US 12337057

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

Let me search for any CAFC or district court litigation involving this patent or its assignee.

US 12,337,057 B2 — Analyst Summary

Search scope and a threshold caveat

I ran targeted searches against Google Patents/patent-text mirrors, the USPTO-sourced Google Patents record, Justia/FPO, and general web sources for litigation and Federal Circuit activity. I found no CAFC 2026 docket entry, no IPR/PGR, and no district-court docket naming US 12,337,057 specifically. I am reporting that as a negative finding, not as proof of nonexistence — CAFC docket data is not fully indexed by the search tools available to me, and "no result" here should not be read as "definitively no litigation." Where I could not confirm something, I say so below.

Bibliographic data

The bibliographic record is corroborated by an independent secondary source (HT Syndication / US Fed News, which reports patent no. 12,337,057 issuing June 24 to Grant Industries Inc., Elmwood Park N.J., with the same three inventors — htsyndication.com).

Abstract (verbatim)

A polyurethane elastomeric rubber composition containing a bio-based polyol cross-linked with a bio-based isocyanate using a urethanation catalyst such as a bismuth catalyst in the presence of a cosmetic emollient is disclosed. The cross-linked polyurethane elastomer rubber is in further aspect of the invention included in a gel after being milled in the presence of a bio-based emollient or mixture of bio-based emollients. The polyurethane elastomeric gel has good compatibility with cosmetic and natural oils and can be used as a gelling agent for these oils among other desirable cosmetic formulary roles.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Note the important structural point: the granted claims are substantially narrower than the specification's narrative. The specification is written primarily as a polyurethane rubber + cosmetic emollient + bismuth catalyst invention, but the granted independent claims are drawn to a cross-linked elastomer per se (claim 1), a cosmetic/personal-care composition containing it (claim 8), and a gel composition containing it (claim 13). The catalyst, emollient, bio-based-content, biodegradability, and hardness/resilience limitations appear in the specification but not in the independent claims.

Claim 1 — the composition-of-matter core. A cross-linked elastomer that is the reaction product of two things: (1) a polyester and (2) a multi-functional crosslinker. Critically, the polyester is defined as either an esterified dilinoleic acid or a branched C36 dicarboxylic acid/diol copolymer. Everything else — isocyanate identity, catalyst, emollient, bio-based content — is optional at this level. The claim is thus anchored on the C36 dimer-acid polyester chemistry.

Claim 8 — the formulated cosmetic. A cosmetic and personal care composition containing the claim-1 elastomer plus a carrier fluid. This is the claim that reaches a finished or semi-finished cosmetic ingredient/product.

Claim 13 — the gel. A gel composition in which the claim-1 elastomer is dispersed in a carrier fluid. This is the "elastomer gel as a cosmetic raw material" claim (the commercial GRANSENSE™ product form).

Dependent claims worth noting

• Claim 2: multi-functional crosslinker is a polyisocyanate.
• Claim 3: diol is propanediol or butanediol.
• Claims 4–5: polyester is >60 wt% (claim 4) and >75 wt% (claim 5) of the cross-linked elastomer.
• Claim 6: the cross-linked elastomer is silicone-free.
• Claim 7: the branched C36 dicarboxylic acid/diol copolymer is specifically dilinoleic acid/propanediol or dilinoleic acid/butanediol copolymer (i.e., DAPD or DABD, the working examples).
• Claims 9–12 (depend from 8): water+oil phases; actives (vitamins, sunscreens, plant extracts, fragrances); fragrances/colorants/preservatives; and product forms (foundation, lotion, cream, shampoo, serum, lip care).
• Claims 14–17 (depend from 13): micronized elastomer; particle size 1–100 µm; particle size <60 µm; gel viscosity 15,000–1,000,000 cP.

Specification context that supports these claims

The working examples use dilinoleic acid + 1,3-propanediol (DAPD) or 1,4-butanediol (DABD) as the hydroxyl-functional polyester, crosslinked with pentylene diisocyanate trimer (PDT, ~20% NCO) or hexamethylene diisocyanate trimer (HDT), catalyzed by bismuth neodecanoate (or zinc neodecanoate), in coco-caprylate/caprate and glyceryl triheptanoate. Reported results include 100% biobased carbon by ASTM D6866-18 Method B, and Ultimate/Inherent Biodegradability under OECD 301B (modified Sturm test). The specification also sets rubber hardness (200–4,000 g; preferably ≥500 g) and resilience (≥70%, preferably ≥90%) as processing windows, but these are not claimed.

Related litigation found — NOT a CAFC 2026 docket

The only litigation I surfaced is a district court case involving Grant Industries relating to the underlying "green elastomer" technology, docketed as Civil Action No. 2:21-cv-13094-KSH-JBC (D.N.J.), discussed in an opinion filed June 30, 2022. Per the opinion, Grant's R&D team for the project was John Gormley, Dr. Ron Lerum, and Dr. Anna Croom (the same inventors named on the '057 patent), and the dispute involves Grant's confidential disclosures to PHD Biosciences / Nanometics (Steven Isaacman, Michael Isaacman, Andrew Mahon) and inventorship claims over the green elastomer. (cases.justia.com)

Caveat: I could not verify from the available excerpt whether US 12,337,057 (or the parent US 11,534,389) is expressly asserted in that case. This is a related case in the same technology family, not a confirmed assertion of the '057 patent, and it is not a 2026 Federal Circuit matter.

Stated uncertainties

1. No CAFC 2026 docket activity located. My searches returned no Federal Circuit appeal, briefing, or opinion referencing 12,337,057. Treat this as "not found," not "verified absent."
2. No USPTO PatentCenter page was retrievable in my searches; the bibliographic data above comes from the Google Patents record and the HT Syndication notice, which agree.
3. Claim-count discrepancy noted, not resolved. FreePatentsOnline's rendering of the pre-grant publication US 2023/0122072 A1 lists claims 1–23, whereas the granted B2 has 17 claims. This is common (claims are cancelled/amended during prosecution) but I did not retrieve the prosecution history to characterize the amendments.
4. Priority-date discrepancy noted. Google Patents lists priority as 2019-08-30; a third-party aggregator (Unified Patents, for the WO family member WO 2021/041046 A1) lists 2019-08-29. I did not resolve this one-day difference.
5. "Adjusted expiration 2041-05-13" is Google Patents' assumption and its own labeling notes it is not a legal conclusion; actual term is affected by PTA, terminal disclaimers, and any post-issuance challenges I could not confirm.

Sources: Google Patents, US12337057B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US12337057/en); Justia Patents (https://patents.justia.com/patent/12337057); FreePatentsOnline US 2023/0122072 A1; HT Syndication/US Fed News issuance notice; Justia docket PDF for D.N.J. 2:21-cv-13094-KSH-JBC.

I'll run targeted searches for litigation naming US 12,337,057 specifically, using litigation-tracking sources.

Let me try litigation-specific databases and docket searches.

Let me check for any post-grant infringement suits by Grant Industries and Unified Patents/docket listings.

Bottom line

No litigation asserting US 12,337,057 has been located. I found no district-court complaint, no ITC Section 337 investigation, no PTAB petition (IPR/PGR), and no CAFC appeal in which US 12,337,057 is the patent-in-suit or is otherwise identified. Per your strict rule, I am reporting this as a negative search finding, not as a verified absence — and I note below that my search was cut short by a step limit, so it is not exhaustive.

I also want to flag one thing up front: the search returned a lot of noise from unrelated patents. The most prominent is Resonant Systems ("the '337 patent") and various "Grant" tire/patent cases from 1902–1914 (Rubber Tire Wheel Co. v. Goodyear, Grant patent No. 554,675). Those are not US 12,337,057 and I have excluded them. Likewise, US 8,222,363 B2 (Lin) appears in the '057 specification only as the source of the texture-analyzer hardness methodology — it is not related litigation.

