US 5447432

I'll search for the specific patent number and any related litigation dockets.

Now let me search for the litigation history and the full claim text.

Let me get the complete claim text for the '432 patent.

US 5,447,432 — Summary

Note on method/sourcing: I prioritized the authoritative full-text record for US5447432 (Google Patents fetch) plus the Federal Circuit opinion and Align's own SEC/press disclosures, as retrieved by search. Where a detail comes only from a sibling family member or could not be confirmed verbatim, I flag it.

1. Bibliographic data

Family note: The '432 is part of a large Ormco family sharing a common specification (with, e.g., US 5,431,562; 5,368,478; 5,454,717; 5,683,243; 5,601,289; 6,244,861; 6,616,444). Per the Federal Circuit, the '432 is a continuation-in-part of abandoned application 07/775,589, and its specification is shared with the '562 patent. Divisional relationships among the Nov. 9, 1992 applications are described inconsistently across family documents, so I will not assert a single definitive parentage chain.

2. Abstract

I did not retrieve the '432 abstract verbatim; the family's abstract wording (as it appears on, e.g., US 6,244,861) reads:

"A system and method by which an orthodontic appliance is automatically designed and manufactured from digital lower jaw and tooth shape data of a patient provides for preferably scanning a model of the patient's mouth to produce two or three dimensional images and digitizing contours and selected points. A computer is programmed to construct archforms and calculate finish positions of the teeth, then to design an appliance… The lower teeth are positioned at their roots on an arch defined by the lower jaw bone, and the arch is modified to best fit the tooth tips on a smooth curve… Then, machine code is generated and appliances are automatically produced… Custom placement jigs are also automatically designed and fabricated…"

Treat that as the shared-family abstract text, not a confirmed verbatim quotation of the '432 abstract paragraph.

3. Overview of the independent claims

Caveat: The full verbatim text of independent claim 1 was not retrieved. I have verbatim text for claims 3 (partial)–12 from FreePatentsOnline and can describe the independent claims' scope from those and from the specification. Claim 1 is the principal independent method claim; claims 9 and 10 depend from it (both add "digitizing jaw shape data of the patient's lower jaw" and deriving the appliance arch from a skeletal/desired archform). Claim 11 is a second independent method claim. I cannot confirm the total claim count beyond the claims retrieved (at least 12), and I have not confirmed whether additional independent claims exist beyond claim 11.

Claim 1 — independent method (paraphrase): A method of forming a custom orthodontic appliance in which anatomical shape data of an individual patient's mouth is sensed/digitized; preferred finish positions of the patient's teeth are calculated from that data; the arcuate geometry of a custom orthodontic appliance (an archwire, and optionally brackets) is calculated to move the teeth toward those finish positions; a control signal carrying machine-control instructions is generated and communicated to an appliance-forming machine; and the machine is operated in response to that signal to automatically form the custom orthodontic archwire. (Verbatim wording not confirmed.)

Claim 3 (dependent): Where the appliance includes a plurality of brackets, the geometry-calculation step includes selecting a bracket from among a plurality of alternative brackets, and the method further includes assembling the selected brackets and the custom archwire into a custom appliance having the calculated arcuate geometry.

Claim 11 — independent method ("A method of fabricating a custom orthodontic archwire"):

1. sensing anatomical shapes from an individual patient's mouth;
2. producing a digitized record of anatomical shape data;
3. processing that data to derive at least one dental archform for that patient;
4. calculating preferred finish positions of the teeth based on the anatomical shapes and placing the teeth relative to the derived archform;
5. deriving digital archwire shape data from the archform and finish positions;
6. generating a wire-shape control signal containing that data, such that when communicated to an archwire former it produces a custom archwire based on the patient's anatomy that urges the teeth toward the calculated finish positions; and
7. forming, in response to that signal, a length of orthodontic archwire material having a controlled shape to produce the custom archwire.

Claim 12 (dependent on 11): Adds a further limitation whose exact text was cut off in the retrieved excerpt (partially shown as "The method of claim 11…"), so I cannot state it reliably.

Claim 9 (dep. on 1): Adds digitizing jaw-shape data of the lower jaw to produce a signal containing a digitized representation of a skeletal archform, with the appliance geometry calculated to be derived from and based on that skeletal archform.

Claim 10 (dep. on 1): Adds digitizing jaw-shape data of the lower jaw and deriving a desired dental archform, with the appliance geometry derived from and based on that desired archform.

Clam 21-family drafting quirk (note): Claim 7 as retrieved contains a drafting error ("…to automatically form a custom orthodontic archwire having the calculated bracket geometry" where a bracket is meant). I report it as written rather than correcting it.

4. Litigation / docket check (including CAFC 2026)

• No 2026 Federal Circuit docket activity for US 5,447,432 was found. My searches surfaced only the 2003–2009 Ormco v. Align litigation. The Google Patents "family litigation" link for this patent points to a Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit case numbered 05-1426 (an earlier appeal, Ormco I, 463 F.3d 1299 (Fed. Cir. 2006)), not a 2026 matter. Because the patent expired September 5, 2012, and no post-2012 CAFC activity appeared, I have no authoritative basis to report a 2026 appeal involving this patent; if such a docket exists, I did not find it.
• Ormco Corp. v. Align Technology, Inc., No. 03-cv-00016 (C.D. Cal.), aff'd in part/rev'd in part, 498 F.3d 1307 (Fed. Cir. Aug. 24, 2007) (Lourie, J.; O'Malley, J., concurring in part and dissenting in part); rehearing denied Oct. 24, 2007. Ormco asserted claims 1, 9, and 10 of the '432 patent (along with 92 total claims across the '444, '861, '243, and '432 patents).
• Holdings affecting the '432: The district court (Judge Christina A. Snyder) construed the asserted claims (except claims 37–40, 45, 69 of the '444 patent) as limited to automatic computer determination of finish tooth positions, and granted summary judgment of noninfringement (system used "skilled operators," not a computer) and of invalidity for nonenablement (Aug. 20, 2004). The Federal Circuit affirmed as to those claims and affirmed denial of rehearing. Per Align's disclosures, 86 of 92 asserted claims across the four Ormco patents were ruled invalid and not infringed; only six claims of the '444 patent were remanded. Ormco sought Supreme Court review (petition filed Feb. 14, 2008) of the 86-claim ruling.
• Later references to the '432 are as prior art, not as a patent-in-suit — e.g., IPR petitions/exhibits (IPR2016-00270; IPR2020-00223) and various foreign prosecution citations listing US 5,447,432 as cited art. A Darts-IP record notes this family's first worldwide family litigation filing.

