US 6329143

I'll run several targeted searches for this exact patent number.

Let me try to retrieve the actual claim text and check for any 2026 CAFC activity.

Summary — US 6,329,143 B1

Verification status: I confirmed the patent number, title, and most bibliographic data against Google Patents and Espacenet listings. However, I was not able to retrieve the verbatim text of the issued claims or the abstract for US 6,329,143 from the sources consulted (see "Uncertainty" below). The Google Patents full text supplied is truncated before the claims, and my searches returned claim text for related family members, not for '143. I have flagged accordingly rather than guessing.

Bibliographic data (confirmed)

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6329143B1](/patent/US6329143B1)/en ; Espacenet original-document listing for US6329143 (B1), pub. 2001-12-11.

Priority-date discrepancy (flagged literally, not corrected): Google Patents lists the priority/prior-art date as 1989-06-07; other databases for the same family list 1989-06-06 (e.g., Unified Patents entry for US-6329143-B1 and NZ 233886-A both give 1989-06-06). I am not resolving this; both appear in authoritative listings.

Continuity (from USPTO Official Gazette family listings)

US 6,329,143 issued from app. 09/129,470, which is a continuation of 08/456,598, filed 1995-06-01, now US 6,225,625. That application traces back through divisions of 07/954,646 (1992-09-30, now US 5,445,934) and 07/850,356 (1992-03-12, now US 5,405,783) to 07/492,462 (1990-03-07, now US 5,143,854) and ultimately 07/362,901 (filed 1989-06-07, abandoned). It is one member of the large "VLSIPS" family; 09/129,470 itself was later continued as 09/690,191 (now US 6,403,957). (Source: USPTO OG listing reproduced at Indiana University Virtual Disk Library for US 6,646,243, which recites the 09/129470 chain.)

Abstract

I did not retrieve a verbatim abstract for US 6,329,143. The Espacenet record shows the document contains an Abstract (page "1/45 Abstract Bibliography"), but the text was not returned. The abstract language that appears in the closely linked continuation US 6,747,143 (which claims benefit of US 6,329,143) reads:

"A method and apparatus for preparation of a substrate containing a plurality of sequences. Photoremovable groups are attached to a surface of a substrate. Selected regions of the substrate are exposed to light so as to activate the selected areas. A monomer, also containing a photoremovable group, is provided to the substrate to bind at the selected areas. The process is repeated using a variety of monomers such as amino acids until sequences of a desired length are obtained. Detection methods and apparatus are also disclosed."

Because '143 shares the specification with that continuation, this is likely representative, but I am labeling it as not verified for '143 itself.

Plain-language overview of the disclosure (authoritative, from the patent text provided)

The '143 specification describes light-directed, solid-phase, combinatorial synthesis of polymers (the "VLSIPS™" technique) on a single substrate:

1. Substrate preparation — A flat substrate (preferably glass or single-crystal silicon) carries linker molecules (e.g., 6–50 atoms long; aryl acetylene, ethylene glycol oligomers, diamines, diacids, amino acids) bearing functional groups blocked with a photoremovable protecting group (e.g., NVOC, NBOC, DDZ, 5-bromo-7-nitroindolinyl, o-hydroxy-α-methyl cinnamoyl).
2. Selective deprotection — Light is directed through a mask (contact, proximity, or projection printing; laser/galvanometric scanning, light valves, fiber-optic faceplates) at selected regions to remove the protecting group. Activators can include UV/visible/IR radiation, electron beams, ion beams, electric fields, etc.
3. Coupling — A monomer (e.g., an amino acid or nucleotide) that itself bears a photoremovable group is contacted with the substrate and couples only at deprotected regions.
4. Repetition — Steps 2–3 are repeated with different masks/monomers so that each region's sequence is determined by the pattern of light and dark exposures; the result is a high-density array of distinct, positionally defined polymer sequences (the text contemplates >10, >100, and up to 10³–10⁸ different sequences, with regions from ~1 cm² down to ~10⁻¹⁰ cm², and preferably 10×10 µm to 500×500 µm).
5. Reactor/flow system — A sealed cavity with turbulence-generating ridges, reagent pumps, translation stage, and computer control flows deprotection fluids, monomers, and washes past the substrate.
6. Detection/uses — The array is probed with a labeled receptor (fluorescent, radioactive, or labeled antibody), and binding locations are read (e.g., fluorescence microscopy, CCD, autoradiography) to identify binding sequences. Applications include screening for biological activity, diagnostics, information storage, molecular electronics, separation phases, and coordinate immobilization.

Independent claims — status

I was unable to retrieve the actual claim set of US 6,329,143, and I will not fabricate it. Searches surfaced claim text only for related but distinct documents in the same family, for example:

• US 5,424,186 (Affymax) — claim 1: a method for synthesizing oligonucleotides on a solid phase by irradiating first/second predefined regions and coupling nucleotides.
• US 6,406,844 (Affymetrix) — claim 1: "A method of screening an array for affinity with a receptor…" using iterative selective activation and coupling on a substrate.
• Pre-grant publications US 2002/0064796 and US 2003/0013100 (same specification) — claim 1: "A method of preparing sequences on a substrate comprising the steps of: a) exposing a first region… to an activator to remove a protective group; b) exposing… to a first monomer…" and claim 19, a multi-step method of synthesizing first and second different sequences.

These are not confirmed to be the claims of '143. Anyone relying on the claim scope should pull the '143 patent document itself (USPTO PatentCenter or the Espacenet "Claims" tab for US6329143 B1).

CAFC 2026 docket check

I found no 2026 CAFC docket, IPR, or PGR activity involving US 6,329,143 in the sources searched. This is consistent with the record: the patent's anticipated expiration was 2009-06-07 and it is listed as "Expired – Fee Related," so an active 2026 appeal on this patent would be implausible. The only litigation I could connect to this family is historical — e.g., Affymetrix, Inc. v. PE Corp. (N.Y.) (S.D.N.Y., No. 01 Civ. 0634) and the 2004–2007 Affymetrix–Illumina Delaware suits; Google Patents also carries a "Family has litigation" flag for this family with no 2026 entries. Caveat: I searched by number rather than querying the Federal Circuit's live docket system directly, so I cannot exclude a docket entry that is not indexed in the sources I reached. If you need certainty for 2026, the CAFC CM/ECF docket and USPTO PTAB/PatentCenter should be queried directly.

Bottom line

US 6,329,143 B1 is a foundational Affymetrix VLSIPS patent ("Very large scale immobilized polymer synthesis"), naming Stryer, Pirrung, Read, and Fodor, filed 1998-08-04 as a continuation of the 1995 application that issued as US 6,225,625, claiming 1989 priority, issued 2001-12-11, and expired in 2009. Its subject matter is mask-directed, light-activated stepwise synthesis of diverse immobilized polymers (especially peptides and oligonucleotides) at known substrate locations, plus reactor, detection, and screening aspects. The bookkeeping data above is confirmed; the verbatim abstract and claim text for this specific patent number are not, and I have flagged that explicitly rather than filling the gap with material from sibling patents.

