample cutoff. The claims, however, are drafted broadly across carcinomas, sarcomas, melanoma, etc., not limited to breast cancer.

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4. Litigation / CAFC 2026 docket check

I searched for judicial activity tied to this specific number (US 11,150,245 / "11150245") and to its assignee. I found no evidence of any 2026 CAFC appeal, district‑court case, or PTAB proceeding involving this patent. I will state plainly that this is a negative finding from web search only — I do not have authenticated access to PACER, the CAFC docket, or the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board docket, so the absence of results should not be read as proof that no such proceeding exists. What did surface is only ordinary commercial/family activity: 2026 publications by Creatv (e.g., US 2026/0063639 A1, US 2026/0125768 A1), a January 2026 grant to US 12,516,379 B2, and a related continuation publication US 2026/0243767 A1 bearing the same "circulating tumor cell mitotic index" title. Also worth flagging for completeness: two non‑US registers returned hits on the bare digits "11150245" (a UK Gazette list and a Brazilian JUCISRS filing for an unrelated company, "TARENTO PARAFUSOS LTDA"); these are coincidental numeric matches to unrelated records, not the US patent.

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5. Confidence and uncertainty statement

• High confidence: all bibliographic fields, the abstract, and the general subject matter — these come from the authoritative full text you supplied and are corroborated by independent sources (FPO, Patents‑Review.com, EP/JP family records).
• Moderate confidence: the independent‑claim summaries — they are drawn from the patent's own nine enumerated embodiments, which in this family are the claim templates, but I did not have the literal granted claim language to quote. The issued claims may be narrower than these embodiments (e.g., limited to specific cancer types, marker sets, or sample volumes), and the exact wording/numbering should be verified against the USPTO PatentCenter claim set or the granted PDF.
• Low/uncertain: any legal‑status characterization beyond "Active per Google Patents," and any implication about litigation. The sources I could reach do not constitute an authoritative litigation check.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11150245 across patent litigation sources.

The initial searches returned noise. Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

No litigation hits yet. Let me check dedicated litigation databases and the patent's own litigation record.

Summary of Findings — U.S. Patent No. 11,150,245

Direct answer: I was unable to identify any known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,150,245. The searches I ran did not return a single district-court case, Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit appeal, ITC investigation, or PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR) naming this patent. I want to be explicit about that up front rather than infer or fabricate a case.

What I verified about the patent (from the authoritative full text)

Search results obtained (and why they do not constitute litigation)

• Searches on "US patent 11150245 litigation," "11150245 patent infringement lawsuit," and Unified Patents portal queries returned no matching case. Hits containing the string "11150245" were unrelated: a Brazilian corporate-registration filing (Tarento Parafusos Ltda.), a UK trademark/gazette number, and an HKEX announcement ID — not U.S. patent litigation. I flag these only to show they are false positives, not cases.
• Queries pairing the patent/assignee with litigation terms ("Creatv Microtech" lawsuit/infringement, "Use of circulating tumor cell mitotic index" asserted in a lawsuit) returned only patent prosecution and portfolio materials (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, Patents-Review, EPO/IP Australia/Australia AU 2018243850, a Spanish ES-2765981 family member) and company press releases — no pleadings, complaints, docket entries, or case numbers.
• Unified Patents, Docket Alarm, and CAFC-oriented searches surfaced only unrelated Unified Patents activities (e.g., Unified Patents, LLC v. Portal Communications, IPR materials) and did not list US 11,150,245 in any litigation or PTAB caselist.

Requested case details

Because no case was identified, I cannot provide plaintiff(s), defendant(s), jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome/status for US 11,150,245. No litigation is known to me for this patent.

Important caveats on search confidence

1. Tool/step limits were hit: several of my follow-up queries (Google Patents "Litigation" tab, Docket Alarm string search, targeted district-court searches) were cut off before completing. My conclusion reflects the evidence actually returned.
2. Absence of evidence ≠ conclusive absence of litigation. A negative search does not affirmatively prove no suit exists. Authoritative confirmation would require checking:
   • Google Patents → US11150245B2 → "Litigation" / "Similar Documents" tabs,
   • Unified Patents Portal → Litigation caselist (search the patent number directly),
   • PACER / CourtListener / Docket Alarm for district-court complaints citing 11,150,245,
   • USPTO Patent Center → Assignments and PTAB for any IPR/PGR,
   • CAFC docket for any appeal referencing the patent or Creatv MicroTech.
3. Creatv MicroTech does hold other patents (e.g., CAML-related claims, CTC microfiltration), and those may have been asserted in unrelated proceedings — but that would not be litigation of US 11,150,245 and I have no verified case for those either.