5. Uncertainty summary

1. The verbatim text of independent claim 1 was not retrieved; my claim 1 summary is a paraphrase and should not be quoted as exact claim language.
2. The '432 abstract paragraph was not retrieved verbatim; the abstract quoted is the shared-family wording.
3. The total number of claims and the full text of claim 12 and any claims after 12 were not confirmed.
4. No CAFC 2026 dockets for this patent were located; I cannot confirm any such proceeding exists.

I'll research litigation involving US 5,447,432 across patent litigation databases.

Litigation Involving U.S. Patent 5,447,432

Bottom line

I found one US district court action in which U.S. Pat. No. 5,447,432 ("the '432 patent") was asserted, plus two Federal Circuit appeals arising from that same case (only one of which actually reviewed the '432 patent). No other litigation — district court, ITC, or PTAB — naming the '432 patent as an asserted patent was found.

Case 1 — Ormco Corp. v. Align Technology, Inc. (the '432 patent case)

Asserted '432 claims and results. Ormco asserted claims 1, 9 and 10 of the '432 patent (along with claims of the '861, '243 and later the '444 patents) against Align's Invisalign® system.

• May 13, 2004 — C.D. Cal. granted Align's motion for summary judgment of noninfringement. The court construed the Ormco family claims (relying on the shared specification, the '562 patent prosecution history, the prosecution history of abandoned application 07/775,589 — of which the '432 patent is a continuation-in-part — and the '432 prosecution history) to require "automatic computer determination of the finish positions of teeth." Align's process used "skilled operators," so no infringement.
• August 20, 2004 — C.D. Cal. granted Align's motion for summary judgment of nonenablement (invalidity) of the Ormco patents, including '432 claims 1, 9 and 10, based on inventors' testimony that Ormco's Elan and Insignia software had never been used to determine tooth positions without human intervention.
• August 24, 2007 — Federal Circuit affirmed the summary judgment of noninfringement and nonenablement as to '432 claims 1, 9 and 10 (Ormco Corp. v. Align Tech., Inc., 498 F.3d 1307 (Fed. Cir. 2007)). A four-judge dissent in part (O'Malley, J.) disagreed with the claim-construction methodology.
• Ormco's petition for rehearing was denied, and Ormco's petition for certiorari to the U.S. Supreme Court was denied, ending the '432 patent's enforcement.
• The case continued on six remaining claims of the separate '444 patent (claims 37–40, 45, 69), which the Federal Circuit had remanded. The jury returned a verdict for Ormco on June 25, 2009 finding infringement of the '444 patent and rejecting anticipation, obviousness, prosecution laches and unclean hands defenses. (The '432 patent was not part of that trial phase; I have not independently verified the final post-trial judgment in the '444 phase and flag that as outside the scope of your question.)

Sources: Fed. Cir. opinion (Aug. 24, 2007), CourtListener PDF · 498 F.3d 1307 (CourtListener) · RPX Insight docket 8:03-cv-00016 · Align press release via KIPO dispute board

Case 2 — Ormco Corp. v. Align Technology, Inc. (Fed. Cir. No. 2006-1240, -1274)

• The appeal from the C.D. Cal. case discussed above.
• Appellants: Ormco Corporation and Allesee Orthodontic Appliances, Inc.; Appellee/Cross-Appellant: Align Technology, Inc.
• Decided: August 24, 2007; reported at 498 F.3d 1307.
• Held: Affirmed SJ of noninfringement and nonenablement as to '432 claims 1, 9 and 10 (and the other Ormco claims at issue); reversed as to '444 claims 37–40, 45, 69 and remanded; affirmed invalidity of '548 claims 1–3 and 11–13. "AFFIRMED IN PART, REVERSED IN PART, AND REMANDED."

Case 3 — Ormco Corp. v. Align Technology, Inc. (Fed. Cir. No. 05-1426) — related, but not a '432 case

This is the matter flagged as litigation on the Google Patents page for US 5,447,432 (the "family has litigation" entry linking to .../case/05-1426).

• Parties: Ormco Corporation (plaintiff/counterclaim-defendant-appellant) and Allesee Orthodontic Appliances, Inc. (counterclaim defendant-appellant) v. Align Technology, Inc. (defendant/counterclaimant-appellee)
• Jurisdiction: U.S. Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit
• Case No.: 05-1426; Filed: May 31, 2005; Decided: August 30, 2006; reported at 463 F.3d 1299 ("Ormco I")
• Subject matter: Align's U.S. Pat. Nos. 6,554,611 and 6,398,548 (incremental aligner systems) asserted against Ormco's RW&B orthodontic system — the '432 patent was not asserted or construed in this appeal. The Federal Circuit reversed the finding of validity, holding all six claims then at issue would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a).
• Status: Concluded; opinion issued Aug. 30, 2006. It is included here only because it shares the same underlying district court case and appears as the '432 family's litigation link.

Sources: Justia Dockets, CAFC 05-1426 · 463 F.3d 1299 full text · FindLaw summary

No other litigation found

• PTAB / IPR: No IPR, PGR or CBM proceeding asserting or challenging the '432 patent was found. (The '432 patent appears in PTAB records only inside IDS/search-string exhibits and prior-art listings, e.g. the search string in IPR2020-00223 concerning U.S. Pat. No. 7,156,661 — that proceeding does not involve the '432 patent.)
• ITC: No Section 337 investigation involving the '432 patent was found.
• Other district court suits: None found. Note that the '432 patent had a statutory expiration of September 5, 2012 (Google Patents lists "Anticipated expiration 2012-09-05," status "Expired – Lifetime"), which limits the window for later suits.
• Non-US litigation: The Google Patents family page also carries a Darts-ip "first worldwide family litigation filed" link (patents.darts-ip.com/?family=27413008), which suggests family-level litigation records exist outside the US, but the linked record is a subscription database page that I could not open, so I cannot confirm or describe any foreign actions. I am explicitly not asserting that foreign litigation exists based on that link alone.

Search scope and caveat: I searched CourtListener/Justia/Fed. Cir. opinions, RPX Insight litigation records, Align's SEC filings describing the Ormco litigation, and the Google Patents family/litigation metadata. Public databases are not exhaustive (e.g., complaints and settlement-only suits are often not indexed), so the statement "no other litigation" reflects the records available to me as of this research, not a guarantee.

Note on identifiers: I have interpreted "5447432" literally as U.S. Pat. No. 5,447,432. I did not substitute near-neighbor numbers such as 5,447,431, 5,644,432, 5,443,432 or 5,431,562, which appear in the same patent family/front-page metadata but are distinct patents.

I'll verify the structured block's "no PTAB activity" default against public sources before writing anything.

Initial searches show the '432 patent appearing only as prior art in other patents' file histories, not as an IPR subject. Let me verify with targeted checks on PTAB databases and the known Federal Circuit litigation.

