US 12302769

Summary of US Patent 12302769

Note on scope of search: Searches of Google Patents, PatentGuru, and Justia confirm the bibliographic record below. Separate searches for CAFC 2026 dockets or litigation referencing patent number 12302769 (or assignee Limitless Space Institute) returned no results, so I found no evidence of a Federal Circuit appeal involving this patent as of the search date. I was also unable to retrieve the verbatim text of the numbered claims from the sources searched; the claim overview below is therefore derived from the patent's Summary/Abstract and should be treated with that caveat.

Bibliographic data (confirmed across Google Patents / PatentGuru / Justia)

• Patent number: US12302769B2 (application no. US18/331,486)
• Title: Casimir power cell
• Assignee / current owner: Limitless Space Institute (Texas; assignment recorded effective June 5, 2023; entity status later set to small/undiscounted per USPTO events)
• Inventor: Harold White
• Filing date: June 8, 2023
• Issue (grant) date: May 13, 2025 (pre-grant publication US20240415034A1 on December 12, 2024)
• Law firm of record: Osha Bergman Watanabe & Burton LLP
• Legal status: Active; adjusted expiration listed as December 20, 2043
• Classifications: H10N99/00; H10N99/05 (quantum-mechanical-effect solid-state devices); Y02E60/10 (energy storage using batteries)
• Priority family: PCT/US2024/033020 (WO2024254457A2), plus filings in IL, TW, EP, KR, AU, CN, MX — all claiming the June 8, 2023 priority date

Abstract (verbatim)

"A battery includes a Casimir-effect powered cell (Casimir cell). The Casimir cell includes a first conductive wall; a second conductive wall that faces the first conductive wall; and a conductive antenna disposed in a cavity gap that is a space between the first conductive wall and the second conductive wall. The conductive antenna faces the first conductive wall and the second conductive wall. The first conductive wall and the second conductive wall produce a same first voltage potential. The conductive antenna produces a second voltage potential that is different from the first voltage potential. A voltage that is the difference between the first voltage potential and the second voltage potential is generated by Casimir phenomenon based on arrangement of the conductive antenna between the first conductive wall and the second conductive wall."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The specification's Summary tracks two independent claim subjects (typical claim 1 and a method claim), though I could not verify the exact final claim set/counting from the pages retrieved:

1. Apparatus claim — a battery/power cell. A battery comprising a Casimir-effect-powered cell, the cell having: (a) a first conductive wall; (b) a second conductive wall facing the first conductive wall; and (c) a conductive antenna disposed in the cavity gap between the two walls, facing both walls. The two walls are at the same first voltage potential (e.g., grounded); the antenna is at a second, different voltage potential; and the voltage difference arises from the Casimir effect due to the antenna's placement between the walls — i.e., the cell generates electric power (with current) by exploiting the quantum-vacuum (Casimir) interaction.

2. Method claim — fabricating a Casimir cell. A method of making the cell by etching a substrate to form (a) a first conductive wall, (b) a second conductive wall facing the first, and (c) a conductive antenna in the cavity gap between the walls — the walls being etched so they are electrically connected at a common first voltage potential, and the antenna being etched so it is at a second voltage potential different from the first. The specification states the etching steps may be performed simultaneously (same material).

Key limitations/embodiments that may appear in dependent claims (not verified as claim text)

• Cavity gap ≤ 10 µm (examples: 90 nm, 10 nm, 3 nm, 1 nm); voltage scales with smaller gap.
• Materials: Au, Ag, Pt, Al, Cu, Pd, Ir, TiN, Mo, Si, graphene; p/n-doped semiconductor wall/antenna combinations (depletion-region benefit); dielectrics such as HfO₂ in the gap.
• Geometries: vertical cells (pillar antennas), horizontal stacked cells (grid/waffle antenna), nested c-shape; arrays in series/parallel to set voltage and current (e.g., CR2032-equivalent stacked-wafer assembly).
• Light exposure is reported to boost output (photovoltaic-like V-I behavior with nonzero ISC and VOC); cells usable as light sensors.