Bottom line

On the record available to me, there is no known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 11,150,245. If you need a definitive, current confirmation, the patent's Google Patents "Litigation" tab and the Unified Patents litigation caselist (filtering on the exact number 11150245) should be checked directly, as my automated searches were truncated before those could be fully reviewed.

I'll verify the structured data against live sources before writing anything.

No hits so far. Let me run more targeted searches to be thorough.

Let me run a few final checks on litigation and appeals involving the patent owner.

PTAB Activity Report — U.S. Patent No. 11,150,245

Patent: US 11,150,245 B2 — Use of circulating tumor cell mitotic index in cancer stratification and diagnostics
Patent Owner (current assignee): Creatv MicroTech, Inc. (Rockville, MD)
Inventors: Daniel Adams; Cha-Mei Tang
Application: 15/576,472 (filed 2016-05-26; § 371 national-stage entry 2017-11-21)
Priority: 2015-05-26 · Granted: 2021-10-19 · Adjusted expiration: 2037-02-11
Report date: 2026-09-29

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) structured block returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 11,150,245 — no instituted trial, no denied institution, no FWD, no settlement, no appeal. No IPR, PGR, or CBM petition was located in supplemental web searching either (queries run against PTAB petition documents, patent-owner name, and patent number returned nothing relating to this patent), and I found no Federal Circuit appeal involving it.

Bottom line for a defendant: you get no PTAB-derived leverage — there are no canceled claims to point to, no FWD reasoning to import into an invalidity case, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel binding anyone. Conversely, the patent owner has no PTAB win hardening the claims either: the claims are simply untested at the Board. This is a small-company, non-asserted (or barely asserted) diagnostic patent — exactly the profile that never attracts an IPR because there is no defendant with the incentive to pay for one.

Confidence and caveat

Per the operating instruction, the ODP block is the canonical source and it reports zero proceedings. My independent verification was search-based, not a direct PTAB E2E / PTAB Center docket pull — my search tooling returned no indexed PTAB filings referencing this patent number or patent owner, but a negative from a general web index is weaker evidence than a direct docket query. Before relying on this in a client memo, confirm at the PTAB Center search UI (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb#/search) and via the USPTO PTAB API (https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-api), filtered on patent number 11150245 and on "Creatv". I did not find, and am not aware of, any proceeding — but I cannot rule out a very recently filed petition that neither ODP nor the web index has captured. If one exists, it would show up as a PTAB Center docket entry tied to application 15/576,472.

Per-proceeding detail

None. There are no proceedings to report. I will not manufacture proceeding numbers, panels, or dispositions.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all claims UNTESTED at the PTAB. No claim of US 11,150,245 has been canceled, narrowed, or confirmed in an AIA trial, because no trial has occurred. Every issued claim therefore stands as granted — for whatever that is worth, which given the subject matter is not much. The claims are a diagnostic/prognostic method family (determining cell-cycle phase of circulating tumor cells, computing a mitotic index, and correlating that to survival or tumor grade). That is squarely the Mayo/Alice fault line, and the specification's own framing — "the inventors have found that… there is a strong correlation between… the number of mitotic CTCs… and the prospects for long term survival" — is the kind of correlation-based recitation that invites a § 101 challenge. But § 101 is not an IPR ground, and the PGR window (9 months from grant) closed on approximately 2022-07-19, well over three years ago. So the practical consequence is: the strongest attack on this patent cannot be brought at the PTAB at all. It has to be brought in district court under § 101/§ 112, or as an IPR limited to § 102/§ 103 art (patents and printed publications only).

Estoppel landscape: empty, which cuts both ways. With no IPRs, there is zero § 315(e)(2) estoppel in either direction. No party is barred from anything. A defendant today can file an IPR on any § 102/§ 103 ground it can find, and is not constrained by any earlier petitioner's choices. Time bars are the only real gate: under § 315(b), a petition is barred if filed more than one year after service of a complaint alleging infringement of this patent. If you have already been served, that clock is the single most important date in the file. Also relevant institution-side: Fintiv-style § 314(a) discretionary denial if parallel litigation is advanced, and § 325(d) if the examiner already considered your art.

Pattern signals: none. No petitioner has filed multiple IPRs against this patent (or any, that I can find). The patent owner shows no evidence of aggressive PTAB appeal practice — Creatv is a privately held diagnostics company (CellSieve™ / CAML programs, NIH/DARPA-funded) whose public footprint is scientific publication and product marketing, not litigation. There is no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, etc.) in this chain. The reason is straightforward: IPRs are filed by accused infringers, and there is no visible assertion campaign against a deep-pocketed target to generate one. Practically, that means the prior-art landscape here is undeveloped at the PTAB — a mixed blessing. Nobody has mined the art for you, but nobody has already burned the good references on an unsuccessful petition either.

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Recommended next steps

Situation A — you have been served with an infringement complaint citing US 11,150,245.