The one related case I did find — and why it is not a '057 case

Critically — this is not a patent infringement action, and the '057 patent did not exist when it was filed. The '057 patent did not issue until June 24, 2025. Case 2:21-cv-13094 is a trade-secret / confidential-information / contract / fraud / RICO dispute over the same "green elastomer" technology platform. What it does connect to the '057 patent is the underlying subject matter:

• The opinion identifies Grant's R&D team on the green elastomer as John Gormley, Dr. Ron Lerum, and Dr. Anna Croom — the exact three named inventors on US 12,337,057.
• Grant's complaint alleges the defendants filed two patent applications on July 10, 2019, without Grant's knowledge or consent (complaint ¶¶ 87–90), in the window right around Grant's August 2019 provisional (62/893,968, filed Aug. 30, 2019 — the '057 priority application).
• The opinion references Grant's own provisional application for the green elastomer and the parties' competing filings.
• The defendants' July 10, 2019 filings correspond (by priority date) to the Nanometics/PHD Biosciences family, including WO 2021/007489 A1 ("Polyurethane gels") and WO 2021/231527 A1 / WO 2021/257937 A1, which appear as third-party citations in the '057 record.

So the case is best characterized as a dispute over ownership/inventorship and misappropriation of the technology that the '057 patent claims — but the '057 patent itself is not the instrument being asserted. I could not verify from the retrieved documents whether the '057 patent (or its parent, US 11,534,389 B2) is mentioned in any amended pleading or counterclaim.

Sources: Justia docket (https://dockets.justia.com/docket/new-jersey/njdce/2:2021cv13094/[476606](/patent/476606)); opinion PDF (https://cases.justia.com/federal/district-courts/new-jersey/njdce/2:2021cv13094/476606/25/0.pdf); CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[9806813](/patent/9806813)/grant-industries-inc-v-isaacman/); UniCourt (https://unicourt.com/case/pc-db5-grant-industries-inc-v-isaacman-et-al-[944639](/patent/944639)).

What I searched (and what came back empty)

• Patent-specific identifier searches for "12,337,057" and "12337057" — returned only the patent's own documents (Google Patents, Justia Patents), a UK IPO/Companies House-style gazette listing, and unrelated hits.
• Litigation-tracker style searches — no Unified Patents litigation caselist entry, no Docket Alarm case, no CourtListener docket, no PTAB proceeding associated with the number.
• Assignee-based searches — the only Grant Industries litigation surfaced is the 2:21-cv-13094 case above (plus 100-year-old "Grant" patent tire cases and genuine name-collisions with other entities).
• Product-name searches ("Gransense") — no enforcement activity surfaced.

No CAFC appeal, no IPR/PGR, no ITC § 337 investigation, and no district-court case naming US 12,337,057 was found.

Stated uncertainties and caveats

1. My search was truncated by a tool step limit partway through the "Gransense / Grant Industries enforcement" query. The negative finding should be treated as incomplete, not conclusive.
2. The '057 patent is young (granted June 24, 2025) and I am working from an April 26, 2026 vantage. Any complaint filed in the last few months could easily be absent from the free databases my tools reach.
3. The related D.N.J. case was last retrieved in the free docket on June 30, 2022. I could not confirm its current status, whether it settled, was consolidated, or produced counterclaims touching the '057 patent.
4. CAFC and PACER are not fully indexed by the tools I used; docket-level confirmation of "no appeal" requires PACER/CM-ECF access I do not have here.
5. I did not auto-correct any identifier. All numbers above are reproduced literally as retrieved. Note in particular that "the '337 patent" in my search results refers to an unrelated Resonant Systems patent and must not be conflated with 12,337,057.

Recommended next steps for a definitive answer

• PACER / CM-ECF: run a party search for "Grant Industries, Inc." in D.N.J. and nationally, and a "patent number" search on 12,337,057.
• Docket Navigator or Lex Machina: same patent-number query; these index complaints by asserted patent number and are the authoritative source for "who has been sued on this patent."
• USPTO PatentCenter "Filed Documents" and PTAB APIs: to confirm no post-grant challenge (and to pull the 16/992,831 prosecution history, which would also resolve the claim-count discrepancy noted in the earlier summary — 23 published claims vs. 17 granted claims).
• Re-check the D.N.J. 2:21-cv-13094 docket for any amended complaint, counterclaim, or later-filed companion case now citing the '057 patent.

I'll verify the structured proceeding data and look for any claim-level detail, panel assignments, or related filings.

Let me try more targeted sources for this specific proceeding and any sibling-patent challenges.

Let me check for any sibling-patent challenges and the litigation/appeal picture.

Proceedings overview

One AIA trial proceeding is on file against US 12,337,057: IPR2026-00498, filed 2026-09-21 by Momentive Performance Materials Inc. et al., status Pending — zero claims invalidated, zero claims sustained, no settlement, no institution decision, and no Federal Circuit appeal. Because the petition is one day old, there is no claim-level outcome of any kind to report, and the bottom-line defensive posture for a defendant today is that nothing has been cancelled, estopped, or narrowed — the patent stands intact with all 17 claims, and the defense is entirely prospective and unproven.

Contradiction flag. The previously generated "Patent summary" section states: "I found no CAFC 2026 docket entry, no IPR/PGR, and no district-court docket naming US 12,337,057." That was accurate as of the search performed for that section, but it is now superseded by the canonical USPTO Open Data Portal list in this prompt, which shows IPR2026-00498 filed 2026-09-21. The CAFC part of that earlier finding (no Federal Circuit activity) remains consistent with everything I can see.

IPR2026-00498 — Momentive Performance Materials Inc. et al. v. Grant Industries Inc.

• Type: Inter Partes Review (35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319). Not a PGR — the 9-month post-grant window under § 321(c) closed on or about 2026-03-24 (patent granted 2025-06-24), so the IPR vehicle was the only AIA trial available to petitioner on this filing date. Not a CBM (unavailable since 2020 and inapplicable to a cosmetic-ingredient patent).

• Filed: 2026-09-21. Google Patents lists an issue/grant date of 2025-06-24, so the petition landed roughly 15 months post-grant.

• Status: Pending (verbatim from the structured data; Last modified 2026-09-21). Plain-English gloss: the petition has been filed and docketed; it is pre-institution. No Patent Owner Preliminary Response, no institution decision, and no scheduling order are on the public record yet.

• Judge panel: Not yet publicly assigned. No APJ panel composition is available at this stage; in the current (2026) environment the institution decision may route through the Director's office rather than a three-APJ merits panel. I am not asserting a panel composition I cannot verify.

• Petition grounds: Not public in the structured data. The record does not state which claims are challenged, which references are asserted, or the statutory basis (§ 102 / § 103; § 112 is unavailable in an IPR). It is reasonable to expect a § 102/§ 103 attack on claims 1, 8, and 13 with dependent claims 2–7 and 14–17 as fallbacks, but that is inference, not fact — treat it as unknown until the petition posts.

• Institution decision: None issued and none due yet. Working from the statutory/regulatory clock and assuming the Board accords a filing date of 2026-09-21:

  • Patent Owner Preliminary Response due ~2026-12-21 (37 C.F.R. § 42.107(b), 3 months from notice according a filing date).
  • Institution decision due by ~2027-03-21 (35 U.S.C. § 314(b), 6 months).
  • These are computed estimates, not docketed dates.

• Final Written Decision: Not issued. No claim has been cancelled, confirmed, or held unpatentable. Do not cite this proceeding for any claim-level proposition.

• Settlement / termination: None. No joint motion to terminate, no § 317(b) settlement, no adverse judgment. The proceeding is live.

• Appeal: None. No appeal to the Federal Circuit is possible until an FWD issues (35 U.S.C. § 319). There is no CourtListener or CAFC docket to link for this proceeding.

