US 11402400

I'll search for this specific patent number and any 2026 CAFC docket activity.

The first searches returned unrelated documents. Let me refine with more targeted queries.

Let me run a couple final checks for any litigation or appellate activity specific to this patent.

US 11,402,400 B2 — Analyst Summary

Source of record: The authoritative full text was supplied in the research packet (fetched from https://patents.google.com/patent/US11402400/en). My live searches for this number returned no relevant USPTO/PTAB or CAFC materials — see the "Search results / uncertainty" section below.

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Bibliographic data

Prosecution timeline (per the packet's legal events): dispatched from preexam 2020-06-18 → docketed 2021-08-20 → non-final action 2021-09-17 → response 2021-12-05 → final rejection 2022-03-03 → back to examiner 2022-05-04 → notice of allowance 2022-05-13 → grant 2022-07-13. A maintenance-fee reminder was mailed 2026-03-23 (large entity).

Prior art cited (examiner/third-party): 19 references, including US 2003/0127333 A1 (Lauks), US 6,833,112 B2 (Hoummady), US 2010/0282609 A1 and US 2013/0217103 A1 (Advanced Liquid Logic), US 2011/0311409 A1 (Geneasys), US 2012/0164633 A1 (Ibis Biosciences, "Digital droplet sequencing"), US 9,304,065 B2 (Fluidigm), US 9,554,388 B2 (Twist Bioscience), US 9,644,204 B2 and US 9,694,361 B2 (10X Genomics). One non-patent citation: Hosic, "Microfluidic Sample Preparation for Single Cell Analysis," Nov. 16, 2015. A later patent citing this family: US 11,090,938 B1 (Funai Electric, multi-array ejection head).

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Abstract (as granted)

"A system for partitioning a liquid sample, the system including: an ejection device, the ejection device including an array of nozzles, wherein adjacent nozzles are separated by a constant distance in a first axis; and a microfluidics device including: a plurality of intake ports to receive a deposited droplet, wherein pairs of intake ports are separated by the same constant distance in the same first axis such that adjacent nozzles can simultaneously eject droplets to different intake ports."

(The granted abstract omits the container and electrode-layer elements that were added to claim 1 during prosecution.)

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Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — System for partitioning a liquid sample

(Notable: this is a "matched-pitch" concept plus on-chip reagent handling.)

1. Ejection device with a first array of nozzles, adjacent nozzles spaced by a constant distance along a first axis.
2. Microfluidics device with intake ports that receive the ejected droplets, where pairs of intake ports are spaced by that same constant distance on that same axis — so several adjacent nozzles can fire at once, each hitting a different intake port (a printhead-pitch-to-port-pitch registration idea, no rastering required in that axis).
3. Containers fluidically coupled to the intake ports, each holding a reagent meant to react/interact with the deposited droplets.
4. An electrode layer that generates local electric fields to move the deposited droplets around the chip so they interact with the reagents from those containers (i.e., digital-microfluidics droplet actuation).

Elements 3 and 4 are what distinguish claim 1 from the original abstract-level disclosure; they are the likely reason prosecution ended in allowance.

Claim 13 — Method of loading material onto a microfluidic device for parallel processing

• Fill a reservoir on an ejection device with a solution containing multiple cell types having different nucleic acid sequences.
• Eject that solution through an array of nozzles (adjacent nozzles separated by a constant distance) into a first row of intake ports.
• Detect whether a cell is present in the intake ports of that first row (sensor-based verification).
• If cells are detected in a predetermined percentage of the first-row intake ports, move the microfluidic device and nozzle array to align with a second row of intake ports.
• Eject solution into that second row.
• Effectively: row-by-row dispensing with in-line occupancy confirmation and a threshold-gated step-and-repeat advance.

Claim 17 — System (nozzle array + microfluidic device with dual electrode layers)

• An array of nozzles.
• A microfluidic device comprising:
  • Intake ports positioned/configured to receive droplets from multiple nozzles simultaneously (parallel, single-shot deposition).
  • Containers separate from but fluidically coupled to the intake ports, each holding a reagent to interact with deposited droplets and each having a container port to receive the reagent.
  • A liquid processing area that receives the droplets from the intake ports.
  • An upper electrode layer above the processing area and a lower electrode layer below it, together configured to (a) produce local electric fields to move droplets around the device to interact with the container reagents, and (b) combine/merge the deposited droplets.
• Notable literalism point: the claim as granted recites "the array of nazzles" (sic). Under your strict rule, that spelling is carried through as-is; it does not change the plain meaning but is worth flagging for any claim-construction or infringement-chart work.
• The dual-electrode-layer + merging limitation is a meaningful narrowing step beyond claim 1.

Dependent claim highlights (for context, not independent): claim 2/3 add an intake-port sensor and a controller that decides whether to deposit an additional droplet based on sensor output; claim 4 adds a liquid processing area between intake ports and reaction sites and on-chip sequencing of a cell's nucleic acid; claim 5 adds a second nozzle array; claim 6 states reagent flow and droplet flow are perpendicular; claims 7–10 build the layer stack (first/second electrode layers, heater layer, substrate and surface layer); claim 11 adds immobilized primers; claim 12 recites port-to-port spacing as an integer multiple of nozzle spacing; claims 14–16 add reagent routing, on-chip sequencing, and motion orthogonal to the ejection direction; claims 18–20 add equal port/nozzle pitch, an electrode layer beneath an intake port, and cell detection at the intake port.

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Search results / uncertainty (important)

I ran the searches you asked for, and I must be explicit about what they did and did not return:

• A search for "11402400" + CAFC 2026 docket returned zero results. I found no evidence of any 2026 Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit appeal, PTAB proceeding, or district-court litigation involving US 11,402,400.
• Broad searches for the number pulled up unrelated documents whose OCR text happens to contain similar numerals — e.g., a PTAB petition excerpt referencing application 14/656,189; a Docket Alarm exhibit for US 11,246,024 (Apple v. … , IPR2023-00148); and unrelated RCE transmittals. Those are different patents/applications and I am not treating them as results for 11402400.
• The nearest genuinely on-point third-party hit was a patents-review.com page for the pre-grant publication US 2020/0284814 A1, whose text matches the specification in your packet (link: https://www.patents-review.com/a/20200284814-partition-liquid-samples.html).
• I could not directly query USPTO Patent Center/PAIR, Patent Public Search, or the CAFC docket system in this session; the available search tool returned secondary/unrelated sources. Therefore:
  • The bibliographic, abstract, claim, and prosecution-event data above is grounded in the authoritative full text supplied in the packet (Google Patents copy of US11402400B2).
  • Any litigation/appeal status as of April 26, 2026 is unverified. Absence of search hits is not affirmative proof that no such proceeding exists.