1. Diary the § 315(b) date immediately. You have one year from service to file IPR. Given the thin art development, do not assume a petition is easy — commission a focused § 102/§ 103 search against the 2015-05-26 priority date, with particular attention to the pre-2015 literature on mitotic index in cytopathology and on circulating tumor cell morphology. The specification itself cites Burton (2000), Clayton (1991), and the Bloom & Richardson grading literature; check whether those or their progeny anticipate the "determine cell cycle phase of each CTC → calculate mitotic index" steps as applied to circulating cells (the novelty, if any, is the application of an old urine/aspirate cytology technique to blood-borne CTCs — a classic obviousness setup).
2. Do not over-invest in an IPR if § 101 is the real case. The claims are vulnerable under Alice/Mayo step two, but that ground lives in district court (or a § 101-based summary judgment), not at the Board. Budget accordingly. If your goal is to kill the patent cheaply, a § 101 motion may be the better instrument than a petition.
3. Confirm no petition is pending before you file. Pull the docket at PTAB Center (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb#/search) and check USPTO Patent Center for application 15/576,472 (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov). If a third party filed first, you may be able to ride their institution decision or, if they were denied, learn from the denial before spending.

Situation B — no suit yet; you are assessing freedom to operate.

• The absence of PTAB activity is itself the signal: this patent has not been stress-tested, and it may never be asserted. Do not treat it as "hardened." Treat it as unknown.
• Prior art and the file history are the levers. The prosecution history of application 15/576,472 (available at Patent Center) may show amendment-based narrowing that is useful for a § 112 or claim-construction argument.
• Monitor for any change: a first IPR petition against this patent would be a leading indicator that an assertion campaign has begun.

Situation C — you are the patent owner.

• Your posture is clean: no canceled claims, no estoppel, no adverse PTAB record. But the claims are untested, and the § 101 exposure is real for a correlation-based diagnostic method. If you intend to assert this patent, expect the validity fight to be a Mayo fight in district court, and consider whether a continuation with claims tied to a specific, unconventional measurement or treatment step would be more defensible before you build a licensing program on the '245 claims.

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Sources and verification links

• Patent text (authoritative): https://patents.google.com/patent/US11150245/en
• PTAB proceedings search (PTAB Center / E2E): https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb#/search
• USPTO Open Data Portal / PTAB API: https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-api
• USPTO Patent Center (application 15/576,472, prosecution history): https://patentcenter.uspto.gov
• CourtListener (Federal Circuit / district court docket search for "Creatv MicroTech"): https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%22Creatv+MicroTech%22

Nothing above is a finding of invalidity or unpatentability. No claim of US 11,150,245 has been adjudicated by the PTAB. Where I have noted litigation-oriented vulnerabilities (§ 101, thin art development), those are my analytical assessments, expressly flagged as such, and not holdings from any proceeding — because there are none.

I'll research the assignment chain for this patent across USPTO assignment records and related sources.

Let me search for the specific recorded assignment details and any ownership changes.

Let me verify a potentially important claim (Thermo Fisher parent) and try to find the actual reel/frame numbers.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,150,245

Scope note / data caveat (read first): I was able to retrieve the existence and substance of the recorded assignments from Google Patents' Legal Events and third-party owner databases, but my searches did not surface the USPTO reel/frame numbers, execution dates, or the correspondent-of-record for the recordings. I will not invent those fields. Where a field is genuinely unknown to me, it is marked [not retrieved] rather than filled in. The patent's Google Patents "Legal Events" tab confirms two ownership recordings (both in favor of Creatv MicroTech, Inc.); the linked USPTO Assignment Center record should be pulled directly to complete the reel/frame + correspondent fields.

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Inventors

Both inventors were employees/founders of the original assignee, Creatv MicroTech, Inc., at the time of filing — the patent's own specification and the surrounding literature (Adams et al., PNAS 2014; RSC Advances 2014/2016) list both as Creatv personnel, and the work was funded by Creatv plus government grants (DARPA, NIH, DoD/CDMRP).

• "Departing inventors" pattern: not present. Unlike the portfolio-fire-sale precursor the task flags, neither inventor left the assignee. Adams rose to CSO of the Creatv Bio division; Tang remains founder/CEO. There is no evidence of inventors spinning out or abandoning the assignee around filing.
• One genuinely unusual pattern is present in the chain of title: one of the two recordings is a "nunc pro tunc" assignment. That term means the assignment was executed after the fact and recorded so as to be effective as of an earlier date (typically the international filing date). It usually appears when the PCT/application was filed by the company as applicant before the inventors' written assignment was formalized, and title had to be perfected retroactively. This is a chain-of-title formality tell, not an NPE tell — but it is worth recording because it means the inventors' rights were not contemporaneously assigned at filing.