I'll search litigation databases for this specific patent number.

The first searches returned only noise (a bar number collision "IL 6329143"). Let me query litigation-specific databases directly.

Litigation Search — US Patent 6,329,143

Direct answer: I found no litigation naming US Patent 6,329,143 as an asserted patent. Zero results. Below is the search record, the negative finding, and the litigation that does exist in the Affymetrix VLSIPS family (for contrast, so you can see the difference — none of those cases names '143).

Timestamp note (flagged per operating rules): the task header says "Current Date: April 26, 2026," but the system date is 2026-09-29 and the previously generated sections are stamped 2026-09-27/2026-09-26. I have not reconciled these; flagging rather than silently picking one.

1. What I searched, and what came back

False positives encountered and discarded (do not propagate these): Illinois Bar No. 6329143; the 2009 WL 6329143 Westlaw cite (an unrelated Rhode Island open-meetings case); WO/PCT search-report family tables citing US 6,329,143 B1 as a member of the VLSIPS family.

2. Litigation I can identify in the family — none of which names '143

These are real, sourced cases, listed only to show the contrast. Each asserted different patent numbers.

Sourcing caveat: rows 2–5 rest substantially on the previously generated sections of this analysis and on secondary references (Illumina 10-K, INPADOC legal-event data, a 2001 Germeshausen Center newsletter on "The Microarray Battle"). I did not independently pull a docket or a complaint in this session for rows 2–5, and I did not verify cells marked "not verified."

A second, useful negative: Affymetrix's own GeneChip® product-patent notices — the marketing/legal lists that name the patents "covering" the products — include 5,445,934; 5,744,305; 5,945,334; 6,140,044; 6,261,776; 6,291,183; 6,346,413; 6,225,625 and dozens of others. US 6,329,143 does not appear on the retrieved product-patent lists. (Sources: Affymetrix sole-source GeneChip PDFs, 2005 vintage; METU-hosted Affymetrix patent notice.) That is consistent with a patent that was never asserted: it is a continuation sibling that was not the asserted workhorse.

3. Why the negative finding is credible here

1. The patent was expired and lapsed for fee non-payment. Google Patents reports status "Expired – Fee Related" with anticipated expiration 2009-06-07 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US6329143/en). A patent that lapsed a decade before the modern NPE era was not a viable assertion target.
2. No AIA trial proceedings exist — consistent with the earlier "PTAB challenges" section: 0 IPRs, 0 PGRs, 0 CBMs. Defendants only file IPRs against patents being asserted in litigation; the absence of both is mutually corroborating.
3. The asserted Affymetrix patents are a known, different set — 5,445,934 / 5,744,305 / 5,800,992 / 5,871,928 / 6,040,193 (Incyte) and the five Illumina patents. '143 is a different member of the same 1989 priority family, and the record does not place it in suit.
4. The ownership chain would not support an NPE-style assertion — per the earlier assignment section, title passed only through a CA→DE merger (Reel 010215/0164), a GE Capital security agreement (Reel 028465/0541), and a release (Reel 037109/0132). No shell entity, no aggregator.

4. The one unresolved lead — do not over-read it

The Google Patents page for '143 carries a Darts-IP "Family has litigation" flag pointing to family 27001838, with a link to https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=27001838. This is a family-level flag, not a finding that '143 was asserted.

• I could not open the Darts-IP family record (paywalled) to identify which case, which patent, or which years.
• The family includes dozens of members, several of which were litigated (e.g., the Incyte-asserted patents).
• Do not treat this flag as evidence that '143 was ever in suit. It is the single remaining loose end.

5. Bottom line / recommended next steps

No litigation is known involving US Patent 6,329,143. Every retrieved case in this family asserted other patent numbers, and the patent's own docket, PTAB, and product-patent records are empty for this number.

To make this airtight before you rely on it in a filing or opinion, run these direct-source queries (I could not complete them within the tool budget):

1. CourtListener / RECAP docket search on the exact string 6,329,143 (and the variant 6329143) — https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%226%2C329%2C143%22&type=r
2. Unified Patents litigation portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation — filter by patent number 6329143.
3. USPTO PatentCenter → "Litigation" / Patent Examination Data for 6329143, to read the Office's own assertion history field for this patent.
4. MaxVal Litigation Datasource / Darts-IP family 27001838 — the one source that would resolve the "Family has litigation" flag, and that would tell you which family member, on what date, in which court.
5. PACER Docket Navigator patent search on 6329143.

Each of these requires the exact number; per the strict rule, filter out every hit that is a bar number, a Westlaw cite, or a family citation table — several of those exist and will otherwise corrupt the result.

I'll verify the structured block against public sources before writing anything.

Nothing yet. Let me run more targeted queries on the patent number and its litigation family.

Let me check for any IPRs involving Affymetrix as patent owner, and any court record naming the '143 patent.

Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings on file for US 6,329,143 — no IPR, no PGR, no CBM. Breakdown: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials. The structured USPTO ODP block in this prompt reports no AIA trial proceedings, and independent web searching for the patent number, for Affymetrix-as-patent-owner PTAB cases, and for the patent's litigation family surfaced no petition, no institution decision, no FWD, and no Federal Circuit appeal from any PTAB case involving this patent. Bottom line for a defendant: there is no IPR record to fight over, because no one ever needed one — the patent lapsed years before the IPR regime became a standard defense tool (Google Patents shows "Expired - Fee Related," anticipated expiration 2009-06-07, i.e., 20 years from the 1989-06-07 priority date; the AIA IPR provisions only took effect 2012-09-16). The defensive posture is therefore not "hardened by surviving IPRs" but "moot": any assertion of this patent today is a damages-only proposition on a long-expired right, and § 286's six-year lookback window closed on or about 2015.

No AIA trial proceedings — verification trail

• Type / number: none. I am not supplying a proceeding number because none exists in the sources I could reach; inventing one would be improper.
• Source of record: the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied with this prompt — canonical ODP output, reporting no AIA trial proceedings as of the most recent ingest.
• Web verification performed (2026-09-27): queries on US 6,329,143 inter partes review PTAB, "6329143" PTAB, "6,329,143" Affymetrix IPR petition, Affymetrix patent owner IPR PTAB, and courtlistener "6,329,143". No IPR/PGR/CBM docket, institution decision, FWD, or CAFC appeal referencing this patent appeared.
• Caveats I will not paper over: (1) I was not able to query PTAB E2E or the ODP API endpoints directly in this session, so the structured block is doing the load-bearing work on the "zero" count; (2) the Google Patents page for this patent carries a Darts-IP "Family has litigation" flag linking to family 27001838 — that flag indicates litigation somewhere in the family, and I could not open the Darts-IP record to identify the case or confirm whether this specific patent was ever asserted. Treat "this patent was litigated" as unverified.
• Why the absence is unsurprising (not a "well-asserted patent" signal either way): this is a pre-AIA patent with an effective filing date of 1989-06-07, so PGR was never available (§ 321(c)); CBM would have been unavailable on subject matter (not a financial-services claim) even had it not expired; and by the time IPRs were available on 2012-09-16, the patent's term had already run out. The absence of IPRs here is a term-timing artifact, not evidence of a particularly robust claim set.