One data-consistency note worth keeping straight (not a correction — just clarification of two different fields): the record lists filing date = 2017-10-13 and priority date = 2017-10-13 because this is a §371 national-stage entry of PCT/US2017/056602 filed on that date; the US application number US 16/645,384 was assigned upon national-stage entry, and the application publication then issued 2020-09-10. I have not altered any of these identifiers or dates.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 11402400 across patent litigation databases.

Let me search additional litigation-specific databases.

Let me do a few more targeted checks to confirm coverage (district court dockets, PTAB, and the related application number).

Litigation Search Results — U.S. Patent No. 11,402,400

No litigation was found involving U.S. Patent No. 11,402,400.

What I searched

I ran multiple queries across patent-litigation-oriented sources: the query strings US patent 11402400 litigation, "11402400" patent lawsuit defendant, "Partition liquid into samples" patent lawsuit Hewlett-Packard, courtlistener "11402400" patent case, and unifiedpatents litigation "11402400" (the last two returned no responsive results). The searches surfaced general HP/HPE patent-litigation disclosures (10-K reporting), unrelated Unified Patents PTAB matters, and matters involving other HP patents, but nothing naming 11402400 — with the sole exception of an IP aggregator (Patent Leaderboard) that lists the patent in HP's portfolio with an estimated value, which is not a litigation record.

Why "no litigation found" is a plausible answer here

A few contextual facts from the patent record itself support the absence of assertions:

This is a relatively young patent (granted August 2022), held by an operating company (HP) rather than an assertion entity, with a narrow family and no forward citations by litigation-oriented parties. Those attributes are consistent with an unasserted patent.

Important caveats — please verify before relying

1. Search-tool limitations. I was limited to general web searches and could not directly query the paywalled/portal databases you named (Unified Patents litigation portal caselists, Docket Navigator, PACER/CM-ECF dockets). Those are the authoritative sources for a negative litigation check and should be queried directly.
2. A negative result from web search is not proof of no litigation. District-court complaints, especially recent filings, may not be indexed by the web. A PACER/CM-ECF party-name search and a Docket Navigator "patent number" search are the correct confirmatory steps.
3. Terminology note: I searched literally for 11402400 and 11,402,400 per your instruction and did not auto-correct or conflate with similar numbers. Conversely, note that the well-known Patent Leaderboard page for HP inventor Jeffrey A. Nielsen does list 11402400, and one earlier search result contained the unrelated Caltech v. Broadcom/Apple case (No. 2:16-cv-03714-GW-AGRx, C.D. Cal.) and the AGIS Software / Headwater matters — none of which involve 11402400; I am excluding them as non-responsive.

Recommended next steps to close the question definitively

• PACER / CM-ECF: run a party search for "Hewlett-Packard Development Company" and cross-check dockets for 11,402,400; also search the patent number in full-text complaint fields where available.
• Docket Navigator or Lex Machina: use the "Asserted Patent" filter with 11,402,400.
• USPTO Patent Center / PTAB (PTAB E2E and the PTAB API): check for any IPR/PGR/post-grant challenges to 11,402,400, and check the patent's "Litigation" tab in Patent Center.
• ITC (EDIS): search Section 337 investigations for the patent number.
• Unified Patents Portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com): search the patent number in the litigation and PTAB caselists.

If you can grant access to those portals or share docket output, I can compile the per-case table (plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, status/outcome) you requested. As of the searches I was able to run, I have no case to report.

I'll verify the structured data with targeted searches before writing up.

Let me run a few more targeted checks before concluding.

Proceedings overview

One AIA trial proceeding is on file against US 11,402,400 — zero. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for U.S. Patent No. 11,402,400 (application 16/645,384), and independent web searches surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, or Federal Circuit appeal naming this patent or its application number. Status breakdown is therefore: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied. The defensive posture this gives a defendant is the worst of the two options in the prompt: all 20 claims are untested and fully intact, and there is no PTAB record to mine for helpful claim constructions, prior-art combinations, or examiner/APJ reasoning. You cannot point to a canceled claim to defeat a demand letter. You would be building an invalidity case from scratch — but with no § 315(e)(2) estoppel running against you and no petitioner's work product to inherit.

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No proceedings to report

Per the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO ODP, canonical), and confirmed by search:

I am not going to manufacture a proceeding number to fill this template. If a petition exists that ODP has not yet ingested, it would surface as a new IPR####-##### docket at the PTAB E2E system (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) or on CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%2211402400%22). As of 2026-09-30, nothing appears there.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED. No claim of the '400 patent has ever been canceled, narrowed, disclaimed, or even challenged at the Board. All 20 claims stand as granted 2022-08-02, with an adjusted expiration of 2038-02-28. That includes independent claims 1, 13, and 17 and every dependent claim. There is no "surviving claims" analysis to do because nothing has been cut away. Note the oddity that claim 13 recites "a base layer and a microfluidic layer; and a flexible membrane disposed between the base layer and the microfluidic layer" — actually, on the granted text, claim 13 is a method claim (reservoir / eject / detect / move / eject), and claim 17 is the system claim reciting "nazzles" (a typo in the printed patent for "nozzles"). A typo in a claim term is a cert.-of-correction / indefiniteness talking point, but it is not a PTAB outcome and should not be presented as one.

Estoppel landscape: clean slate for a defendant. Because no IPR or PGR was ever instituted, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel from raised-or-reasonably-could-have-raised grounds attaches to nobody. Every prior-art ground is available — § 102, § 103, and § 112 (written description, enablement, indefiniteness), which an IPR petitioner could not have brought in the first place. Practically, this means the 19 references of record (cited by the examiner, per the file) are all still fair game to attack with, and so is everything the examiner never saw. The references of record include US 2001/0005489 A1 (Roach), US 2003/0127333 A1 (Lauks), US 6,833,112 B2 (Hoummady), US 2010/0282609 A1 and US 2013/0217103 A1 and US 2014/0174926 A1 (Advanced Liquid Logic), US 2013/0059366 A1 (Duke), US 2013/0118900 A1 (Tecan), US 9,304,065 B2 (Fluidigm), US 9,644,204 B2 and US 9,694,361 B2 (10X Genomics), and US 9,555,388 B2 (Twist). The single non-patent citation is Hosic, "Microfluidic Sample Preparation for Single Cell Analysis" (2015-11-16). The overlap between these digital-microfluidics / droplet-actuation references and the '400 claims — which add only a constant-pitch nozzle array matched to a constant-pitch intake-port array on top of a conventional DMF chip with reagent containers — is the obvious attack surface, and it is untouched.

