US 7933722

I'll research this patent number. Let me run targeted searches.

Let me check USPTO/CAFC sources and litigation records directly.

Let me retrieve the full claim set and check for any appellate/litigation activity specifically.

US 7,933,722 B2 — Verified Summary

Important caveat up front: I did not have direct query access to USPTO PatentCenter, the USPTO assignment database, or the CAFC docket system in this session. What follows is grounded in (a) the authoritative full text of US 7,933,722 supplied to me (Google Patents, https://patents.google.com/patent/US7933722/en), (b) the USPTO/Google-hosted front-page PDF (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/2a/10/63/af9b6937d67cca/US7933722.pdf), and (c) third-party databases (DrugPatentWatch, Justia, FreePatentsOnline). Where a docket/litigation record could not be confirmed, I say so explicitly rather than guessing.

Note also that the identifier was located literally as 7,933,722 — I did not substitute any near-number. Searches for the bare string "7933722" also returned unrelated non-patent hits (e.g., a Brazilian company registration number), which I disregarded.

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Bibliographic data

Assignee discrepancy worth flagging: the granted front page lists Synergenz Bioscience Limited of Hong Kong (CN), while Google Patents displays "Synergenz Bioscience Ltd." The wider Synergenz family also includes entities at Tortola (VG) and "Sea Meadow House" appearing on related applications (e.g., US 11/874,187). I would treat the exact assignee entity/domicile for any particular date as requiring confirmation from the USPTO assignment record (reel/frame) rather than from any single database.

Abstract (verbatim)

"The present invention provides methods for the assessment of diseases that result from the combined or interactive effects of two or more genetic variants, and in particular for diagnosing risk of developing such diseases in subjects using an analysis of genetic polymorphisms. Methods for the derivation of a net score indicative of a subject's risk of developing a disease are provided."

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Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Caveat on sourcing: the full patent text I hold is truncated partway through the "Description of the Preferred Embodiments" and does not include the printed claim set. The claim text below is drawn from the DrugPatentWatch claim listing for patent 7,933,722 (https://www.drugpatentwatch.com/p/biologics/patent-claims/7933722). The gist is highly reliable because the summary-of-invention section of the patent mirrors the claim language almost verbatim, but exact claim wording should be verified against the granted PDF before being relied on, and claims 30–33 were not recovered at all.

Claim 1 (the core independent claim) — A diagnostic/risk-assessment method with four steps:

1. obtain a biological sample from a human subject;
2. analyze the sample for the presence/absence of at least one protective polymorphism and at least one susceptibility polymorphism associated with a disease having a genetic basis, where the total number of polymorphisms analyzed is four or greater;
3. assign a positive score to each protective polymorphism and a negative score to each susceptibility polymorphism (or vice versa);
4. calculate a net score representing the balance between the combined protective value and the combined susceptibility value.
   The disease must be selected from lung cancer, COPD, occupational COPD (OCOPD), and emphysema; a net protective score indicates reduced risk and a net susceptibility score indicates increased risk.

Claim 26 — Essentially the same method framed as an "information-processing" variant: obtain a sample, then obtain the result of one or more analyses determining protective/susceptibility polymorphisms (total ≥ 4), assign scores, and calculate the net score with the same predictive interpretation. This claim is structured to cover a party that receives genotype results rather than generating them.

Claim 27 — Same scheme as claim 1 but the threshold is five or greater total polymorphisms analyzed.

Claim 28 — Same "method of assessing a human subject's risk" format as claims 1/27; the full text was not recovered, so its distinguishing limitation (likely a different minimum polymorphism count or a disease/score limitation) is unconfirmed.

Claim 29 — Same family of "method of assessing a human subject's risk"; text also truncated and unconfirmed.

Dependent claims 2–25 (as recovered) add: disease-specific polymorphism panels — for COPD (claim 18-type lists of protective and susceptibility genotypes across COX2, IL-13, NOS3, VDBP, GSTP1, α1AT, TNFα, SMAD3, MBL2, CMA1, NAT2, MEH, ALOX5, HSP70, Elafin, ADBR, MMP1, IL-18, PAI-1, IFN-γ, ICAM1, NOD2, IL1B, CLCA1, CD-14), for OCOPD, and for lung cancer (NOS3, SOD3, MMP12, IL-18, COX2, MUC5AC, Arg1, IGF2R, IL-10, IL-8, XRCC1, CCND1, XPD, CYP1A1, OGG1, REV1, ACT, CTGF, MBL2, IL-1B, FAS, NAT2, CYP2E1, GSTM, MMP1, NBS1, APE1); claims directing that each polymorphism be scored +1/−1 or −1/+1; a claim that the subject is or has been a smoker; and a claim adding epidemiological risk factors (smoking/tobacco exposure, age, sex, family history).

Apparent drafting/typo issues to be aware of: claim 19 says "according to claim 18" while describing "all polymorphisms of the group" for the lung-cancer protective panel, and claim 21 says "according to claim 18" while referring to the susceptibility panel of claim 20 — these look like uncorrected antecedent-basis inconsistencies in the printed patent rather than correct dependencies. Worth verifying against the USPTO face copy if the claim scope matters.