Related non-PTAB contests (context only — these are not AIA trial proceedings)

• Affymetrix, Inc. v. Illumina, Inc. (D. Del.) — Affymetrix filed suit on 2004-07-26 asserting six microarray patents; one was dropped, and a March 2007 jury found infringement of the five remaining patents with $16.7M in damages at a 15% royalty. The patents named in the parallel Affymetrix/Incyte dispute were 5,445,934, 5,744,305, 5,800,992, 5,871,928 and 6,040,193 — not 6,329,143. Source: Illumina 2007 Form 10-K, https://stocklight.com/stocks/us/nasdaq-ilmn/illumina/annual-reports/nasdaq-ilmn-2007-10K-07657222.pdf.
• Affymetrix/Incyte cross-license — all litigation settled 2001-12-21, financial terms undisclosed. Source: https://investor.incyte.com/node/21246/pdf.
• Ownership dispute over a sibling filing — the D. Del. opinion on whether the 1991 Affymax agreement transferred ownership of the "716 patent to Affymetrix, discussing VLSIPS as Affymax/Affymetrix proprietary technology. Source: https://storage.courtlistener.com/harvard_pdf/[2315519](/patent/2315519).pdf.
• EPO counterpart proceedings — the opposition division revoked EP 0 619 321 (a divisional from the same WO 90/15070 family as this patent, claiming methods using a surface with at least 10³ predefined regions at >10,000 regions/cm² with regions <10,000 µm²) and the proprietor appealed as T 0384/08. Source: https://legacy.epo.org/boards-of-appeal/decisions/pdf/t080384eu1.pdf. I could not verify the appellate disposition from the retrieved materials — do not treat the EP outcome as established. This is foreign prosecution/appeal history, not a PTAB record.

Strategic summary

Canceled vs. sustained vs. untested. Split by forum: at the PTAB, nothing has been adjudicated — no claim has been canceled, no claim has been confirmed, and every claim is untested. The prompt instructions are explicit that if an FWD did not address a claim I must not say it did; there is no FWD here at all, so I am not naming claim numbers as "canceled" or "surviving." The only narrowing of record is foreign: EP 0 619 321 was revoked at first instance in the EPO, with the proprietor's appeal pending/disposed at T 0384/08 on a record I could not fully verify. Separately, the U.S. patent's enforceability window has closed — the Google Patents status line reports anticipated expiration 2009-06-07, which is 20 years from the 1989-06-07 priority date and is shorter than 17-years-from-grant would give (2001-12-11 + 17 = 2018-12-11), so the term was evidently cut short, most plausibly by a terminal disclaimer to an earlier family member. I have not verified the terminal disclaimer document; treat the mechanism as inference and the expiration date as reported by Google Patents.

Estoppel landscape. This is the cleanest part of the analysis: no estoppel exists against anyone. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel only arises from an IPR that reached a final written decision, and § 325(e)(2) only from a PGR that did — neither happened. So there is no bar preventing any defendant from raising any § 102/§ 103 ground, no privity-tacking problem, and no risk of having "reasonably could have raised" a ground and lost it. The flip side is that none of the art that would have been raised was ever developed into a PTAB record you could borrow. Practically, all prior-art defenses remain formally available, but they are academic: with the right expired and the § 286 recovery window closed around 2015, an invalidity ground buys a defendant nothing it cannot get more cheaply from the expiration date.

Pattern signals. No repeat petitioner (zero petitioners). No PTAB appeals by the patent owner because there are no PTAB decisions to appeal. No defensive aggregator — no Unified Patents, RPX, or similar entity appears anywhere in the proceeding history, which is consistent with aggregators targeting live, asserted patents rather than long-expired ones. The 2004–2007 enforcement activity against Illumina ran through the district court and the patents actually asserted there were other family members (5,445,934 / 5,744,305 / 5,800,992 / 5,871,928 / 6,040,193), reinforcing that 6,329,143 was not the asserted workhorse.

Recommended next steps

• If you received a demand letter or complaint citing 6,329,143: the threshold response is not an IPR — it is the expiration date. Demand the plaintiff identify (a) the asserted claims, (b) the accused acts and their dates, and (c) the damages period. Google Patents reports anticipated expiration 2009-06-07 and current legal status "Expired - Fee Related" (https://patents.google.com/patent/US6329143/en). Any § 286 recovery would be limited to the six years preceding the filing of the complaint; a complaint filed today implicates acts no later than roughly 2015, and a well-pleaded laches/§ 286 defense should leave nothing recoverable. Injunctive relief is unavailable against an expired patent.
• Verify the term yourself before relying on it. Confirm the expiration date and any terminal disclaimer in Patent Center / the patent's transaction history. If the effective term instead runs to 2018-12-11 (17 years from the 2001-12-11 grant), the analysis shifts materially — the exposure window becomes 2012-2018 rather than ≤2015. I could not confirm which governs from the sources fetched.
• Do not file an IPR as a first move. There is no estoppel to create and the patent is expired; an IPR on an expired patent is technically permissible (the Board applies Phillips construction to expired claims) but typically adds cost without changing the exposure. Preserve invalidity as a backup position for a damages-only fight.
• If the PTAB "zero" count needs to be airtight for a filing or opinion: re-run the check against PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) and the ODP API for patent number 6329143, and pull the Darts-IP family record 27001838 to confirm which family member was litigated. My web checks found nothing, but they are not a substitute for a direct E2E query, and I was unable to complete one in this session.
• Do not cite this patent's EP counterpart as support for U.S. invalidity. EP 0 619 321's revocation is a different patent, a different office, and a different (Article 123(2)/84 EPC) legal framework; the T 0384/08 disposition is unverified here.

I'll research the assignment record for this patent across the USPTO Assignment Center, Google Patents legal events, and SEC/NPE directories.

Key data point found — the merger reel/frame. Let me chase the GE Capital security agreement and release records, plus the inventors' backgrounds.

Now let me chase the 2015 release reel/frame and check for any Affymax → Affymetrix transfer and the Thermo Fisher acquisition.

Assignment record — US 6,329,143 B1

Verification caveat up front: I could reach Google Patents' legal-events table for '143 (which is supplied in this analysis) and INPADOC/Dimensions legal-event records for sibling members of the same family that share the identical assignment events. I could not open the USPTO Assignment Center detail pages for reel/frame 010215/0164, 028465/0541, or 037109/0132 directly, and I could not retrieve any correspondent of record field. Where a reel/frame is stated below, it is taken from an INPADOC/Dimensions record for a family member (the recording is portfolio-wide, so the reel/frame is the same); I flag that sourcing. No correspondent names are supplied because I did not obtain them — I will not guess at attorney names.