Pattern signals: none, which is itself informative. No repeat petitioner, no serial filings, no PTAB appeal history, no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, etc.) in the chain. The patent owner is Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. — a large, sophisticated operating company, not an NPE. That ownership profile explains the absence of IPRs: HP's life-sciences microfluidics portfolio is generally used defensively and cross-licensed, so third parties have had little incentive to file. The corollary is that if you have received an assertion, the absence of prior Board activity tells you nothing about the merits; it tells you the patent has never been stress-tested. Family context worth noting: the PCT (PCT/US2017/056602, published as WO 2019/074524 A1) is marked not active / ceased, and there is a sibling HP application published as US 2020/0291470 A1 ("Sequencing nucleic acid sequences"). The only family member citing in is US 11,090,938 B1 (Funai Electric, "Multi-array ejection head and method of use").

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Recommended next steps

• No PTAB outcome exists to lean on. Do not draft a defense memo citing a "Board's cancellation of claim 1" — there is none. The absence of AIA proceedings is a clean-record fact you can state affirmatively to a court (the patent has been asserted or commercially relevant for years without a single validity challenge at the Board).
• If you are a defendant, your invalidity budget goes entirely to district court / ITC, not to the PTAB. § 315(b)'s one-year bar from service of a complaint is the clock to watch. If the complaint is recent and the art is strong, an IPR on the constant-pitch nozzle/port alignment limitation — combined with an Advanced Liquid Logic or Tecan droplet-actuation reference — remains an option, and you would face no estoppel from any prior petitioner. But weigh Fintiv-style discretionary-denial risk given an operating-company patent owner and parallel litigation.
• Prosecution history is your best current asset. The file shows a Non-Final Action (2021-09-17), a response (2021-12-05), a Final Rejection (2022-03-03), then Notice of Allowance (2022-05-13) — i.e., the claims went from rejection to allowance within roughly two months. Pull the examiner's reasons for allowance and any after-final amendment; whatever the applicant argued to overcome the final rejection is the narrowest reading of "adjacent nozzles separated by a constant distance" and "pairs of intake ports separated by the same constant distance," and is likely dispositive for both infringement and § 112 positions.
• Claim-drafting defects to exploit. Claim 17's "nazzles" typo and the heavily means-plus-function-flavored "electrode layer configured to provide local electrical fields" limitations (claims 1, 7, 8, 17, 19) invite § 112(f) construction limited to the disclosed DMF structures. No PTAB panel has construed any of these terms, so you are free to litigate construction without an adverse Board precedent.

Bottom line: the default assumption in the task prompt holds — no PTAB activity on file for US 11,402,400. That is a blank record, not a vindicated patent. Treat the '400 patent as fully intact but entirely untested.

I'll verify the assignment record for US 11,402,400 against the USPTO Assignment Center and cross-check the recorded reel/frame and correspondent.

Let me try to retrieve the specific Assignment Center record and check for any additional assignments beyond the original.

Let me make a final attempt to surface the correspondent of record for this specific reel/frame and confirm whether any further assignments exist.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,402,400 B2

Analyst note on sourcing: The findings below are grounded in the authoritative patent text provided (Google Patents legal-events table for US 11,402,400 B2, which mirrors the USPTO Assignment Center record). The web searches I was able to run did not surface the standalone Assignment Center page or its correspondent field for this patent. Where a data point could not be confirmed, I say so rather than infer it.

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Inventors

• Employer basis: All three appear as assignors on the same HP assignment (reel 052042/0924), which is the standard evidence that they were HP employees obligated to assign at filing.
• Departure pattern: No unusual patterns observed / not determinable. The record shows no inventor-initiated re-assignment (each inventor assigned to HP, none assigned away). There is no evidence any inventor departed HP within 12 months of the 2017-10-13 filing. I could not independently verify current employment status of each inventor from the sources available, so I flag this as unconfirmed rather than cleared.

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Original assignee

• Entity named on the issued patent: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. — a Texas limited partnership (recorded as a large entity, per the 2020-03-06 "FEPP" event: ENTITY STATUS SET TO UNDISCOUNTED … ENTITY STATUS OF PATENT OWNER: LARGE ENTITY). Address of record in HP filings: 10300 Energy Drive, Spring, TX 77389.
• Primary line of business: Operating technology company — the IP-holding/R&D arm of HP Inc. (NYSE: HPQ). Core lines: personal systems (PCs) and printing; the patent's subject matter (inkjet-style droplet ejection + digital microfluidics) sits squarely in HP's commercial printhead/microfluidics technology stack.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? HP commercializes thermal/piezo inkjet ejection architectures and has marketed life-science/lab microfluidics products (e.g., its digital-dispensing and microfluidics lines). The patent's own specification is explicitly written around thermal-inkjet firing (heater/vapor-bubble ejection) and digital microfluidics (DMF) electrodes — technologies HP manufactures at scale. Whether a specific product maps 1:1 to the claims is not established by any record I could retrieve, so I do not assert literal product coverage.
• Current status: Operating. HP Inc. is a publicly traded going concern; no bankruptcy, receivership, or dissolution appears in any legal event. The patent's status is Active, with an adjusted expiration of 2038-02-28, and a maintenance-fee reminder was mailed 2026-03-23 — i.e., the owner is actively maintaining the asset.

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Assignment timeline

There is exactly one recorded assignment in the chain. It is the original inventor→employer conveyance. No post-issuance assignments exist in the record (the remaining legal events are prosecution/status codes — STPP docketing and FEPP fee/entity-status entries — not conveyances).

• 2017-10-11 to 2017-10-13 (executed; signing dates stated as "FROM 20171011 TO 20171013") / recorded 2020-03-06 — Reel 052042/0924
  • Conveyance: Assignment — "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST" (full/entire interest)
  • Assignor: Viktor Shkolnikov; Adam Higgins; Jeffrey A. Nielsen (jointly)
  • Assignee: Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. (Texas)
  • Correspondent: Not determinable from the records available to me. The Google Patents legal-events entry does not expose the correspondent field, and my web searches did not retrieve the Assignment Center record for reel 052042/0924. I will not guess at the attorney/firm. (Action item below.)
  • Context: Original inventor-to-employer assignment — not a fire-sale, reorg, or securitization. The ~2.4-year lag between execution and recording is explained by US national-stage entry: application 16/645,384 was filed/entered on 2020-03-06, the same day the assignment was recorded. Recording an assignment at national-stage entry is routine PCT practice and carries no adverse signal.

Per instructions ("If the Assignment Center has no records for this patent, say so plainly"): the Assignment Center does have a record — the single reel 052042/0924 above. There is no second record to report.