Uncertainty flags

• The exact text and number of the granted claims was not obtainable from the search results I retrieved; the overview above is reconstructed from the Summary/Abstract and should be verified against the USPTO Patent Center or the claims tab of Google Patents before citation.
• No CAFC docket or litigation referencing US12302769 was found in my searches — absence of a finding is not definitive proof that no proceeding exists.

Based on the searches I was able to perform, I found no known litigation involving US Patent 12302769 as of the search date.

Search results summary

I searched several query formulations intended to surface U.S. district court, PTAB, or Federal Circuit activity, including:

• "12302769" patent litigation — no results
• "US 12302769" lawsuit — no results
• "12,302,769" patent — no results
• "Casimir power cell" Harold White litigation Limitless Space Institute — returned only general press coverage of the technology (Casimir Inc./MicroSparc commercialization articles), not any litigation
• "12,302,769" OR "12302769" court docket complaint patent infringement — no results
• site:unifiedpatents.com 12302769 — no case-list results returned

I also note that the prior summary section of this analysis (performed earlier against Google Patents, PatentGuru, Justia, and CAFC/PACER-adjacent sources) likewise found no CAFC docket or litigation referencing US12302769 or assignee Limitless Space Institute.

Conclusion

No litigation is known involving US Patent 12302769 (Casimir power cell; assignee Limitless Space Institute; inventor Harold White). Accordingly, there are no cases for which I can report plaintiff(s), defendant(s), jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or status.

Caveats

• The patent only granted on May 13, 2025, so the window for district-court litigation is short relative to the current date.
• Absence of findings from these searches is not definitive proof that no proceeding exists. Dockets may be sealed, recently filed (e.g., within the last few weeks), pending service, or indexed under terms my queries did not capture (e.g., litigated by a different entity after assignment, or referenced in a complaint by a non-party).
• Recommended verification sources if a definitive clearance is needed: USPTO Patent Center assignment/status records, PACER (federal district court dockets), the Federal Circuit docket, and the Unified Patents or RPX litigation databases queried directly (rather than via web search).

Proceedings overview

The USPTO Open Data Portal lists one AIA trial proceeding on US 12302769: IPR2026-00469, filed 2026-09-03 and Pending — there are no finalized outcomes of any kind (no institution decision, no Final Written Decision, no settlement, no denial). Because the sole petition was filed the day before this analysis (relative to 2026-09-04), the patent is entirely untested at the PTAB: no claim has been canceled or sustained in an AIA trial, so a defendant cannot yet rely on any IPR-based invalidation — but the pendency of a freshly filed IPR is an early signal that challengers are moving on this patent.

IPR2026-00469 — EverWave Inc. et al. v. Limitless Space Institute

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2026-09-03
• Status: Pending (petition just filed; no Board action of record as of 2026-09-04)
• Judge panel: Not yet assigned or publicly identified. No panel has been named in any source I could retrieve.
• Petition grounds: Not yet publicly available in any source I could locate. The petition was filed 2026-09-03 and no PTAB E2E docket entries, notice of filing, or petition excerpts surfaced in web searches. Accordingly, I cannot report the challenged claims, the prior-art references, or the statutory basis (§ 102 / § 103 / § 112). I will not speculate.
• Institution decision: None yet. Under the statutory framework (35 U.S.C. § 314(b); 37 C.F.R. § 42.107), the patent owner's preliminary response is due roughly three months after notice of the petition (≈ early December 2026), and the Board's institution decision would typically follow within three months of that due date (≈ early March 2027). No such decision exists as of today.
• Final Written Decision: None — the statutory one-year trial clock (35 U.S.C. § 316(a)(11)) has not even started, because no institution decision has issued.
• Settlement / termination: None. The proceeding is hours old in procedural terms; there are no settlement negotiations of record.
• Appeal: None. There is no FWD to appeal, and no Federal Circuit docket referencing IPR2026-00469 was found (the CAFC appeal "26-1969 / Greenthread v. Monolithic Power Systems" that surfaced in searching relates to a different case, IPR2024-00469, not this one).
• Petitioner identity caveat: The structured data names "EverWave Inc. et al." My searches did not confirm who EverWave Inc. is, its relationship (if any) to the asserted patent, or whether it is an operating company, NPE, or defensive filer. An unrelated German entity "EverWave GmbH" (water-treatment patents) appeared in results, but there is no evidence connecting it to this petition, and I am not drawing that inference.
• Defensive value: Limited today but directionally useful. The petition is so new that it confers no estoppel and no canceled claims. Its defensive value to a defendant is (a) as a vehicle to seek a stay of any parallel district-court litigation while the Board decides whether to institute, and (b) as a disclosure of the challenger's best prior art once the petition and any institution decision become public. Until institution, the patent's claims remain presumptively valid and fully enforceable.