Sibling/independent claims beyond 29: The front page states 33 claims total, so claims 30–33 exist but were not recovered in this search. Given the pattern (kits, prophylactic/therapeutic intervention, and treatment-by-altering-net-score aspects are all described in the specification), those claims plausibly cover a kit and/or treatment/prophylaxis methods, but I cannot confirm this and will not assert it as fact.

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Litigation / CAFC 2026 docket check — no record found

I specifically searched for Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit 2026 dockets and Synergenz Bioscience litigation. I found no CAFC 2026 docket, appeal, or district-court case involving US 7,933,722, and no appellate activity naming Synergenz Bioscience as a party. The only litigation-adjacent signal in the search results was financial/conflict-of-interest: a respiratory-medicine journal disclosure that inventor R.P. Young "is a shareholder of Synergenz Bioscience, which holds patents for gene-based risk prediction in COPD and lung cancer" (https://www.resmedjournal.com/article/S0954611117302548/pdf). That is a conflict statement, not a lawsuit.

Because I could not query the CAFC docket system or PACER directly in this session, this should be read as "not found" rather than "does not exist." To be authoritative on any 2026 appellate activity you would need to run the party name ("Synergenz Bioscience") and the patent number through the CAFC's public docket (cafc.uscourts.gov / PACER) and the USPTO PatentCenter "Litigation" tab.

Related-family notes (useful context)

• Priority chain: NZ 540249 (2005-05-20) and NZ 541842 (2005-08-15); published as US 2006/0275808 A1 (2006-12-07).
• Continuations claiming priority to this patent: US 13/049,612 (published US 2011/0182872 A1) and US 13/903,913 (published US 2013/0345287 A1) — the latter is the "assessment of a subject's suitability for an intervention" and insurance/health-risk line.
• International counterparts: WO 2006/123943 A1 and WO 2006/123955 A2 (Synergenz Bioscience Limited, published 23 Nov 2006) appear in the ISR for JP 2010-506588 as both prior art cited against and family members of this work.

Bottom line on certainty

• High confidence: patent number, title, sole inventor, assignee name, application number, filing date, issue date, priority, abstract, term extension/expiry, expired-fee status, and the substance of independent claim 1.
• Moderate confidence: exact wording and full scope of claims 26–29 (recovered from a secondary database, not the face copy).
• Unconfirmed: claims 30–33 entirely; the exact responsible assignee entity at any given date; and the absence of CAFC 2026 activity (not found, but not exhaustively verified against the docketing systems).

I'll search for litigation records involving US patent 7933722.

Let me run more targeted searches specific to this patent number.

Let me perform additional targeted searches to confirm.

Summary of Findings — U.S. Patent No. 7,933,722

Patent identification (confirmed)

• Patent No.: US 7,933,722 B2 — "Methods of analysis of polymorphisms and uses thereof"
• Inventor: Robert Peter Young (Auckland, NZ)
• Assignee: Synergenz Bioscience Limited (Hong Kong / CN — record lists Hong Kong)
• Application No.: 11/432,770; Filed: May 10, 2006
• Priority: NZ 540249 (May 20, 2005) and NZ 541842 (Aug. 15, 2005); prior art date listed as 2005-05-20
• Issued: April 26, 2011; Status: Expired – Fee Related; adjusted expiration 2029-07-14
• Subject matter: Methods of assessing disease risk (COPD, OCOPD, emphysema, lung cancer) by detecting protective and susceptibility polymorphisms and calculating a "net score."

Litigation

No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,933,722 was identified. Searches of general litigation coverage, patent-litigation aggregators (including Unified Patents' litigation portal), and CAFC/opinion sources returned no case in which 7,933,722 was asserted as a patent-in-suit, challenged (IPR/PGR/CBM), or otherwise made the subject of a court or PTAB proceeding.

Consistent with your instruction to interpret identifiers literally and not auto-correct them, I want to flag the near-miss numbers that appeared in search results and explain why they are not this patent:

None of these is U.S. 7,933,722.

Caveats on completeness

• I was unable to directly query PACER/Docket Navigator/RPX/Unified's case pages for this exact number within the available search budget; my conclusion rests on the searches performed. If you need a court-record-grade negative, a direct PACER or commercial docket (e.g., Docket Navigator, Lex Machina) query on "7,933,722" is the recommended confirmation step.
• This is a diagnostic/genetic-methods patent held by a small biotech (Synergenz Bioscience Ltd). There is no indication in the record of any enforcement activity, and the lack of any litigation hit is consistent with a patent that was never asserted.

Bottom line: Based on the searches performed, there is no known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,933,722, and results for the similarly numbered '372/'722 patents should not be attributed to it.

I'll start by verifying the structured data against live sources, since the ODP block reports no proceedings and web search may surface anything not yet indexed.

Let me run a few more targeted checks before concluding the list is genuinely empty.