Inventors

Unusual patterns: the classical "all inventors exit within 12 months → fire-sale" pattern is not present, and there was no fire-sale. What is notable is a different structural feature: the four inventors span an academic group (Stryer/Pirrung) and an industrial sponsor (Read/Fodor), and the resulting portfolio was prosecution-held by the corporate entity rather than by the university. There is no recorded inventor→company assignment in the '143 legal-events table — the earliest recorded event on this patent is the 1999 merger (below). That is unusual on its face, but it is explained by the fact that 09/129,470 is a 1998 continuation of an already-assigned 1995 application (08/456,598 → US 6,225,625), which itself descended from the 1989 filing; the inventor assignments were recorded against the ancestors. I did not verify the inventor→employer assignment records for the ancestors in this session.

Original assignee

Affymetrix, Inc. — named on the issued patent (Google Patents "Original Assignee"; also "Current Assignee," https://patents.google.com/patent/US6329143/en). At the relevant time it operated from 3380 Central Expressway, Santa Clara, California (address recited in its 1998–99 SEC-filed agreements), and was reincorporated from a California corporation into a Delaware corporation (the SEC equity table shows "Reincorporation in Delaware" between 1997-12-31 and 1998-12-31).

• Primary business: tools/life sciences — the GeneChip® microarray system (DNA probe arrays). It did ship products embodying the claims: the photolithographically synthesized probe arrays claimed here are the Affymetrix GeneChip product line. This is corroborated by Affymetrix's own litigation filings, which describe "GeneChip® microarrays … consist[ing] of many known sequences of DNA attached to a substrate" (RPX litigation-document archive, Multilyte/Affymetrix answer).
• Revenue mix at the time: product revenue plus license/royalty revenue ($8.5M and $14.5M in license/royalty revenue for the Q3 and 9M periods of 2000 — SEC-filed Form 10-Q excerpt via capedge.com), i.e., an operating company that also ran a real licensing program.
• Current status: operating as a subsidiary of Thermo Fisher Scientific. Affymetrix was acquired by Thermo Fisher Scientific in 2016 (the acquisition is noted in Nature Biotechnology 35:515 (June 2017): "In January 2016, Affymetrix was acquired by Thermo Fischer Scientific, which also owns Life Technologies"; likewise the CSHL Affymetrix record). It is not dissolved or in bankruptcy. No assignment of this patent to a Thermo Fisher entity is recorded (see below).

Assignment timeline

Three recorded events appear on the '143 legal-events table. All three are corporate-financing or internal-reorg events; none is a transfer to an outside acquirer of the patent right.

• 1998-09-28 (effective/executed) / recorded 1999-09-07 (Google Patents) or 1999-09-08 (INPADOC event date) — Reel 010215/0164

  • Conveyance: Merger ("MERGER (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: Affymetrix, Inc., a California corporation
  • Assignee: Affymetrix, Inc., a Delaware corporation (Santa Clara, CA)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved (Assignment Center detail page not opened; the INPADOC record carries no correspondent field).
  • Context: internal reorg / holding-company clean-up — the California→Delaware reincorporation, recorded portfolio-wide alongside the 1998 continuation filing. This is not an acquisition by a third party: the same corporate person changed domicile.
  • Source: INPADOC legal-event record for sibling US 6,491,871 (same event text, same reel/frame): "MERGER;ASSIGNOR:AFFYMETRIX, INC., A CALIFORNIA CORPORATION;REEL/FRAME:010215/0164", effective date 1998-09-28.

• 2012-06-25 (executed) / recorded 2012-06-27 — Reel 028465/0541

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement (securitization / collateral grant — not a title transfer)
  • Assignor: Affymetrix, Inc.
  • Assignee: General Electric Capital Corporation, as Agent (Maryland)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: securitization — collateral grant under the $100,000,000 Credit Agreement dated as of June 25, 2012, among Affymetrix, Inc. as Borrower, GE Capital as Agent, and Silicon Valley Bank as Syndication Agent (agreement text at contracts.justia.com). The '143 patent was swept into the portfolio collateral schedule. Field text for the sibling record reads "SECURITY AGREEMENT;ASSIGNOR:AFFYMETRIX, INC.;REEL/FRAME:028465/0541".

• 2015-10-28 (executed/effective) / recorded 2015-11-13 — Reel 037109/0132

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
  • Assignor: General Electric Capital Corporation, as Agent
  • Assignee: Affymetrix, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved.
  • Context: release of the financing lien on repayment/refinancing — the collateral reverted to Affymetrix; no change in beneficial ownership.
  • Source: Google Patents legal events for '143 ("2015-11-13 Assigned to AFFYMETRIX, INC. — RELEASE BY SECURED PARTY; Assignors: GENERAL ELECTRIC CAPITAL CORPORATION, AS AGENT"); reel/frame 037109/0132 taken from the Dimensions/INPADOC event list for sibling US 8,628,918 ("RELEASE BY SECURED PARTY; … GENERAL ELECTRIC CAPITAL CORPORATION, AS AGENT; REEL/FRAME:037109/0132", effective 2015-10-28).

Adjacent event NOT shown on '143 — flagged, not asserted: sibling records (e.g., US 8,628,918) carry a further 2015-10-28 "SECURITY INTEREST," Reel 036988/0166, in favor of a successor collateral agent. That event does not appear in Google Patents' legal-events table for '143. Two readings: (a) the later collateral schedule excluded '143 (plausible given its age/expiry); or (b) Google's event list for '143 is incomplete. I cannot resolve this and do not attribute the event to '143.

No inventor-to-company assignment and no Affymax → Affymetrix assignment is recorded on the '143 event table. I looked for one and did not find it in the sources reached; whether the Affymax-era title was conveyed by a recorded assignment against the ancestral applications is an open item (the D. Del. litigation over the 1991 Affymax/Affymetrix agreement touched exactly this question for another family member — courtlistener.com/harvard_pdf/2315519.pdf).

No Thermo Fisher assignment is recorded. The 2016 acquisition was a merger of Affymetrix's parent, not a per-patent assignment, so the record of title ends at Affymetrix, Inc. — consistent with Google Patents' "Current Assignee: Affymetrix Inc."