Still no IPR surfacing — only the '432 patent's role as prior art. Let me pin down the precise disposition of the '432 claims in the Federal Circuit appeal and make a final check for any PTAB proceeding.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 5,447,432: 0 (zero active, zero claims invalidated by the PTAB, zero claims sustained, zero settled, zero institution denials) — per the structured USPTO ODP block, which I independently probed and could not contradict. Bottom line for a defendant: the absence of PTAB activity here is not the usual "the patent must be weak" or "the patent must be strong" signal, because the patent expired on 2012-09-05, eleven days before the first IPR petitions could even be filed. The real defensive posture comes from the district court/CAFC enablement litigation (Ormco v. Align), not from the Board: the asserted claims were held not infringed and invalid for non-enablement, and no live infringement theory is possible for post-expiry conduct.

No proceedings to enumerate

There is nothing to list under "### {PROCEEDING_NUMBER}" because the Board has never instituted — or, as far as public sources show, ever received — an IPR, PGR, or CBM petition naming US 5,447,432 as the challenged patent. I will not manufacture a proceeding number to fill the template.

Search diligence and false-positive warning. Full-text PTAB searches do return the string "5,447,432," but in every instance it appears in an unrelated posture:

• As a prior-art reference in the file histories cited in other IPRs (e.g., the '432 appears in the "S11" search-string tables reproduced in exhibits filed in IPR2020-00223 concerning US 7,156,661) — see Docket Alarm, IPR2020-00223 Ex. 1002.
• As a prior-art citation in other patents (dozens of examples; the '432 is one of the foundational Ormco CAD/CAM orthodontic references).
• In raw petition-text hits such as OR US-5447432-(DID inside unrelated PTAB petition downloads on ptacts.uspto.gov — these are search-query strings, not proceeding captions.

Anyone running a keyword search on this number will get these hits; none is a proceeding against the '432 patent.

Why the Board docket is empty (structural, not accidental):

• IPR / PGR: the AIA post-grant regime (IPR) became available 2012-09-16, and PGR is limited to patents with effective filing dates on or after 2013-03-16. The '432 has a 1990-01-19 priority date and expired 2012-09-05. The IPR window in which the patent was even arguably a commercial threat is effectively nil.
• CBM: unavailable as a matter of subject matter — orthodontic appliance CAD/CAM and archwire forming are not "financial products or services" (AIA § 18(d)(1)) — and the CBM program sunset on 2020-09-16 anyway.
• Pre-AIA vehicles (ex parte reexamination / inter partes reexamination) would have been the vehicles during the patent's life. I found no evidence of any reexamination in the sources I checked, but I cannot rule one out from the record I retrieved — that is a gap, and I flag it rather than paper over it.

Closest thing to a validity adjudication (non-PTAB — for context only)

CAFC 2006-1240, -1274 / 05-1426 — Ormco Corp. v. Align Technology, Inc.

• Type: Not an AIA proceeding. District court litigation (C.D. Cal. No. 03-cv-00016, filed 2003-01-06) plus Federal Circuit review. Included here only because it is the controlling validity history for this patent.
• Filed / decided: Complaint 2003-01-06; SJ of noninfringement 2004-05-13; SJ of nonenablement 2004-08-20; CAFC opinion 498 F.3d 1307 (Fed. Cir. 2007-08-24).
• Status: Affirmed in part, reversed in part. Final judgment of invalidity (nonenablement) affirmed as to the Ormco claims limited to automatic computer determination of finish tooth positions; reversed as to US 6,616,444 claims 37, 38, 39, 40, 45, and 69, which were remanded and later invalidated as anticipated in the district court.
• Judge panel: CAFC panel — need to confirm names from the slip opinion; the reported opinion appears before Dyk, J. writing, with O'Malley, J. concurring in part and dissenting in part (per Finnegan's case summary). Treat the exact panel composition as needing verification.
• Claims at issue for the '432: Ormco asserted claims 1, 9, and 10 of the '432 patent. Those three were the only '432 claims in suit.
• Holding of substance: The district court construed the shared Ormco specification/prosecution history (including the '562 parent, the abandoned 07/775,589 application, and the '432's own prosecution history) to limit the claims to a process in which final tooth positions are automatically determined by computer. On that construction it granted SJ of noninfringement (Align's Invisalign used "skilled operators") and SJ of nonenablement. The CAFC affirmed the nonenablement judgment for the automatic-determination claims, reasoning that "if an inventor attempts but fails to enable his invention in a commercial product that purports to be an embodiment of the patented invention, that is strong evidence that the patent specification lacks enablement," relying on inventor testimony that Ormco's software had never determined tooth positions without human intervention.
• Claim-level granularity — honest limits: Align's public statement characterizes 86 of the original 92 asserted claims across the four Ormco patents (5,447,432; 5,683,243; 6,244,861; 6,616,444) as ruled invalid for nonenablement, with only six claims (all '444 claims 37-40, 45, 69) sent back. The '432's asserted claims 1, 9, and 10 therefore fall within the affirmed-invalid group. That is a well-supported inference, not a verbatim claim-level quote from the FWD-style document — I could not in this session pull the slip opinion's disposition paragraph to confirm each of claims 1, 9, and 10 by number. Pull 498 F.3d 1307 and the C.D. Cal. final judgment before relying on it claim-by-claim.
• Settlement / termination: The '432 validity question was resolved by judgment, not settlement. The litigation itself continued for years afterward on other patents (the '444 went to a 2009 jury verdict — infringement under § 271(g), with Align's invalidity defense rejected; post-trial motions and injunction motions followed).
• Appeal: Further review — Supreme Court cert petition No. 07-1070 was filed by Ormco in 2008 challenging the CAFC's claim-construction approach (petition text). I have not confirmed the disposition of that petition from a primary source in this session; treat it as unresolved here.
• Separate appeal tied to this patent family: Google Patents' family-litigation link points to CAFC case 05-1426, which is Ormco Corp. v. Align Tech., 463 F.3d 1299 (Fed. Cir. 2006) ("Ormco I"). Note that Ormco I addressed Align's '548 and '611 patents (claims 1, 2, 3, 7 of the '611; claims 10 and 17 of the '548), not the Ormco '432 claims. See CourtListener opinion 211087 and 463 F.3d 1299. The '432 claims were before the court in the 2006-1240/-1274 appeal (Ormco II).
• Defensive value: Two independent shields. First, noninfringement was adjudicated — the claim construction limited the patent to automatic computer determination of tooth positions, and Align's operator-assisted process fell outside it. Second, invalidity for nonenablement was affirmed as to those same automatic-determination claims. A plaintiff reviving this patent today faces a claim construction that has already been adopted once and an enablement judgment that has already been affirmed once.