One more diligence pass targeting PTAB dockets and any assertion history.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block — the canonical USPTO Open Data Portal list — returns no AIA trial proceedings for US 7,933,722, and independent web-search diligence surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition or decision naming this patent. There is therefore no "claims invalidated" / "claims sustained" / "settled" / "institution denied" breakdown to report — every one of those buckets is empty. Defensive posture: the patent is completely untested at the PTAB — it has neither been hardened by surviving an IPR nor weakened by one. A defendant cannot point to any prior panel that has construed or invalidated a single claim, and equally cannot assume the patent is a paper tiger.

Because there are no proceedings, the per-proceeding template is intentionally not populated — I will not invent proceeding numbers, panels, or dispositions.

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Diligence log (what I checked, and what came back)

I cannot state with certainty that no petition was ever filed and denied pre-institution without seeing the ODP docket directly; the confidence level is "high but not absolute." A confirmatory check should be run in PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) and the PTAB Decisions database using "7,933,722" as the patent-number filter.

Patent-identity facts that matter for any future petition

• Patent: US 7,933,722 B2 — "Methods of analysis of polymorphisms and uses thereof"
• Application: 11/432,770 | Filed: 2006-05-10 | Granted: 2011-04-26
• Earliest priority: 2005-05-20 (NZ 540249) — the block also notes NZ 541842, filed 2005-08-15
• Inventor: Robert Peter Young | Assignee: Synergenz Bioscience Ltd
• Legal status shown: "Expired - Fee Related"; adjusted expiration 2029-07-14
• Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7933722/en

Two consequences flow from the 2005-05-20 priority date:

1. PGR is unavailable. Post-grant review applies only to patents with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16. This is a pre-AIA patent, so the only available AIA trial vehicle is IPR.
2. CBM is unavailable — the subject matter (genotype-based risk scoring for COPD/lung cancer) is not a "financial product or service," and the CBM program sunset on 2020-09-16 in any event.
3. IPR grounds are limited to § 102 and § 103 on patents and printed publications. No § 112, no public-use/on-sale art. Given that the challenged claims are diagnostic/scoring methods, that limitation matters: the natural attack is anticipation or obviousness over printed publications, including the patent owner's own earlier PCT publications in this family.

Status note on "Expired - Fee Related"

The legal-status field reports Expired - Fee Related with an adjusted expiration of 2029-07-14. Under USPTO practice that label ordinarily signals a lapse for non-payment of a maintenance fee — which, if accurate, would mean the patent is unenforceable for failure to pay maintenance and the entire IPR/validity question is moot. The same record simultaneously lists a 2029 term, so the two data points are in tension. I do not know with high confidence which is operative. This should be confirmed in USPTO Patent Center (maintenance-fee / EPAS tab) before anyone spends money on an invalidity theory. If the patent truly lapsed, that is the single most valuable defensive fact available and it costs nothing to verify.

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Strategic summary

Claim status — all claims are UNTESTED. No claim of US 7,933,722 has been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the PTAB because no petition was ever instituted. Contrast this with the usual "hardened vs. gutted" spectrum: there is no Final Written Decision, no Certificate of Correction from an IPR, and no Federal Circuit mandate. The claims as granted remain exactly as issued, subject only to any ex parte reexamination or certificate of correction that may appear in the file history (not visible in the structured data provided). Note also the family members listed as "other versions" — US 2006/0275808 A1 (the published application), plus two later continuations from applications 13/049,612 and 13/903,913 (published as US 2011/0182872 A1 and US 2013/0345287 A1). If someone is being asserted against, the asserted patent may not be the only family member in play, and an IPR on the '722 patent alone would not clear the family.

Estoppel — none exists, in either direction. Since no IPR was instituted, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel against anyone. For a defendant today:

• All § 102/§ 103 patent-and-printed-publication grounds are available in a fresh IPR.
• § 315(b) has not been triggered as far as the public record shows (no identified district-court complaint asserting this patent). That means the one-year bar is not yet running — the door is open, but it closes one year after service of a complaint alleging infringement. That is the clock to watch.
• § 315(a)(1) is clean — no prior civil action challenging validity by the would-be petitioner appears on the record.
• The § 325(d) discretion problem is absent because no ground has ever been presented to the Office in an AIA trial. (Grounds could still be met with § 325(d) if the same art was considered during original prosecution — worth checking the file wrapper.)

Pattern signals — a blank slate.

• No repeat petitioner, because there is no petitioner at all. No serial-IPR / General Plastic follow-on dynamic.
• No PTAB appeal practice by the patent owner — no FWD to appeal, no Federal Circuit docket numbers to trace. Nothing on CourtListener tying this patent number to a CAFC appeal surfaced.
• No defensive aggregator in the chain. Unified Patents or a similar entity has not (on the public record) targeted this patent. That is consistent with the patent's profile: a 2011-issued, fee-lapsed-status, single-assignee diagnostic-method patent in a narrow COPD/lung-cancer-risk niche that has evidently attracted little commercial assertion. Well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs; this one has not, which cuts against the "troll with a strong portfolio" narrative and also means there is no ready-made invalidity record to borrow.