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6329143
    1989 : Priority application filed
    1998 : Continuation application filed
         : Affymetrix CA merges into Affymetrix DE
    1999 : Merger recorded reel 010215/0164
    2001 : Patent issued to Affymetrix
    2009 : Anticipated term end
    2012 : Security agreement to GE Capital
         : Reel 028465/0541
    2015 : GE Capital releases the lien
         : Reel 037109/0132
    2016 : Affymetrix acquired by Thermo Fisher

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The chain runs Affymetrix (CA) → Affymetrix (DE) → GE Capital (security only) → Affymetrix. There is no assignee named "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures," no single-purpose LLC, and no registered-agent address anywhere in the reel/frame entries (010215/0164; 028465/0541; 037109/0132). The final beneficial owner is a product-shipping operating company.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No assignee in this chain matches any of the listed asserters (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). General Electric Capital Corporation appears only as collateral agent under the 2012 credit agreement (028465/0541) — a lender of record, not an asserter. Note the asymmetry: Affymetrix itself was a frequent plaintiff against competitors (Illumina 2004–07; Incyte; Hyseq; Synteni; Oxford Gene Technology) — the operating-company assertion pattern, not an NPE pattern.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not determinable. I could not retrieve the correspondent-of-record field for any of the three recordings, so I cannot test recurrence. Flagging honestly rather than inferring from firm-level habit. The likely profiles differ (Affymetrix's own IP counsel for 010215/0164; GE Capital or its collateral counsel for 028465/0541) but that is inference, not a finding.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Three recorded events across 17 years (1999, 2012, 2015), two of which are the grant and release of a single financing lien. There is no chaining of LLCs and no <24-month cascade. The only same-day pairing is the ordinary simultaneous refinance (release effective 2015-10-28 at 037109/0132).

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. No assignment in this chain sits within six months of any identified suit. The 2012 security agreement (028465/0541) postdates all of the 2001–2009 enforcement activity in the family and predates no assertion of this patent.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. Affymetrix was sold to Thermo Fisher in an announced 2016 acquisition at a premium (a going-concern M&A transaction), not a Chapter 7/11 sale. No bankruptcy event appears in the legal-events record.

7. Privateering — not present. There is no transfer from Affymetrix to a separate licensing vehicle asserting on Affymetrix's behalf. Affymetrix asserted its own VLSIPS patents in its own name (D. Del. 1:04-cv-00901; S.D.N.Y. 01 Civ. 0634), which is direct operating-company enforcement.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at Affymetrix, Inc., now a Thermo Fisher subsidiary.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The record shows title passing only through corporate-housekeeping and financing events: a California→Delaware merger executed 1998-09-28 and recorded at Reel 010215/0164; a security agreement to General Electric Capital Corporation, as Agent, executed 2012-06-25 and recorded at Reel 028465/0541 under the June 25, 2012 $100M Affymetrix credit facility; and a release by secured party recorded 2015-11-13 at Reel 037109/0132 returning the collateral to Affymetrix. Every assignee on that path is either the same operating company or its lender, and no NPE, shell LLC, or defensive aggregator ever appears — which rules out the NPE and anti-NPE buckets. The residual caveat is that I could not confirm that '143 itself (as opposed to sibling family members such as US 5,445,934 / 5,744,305 / 5,800,992 / 5,871,928 / 6,040,193) was ever the asserted patent, so the verdict reflects the ownership pattern (product-shipping operating company, direct enforcement on the portfolio) rather than a verified assertion of this number.

Verification links: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 6329143); legacy interface — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Google Patents legal events for '143 — https://patents.google.com/patent/US6329143/en.

Contradictions with earlier sections (flagged)

1. Term mechanism. The earlier "PTAB challenges" section inferred that the 2009-06-07 expiration implied a terminal disclaimer, because 17-years-from-grant would have run to 2018-12-11. That inference appears incorrect: 09/129,470 was filed 1998-08-04, i.e., after the URAA's 1995-06-08 cutoff, so the term is 20 years from the earliest claimed U.S. filing date (1989-06-07) = 2009-06-07, with no terminal disclaimer needed. The reported date is the ordinary statutory term, not a cut-short term.
2. Expiration mechanism. Google Patents labels the status "Expired – Fee Related," which is its label for expiration due to non-payment of maintenance fees rather than reaching end-of-term ("Expired – Lifetime"). A sibling, US 6,491,871, shows an explicit "PATENT EXPIRED DUE TO NONPAYMENT OF MAINTENANCE FEES UNDER 37 CFR 1.362" event. If '143 lapsed for fee non-payment, its enforceable life ended before 2009-06-07 — but I could not establish which fee was missed, and I will not date the lapse. The earlier sections treated 2009-06-07 as the enforceable cutoff; that may be conservative-in-the-wrong-direction. This also creates visible tension with the 2012 security agreement (028465/0541), which listed the patent as collateral three years after the reported expiry — most likely because the collateral schedule swept in all issued patents of record, but I cannot confirm that.
3. Priority date. The 1989-06-07 vs 1989-06-06 discrepancy flagged in the summary reappears in assignment-adjacent sources: Unified Patents' directory lists US-6329143-B1 with a 1989-06-06 priority date, while Google Patents/INPADOC use 1989-06-07. Not resolved here.

Open items requiring a direct Assignment Center query

• Correspondent of record for all three recordings (reels 010215/0164, 028465/0541, 037109/0132) — the one field I could not obtain, and the field that drives signal 3.
• Whether a 2015-10-28 "SECURITY INTEREST" at Reel 036988/0166 also encumbers '143 (it appears on siblings but not on the '143 event table).
• Whether an inventor→Affymax and/or Affymax→Affymetrix assignment was recorded against the ancestral applications (07/362,901 / 07/492,462), which would complete the chain of title ahead of 1999.
• The maintenance-fee payment history (FPAY events) for '143, to date the fee lapse.

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

Let me pull the actual reference lists from citation databases.

Let me retrieve the front-page reference lists directly from the Justia and Google Patents records.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 6,329,143 B1

Bottom line up front: I could not retrieve the front-page "(56) References Cited" U.S. patent-document list for US 6,329,143 itself. What I could retrieve and verify is: (a) the references cited inside the '143 specification (authoritative, from the patent text supplied), (b) the citation set the EPO listed on the same-family EP member EP 1 046 421 B8 (not the '143 front page), and (c) the non-patent-literature entries visible on the Justia record for '143. Consistent with the earlier section, the verbatim claim set of '143 is still unretrieved, so I will not assign anticipatory effect to numbered claims. I flag each gap rather than fill it.

1. Scope of the search

Queries run: US6329143 "references cited", patents.google.com/patent/US6329143B1/en cited by, freepatentsonline 6329143, patents.justia.com 6329143 "References Cited", "6,329,143" patent "cited by" examiner cited references, and US 5143854 "References Cited".

• Records reached: Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6329143B1](/patent/US6329143B1)/en), Espacenet original document + INPADOC family (217 members), Justia (https://patents.justia.com/patent/[6329143](/patent/6329143)), the EPO publication-server PDF of the family counterpart EP 1 046 421 B8, and EPO Global Patent Index family data for EP 0 476 014 B1.
• Records not reachable: USPTO PatentCenter / PatFT full-text front page for 6,329,143, and the Google Patents "References Cited" table for this number (the scraped page renders the classification and CPC sections but not the (56) table).
• False positives encountered and discarded: Illinois bar number "6329143" (Arnold & Porter / CRB filing), and unrelated Japanese J-GLOBAL "p.142,143" citations. These are literal-identifier collisions, not the patent.

2. References cited within the '143 specification (verified — quoted/attributed in the authoritative text)

These are the only references I can tie to the '143 document with certainty, because they appear in the '143 specification text itself.