• Defensive value: Minimal today, and asymmetrically loaded. The single most useful fact for a defendant is who filed: Momentive Performance Materials is a principal incumbent supplier of the silicone elastomer technology that US 12,337,057 is expressly positioned to displace, and the patent's own "Families Citing this family" table shows Momentive filing its own competing "Polyester elastomers from di-carboxylic acid or tri-carboxylic acid, monocarboxylic acid, and polyol for cosmetic and personal care applications" (US 2024/0382405 A1) and "Crosslinked polymer elastomers, compositions, and methods of preparation thereof" (US 2024/0327571 A1), plus 2024-vintage applications WO 2026/073025 A1 and US 2026/0090975 A1. That is a competitor with commercial skin in this exact chemistry running the validity attack — a meaningful quality signal about the art, but not a substitute for your own invalidity case. Note also the "et al." on the petitioner line, which conventionally signals multiple real parties in interest; confirm the RPI list before assuming privity boundaries.

Strategic summary

Claim status: every claim is UNTESTED. Claims 1–17 are all live and unadjudicated. There are no CANCELED claims and no SUSTAINED claims, because there is no FWD. If a demand letter asserts claim 1 (the reaction product of a polyester — esterified dilinoleic acid or a branched C36 dicarboxylic acid/diol copolymer — and a multi-functional crosslinker), claim 8 (cosmetic/personal-care composition + carrier fluid), or claim 13 (gel composition), those claims are fully enforceable as issued. The earlier-generated summary's observation that the granted claims are materially narrower than the specification's polyurethane/emollient/bismuth narrative remains the single most useful substantive takeaway: the independent claims are anchored on C36 dimer-acid polyester chemistry and recite no catalyst, emollient, bio-based-content, hardness, or biodegradability limitation.

Estoppel: none attaches yet. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel arises only from a final written decision. Because IPR2026-00498 is pre-institution, there is currently no estoppel against anyone — not Momentive, not you, unless you are a privy of Momentive. Two corollaries matter: (1) you retain the full universe of § 102/§ 103 grounds on patents and printed publications, plus all § 112 and § 101 grounds that IPR cannot reach; and (2) if the Board institutes and later issues an FWD, Momentive will be estopped as to grounds raised or reasonably raisable — which shrinks, not expands, the art pool available to a co-defendant who is in privity. Watch for a Sotera-style stipulation; in the 2025–2026 filings I reviewed, petitioners routinely file broadened stipulations not to pursue in litigation the grounds raised or reasonably raisable in the IPR, which is often as valuable to a defendant as the IPR itself.

Pattern signals: this is a family-wide risk, not a single-patent risk. No petitioner has filed multiple IPRs on the '057 patent — the count is one. No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX) appears anywhere in the chain; this is a direct competitor attack, not a troll-routing exercise. Critically, IPR2026-00498 targets only US 12,337,057. The family contains US 11,534,389 B2 (the parent, from which '057 was divided, Google Patents-adjusted expiry 2040-09-02) and a pending continuation, US 19/222,604, published as US 2025/0288513 A1. Invalidating '057 would not disable the '389 parent and would not stop Grant from prosecuting further claims in the pending child. Any defense strategy that treats '057 as the whole battlefield is mis-scoped.

Recommended next steps

1. Pull the petition the moment it posts. The USPTO PTAB E2E / Patent Center "Trials" portal is the authoritative source: PTAB E2E and the USPTO Patent Center. Extract the challenged claims, the statutory grounds table, and the real-party-in-interest list (the "et al." must be resolved). Those three items determine whether a Sotera stipulation or § 315(e)(2) estoppel will bind a downstream co-defendant.

2. Calendar the milestones now, and re-verify against the Notice of Filing Date Accorded. Preliminary response ~2026-12-21; institution decision ~2027-03-21; if instituted, FWD ~2028-03-21. These are computed from 35 U.S.C. §§ 314(b), 316(a)(11) and 37 C.F.R. § 42.107(b) — confirm on the docket rather than relying on these estimates.

3. Run the § 315(b) time-bar check first. If Momentive (or any RPI) was served with a complaint alleging infringement of '057 more than one year before 2026-09-21, the petition is barred outright and the defense is over before institution. My prior search surfaced only a New Jersey district court matter, Grant Industries v. PHD Biosciences/Nanometics, Civil Action No. 2:21-cv-13094-KSH-JBC (D.N.J.), with an opinion filed 2022-06-30 (Justia docket PDF) — a case involving the same three inventors (Gormley, Lerum, Croom) but not Momentive, and I could not confirm it asserts '057. So the § 315(b) trigger for Momentive is currently unexplained on the public record; that gap is worth chasing, because a late-served or never-served petitioner creates an argument under § 315(b) and under the Director's discretionary-denial practice.

4. Do not build a case on this proceeding yet. Because there are no cancelled claims, there is nothing to link to, nothing to quote, and no FWD disposition to cite. Any representation that IPR2026-00498 has narrowed, invalidated, or "hardened" the patent would be false. The only accurate statements available today are: one IPR is pending, filed 2026-09-21 by a competitor, at the pre-institution stage, with institution review due on or about 2027-03-21.

5. Scope the family separately. Evaluate validity and infringement exposure for US 11,534,389 B2 and the pending continuation claims in US 2025/0288513 A1 in parallel. A win against '057 alone leaves Grant two other assertion vehicles in the same family.

Sources consulted: the canonical USPTO Open Data Portal proceeding list supplied in this prompt (IPR2026-00498); Google Patents, US 12,337,057 B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US12337057/en), including its "Families Citing this family" table identifying Momentive's competing polyester-elastomer filings; Justia docket PDF for D.N.J. 2:21-cv-13094-KSH-JBC; and general 2026 PTAB institution-notice practice reflected in practitioner summaries (NYIPLA PTAB Committee materials; Banner Witcoff PTAB Highlights). No Federal Circuit opinion or PTAB Final Written Decision on this patent exists to cite.

I'll attempt to pull the actual assignment records before writing anything, since reel/frame data cannot be invented.

Useful — I found the prosecuting firm and the corporate backstory. Now let me try to pull actual reel/frame records and any security interests.

Ownership and Assignment Analysis — US 12,337,057 B2

Threshold disclosure before anything else: I could not retrieve the USPTO Assignment Center records for this patent. The Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) and its legacy mirror (assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) are not indexed by the search tools available to me, and my final three targeted queries (application-number search, correspondent search, security-agreement search) were cut off by a tool step limit. I therefore have no verified reel/frame numbers for this patent, and I will not invent any. Everything below is sourced from the patent's own front page, Google Patents legal events, the D.N.J. opinion in Grant Industries v. Isaacman, PatentGuru's Grant-family listings, and Grant's own product marketing. Where the Assignment Center would be dispositive, I say so.

Inventors

Unusual pattern — departure test: NOT PRESENT. The classic fire-sale precursor (all inventors exiting the original assignee within 12 months of filing) does not appear here. The opposite is true: all three inventors are still filing for Grant years later. Lerum and Croom appear as inventors on Grant's US 2025/0302732 A1 ("Biobased, biodegradable composite powder for use in cosmetics," filed 2025-06-13); Gormley, Croom and Lerum appear on Grant's US 12,521,324 B2 ("Polyurethane gels," filed 2024-05-02). Fifteen-year-plus tenure, no exodus.

Unusual pattern — inventorship/ownership contest: PRESENT, and it is the single most important fact in this chain. The D.N.J. opinion records that Grant's green-elastomer project started ~May 2017; that on 2019-07-10 Steven Isaacman, Michael Isaacman and Andrew Mahon filed two provisional applications naming themselves as co-inventors and omitting Gormley, Lerum and Croom; and that Grant alleges those filings misappropriated Grant's confidential information and falsely stated inventorship. Grant's pleaded position is that it is "the sole assignee of any patent or patent application that was filed" and that the Gormley group were "the true and sole inventors." That is an ownership-cloud allegation over exactly the subject matter of the '057 claims — not a recorded assignment, but a chain-of-title risk item that a diligence reviewer must carry forward.

Original assignee

Grant Industries, Inc. — 125 Main Avenue, Elmwood Park, NJ 07407. Named as both Original Assignee and Current Assignee on the Google Patents record for US 12,337,057, and confirmed as assignee of record in the USPTO issuance notice (HT Syndication/US Fed News, June 25, 2025).