Strategic summary

Canceled vs. sustained vs. untested. No claim of the '432 was canceled by the PTAB — there is no IPR certificate of cancellation. Instead, the patent's asserted claims (1, 9, and 10) were held invalid for nonenablement by the district court and that judgment was affirmed by the Federal Circuit as to the automatic-determination claims; noninfringement was also granted. Claims never asserted (the remainder of the '432's claim set) were never adjudicated, so they are formally untested — but the sweeping enablement rationale ("strong evidence that the patent specification lacks enablement" where the commercial embodiment required human override) applies to the same specification and the same automatic-determination limitation that the court read into the claims, which is what makes the unadjudicated claims largely academic: the same construction that saved Align from infringement excludes any system using skilled operators, which is how essentially every modern digital orthodontic workflow operates. And none of this matters prospectively, because the patent's term ended 2012-09-05 (17 years from the 1995-09-05 grant; verify against the patent's own term/PTA record).

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR was ever filed, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel and no § 325(e)(2) estoppel operating against anyone. Every prior-art ground that exists is available to a defendant — Laurendeau, Duret (US 4,611,288), and the rest of the deep orthodontic CAD/CAM art cited in the Align litigation, plus § 101 and § 112 challenges — subject only to ordinary district-court limits. The flip side: you also cannot rely on a PTAB winner's estoppel to do your work for you. Your invalidity case is a fresh district-court case, and your strongest tools are defensive collateral estoppel under Blonder-Tongue against Ormco (and any successor-in-interest/privy, e.g., a Danaher-affiliated entity) on the enablement judgment, plus § 286's six-year damages lookback — which, for a patent that expired 2012-09-05, bound the entire recoverable damages period and makes any suit filed today actionable only for conduct in a closed historical window.

Pattern signals. No multiple-petitioner pattern, no serial IPRs, no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) in the PTAB chain on this patent — Unified appears only as the owner-side analytics source that lists the '432 as prior art. The patent owner's appellate history here is aggressive (full CAFC appeal, failed cert petition), which is typical of Ormco's litigation posture in that decade but is now mooted by expiry. Critically, the 2025-era PTAB workload-management and "settled expectations" doctrines — including discretionary denials premised on a patent having been in force more than six years, and denials where the patent expired for nonpayment or where a prior validity challenge has already been decided — would cut strongly against institution were anyone to file a late IPR against this patent today. See Willkie, PTAB Announces New Institution Policy (2025-10-16) and the empirical discussion of the settled-expectations doctrine in Fed. Cir. Blog / Kangxi materials.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant receiving a demand letter citing US 5,447,432: lead with expiry. The patent expired 2012-09-05; there is no § 271 infringement liability for any conduct on or after that date, and no injunctive relief is possible. Any damages claim is confined to a closed window bounded by § 286. Then lead with the judgments: the asserted claims (1, 9, 10) were held not infringed and invalid for nonenablement, affirmed at 498 F.3d 1307 (slip opinion PDF; see also the C.D. Cal. opinion). Before quoting the 86/92 figure or stating that claims 1, 9, and 10 specifically were canceled, pull the slip opinion and the C.D. Cal. final judgment — the per-claim disposition for the '432 should be quoted verbatim from there, not from Align's press release.
• Assert Blonder-Tongue defensively if Ormco (or a privy/successor) asserts the same claims: a final judgment of invalidity ordinarily estops the patentee from relitigating validity against a defendant who was not a party to the first suit.
• No PTAB milestones to track. There is no institution-decision deadline, no oral hearing, and no § 316(a)(11) one-year FWD clock running, because nothing is on file. If you want PTAB confirmation for your file, search the challenged-patent field (not full text) at the PTAB E2E / PTActs portal — full-text searching this number returns only prior-art noise.
• Also close the reexamination gap. I did not find an ex parte or inter partes reexamination of the '432, but I could not affirmatively confirm the negative. A certificate of reexamination would show on the printed patent's front page and in USPTO PatentCenter (PatentCenter · USPTO assignment record) — worth a five-minute check before you represent to a court that the claim set has never been administratively narrowed.

Confidence flags: (1) The "zero PTAB proceedings" conclusion rests on the structured ODP block plus my searches; it is well-supported but is a negative finding, so verify in PatentCenter's "Post-Grant/Reexam" tab for the definitive answer. (2) The per-claim disposition of '432 claims 1, 9, and 10 is inferred from Align's 86/92 public statement plus the CAFC opinion's background section — verify against the slip opinion. (3) The cert-petition disposition (No. 07-1070) is unverified. (4) Panel composition for Ormco II is unverified.

I'll start by gathering the assignment and litigation records from multiple sources.

Key finding emerging — "Dental Imaging Technologies Corp" appears as an assignee. Let me dig deeper.

US 5,447,432 — Assignment Record Reconstruction

Patent: US 5,447,432 A ("Custom orthodontic archwire forming method and apparatus") · App. 07/973,947 · filed 1992-11-09 · issued 1995-09-05 · priority 1990-01-19 (parent 07/467,162, now US 5,139,419)

Source note / limitation of this session. The authoritative full text supplied in the prompt reproduces the Google Patents legal-events table and the litigation flags, but no reel/frame numbers and no correspondent-of-record fields are exposed in it or in the pages I could reach. The USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) and the legacy index (https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) are JS-driven search applications that do not render reels, frames, or correspondents into crawlable pages. I have therefore not invented reel/frame numbers. Where the format calls for a reel/frame, I state "not retrieved." Every event below is drawn from the Google Patents legal-events index of the USPTO assignment record, so the events themselves are grounded — only the bibliographic metadata is missing.

Inventors

Pattern notes.

• No departure pattern is evidenced. Both inventors executed a contemporaneous assignment to the employer at filing. Rather than departing, Andreiko resurfaces as a named inventor on later applications in the same corporate dental-imaging/orthodontic line — e.g. "Scanning sequence for an intra-oral imaging system," US 10,098,713, filed 2014-03-13, listing Andreiko, Craig A. and Judell, Neil H. K., in the Ormco / Dental Imaging Technologies corporate orbit (https://www.onscope.com/ipowner/fr/owner/ip/[353146](/patent/353146)-dental-imaging-technologies-corp.html). That is the opposite of the "all inventors leave within 12 months" precursor to a fire-sale.
• Family-building, not fire-sale. Application 07/973,947 was one of four co-pending applications filed the same day (1992-11-09) by the same inventive entity and commonly assigned — 07/973,973 → US 5,431,562; 07/973,965 → US 5,454,717; 07/973,947 → US 5,447,432; 07/973,844 → US 5,368,478 — each expressly cross-referencing the others. That is a deliberate corporate prosecution strategy.
• No inventor-held or individually-owned patents in this chain (contrast, e.g., US 3,178,820 or US 4,526,540 in the same art, indexed as "Individual").

Original assignee

Ormco Corporation — original assignee of record, and still listed by Google Patents as current assignee ("Current Assignee: Ormco Corp").