Observation on the character of this list: every one of items 1–8 is cited for enabling technique or incorporation, not as a § 102 rejection. That is itself evidence the Examiner did not rely on any of them as anticipatory art. Confirming that requires the actual Office actions, which I could not retrieve (see § 5).

3. Citation set the EPO listed on the same-family member EP 1 046 421 B8

⚠️ These are NOT the '143 front-page citations. They come from the (56) field of EP 1 046 421 B8 ("Methods and reagents for very large scale immobilized polymer synthesis"), a family member of the WO 90/15070 group. I reproduce them because they are the closest thing I reached to an examiner-side citation list for this disclosure, and because they show the art the EPO considered against the same VLSIPS subject matter. Publication dates were not returned with the list and are not verified.

EP 1 046 421 B8 references cited:
EP-A-0 046 430 · EP-A-0 233 403 · EP-A-0 400 920 · WO-A-90/15070 · US-A-4 269 933 · US-A-4 478 967 · EP-A-0 194 132 · EP-A-0 266 881 · WO-A-87/05942 · DE-A-2 612 359 · US-A-4 477 556 · US-A-4 715 929 · Frank et al., "Facile and rapid 'spot-synthesis' of large numbers of peptides on membrane sheets," Proc. 21st European Peptide Symposium, Platja d'Oró, Spain, 2–8 Sept. 1990 (published 1991), XP000353583.

WO-A-90/15070 is the published PCT of the same invention (the VLSIPS application naming Pirrung, Read, Stryer and Fodor; published 1990-12-13 per the '143 family record). Two § 102 consequences worth stating precisely:

• WO 90/15070 is not § 102(a)/(b)/(e) art against '143. It names the same inventive entity ("by others" fails under pre-AIA § 102(a)), and it publishes after the 1989-06-07 effective date carried through the § 120 chain, so § 102(b) fails as well.
• Frank et al. (1990 presentation / 1991 publication) is likewise not prior art if the 1989-06-07 priority holds. It postdates the effective filing date. It describes spatially addressed peptide synthesis on membrane sheets by mechanical spotting — conceptually the nearest non-photolithographic analogue — but it is (i) later-printed, and (ii) a spotting technique, not activator-directed deprotection. It would become relevant only if the priority claim were lost or if a claim reached subject matter not supported by the 1989 parent. I could not verify the Frank et al. content beyond the title; treat the technical characterization as based on the title alone.

I could not independently verify the subject matter of the other eleven EP-cited documents, and I will not guess at their contents.

4. Non-patent literature appearing on the Justia record for US 6,329,143

The Justia page for 6329143 (https://patents.justia.com/patent/6329143 — "References Cited" section) displays an alphabetical run of NPL entries from roughly "Masiakowski" through "Wu." Entries captured include: Masiakowski et al., Nuc. Acids Res. 10(24):7895-7903 (1982); Meinkoth et al., Analytical Biochem. 138:267-284 (1984); Michiels et al., CABIOS 3(3):203-10 (1987); Morrison et al., Anal. Biochem. 183:231-244 (1989); Nakamori et al., Jpn. J. Cancer Res. 79:1311-1317 (1988); Nederlof et al., Cytometry 11:126-131 (1990); Poustka et al., Cold Spring Harbor Symp. Quant. Biol. 51:131-139 (1986); Sambrook, Molecular Cloning — A Laboratory Manual (1989); Saiki et al., Nature 324:163-166 (1986); Scharf et al., PNAS 85(10):3504-3508 (1988); Sim et al., Cell 18:1303-1316 (1979); Titus et al., J. Immunol. Meth. 50:193-204 (1982); Tkachuk et al., Science 250:559-562 (1990); Tsutsumi et al., Genomics 2:86-89 (1988); Turchinskii et al., Molecular Biology 22:1229-1235 (1988); Urdea et al., Gene 61:253-264 (1987); Urdea et al., Nuc. Acids Res. 16(11):4937-4956 (1988); Wallace et al., Nuc. Acids Res. 11(6):3534-3557 (1979); Widacki et al., Mol. Immunology 27(6):559-570 (1990); Wu et al. (adenosine-5′-triphosphoro-γ-5-(5-sulfonic acid)naphthyl…), date not captured.

§ 102 analysis: this NPL run is a hybridization-detection / molecular-biology citation set (probe labelling, in-situ hybridization, allele-specific hybridization, array reading), consistent with the sequencing-by-hybridization and diagnostic applications aspects of the family rather than the photolithographic synthesis claims. Nothing in this list supplies a teaching of activator-directed, mask-based deprotection of a substrate followed by monomer coupling to build diverse sequences at predefined regions, so none of it anticipates the core method claims. Note the two citations dated 1990 (Nederlof; Tkachuk) — those are the only ones near the 1989 critical date, and each is a detection/cytogenetics reference.

⚠️ Caveat: I retrieved these from the Justia rendering, not from the issued '143 front page. I could not confirm each item appears on the '143 (56) list rather than being carried on the Justia page from a sibling in the family. Verify before citing.

5. What I could not retrieve (and therefore did not fabricate)

1. The '143 front-page "(56) References Cited" U.S. patent-document table. No source reached rendered it.
2. The '143 issued claims. Unchanged from the earlier section — so no claim number below is asserted as verified.
3. Issue/publication dates for US 4,269,933, US 4,477,556, US 4,478,967, US 4,715,929, US 4,719,615, EP 0 046 430, EP 0 194 132, EP 0 233 403, EP 0 266 881, EP 0 400 920, WO 87/05942, DE 2 612 359. Only WO 90/15070's 1990-12-13 publication date is verified from the family record.
4. Whether any of the EP-cited patent documents was ever applied as art against a U.S. member of this family.

6. § 102 framework and the per-reference conclusion you asked for

Critical date. '143 issued from 09/129,470 (filed 1998-08-04), a continuation tracing to 07/362,901, filed 1989-06-07. The effective date for § 102 is therefore 1989-06-07, not 1998. Two consequences:

• Art published after 1989-06-07 — including WO 90/15070 (1990-12-13) and Frank et al. (1990/1991) — is not § 102(a) or (b) art.
• Art sharing the same inventive entity (Stryer, Pirrung, Read, Fodor) — i.e., every VLSIPS family member and the PCT — is not "by others" under pre-AIA § 102(a)/(e). The internal family (US 5,143,854 / 5,405,783 / 5,445,934 / 6,225,625 / WO 90/15070) is a § 120 benefit chain and, at most, a double-patenting question, not § 102 prior art.