Strategic summary

Claims status. No claim of US 12302769 has been tested, let alone canceled or sustained, in any AIA trial. The earlier portion of this analysis could not even verify the verbatim text and numbering of the granted claims from public sources, and the structured PTAB data identifies only a single pending IPR — not which claims it challenges. The accurate cross-proceeding picture is therefore: every claim is UNTESTED; the sole proceeding (IPR2026-00469) is in its earliest pre-institution phase. There are no claims to list as "canceled" or "sustained," and I will not pretend otherwise.

Estoppel landscape. No § 315(e) estoppel has attached to anyone yet. Estoppel under § 315(e)(2) binds a petitioner (and its privies) only as to grounds that resulted in a final written decision — and even then only to grounds raised or reasonably available at the time of the petition. Because IPR2026-00469 has not been instituted and no FWD exists, EverWave Inc. (and any privy) faces no PTAB estoppel today. Critically for a different defendant who is not EverWave or its privy: § 315(e)(2) does not bar that defendant at all, and all prior-art grounds — including any that EverWave raises or could have raised — remain fully available in a district-court invalidity defense or a future IPR petition of its own. One timing trap to check immediately: if EverWave (or a privy) was served with an infringement complaint more than one year before 2026-09-03, the petition could be time-barred under § 315(b) — that issue would be litigated at institution, and a successful time-bar challenge would kill this proceeding without a merits ruling.

Pattern signals. There is no pattern yet — this is a first-and-only IPR, filed 2026-09-03, by a petitioner ("EverWave Inc. et al.") whose identity and motives are unverified. There is no evidence of repeat filings by the same petitioner, no defensive-aggregator chain (e.g., Unified Patents) visible in the record, and no PTAB appeals by the patent owner because there is nothing yet to appeal. The only contextual signal worth noting: this patent issued 2025-05-13 to Limitless Space Institute (inventor Harold White), whose technology has been publicly commercialized through press coverage of Casimir Inc.'s "MicroSPARC" chip — a profile that historically attracts IPR challenges once assertion activity begins. The filing of IPR2026-00469 roughly 16 months after grant is consistent with that pattern beginning to play out.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant facing assertion of US 12302769 today: You cannot yet cite any FWD, because none exists — do not let anyone represent otherwise. Your immediate, verifiable moves are: (1) confirm on USPTO PTAB E2E (search IPR2026-00469) whether the petition has been accorded a filing date and whether any preliminary response or institution decision has been entered since 2026-09-04; (2) review the petition itself once it is publicly docketed to learn exactly which claims are challenged and on what art — that is now your roadmap; and (3) check whether you are EverWave or in privity with EverWave (e.g., a customer/indemnitor relationship), because that determines whether § 315(e) estoppel could ever reach you and whether § 315(b)'s one-year bar is in play.
• Track the statutory milestones (assuming the petition was accorded a filing date of 2026-09-03): patent owner's preliminary response due ≈ 2026-12-03 (3 months from filing, 37 C.F.R. § 42.107); institution decision due ≈ 2027-03-03 (3 months after the POPR due date, 35 U.S.C. § 314(b)); if instituted, the Board must issue a FWD within 12 months of institution (35 U.S.C. § 316(a)(11)), extendable up to 6 months for good cause. If a parallel district-court case exists or is filed, move promptly for a stay pending IPR — the petition's early stage makes a stay motion well-timed.
• If no further PTAB activity materializes: Do not read too much into it yet. Institution decisions can be denied, and a denial here would leave the patent untested again (a denial on the merits creates no estoppel for non-parties and limited estoppel even for the petitioner). Conversely, if the Board institutes and EverWave later settles or drops off, that is a common pre-FWD pattern — but none of that has happened, and the honest bottom line as of 2026-09-04 is that US 12302769 has survived nothing and been tested by nothing: one day-old IPR is pending, all claims remain in force, and the defendant's strongest play right now is procedural (stay, § 315(b) time-bar scrutiny) rather than reliance on any PTAB merits ruling.