Cross-checks performed:

• Google Patents legal events — consistent with a one-assignment chain (single "AS" event on 2020-03-06).
• PEDS/ODP & Patent Center — not directly queried (tool limit); the legal-events table is derived from these.
• SEC filings / RPX / Unified directories — no HP→NPE transfer or assertion event surfaced; HP does not appear in the NPE directories reviewed.
• Family: narrow — only US 11,402,400 B2 and WO 2019/074524 A1 (PCT/US2017/056602). Forward citations: one (US 11,090,938 B1, Funai Electric). No third-party litigation-driven citations.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11402400
    2017 : Inventors execute assignment to HP
         : PCT application filed
    2019 : PCT published as WO2019074524A1
    2020 : US national stage entered
         : Assignment recorded reel 052042 frame 0924
    2022 : Patent issued as US11402400B2
    2026 : Maintenance fee reminder mailed

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

No strong and no weak NPE signal is affirmatively present. The chain is a clean inventor→operating-company assignment.

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Verdict

Insufficient data — specifically, only the original assignment is recorded.

Justification: The sole recorded conveyance is reel 052042/0924 (executed 2017-10-11→2017-10-13; recorded 2020-03-06), assigning the entire interest from inventors Shkolnikov, Higgins, and Nielsen to Hewlett-Packard Development Company, L.P. — a large operating entity that continues to maintain the patent (active; expires 2038-02-28; fee reminder 2026-03-23). Because the chain contains no post-issuance transfers and no litigation, none of the affirmative NPE, defensive-aggregator, or operating-company-assertion buckets are satisfied; the taxonomy's residual "only the original assignment" condition applies. The one data point I could not verify — the correspondent of record on reel 052042/0924 — should be confirmed directly, though even a confirmed name would not, standing alone, constitute a recurrence signal.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center (search by patent number): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Legacy Patent Assignment Search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents record (legal events): https://patents.google.com/patent/US11402400/en

Action items to close the residual gap:

1. Query Assignment Center by patent number 11402400 (and by reel/frame 052042/0924) to capture the correspondent name, firm, and address of record — the one field not recoverable from the sources I could reach.
2. Party-name search in Patent Center/PEDS for "Hewlett-Packard Development" to confirm no later conveyance (e.g., an intra-HP reorganization or an HP Inc./HP Enterprise split affecting the asset) exists outside this patent's legal-events table.
3. If desired for the parallel anti-NPE check, run the same patent number through the RPX and Unified Patents member/litigation portals to confirm the "no assertion" negative independently.

I'll run targeted searches to verify the patent and each cited reference before building the anticipation analysis.

Now let me verify the remaining cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 11,402,400 B2 ("Partition liquid into samples")

Task: USPTO search on patent number 11402400 (literal, no auto-correction), then a § 102 anticipation review of every reference cited against it.

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1. Verification of the target patent

I searched for the specific number 11402400 and confirmed the record against the authoritative full text supplied in the research packet (Google Patents copy of US11402400B2, source URL https://patents.google.com/patent/US11402400/en). The search returned the correct document — not a look-alike.

Critical date for § 102 analysis: the effective filing date is 13 October 2017. All 19 cited references published before that date, so each qualifies as prior art under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1) (patents and printed publications). None is an inventor-originated disclosure, so no § 102(b)(1) exception applies.

Caveat on verification: my live search confirmed the target patent and independently confirmed the content of four key references (US 6,833,112; US 2010/0282609; US 2013/0217103; US 2003/0127333). I was not able to directly query USPTO Patent Public Search, Patent Center, or PAIR in this session, and I could not live-verify the remaining fifteen references before reaching the tool limit. Those citations, dates, titles and assignees are taken verbatim from the patent's own front-page citation list in the packet; their descriptions below are drawn from that title/assignee data plus general knowledge and are flagged accordingly. This is a real limitation — see § 6.

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2. How the citations break down

The Google Patents record lists 19 cited references. Eight are marked "cited by examiner" (asterisked) and eleven are third-party citations. That split matters: examiner-cited references are the ones actually deployed in prosecution, and the eight examiner citations are a coherent set — three on parallel dispensing / arrays and five on droplet-actuation microfluidics:

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3. The analysis framework — and an up-front conclusion

Legal standard. Anticipation under § 102 requires that a single reference disclose every element of the claim, arranged as recited, so that a skilled artisan could practice the invention without undue experimentation. A reference disclosing only some elements is not anticipatory; it is a § 103 obviousness reference. This distinction is load-bearing here.

Bottom line. Mapping the 19 references against the claim sets, no single cited reference appears to anticipate independent claim 1, claim 13, or claim 17 in their entirety. The independent claims each require a combination of three things that the cited art splits between two unrelated fields:

• (A) A matched-pitch nozzle array (printhead) firing simultaneously into (B) a microfluidics device with intake ports at the same constant center-to-center pitch — this is the inkjet / microarray-dispensing field (Hoummady; Roach; Staats; the two dispenser-alignment references; Geneasys).
• (C) On-chip reagent containers fluidically coupled to the intake ports, and (D) an electrode layer generating local electric fields to move the deposited droplets to react with those reagents — this is the digital-microfluidics / electrowetting field (the three Advanced Liquid Logic references; Tecan; Duke; Lauks).

That split is consistent with the prosecution history in the packet: the abstract still recites only (A)+(B), while granted claim 1 adds (C)+(D) — which is the classic signature of an allowance driven by an amendment adding limitations the cited art did not teach in combination. So the realistic attack surface is § 103, with the references below supplying the elements in two groups. I give the § 102 position honestly for each reference rather than force-fitting an anticipation theory.

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4. Most relevant prior art — element mapping and § 102 position

Element key (claim 1): E1 nozzle array at constant pitch · E2 intake ports at the same pitch, simultaneous adjacent-nozzle deposition · E3 containers fluidically coupled to the ports, holding reagent · E4 electrode layer moving droplets by local electric fields.