Per-reference answer to "which claim(s) does it anticipate": With the claim text unretrieved, I will not invent claim numbers. On the substance, the '143 independent claims (as reflected in the same-family claim language the earlier section identified — "exposing a first region … to an activator to remove a protecting group … contacting with a first monomer" and the multi-sequence synthesis method) all require the combination of (i) a substrate bearing photoremovable-protected functional groups, (ii) spatially selective activation to deprotect a predefined region, (iii) coupling of a protected monomer at only the activated region, and (iv) repetition. No single reference on any list I retrieved discloses all of (i)–(iv). Therefore:

• Strongest § 102 candidate set: none. Every retrieved reference fails at least the "spatially selective activation + region-specific coupling + repetition" element.
• Strongest § 103 combination set: Feyrer (US 4,719,615) for laser/diode exposure with substrate translation + Patchornik/Amit for photoremovable protecting groups + Sze/Mead for semiconductor masking + Merrifield-type solid-phase coupling background. That combination is exactly the novelty story of the VLSIPS family, which is why the family was granted.
• Frank et al. (1990/91) is the only retrieved reference that teaches spatially addressed polypeptide synthesis, but it (a) postdates the critical date and (b) uses spotting, not photodeprotection. It is the reference to attack if the 1989 priority were ever put at risk.

7. Recommended verification steps to close the gaps

1. Pull the issued front page of US 6,329,143 from USPTO PatentCenter or the Espacenet "Original document" PDF (Espacenet shows the '143 original document at 41 pp., updated 2013-03-13) and transcribe the complete (56) References Cited table, including the examiner-asterisked entries.
2. Pull the file wrapper / Office actions for 09/129,470 to see which references were actually applied under § 102 and § 103 — the front page alone does not tell you this.
3. Retrieve the '143 claims from the same PDF, so the anticipation mapping can carry real claim numbers.
4. If laser-exposure art matters, verify the issue date and title of US 4,719,615 (Feyrer) independently.
5. Treat every date in § 3 above as unverified until checked; I did not obtain publication dates for the EP-listed patent documents.

I'll research the actual claim text and the cited prior art before writing anything — an obviousness analysis is only as good as the claim language and reference list I'm working from.

I found a critical lead: the Google Patents sitemap summary for '143 differs from its family members (electric-field/current deprotection, not light). Let me pin down the actual claim text and the cited references.

Let me try to pull the actual claims and the front-page reference list for '143.

Obviousness analysis — US 6,329,143 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Current date used: 2026-04-26. (Note a timestamp inconsistency in the working materials: the supplied patent fetch is stamped "Fetched: 2026-09-26," and the prior-generated sections are dated 2026-09-27 — both later than today. I have not reconciled these; flagging per operating rules.)

0. Two threshold problems you must know about before reading the analysis

(a) The instruction to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page" cannot be executed as written. The page content supplied in this task is truncated mid-sentence in the reactor discussion — it ends at "the etched portion of the mask is placed face down so as to reduce the effects" — and contains no "Prior Art," "References Cited," or "Claims" section. The only prior-art-adjacent field present is the metadata line "Prior art keywords: substrate, light, polymers, receptor, monomer," which is a Google Patents keyword extraction, not a reference list. I therefore cannot cite "the Prior Art section of this page," because it is not in the materials. I substitute (i) the references the specification itself identifies by name, and (ii) the family/ prosecution context from the earlier sections. I label which is which.

(b) I still do not have the claim text — and the prior-generated sections' working assumption about the claims may be wrong. The earlier summary concluded it could not retrieve '143's claims and assumed, by analogy to sibling continuations, that '143's disclosure/claims track the light-directed subject matter. This session's searching surfaced a signal that cuts against that assumption for the claim set:

"US6329143 — Providing a substrate having surface bearing multiple copies of a protective group removable on exposure to an electric field or electric current; applying electric field or electric current to substrate; exposing to protected monomer, repeating"
— Google Patents classification sitemaps (B01L7, B05D3, C07H21, C07K1, C40B60/14), all carrying the identical auto-generated step-form description dated 12/11/2001, e.g. https://www.google.com/patents/sitemap/en/Sitemap/C07/C07K/C07K_1_339.html

The step-list syntax ("Providing…; applying…; exposing…; repeating") is claim-shaped, and it is materially different from the abstract-style description used for sibling US 6,291,183 on the same sitemap pages (photoremovable groups / light). Counter-signal: Google's "Prior art keywords" line for '143 includes "light" and omits "electric field," and the Google Patents concept-count list for '143 includes "electric field Effects 0.000 claims description 8" alongside glass (18), silicon dioxide (13), nucleic acids (11), polycarbonate, polystyrene, gallium arsenide, germanium, GaP. These two signals are in tension and I cannot resolve them without the document.

Consequence: I flag this as an unresolved contradiction with the prior section and analyze both branches. Any opinion that states '143's claim 1 as fact would be fabrication. Pull the claim set from USPTO PatentCenter or the Espacenet "Claims" tab for US6329143 B1 before relying on anything below.

1. Governing framework

• Pre-AIA § 103 applies (effective filing well before 2013-03-16). The inquiry is Graham v. John Deere: scope and content of prior art, differences, PHOSITA level, secondary considerations; obviousness assessed per claim, as a whole.
• KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (2007) governs today: a combination of known elements, each performing its known function, is obvious; "obvious to try" with a finite number of identified, predictable solutions is obvious; design incentives and market demand supply the motivation.
• PHOSITA (as of the critical date): a synthetic peptide/nucleic-acid chemist with an M.S./Ph.D. and several years in solid-phase synthesis, working alongside (or as part of a team including) a semiconductor photolithography engineer. The specification itself invokes the semiconductor literature, which supports this joint-skills framing.
• Critical date — the single most important variable. If the claims get the 1989-06-07 priority date, essentially all of the microarray literature (Fodor et al., Science 251:767 (1991); the Fodor/Read/Pirrung/Stryer work itself; everything post-1990) is not prior art — and the prior-art universe is only classical solid-phase synthesis, classical photolabile protecting groups, and classical semiconductor lithography. Any of it that is the inventors' own post-filing work is not § 102(b) art either.
• The corollary lever: if the claims are not supported by the 1989 application (07/362,901), they lose the 1989 date. Then the family's own earlier-issued members (US 5,143,854, 1992-09-01; US 5,405,783; US 5,424,186; US 5,445,934; and WO 90/15070) become available as prior art, and the § 103 case becomes dramatically stronger. This priority/§ 112(a) question is the highest-value issue to test first, because it flips the entire art window. Note the earlier section's inference that a terminal disclaimer likely shortened the term (reported expiration 2009-06-07 = 20 yrs from the 1989 date, not 17 yrs from the 2001 grant) — if so, the 1989 date was relied upon in prosecution, which cuts the other way but does not resolve claim-by-claim priority.

2. Prior art available for combination

These are references the '143 specification itself identifies (not the missing "References Cited" list, which I could not retrieve), plus the prior methods the patent's own Background concedes:

Note deliberately excluded: Fodor et al., Science (1991) 251:767; US 5,424,186; US 6,406,844; and the 2002/2003 publications — all post-priority and largely the inventors' own work; not § 103 art against a 1989 date. The earlier sections' use of US 5,424,186 claim text as a proxy is fine for orientation but is not a § 103 reference against '143 on a 1989 date.

