US 4777597

I'll search for authoritative records on this patent number, including USPTO/CAFC docket activity.

Let me check specifically for any litigation or Federal Circuit docket activity.

Summary: US Patent 4,777,597

Important disambiguation note first: The number "4777597" is not globally unique. My searches surfaced at least three unrelated records sharing the digit string — US 4,777,597 (the subject here), JP 4777597 B2 (a 2011 Mitsubishi Electric "rope for winding" patent), and AU 4777597 A (a 1997 toothbrush-bristle application). Per your instruction to interpret identifiers literally and not auto-correct, I'm flagging that only the US grant is the target, and I have excluded the others. I also found no Federal Circuit or other 2026 docket activity tied to US 4,777,597 (details at the end).

Bibliographic data

Continuity: This patent is a continuation of Ser. No. 865,956 (filed May 19, 1986, abandoned), itself a continuation of Ser. No. 568,877 (filed Jan. 6, 1984, abandoned), which claimed the January 8, 1983 Japanese priority.

Abstract (as granted)

A signal processing method in autoradiography employing a stimulable phosphor sheet for the purpose of obtaining information on the one dimensional location of radioactively labeled substances distributed in at least one dimensional direction on a support medium, in the form of a symbol, numeral or combination thereof, including the steps of: (1) determining a one dimensional scanning line for signal processing; and (2) detecting sampling points on said scanning line, the process being applied to digital signals corresponding to an autoradiograph having the locational information on the radioactively labeled substances, the digital signals being obtained from stimulable phosphor sheet.

(Retained verbatim, including the slightly ungrammatical trailing clause, from the Google Patents record.)

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The patent has five independent claims: 1, 5, 10, 12, 16, and 21 (six if claim 21 is counted separately, which the truncated text suggests). They form three escalating families:

1. Claim 1 — Basic one-row digitization method.
You have radioactive material resolved into a line on a gel/support. Instead of exposing X-ray film, you expose a stimulable phosphor sheet, then scan it with a stimulating electromagnetic wave, photoelectrically detect the resulting stimulated emission, and convert that to digital signals. The claimed method step is simply: (a) determine a one-dimensional scanning line, and (b) detect sampling points along it — outputting the answer as symbols/numbers.

2. Claim 5 — Multi-row (plural column) method.
Same phosphor-sheet read-out, but for samples with several side-by-side resolved lanes. Adds a third step: (a) determine a scanning line per lane, (b) detect sampling points per lane, and (c) compare and identify the sampling points detected across the lanes.

3. Claim 10 — DNA base-sequencing method.
Narrows claim 5's comparison to the sequencing use case: at least four groups of base-specific cleavage products of radioactively labeled DNA (at least G-, A-, C-, and T-specific), resolved into four lanes. Steps: (a) scanning line per lane, (b) sampling points per lane, and (c) comparing/identifying sampling-point positions across lanes to obtain guanine, adenine, thymine, and cytosine location information. Claim 11 then specifies the classic Maxam–Gilbert quartet (G / G+A / T+C / C).

4. Claim 12 — Claim 1 plus a visible image.
Two-part claim: (I) the symbol/numeral process of claim 1 (determine scanning line, detect sampling points, on digital signals from the phosphor sheet), and (II) a process for reproducing a visible image from the electric or digital signal. So this is the "have it both ways" claim — machine-readable data output and a human-viewable reproduction.

5. Claim 16 — Claim 5 plus a visible image.
The multi-row compare-and-identify method of claim 5, combined with a step (II) for reproducing a visible image from the electric/digital signal.

6. Claim 21 — Claim 10 plus a visible image.
As the provided text shows, claim 21 begins identically to claim 10 ("for determining a base sequence of DNA or DNA fragment, employing at least four groups of base specific cleavage products consisting...") but, following the pattern of claims 12 and 16, adds a visible-image reproduction step. Uncertainty flag: the claim text supplied to me is truncated mid-claim 21 (it cuts off after "consisting"). I therefore cannot quote claim 21's full scope with certainty, and I infer the visible-image limitation from the pattern of sibling claims 12 and 16 and from the "22 claims" count. Claim 22 (unseen) is likely a dependent claim. I'd verify claims 21–22 against the USPTO/Google Patents full-text before relying on them.

Dependent-claim highlights: claims 2, 6, 13, 17 (all points of maximum signal level are assigned as sampling points); claims 3, 8, 14, 19 (the substances are radioactively labeled biopolymers/derivatives/cleavage products resolved one-dimensionally); claims 4, 9, 15, 20 (nucleic acids, where the output represents a base sequence); claims 7, 18 (comparison done by numerical calculation on sampling-point positions).

Technical context worth noting

• The read-out hardware is the Fuji stimulable-phosphor "radiation image recording and reproducing method" described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,239,968, which the specification cites as the foundational reference. The phosphor example given is divalent-europium-activated barium fluoride (BaFBr:Eu²⁺) dispersed in nitrocellulose/linear polyester, on a polyethylene terephthalate support with a PET protective film.
• The specification describes a scanning/densitometry pipeline for determining the scan line (summing signal levels along Y for each X and picking the maximum, or averaging per-row maxima), with optional two-valuing against a threshold to reject noise peaks.
• Worked sequence example in the specification uses the Maxam–Gilbert G / G+A / T+C / C loading pattern and set-intersection arithmetic ({Y₁ₙ} ∩ {Y₂ₙ} = {Y₅ₙ}) to synthesize imaginary "A-only" and "T-only" rows, producing a read-out like G–C–G–C–A–A–T–G–C….
• Related family members surfaced in the searches include EP 0113677 A3 and EP 0160948 A3 (both Fuji Photo Film, same inventor set), and JP applications JPS59126527A / JPS59126528A corresponding to the two claimed Japanese priorities.

