Invalidity dossier
US 11369456
Automated treatment staging for teeth
Current assignee: Align Technology Inc
Added 10/22/2026, 4:01:11 AM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
US11369456B2 — Patent Overview
Title: Automated treatment staging for teeth
Patent number: US11369456B2
Application number: US16/723,706 (filed 2019-12-20)
Publication: US20200121421A1 (2020-04-23); granted 2022-06-28
Priority date: 2006-08-30 (per the source page, which flags this date as an assumption, not a legal conclusion)
Anticipated expiration: 2027-08-30 (per source page)
Legal status: Active (per source page; an assumption, not a legal conclusion)
Assignee: Align Technology Inc. (original and current assignee)
Inventors: Ian Kitching, Alexander Dmitriev, Alexey Vishnevskiy
Purpose: The title and the page's prior-art keywords ("movement," "dental," "schedule," "modification," "teeth") indicate the subject matter concerns automating the staging of orthodontic treatment — that is, organizing planned tooth movements into a treatment schedule. The assignee is an orthodontics/dental technology company.
Plain-language scope: Based solely on this text, the patent relates to a computer-implemented method or system for automatically generating and possibly modifying a staged schedule of dental (tooth) movements. The abstract, claims, and written description are not included in the supplied excerpt, so the specific limitations of the claimed invention cannot be stated.
Source URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11369456](/patent/US11369456)/en
What the supplied excerpt does not establish:
- The actual claims (independent or dependent) and therefore the precise legal scope.
- The abstract or any description of the invention's technical details, algorithms, or embodiments.
- The specific prior-art references cited during prosecution.
- Which features of the priority application are actually supported or claimed.
- Whether the priority date is correct (the page itself labels it an assumption).
- The significance, if any, of the related family members listed (US11950977B2, US11717381B2, US20240024077A1) — no relationship details are given.
- Litigation, ownership-transfer, or validity matters — per instructions, these were not researched and are not addressed here.
Note: The source page mentions a PTAB proceeding and district-court case, but these are outside the requested analysis and are not evaluated.
Generated 10/22/2026, 4:10:48 AM
Cases on file (0)
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Litigation summary
Past and pending lawsuits — plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, outcomes, and notable rulings.
Proceedings on file (0)
All PTAB activity →AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) filed at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board against this patent. Sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and refreshed every six hours; each proceeding number deep-links to the PTAB E2E docket.
No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.
Obviousness
Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.