Bottom line for a defendant: you are not walking into a PTAB-hardened patent, but you are also not walking into a record of invalidity you can cite. You would be the first challenger, building the § 102/§ 103 case from scratch. The two highest-leverage moves are (1) verify the maintenance-fee status, and (2) check whether the 2013-03-16 AIA date and the family's own earlier PCT publications (WO 02/099134, the family's WO 2006/123943 and WO 2006/123955, both naming Synergenz) supply printed-publication art.

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Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the maintenance-fee status first — this is the cheapest dispositive point. Pull US 7,933,722 in USPTO Patent Center (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov) → "Maintenance Fees" / EPAS tab. If the 4th, 8th, or 12th-year fee went unpaid, the patent lapsed and there is no need to file anything. The Google Patents status "Expired - Fee Related" (https://patents.google.com/patent/US7933722/en) points that direction, but the co-listed 2029-07-14 adjusted expiration means it must be verified, not assumed. Note that a lapsed patent can generally still be the subject of an IPR (the Board may institute on an expired patent because a live controversy may remain), so a lapse helps you commercially but does not automatically stop a proceeding you file.

2. Sweep the file history and the family for § 102/§ 103 art. Review the prosecution file wrapper for the references the Examiner applied and any art cited. Then work the family's own publications — the JP search report referenced WO 2006/123943 A1 (Synergenz, published 2006-11-23) and the record shows WO 2006/123955 A2 (Synergenz, pub. 2006-11-23, earliest priority 2005-05-19), both of which post-date the 2005-05-20 priority and are therefore not prior art to this patent by publication, though their underlying applications may be under § 102(e)/§ 102(a)(2) logic depending on filing dates — get counsel to run the dates precisely. The specification's own incorporated-by-reference material, including PCT/NZ02/00106, published as WO 02/099134 (2002-12-12), predates the priority date and is a genuine printed-publication candidate; the '722 specification expressly acknowledges it as identifying four susceptibility and three protective polymorphisms for lung disease, which is a § 103 admission worth mining.

3. Watch the § 315(b) clock. No complaint asserting this patent was found on the public record. If one is served on you, you have one year from service to file an IPR. Calendar it on day one — this is the single most commonly blown deadline.

4. If a petition is warranted, scope it correctly. Because the patent is pre-AIA: file IPR only (PGR and CBM are both unavailable, as explained above), and limit grounds to § 102/§ 103 patents and printed publications. Do not plead § 112 or prior public use — those grounds cannot be raised in an IPR on this patent.

5. Treat the whole family, not just the '722 patent. The "Other versions" fields list continuations from applications 13/049,612 (published as US 2011/0182872 A1) and 13/903,913 (published as US 2013/0345287 A1). Confirm which family member a patent owner is actually asserting before budgeting an IPR, and consider whether family-wide prior art (same references against the same specification) supports parallel petitions.

Caveat on completeness: I found no PTAB activity and no reported assertion of this patent, but I could not query PTAB E2E or Patent Center directly. Treat "zero proceedings" as high-confidence but unverified against the primary docket, and confirm before relying on it in a filing or a client opinion. If PTAB E2E does surface a proceeding that ODP has not indexed, that proceeding — not this report — controls.

I'll research the assignment history for US 7,933,722 before drafting. Let me run some targeted searches.

Ownership Reconstruction — US 7,933,722 B2 ("Methods of analysis of polymorphisms and uses thereof")

Scope note / sourcing limitation. I ran web research but could not directly load the USPTO Assignment Center results page (it is a JavaScript-driven app that my retrieval tools could not render). No reel/frame numbers for this patent were returned by any retrieved source, and I will not guess at them. The most authoritative artifact I have is the Google Patents legal-events record supplied in the patent text, which shows exactly one post-filing assignment event. Everything below is grounded in that record plus the corroborating sources cited.

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Inventors

Supporting evidence:

• The patent names a single inventor: Young, Robert Peter (NZ). Application US 11/432,770.
• Journal affiliations list "R. P. Young, MD, PhD — Auckland Hospital, Auckland, New Zealand and Synergenz Biosciences Ltd, Auckland" (AJRCCM abstract A5886). Media coverage describes the work as "developed from research at The University of Auckland by Associate Professor Robert Young" and the company as "spun off from Auckland UniServices Ltd."
• Young is disclosed elsewhere as a shareholder of Synergenz Bioscience, which "holds patents for gene-based risk prediction in COPD and lung cancer" (ResMed journal conflict-of-interest statement).

Unusual-pattern check: Not applicable in the classic sense — there is only one inventor, and he is also the founder/principal of the assignee. There is therefore no "all inventors depart the original assignee" pattern; inventor and assignee are the same economic party. This is an academic spin-out structure, not a pre-fire-sale structure.

Confidence caveat: Young's precise employment status on 2006-05-10 is inferred from his academic affiliation and the UniServices spin-out history, not from a filed employment record. Treat the "University of Auckland" attribution as high-confidence but not documentary.

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Original assignee

Synergenz Bioscience Limited — the entity named as assignee on both the application and the issued patent, and still the "current assignee" per Google Patents.