• Primary line of business: specialty performance ingredients for personal care, cosmetics, textiles and performance chemicals. Founded in the late 1930s by Charles Granatell; privately held and family-run into the fourth generation (Tom Granatell, his five sons, and grandson). Fourth-generation principal Daniel J. Granatell is the trademark correspondent of record for the GRANSENSE mark.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes — this is a commercialized patent, not a paper patent. The specification itself states the invention "is trademarked as Gransense™ and will be commercially available as a cosmetic material from Grant Industries." Grant's published GRANSENSE line includes GRANSENSE™ TC-8X (Coco-Caprylate/Caprate and Triheptanoin and C9-12 Alkane and Polyurethane-100) and GRANSENSE™ TC-11X (Triheptanoin and Coco-Caprylate/Caprate and Polyurethane-100) — 100% natural polyester elastomer gels ranging up to ISO 16128 index 1.00, OECD 301B inherent biodegradability, USDA BioPreferred (ASTM D6866 C14). The D.N.J. opinion independently records that "since December 2019, Grant had been marketing its green elastomer in a commercial product." The INCI name Polyurethane-100 ties the commercial gel to a polyurethane reaction product, consistent with claim 1/claim 8/claim 13 subject matter.
• Current status: operating. Privately held, no bankruptcy, no acquisition, no dissolution, and no public-company successor. Grant has manufacturing and warehousing in Elmwood Park NJ, Mexico, the Dominican Republic, England and Egypt.
• Prosecution agency of record for the Grant polyester-elastomer family: Lucas & Mercanti, LLP (per PatentGuru entries for US 12,616,644 B2 and US 12,521,324 B2). Flagged as a lead only — see signal 3 below.
• SEC cross-reference: not available. Grant Industries is privately held and files no 10-K/8-K, so there is no SEC disclosure trail for patent transfers, privateering, or collateral pledges.

Assignment timeline

No reel/frame-verified assignment record could be retrieved for US 12,337,057. I am stating that plainly rather than populating a timeline with unverified entries.

What can be stated with confidence, from the record that is available:

• 2019-08-30 — Priority provisional 62/893,968 filed; a second provisional 62/976,015 followed 2020-02-13. Both are identified on the face of the '057 patent as Grant's applications, and the D.N.J. complaint confirms Grant "decided to apply for patent protection on the green elastomer in August 2019."
• 2020-08-13 — Parent non-provisional 16/992,831 filed; it issued as US 11,534,389 B2 on 2022-12-27. The assignment from Croom, Lerum and Gormley to Grant Industries (if separately recorded) would most plausibly sit at or around this date, but I could not verify a reel/frame.
• 2022-12-14 — Divisional application 18/066,105 filed (the application that issued as the '057 patent). A divisional filed by the same assignee frequently does not generate a new recorded assignment, because the parent assignment's terms extend to continuing applications; the '057 record may therefore show zero or one post-2022-12-14 entries. Either outcome is routine and neither is a red flag.
• 2025-05-29 — Child divisional 19/222,604 filed, published as US 2025/0288513 A1 (2025-09-18). Still Grant.
• 2025-06-24 — US 12,337,057 B2 issues to Grant Industries, Inc.
• 2026-09-21 — IPR2026-00498 filed against the patent by Momentive Performance Materials Inc. et al. This is an enforcement event, not a transfer — it changes nothing about title.

A separate ownership event that is not in the '057 chain but belongs in any chain-of-title memo: PatentGuru lists US 12,616,644 B2 "Polyurethane gels" (application 17/625,964, filing date 2020-07-10, granted 2026-05-05) with inventors Isaacman, Michael J.; Croom, Anna K.; Lerum, Ronald V.; Gormley, John and applicant GRANT INDUSTRIES, INC., prosecuted by Lucas & Mercanti. The 2020-07-10 filing date is the PCT date for the 2019-07-10 priority family — i.e., the Isaacman/Mahon provisional chain that Grant alleges was misappropriated. If that listing is accurate, the competing family has ended up in Grant's name, with Grant's three inventors added alongside Michael Isaacman. That is a documented-looking ownership outcome (settlement or agreement) that would resolve part of the D.N.J. cloud. I could not verify this in PEDS or the Assignment Center and I flag it as unconfirmed.

To complete this section definitively: search the USPTO Assignment Center by patent number 12337057 and by application number 18066105, and also pull the parent 16/992,831 — the parent's reel/frame is the most likely recordation point for the inventor→Grant assignment.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 12337057
    2019 : Grant R and D group conceives green elastomer
         : Grant files priority provisional
         : Third parties file rival provisionals on July 10
    2020 : Grant files parent application
    2021 : Grant sues over trade secrets and inventorship
    2022 : Parent patent issues to Grant
         : Divisional application filed
    2025 : US 12337057 issues to Grant Industries
         : Grant files further divisional
    2026 : Competitor Momentive files IPR

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT.
No transfer to a licensing-only entity appears anywhere in the record. Google Patents lists Grant Industries Inc. as both original and current assignee; the '057 issuance notice names Grant as assignee. There is no "IP / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" successor, no Delaware or Texas single-purpose LLC, and no registered-agent-service address in the chain. If any such entity were the recorded owner, it would have displaced Grant in the "Current Assignee" field — it has not.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT.
Grant Industries matches none of the enumerated asserters (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). Grant is a 1930s-vintage, fourth-generation family-owned ingredients manufacturer that sells the product. The '057 patent is being challenged by a competitor, not wielded by a troll: IPR2026-00498, filed 2026-09-21 by Momentive Performance Materials Inc. et al. — the incumbent silicone-elastomer supplier this patent is expressly positioned to displace.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (insufficient assignment data).
I cannot run this test properly without the recorded assignments, because the signal is the correspondent of record on the assignment coversheets, not the prosecuting firm. Two adjacent data points are available and both fall short of a finding:

• Lucas & Mercanti, LLP is the prosecution agency of record for Grant's polyester-elastomer family (per PatentGuru for US 12,616,644 B2 and US 12,521,324 B2). Prosecution agency and assignment correspondent are different roles and are frequently different firms; a single firm doing ordinary prosecution for a New Jersey ingredients manufacturer is emphatically not an NPE tell.
• Daniel J. Granatell, 125 Main Avenue, Elmwood Park, NJ 07407 is the correspondent of record on the GRANSENSE trademark (USPTO Serial 88615541, Reg. 6028662). An in-house principal of the assignee signing his own company's filings is the opposite of an anonymous shell-entity pattern.
  Neither is evidence of a repeat-player NPE filer. To close this out, pull the correspondent field on every reel/frame from the Assignment Center and compare against the RPX/Unified high-frequency-filer lists.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT.
No chain of consecutive assignments through chained LLCs, in under 24 months or otherwise, is evidenced. The only transfers of any kind are the ordinary parent/divisional continuations (16/992,831 → 18/066,105 → 19/222,604), which are internal prosecution events by the same assignee, not third-party conveyances.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT.
No assignment is evidenced within 6 months before any infringement suit naming this patent, because — per the earlier litigation section — no infringement suit naming US 12,337,057 has been located at all. The only litigation in the technology's history is Grant Industries v. Isaacman (D.N.J. 2:21-cv-13094, filed 2021-06-29), a trade-secret/fraud/RICO action filed four years before the '057 patent issued and in which Grant is the plaintiff, not a transferee. There is no venue-engineering transfer to find.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT.
No Chapter 7/11 filing by Grant Industries is evidenced; the company is operating, marketing, and expanding its GRANSENSE line, and prosecuting a live continuation. No Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid-style sale appears.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT (and inverted).
Nothing shows Grant transferring rights to an NPE to assert on its behalf. The direction of travel is the reverse: Grant is the operating manufacturer defending its own patent in an IPR brought by a direct competitor, Momentive Performance Materials — a company whose own competing filings ("Polyester elastomers from di-carboxylic acid or tri-carboxylic acid, monocarboxylic acid, and polyol for cosmetic and personal care applications," US 2024/0382405 A1; "Crosslinked polymer elastomers, compositions, and methods of preparation thereof," US 2024/0327571 A1) appear in the '057 "Families Citing this family" table.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The owner is the original operating company, and the patent is not neutralized — it stands with all 17 claims live and enforceable, with only a pre-institution IPR pending.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

US 12,337,057 is owned by its original assignee and named applicant, Grant Industries, Inc. — an operating, privately held, family-owned manufacturer (Elmwood Park, NJ) that ships products embodying the claims under the GRANSENSE™ brand (INCI Polyurethane-100, per Grant's TC-8X/TC-11X product literature), and that has been marketing the green elastomer commercially since December 2019 per the D.N.J. opinion. There is no shell-entity transfer, no known asserter, no cascading LLC chain, no bankruptcy sale, no privateering, and no defensive-aggregator termination in any record I can reach; the patent has not moved at all between issuance and today, and Google Patents lists Grant as both original and current assignee. The assertion posture is defensive rather than offensive: Grant is not shown suing anyone on '057, and is instead defending IPR2026-00498, filed 2026-09-21 by competitor Momentive Performance Materials.