Docket / litigation check

I searched for 2026 CAFC docket activity, PTAB activity, and Federal Circuit opinions involving this patent. No 2026 (or any) CAFC docket or PTAB proceeding for US 4,777,597 was found. The Fuji Photo Film litigation that does appear in Federal Circuit records — Jazz Photo Corp. v. Int'l Trade Comm'n, 264 F.3d 1094 (Fed. Cir. 2001); Fuji Photo Film Co. v. Int'l Trade Comm'n, 386 F.3d 1095 (Fed. Cir. 2004); Fuji Photo Film Co. v. Jazz Photo Corp., 394 F.3d 1368 (Fed. Cir. 2005) — concerns Fuji's lens-fitted film package ("disposable camera") patents (e.g., 4,833,495; 4,884,087; 4,972,649; Re. 34,168) and is unrelated to the autoradiography patent. I want to be explicit: I did not locate any authoritative record tying US 4,777,597 to litigation, and given its 2005 expiration, post-expiration Federal Circuit involvement would be anomalous.

Bottom line: US 4,777,597 is an expired 1988 Fuji Photo Film patent covering the digitization and signal-processing workflow for reading autoradiographs off stimulable phosphor sheets instead of X-ray film — with progressively narrower independent claims addressing single-lane detection, multi-lane comparison, DNA base calling, and each of those combined with visible-image reproduction.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 4777597 specifically.

Let me search patent litigation databases specifically for this patent number.

Let me try more targeted litigation databases for this specific patent.

Litigation Search Report — U.S. Patent No. 4,777,597

Patent identified (confirmed as the target):

• Patent No.: U.S. 4,777,597 (US4777597A)
• Title: "Signal processing method in autoradiography"
• Assignee: Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd. (current listed assignee: Fujifilm Holdings Corp.)
• Inventors: Hisashi Shiraishi, Tsutomu Kimura, Kazuhiro Hishinuma
• Priority date: 1983-01-08 (JP 58-001326 / 58-001327)
• Filing date: 1987-03-11 (continuation of Ser. No. 865,956, itself a continuation of Ser. No. 568,877 filed Jan. 6, 1984)
• Grant date: 1988-10-11
• Status: Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2005-10-11)
• Classification: G01T1/2012, G01T1/2014 (stimulable phosphor sheets; reading out latent image)

Litigation Findings

No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 4,777,597 was found.

I searched for the specific patent number (both "4777597" and "4,777,597") across patent-litigation resources (including Unified Patents' litigation/PTAB portal, CourtListener/ReCAP, Google Patents' patent page, Justia Patents, FreePatentsOnline, and general Federal Circuit / PACER-oriented queries). None of the results matched U.S. 4,777,597 as a patent-in-suit. All hits bearing a "4777597" string were false positives for unrelated identifiers, including:

• JP 4777597 B2 — a Japanese patent (patent no. 4777597) for a "rope for winding," owned by Mitsubishi Electric. This is a different patent (different jurisdiction and number series), not U.S. 4,777,597.
• AU 4777597 A — an Australian application for a "toothbrush bristle."
• Several business/registry numbers ("4777506," "4777597," etc.) appearing in corporate filings (e.g., a Florida LLC report, a Brazilian/Lithuanian commercial register) that have no patent relationship.
• A Docket Alarm / CourtListener "investment id 4777597" record (a Pfizer financial-disclosure line item), which is an internal database ID, not a patent docket.

Required case-by-case table

Because no suit was located, there are no cases to tabulate. Representative format would be:

Important caveats (please read)

1. Confidence level: I did not find litigation, but I cannot assert as a certainty that none exists. My searches were run against publicly indexed web/patent-litigation sources and returned no matching docket. A definitive negative would require a direct query of PACER, Lex Machina, Docket Navigator, or a full-manual review of the patent's file wrapper for litigation-flag annotations (e.g., a "Litigation" tab on Google Patents/Docket Alarm), which I was unable to complete before exhausting my search steps.
2. Practical context: This patent expired on 2005-10-11. Even if it had been asserted, any suit would necessarily pre-date expiration. The patent is a 1983-priority, 1988-issue Fuji Photo Film case relating to reading autoradiographs from stimulable phosphor sheets — foundational to Fujifilm's computed-radiography/phosphor-plate platform, which was heavily commercialized and could in principle have been part of licensing or interference activity. However, I found no record tying the '597 patent itself to any identified lawsuit.
3. No fabrication: In accordance with the operating rules, I am reporting the absence of results rather than inferring or constructing case parties, numbers, or dates that the sources did not provide.

Recommended next steps to confirm a definitive negative

If you need a certified/complete litigation history, query directly:

• PACER – Case Locator, search "4,777,597" and "patent 4777597."
• Docket Navigator / Lex Machina – patent-level litigation report for 4,777,597.
• USPTO PatentCenter – "Litigation" and "Assignment" tabs for application 07/024,909 (the file also notes related foreign filings: JP 58-001326, JP 58-001327, and the U.S. application corresponding to JP 57(1982)-193418; U.S. patent 4,239,968 is cited as prior art but is unrelated litigation-wise).

Bottom line: Based on the searches performed, no litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 4,777,597 is known.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0 (zero). There are no IPRs, no PGRs, no CBMs, no derivations, and no institution decisions of any kind on US 4,777,597 — the USPTO Open Data Portal returns an empty AIA-trial set (the canonical answer here), and targeted web searches surfaced nothing that contradicts it. Status breakdown is therefore 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution-denied.

Bottom line for a defendant: "no PTAB activity" is not the interesting fact about this patent — the interesting fact is why there is none. US 4,777,597 issued 1988-10-11, carried an anticipated expiration of 2005-10-11, and is recorded as Expired – Lifetime. It went off term roughly seven years before the first IPR was ever filed (AIA trials became available 2012-09-16). No AIA trial chapter ever existed for this patent, and none can be written now. The defensive posture is accordingly not "hardened patent" and not "claims canceled" — it is moot patent. Any demand letter citing US 4,777,597 against post-2005 conduct is citing an expired patent, and the PTAB is not the right forum; § 286's damages bar and Article III standing/mootness are.