Caveat on sources: The proceedings count and docket number come exclusively from the structured USPTO Open Data Portal block supplied in this prompt (canonical). Web searches on 2026-09-04 returned no PTAB E2E docket entries, no Federal Register notice, no institution decision, no FWD, no settlement notice, and no CAFC appeal for IPR2026-00469 — consistent with a petition filed only the prior day. I have not fabricated any ground, panel, or ruling; items marked "none/not public" reflect the absence of any retrievable public record, which for a filing this new is expected rather than suspicious.

Inventors

• Harold "Sonny" White — sole named inventor (per Google Patents / PatentGuru bibliographic data for US12302769B2).
  • Employer at filing (June 2023): Limitless Space Institute (LSI), the Texas nonprofit he co-founded in 2019 with Kam Ghaffarian after ~20 years at NASA Johnson Space Center (Eagleworks). Press coverage identifies him as LSI's Director of Advanced R&D and, concurrently, founder/CEO of Casimir Inc., the Houston commercial spin-out that LSI incubated (formed ~2022, emerged from stealth May 2026).
  • Pattern note: Single-inventor filing, not a multi-inventor team that departed the assignee post-filing. The inventor-to-company assignment executed 2023-06-05 is the standard employment/inventor obligation transfer. No fire-sale precursor pattern (no mass inventor departures) is present.

Original assignee

• Limitless Space Institute (Texas) — named as assignee on the issued patent and recorded as owner in the sole assignment (reel/frame 063963/0276).
  • Line of business: Nonprofit research institute focused on advanced space propulsion and quantum-vacuum science (DARPA-funded Casimir/nanostructure research); an incubator of space and deep-tech ventures (co-founded by Kam Ghaffarian, whose portfolio includes Intuitive Machines, Axiom Space, X-energy).
  • Product status: Does not ship products embodying the claims. The commercial embodiment is being developed by its spin-out, Casimir Inc. (Houston), which announced a $12M seed round (May 12, 2026) for its MicroSPARC 5 mm × 5 mm chip (target ~1.5 V / 25 µA ≈ 40 µW), with commercial availability targeted for 2028.
  • Current status: Operating. No assignment of the patent to Casimir Inc. (or anyone else) is reflected in the recorded legal events I could retrieve; LSI remains the record owner. Whether a separate, unrecorded license to Casimir Inc. exists is not ascertainable from the public record.

Assignment timeline

The USPTO Assignment Center was not directly reachable in my searches; the record below is reconstructed from the USPTO legal-events data mirrored on Google Patents (canonical reel/frame identifier present) and cross-checked against PatentGuru/Justia bibliographic data. Only one recorded assignment exists.

• 2023-06-05 (executed, "effective date" per USPTO) / recorded 2023-06-15 — Reel 063963/0276
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest (ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST; SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)
  • Assignor: Harold White (inventor)
  • Assignee: Limitless Space Institute (Texas)
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable from the search results (the legal-event mirror lists reel/frame but not the correspondent). The law firm of record for the application is Osha Bergman Watanabe & Burton LLP (Houston), which is the likely correspondent of record — verify on the Assignment Center before citing. Single appearance; no recurrence to flag.
  • Context: Standard inventor-to-employer/nonprofit assignment on the eve of filing (application filed 2023-06-08; patent issued 2025-05-13 to Limitless Space Institute). No post-issuance assignments are recorded.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 12302769
    2023 : Inventor White assigns to Limitless Space Institute
         : Application filed by LSI
    2024 : Pre-grant publication US20240415034A1
    2025 : Patent US12302769B2 issued to LSI
    2026 : IPR2026-00469 filed by EverWave Inc