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Original assignee

Creatv MicroTech, Inc. — the entity named on the issued patent (Current Assignee field: Creatv MicroTech Inc; Original Assignee: Creatv MicroTech Inc).

• Primary line of business: privately held life-sciences / microfabrication company. Founded ~1996–2000 by Dr. Cha-Mei Tang. It developed the CellSieve™ precision microfilter platform and the LifeTracDx® liquid-biopsy blood test built on circulating tumor cells (CTCs) and the company-discovered cancer-associated macrophage-like cells (CAMLs). Addresses of record across the portfolio: Potomac, MD; Rockville, MD; and Monmouth Junction, NJ.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? — Yes, at least a research/commercial assay. The claimed methods turn on isolating CTCs by microfiltration and cytologically scoring mitotic phase. Creatv sells/sold the CellSieve™ microfilters and runs the LifeTracDx® test (Research Use Only; later a CLIA-certified lab in Monmouth Junction, NJ, with the company stating it is beginning FDA submissions). The company's own materials describe CellSieve assays "used in hospitals and clinics throughout the US and nine other countries." Whether any specific product practices the exact MI-grading claim set is not something I can confirm — but the assignee is unambiguously an operating diagnostics/microfiltration company, not a licensing shell.
• Current status: operating and active. Independent sources in 2022–2026 (ASCO abstracts, PRNewswire releases, company press materials) show Creatv MicroTech and its Creatv Bio division still commercially active, running clinical-trial biomarker work (e.g., with CytoDyn, BriaCell) and operating a CLIA lab as of 2026.

⚠️ Contradiction / unverified data flag: One aggregator (onscope.com owner profile) lists a "Parent Entity: Thermo Fisher Scientific Inc." for Creatv Microtech, Inc. I could not corroborate this anywhere else (no SEC filing, no press release, no news of a Thermo Fisher acquisition of Creatv). This appears to be a database error or a conflation with an unrelated entity. I am flagging it explicitly rather than repeating it as fact — do not treat "Thermo Fisher is the parent" as established. My working conclusion, pending the USPTO record, is that Creatv MicroTech, Inc. remains an independent privately held owner.

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Assignment timeline

The patent is subject to two recorded ownership events, both running inventors → Creatv MicroTech, Inc. (same direction, same assignee, recorded one day apart). Per Google Patents Legal Events:

• Executed [not retrieved] / recorded 2017-11-21 — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: NUNC PRO TUNC ASSIGNMENT
  • Assignor: Adams, Daniel; Tang, Cha-Mei
  • Assignee: Creatv MicroTech, Inc.
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved] (Google Patents truncated the entry as "SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS"; the USPTO Assignment Center abstract of title must be pulled for the attorney/firm and street address)
  • Context: Perfection of the original inventors' chain of title to the filing entity, made retroactive (nunc pro tunc) to the earlier effective date — a title-cleanup, not a transfer of ownership away from the operating company.

• Executed [not retrieved] / recorded 2017-11-22 — Reel [not retrieved]/[not retrieved]

  • Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST
  • Assignor: Adams, Daniel; Tang, Cha-Mei
  • Assignee: Creatv MicroTech, Inc.
  • Correspondent: [not retrieved] (same limitation as above)
  • Context: Confirmation/parallel recordation of the inventors' assignment to the same operating company (the near-duplicate, one-day-later recording of the same inventors-to-company transfer consistent with national-stage formalities).

• 2021-10-19 — Patent granted; assignee remains Creatv MicroTech, Inc. (no intervening assignment recorded).

• No post-issuance assignment to any third party, LLC, or aggregator was found. If the USPTO Assignment Center shows additional records beyond these two, they were not surfaced by my searches — but nothing in Google Patents' legal-events history, the OSCOPE owner record, or any news source indicates a later transfer.

If the Assignment Center's abstract of title shows more than these two records, treat this section as incomplete and re-run the search by application number 15/576,472. As presented, however, the recorded chain is a single-hop inventors→company assignment pair with no downstream transfer.

Correspondent cross-reference: I was unable to confirm the assignment recording correspondent. Separately, third-party patent data lists the prosecution agency for a sibling Creatv patent (US 12,516,379, "Methods of using giant cell nucleic acid characterization…") as Wenderoth, Lind & Ponack, L.L.P. That is prosecution counsel of record on a different patent in the same portfolio — not evidence of the assignment-recording correspondent for US 11,150,245, and I am deliberately not treating it as a match. No recurring NPE-style recording attorney appears anywhere in this chain, because the chain never leaves the operating company.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11150245
    2015 : Priority date 26 May
    2016 : PCT and US filing by Creatv MicroTech
    2017 : Inventors assign to Creatv MicroTech
         : Nunc pro tunc recording filed
         : Second assignment recording filed
    2021 : Patent granted to Creatv MicroTech
    2022 : Creatv Bio division active
    2026 : Still held by Creatv MicroTech

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

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Verdict

Insufficient data — specifically, only the original (inventor→company) assignment is on record in any source I could retrieve; there is no downstream ownership chain to evaluate for NPE behavior.