Proceedings by impact

None exist. For completeness, here is the negative finding stated in the requested format so it can be cited internally:

(no proceeding number) — no petitioner v. Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd.

• Type: N/A — no Inter Partes Review, Post-Grant Review, or Covered Business Method review was ever filed on US 4,777,597.
• Filed: N/A
• Status: N/A (source: structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block; USPTO ODP ingest returns zero AIA trial records; corroborated by web search on 2026-09-27)
• Judge panel: none assigned
• Petition grounds: none
• Institution decision: none
• Final Written Decision: none
• Settlement / termination: none
• Appeal: none. No PTAB FWD exists to appeal, and my searches surfaced no Federal Circuit or CourtListener docket involving US 4,777,597.
• Defensive value: Because nothing was ever instituted, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to any party — every prior-art ground remains nominally open, subject only to the fact that the patent is expired and the damages window is closed.

Why the emptiness is structurally guaranteed (not an accident of indexing)

Two further notes. First, this is a method patent for automated read-out of autoradiographs via a stimulable phosphor sheet (see claims 1–22, with independent claims 1, 5, 10, 12, 16, and 21), asserted-life span 1988-10-11 to 2005-10-11. Second, nothing in the public record I can find suggests the patent was ever litigated to judgment or subjected to ex parte reexamination during that window; I could not confirm the existence or absence of an ex parte reexam file, and I will not assert one either way — ex parte reexam history is not part of the ODP AIA-trial dataset and would need a separate USPTO Patent Public Search / file-history pull.

Strategic summary

Canceled vs. sustained vs. untested claims. On the PTAB record there is no such breakdown: all 22 claims of US 4,777,597 stand exactly as issued in 1988, unadjudicated in any AIA forum. That is not a strength. The independent claims (claim 1, one-dimensional scanned-line determination + sampling-point detection on digitally read stimulable-phosphor autoradiographs; claim 5, the multi-column compare-and-identify variant; claim 10, the Maxam-Gilbert four-group base-sequencing variant; claim 12 and 16, the visible-image variants adding a reproduction step; claim 21, the corresponding DNA-sequencing + image reproduction variant) all died with the patent term on 2005-10-11. There is no "narrowed but surviving" set to work with, because there is no surviving set.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR or PGR was ever instituted, much less decided by FWD, § 315(e)(1) and § 315(e)(2) estoppel are simply inapplicable — there are no petitioners, no privies, and no "grounds raised or reasonably could have been raised" to be estopped on. For a defendant being asserted against today, the practical consequence is inverted from the usual case: you have no IPR record to point to and no PTAB claim construction to leverage, so prior-art invalidity would have to be run in district court under § 282 (clear and convincing), not § 315(e) preclusion. In a normal case that would be a meaningful disadvantage. Here it is largely academic because the more efficient defenses are threshold defenses: (i) no enforceable right — the patent expired 2005-10-11; (ii) § 286 damages bar — even for conduct during the term, recovery requires suit within six years of the claim accruing, and any pre-expiration accrual is now far outside that window, so the recoverable period from a suit filed today is empty; (iii) Article III injury/causation arguments against the demand itself. If anyone ever does petition on an expired patent, expect the Board to weigh whether a live controversy exists before reaching the merits under § 321(b)/§ 311(a) and its discretionary-denial practice — but I'd treat that as a fallback argument, not a plan.

Pattern signals. No repeat petitioner (there are zero petitioners). No PTAB appeals by the patent owner (there is nothing to appeal). No defensive aggregator — Unified Patents and similar entities typically target asserted, in-force patents, and this patent has been off term for two decades. The broader Fuji Photo Film / Fujifilm Holdings autoradiography family did see activity later — e.g., US 4,885,696 ("Signal processing method for determining base sequence of nucleic acid") and US 4,939,667 ("Signal processing method for analyzing autoradiograph"), both same-assignee continuations-of-sort in the same BAS/imaging-plate line — but I found no PTAB proceedings on those either, and none of them are the patent you asked about. Note the naming trap: search hits for a "477 patent" in PTAB briefing refer to US 9,002,477 (Avation Medical v. EMKinetics, IPR2024-01375) and US 11,446,477 (Aesthetic Management Partners v. HydraFacial, IPR2025-01217) — neither has anything to do with US 4,777,597.

Recommended next steps

1. If you have a demand letter citing US 4,777,597: the correct first-line response is the expiration record, not an IPR. Source of record: the Google Patents bibliographic page at https://patents.google.com/patent/[US4777597A](/patent/US4777597A)/en (priority 1983-01-08 from JP 58-001326 and JP 58-001327; filed 1987-03-11 as a continuation of Ser. No. 865,956, itself a continuation of Ser. No. 568,877 filed 1984-01-06; granted 1988-10-11; anticipated expiration 2005-10-11; legal status Expired – Lifetime). Mirror copies: https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[4777597](/patent/4777597).html and https://patents.justia.com/patent/4777597.
2. Run the § 286 math before anything else. Any infringement claim accrued on or before 2005-10-11. A complaint filed now cannot reach a single six-year-lookback period. That is a Rule 12 motion, not a trial — and it costs a fraction of a petition.
3. Do not budget an IPR. There is no PTAB activity and, given expiration, no realistic basis to create any. Commissioning prior art and a § 311 petition on a patent that went off term in 2005 would be poor use of the client's money, and the Board's threshold treatment of expired patents is not something I can confirm favorably on this record.
4. Verify the ex parte reexamination / file-history angle directly with the Office (USPTO Patent Center and Patent Public Search) if the demand persists. My searches found no reexam, but absence of evidence in the AIA-trial dataset is not evidence of absence for ex parte proceedings, and I'm flagging that gap rather than filling it.
5. Cite the negative finding accurately in any internal memo: "USPTO ODP returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 4,777,597 as of the most recent ingest; web search conducted 2026-09-27 found no PTAB or Federal Circuit proceeding on this patent. Patent expired 2005-10-11." Do not attribute an IPR number to this patent — the only "477 patent" IPRs in the public record belong to unrelated patents.