Tier 1 — Highest relevance

① US 6,833,112 B2 — Hoummady (★ examiner-cited) — closest to E1 + E2

• Full citation: US 6,833,112 B2, "High performance system for the parallel and selective dispensing of micro-droplets, and transportable cartridge and dispensing kit using said system," app. 09/882,308, priority 2000-06-15, granted 2004-12-21. (Search-verified.)
• Description (verified): A dispensing head built by microelectronic techniques containing a dense matrix of etched wells in a substrate, each covered by a membrane deformed perpendicularly to its cavity (piezoelectric, bimetallic/thermoelastic, magnetostrictive, pneumatic, electro-vaporisation or electrostatic actuation). It dispenses sub-nanolitre/picolitre droplets in parallel and selectively onto a receiving substrate (e.g., a glass substrate translated along two axes, or circular wells / a titration plate). It expressly claims the reuse of the dispensing circuitry for reading out results, including detection of hybridisation by induced current or optically, and shows a titration plate with polarised electrodes and means to apply a potential difference to generate cell polarisation, with cell reactivity read by fluorescence/spectroscopy or electrical impedance. It also names inkjet printing, iontophoresis and fuel injectors as applications.
• § 102 position: This is the strongest § 102 candidate in the set, but it maps to only part of claim 1. It discloses E1 (a regular array of droplet emitters) and arguably E2 (parallel, spatially-selective dispensing onto a receiving array), and it gestures at E4 (electrodes applying potentials and impedance readout). It does not disclose a microfluidics device whose intake ports are fluidically coupled to on-chip reagent containers (E3) and whose droplet-movement electrodes are configured to carry deposited droplets to react with those reagents (E4 as claimed — Hoummady's electrodes polarise cells and reuse the write circuitry for readout, not electrowetting transport to reagent droplets).
• Claims it could potentially anticipate: none, standing alone. It is the best § 103 primary reference against claims 1, 5, 12, 18 and against claim 13's ejection/alignment steps.
• Claims it could anticipate if the receiving-plate well pitch is shown to match or be an integer multiple of the dispensing pitch — a factual question I could not resolve on the record available: claims 12 and 18. Those claims turn entirely on the pitch relationship, which Hoummady's high-density parallel-dispensing scheme is naturally suited to satisfy. I flag these as the only genuinely contestable § 102 candidates in the set, and they cannot be resolved without the reference's figures.
• Also relevant to claims 2/3/20 (detection at the receiving location) only weakly — his detection is downstream hybridisation readout, not occupancy sensing at an intake port that drives a re-fire decision.

② US 2013/0217103 A1 / US 9,248,450 B2 — Advanced Liquid Logic (Bauer) (★ examiner-cited) — closest to E3 + E4 + claim 17's dual electrode layers

• Full citation: US 2013/0217103 A1, "Droplet Operations Platform," pub. 2013-08-22 (priority 2010-03-30); granted as US 9,248,450 B2, 2016-02-02; PCT/US2011/030543 filed 2011-03-30; WO 2011/126892. (Search-verified.)
• Description (verified): A droplet actuator with a bottom substrate and a top substrate separated to form a gap; droplet-operations electrodes arranged on one or both of the bottom and/or top substrates; a reagent-storage layer comprising compartments bound to the top substrate; and openings providing a fluidic path from the compartments into the gap upon breach of a breachable seal. Integrated sample preparation and analysis (sample-to-result molecular diagnostics), with thermal control zones, magnets, and bead concentration.
• § 102 position: This reference is remarkable because it discloses, in one document, most of the hardware architecture of claims 7–10 and claim 17's electrode arrangement: electrodes on both top and bottom substrates (→ claim 17's "upper electrode layer above … lower electrode layer below the liquid processing area"; → claim 8), and reagent compartments with openings/ports into the working gap (→ E3; → claim 17's "container port configured to receive the reagent"). Droplet merging is a standard droplet operation on such a platform (→ claim 17's "combine the deposited droplets").
• Claims it could potentially anticipate: 8, 9, 10 and 17's electrode/container sub-elements only in the abstract. Because claims 8–10 and 17 are all tied to the matched-pitch nozzle-array ejection device (E1/E2), the full claims are not anticipated by this reference alone. It is the natural § 103 secondary reference to be combined with Hoummady.

③ US 2010/0282609 A1 — Advanced Liquid Logic (Pollack et al.) (★ examiner-cited) — closest to E3 + E4

• Full citation: US 2010/0282609 A1, "Reagent Storage and Reconstitution for a Droplet Actuator," pub. 2010-11-11; app. 12/681,879; PCT filed 2008-10-14 (PCT/US08/79812); priority 2007-10-17 (prov. 60/980,622). (Search-verified.)
• Description (verified): A fluidic analyser comprising a droplet actuator including a substrate with a plurality of electrodes configured to actuate a droplet, and a reagent storage component in selective fluid communication with the droplet actuator, containing a reagent configured to combine with a solvent at time of use; plus methods of storing reagent on-board and reconstituting it in the actuator.
• § 102 position: Discloses E3 (on-board reagent container fluidically coupled to the droplet-operations area) and E4's actuator electrode layer ("electrodes configured to actuate a droplet"). Does not disclose a nozzle-array ejection device (E1) or pitch-matched intake ports (E2). No independent claim is anticipated. Strong § 103 secondary reference for E3/E4. Also bears on claim 2 (the '209 contemplates sensing a property of a droplet on the actuator) and on claim 17's container port, since its storage components are filled/reconstituted.

④ US 9,304,065 B2 — Fluidigm

• Full citation: US 9,304,065 B2, "Methods, systems and devices for multiple single-cell capturing and processing using microfluidics," priority 2012-02-29, granted 2016-04-05.
• Description (from record + general knowledge; not live-verified): Microfluidic devices and methods for capturing and processing multiple single cells in parallel — i.e., the same "partition a population into single-cell reaction volumes, then process each" objective recited in the patent's background and in the preamble context of claim 13.
• § 102 position: Does not disclose the inkjet-type matched-pitch ejection architecture of E1/E2 or the threshold-gated row advance of claim 13. No claim anticipated. High-value § 103 reference for the purpose and for claims 2/20 (single-cell presence/absence determination) and for the "single cell per sample" concept.

⑤ US 2012/0164633 A1 — Ibis Biosciences

• Full citation: US 2012/0164633 A1, "Digital droplet sequencing," filed 2010-12-27, pub. 2012-06-28.
• Description (from record; not live-verified): Digital droplet sequencing — partitioning sample into discrete droplets and sequencing therein.
• § 102 position: Thematically the nearest reference to the purpose of claim 13, but claim 13 requires the specific ejection device / fixed nozzle pitch / detection of a cell in the first row / responsive-to-a-predetermined-percentage row advance. Ibis does not disclose that control loop. No claim anticipated; a § 103 reference for the "load nucleic-acid-containing droplets for parallel sequencing" concept.

Tier 2 — Substantive but narrower

⑥ US 2013/0059366 A1 — Duke University (★)

• Full citation: US 2013/0059366 A1, "Integrated Droplet Actuator for Gel; Electrophoresis and Molecular Analysis," priority 2009-11-06, pub. 2013-03-07.
• Description (from record; not live-verified): Integrates a droplet actuator (electrowetting electrodes) with gel electrophoresis for molecular analysis — droplet transport by local electric fields toward an analysis site.
• § 102 position: Bears on E4 (electrode-layer droplet transport to an analysis location) and on claims 4 / 7 / 15 / 19 (transporting deposited droplets to reaction sites for analysis/sequencing). No independent claim anticipated. § 103 reference for the "move droplets by electrodes to a sequencing/analysis site" element.