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. The only recorded transfer is inventor → Texas nonprofit research institute (Limitless Space Institute), reel 063963/0276, recorded 2023-06-15. No IP/Licensing/Holdings LLC appears anywhere in the chain, and LSI is a publicly documented operating nonprofit, not a registered-agent mailbox entity.
2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither Limitless Space Institute nor Casimir Inc. appears on any NPE list surfaced in my searches (no Acacia, Marathon, IV, Conversant, Vringo, etc., and no Unified Patents/RPX asserter-directory hit). LSI's public profile is research/incubation, not assertion.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Not present / not applicable. There is only one recorded assignment, so no correspondent recurs. A single appearance (Osha Bergman Watanabe & Burton LLP is the firm of record) is expressly not a finding under the operating rules.
4. Cascading transfers — Not present. One assignment total; no chained LLC transfers in any 24-month window.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No assignment occurred within six months of any suit — indeed no infringement suit naming this patent was found in the companion litigation search (as of 2026-09-04), and the sole assignment predates the patent's grant by two years.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No bankruptcy of the assignee is known; LSI is operating.
7. Privateering — Unclear. The public record shows a familiar "nonprofit incubator → for-profit spin-out" shape (Casimir Inc. emerged from stealth in May 2026 to commercialize MicroSPARC, per InnovationMap/EnergyCapitalHTX coverage), but no recorded assignment or license from LSI to Casimir Inc. was found, and there is no evidence of Casimir Inc. (or LSI) asserting against competitors. The privateering label requires an operating company outsourcing assertion to an NPE; nothing of the sort is evidenced.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. LSI is not a defensive aggregator.

Verdict

Insufficient data (per the rubric: only the original assignment is recorded, and no NPE indicia exist).

The full recorded chain is a single 2023 inventor-to-assignee transfer (reel 063963/0276), and Limitless Space Institute — a nonprofit research institute with a documented commercial spin-out (Casimir Inc., MicroSPARC chip targeted for 2028) — remains the record owner. There are no shell-entity transfers, no known asserter, no cascading assignments, no pre-litigation conveyance, and no bankruptcy event, so no NPE signal (weak or strong) is present. The residual uncertainty is factual rather than structural: I could not open the USPTO Assignment Center directly to confirm the correspondent name or rule out a post-2025 unrecorded-in-Google-Patents transfer/license, and no litigation or PTAB institution decision exists yet to test how the patent is being enforced. Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 12302769).

I'll search for the patent's cited references and prior art.

I found the 7 patent citations and 5 non-patent citations. Let me dig deeper into the most relevant references to characterize them accurately.

Let me gather details on the remaining cited references.

I have sufficient data from the searches (I reached the step limit before I could pull full text on three of the seven references; I flag that limitation below). Here is the prior-art analysis for US Patent 12302769.

Prior-Art Analysis — US12302769B2 ("Casimir power cell")

Sources and method

The USPTO Patent Center was not directly reachable in my environment, so I pulled the citation record from the Google Patents mirror of the USPTO data for US12302769B2 (canonical URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US12302769B2/en). That page's "Citations (7)" block lists 7 U.S. patent citations and 5 non-patent literature (NPL) citations. All seven patent citations were considered during prosecution and appear on the face of the issued patent (they are denoted with "*" where they are cited in other documents as well). None of the seven was used to reject the claims, since the patent issued — but that does not foreclose § 102/§ 103 challenges, and a fresh IPR2026-00469 (EverWave Inc. et al. v. Limitless Space Institute, filed 2026-09-03, pending) is pending against this patent as of the companion analysis.

Critical caveat on claim text: As noted in the prior sections of this analysis, the verbatim granted claim text was not retrievable from the sources searched. The claim mapping below is therefore keyed to the reconstructed independent claims (an apparatus claim directed to a battery/Casimir cell and a method claim directed to etching the cell), plus the dependent-claim features described in the specification. Anticipation opinions are necessarily provisional until the actual claims are charted.

Statutory framework: Effective filing date of the '769 patent is June 8, 2023 (no earlier benefit claim appears in the record). Every reference below published before that date, so each is prior art under AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1) (patented or described in a printed publication before the effective filing date); the U.S. applications among them with earlier effective filing dates are also available under § 102(a)(2). Under § 102, a single reference must disclose every claimed limitation, arranged as in the claim, for anticipation — a legal conclusion that requires claim-by-claim charting against the actual claim language.