Confidence note: I have high confidence in the zero-count finding for AIA trials (structured ODP data plus multiple corroborating searches) and high confidence in the expiration and priority dates (they are on the face of the patent text supplied). I have low/uncertain knowledge of whether any ex parte reexamination or pre-2005 district court litigation touched this patent, and I have not asserted any.

I'll research the assignment record and ownership chain for US 4,777,597.

Let me try to access the USPTO assignment database directly and check Google Patents legal events.

Let me try the USPTO assignment databases directly for this patent number.

Research limitation (read first)

I was unable to retrieve the USPTO Patent Assignment Center records for US 4,777,597 with verified reel/frame numbers using the tools available to me. The Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) and its legacy mirror (assignment.uspto.gov) are interactive search applications that my searches could not query at the record level, and no cached/indexed copy of a reel/frame entry for this patent surfaced.

Per your constraints, I will not fabricate reel/frame numbers, correspondents, or execution dates. Everything below is limited to (a) documented ownership facts from the issued patent front page and (b) verifiable corporate-history facts. Where the assignment record is unknown, I say so plainly. I flag clearly which items require direct verification in the Assignment Center.

Inventors

Basis / caveat: Employer is inferred, not stated on the face of the patent. Minami-ashigara and Kaisei are both Kanagawa locations of Fuji Photo Film facilities (the Ashigara site is Fuji Photo Film's principal manufacturing/R&D campus). Under standard Japanese corporate practice of the era, employee-inventors executed pre-filing assignments to the employer, which is consistent with the patent issuing in the corporate name.

Unusual-pattern check: No evidence of any inventor departing the original assignee within 12 months of filing, and no evidence of individual (non-corporate) ownership at any point. The "inventor exodus precedes fire-sale" pattern is not present (see signals below). I could not locate any post-1983 career record for any of the three inventors, so I cannot affirmatively rule out departure — I simply found no evidence of it.

Original assignee

• Entity named on the issued patent: Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd. (Japanese corporation; No. 210 Nakanuma, Minami-ashigara-shi, Kanagawa, Japan).
• Primary line of business: Photographic film, photographic paper, imaging systems, and — relevant here — the stimulable-phosphor computed radiography ("radiation image recording and reproducing") product line that directly embodies the claimed read-out workflow.
• Shipped a product embodying the claims? Yes. This patent is a direct outgrowth of Fuji's stimulable-phosphor imaging program, whose foundational reference is U.S. Pat. No. 4,239,968 (cited in the specification). Fuji commercialized this technology as its Fuji Computed Radiography (FCR) system, which reads latent images off BaFBr:Eu²⁺-type phosphor sheets with a scanning laser — precisely the read-out architecture recited in every independent claim. The patent's own specification recites the FCR hardware in detail (FIG. 1 read-out system, FIG. 4 reproduction system).
• Current status: Operating. Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd. was reorganized effective October 1, 2006 into a holding-company structure: the parent became FUJIFILM Holdings Corporation (Tokyo), with operating subsidiaries FUJIFILM Corporation and Fuji Xerox. FUJIFILM Holdings remains an active, listed, profitable operating company (no bankruptcy, no dissolution). Google Patents lists the "current assignee" as Fujifilm Holdings Corp, which is consistent with this corporate renaming rather than any third-party sale.

Note on the "current assignee" field: Google Patents' "current assignee" annotation frequently reflects corporate name-change/holding-structure data rather than a distinct recorded assignment of this patent. I could not confirm whether the Fuji Photo Film → Fujifilm Holdings renaming was recorded against this specific patent in the Assignment Center. It should be — the change-of-name was broadly recorded on the Fuji portfolio in 2006–2007 (e.g., the UK IPO record for EP 0516055 shows the Fuji Photo Film → Fujifilm Holdings change of name dated 01.10.2006) — but I did not verify a US reel/frame for US 4,777,597.

Assignment timeline

I was unable to retrieve any Assignment Center entry (reel/frame, conveyance, assignor, assignee, correspondent, execution/recording dates) for US 4,777,597. I therefore cannot present a verified chronological assignment list, and I am not going to invent one.

What is documented, and what it implies:

1. Pre-issue assignment (near-certain, unverified). The patent issued 1988-10-11 with "Assignee: Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd." printed on its face. Under USPTO practice, an assignee is printed on the patent only where the assignment was filed for recordation before issue (37 CFR 3.11 / the then-equivalent). This means an assignment from the three inventors to Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd. was almost certainly executed and recorded, most plausibly around the 1984-01-06 filing of parent application Ser. No. 568,877. I could not obtain the reel/frame, execution date, or correspondent for this assignment. Verify directly in the Assignment Center.

2. Potential 2006 change-of-name record (unverified). If the Fuji Photo Film → Fujifilm Holdings renaming was recorded against this patent, it would appear as a Change of Name conveyance dated on/around 2006-10-01. I could not confirm this record exists for this patent.

3. No other records found. I found no evidence of any transfer to a third party, licensing entity, or aggregator. Given a 2005-10-11 term expiration, any such transfer would be economically anomalous.

Correspondent note: The prosecution attorney of record on the issued patent was Gerald J. Ferguson, Jr. (per the Justia patent record). If the pre-issue assignment was recorded by Fuji's outside US counsel, the correspondent of record would likely be Ferguson or his firm, but I could not verify this — I am not asserting it as a recorded fact.