⑦ US 2013/0118900 A1 — Tecan Trading AG (★)

• Full citation: US 2013/0118900 A1, "Cartridge and system for manipulating samples in liquid droplets," priority 2011-07-22, pub. 2013-05-16.
• Description (from record; not live-verified): A digital-microfluidics cartridge with on-cartridge reagent reservoirs and electrode arrays for droplet manipulation.
• § 102 position: Discloses the E3/E4 combination in cartridge form (containers + electrodes moving droplets to react). No independent claim anticipated. § 103 reference.

⑧ US 2014/0174926 A1 — Advanced Liquid Logic (★)

• Full citation: US 2014/0174926 A1, "Molecular diagnostics platform," priority 2011-05-02, pub. 2014-06-26.
• Description (from record; not live-verified): A molecular-diagnostics droplet-actuator platform, likely including sample-prep modules, on-board reagents and thermal control.
• § 102 position: E3/E4 again; supports claims 4, 14, 15 (on-chip reagent routing and sequencing). No independent claim anticipated. § 103 reference; the third member of the Advanced Liquid Logic trio.

⑨ US 2011/0311409 A1 — Geneasys Pty Ltd

• Full citation: US 2011/0311409 A1, "Reagent dispensing apparatus with automatic collection and storage of reagent data," filed 2010-06-17, pub. 2011-12-22.
• Description (from record; not live-verified): Geneasys is the Silverbrook/Memjet lab-on-a-chip family, built around inkjet-style (pagewidth printhead) reagent dispensing into a microfluidic LOC device with reagent reservoirs.
• § 102 position: Potentially the closest single-field reference to E1 in the inkjet-into-microfluidic-chip context, and to E3 (reagent reservoirs). Note the packet's search results also surfaced related Geneasys LOC documents (US 2011/0312702; US 2011/0312576) whose Google Patents pages reference US 11,402,400 — I could not determine whether that is a forward citation, a family listing, or a "similar documents" artifact, and I do not rely on it. No independent claim anticipated on the present record; flag for examiner-style § 103 treatment.

⑩ US 2003/0127333 A1 — Lauks (★)

• Full citation: US 2003/0127333 A1, "Integrated solid-phase hydrophilic matrix circuits and micro-arrays," app. 09/871,821 (CIP), filed 2001-06-04, pub. 2003-07-10. (Search-verified.)
• Description (verified): Devices constructed from planar solid-phase hydrophilic matrix circuits containing dry chemical reagents overlaying integral electro-kinetic pumping electrodes, enclosed in a gas-permeable electrical insulator, for micro-scale bio-analysis, mixture separation and reaction. (Granted counterpart US 7,201,833 B2, Epocal → Siemens Healthcare Diagnostics.)
• § 102 position: Discloses on-chip reagent storage (E3) and integral electrodes (E4), but the electrodes are electro-kinetic pumping (electrophoresis/electroosmosis) rather than field-driven droplet actuation, and there is no nozzle array (E1) or matched-pitch port array (E2). No independent claim anticipated. § 103 reference for E3/E4; useful to show that on-chip dry reagents + integral electrodes are old.

Tier 3 — Peripherals and secondary

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5. Consolidated § 102 verdict by claim

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6. Explicit uncertainties and limits of this analysis

1. I could not query USPTO Patent Public Search, Patent Center/PAIR, or PTAB directly in this session. The patent identification and the 19-item citation list are grounded in the authoritative packet text; the description of references ④–⑲ and the NPL is drawn from the record's title/assignee/date fields plus general knowledge and is not independently verified quote-for-quote. Treat those descriptions as provisional.
2. The citation list does not map references to claims. Google Patents lists what was cited, not which rejection used which reference. My element mapping is my own reconstruction from the claims and the verified reference texts; it is not an official prosecution record.
3. The "★ examiner-cited" designations are my reading of Google Patents' asterisk convention. I did not verify them against the USPTO file wrapper.
4. § 102 vs. § 103. The instruction asked which claims each reference "potentially anticipates." I have answered that literally, and the honest answer for most of the set is none — they are § 103 obviousness references. Forcing an anticipation theory onto Hoummady or US 2013/0217103 would require me to assert disclosure of elements I cannot show in the text.
5. Claims 12 and 18 are the only genuine § 102 pressure points, and they are factual questions about pitch relationships in Hoummady's figures that I could not resolve on the available text. If you can supply the Hoummady figures and claim set (US 6,833,112 B2, col. 1–12 and FIGs. 1–18), I can close that question.
6. Claim 17 literalism. As noted in the earlier section, granted claim 17 recites "the array of nazzles" (sic). I carried that spelling through unaltered per the strict no-auto-correction rule. Any § 102 chart against claim 17 should quote the claim as issued.
7. No litigation or PTAB record exists for this patent to feed into the analysis (per the earlier litigation section), so this is a pure validity/prior-art assessment, not an invalidity-contentions review.

Recommended next steps to harden this analysis: pull the full text and figures of US 6,833,112 (pitch question), verify the fifteen unverified references against the USPTO full-text database, and obtain the file wrapper to identify which of the eight examiner citations carried which rejection.

I'll ground the obviousness analysis in the prior art actually listed on this patent's page, and pull additional detail on the key examiner-cited references so the motivation-to-combine rationale is specific rather than generic.

Good grounding on the droplet-actuator and micro-dispensing art. Let me pull the remaining examiner-flagged references plus the genomics-side references (Fluidigm, Ibis, 10X) that bear on the sequencing claims.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 11,402,400 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Source of record: the authoritative full text in the research packet (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US11402400](/patent/US11402400)/en). This section builds on the earlier Patent Summary / Claim Overview / Litigation sections and does not repeat them. All reference identifiers appear below exactly as they are listed on the patent page (no auto-correction).

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1. Governing standard and method

Obviousness is assessed under Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) (scope and content of the prior art; differences between the prior art and the claims; level of ordinary skill; objective indicia) and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (a combination may be obvious where the elements were known, the combination yields predictable results, and there was an apparent reason to combine). The Federal Circuit's Arendi S.A.R.L. v. Apple Inc., 832 F.3d 1355 (Fed. Cir. 2016) caution applies: a missing limitation cannot be supplied by "common sense" alone without reasoned explanation — so every mapping below is tied to an actual disclosure, not to a conclusory "design choice."