Two caveats that could change this verdict, stated because I would rather be useful than tidy:

1. The Assignment Center records were not retrievable (tool step limit). If a recorded conveyance from Grant to a non-Grant entity exists that Google Patents and the issuance notice do not reflect, this verdict would flip. A ten-minute check at USPTO Assignment Center by patent number 12337057 resolves it.
2. The chain carries an unlitigated ownership cloud, not an NPE signal. Grant Industries v. Isaacman (D.N.J. 2:21-cv-13094-KSH-JBC) alleges that the 2019-07-10 rival provisionals — the priority filings behind the "Polyurethane gels" family — misappropriated the '057 subject matter and falsely named inventors. That is a title-risk issue for any acquirer or exclusive licensee, and it is independent of the NPE taxonomy. The apparent presence of Grant Industries as applicant on US 12,616,644 B2 with Grant's three inventors added alongside Michael J. Isaacman suggests it may have been resolved, but I could not verify that and it should not be assumed.

I'll verify the patent record and pull the prior-art citations, then map each reference to the claims.

Let me pull details on the most claim-relevant references.

Let me examine the third-party references that look most on-point for the claimed chemistry.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 12,337,057 B2

0. Threshold notes before the art tables

Record verification. I could not pull a live USPTO PatentCenter page (not retrievable with the tools available). The authoritative record I am using is the Google Patents front end of the USPTO full text supplied in the prompt (https://patents.google.com/patent/US12337057/en), which I cross-checked against third-party sources: the HT Syndication/US Fed News issuance notice for patent no. 12,337,057, issued June 24 to Grant Industries Inc. (Elmwood Park, N.J.), inventors Anna K. Croom (Brooklyn, N.Y.), Ronald V. Lerum (Leonia, N.J.), John Gormley (Midland Park, N.J.) — htsyndication.com — and Justia Patents (https://patents.justia.com/patent/12337057). The bibliographic data agree. No number was auto-corrected. Note that US 12,337,057 is distinct from US 12,337,057–adjacent hits I saw in search noise (e.g., US 11,304,757, US 8,212,327, US 8,222,363); none of those are this patent.

A contradiction to flag, per your cross-reference rule. The previously generated PTAB section describes IPR2026-00498, filed 2026-09-21. The current task states the analysis date is April 26, 2026. A proceeding filed 2026-09-21 cannot exist as of 2026-04-26. Either the current-task date or the IPR filing date is wrong; I am flagging it rather than reconciling it. This does not affect the prior-art analysis below, because none of the cited art depends on that IPR.

Legal frame I am applying.

Claim 1, elementized — this is the gate for every § 102 mapping below.

1. A cross-linked elastomer
2. comprising a reaction product of (a) a polyester and (b) a multi-functional crosslinker
3. wherein the polyester is (i) an esterified dilinoleic acid or (ii) a branched C₃₆ dicarboxylic acid/diol copolymer

Nothing else is required at claim 1 — no isocyanate, catalyst, emollient, bio-based content, hardness, resilience, or biodegradability limitation. Both claim-1 polyester alternatives are C₃₆ dimer-acid chemistry (dilinoleic acid is the C₃₆ dimer of linoleic acid).

The central honesty point of this deliverable: I reviewed every one of the 54/58 patent citations and 11 non-patent citations in the '057 record. I cannot confirm that any single cited reference discloses all three claim-1 elements simultaneously. The art splits into (a) references that disclose the polyester (C₃₆/dimer-acid esters) but not crosslinking, and (b) references that disclose crosslinked polyester-urethane elastomer gels but not the C₃₆ dimer-acid polyester. That is the classic structure of an obviousness fight, not an anticipation fight — which is consistent with a pre-institution IPR by a competitor. I mark each mapping below as § 102 (all elements) or § 103 (element-only) and say why.

Tier 1 — Closest art: crosslinked polyurethane elastomer gels for cosmetic/personal care

These are the references that come nearest to claim 1 as a whole, and they are the ones that squarely read on claims 8 and 13.

Why Tier 1 matters: the '057 claims most vulnerable to invalidity are claims 8 and 13, because those read on any polyurethane elastomer dispersed in a cosmetic carrier fluid — a crowded field by 2019 (items 1–7). The narrowest claim (1, and especially 7) is protected only because the independent claims were rewritten around the C₃₆ dimer-acid polyester, which is exactly what the specification (not the claims) otherwise emphasizes.

Tier 2 — Polyester / dimer-acid / bio-based polyester art (the claim-1 predicate)

Tier 3 — Isocyanate chemistry (claim 2 / claim 7 element level)

Claim 2 (polyisocyanate) and the specification's PDT/HDT examples make the 1,5-pentamethylene diisocyanate (PDI/PDT) and HDI families the relevant art. These references are element-level § 103 art for claim 2, not § 102 for claim 1.

Tier 4 — Cosmetic formulation / application art (claims 8–12, 14–17)

These references matter only if a petitioner attacks the formulation claims. Nearly all are § 103 art for claims 9–12.

Tier 5 — Non-patent literature (11 items) — claim mapping

Synthesis — what actually threatens which claims

Bottom line. The '057 record is a § 103 record, not a § 102 record. The examiner's own citation set is dominated by polyurethane-gel chemistry (Konishi, Mitsui, Kose, Polymerexpert, Bayer) and by bio-based polyester chemistry (Inolex, Aguilar-Castro, MIT). No reference in the record is a clean, single-document anticipation of claim 1. The claim set survives today because the drafting moved the C₃₆ dimer-acid polyester into the independent claims while the specification keeps talking about polyurethane/emollient/bismuth — the mismatch the earlier summary already flagged.

What I could not confirm, and what to pull next

1. Whether WO 2021/007489 A1 (Nanometics) discloses a C₃₆ dimer-acid polyester polyol. This is the hinge of the entire § 102 case against claim 1. Its claim 1 emphasizes triheptanoin, C13-15 alkane, and castor oil — the '057 examples use triheptanoin and coco-caprylate/caprate. Pull the full WO text. Note the D.N.J. opinion in Grant Industries v. Isaacman, 2:21-cv-13094-KSH-JBC, alleges the defendants filed two applications on July 10, 2019 — the same day as WO '489's priority — which is why this is in the '057 record as third-party art (Justia opinion PDF).
2. The EESR for EP 20855942.7 (13 pp., 2023-11-08). The highest-signal prior-art map in the record and I have not seen its contents.
3. The ISR/WO for PCT/US2020/041540 (Oct. 16, 2020). Same — it is the ISA's treatment of the competing Nanometics case.
4. US 10,035,871 B2 (MIT) in full. Urethane-crosslinked biodegradable elastomers is the closest thing to a claim-1 genus disclosure in the record; I have not verified its polyol identity.
5. Which citations carried X/Y categorizations. I have the citation list but not the examiner's rejections; the Google Patents scrape does not reliably reproduce the examiner/third-party star annotations, so I have not asserted which references were examiner-cited except where the scrape was unambiguous (US 3,192,185 A).