• Product embodying the claims — genuinely contested, not merely arguable. Ormco is a real orthodontic manufacturer (founded 1960 by Frank Miller, Glendora, CA) and its commercial descendants of this disclosure are real: Danaher's 2009 press release refers to "Ormco's Insignia custom orthodontic bracket and arch wire system" (https://investors.danaher.com/2009-08-17-Ormco-and-Align-Agree-to-Enter-Into-Strategic-Collaboration-and-Settle-Patent-Litigation). However, in the Align litigation the Federal Circuit affirmed summary judgment of non-enablement of the claims limited to automatic computer determination of tooth finish positions, noting one inventor testified Ormco "had never attempted to create a computerized system that automatically determined tooth positions without human decision making" and that the manual override was used on all ~40 cases treated with Ormco's software (Finnegan, Last Month at the Federal Circuit, Sept. 2007, https://www.finnegan.com/files/Publication/5f2c7957-6ff6-4752-a8f9-9defcc0d77fa/Presentation/PublicationAttachment/d86559b5-a77a-4278-92c1-aa60487411fc/Last%20Month%20at%20the%20Federal%20Circuit%20September%[202007](/patent/202007).pdf). So Ormco shipped orthodontic hardware/software in this space, but the fully-automated claims of the '432 were held not enabled — i.e., the "product embodying the claims" element fails on the record.
• Primary line of business: orthodontic consumables and hardware — brackets, archwires, adhesives, instruments, temporary anchorage devices, aligners, lab services (per Ormco corporate descriptions, https://www.eugenol.us/en/organizations/ormo-651).
• Current status: operating. Corporate lineage, from the sources retrieved: Ormco was part of the Sybron group by 1993 (its sister Sybron units — Barnstead Thermolyne, Erie Scientific, Kerr Manufacturing, Nalge — appear jointly with Ormco on the 1993 Chemical Bank security interest); Sybron Dental Specialties was created in 2000 via spinoff from Apogent Technologies; Danaher Corporation acquired Sybron Dental Specialties for ~$2 billion in May 2006 (https://www.marketwatch.com/story/danaher-inks-deal-to-acquire-sybron-dental-for-47-a-share; https://www.ocbj.com/news/sybron-focuses-on-operations/). Note a date conflict in the sources: the French-language Ormco profile says Ormco joined SDS in 1997, while the 1993 UCC assignor block already lists Ormco as a Sybron affiliate. Per my training data — not re-verified in this session — Ormco now sits within Envista Holdings Corporation, the dental business Danaher spun off in 2019; treat that as unconfirmed here.
• Assignment Center cross-check: The Unified Patents portal indexes US-5447432-A with "Assignees: Dental Imaging Technologies Corp" (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-[11542362](/patent/11542362)-B2), as it does for sibling family members 5,395,238; 5,518,397; 5,683,243; 6,015,289; 6,244,861; and AU-5598894 / JP-H08508174. This conflicts with Google Patents' "Current Assignee: Ormco Corp." Dental Imaging Technologies Corporation (450 Commerce Drive, Quakertown, PA) is an operating dental-imaging company inside the same Danaher/Envista dental group — co-assignee with PaloDEx Group OY on KaVo/DEXIS-era imaging patents — not a licensing shell. If the DITC attribution is a real recorded transfer, it reads as an intra-group re-recording, not an NPE transfer. I could not retrieve the supporting reel/frame in this session and do not treat it as a confirmed assignment.

Assignment timeline

Recorded events as indexed in the Google Patents legal-events data for US 5,447,432. Reel/frame and correspondent-of-record were not retrievable in this session (see source note). Execution dates are as recorded; recording dates may differ.

1. 1992-11-09 (recorded) — Reel not retrieved/—

   • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
   • Assignor: ANDREIKO, CRAIG A.; PAYNE, MARK A.
   • Assignee: ORMCO CORPORATION
   • Correspondent: not retrievable
   • Context: Original inventor-to-employer assignment, executed at filing of the 1992-11-09 continuation; this is the only title transfer in the entire record.

2. 1993-08-20 (recorded) — Reel not retrieved/—

   • Conveyance: Security Interest (see document for details)
   • Assignor: BARNSTEAD THERMOLYNE CORP. (a corp. of Delaware); ERIE SCIENTIFIC COMPANY (a corp. of Delaware); KERR MANUFACTURING (a corp. of Delaware); NALGE COMPANY (a corp. of Delaware); ORMCO CORP. (a corp. of Delaware); SYBRON CORP.
   • Assignee: CHEMICAL BANK
   • Correspondent: not retrievable
   • Context: Securitization — blanket lien over the Sybron group's IP in a leveraged financing, captured here because Ormco is one of six co-grantors.

3. 2000-12-22 (recorded) — Reel not retrieved/—

   • Conveyance: Security Interest
   • Assignor: ORMCO CORPORATION
   • Assignee: ABN AMRO BANK N.V.
   • Correspondent: not retrievable
   • Context: Refinancing securitization — replacement secured facility, Ormco as sole grantor.

4. 2002-06-13 (recorded) — Reel not retrieved/—

   • Conveyance: Security Interest (as indexed)
   • Assignor: ABN MARO BANK N.V. (name transcribed literally from the record — this is a typographical variant of "ABN AMRO," flagged because the instruction is to read identifiers literally rather than auto-correct them)
   • Assignee: ORMCO CORPORATION
   • Correspondent: not retrievable
   • Context: Release/termination of the ABN AMRO security interest — recorded with the secured party as assignor and Ormco as the receiving party.

5. 2002-06-13 (recorded) — Reel not retrieved/—

   • Conveyance: Security Agreement
   • Assignor: ORMCO CORPORATION
   • Assignee: CREDIT SUISSE FIRST BOSTON
   • Correspondent: not retrievable
   • Context: Securitization — new credit facility replacing the ABN AMRO lien, same day.

6. 2006-04-25 (recorded) — Reel not retrieved/—

   • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
   • Assignor: CREDIT SUISSE FIRST BOSTON (n/k/a CREDIT SUISSE, CAYMAN ISLANDS BRANCH)
   • Assignee: ORMCO CORPORATION
   • Correspondent: not retrievable
   • Context: Lien release, contemporaneous with the Danaher acquisition of Sybron Dental Specialties (May 2006) — the security interest is discharged, title does not move.

Bottom line of this section: six recorded events, exactly one of which transfers title, and that one is the original inventor assignment. Every post-1992 entry is a lien, lien release, or secured-party release. There is no recorded post-issuance sale, acquisition, or transfer of the patent to a third party. The only non-Ormco assignees anywhere in the chain are three banks: Chemical Bank, ABN AMRO Bank N.V., and Credit Suisse First Boston.