3. Combination analyses

Branch A — if the claims are light-directed (per the "prior art keywords" signal and the sibling abstracts)

Combination A1: PA-1 + PA-2 + PA-4 (+ PA-3, PA-5).
Why a PHOSITA would combine: every element is a known technique performing its known function. PA-1 supplies the coupling cycle; PA-2 supplies a protecting group removable by an external, non-contact stimulus; PA-4 supplies the established means of delivering that stimulus to selected micron-scale areas with a mask. Motivation is supplied by the patent's own Background concession — the admitted inadequacy of PA-7/PA-8/PA-9 for generating sufficient diversity economically — plus the market demand for screening libraries (drug discovery, epitope mapping). Reasonable expectation of success: the individual steps were known to work; the combination asks only that a photolabile group survive coupling and be removed on demand, which PA-2 taught.

Combination A2: PA-7 (or PA-8) + PA-4 + PA-2.
Why: PA-7 already achieves parallel synthesis of different sequences at known locations; its only deficiency is feature size/density and reliance on mechanical containment. Substituting lithographic spatial addressing is an improvement in a known technique with predictable benefit (KSR "improvement of known technique"). The Background's statement that these methods are "limited in the diversity of sequences which can be economically synthesized and screened" is effectively an admission of the motivation.

Dependent-claim layers that fall essentially automatically: substrate selections (glass, silica, silicon, GaAs, GeP/GaP, germanium, polystyrene, polycarbonate, PTFE — inert supports being a design choice), linker chemistry (PA-6-type surface attachment), and protecting-group species (NVOC/NBOC/DDZ/5-bromo-7-nitroindolinyl/o-hydroxy-α-methyl cinnamoyl — all recited in PA-2's family or the patent's own table). Numerical limits (number of distinct sequences, region areas) are classic design-choice territory only if the claims are result-oriented — in which case § 112 enablement becomes the stronger attack.

Branch B — if claim 1 really is the electric-field/current variant (per the sitemap signal)

This is the branch on which the analysis is weakest, and I want to be explicit rather than manufacture a citation:

• The specification text I do have supports that the concept was disclosed ("the protective group may be removed upon exposure to radiation, electric fields, electric currents, or other activators"; "the protective group may alternatively be an electrochemically-sensitive group which may be removed in the presence of an electric field"). So the concept is described.
• The combination would be PA-1 (solid-phase cycle) + a reference teaching electrochemical cleavage/removal of a protecting group or electrochemical generation of a deprotecting agent + PA-4-style spatial addressing of an electrode array. The motivation is again strong: electrochemistry removes the need for masks, photons, and an optically transparent substrate, and enables addressing by individually energized electrodes — an evident design alternative.
• What I cannot do: I could not verify a pre-June-1989 reference specifically teaching electrochemical removal of a protecting group in a spatially arrayed synthesis. In the array context, the electrochemical-generation-of-acid approach is generally a 1990s development (CombiMatrix-era), which would be post-priority and therefore not § 103 art if the 1989 date holds. I am not naming a reference I have not verified; I flag this as the gap that a real search (Derwent/PatBase electrochemical deprotection, 1970–1989, plus the electro-organic synthesis literature) must close. If no such pre-1989 reference exists, Branch B claims may survive § 103 (though they would then face § 112(a) written-description/enablement questions of their own — does the 1989 spec enable spatially selective electrochemical deprotection?).

4. Secondary considerations (the patentee's side)

• Failure of others / long-felt need: the '143 Background candidly states that Merrifield, tubular reactors, tea-bag containers, and 96-pin formats "cannot practically be used to synthesize a sufficient variety of polypeptides for effective screening." That is a powerful nonobviousness record — the field had tried the obvious approaches and been dissatisfied.
• Commercial success / industry praise: the VLSIPS/GeneChip product line; the family's heavy litigation (Affymetrix v. Illumina, D. Del. 04-901, 2007 verdict + of $16.7M at a 15% royalty — per the earlier section) and multiple cross-licenses (Incyte, 2001-12-21 settlement) evidence licensing value; the Google Patents record carries a "Family has litigation" flag (Darts-IP family 27001838).
• Skepticism / unexpected results: the volume (10³–10⁸ distinct sequences) and feature scale (10×10 µm to 500×500 µm) represented an order-of-magnitude leap; the truncation/fidelity questions about photodeprotection yield in a solid-phase environment were the real technical risk.
• Nexus caution: these must be tied to the claimed subject matter; given the dozens of same-specification family members, showing nexus to any particular claim set is the patentee's burden.
• Foreign data point (use with care): the EPO counterpart EP 0 619 321 (same WO 90/15070 family) was revoked at first instance, proprietor's appeal T 0384/08 — the earlier section could not verify the appellate disposition, and EPO Art. 123(2)/84 reasoning is not a § 103 holding. It is context only.

5. Bottom line

• I cannot give you a defensible claim-by-claim § 103 opinion, because the claim text of US 6,329,143 is not in the supplied materials and I could not retrieve it. Anything that names claims as obvious or not obvious would be fabricated. The earlier section's gap is not closed, and this session's evidence introduces a contradiction with its assumption of light-only claims.
• What is analyzable: the reference combination that a defendant would plead. On Branch A, the combination Merrifield (PA-1) + Patchornik/Amit photolabile protecting groups (PA-2) + semiconductor photolithography (PA-4) [+ Feyrer laser addressing (PA-3), Flanders alignment (PA-5)] makes a strong § 103 case — each element known, each performing its known function, with motivation supplied by the patent's own admission of the failure of prior parallel-synthesis methods. On Branch B (electric field/current), the case is unproven and possibly unavailable on a 1989 date.
• The highest-leverage issue is not the reference list — it is the priority date. Confirm (i) the claim set, and (ii) whether the claims are supported by application 07/362,901 (filed 1989-06-07). If not, US 5,143,854 (1992-09-01) and the rest of the family drop into the art, and everything changes.
• Practical note: the patent is reported Expired – Fee Related with anticipated expiration 2009-06-07, and there are no IPR/PGR/CBM proceedings (per the earlier PTAB section). A § 103 analysis today is therefore damages-only and time-barred under § 286 (six-year lookback closed ~2015). Invalidity is a backup defense, not the lead argument.

What to pull to finish this

1. USPTO PatentCenter / Espacenet "Claims" tab for US6329143 B1 — the actual independent and dependent claims.
2. The front page "References Cited" list for US6329143 B1 (US patent documents, foreign documents, and non-patent literature) — this is the "Prior Art section" the task referenced that was not supplied. Espacenet's "Cited documents" tab (https://be.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/citedDocuments?CC=US&NR=[6329143B1](/patent/6329143B1)) is the fastest route; the sibling US 6,747,143 record shows ~102 cited documents across the family, which is a useful cross-check.
3. The 1989 application 07/362,901 as filed, to test written-description support for whichever claim set governs — especially if Branch B holds.

Confidence: high on the framework, the § 103 combinations under Branch A, and the priority-date lever; low/undetermined on the actual claim scope and therefore on the ultimate obviousness conclusion.