Justification: the recorded title events are two same-direction recordings dated 2017-11-21 (NUNC PRO TUNC ASSIGNMENT) and 2017-11-22 (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST), both naming Adams and Tang as assignors and Creatv MicroTech, Inc. as assignee; the patent issued 2021-10-19 with that same operating company still of record, and no assignment to any LLC/aggregator appears. This is the classic "clean" profile of a privately held operating diagnostics company that retains its own patents — not an NPE chain — but because the record contains only the original assignment, the verdict rubric's own definition ("no records, or only the original assignment") is the honest classification rather than an affirmative "not-an-NPE" finding, which would require confirming the complete abstract of title and the absence of any later encumbrance.

Two fields must still be pulled directly from the primary source to close the analysis: (a) the reel/frame for each of the two recordings, and (b) the correspondent of record (attorney/firm and address) — neither was retrievable here, and I have deliberately left them blank rather than guess.

Verify at:

• USPTO Assignment Center — search by patent number 11150245 or application 15/576,472: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Mirror index: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents Legal Events (source of the two recordings cited above): https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11150245B2](/patent/US11150245B2)/en

I'll search the USPTO and patent databases for the specific patent 11150245 and its cited prior art.

Let me retrieve the specific cited prior art from the patent's citation records.

Let me access the patent's citation records via additional sources.

Prior Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,150,245 B2

1. Verification of the target patent (interpreted literally)

Family members share the same substantive disclosure: EP 3304074 (translation published as ES 2 765 981 T3), WO 2016/191532 A1, US 2018/0156801 A1, and continuation US 2022/0034888 A1 (app. 17/503,872).

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2. Important limitation on what I was able to retrieve (stated up front)

The task asks me to walk "each patent citation" on the face of US 11,150,245. I was not able to retrieve the USPTO front-page "U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS" / "Patent Citations" list for this patent. My queries hit the tool's step ceiling before I could pull the Google Patents "Patent Citations" pane, the USPTO Patent Center file wrapper for 15/576,472, or the PCT/US2016/034261 International Search Report (the document that would enumerate the patent-document citations of record). I therefore do not report any patent-document citation numbers, because I could not verify them — inventing docket-style prior-art patent numbers here would violate the no-fabrication rule.

What I can report with grounding is:

• the references cited in the patent's own specification (authoritative, from the provided full text), and
• the prior art the patent office identified during prosecution of the same family (from the EP translation ES 2 765 981 T3, i.e. EP 3304074).

Both are set out below. The verification checklist for the missing piece is in §7.

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3. References cited within the patent specification (authoritative — from the full text)

The patent's "REFERENCES" section lists numbered non-patent literature [1]–[27] (the text is truncated at [27] in the source). The references most probative on the claims are:

Key point: [15] (Serrano 2011) is the reference in the applicant's own list that most closely touches the core novelty of the patent — the observation of dividing (mitotic) circulating cancer cells. It is not, however, a teaching of a mitotic index of a CTC population correlated to survival, so it is better characterized as a §102(a)(1) candidate against narrow "screening for mitotic CTCs" claims than against the MI-calculation and prognosis claims.

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4. Prior art identified during prosecution of the same family (EP 3304074 / ES 2 765 981 T3)

The European family member ES 2 765 981 T3 lists four references in its specification that were cited against this invention during prosecution of the corresponding EP case. These are the closest thing to a prosecution-identified prior-art set that I could verify:

Reading of this set: the examiner-identified art clusters on (i) CTC enumeration, (ii) primary-tumor mitotic index, and (iii) CTC proliferation markers — but none of the four discloses a mitotic index of a CTC population correlated to patient survival. That gap is exactly the point of novelty the applicant asserted ("The inventors have shown for the first time that circulating tumor cells … can have cell cycle phase variability").

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5. §102 anticipation analysis (by claim group)

No reference above, on the record I retrieved, is a clean §102(a)(1)/(a)(2) anticipation of the full claim set, because each discloses at most a subset of the claimed steps:

Serrano [15] deserves emphasis: it is the single reference that most closely approaches the novelty of detecting dividing CTCs, and it is cited in the applicant's own background. Any §102 challenge would most plausibly be built on [15] alone against a very narrow "screening for mitotic CTCs" claim, and on [15] + Tryfonidis as a §103 combination against the MI/prognosis claims.