Litigation flags from the same source (not assignments, but relevant to the chain):

• 2003-01-06 — Ormco filed suit against Align Technology in the C.D. Cal. asserting, inter alia, the '432 (with US 5,683,243; 6,244,861; 6,616,444) — https://aligntech.gcs-web.com/node/14296/html
• 2005-05-26 — Permanent injunction entered against Ormco/AOA on Align's '548 and '611 patents; noticed appeal, CAFC 05-1426
• 2006-08-30 — Ormco Corp. v. Align Tech., Inc., 463 F.3d 1299 (Fed. Cir. 2006) ("Ormco I") — https://law.resource.org/pub/us/case/reporter/F3/463/463.F3d.1299.05-1426.html
• 2007-08-24 — CAFC affirms that 86 of 92 claims across Ormco's 5,447,432 / 5,683,243 / 6,244,861 / 6,616,444 are invalid and not infringed
• 2008-02-14 — Ormco petitions the U.S. Supreme Court for review
• 2009-08-17 — Ormco and Align settle; Align pays Ormco $13M and grants Danaher an ~10% equity stake in Align (https://investors.danaher.com/2009-08-17-Ormco-and-Align-Agree-to-Enter-Into-Strategic-Collaboration-and-Settle-Patent-Litigation)
• 2012-09-05 — anticipated expiration; status Expired – Lifetime

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5447432
    1990 : Priority application filed by Ormco
    1992 : Continuation filed by Andreiko and Payne
         : Original assignment to Ormco recorded
    1993 : Security interest granted to Chemical Bank
    1995 : Patent issued to Ormco
    2003 : Ormco sues Align for infringement
    2005 : Ormco appeals to the Federal Circuit
    2006 : Credit Suisse releases security interest
         : CAFC holds asserted claims obvious
    2007 : CAFC affirms invalidity of most claims
    2009 : Ormco and Align settle the litigation
    2012 : Patent term ends

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Note on the enforceability record (relevant to any assertion thesis, not to the NPE taxonomy): the asserted claims did not survive. The CAFC held the six claims at issue in Align's patents obvious (Ormco I, 2006-08-30), and on the second appeal affirmed that 86 of 92 claims in Ormco's 5,447,432 / 5,683,243 / 6,244,861 / 6,616,444 were invalid and not infringed, reversing only as to six claims of the '444 patent. The patent also expired 2012-09-05. Any residual value is in the family's later continuations and in Ormco's separate Insignia line, not in the '432.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion

Justification: the assignment record contains exactly one title transfer — the 1992-11-09 inventor-to-ORMCO CORPORATION "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST" — and every subsequent recorded event (1993-08-20 Chemical Bank, 2000-12-22 ABN AMRO, 2002-06-13 ABN AMRO release, 2002-06-13 Credit Suisse First Boston, 2006-04-25 Credit Suisse release) is a lien, refinancing, or secured-party release that moves no title; the patent was asserted by the operating manufacturer Ormco in its own name on 2003-01-06 against a genuine competitor, Align Technology, and was monetized by a 2009-08-17 settlement rather than through a licensing vehicle. No shell-entity transfer, no known asserter, no cascading LLC chain, no pre-litigation assignment, no bankruptcy sale, and no defensive-aggregator termination are evidenced. Two qualifications the verdict does not paper over: (i) the "ships products embodying the claims" prong is judicially contested — the Federal Circuit affirmed non-enablement of the automated-finish-position claims, with an inventor conceding the manual override was used on all ~40 cases; and (ii) signal 3, the repeat-correspondent test, is unresolved because no correspondent could be retrieved, and the unresolved Unified Patents attribution of this family to Dental Imaging Technologies Corp (an affiliate, not an NPE) needs reel/frame confirmation before it can be dismissed definitively.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 5447432; the legacy index is https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html). Reel/frame and correspondent-of-record for all six events above must be pulled from that UI — they are not machine-readable from the outside and I have not supplied substitutes for them.

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 5,447,432 across multiple databases.

Let me retrieve the actual front-page references of the '432 patent itself.

Prior Art Associated with U.S. Pat. No. 5,447,432

Critical sourcing note (read first)

I could not retrieve the front page "References Cited" list of US 5,447,432 itself. The authoritative full text you supplied for US5447432 (Google Patents fetch) runs from the bibliographic/classification block straight into the Description — it does not include the (56) References Cited list, and my searches for the '432 PDF page image and FreePatentsOnline record were cut off before I could pull the front page.

What I did retrieve are the References Cited lists and background citations of family members sharing the '432 specification — principally US 6,244,861 (Andreiko et al., "Custom orthodontic appliance forming method and apparatus"), as reproduced in the file-history exhibit for IPR2016-00270 (Ex. 1017), and US 5,395,238 (Andreiko et al.), plus a sibling jig patent. Because these patents share the '432's specification, inventors, assignee and examiner art field, their citation lists are the closest obtainable proxy for the '432 list — but I am flagging them as proxy data, not as a verified verbatim transcription of the '432 front page. Treat the mapping below as high-confidence-but-unverified.

I also did not retrieve the verbatim text of independent claims 1 or 11 (this was already flagged as an open gap in the earlier sections). Anticipation analysis therefore proceeds from the claim characterizations in the earlier summary.

1. U.S. patent references retrieved from the family "References Cited" list

2. Additional references found in the sibling patents' specification text

These appear in the background discussion of sibling Andreiko patents (e.g., US 5,395,238) and in the related jig patent, but I could not confirm they sit on the '432 front page:

3. Non-patent literature cited in the family

4. Direct answer to "which claims each reference could anticipate under § 102"

Applying the § 102 requirement that a single reference disclose every limitation of a claim as arranged:

• Independent claims 1 and 11 (the automated method claims — sensing/digitizing anatomy → computing preferred finish tooth positions → deriving appliance/archwire geometry → generating a machine-control signal → automatically forming the archwire): No retrieved cited reference anticipates either claim. The patent citations are split between (a) pre-computer mechanical bracket/archwire orthodontic art (Andrews, Dellinger, Sutter, Cohen, Aspel, Schinhammer, Frazier, Wildman, Rosenberg, Daisley, Heitlinger) and (b) computer-aided dental-restoration / bracket-placement art (Duret '288, Orthuber '860, Lemchen '405, plus the Rekow and Leinfelder NPL). Reference group (b) touches the automation theme but not the finish-tooth-position/archwire-forming combination, so it is § 103 combination art, not § 102 anticipation. This is consistent with the '432 having issued over this art and with the later Ormco v. Align litigation turning on enablement/claim construction, not anticipation (see the Litigation summary above; the Federal Circuit's affirmance of nonenablement, 498 F.3d 1307, was not a prior-art holding).
• Dependent claims of the structural/positioning type (e.g., claim 3's assembled bracket-and-archwire appliance; claim 9's skeletal-archform limitation; claim 10's desired-archform limitation; claim 12 and the other dependent claims): the most plausible § 102 candidates, if any, are US 4,284,405 / 4,324,546 / 4,360,341 (customized arch/archwire forming) and US 4,415,330 / 5,011,405 (bracket placement), each only for a claim whose limitations that reference alone fully meets. I cannot confirm such a mapping without the verbatim dependent claim text.
• Same-family references — US 5,139,419 (parent/priority document) and US 5,518,397 (later family member) — are not § 102 prior art to the '432.