• Domicile: Sea Meadow House, P.O. Box 116, Road Town, Tortola, British Virgin Islands (per the PCT/CA family publications, assignee "SYNERGENZ BIOSCIENCE LIMITED; Sea Meadow House, P O Box 116, Road Town, Tortola (VG)"). Note the record is inconsistent across sources: DrugPatentWatch lists the assignee as "Hong Kong, CN," and one PubChem entry lists "(CN)." The BVI Tortola address is the one tied to the patent family filings.
• Primary line of business: Genetic / molecular diagnostics for respiratory medicine — SNP-based risk prediction for COPD, occupational COPD (OCOPD), and lung cancer. It commercialised a product, Respiragene™, a gene-based lung cancer risk test launched in New Zealand in June 2009 (processed by DNA Diagnostics Ltd., another University of Auckland spin-out). A medical/diagnostic kit trademark, RESPIRAGENE, was filed 2008-08-07.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, historically — Respiragene implemented the net-score SNP algorithm claimed here. Evidence: company press materials, University of Auckland/UniServices release, and geographic expansion (AU2015205934A1 continued the family).
• Current status: Effectively dormant / wound down.
  • The RESPIRAGENE trademark was cancelled (Section 8) as of 2016-04-08 — a live-product mark would normally be maintained.
  • The GoodIP assignee profile records Synergenz's IP activity has fallen 100%, with no recent filings.
  • Most decisively, US 7,933,722 is itself "Expired – Fee Related" on Google Patents (adjusted expiration listed as 2029-07-14, but lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees).
  • I found no evidence of a Chapter 7/11 bankruptcy filing. A lapsed-fee patent is consistent with a quiet wind-down, not necessarily an insolvency proceeding. Do not conflate the two.

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Assignment timeline

Chronological list of recorded assignments. Only one assignment appears in the chain. The Google Patents legal events for US 7,933,722 show a single reassignment entry, and no other recorded conveyance was surfaced by my searches.

• Executed date not shown in retrievable sources / recorded 2006-07-26 — Reel/Frame not exposed in the sources retrieved (not stated by Google Patents legal events; Assignment Center record not directly retrievable by my tools)
  • Conveyance: Assignment (recorded as "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: YOUNG, ROBERT PETER (inventor)
  • Assignee: SYNERGENZ BIOSCIENCE LIMITED
  • Correspondent: Not determinable from the sources retrieved. For the record, the prosecution attorney of record on the younger sibling applications in this family (US 11/874,185 and US 11/874,187) is Davis Wright Tremaine LLP – SF (Seattle, WA) per FreePatentsOnline. That is family context, not confirmation of the correspondent on the '722 assignment recording. I could not confirm any correspondent for the 2006-07-26 recording, and I will not assert one.
  • Context: Founder/inventor-to-company assignment made in connection with the original filing (2006-05-10) — a standard spin-out capitalisation step, not a fire-sale, securitization, or transfer-to-asserter.

Events that are NOT assignments (do not mis-read these as ownership changes):

Both are domestic-benefit links inside the same corporate family. Neither moves title.

Bottom line: Apart from the founding assignment to the operating spin-out, the Assignment Center's chain contains no post-issuance assignment for US 7,933,722. As of the record, Synergenz Bioscience Limited remains the assignee of record. That is itself the finding.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7933722
    2005 : NZ priority application filed
         : NZ 540249 claims earliest priority
    2006 : US application filed by Robert P Young
         : Inventor assigns rights to Synergenz BioScience Limited
    2009 : Respiragene lung cancer test launched in New Zealand
    2011 : US 7933722 B2 granted to Synergenz
    2016 : Respiragene trademark cancelled
    2029 : Adjusted expiry listed as fee related

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

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Verdict

Insufficient data — meaning specifically: only the original assignment is on record.

Justification. The complete chain is a single founder-to-startup assignment recorded 2006-07-26 (inventor Robert Peter Young → Synergenz Bioscience Limited), contemporaneous with the 2006-05-10 filing; no post-issuance assignment exists in the retrieved record, and Synergenz Bioscience Limited remains the assignee (Google Patents legal events). The assignee was a genuine operating spin-out that shipped Respiragene, the product embodying the claimed net-score method, and there is no assertion activity, no NPE transferee, and no aggregator in the chain — so none of the NPE verdicts is supported. The closest thing to a shell signal is the BVI holding-company domicile, but that is outweighed by documented product activity and is a naming/structure observation, not evidence. Note the two "Priority to US13/…" events (2011-03-16 and 2013-05-28) are continuations, not assignments and should not be counted as transfers.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• USPTO legacy Assignment Search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search patent number 7933722)
• Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7933722/en

Two open items a manual Assignment Center pull should close: (1) the reel/frame of the 2006-07-26 recording, and (2) the correspondent of record on that recording — neither was retrievable with the tools available here, and neither should be inferred.

I'll research US patent 7933722 and its cited prior art references.

Let me get the full citations list from the patent databases.

Let me retrieve the complete citations list from Justia.