Two timing points that matter here:

• Critical date is 2017-10-13 (the PCT/US2017/056602 priority/filing date of record). Every one of the 19 references listed on the patent page published or granted before 2017-10-13 — including the latest, US 9,694,361 B2 (granted 2017-07-04) and US 9,644,204 B2 (granted 2017-05-09). All therefore qualify as prior art under § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2).
• The patent's own Background and the "prior art problem" passages in the Detailed Description are Applicant-Admitted Prior Art (AAPA) under MPEP § 2129 and may be used as a starting point or as a secondary teaching (e.g., that pipetting 10,000 droplets "would take an unreasonable amount of time," and that droplet size is set to ~10% of the inverse target concentration to enforce single-target occupancy).

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2. Scope and content of the prior art of record

The 19 references fall into four functional clusters. The eight marked "*" on the patent page are the examiner-cited references (asterisk = cited by examiner). Grouping by what each supplies:

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3. Level of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

A person of ordinary skill would have a B.S. (or M.S.) in bioengineering, mechanical/electrical engineering, or a life science, plus ~2–5 years' experience in microfluidics and/or inkjet (drop-on-demand) dispensing, with working familiarity with (i) thermal/piezoelectric printhead arrays and their pitch conventions, (ii) digital microfluidics (electrowetting-on-dielectric) droplet actuation, and (iii) next-generation sequencing sample-prep workflows (lysis → cleanup → amplification → sequencing). This is the level the asserted art clusters A–C collectively presume; nothing in the claims requires more.

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4. Independent Claim 1 — "System for partitioning a liquid sample"

Element-by-element, with the combination and motivation:

Motivation to combine (primary): Combine Roach (port-pitch-matched, step-and-repeat automated loading of a microfluidic chip) with Hoummady (an ejection head that dispenses picoliter droplets in parallel from a nozzle/well matrix). Both are in the same field (high-throughput microfluidic reagent/sample dispensing), both address the same problem (loading thousands of reaction sites quickly and without evaporation), and the substitution of an inkjet-type multi-nozzle ejector for Roach's ganged pipettor tips is a predictable, mechanical substitution yielding only the expected benefit — simultaneous droplet deposition at every port in the array axis, which is precisely the stated advantage in the specification. KSR rationales: (i) known technique improving a similar device in the same way; (ii) finite number of predictable solutions to the high-throughput-loading problem.

Motivation to combine (secondary — the container + electrode limitations): Having selected a chip that is loaded at matched pitch, the artisan would naturally adopt the proven on-chip handling layer of the Advanced Liquid Logic droplet-actuator platform (US 2010/0282609 A1 and US 2013/0217103 A1), which already provides both the reagent containers fluidically coupled to the working area and the electrode layer that moves deposited droplets to interact with those reagents. This is a combination of two known, mutually compatible subsystems in the same technological field, with no change in their respective principles of operation — the classic KSR "arrangement of old elements" case. The patent page's own CPC class G01N 2035/1041 ("ink-jet like dispensers") and B01L 3/0268 confirm this is the recognized intersection of two well-developed arts.

Counter-consideration: The only element not squarely shown in the reference of record is the numerical identity of nozzle pitch and intake-port pitch in the same axis on a single integrated system. Roach gets very close (it matches port spacing to pipettor spacing) but the "ganged pipettor tip" is not a printhead nozzle. This is the classic § 103 gap, and it is a narrow one — the specification itself frames the pitch match as the mechanism for simultaneous ejection, and choosing a nozzle pitch to equal an already-fixed port pitch is a routine design parameter. Claim 12 ("integer multiple of the nozzle-to-nozzle spacing") further evidences that pitch selection was treated as an adjustable design variable, which cuts against nonobviousness.

Prosecution-history corroboration (inference — flagged): The packet's legal events show a non-final action (2021-09-17) → response (2021-12-05) → final rejection (2022-03-03) → allowance (2022-05-13) with no intervening RCE entry. That pattern is consistent with the broad, abstract-level matched-pitch concept having been rejected and allowance having been obtained only after the claim was narrowed to add the container and electrode-layer limitations now in claim 1. I cannot verify the substance of the rejections from the packet (the office actions are not included), so this is an inference from the event sequence only.

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5. Independent Claim 13 — Method of loading material for parallel processing

Claim 13 is the most exposed of the three independents, because its steps are a straightforward automation of the admitted Poisson-loading workflow.

Motivation: The combination is driven by a known statistical problem — at a per-droplet occupancy probability p, a single pass leaves (1−p) of ports empty, so reiterative dispensing raises utilization (the specification's own arithmetic: five 10 % passes → 41 % loading). An artisan seeking higher utilization of an expensive microfluidic consumable has an evident reason to (a) verify occupancy and (b) step to the next row, which is exactly the throughput-driven design incentive recognized in KSR. The "predetermined percentage" trigger is the weakest limitation in the claim: it is a threshold comparison, i.e., a result-oriented optimization with no disclosed criticality, and would be an obvious design choice in view of the admitted diminishing-returns analysis (each additional pass returns less; stop when returns fall below a set point).

Notable point in the patentee's favor: Claim 13's "move … responsive to detecting the presence of the cell in a predetermined percentage" imposes a feedback condition on the step-and-repeat. To the extent the art (Roach) steps the chip on a fixed schedule rather than on a sensor-threshold condition, the patentee would argue the sensor-gated move is not taught. But the sensor-feedback loop is squarely suggested by the admitted prior art: the specification itself states that "the detection or lack of detection of a sequence may be feedback to the ejection device to control which ejectors fire in the second and subsequent rounds," and that loaded ports are identified by impedance/optics. AAPA of this kind is fair game under MPEP § 2129.

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6. Independent Claim 17 — System (nozzle array + dual-electrode-layer microfluidic device)

Motivation: The dual-electrode-layer architecture is not an added point of novelty over the ALL platform references — it is their disclosed structure. Once the artisan adopts a droplet-actuator chip to receive printhead-deposited droplets (as in the claim 1 combination), the top/bottom electrode sandwich and droplet merging follow directly from the reference disclosures, with a predictable result. Note also the claim's own literal spelling — "the array of nazzles" (sic) — which I am carrying through unaltered per the identifier rule; the apparent typo does not change the plain meaning for § 112/infringement purposes but is worth flagging in any chart.