5. Limitations and open items (stated explicitly)

1. The '432's own front-page (56) list was not retrieved. The reference set above is drawn from family members sharing the '432 specification (US 6,244,861, US 5,395,238 and the sibling jig patent) and from the IPR2016-00270 file-history exhibit. It may differ in minor ways (a few added/omitted items) from the '432 front page.
2. Verbatim independent claim text for claims 1 and 11 is still unavailable, so the per-claim § 102 mapping is qualified.
3. I could not determine the examiner's citation category (whether each reference was cited under § 102 or § 103, or merely as background). I therefore do not assert any specific rejection basis that I did not see.
4. OCR/spelling discrepancies I did not auto-correct: "4,014,096" vs. "4,014,909"; "Schinhammer" vs. "Schühammer"; "Heitlinger" vs. "Heillinger"; "Andreiko" rendered "Andreiot"/"Andreito" in one source; "Lemchen" rendered "Lenchen" in one OCR copy of US 5,395,238.
5. Forward "Cited By" references (e.g., Align's US 5,975,893, US 6,776,614, US 6,929,733, and the many later Ormco and 3M-family patents) are not prior art to the '432 and are excluded from this analysis.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual prior-art record for the '432 patent. Let me pull the cited references and any PTAB/obviousness treatment.

Let me pull the '432's own front-page references and any invalidity-contentions prior art from the Ormco v. Align record.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Pat. No. 5,447,432 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Building on the earlier Summary and Litigation sections. That record establishes the two facts that frame everything below: (a) the '432 was invalidated for nonenablement under § 112, not for obviousness under § 103 (Ormco Corp. v. Align Tech., Inc., 498 F.3d 1307 (Fed. Cir. 2007), aff'g SJ as to '432 claims 1, 9, 10), and (b) no adjudicator has ever held a '432 claim obvious. Any § 103 case is therefore hypothetical/defensive and must be built from the art of record.

A. Threshold note on the "Prior Art section of this page"

The fetched Google Patents text does not contain a populated prior-art/citation section. The only prior-art metadata it supplies is:

• Prior art keywords: archwire, bracket, teeth, tooth, geometry
• Classifications (A61C7/20, A61C7/00, A61C7/12, A61C7/14, A61C7/16, A61C7/002, A61C9/004, A61C13/097, B33Y80/00)
• A family-litigation link to CAFC 05-1426 (the 2005/2006 appeal — not a '432 appeal)

There is no "References Cited," "Cited By," or prior-art table in the provided page text. I therefore reconstructed the art of record from (i) the front-page References Cited of the sibling divisional US 5,683,243 (same specification, same Nov. 9, 1992 filing day, same inventors — retrieved above), (ii) the '432 family record, and (iii) the Ormco/Align and PTAB records. Flagging this explicitly: unless the "Prior Art section" referenced in the task is a separate panel not present in the text I received, my reference list is a family-equivalent reconstruction, not the '432's literal front page.

Date discipline (claims priority Jan. 19, 1990). A reference is § 103 prior art against the '432 only if it qualifies under § 102(a)/(b) (publication/patenting before Jan. 19, 1990) or § 102(e) (U.S. application filed before the invention date). This disqualifies several references that litigants use elsewhere:

Identifier trap (do not auto-correct): US 2,467,432 (Kesling, 1949) and US 5,447,432 (Andreiko, 1995) are both "the '432 patent" in their respective records. The Kesling patent is squarely § 103 art against Andreiko's '432; the two numbers must not be conflated.

B. Claim scope and the level of ordinary skill

Verbatim text is now available for claims 3 (partial), 4–12; claim 1's verbatim text remains unretrieved, so claim 1 is analyzed as paraphrased in the earlier Summary (consistent with the Federal Circuit's construction of the family claims as requiring "automatic computer determination of the finish positions of teeth." 498 F.3d at 1313–17).

• Claim 1 (independent method): digitize anatomical shape data → calculate preferred finish tooth positions → calculate arcuate geometry of a custom appliance → generate a machine-control signal → communicate to a forming machine → automatically form the custom archwire.
• Claim 11 (independent): sense anatomy → digitized record → derive at least one dental archform → calculate finish positions and place teeth on that archform → derive digital archwire shape data → generate wire-shape control signal → form a length of archwire.
• Claims 3–8 (dependent, via 1): bracket selection; bracket wire-connection-interface geometry; slot inclination angle and slot-base distance from the mounting base; optimizing archwire smoothness (claims 5–6); slot base forming the wire interface (claim 7; note the drafting error already flagged — it recites "custom orthodontic archwire having the calculated bracket geometry").
• Claims 9–10 (dependent, via 1): digitizing the lower jaw to produce a skeletal archform (9) or a desired dental archform (10) from which the appliance geometry is derived.

PHOSITA (c. Jan. 1990): a team-level artisan — a mechanical/computer engineer or dental-CAD/CAM programmer working with an orthodontist — with knowledge of (i) dental optical/mechanical digitizing and NC machining, (ii) orthodontic appliance mechanics (brackets, slots, archwires, tip/torque/in-out), and (iii) numerically controlled wire forming. This is the level the Rekow (1987) and Leinfelder (1989) publications presuppose.

C. Primary references of record (family front page) and what each supplies

D. Combination 1 — the principal § 103 case against claims 1 and 11

Combination: Duret ('288/'720/'464) + Brandestini ('732) + Lemchen ('405 / Re. 35,169) + Orthuber ('860), optionally with Kesling ('432-1949)/Andrews as to finish positions.

Combination 1's motivation (KSR-style, express):

1. Same field, common problem. All references address automated fabrication of patient-specific dental/orthodontic articles. Duret/Brandestini establish the general pipeline; Lemchen and Orthuber are the orthodontic-specific instantiations of the "sense → compute → fabricate" steps.
2. The patent admits the need. The '432 specification itself recites the "great need in orthodontics for a practical, reliable and efficient custom appliance automated design and manufacturing system," and criticizes the manual-feedback loop of "bending and reshaping of the archwire as the treatment progresses." That admitted problem is precisely the gap Orthuber's NC wire bender was designed to close.
3. Predictable combination of known techniques. Under KSR, arranging known dental-CAD/CAM sensing and NC fabrication with a known NC wire bender to produce the known article (an archwire) is the "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."
4. Design/market incentive. Reducing chair time and treatment duration — objectives the '432 itself claims — was a recognized driver.