Prior-Art Analysis of US 7,933,722 B2

1. Patent Identification (literal)

This is a pre-AIA patent (filed 2006), so §§ 102(a)/(b)/(e)/(g) and 103(a) apply in their pre-AIA form. Claim 1 (independent) broadly covers: (a) analyzing a biological sample for protective and susceptibility polymorphisms, (b) assigning positive/negative scores, and (c) calculating a net score whose sign predicts reduced vs. increased risk. The specification's disclosed SNP lists are recited in dependent/embodiment claims (COPD, OCOPD, lung cancer gene sets) and the net-score methodology.

Scope caveat (required by the analyst's rules): I could retrieve the cited-references lists from the public record (Justia / Google Patents), but I could not open the full text of every cited document in this session. Descriptions below are drawn from the citation data plus each reference's title/subject matter, and the § 102 assessment is framed accordingly. Where the disclosure is unknown, that is stated rather than assumed.

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2. Cited U.S. Patent Documents

Examiner/primary examiner of record: Mark K. Zeman.

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3. Cited U.S. Patent Application Publications

⚠️ Critical timing note

The effective priority date is 2005-05-20. Under pre-AIA § 102, a reference must predate the applicant's invention/priority to qualify (and § 102(b) requires publication more than one year before the U.S. filing date of 2006-05-10). Consequently, the following cited documents on their face postdate the priority date and cannot anticipate under § 102 unless the priority claim fails: US 2005/0196754 (9/2005), US 2005/0272054 (12/2005), US 2005/0282198 (12/2005), EP 1 043 406 (6/2006), WO 2006121351, WO 2006123943, WO 2006123954, WO 2006123955 (all 11/2006), JP 2005328707 (12/2005), and US 2006/0122373 (6/2006). These appear in the file as later-filed/later-published art and are properly § 103/§ 102(e-style contextual references, not § 102(a)/(b) anticipatory art. This is itself a notable feature of the prosecution history.

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4. Cited Foreign Patent Documents

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5. Cited Non-Patent Literature (partial — list as retrieved)

(The record contains additional NPL entries that were truncated in the retrieved data; I am not listing them to avoid fabricating citations.)

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6. Anticipation Assessment Under 35 U.S.C. § 102

Bottom line: No cited reference anticipates the independent claim (or the net-score genus).

Anticipation requires a single reference to disclose every element of a claim, arranged as claimed. Claim 1 requires, in combination:

• analysis of both protective and susceptibility polymorphisms;
• assignment of opposing signed values; and
• calculation of a net score whose sign is predictive.

Breaking this down:

1. Genotyping-method references — US 6,346,385 (Eguchi), US 6,610,510 (Valenzuela), US 6,673,549 (Furness), US 6,677,442 (Wang), US 2005/0196754 (Drmanac), and the various SNP-detection methods cited in the specification (SSCP, DGGE, mass spectrometry, etc.). These disclose how to detect a polymorphism but say nothing about protective/susceptibility categorization or a net score. No § 102 anticipation of any claim.

2. Single-gene polymorphism / association references — Duff (US 6,268,142; 6,706,478; US 2004/0152124; US 2005/0282198), Nogee, Tazi-Ahnini, Cargill, and the NPL association studies (Barnes; Cambien; Dunleavey; Folz; Cantlay; Harrison; Butkiewicz). These disclose individual SNP–disease associations and could theoretically bear on a hypothetical claim reciting a single SNP and its protective/susceptibility status. At most they are § 102 art against a narrow, single-marker dependent claim — not against claim 1, which requires the combination and the net score. For instance, Folz (SOD3 variants) and Dunleavey (MMP1 1G/2G) each touch one recited marker but not the claimed method as a whole.

3. Scoring / risk-algorithm references — US 7,054,758 (Gill-Garrison, "assessing lifestyle risk factors"). This is the most relevant single reference because it discloses computer-assisted combination of multiple risk factors into a composite risk assessment. However, it does not disclose (a) categorization of genetic polymorphisms as protective vs. susceptibility, nor (b) a signed net score of the claimed type. It therefore supports an obviousness (§ 103) theory rather than anticipation.

4. Applicant's own earlier publications — US 2004/0219548 and US 2005/0064454 (Young). Because these are by the same inventive entity, they are not § 102(a) "by others" art; they are relevant mainly as § 102(b)/priority or as § 103 context. They likewise do not disclose the signed net-score.

§ 102 conclusion by claim type

• Independent claims (net-score method / determination-from-pre-analyzed-results): No anticipation by any cited reference.
• Dependent claims reciting specific polymorphism–disease associations (SOD3 +760, MMP1 2G2G, TGF-β codon 10, MMP1 1G/2G, GSTP1, etc.): Possible § 102 exposure from the NPL association studies (Folz, Dunleavey, Cambien, Cantlay, Harrison, Butkiewicz) and from Duff/Cookson patent art, only if a single reference expressly discloses the specific genotype and its protective/susceptibility designation for the same disease. This requires verification against each document's full text.
• Post-priority references (WO 2006/121351, 2006/123943, 2006/123954, 2006/123955; EP 1 043 406; US 2005/0196754; US 2005/0272054; US 2005/0282198; US 2006/0122373): Cannot be § 102 anticipatory art as of the 2005-05-20 priority date.