Sources: Google Patents full text US 12,337,057 B2 and its citation lists (https://patents.google.com/patent/US12337057/en); Justia Patents (https://patents.justia.com/patent/12337057); HT Syndication/US Fed News issuance notice; EPO Global Patent Index for WO 2013/074655 A1 / EP 2 780 083 B1; Inolex US 9,610,237 B2 and US 2005/0288478 A1 (patentimages/onscope); Aguilar-Castro et al., J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 136:47095 (2018) (Wiley/CIATEQ repository); WO 2021/007489 A1 (https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2021007489A1/en); Unified Patents WO 2021/041046 A1 record (noting the 2019-08-29 vs 2019-08-30 priority discrepancy carried over from the earlier summary). No search result contradicted the training-data expectation for any identifier used above; all identifiers are reproduced literally.

I'll ground the key reference characterizations before building the § 103 grounds, since the record gives me titles but not full disclosures for several references.

Excellent grounding. Now let me verify the isocyanate and cosmetic-vehicle references.

Obviousness Analysis — US 12,337,057 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Vantage point: The task header specifies April 26, 2026. The system date supplied with this session is 2026-09-22, and the prior sections of this analysis used both. This matters for one item only — whether IPR2026-00498 (filed 2026-09-21 per the canonical USPTO list in the record) has occurred. Per your rules I take the supplied record literally: the IPR exists and is pending. Everything below is a § 103 merits analysis and is not affected by which of those two dates is the operative "today."

Contradiction flag carried forward: the first-generated "Patent summary" states no IPR/PGR was found against the '057 patent. As the PTAB section already noted, that finding is superseded by IPR2026-00498. Nothing in this section depends on the earlier negative finding.

Contradiction flag, new: the earlier sections characterize the pre-grant publication as listing 23 claims against 17 granted claims. That gap is not merely a prosecution curiosity — it is directly material to § 103, because it raises the possibility that the granted claim language (specifically the "branched C36 dicarboxylic acid/diol copolymer" alternative in claim 1) was added after the August 30, 2019 provisional. If so, the effective filing date for § 102/§ 103 purposes moves to August 13, 2020, which materially enlarges the prior-art pool. I flag this as an unresolved issue, not a conclusion. See "Ground 6" and "Priority exposure" below.

1. Legal framework and the person of ordinary skill

The application has an effective filing date no earlier than August 30, 2019, so AIA § 102/§ 103 governs. The analysis is the Graham v. John Deere inquiry as applied in KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), and In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413 (CCPA 1981) (a combination is obvious if the claimed subject matter as a whole would have been obvious; there is no requirement that the references themselves suggest the specific combination).

A POSA here would be a person with a B.S. in chemistry, polymer science, or chemical engineering and approximately 2–4 years of experience formulating oil-phase cosmetic and personal-care compositions or synthesizing polyurethane polymers for topical applications. That person would know:

• the silicone-elastomer-in-carrier-fluid paradigm (micronized crosslinked elastomer semi-swollen in a volatile or non-volatile carrier), because the '057 specification itself describes it in detail;
• that polyurethanes are made by reacting hydroxyl-functional polyols (including hydroxyl-functional polyesters) with isocyanates, and that tri-functional isocyanates or polyols produce crosslinked networks;
• that "dimer acid" / "dilinoleic acid" is the C36 branched dicarboxylic acid obtained by dimerizing C18 unsaturated fatty acids, and that it is the standard commercial feedstock for fatty-acid-derived polyester polyols;
• that bismuth and zinc carboxylates are the low-toxicity urethanation catalysts of choice where organotin is disfavored.

Nothing in the '057 claims requires anything outside that skill set.

2. Element decomposition of the claims

The critical structural observation for § 103: the entire inventive weight sits in claim 1's polyester definition. Everything else in the claim set is either a conventional polyurethane reaction, a conventional cosmetic formulation element, or a result-effective variable. That is the shape of a claim set that is vulnerable under KSR — a narrow chemical selection dressed with conventional downstream limitations.

3. The § 103 prior-art corpus available on this record

The '057 patent's own "Citations" table and Non-Patent Citations list supply essentially a complete § 103 toolkit. I verified the disclosures of the most important references:

Outside the record but squarely relevant (verified in my search, offered as additional art a petitioner could use): Croda's Priplast polyester polyol product literature, which expressly describes C36 dimer-acid-based polyester polyols used to make polyurethane elastomers and TPUs, including 100%-bio-based grades sold for crosslinked PU systems (Cargill/Croda product overview); and WO 2016/185172 A1, whose Example 2 reacts a Pripol dimer-diol/1,3-propanediol polyol with HDI and MDI to yield a polyurethane elastomer with Shore A hardness 46.

4. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — Claims 1–7 and 13–17: WO '489 as the primary reference

This is the strongest single ground in the record, and it is not a combination at all.

WO '489 is directed to "Polyurethane gels" comprising a polyurethane elastomer, a carrier fluid, and an active ingredient, made from a polyol, a polyisocyanate, and a reaction catalyst. Its claim set expressly recites triheptanoin, C13-15 alkane, and castor oil — i.e., the same emollient system (glyceryl triheptanoate + coco-caprylate/caprate/alkane), the same castor-oil polyol (the '057 Example 11 prepolymer), and the same active-ingredient-in-gel architecture that the '057 specification presents as its contribution.

Two procedural facts make this more than academic:

1. Effective date. WO '489's priority date is July 10, 2019 — roughly seven weeks before the '057 provisional of August 30, 2019. If its provisional supports the disclosure, it is § 102(a)(2) prior art (PCT designating the US, published in English, deemed published under § 122(b) per § 374, naming different inventors), and it is available for use in a § 103 combination.
2. The examiner already had it. The '057 record lists the International Search Report for PCT/US2020/041540 (mailed Oct. 16, 2020) and the Written Opinion for PCT/US2020/041540 (14 pages) among its Non-Patent Citations. PCT/US2020/041540 is the WO '489 application. The Examiner therefore had the search report and written opinion for the very closest art in the field in front of him.

Limitation mapping: WO '489 supplies the elastomer + carrier fluid + gel architecture (claims 8, 13–17), the polyol/polyisocyanate/catalyst reaction (claims 1, 2), the emollient system, and the active ingredient (claim 10). What I have not verified is whether WO '489 expressly names a dilinoleic acid / branched C36 dicarboxylic acid polyester polyol. If it discloses a polyol genus broad enough to encompass C36 dimer-acid polyesters, then claim 1 falls to a genus-plus-reason-to-select argument under In re Baird's obviousness predicate. If it does not, the missing element is supplied by Ground 2's secondary references. I flag this as the single highest-value verification item.

Ground 2 — Claims 1–7: Bayer '296 + Aguilar-Castro + Croda Priplast (or Inolex '655) + Mitsui '404

If WO '489 does not disclose the C36 dimer-acid polyester, the combination is:

• Bayer '296 — the polyurethane gel architecture: a covalently cross-linked polyurethane matrix swollen in a liquid medium, made at NCO/OH index 15–60, optionally with catalysts and active ingredients.
• Aguilar-Castro — a printed publication that expressly takes a hydroxyl-terminated polyester built from C18 fatty-acid metathesis monomers and reacts it with a diisocyanate to make a polyurethane, and whose title states the polyester is a precursor to synthesis of polyurethanes.
• Croda Priplast literature (or Inolex '655) — teaches that the C36 dimer-acid polyester polyol is the commercial, bio-based polyester polyol of choice for polyurethane elastomers, available in 100%-bio-based grades, and characteristically non-crystalline, hydrophobic, and compatible with low-polarity organic media.
• Mitsui '404 — supplies the bio-based polyisocyanate: PDI from lysine, and PDI derivatives (the '057 examples' crosslinker, "PDT," is a pentylene diisocyanate trimer).

Every element of claim 1 is present: a cross-linked elastomer (Bayer '296), a reaction product of a polyester and a multi-functional crosslinker (Aguilar-Castro), where the polyester is a branched C36 dicarboxylic acid/diol copolymer (Priplast / Inolex). Claims 2 (polyisocyanate) comes from Bayer '296 and Aguilar-Castro; claim 3 (propanediol or butanediol) comes from the dimer-acid polyol literature, which routinely reacts dimer acid with PDO or BDO — WO 2016/185172 Example 2 does precisely this; claim 6 (silicone-free) is inherent; claim 7 (DAPD/DABD) is the species-level selection discussed below.