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6. What a complete analysis still requires

To give the "each patent citation" enumeration the task requests, the following must be pulled directly (I could not complete these):

1. Google Patents → US 11,150,245 B2 → "Patent Citations" and "Cited By" panes (front-page patent documents).
2. PCT/US2016/034261 International Search Report — the "C. Documents Considered Relevant" table and any "A/X/Y" patent-document citations.
3. USPTO Patent Center file wrapper for 15/576,472 — the examiner's non-final/final rejection and Form PTO-892 listing cited patents.
4. EP 3304074 A1 register / EPO search report — the ESR is the origin of the four references surfaced in §4 above.

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7. Bottom line

• US 11,150,245 B2 is confirmed: Creatv MicroTech, priority 2015-05-26, directed to CTC mitotic-index methods.
• I could not verify the patent-document citation list, so I do not assert any patent citations.
• The verifiable prior art in the record consists of: (a) the applicant's own cited NPL [1]–[27], most importantly Serrano 2011 ("Circulating cancer cells in division in an early breast cancer patient," Ann Oncol 22(9):2150–2151) and the Adams/Creatv microfiltration papers [3],[17],[18],[24]; and (b) the references cited in the family's European prosecution (Tryfonidis 2014, Spiliotaki 2014, Raimondi 2011, Rossi 2015).
• Strongest §102 candidate: Serrano 2011, and only against narrow "detect mitotic CTC" claims. The MI-of-CTCs and mitotic-CTC–survival limitations do not appear anticipated by any single reference I could verify.
• Strongest §103 combination: Serrano 2011 / Spiliotaki 2014 (CTC proliferation) in view of Tryfonidis 2014 (mitotic index + prognosis) — the examiner's implied theory in the EP family.

If you want the definitive patent-document citation list, the four sources in §6 (especially the PCT ISR for PCT/US2016/034261 and the PTO-892 in the 15/576,472 file wrapper) are where it will be found. I can run those targeted retrievals if you re-authorize additional search steps.

I'll ground this analysis by verifying the key prior-art references from the patent's own reference section and checking for related prior art on mitotic-cell detection in CTCs.

Key finding: the patent's own reference [15] Serrano et al. 2011 is directly on point. Let me pin down the two references the Chinese search report cited against the family (CN101878429A and US2005/0250155A1) and try to retrieve the granted US claim language.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,150,245 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst note / scope caveat. The Google Patents record I was given contains the abstract, description, examples, and the specification's own reference list, but not the granted U.S. claim set. I therefore analyze the claim structure via (i) the nine "BRIEF SUMMARY" embodiments, which are the claim templates in this family, and (ii) the granted family claim text I was able to retrieve from the Chinese counterpart CN107850587B and the Spanish counterpart ES2765981T3 (both in the same priority family, US provisional 62/166,499 filed 2015‑05‑26). Where I rely on the foreign family claims rather than the U.S. claims, I say so. I flag this because a §103 conclusion is only as good as the literal claim language. I also note one contradiction with the prior sections: my earlier litigation summary was correct that no litigation surfaced, but the earlier "Patent summary" section did not flag reference [15] Serrano 2011, which is the single most material piece of prior art in this record — it is discussed below.

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1. The "Prior Art" content of this page

Two sources of prior art appear on the retrieved record:

1. Google's own prior‑art keyword cluster for this document: ctcs, cancer, subject, mitotic, cells. That cluster is essentially the claim itself — an early warning that the inventive concept sits directly on top of the existing CTC literature.
2. The specification's REFERENCES list ([1]–[30]), which the applicant itself incorporated. Under §102/§103 these are printed publications, and several of them are fatal or near‑fatal.

The distinction matters: the patent cites its own worst prior art. That converts much of the specification's "Background" into an admission of what a person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA) knew.

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2. Element-by-element decomposition of the claim

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3. Legal framework

The analysis applies Graham v. John Deere (scope/content; differences; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations), KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (predictable combinations; "obvious to try"; finite number of identified, predictable solutions), and MPEP §2143 rationales — especially (A) combining prior‑art elements per known methods to yield predictable results, (C) using a known technique to improve a similar method in the same way, and (F) "obvious to try."

The art is unpredictable‑art adjacent but not truly unpredictable for this purpose: the analytical act claimed (counting cells in a defined population that exhibit a well‑established morphology) is a classic, deterministic cytology step. Enablement of the biology is not the question; predictability of the measurement is.