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7. Summary

The cited art reflects a § 103-based prosecution: the examiner assembled (i) SNP-detection methodology, (ii) single-gene COPD/lung-cancer association studies, and (iii) a lifestyle-risk-scoring reference (US 7,054,758), with the inventive contribution of 7933722 resting on the protective-vs-susceptibility, signed net-score combination — a feature none of the cited references individually discloses.

If you want the definitive element-by-element § 102 chart, I'd need the full text/claims of the strongest candidates — US 7,054,758, the Duff family, US 2004/0219548 and US 2005/0064454 (Young), plus the Barnes, Folz and Dunleavey papers. I can pull those next; I did not want to assert anticipation without inspecting their disclosures.

§ 103 Obviousness Analysis — US 7,933,722 B2

Sourcing / date note. I am proceeding on the claim-scope understanding established in the Patent Summary above (claim 1 = sample → analyze ≥1 protective + ≥1 susceptibility polymorphism with total ≥4 → assign opposing signed scores → compute net score → net-protective = reduced risk / net-susceptibility = increased risk, for lung cancer, COPD, OCOPD, or emphysema). That understanding was drawn from a secondary database, not the granted face copy, so the analysis below is keyed to it and should be re-run against the printed claims before filing.

Flagged contradiction (do not auto-correct): the task states the current date as April 26, 2026, while the session header carries 2026-09-30. Nothing in this § 103 analysis turns on the difference, but the two dates are inconsistent and I am not silently reconciling them. (Separately, note the coincidental overlap: 2011-04-26 is the issue date of this patent, not today's date.)

Threshold point carried forward from the Prior Art section: no cited reference anticipates under § 102. That makes § 103 the only realistic validity attack on the independent claims, and it is where the analysis must be concentrated.

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1. Governing framework

This is a pre-AIA patent (US filing 2006-05-10; earliest priority 2005-05-20), so pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) applies, governed by Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007). The four Graham factors:

1. scope and content of the prior art;
2. differences between the prior art and the claims;
3. level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art; and
4. objective indicia (secondary considerations).

The decisive post-KSR principle here: "the combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results." KSR, 550 U.S. at 416. The claimed net-score is, at bottom, addition and subtraction over a set of scored binary variables — a known method of aggregating risk factors applied to known genetic risk factors. That framing is the core of the invalidity case. See MPEP § 2143 for the enumerated rationales (A)–(G) relied on below.

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2. The pertinent art, restated by availability (not re-listing)

Building on the Prior Art section, the practical universe splits by the 2005-05-20 priority date:

Two consequences follow immediately: (i) the obviousness case must be built on the pre-priority subset; and (ii) the single most powerful piece of art is the applicant's own admission about WO 02/099134, because admissions in the specification are prior art regardless of whether the document is separately retrieved. See In re Nomiya; MPEP § 2129.

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3. Element-by-element obviousness chart — Combination I (methodology + marker set)

Primary references: WO 02/099134 (Synergenz/Young; 4 susceptibility + 3 protective polymorphisms for lung disease) in view of US 7,054,758 (Gill-Garrison; computer-assisted combination of multiple individual risk factors into an overall risk assessment).

Motivation to combine (Combination I). Both references sit in the same field of endeavor (stratifying individuals by health/disease risk) and address the same problem (producing a single actionable risk indicator from multiple inputs). KSR rationale (D) — applying a known technique ('758's multi-factor composite scoring) to a known set ready for improvement (WO 02/099134's already-classified SNP panel) — is squarely met. Rationale (F) also applies: market/clinical incentives for a predictive respiratory-disease test would prompt a POSITA to convert a descriptive marker panel into a scored index.

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4. Combination II — the applicant's own art ("self-collision")

References: US 2004/0219548 (Young, pub. Nov 4, 2004 — >1 year pre-filing, so a § 102(b) printed publication) and/or US 2005/0064454 (Young, Mar 24, 2005) in view of US 7,054,758.

The Prior Art section establishes that the Young publications recite lung-disease polymorphism analysis but not the signed net score. That gap is precisely what '758 supplies, and the gap is narrow: converting a disclosed list of disease-associated genotypes into a weighted composite is the routine step '758 teaches.

Caveat requiring counsel input. US 2005/0064454 is by the same inventor and published less than one year before the 2006-05-10 filing; it is therefore likely not "by another" for §§ 102(a)/(e), and pre-AIA § 103(c) may disqualify commonly-owned § 102(e)/(f)/(g) art. US 2004/0219548 is >1 year pre-filing and, as the inventor's own publication, is a § 102(b)-type printed publication — but its use against the same inventive entity needs care. These date/ownership questions must be run precisely before anyone relies on this combination.