Ground 3 — Claims 1–7: Konishi '024 / '557 or Mitsui '720 + dimer-acid polyester polyol art

An alternative primary reference. Konishi teaches polyurethane particles for cosmetics; Mitsui '720 teaches a polyurethane gel and its production method. Either, combined with the C36 dimer-acid polyester polyol art of Ground 2, yields claim 1. This ground is weaker than Grounds 1–2 only because the primary reference is further from the swellable-rubber architecture; it is stronger in that Konishi and Mitsui '720 are unquestionably § 102(a)(1) art with no effective-date dispute.

Ground 4 — Claims 8–12: any of Grounds 1–3 + a cosmetic-formulation reference

Claims 8–12 add only conventional formulation elements. The combination is:

• Claim 8 (carrier fluid): supplied by Bayer '296's liquid dispersing agent; expressly supplied by WO '489's "carrier fluid."
• Claim 9 (water + oil phases): DuPont '466 and Bayer '139 both teach cosmetic emulsions/sun-care compositions having aqueous and oil phases.
• Claims 10 and 11 (actives; fragrances/colorants/preservatives): Bayer '296 itself claims a list of active ingredients including "ethereal oils, perfumes, dyes… preserving agents." L'Oréal '770 teaches lip makeup with colorants. Becker et al. (CIR 2017) confirms polyurethanes are established cosmetic ingredients.
• Claim 12 (product forms): the record contains a reference for essentially every recited form — L'Oréal '770 (lip care), Bayer '139 (sun care), DuPont '466 (cosmetic compositions generally).

Under MPEP 2144.04, selecting a claimed active or product form from a recited list of alternatives is an art-recognized obviousness rationale (In re Susi; In re Petering). These claims are, on this record, the most obviously unpatentable in the set — which is why they are also the weakest assertion targets.

Ground 5 — Claims 13–17: + Dow Corning '363 / Konishi / general micronization art

Claim 15's 1–100 µm range is admitted prior art in the '057 specification itself: the Background states that silicone elastomers "as generally used in cosmetics are micronized particles (from about 1-100 microns) of silicone rubber, dispersed and semi-swollen into a carrier phase." An applicant's own characterization of the prior art is a binding admission usable for both § 102 and § 103 (In re Fout; MPEP 2129). Dow Corning '363 teaches silicone organic elastomer gels in micronized form; Konishi '024 teaches polyurethane particles and clusters.

Claim 17's 15,000–1,000,000 cP range is a result-effective variable obtained by routine optimization of solids loading — and the '057 specification confirms this by describing the viscosity as a consequence of dilution ("further diluted with mixing by adding 30 g… to produce… a viscosity of 416,667 cP"). Where a patent describes a property as the product of a disclosed adjustment, that property is not a separate inventive contribution (In re Boesch; In re Applied Materials).

Ground 6 — Claims 4 and 5: relative proportions

A polyurethane in which the polyol is the majority component is the norm, not the exception — the polyol is the soft segment and is conventionally present in excess of the isocyanate on a weight basis. Bayer '296's matrix is 15–62 wt% and its dispersing agent 85–38 wt%, so the reference teaches tuning the polymer-to-fluid ratio across a broad range. The '057 examples themselves land at ~75.8 wt% polyester of the dry polymer network (e.g., Example 1: 11.25 g DAPD / [11.25 + 3.15 + 0.45] g). Claims 4 and 5 are therefore either (a) obvious as routine proportions, or (b) of questionable support — see the construction note below.

5. Why a POSA would have combined these references

The KSR rationales that apply, in order of strength:

(A) Combining prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results. Polyurethane formation from a polyol and a polyisocyanate is one of the most thoroughly characterized reactions in polymer chemistry. The '057 specification itself describes the process as a "generalized" three-step procedure with no asserted unpredictability. Combining Bayer '296's gel architecture with Aguilar-Castro's bio-based polyester-polyurethane teaching produces nothing more than the expected sum of known properties.

(D)/(F) "Obvious to try" with a finite number of identified, predictable solutions. The universe of commercial bio-based polyester polyols suitable for polyurethane elastomers is small and enumerated: dimer-acid/diol polyesters (Priplast), castor oil and its derivatives, sebacic/adipic copolyesters, polycaprolactone. The '057 specification lists them itself. KSR holds that where there are "a finite number of identified, predictable solutions," a POSA has good reason to pursue the known options — and if that leads to the claimed invention, it is not innovation but ordinary skill.

(C)/(G) Design incentive and market forces driving the substitution. This is the strongest market-based rationale and it is supplied largely by the '057 patent's own Background, which states the case against the prior art: silicones "come from non-renewable feedstocks of petroleum origin," are "not inherently biodegradable," and "phase separate from more polar esters." A POSA reading Inolex '655 — literally titled "Natural silicone replacements for silicone fluids in personal care formulations" — would know the industry was actively seeking exactly the substitution the '057 patent claims to have made. When the prior art "contains detailed, enabling technology that does no more than suggest a direction," following that direction is obvious.

(Simple substitution of a known element for another, with predictable results.) Substituting a known, commercially available, bio-based polyester polyol (dimer acid/diol) for the polyether polyols used in Bayer '296 is the paradigm of a predictable substitution. Croda's own literature documents that the substitution improves hydrolysis resistance and oil compatibility — precisely the properties the '057 specification claims as benefits.

(Motivation from the biodegradability art.) Yeganeh 2007 teaches that castor-oil-based polyurethane networks are biodegradable; Mutlu 2010 teaches castor oil as a renewable PU feedstock; MIT '871 teaches urethane-crosslinked biodegradable elastomers; Steripak WO 2014/167518 (cited in the '057 record for the biodegradation testing methodology) teaches degradable, biodegradable plastic materials. A POSA seeking a biodegradable cosmetic elastomer had explicit motivation to move to renewable fatty-acid polyols.

6. Reasonable expectation of success

A petitioner must show not merely motivation but a reasonable expectation that the combination would work. The record supplies it:

• Bayer '296 teaches the numeric operating window (NCO/OH index 15–60) and the polyol purity constraint that makes the gel form.
• The '057 examples confirm the chemistry worked essentially on the first attempt across five formulations and five variants, with the only failure (Example 5, coco-caprylate/caprate alone) attributable to the absence of a swelling triglyceride — a formulation adjustment the art already teaches (WO '489 claims triheptanoin; the '057 spec says "Preferable emollients include plant origin medium chain triglycerides").
• WO '489 independently demonstrates that a polyurethane elastomer gel in triheptanoin/C13-15 alkane carrier, with an active ingredient, was achievable by others in the same window.

7. Rebuttal exposure — what the patent owner will argue

I assess these honestly rather than only favorably to the challenger:

(a) "No reference teaches crosslinking a C36 dimer-acid polyester into a swellable rubber." This is the best non-obviousness argument available, and it is a genuine gap in Ground 2 if the primary reference (Bayer '296) uses only polyether polyols. It is substantially neutralized if WO '489 discloses a broad polyol genus, and it is defeated by the Priplast/Croda literature, which expressly markets dimer-acid polyester polyols for crosslinked polyurethane systems ("Priplast 3266… suitable for cross-linked or ZK-systems"). A petitioner must put the Croda literature into the record; the '057 citation table does not contain it.

(b) Unexpected results. The specification reports 100% biobased carbon (ASTM D6866-18 Method B) and Ultimate/Inherent Biodegradability under OECD 301B, plus "cushion/cloud-like feel" usually only attainable with silicones, and improved compatibility with sunscreen actives (Table 9 vs. Gransil DMCM-5). This is the strongest secondary-considerations case in the record.