The 7 U.S. patent citations on the face of US12302769B2

1. US 11,133,758 B2 — "Quantum vacuum fluctuation devices"

• Full citation: Moddel, Garret; assignee The Regents of the University of Colorado, a body corporate. US 11,133,758 B2, filed April 22, 2020 (provisional priority May 10, 2019), granted September 28, 2021. (Appl. 16/855,890; published as US20200358376A1.)
• Description: Discloses devices that incorporate Casimir cavities to modify the quantum-vacuum (zero-point-energy) mode distribution inside the cavity, creating an energy-density asymmetry that drives charge carriers across an adjoining electronic device (a "Casimir photoinjector"): a first conductive layer, an ultra-thin transport layer, and a second conductive layer, optionally with doped semiconductor layers. Casimir cavity = first reflective layer / cavity layer (gap ~10 nm–2 µm, vacuum, gas, or transparent solid) / second reflective layer. Discloses arrays in series and parallel and device stacks for power production. Materials overlap heavily with the '769 patent (Al, Ag, Au, Cu, Pd, Pt reflectors; SiO₂, Al₂O₃, HfO₂, Ta₂O₅, TiO₂, ZrO₂ dielectrics; doped semiconductors).
• Potential § 102 anticipation: This is the closest single reference. It reads on many elements of the reconstructed apparatus claim: a power-producing cell built around a Casimir cavity defined by two spaced conductive/reflective walls at a common potential, with the gap-space quantum-vacuum asymmetry generating a voltage/current (a DC device producing a voltage between the two conductor stacks). However, the claimed "conductive antenna disposed in the cavity gap," facing both walls at the cavity midplane, at a floating second potential different from the walls — the structural heart of claim 1 — is not clearly disclosed: Moddel's transport/electronic structure sits adjacent to the cavity and typically forms one of the cavity boundaries, rather than a mid-gap antenna electrically isolated from both walls. On the reconstructed apparatus claim, anticipation is arguable but not clean; the reference is more potent as a § 103 primary reference combined with the mid-plane-antenna teachings of, e.g., White's own NPL or the other Moddel filings. The method claim (etching walls + antenna from a substrate) is not disclosed in '758 (Moddel teaches deposition of thin-film stacks).
• Anticipates: Potentially dependent-feature claims reciting materials/dielectrics and series/parallel arrays; not a confident anticipation of the full apparatus claim as reconstructed.

2. US 11,463,026 B2 — "Quantum plasmon fluctuation devices"

• Full citation: Moddel, Garret; assignee The Regents of the University of Colorado, a body corporate. US 11,463,026 B2, filed April 22, 2020 (provisional priority May 10, 2019), granted October 4, 2022. (Appl. 16/855,892; published as US20200357997A1.)
• Description: Same family/architecture as '758 but using plasmon Casimir cavities — conductors structured (metasurface, alternating conductor sublayers) to suppress zero-point-energy plasmon modes rather than optical modes — driving carriers across a conductor/transport-layer/conductor "plasmon injector." Discloses nanoparticle embodiments, arrays (series/parallel), and stacks.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: Same structural gap as '758: the claimed mid-gap conductive antenna facing both conductive walls is not the Moddel injector geometry (transport layer between two conductors, one of which is the structured plasmon cavity). Also less relevant than '758 because the '769 claims recite an optical/Casimir-cavity structure (walls + antenna) rather than plasmon-mode suppression. Best used in combination with '758/Moddel publications and the White NPL rather than as a stand-alone anticipation.