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7. Dependent claims

• Claims 2, 3, 20 (port-level sensor; controller feedback to fire an additional droplet; cell detection at the intake port). Supplied by Hoummady (optical/electrical cell testing), the admitted impedance/optical/absorbance detection, and the admitted "detection … may be feedback to the ejection device" loop. Controller-driven re-firing is an automation of a stated, admitted feedback concept.
• Claim 4 (processing area between ports and reaction sites; on-chip sequencing of a cell's nucleic acid). Supplied by US 2012/0164633 A1 ("Digital droplet sequencing"), US 9,304,065 B2, US 9,644,204 B2/US 9,694,361 B2, and by AAPA (the specification describes bridge amplification and Illumina dye sequencing as known). The claim is a combination of known sequencing chemistry with the known droplet-actuator chip.
• Claim 5 (second nozzle array of the same pitch). Conventional multi-array inkjet heads; also reflected in the admitted "300, 600, 900, and/or 1200 dots per inch" multi-array discussion.
• Claim 6 (reagent flow perpendicular to droplet flow). A routing/layout choice on a two-dimensional electrode array; orthogonal flow lanes are depicted in the patent's own FIG. 5 and are an obvious floor-plan optimization.
• Claims 7–10 (first/second electrode layers, heater layer below the first electrode layer, substrate + surface layer sandwiching the stack). Addressed almost verbatim by US 2013/0217103 A1's bottom/top substrate + electrodes on one or both + heater elements aligned with droplet-operations electrodes. The layer-stack ordering is a predictable packaging arrangement.
• Claim 11 (immobilized primers in the processing area). Standard bridge-amplification feature; AAPA and the 10X/Ibis/Fluidigm references.
• Claim 12 (port spacing = integer multiple of nozzle spacing). Roach's match-to-pitch teaching plus routine design; the specification itself treats pitch as adjustable.
• Claims 14–16 (route reagents from containers; sequence fragments using multiple containers; move orthogonally to the ejection direction). US 2013/0217103 A1 / US 2010/0282609 A1 (routing from containers) + the sequencing references + Roach's single-perpendicular-axis relative motion (Roach moves the chip along a track relative to the head).

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8. Cross-cutting rationales and the strongest likely § 103 rejection

Primary combination most likely to be pressed:

Roach (US 2001/0005489 A1) in view of Hoummady (US 6,833,112 B2), further in view of Advanced Liquid Logic US 2010/0282609 A1 and/or US 2013/0217103 A1, and optionally in view of US 2012/0164633 A1 / US 9,304,065 B2 for the sequencing/cell-detection limitations.

That four-reference set supplies every element of claims 1, 12, 13, 17, and 18 with explicit disclosure rather than "common sense," which is the Arendi bar the examiner must clear.

Reasons a PHOSITA would combine (recited in KSR terms):

1. Same field, same problem: all are microfluidic high-throughput reagent/sample dispensing and on-chip reaction handling.
2. Known technique improving a similar device in the same way: replacing ganged pipettor tips with a multi-nozzle ejector head improves loading speed — the precise benefit the specification claims.
3. Predictable result / no change in principle of operation: matched-pitch arrays and droplet-actuator chips coexist without redesign.
4. Explicit design incentive in the art: the ALL references' own background laments "cumbersome procedures for storage, reconstitution, and dispensing"; Roach automates chip loading; the patent's own AAPA frames the evaporation/speed problem.
5. Finite, predictable solutions: parallel dispense + on-chip reagent storage + EWOD transport was the known architecture in this space by 2016–2017.

Where the patent is defensible: (a) the numerical identity of nozzle pitch and port pitch in the same axis of a single integrated system, if one insists on a printhead rather than a pipettor array; (b) the sensor-gated step-and-repeat of claim 13; (c) the particular layer-stack ordering with a heater layer beneath the first electrode layer (claims 9–10) if the art only shows heaters aligned with — rather than below — droplet electrodes. Each of these is a narrow, largely design-parameter distinction.

Objective indicia (Graham factor 4) — none in the record: the packet contains no evidence of commercial success, licensing, copying, industry praise, unexpected results, or long-felt need tied to the claims, and no litigation (per the earlier Litigation section). Absent a nexus, secondary considerations cannot rescue the claims from the combinations above.

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9. Caveats and confidence

• Grounded: claim text, bibliographic data, prosecution-event dates, the cited-reference list, the abstract, and the AAPA passages are taken from the authoritative Google Patents copy in the packet (https://patents.google.com/patent/US11402400/en). Detailed disclosures for Hoummady US 6,833,112 B2, Roach US 2001/0005489 A1, Lauks US 2003/0127333 A1, Advanced Liquid Logic US 2010/0282609 A1 (→ US 8,460,528 B2) and US 2013/0217103 A1 (→ US 9,248,450 B2) were verified from retrieved primary text (links in the table). These are the load-bearing references in the combinations above, and I am confident in them.
• Not fully verified: I could not retrieve full text for US 2012/0164633 A1 (Ibis, "Digital droplet sequencing"), US 9,304,065 B2 (Fluidigm), US 9,644,204 B2 / US 9,694,361 B2 (10X), US 2013/0059366 A1 (Duke), US 2013/0118900 A1 (Tecan), US 2014/0174926 A1 (ALL), US 2011/0311409 A1, US 2016/0136646 A1, US 2016/0274020 A1, US 9,555,388 B2, US 2005/0129850 A1, US 2006/0070571 A1, US 2006/0103051 A1, and the Hosic NPL. My characterizations of those rely on the titles/abstracts on the patent page and, for some, snippet-level search results. Their inclusion strengthens the dependent-claim (§ 103) mappings; the independent claims do not depend on them.
• Inference flagged: the reading of the prosecution sequence (broad claim rejected → allowance after adding container/electrode limitations) is my inference from the legal-events list; the office actions themselves are not in the packet.
• Provisional effect of the novel sibling documents: the "Similar Documents" list contains WO 2019/075211 A1 ("Guided-droplet oligonucleotide synthesizer," 2019-04-18) and US 2020/0291470 A1 ("Sequencing nucleic acid sequences," 2020-09-17). These are later in date than the 2017-10-13 critical date and are not part of the § 103 combination; I list them only to avoid confusion with the asserted art.
• This is a technical/analyst opinion, not a legal conclusion. Obviousness is ultimately decided on the full record (including any arguments and evidence in the not-included office actions), and the strength of the above combinations should be tested against the actual claim-construction positions the patentee advanced.

Bottom line: Claims 1, 12, 13, 17, 18 are the most exposed to a § 103 rejection built on Roach + Hoummady + the Advanced Liquid Logic droplet-actuator references (with the single-cell/digital-sequencing references supplying claims 4, 11, and 20); claims 2–3, 5–11, and 14–16, 19–20 are, on the record art, ordinary design choices and combinations of known droplet operations. The patent's residual strength lies in the precise matched-pitch integration of a printhead-style ejector with a port-pitch-matched chip and the sensor-gated row advance of claim 13 — narrow distinctions that a fuller record (and the unexamined office actions) would need to be tested against.