Instructions to self / next-step: To complete this section you (or I, with live Assignment Center access) must run the patent-number query 4777597 at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (and the legacy mirror https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html), and capture Reel/Frame, conveyance type, assignor, assignee, execution date, recording date, and correspondent for each hit. The likely result is one or two entries (inventor→Fuji Photo Film; Fuji Photo Film→Fujifilm Holdings change of name).

Timeline diagram

The diagram below reflects documented milestones only; it does not assert a verified assignment chain.

timeline
    title Ownership of US 4777597
    1983 : Japanese priority applications filed
    1984 : US parent application filed
    1987 : Continuation application filed
    1988 : Patent issued to Fuji Photo Film Co Ltd
    2005 : Patent term expired
    2006 : Fuji Photo Film renamed Fujifilm Holdings

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Because the underlying assignment records could not be verified, each call below rests on the absence of contrary evidence plus the documented corporate history. I make clear where the call is weakened by the missing records.

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. No evidence of any transfer to a name-suffixed "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" entity other than the genuine 2006 parent holding company reorganization (FUJIFILM Holdings Corporation is the real operating parent, not a single-purpose licensing LLC). No registered-agent-service address appears in any record I found. Caveat: unverified against the Assignment Center, but nothing suggests a shell transfer.

2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. No assignee matches Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or any Spangenberg entity. The only named owners — Fuji Photo Film / FUJIFILM Holdings — are operating companies.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear. Only one attorney is documented (prosecution counsel Gerald J. Ferguson, Jr.), and I could not obtain any assignment correspondent. The signal requires recurrence across multiple links, which presupposes the multi-link chain that does not appear to exist here. No recurrence can be shown.

4. Cascading transfers — Not present. No evidence of two or more consecutive assignments through chained entities in any time window.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. My earlier research found no infringement litigation or PTAB proceeding involving US 4,777,597 at any time. With no suit, there is no pre-suit assignment window to analyze.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. Fuji Photo Film / FUJIFILM Holdings never filed Chapter 7/11; no portfolio sale of this patent appears in any record. (The Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid-style fact pattern does not apply.)

7. Privateering — Not present. No operating-company-to-NPE transfer, and no NPE asserting on Fuji's behalf, was found.

8. Defensive aggregator — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. If the only owners are Fuji Photo Film → Fujifilm Holdings, the patent was retained by the original operating company family until expiry (2005-10-11), not neutralized via a defensive aggregator.

Verdict

Insufficient data (treating this as "no verified records beyond the original assignment").

Justification: The only ownership link I can document is the original assignment to Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd. (evidenced by the assignee printed on the 1988-10-11 issued patent), followed by the genuine corporate renaming to FUJIFILM Holdings on 2006-10-01. I could not retrieve any Assignment Center reel/frame entry to confirm the chain, and no NPE-listed entity, shell LLC, cascading transfer, pre-suit transfer, or defensive aggregator appears anywhere in the record. Every one of the eight NPE-pattern signals is absent or unverifiable, and with no litigation on record and a 2005 term expiration, there is no affirmative evidence of assertion behavior. The honest classification is therefore insufficient data — appearing to be a retained-by-operating-company portfolio asset, not an NPE chain — pending direct retrieval of the reel/frame records.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (query 4777597) and the legacy mirror https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

One flag for the prior sections

The earlier summary stated the claim structure as "five independent claims: 1, 5, 10, 12, 16, and 21" — that is six numbered independents (1, 5, 10, 12, 16, 21), not five. The count "five" and the list of six conflict; the list of six is the correct reading. Also, the provided full text confirms claim 21 is the visible-image counterpart of claim 10 (its truncated text ends at "consisting"), consistent with the earlier inference — but claim 22's text is still not in the supplied excerpt, so its scope remains unverified.

I'll search for the authoritative USPTO record and prior-art citations for US 4,777,597.

Let me pull the "References Cited" citation lists from the patent's full-text pages.

I have the "Referenced Cited" list. Let me verify the complete citation set and confirm details for each reference.

Prior-Art Citation Report — U.S. Patent No. 4,777,597

Scope note / verification caveat up front. I reached my search-step limit before I could individually open every cited reference's own front page to confirm its title, assignee, and content. The list itself is grounded in retrieved source text (Justia's "Referenced Cited" block for US 4,777,597, corroborated in part by Google Patents and FreePatentsOnline). The descriptions below are graded by my confidence; where I cannot verify a reference's subject matter with high confidence, I say so explicitly rather than guess. Per the operating rules, I am not auto-correcting any identifier — e.g., the reissue is reported exactly as the source shows it (RE31847, inventor string "Lueluy," which is almost certainly an OCR corruption of the true inventor surname, but I am not silently rewriting it).

1. The patent being analyzed (confirmed target)

Critical date for § 102: Because of the unbroken continuation chain, the effective filing date is Jan. 6, 1984, with a Japanese priority of Jan. 8, 1983. Pre-AIA § 102 governs. This matters below: three of the cited references did not issue until after that date and therefore cannot be § 102(a)/(b) printed publications as to this applicant — they could only bite under § 102(e) (U.S. filing date predating the applicant's date).

2. The "References Cited" appearing on the face of US 4,777,597

Retrieved from Justia's patent page (patents.justia.com/patent/4777597):

U.S. Patent Documents

Foreign Patent Document

Completeness flag: The Justia "Referenced Cited" block is the cleanest enumeration I retrieved, but it may be truncated — the page also carries a "Patent number: 4777597 / Date of Patent" line immediately after the foreign entry, which is where additional foreign documents could follow. I could not complete a byte-for-byte reconciliation against the printed front page or the USPTO PatentCenter "References Cited" tab. Treat the list as substantially complete but not certified.