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4. The prior‑art corpus (as cited by the patent itself, with what I independently verified)

Additional prior art I verified independently (all pre‑2015‑05‑26):

• Um et al., AACR‑NCI‑EORTC abstract A47, Mol Cancer Ther 10(11 Suppl):A47 (Nov. 2011) — a CellSearch‑based CTC assay for phospho‑histone H3 (pHH3), "a biomarker of mitosis," run on the open/fourth channel. It reports that 1–4 % of cultured tumor cells were pHH3‑positive without drug treatment, that mitotic‑poison drugs (paclitaxel, taxotere, Eg5 inhibitor LY2523355) raised this to 30–50 %, and concludes: "monitoring CTCs with pHH3 expression post‑treatment may be a useful PD marker." This is essentially the monitoring claim, pre‑dated by 3.5 years.
• Park et al., PLoS ONE 9(1):e85264 (2014) — morphological characterization of CTCs from patients (size distributions).
• Mao et al., IEEE ISBI 2015, pp. 190‑194 (16 Apr. 2015) — machine‑learning CTC detection from images (marginal; within the pre‑priority window).

(Caveat: the Chinese search report cites CN101878429A (2010‑11‑03) and US 2005/0250155 A1 (2005‑11‑10) as comparison documents. I attempted to retrieve both and was cut off; I therefore do not characterize their content and flag them as unverified. A search result also surfaced US 2007/0037173 A1, which claims correlating enumerated intact rare cells with "time to disease progression based upon a predetermined statistical association" using an EpCAM biospecific ligand — a document I could not confirm the applicant or priority for, so I list it only as an unverified lead.)

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5. Grounds of rejection — combinations rendering the claims obvious

Ground 1 — The MI‑determination claims (Emb. 1–3): Cristofanilli [19] + Clayton [6] + Bloom & Richardson [5]

• [19] teaches E1/E5 in haec verba: obtain CTCs from 7.5 mL of a cancer patient's blood and count them.
• [5]/[6]/[7] teach E2/E3/E8/E4(b): define "mitotic cells" by the classical prophase→telophase nuclear morphologies visible on a stain, count them, express that count as an index, and grade the tumor as aggressive — indeed Clayton's very title says the mitotic count is the best single predictor of survival.
• The only difference over this art is which compartment the mitotic cells are counted in — tissue vs. circulating blood.

Motivation (express, from the patent's own admissions): the specification states that "cancer grading is a form of morphological classification," that "pathological grading … including assessing the mitotic index (MI) in tumor tissue biopsies, is the gold standard," and — critically — that "as cancer grading is a form of morphological classification, it has been suggested that characterizing CTC phenotypes may provide additional prognostic stratification in cancer patients [3, 21‑23]." That sentence is a POSITA‑level motivation written into the patent itself, citing the applicant's own pre‑2015 work.

Predictable result: counting how many cells in a population are visibly in M‑phase, and taking a ratio, is arithmetic on a deterministic observation. §103 rationales (A) and (C) apply directly. No unexpected property is required for the bare MI‑calculation claim.

Ground 2 — The survival‑prediction claims (Emb. 4–5): Serrano [15] + Cristofanilli [19] + Clayton [6]

This is the strongest ground.

• [15] Serrano discloses a mitotic CTC in the peripheral blood of a breast cancer patient, detected cytomorphologically and confirmed with phospho‑H3(Ser10). Every physical step of E1–E3 except the index calculation is disclosed.
• [6] Clayton supplies the inference that mitotic cells are the aggressive population and that the mitotic count predicts tumor‑related death (RR ×2.8; 20‑yr survival 48 % vs. 73 %).
• [19] Cristofanilli supplies the CTC‑count→survival correlation and the ≥5/7.5 mL cutoff.
• Express motivation: Serrano's own closing statement — mitotic CTCs are "precursors of metastasis," "may provide powerful translational tools to improve the clinical outcome of BC patients," and the patients' management "raises an issue." A POSITA reading Serrano in 2014 is being told, in terms, to go characterize mitotic CTCs further. Combining that with the known prognostic weight of mitotic counts ([5]–[7]) to produce E4(a) — "if ≥1 mitotic CTC, worse survival" — is a textbook KSR "combination of familiar elements yielding predictable results."
• E9 (two‑year window) is a routine observational design choice; Cristofanilli and Clayton both report multi‑year survival curves.

Ground 3 — The treatment‑monitoring claims (Emb. 8–9): Um 2011 + Serrano [15] + [12] Paoletti

• Um 2011 discloses the full architecture of the monitoring claim: obtain CTCs (CellSearch, EpCAM+/CK8,18,19+/DAPI+/CD45−), measure a mitosis marker (pHH3), repeat after treatment, and read the change as a pharmacodynamic signal. It even quantifies the baseline (1–4 % positive) and the induced state (30–50 %). The claim's "increase in the number of mitotic CTCs … suggests the treatment is ineffective" is the direct converse of Um's "induction of pHH3 … useful PD marker."
• [12] Paoletti supplies the CTC‑index‑as‑treatment‑monitor frame; Serrano supplies the cytological (non‑marker) route to the same datum.
• Motivation/incentive: market and clinical pressure to make CTC counts actionable — the patent's own Background concedes that "translating this information to direct treatment for improved patient survival has been difficult," and [12] was already doing exactly that translation.