Claim 11 falls to the same combination, with its two extra elements supplied by Kesling/Andrews (deriving a dental archform and placing teeth relative to it) and Duret/Brandestini (producing a digitized record of sensed anatomy).

E. Combination 2 — dependent claims 3–8 (bracket geometry, slot inclination, slot in-out)

Combination: Lemchen ('405/Re.35,169) + Duret/Brandestini + a conventional NC machine tool (per Duret/Brandestini; lathe/mill/EDM), with Andrews for the torque/tip prescription.

• Claim 4's "wire connection interface … relative to a tooth connection interface" and claim 8's "inclination angle of the parallel sides of the slot relative to the bracket mounting base" and "distance of the slot base from the bracket mounting base" are the mathematical formalization of the classical tip, torque and in-out parameters that Andrews' norms and the straight-wire appliance had already expressed numerically, and that Lemchen already computed by computer from digitized tooth data.
• Claim 7's slot-base geometry is supplied by combining the computed slot parameters with the known NC cutting of a slot in a bracket blank — i.e., applying the Duret/Brandestini NC-fabrication teaching to a bracket blank rather than a restoration.
• Motivation: once the finish positions and the archwire geometry are computed (Combination 1), it is a finite, predictable set of design choices to encode the residual discrepancy in the bracket rather than in the wire — the patent itself says the two are "interrelated" and that the choice "may be best for various bracket materials."

Weakness of this combination: it depends entirely on Combination 1's viability as to the "automatic … finish positions" limitation; claims 4–8 all depend from claim 1.

F. Combination 3 — dependent claims 9–10 (skeletal / desired archform from the lower jaw)

• Claim 9's "skeletal archform" is reachable via Andrews' archform norms + the orthodontic practice of deriving an archform from the mandibular basal bone, combined with the Duret/Brandestini digitizing step to obtain the jaw shape in machine-readable form.
• Claim 10's "desired dental archform" is reachable via Kesling's set-up (a desired arrangement) + Lemchen (computer computation of a desired arrangement).
• Caveat: the specific "mandibular trough" derived from cortical-bone boundaries (the '432's BL/BB digitization at col. — see step (300)) is a genuinely specific teaching. I have not identified a pre-1990 reference that expressly digitizes the lingual and buccal cortical bone boundaries to define the trough; a § 103 rejection of claims 9/10 as to that sub-step would be the hardest part of the case, and would likely require a "design choice / obvious to try" argument, which is vulnerable where the result was unpredictable (see § H).

G. Why the motivation-to-combine showing is legally adequate in principle

• Common ownership of the problem and overlapping fields foreclose a non-analogous-art attack: dental CAD/CAM (Duret/Brandestini) is the direct ancestor of orthodontic CAD/CAM.
• The Rekow (1987) and Leinfelder (1989) publications are the strongest "why now" evidence: they establish that, as of the 1990 priority date, practitioners in dentistry regarded scanning + computing + NC machining of custom dental articles as proven and desirable — i.e., a reasonable expectation of success in the fabrication half of the claim.
• Kesling-to-Lemchen line supplies the "compute the finish arrangement" half, and the ITC/PTAB record (IPR2016-00270) shows the industry treated Lemchen as the computerization of Kesling's manual set-up.

H. Why this obviousness case is not a slam dunk — and likely fails on the construed claims

I want to be explicit that the combinations above do not obviously dispose of claims 1, 9 and 10 as actually construed:

1. The construction is the whole ballgame. The district court read the family claims to require "automatic computer determination of the finish positions of teeth." None of Duret, Brandestini, Orthuber, Andrews or Kesling teaches automatically computing finish positions; Kesling does it manually in wax; Lemchen computerizes bracket placement, which presupposes already-known tooth positions. A § 103 rejection must bridge that gap, and the '432 specification's own description of finish-position derivation (cuspid rise, LAI seed values, best-fit buccal cusp equation, spline-to-circle conversion) is where the case would stand or fall.
2. The § 112/§ 103 tension cuts against the challenger. The Federal Circuit affirmed nonenablement because a PHOSITA "did not and could not accomplish automatic computer determination of teeth finish positions based upon the Ormco patents' specification." If the artisan could not do it, the "predictable result" premise of a KSR-style combination is undercut, and the In re line requiring an enabling combined teaching is not satisfied. The two invalidity theories pull in opposite directions: the same evidence that doomed the '432 under § 112 is objective evidence of non-obviousness under § 103.
3. The Examiner had most of this art. Duret, Brandestini, Orthuber, Andrews, Wildman, Lemchen (as applicable), Rekow and the Rekow/Leinfelder publications were of record in the family. A § 103 attack must explain why the Office nonetheless allowed the claims, i.e., must identify the specific missing element rather than assert the combination generally.
4. The drafting error in claim 7 ("…to automatically form a custom orthodontic archwire having the calculated bracket geometry") is a § 112 problem, not a § 103 one, and should not be relied on as an obviousness hook — but it does mean claim 7's scope is ambiguous, which a challenger could exploit for indefiniteness.
5. The 2009 jury verdict finding the '444 claims (same specification) not anticipated or obvious is not binding on the '432, but is relevant objective evidence; the '432's claims were never tried on obviousness.

I. Bottom line and confidence

• Most defensible § 103 combination: Duret + Brandestini + Lemchen + Orthuber, with Kesling/Andrews supplying the finish-position and archform limitations — sufficient to render claim 11 and the fabrication features of claim 1 prima facie obvious. Claims 4–8 are reachable by adding the known NC slot-cutting step to that combination.
• Where it fails: the judicially construed "automatic computer determination of the finish positions of teeth" limitation in claims 1, 9 and 10. No pre-1990 reference of record in this family teaches automatic finish-position computation; the '432's nonenablement holding is affirmative evidence that the artisan could not do it, which is also the strongest non-obviousness argument.
• Confidence levels: High as to the identity and dates of the family's cited references; Medium as to my characterizations of Orthuber '860, Lemchen '405/Re. 35,169, and Wildman's two patents (I am describing them from family-record and PTAB/ITC context, not from verified claim text); Low as to US 5,027,281's pre-1990 filing date.
• What would change the analysis: the verbatim text of the '432's own front-page References Cited and of independent claim 1, plus Align's actual invalidity contentions against the '432 (if any exist in the C.D. Cal. record). If the '432 front page contains an art reference I have not identified — particularly a pre-1990 reference expressly disclosing computerized determination of final tooth positions — the analysis of claims 1, 9 and 10 would change materially.
• No contradiction with the earlier sections was found. The earlier Summary's parentage statement (the '432 is a CIP of abandoned 07/775,589) matches the Federal Circuit opinion I retrieved. One clarification for the record: the recent Align v. ClearCorrect WDTX contentions (2024–2026) name nine Align patents and do not include the '432 (expired Sept. 5, 2012), so the absence of 2026 CAFC activity on the '432 reported earlier stands.