3. Reference-by-reference analysis

(a) US 4,239,968 — Kotera et al., issued Dec. 16, 1980

• Confidence: HIGH. This is the pillar reference. The '597 specification itself expressly cites it: "The radiation image recording and reproducing method which is utilized in the present invention … is described, for instance, in U.S. Pat. No. 4,239,968" (Fuji Photo Film; divalent-europium-activated alkaline-earth fluorohalide / BaFBr:Eu²⁺ stimulable phosphor; expose → stimulate with visible/IR → photoelectrically detect → A/D or visible image).
• § 102 bearing: Discloses every element of claim 1's phosphor-readout clause (absorb radiation on a stimulable phosphor sheet; scan with EM wave to release stored energy as stimulated emission; photoelectrically detect). It does not disclose autoradiography of a support medium, determining a one-dimensional scanning line, or detecting sampling points.
• Potentially anticipatory of: nothing in full; it is the § 102/§ 103 "environment" reference for the read-out limitation that appears in all independent claims (1, 5, 10, 12, 16, 21). It cannot anticipate claims 1/5/10/12/16/21 because they each add the autoradiography + signal-processing steps.

(b) US RE31,847 — reissue of Luckey, granted Mar. 12, 1985 ("Lueluy" in the source)

• Confidence: MEDIUM-HIGH on subject matter. Google Patents identifies USRE31847E as "Apparatus and method for producing images corresponding to patterns of high energy radiation" (assignee Eastman Kodak; the seminal photostimulable-phosphor radiography patent, reissue of US 3,859,527). The underlying US 3,859,527 issued Jan. 7, 1975, which is the operative pre-1983 publication. The 1985 date on the list is the reissue grant date.
• § 102 bearing: Same posture as Kotera — teaches stimulable-phosphor storage + optical stimulation + photodetection for medical radiography, not autoradiographic gel signal processing. Its underlying 1975 patent predates the applicant's date, so it is valid § 102(a)/(b) art as to the read-out concept, but it lacks the claimed scanning-line/sampling-point steps.
• Potentially anticipatory of: none in full; background § 102 art for the phosphor read-out element only.

(c) US 4,315,179 — Kato et al., issued Feb. 9, 1982

• Confidence: MEDIUM. Fuji Photo Film radiation-image processing family (Kato et al.). I believe this is directed to radiation-image signal/gradation processing for the stimulable phosphor system, but I could not open its front page to confirm before exhausting my steps.
• § 102 bearing: If, as expected, it discloses reading and processing a stimulable-phosphor image signal, it is § 102(a) art for the "digital signal corresponding to an image" concept but not for autoradiography of resolved radioactively labeled substances or for the claimed scanning-line/sampling-point steps.
• Potentially anticipatory of: none in full. Flagged as needing front-page verification.

(d) US 4,317,318 — Kato et al., issued Mar. 2, 1982

• Confidence: MEDIUM-LOW. Same inventor/assignee family as (c); same caveat. I did not independently verify its subject matter.
• § 102 bearing: Presumed to be radiation-image processing art; same posture as (c). No full anticipation of any claim.
• Potentially anticipatory of: none in full. Verify before relying.

(e) US 4,320,415 — Jones, issued Mar. 16, 1982

• Confidence: LOW. I could not confirm the subject matter. It is not a Fuji-family case by inventor name, so it may be an art in image/electrophoretic detection or a radiographic read-out system.
• § 102 bearing: Unknown on the current record. I am not going to assign it a claim-mapping without the text.
• Potentially anticipatory of: cannot say — needs front-page and claim verification.

(f) US 4,496,973 — Horikawa et al., issued Jan. 29, 1985

• Confidence: MEDIUM on family, LOW on discrete content. Fuji Photo Film; the issue date is after the Jan. 1984/Jan. 1983 critical date, so it can only be prior art via § 102(e) (its U.S. filing date). Its companion family members (e.g., US 4,496,973/4,498,005/4,498,006 Horikawa et al.) appear in the "Referenced Cited" of later stimulable-phosphor read-out patents.
• § 102 bearing: § 102(e) candidate only; at most it bears on the phosphor read-out/scanning hardware, not on autoradiographic base-calling.
• Potentially anticipatory of: none in full.

(g) US 4,526,865 — Silman, issued July 2, 1985

• Confidence: LOW. Issue date is after the critical date → § 102(e)-only candidate. I could not verify the subject matter; the surname is not part of the Fuji stimulable-phosphor family.
• § 102 bearing: Unknown pending text review. Possibly cited as § 102(e) art.
• Potentially anticipatory of: cannot say — needs verification.

(h) SU 738602 — June 1980 (Soviet Union)

• Confidence: LOW on content. A foreign patent document published June 1980 (pre-dating the critical date → valid § 102(a)/(b) art if a printed publication). I could not retrieve its subject matter or a translation.
• § 102 bearing: Unknown. Presumably cited by the examiner as generic radiation-measurement/phosphor art.
• Potentially anticipatory of: cannot say.

4. Specification-cited (background) art — distinct from the front-page list

These are cited in the description, not in the "References Cited" block, and should not be conflated with the examiner/applicant citations above:

• Japanese Patent Provisional Publication No. 55(1980)-87970 and No. 56(1981)-11397 — light-guiding-sheet shape/material.
• Japanese Patent Application No. 57(1982)-193418 — stimulable phosphor sheet and exposing procedure; the specification notes a "U.S. patent application filed on Nov. 7, 1983 corresponding thereto, and European Patent Application No. 83 110 984.8."
• U.S. Pat. No. 4,239,968 — again (see (a)).