Its weaknesses: (i) Nexus — claims 1, 8 and 13 recite no bio-based-content, biodegradability, catalyst, emollient, or hardness/resilience limitation, so the bio-based and biodegradability evidence has an attenuated nexus to the claimed subject matter; (ii) Expectation displacement — Yeganeh 2007 and Mutlu 2010 already establish that fatty-acid-derived polyurethane networks biodegrade, so 100% biobased carbon plus OECD 301B passing is arguably the predicted result of choosing a fully bio-based feedstock, not an unexpected one; (iii) No corroborated third-party evidence of record — the D6866 and OECD 301B results appear as specification narrative (Examples 21 and 22) with no declaration or test report in the citation table.

(c) Criticality of the hardness/resilience window. The specification sets a hard 200–4,000 g hardness floor/ceiling and a ≥70% resilience requirement, and states that outside that window "a suitable elastomeric rubber could not be yielded." This is a well-crafted criticality argument — but it appears nowhere in the claims. It cannot rescue claims 1, 8, or 13. It is the clearest illustration of the point already made in the earlier sections: the granted claims are materially narrower than the specification's narrative, and they correspond to fewer of the specification's asserted advantages.

(d) Teaching away. I found no reference in this record that teaches away from dimer-acid polyesters or from silicone-free cosmetic elastomers. The Dow Corning art is a different chemistry and does not disparage the alternative.

(e) Secondary considerations of record. No commercial-success, long-felt-need, failure-of-others, or copying evidence appears in this record. GRANSENSE™ launched commercially, which could support a commercial-success argument, but no nexus evidence (sales, market share, licensing, praise) is in the material I have.

8. Priority exposure — a distinct and potentially decisive § 103 lever

This is independent of the grounds above, and I flag it because it interacts with the earlier-noted 23-vs-17 claim discrepancy.

If the granted claim 1 language — specifically "a branched C36 dicarboxylic acid/diol copolymer" — is not supported by the August 30, 2019 provisional 62/893,968, the claims are entitled only to the August 13, 2020 filing date of parent application 16/992,831. That shift has three consequences for § 103:

1. WO '489 remains § 102(a)(2) art (July 10, 2019), so nothing is lost there.
2. WO 2021/231527 A1 ("Non-isocyanate polyurethane elastomers," effective filing 2020-05-12) and WO 2021/257937 A1 ("Chemically cross-linked elastomers formed by Michael addition," effective filing 2020-06-18) — both Nanometics/PHD Biosciences, both currently cited in the '057 record as merely third-party citations — become § 102(a)(2) prior art available for § 103 combination. Both are directed to crosslinked polyurethane-family cosmetic elastomers.
3. The intervening-art pool for the "silicone-free bio-based cosmetic elastomer" space roughly doubles.

Caveat on § 102(b)(2)(A): WO '489 and its siblings are subject to the derivation exception if the subject matter "was obtained directly or indirectly from the inventor." That is exactly what Grant Industries alleges in Grant Industries, Inc. v. Isaacman et al., No. 2:21-cv-13094-KSH-JBC (D.N.J.), where the opinion identifies Grant's green-elastomer R&D team as Gormley, Lerum and Croom — the three named '057 inventors — and alleges the defendants filed applications on July 10, 2019 without authorization. A § 102(b)(2)(A) exception is a factual defense the patent owner bears the burden of establishing, and it would be litigated on the same facts as the New Jersey case. A petitioner must therefore expect the derivation issue to be contested and should build the alternative Grounds 2 and 3, which rest entirely on § 102(a)(1) art with no derivation exposure.

9. Where this analysis is weak

I want to be explicit about the limits of what I can support:

1. I have not read the full text of WO 2021/007489 A1. I verified its title, subject matter, claim-level recitation of triheptanoin/C13-15 alkane/castor oil, and its July 10, 2019 priority date, but I cannot state whether it discloses a C36 dimer-acid polyester polyol. Ground 1's treatment of claim 1 turns on that unanswered question. This is the first thing to pull.
2. I have not read Bayer '296's full polyol disclosure. The verified abstract and claims teach a polyol of MW 1,000–12,000 with OH number 20–112 and a preference for polyether polyols. A polyester polyol of ~1,000–3,000 MW with OH number 50–200 (the '057 specification's stated range) is at the edge of or outside that window, which is an argument the patent owner can make and which a petitioner must address.
3. I have not read Aguilar-Castro's full experimental section beyond the abstract and materials/methods, and it produces a linear polyester-urethane from an aromatic diisocyanate (MDI), not a crosslinked aliphatic network. It is motivation art, not anticipatory art, and I have treated it as such.
4. The Croda/Priplast literature and WO 2016/185172 are not in the '057 citation record. I found them independently and they appear to be genuine § 102(b) printed publications, but a petitioner would need to establish their public-availability dates (the Croda brochures I retrieved are undated or dated 2014 and 2016; WO 2016/185172 published 24 November 2016). Their value to the case is high enough that this should be documented carefully.
5. The priority-date question in § 8 is a hypothesis, not a finding. I have not retrieved the 62/893,968 provisional or the 16/992,831 prosecution history. Resolving the earlier-noted 23-vs-17 claim discrepancy would resolve it.

10. Bottom line

• Claim 1 is a narrow composition-of-matter claim, but a narrow claim is not necessarily a non-obvious one. Its single substantive limitation — a crosslinked reaction product of a polyester that is a dilinoleic-acid/C36 dimer-acid polyester — sits at the intersection of art that is thoroughly documented in the '057 patent's own citation record: polyurethane gels (Bayer '296; Mitsui '720; Konishi), bio-based polyester polyurethanes (Aguilar-Castro), bio-based polyisocyanates (Mitsui '404; Covestro '852), and natural silicone replacements (Inolex '655). The claim is vulnerable, most acutely to WO 2021/007489 A1 as § 102(a)(2)/§ 103 art given its July 10, 2019 priority date.
• Claims 8–12 are, on this record, the most plainly obvious claims in the set: they add only conventional formulation elements, each of which is separately disclosed by a reference already cited in the patent.
• Claims 13–17 rest substantially on processing parameters the specification itself admits are conventional (the 1–100 µm micronized-elastomer-in-carrier paradigm is described in the patent's own Background as the state of the art).
• The most important verification tasks, in order: (1) pull the full WO 2021/007489 A1 text and determine whether it discloses a C36 dimer-acid polyester polyol; (2) determine the priority entitlement of claim 1's "branched C36 dicarboxylic acid/diol copolymer" language from the 62/893,968 provisional; (3) put the Croda Priplast and WO 2016/185172 references into the record with documented publication dates; (4) resolve the derivation question under § 102(b)(2)(A), which is the patent owner's principal escape hatch from WO '489 and is already the subject of D.N.J. 2:21-cv-13094.
• Cross-reference to the IPR posture: IPR2026-00498 (Momentive, filed 2026-09-21) is pre-institution, so nothing here is binding on anyone and no estoppel attaches. But the grounds above are the kind of § 102/§ 103 attack that a competitor with its own polyester-elastomer portfolio (US 2024/0382405 A1; US 2024/0327571 A1) would be motivated to run — and note that § 112 and § 101 theories, plus the priority challenge in § 8, are not available in an IPR and would have to be raised in district court.

Sources: Google Patents US 12,337,057 B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US12337057/en) including its Citations and Non-Patent Citations tables; Google Patents WO 2021/007489 A1 (https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2021007489A1/en); Google Patents US 4,404,296 A (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US4404296A](/patent/US4404296A)/en) and PubChem US-4404296-A; Wiley, Aguilar-Castro et al., J. Appl. Polym. Sci. 136:47095 (2018) (https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/abs/10.1002/app.47095); Google Patents US 9,376,404 B2 (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US9376404B2](/patent/US9376404B2)/en); Cargill/Croda Priplast product literature (https://www.cargill.com/bioindustrial/doc/1432234521125/engineering-plastics-brochure-polymer-modification.pdf; https://www.cargill.com/bioindustrial/doc/1432280087571/case-product-overview.pdf); WO 2016/185172 A1 (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/55/41/ae/0be17f6f49d47e/WO2016185172A1.pdf); Justia docket PDF, D.N.J. 2:21-cv-13094-KSH-JBC.