3. US 2020/0358375 A1 — "Quantum noise power devices"

• Full citation: Moddel, Garret; assignee The Regents of the University of Colorado, a body corporate. US 2020/0358375 A1, filed April 22, 2020 (provisional priority May 10, 2019), published November 12, 2020. Granted as US 11,258,379 B2 (Feb. 22, 2022). (Appl. 16/855,897.)
• Description: Discloses devices in which quantum (zero-point) noise is reduced by placing a resistor or diode in or adjacent to a Casimir cavity ("Casimir resistor," "Casimir diode"), paired with a free-space electric device so the difference in noise power between the two is captured and rectified as DC output to a load; includes series/parallel arrays. Its own References Cited include Villalobos's US 2018/0059704 A1 (below) — the examiner of that patent treated the ZPE-battery art as in the same field.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: This one is notable because it discloses a Casimir cavity with two conductive/reflective walls and an intervening cavity layer, plus an electric device that is itself a component of the cavity — closer in spirit to "a conductive element interacting with the cavity to yield DC power." But the operative structure is a resistor/diode (or free-space pair) rather than a three-element wall–antenna–wall cell with the antenna floating at a different potential inside the gap, and there is no etched-substrate method. Anticipation of the reconstructed claim 1 is weaker than '758; it is a strong § 103 secondary reference (rectification/noise-capture mechanism analogous to the '769 current-flow model) and for claims reciting diode-like operation.

4. US 2018/0059704 A1 — "ZPE magnetic battery"

• Full citation: Villalobos, Victor M. US 2018/0059704 A1, filed August 25, 2016, published March 1, 2018. (No assignee of record identified in the retrieved data.)
• Description: Title stands for "Zero-Point-Energy magnetic battery." From the title and the fact that both the '769 examiner and the Moddel '58379 examiner cited it, it is a device/battery claiming extraction of energy from the quantum-vacuum/zero-point field, in the same energy-harvesting field as the '769 cell. I could not retrieve the full text before the step limit, so I cannot verify its structure (magnets? Casimir cavities? coils?).
• Potential § 102 anticipation: Cannot be assessed without the specification. Because it is the earliest-filed (2016) of the battery-form zero-point-energy references and is not a Moddel/Colorado filing, it is worth pulling in full for an IPR ground. As a general "ZPE battery" it is likely too far from the specific wall–antenna–wall Casimir-cell structure to anticipate, but that is an unverified statement.

5. US 2020/0321514 A1 — "Green energy harvesting methods for novel class of batteries and power supplies"

• Full citation: Sadr, Ramin. US 2020/0321514 A1, filed April 8, 2019, published October 8, 2020.
• Description: Discloses energy-harvesting methods and a class of batteries/power supplies that harvest ambient/zero-point energy. Full text not retrieved before the step limit; I cannot verify whether it discloses a Casimir cavity, conductive walls, or an in-gap antenna.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: Cannot be assessed without the specification. Likely relevant only as general field art or for battery-application dependent claims (e.g., CR2032-equivalent form factor) if it discloses battery packaging for vacuum-energy harvesters. Pull in full before relying on it.

6. US 2021/0135600 A1 — "Energy harvesting devices and sensors, and methods of making and use thereof"

• Full citation: Board of Trustees of the University of Arkansas (inventor field per family data; associated with the WO2018119180A1 family; related work by Thundat's group and Arkansas Technology Ventures "device for ambient…" filings). Priority December 22, 2016; published May 6, 2021.
• Description: Broad disclosure of energy-harvesting devices and sensors and their fabrication, in the same general ambient/zero-point energy space (the Arkansas family has been pursued as continuation/divisional filings into the 2020s). Full text not retrieved; the family's later filings (e.g., US20240014686A1) relate to nano-scale electromagnetic inductance cells and Casimir-type energy capture.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: Cannot be assessed without the specification. The 2016 priority date makes it the oldest of the seven; if it discloses a Casimir-cavity power device with opposed conductive elements and an intermediate collector, it could be a strong § 102(a)(1)/(a)(2) reference. Must be read in full.

7. US 2012/0076162 A1 — "Device for transforming electromagnetic IR energy…"

• Full citation: STMicroelectronics S.R.L. US 2012/0076162 A1, filed (priority) July 5, 2010; published March 29, 2012.
• Description: A device for transforming spatially incoherent, low-power-density, broadband IR radiation into spatially coherent, high-power-density, quasi-monochromatic radiation — an antenna/rectenna-class IR energy-harvesting structure. It is the most remote of the seven: it concerns conversion of real infrared photons (thermal/blackbody), not quantum-vacuum/Casimir energy, and does not appear to disclose a Casimir cavity power cell.
• Potential § 102 anticipation: Low. Likely cited for the general proposition that micron-scale antenna structures can harvest and convert electromagnetic energy into electrical output, and possibly for the term "antenna" in the '769 claims. It does not plausibly anticipate the wall–antenna–wall Casimir cell or the etching method. At most a § 103 building block.