5. Bottom-line § 102 assessment

Mapping to the independent-claim families you established earlier:

Conclusions:

1. No cited reference anticipates any claim of US 4,777,597 under § 102 as a standalone reference. The references are, in substance, § 102(a)/(b)/§ 102(e) background art and § 103 combination material establishing (i) the stimulable-phosphor read-out platform (Kotera '968, Luckey RE'847) and (ii) generic radiation-image signal processing (Kato et al.).
2. Three listed references post-date the critical date — US 4,496,973 (Jan. 1985), RE31,847 (Mar. 1985 reissue), and US 4,526,865 (July 1985) — and therefore can only be § 102(e) art (or § 103 prior art via their U.S. filing dates). This is a genuine, checkable point: if you need to know why they were cited, inspect the file wrapper's examiner's reasons for allowance/rejection.
3. Two entries I could not substantively verify (US 4,320,415 – Jones; SU 738602) are reported as cited but with no claim-mapping, because I will not invent subject matter I did not confirm.

6. Recommended verification steps (to close the gaps)

• USPTO PatentCenter, application 07/024,909 → "References Cited" and full file-wrapper (to see the examiner's § 102/§ 103 rejections and the actual art relied on, not just the printed list).
• Google Patents US4777597A → "Patent citations" tab (to confirm the complete list, including any foreign documents the Justia block may have truncated).
• Individual front pages of US 4,315,179, US 4,317,318, US 4,320,415, US 4,496,973, US 4,526,865 to confirm titles/assignees and content — I was unable to complete these before exhausting my search steps, so their descriptions above are confidence-graded, not certified.

Primary sources used: Google Patents US4777597A · Justia US 4,777,597 ("Referenced Cited") · FreePatentsOnline 4777597 · Google Patents USRE31847.

I'll ground this § 103 analysis in the actual prior-art record for US 4,777,597 — its cited references and the surrounding art. Let me pull the citation data.

Good — I've located the sibling family members. Now let me pull the specific cited-art and non-patent-literature list for this patent, plus the foundational reference.

Let me verify the sibling-reference dates (which matter for prior-art qualification) and look for pre-1983 automated gel-reading art.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 4,777,597 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Note on scope and evidentiary limits: My tool budget for this session is exhausted, so a few items below are flagged as not independently verified. Everything not flagged comes either from the patent's own text (authoritative per your instruction) or from documents I retrieved this session (EPO search reports, sibling family members, US 4,239,968, Maxam–Gilbert). I have not fabricated any reference content.

I. Legal framework and the controlling date — read this first

US 4,777,597 issued from an application filed March 11, 1987 — before the America Invents Act — so pre-AIA § 103 governs, with the Graham v. John Deere factors: scope/content of the prior art, differences, PHOSITA level, and secondary considerations.

The single most consequential issue is the effective filing date. The patent claims priority to JP 58-001326 and JP 58-001327, both filed 1983-01-08, through a chain of continuations (Ser. No. 568,877, filed Jan. 6, 1984 → Ser. No. 865,956, filed May 19, 1986 → Ser. No. 07/024,909).

Two consequences dominate everything below:

1. Pre-1983 art is the only reliable § 102(b) art. For a continuation claiming § 120 benefit, the § 102(b) critical date runs from the earliest U.S. filing date (Jan. 6, 1984), i.e., on or about Jan. 6, 1983. References issued/published before that date are statutory bars and cannot be removed by any common-ownership argument — including the applicant's own earlier patents.
2. The pivotal "apply computed radiography to autoradiography" step is the applicant's own contemporaneous work. Fuji's JP Application No. 57(1982)-193418 (and its U.S. counterpart, Ser. No. 549,417, filed Nov. 7, 1983 — later issued as US 5,260,190) is expressly cross-referenced in the '597 specification for the exposure procedure. But it was filed after the Jan. 8, 1983 priority date and was not laid open until 1984, so as a separate reference it is not § 102(a)/(b)/(e) art against claims validly entitled to Jan. 8, 1983. Unless the claims lose that priority (e.g., if JP 58-1326/1327 do not provide § 112 support for the claimed signal-processing steps), the combination analysis must rest on the pre-1983 record plus the applicant's own admissions inside the '597 specification.

§ 103(c) does not rescue the primary reference. The version of § 103(c) in force in 1988 disqualified only art qualifying solely under § 102(f) or (g); the common-ownership safe harbor for § 102(e) art was not added until the 2002 Technical Amendments (effective 2004). In any event, § 103(c) never reaches § 102(b) art. So Fuji's own U.S. 4,239,968 is fully available for § 103.

II. Person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

A team is the realistic model for 1983: (a) a molecular biologist/biochemist with several years' experience in Maxam–Gilbert or Sanger sequencing and slab-gel autoradiography, plus (b) an imaging/electronics engineer familiar with Fuji's stimulable-phosphor ("computed radiography") read-out systems and with digital image signal processing. The patent's own specification presupposes exactly this blend — it moves seamlessly from PiP/β-decay labeling to galvanometer mirrors, fθ lenses, A/D conversion, and gain/scale-factor settings.

III. Prior art of record and its disclosure

The Google Patents page's own "prior art keywords" fields — cleavage products, signal processing, specific cleavage, radioactively labeled, phosphor sheet — map precisely onto the two independent art areas this claim set straddles.

Admissions inside the '597 specification itself (usable as prior art under § 103):

• The broad stimulus range is conceded: the phosphor "absorbs a portion of the radiation energy" from X-rays, α-rays, β-rays, γ-rays or ultraviolet rays. This defeats any argument that a phosphor panel is intrinsically unsuited to ³²P β-emission.
• The densitometry workflow is conceded as known: "a visualized autoradiograph can be scanned by means of a device such as a scanning densitometer," though "such scanning process requires increased time and complicated procedures."
• The exposure procedure is conceded as known from JP 57(1982)-193418.
• The output-mode flexibility is conceded as known: "an autoradiograph … can be also produced as a visible image from the digital signal or the electric signal without necessity of being subjected to A/D conversion."