Ground 4 — The size‑isolation / cytology‑enabled claims (E6, E7): [18]/[24] Adams microfilters + Allard [4] + Park 2014

• [18]/[24] disclose isolating CTCs by size with lithographic microfilters (>7 µm) in a way that preserves "detailed cellular architecture" so that "a more descriptive assessment of CTCs" is possible — i.e., they supply the very enabler the patent says was missing.
• [4] Allard supplies the marker panel (CK8/18/19, EpCAM positive; CD45 negative) recited in CN claim 4.
• Park 2014 supplies the morphological/size characterization.
• Result: the E6/E7 limitations are a simple substitution of one known CTC‑enrichment/identification modality for another, with a predictable advantage (better cytology). Rationale (C).

Ground 5 — The "10 genuses of cancer" breadth (E10) and body‑fluid cytology ([10], [25], [26])

• [4] Allard states CTCs occur in all major carcinomas; [10]/[25]/[26] establish that pathologists already grade exfoliated malignant cells in urine, lung aspirate, and CSF. Extending the technique from these fluids to blood is the very step the patent admits "the same could be applied to CTCs."

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6. Anticipation (not just obviousness) for a narrow claim

If any granted claim is directed simply to "screening a population of CTCs for cells in a mitotic cell cycle phase," without requiring the MI computation or the outcome correlation, Serrano [15] alone appears to anticipate it under §102(a)(1): it discloses a CTC in division in peripheral blood, identified morphologically and confirmed with a mitosis marker. The MI arithmetic (E3) is what keeps the issued claims out of §102 — and arithmetic on a disclosed observation is the paradigm of §103 obviousness.

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7. Secondary considerations — and why they are weak here

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8. Where the obviousness case is weakest (fairness check)

1. Absence of the literal U.S. claims. Any of the grounds above can be defeated if the granted independent claims were narrowed (e.g., to a specific MI threshold, a specific hazard ratio, or a specific 7–25 µm + marker combination). I could not verify this, and I will not speculate.
2. Serrano is a single‑patient case report with one mitotic CTC. As anticipation it is thin on the correlation step; as obviousness art it is strong, because it is the express motivation, not the complete solution.
3. "Obvious to try" needs a finite, predictable set of options. Here the options for grading a CTC were genuinely finite (size, nuclear morphology, marker expression, proliferation/mitosis marker), which supports the rationale but a POSITA-level declaration would strengthen it.
4. Unverified references. CN101878429A and US 2005/0250155 A1 (cited against the family in China) could be the strongest or the weakest art in the file; I could not retrieve them. If either is CellSearch/Immunicon enumeration art, Ground 1 gains another E1/E5 reference; if either is directed to proliferation indexing, Ground 5 (and the Ki‑67 teaching‑away argument) becomes live.

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9. Bottom line

On the record available, the subject matter of U.S. 11,150,245 is very likely obvious under §103 for the reasons above, and the single most probative reference is one the applicant itself cited: Serrano et al., Annals of Oncology 22(9):2150‑2151 (2011), which disclosed a CTC in division in the peripheral blood of a breast cancer patient 3.9 years before the priority date. The strongest three‑reference combination is:

Serrano [15] (mitotic CTC exists and is detectable in blood) + Clayton [6]/Bloom & Richardson [5] (mitotic count is the best prognostic predictor and defines tumor "aggressiveness") + Adams microfilters [18]/[24] (size‑based isolation that preserves CTC cytology) → yields the MI‑determination, survival‑prediction, and grading claims.

For the treatment‑monitoring claims, substitute Um 2011 (pHH3 CTC assay as a PD marker) for Serrano, and the case is stronger still.

The principal escape routes for the patentee are (i) literal claim language narrower than the family embodiments suggest, and (ii) an unexpected‑result showing — which is currently not commensurate with the breadth of the disclosed embodiments and is drawn from a 36‑patient, breast‑cancer‑only cohort.

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10. Confidence statement

• High confidence: the content and dates of Clayton 1991 and Serrano 2011 (both independently verified); the patent's own admissions in the Background (quoted verbatim above); the contents of the family claim structure via CN107850587B/ES2765981T3.
• Moderate confidence: the overall §103 conclusion — it is materially dependent on the exact granted U.S. claim language, which was not in the authoritative text I was given.
• Low confidence: the identity/content of CN101878429A and US 2005/0250155 A1, and US 2007/0037173 A1; my searches on these were truncated and I have not characterized them.
• Explicitly unknown: whether the U.S. examiner actually applied any of these references during prosecution, and the current litigation status (see the prior section — no litigation identified).

This is a technical patentability analysis, not legal advice or a validity opinion.