Non-patent literature cited on the face of the patent (5)

For completeness — these are not "patent citations" but were considered during prosecution and include White's own prior publications, which are highly relevant because they disclose the inventor's own earlier description of the dynamic-vacuum model, the 1/d⁴ Casimir-cavity energy-density scaling, mid-plane polarization fields, and whip/pillar probes in a Casimir cavity:

1. Moddel, G., et al., "Casimir-cavity-induced conductance changes," Physical Review Research, vol. 3, no. 2, Apr. 2021, pp. L022007-1–L022007-7.
2. "[…] Optical-Cavity-Induced Current," Symmetry, vol. 13, no. 517, Jan. 7, 2021 (16 pp.) (Moddel group; truncated title in the retrieved record).
3. White, H., et al., "A discussion on a dynamic vacuum model: Derivation of Helmholtz equation from Schrödinger equation," Physics Open, vol. 1, Dec. 2019 (8 pp.).
4. White, H., et al., "Worldline numerics applied to custom Casimir geometry generates unanticipated intersection with Alcubierre warp metric," European Physical Journal C, vol. 81, no. 677, Jul. 31, 2021 (10 pp.).
5. White, H., et al., "Dynamic Vacuum Model and Casimir Cavity Experiments," Journal of the British Interplanetary Society, General Interstellar Issue, vol. 73, no. 7, Jul. 2020, pp. 268–272.

Note: Items 3–5 are inventor-authored publications that predate the June 8, 2023 filing by 1–3 years. If any of them discloses the claimed wall–antenna–wall cell (pillar "whip probes" at the cavity midplane at a different potential, generating measurable DC voltage/current), they are § 102(a)(1) prior art usable against the inventor's own later claims (AIA first-to-file; no grace-period issue arises for these because the earliest is Dec. 2019, far outside the one-year grace window relative to the 2023 filing).

Ranking of most relevant prior art

1. US 11,133,758 B2 (Moddel, Quantum vacuum fluctuation devices) — closest single reference: Casimir cavity + DC power device + series/parallel arrays + overlapping materials/dielectrics/gap sizes. Most credible § 102 candidate for the reconstructed apparatus claim, though the mid-gap "conductive antenna" element is likely missing; otherwise the anchor for a § 103 ground.
2. White NPL (JBIS 2020; EPJC 2021) — inventor's own pre-filing disclosure of the exact physics and probe-in-cavity concepts; potentially devastating § 102(a)(1) material if it discloses the claimed structure, and admissible against the inventor under AIA.
3. US 11,463,026 B2 and US 2020/0358375 A1 (Moddel family) — same family as '758; useful for § 103 combinations and for claims directed to plasmon or noise-rectification variants.
4. US 2018/0059704 A1 (Villalobos) and US 2021/0135600 A1 (Arkansas) — oldest-filed ZPE/energy-harvesting disclosures; must be read in full before any anticipation position; currently unverifiable.
5. US 2020/0321514 A1 (Sadr) — battery-form-factor harvesting art; secondary.
6. US 2012/0076162 A1 (STMicroelectronics) — peripheral IR-antenna art; weak.

Bottom line

• All seven patent citations and five NPL items predate the June 8, 2023 effective filing date and are § 102(a)(1) prior art; the U.S. applications among them are also § 102(a)(2) art.
• No single retrieved reference cleanly reads on the distinctive claimed combination (two same-potential conductive walls flanking a floating conductive antenna disposed in the gap between them, generating power by the Casimir effect) — but that conclusion is provisional because (a) the granted claim text was never retrieved, and (b) full text was not obtained for Villalobos, Sadr, and the Arkansas application.
• The Moddel '758 patent and White's own 2019–2021 NPL are the strongest art and the most likely bases for the pending IPR2026-00469 (petition grounds not yet public as of the companion analysis date).
• Recommended next step before asserting any § 102 ground: retrieve the claims from USPTO Patent Center, then pull full text of US20180059704A1, US20200321514A1, and US20210135600A1 (the three I could not fully characterize) to complete the anticipation matrix.