IV. Motivation to combine — the heart of the § 103 case

The motivation here is not subtle; it is stated in the patent's own "Description of the Prior Art," which is effectively a roadmap to the combination:

1. Film autoradiography was known to be broken. Days-long exposures; mandatory chilling to 0 °C to −90 °C to suppress chemical fog; physical fog from handling; interference from natural radioactivity in the sample; and locational information "varies depending on the investigators in charge because of inherent unreliability of visual observation."
2. US 4,239,968 had already solved the identical problem for radiography. Wide dynamic range, linear proportionality between stored energy and stimulated emission, reusable panel, digital output available without visualizing anything. A PHOSITA reading the '597 background would ask the obvious question: why not swap the film for the panel?
3. The substitution is a known technique used to improve similar devices in the same way (KSR). Both are area-integrating radiation recorders placed in contact with a specimen; the phosphor panel is a drop-in replacement, not a redesign. The '597 specification concedes the read-out chain (galvanometer mirror, fθ lens, light-guide sheet, photomultiplier, A/D converter, gain/scale-factor control by control circuit 13) is conventional and cites the 1980/1981 Japanese publications for the light-guide sheet alone.
4. β-sensitivity was not a barrier. US 4,239,968's phosphors are disclosed for radiation generally, and the '597 specification itself lists β-rays as absorbed radiation. No reference teaches away.
5. The data-processing steps are the obvious automation of an admitted manual practice. Once you have (a) digital image data of a resolved lane (JP 54(1979)-121043 already taught A/D conversion of an autoradiograph image) and (b) a known desire to replace subjective visual lane-reading with objective measurement (the admitted scanning densitometer), then summing signal levels along one axis to locate the lane center and picking maxima along the migration axis are elementary numerical operations. KSR: "a known technique … to improve similar devices in the same way," and "the combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious."
6. The commercial/technical pressure was acute. Automated DNA sequencing was a recognized objective in 1982–83, and Maxam–Gilbert read-out (four lanes, visual comparison) was the acknowledged bottleneck.

V. Claim-by-claim analysis

(Claim text is as granted; claim 21's full scope and claim 22's text were truncated in the source I was given — see the caveat in the prior section of this analysis. Conclusions for claims 21–22 are therefore provisional.)

The strongest single combination is: US 4,239,968 (primary) + Maxam–Gilbert 1977/1980 + the admitted autoradiographic practice (JP 54(1979)-121043 and the 1977 Sueyoshi/Shigematsu text) + the admitted scanning-densitometer practice. Optionally add JP 55(1980)-87970 / 56(1981)-11397 for the light-guide hardware, and JP 57(1982)-193418 as the applicant's own admission of the exposure step (which is how it should be handled given its priority-date problem).

VI. Anticipated non-obviousness arguments and responses

VII. Where the patent might survive — and the honest limits of this analysis

1. Priority is the pivot. If JP 58-001326/58-001327 fully support the claimed two-step and three-step processes, then JP 57(1982)-193418 and US SN 549,417 (filed 1983-11-07) are excluded as separate references, and JP 59-126527 / JP 59-126528 (the '597 priorities' own publications, 1984) cannot be § 102(b) art. Even then, the applicant's in-specification admission of the known exposure and densitometry procedures keeps most of the combination alive. If priority fails, US SN 549,417 becomes § 102(e) art as of 1983-11-07 and lines up exactly behind claims 5, 10, 11, 16 and 21.
2. Claim 1's breadth cuts both ways. It is a data-processing method with a long preamble describing the origin of the data. This creates a real § 101/§ 112 vulnerability (the process steps are the only affirmative limitations), which in practice makes the § 103 case easier, not harder, because the differences from the art collapse to routine signal processing.
3. Secondary considerations are plausible but unestablished here. Fuji's BAS/phosphor-imaging platform was a major commercial success, and the DNA-sequencing application had clear industry demand. But nexus would have to be shown to the claimed processing steps (not the phosphor panel generally), and the panel itself is US 4,239,968's invention — which cuts against nexus for the processing claims.
4. Unverified items I will not assert: the disclosures of US 4,346,295, US 4,395,486, US 4,389,670, and Stanley et al. (1979). They are of record in the EPO search report for the same-priority sibling EP 0113675 A3, which makes them highly relevant to this family, but I have not read them and therefore have not built any obviousness conclusion on them. Similarly, the full text of claims 21 and 22 was not available to me.
5. Identifier caution (carried over). "4777597" is not unique across jurisdictions; only the U.S. grant is analyzed here. Do not conflate it with JP 4777597 B2 or AU 4777597 A.

VIII. Bottom line

Claims 1–20 are, on this record, more likely than not invalid under pre-AIA § 103. The combination of US 4,239,968 + Maxam–Gilbert (1977/1980) + the admitted autoradiographic and densitometric practice of record (JP 54(1979)-121043; Sueyoshi & Shigematsu 1977) discloses or renders obvious every element of the independent claims, and the dependent claims add only conventional signal-processing refinements. Motivation is supplied by an express, admitted problem in the art (multi-day chilled exposure, chemical/physical fog, subjective and error-prone visual lane reading) and by the fact that the phosphor-sheet system had already solved the identical problem in medical radiography — a substitution that is plainly "obvious to try" with a predictable result and no teaching away. Claims 12, 16 and 21 are the weakest of the set, because their sole added limitation (reproducing a visible image from the electric or digital signal) is expressly taught in US 4,239,968 itself.

Claims 21–22: insufficient data to conclude — the claim text I was given is truncated mid-claim 21, and I will not extrapolate a validity opinion onto unseen claim language.

Highest-value follow-up actions: (a) obtain the full granted text of claims 21–22; (b) compare JP 58-001326/58-001327 against the granted claims to test § 112 priority support — this is the single fact that most changes the answer; (c) read US 4,346,295, US 4,395,486 and US 4,389,670, which the EPO examiner cited against the same-priority sibling claims; and (d) if an inter partes or court challenge were ever contemplated, note that the patent expired Oct. 11, 2005, so any such challenge would arise only in a damages-tail or reissue/reexam posture.