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5. Combination III — the specific marker panels in dependent claims 2–25

For the dependent claims reciting discrete genotype lists (COPD, OCOPD, lung-cancer panels), the obviousness case is stronger and more granular, because each recited marker is independently taught in the pre-priority literature identified in the Prior Art section:

• SOD3 +760 / Arg 312 Gln ← Folz 1997 (SOD3 variants in chronic lung disease)
• MMP1 −1607 1G/2G / 2G2G ← Dunleavey 2000 (MMP1 1G/2G genotyping)
• TGF-β codon 10 ← Cambien 1996
• GSTP1 Ile 105 Val / GSTM null ← Cantlay 1994; Harrison 1997; Butkiewicz 1999
• Broad COPD candidate-gene associations ← Barnes 1999 (Thorax review)

Rationale. Combining these into a panel is textbook obviousness by routine optimization and known-technique application:

• In re Merck & Co., 800 F.2d 1091 (Fed. Cir. 1986) — combining known compounds/methods each performing the same function.
• In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413 (CCPA 1981) — the test is what the combined teachings would have suggested, not bodily incorporation.
• KSR rationale (E) — "obvious to try": where there is "a finite number of identified, predictable solutions," a POSITA's success is not innovation. The named genes (SOD3, MMP1, TGF-β, GST, MMP9/12, IL-18, COX2, NOS3, TNFα, etc.) are a closed, enumerated set of candidate genes drawn directly from the pre-priority literature.

Numeric thresholds (claim 1 "≥4"; claim 27 "≥5"). These are range/design-choice limitations that KSR and In re Aller, 220 F.2d 454 (CCPA 1955), treat as obvious absent a showing of criticality. Adding a fourth or fifth marker to a disclosed panel is the paradigm of a predictable variation with no unexpected result. Tokai Corp. v. Easton Enters., 632 F.3d 1358 (Fed. Cir. 2011).

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6. Combination IV — claim 26 (information-processing variant)

Claim 26 recites obtaining the result of the analyses rather than performing them. This is arguably more vulnerable: once the marker set and the arithmetic are known, the claim adds nothing but a data-flow step. The specification itself says the method may be practiced where "the subject sample can have already been analysed" — an admission that the inventive weight, if any, lies in the scoring step, not the assay. Because the scoring step is the obvious part, claim 26 has the thinnest nonobviousness footing.

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7. The POSITA and reasonable expectation of success

A POSITA here would be a genetic epidemiologist or molecular-diagnostics scientist with (i) routine SNP-genotyping skills and (ii) familiarity with multifactorial risk modelling (e.g., Framingham-style risk indices). Such a person:

• knew that complex diseases reflect polygenic contributions (Barnes 1999 says so);
• knew how to genotype the recited markers; and
• knew how to aggregate binary risk factors into a composite index ('758).

Reasonable expectation of success is not a requirement that success be guaranteed — only that it be reasonably predictable. In re O'Farrell, 853 F.2d 894 (Fed. Cir. 1988). A simple additive score needs no validated biological mechanism to be "reasonably expected" to produce a monotonic risk gradient.

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8. The patent owner's best rebuttals, and the counters

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9. Objective indicia (Graham factor 4)

• Commercial success: Respiragene (2009) may be evidence — but there is no established nexus to the claimed method, and success is at least as attributable to the underlying marker discoveries (themselves prior art) and to marketing. Wm. Wrigley Jr. Co. v. Cadbury Adams; In re GPAC.
• Long-felt need / failure of others: Not evidenced in the record. The Prior Art section identifies no failed attempts to build multi-marker genetic risk scores; to the contrary, '758 shows composite risk scoring already existed.
• Licensing / industry praise: No licensing or infringement activity was found (consistent with the Litigation and PTAB sections). Silence here is a negative for the patent owner — nobody paid to license it and nobody cared enough to challenge it.
• Copying: None shown.

Net: objective indicia are absent or unproven, and cannot overcome a well-constructed KSR combination.

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10. Weaknesses in the § 103 case — what must be proven before filing

The analysis above is rationale-complete but evidence-incomplete. The gaps:

1. Full texts not inspected. I have not read US 7,054,758, WO 02/099134, US 2004/0219548, Folz 1997, or Dunleavey 2000. The chart above rests on titles/abstracts and the '722 specification's own characterizations. The '758 reference must be read to confirm it discloses a summed/composite score, not merely a list of factors — that is the load-bearing fact.
2. WO 02/099134's literal content. The strongest single piece of evidence is the applicant's admission about it. Obtain the document and confirm the 3 protective + 4 susceptibility markers and their explicit protective/susceptibility labeling.
3. Priority dates of '758 and the Young publications must be confirmed to fall before 2005-05-20 / 2006-05-10 respectively.
4. § 103(c) common-ownership analysis for the Young-family art.
5. Which claims are actually being asserted. The dependent marker panels are the most vulnerable; the independent genus claims (1, 26, 27) require the combination theory to hold. A petition or invalidity contention should chart them separately.

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11. Bottom line

The independent claims (1, 26, 27) are vulnerable to § 103 but not plainly so. The case runs: '758 (composite multi-factor risk scoring) + WO 02/099134 (applicant-admitted panel of protective and susceptibility SNPs for lung disease) + the pre-priority association literature (Barnes, Folz, Dunleavey, Cambien, Cantlay, Harrison, Butkiewicz). The KSR rationales most likely to carry the day are (A) familiar elements yielding predictable results, (C)/(D) known technique applied to a known set ready for improvement, and (E) obvious to try over a finite set of identified solutions. The applicant's own specification supplies the two most damaging admissions: that the marker dichotomy already existed in WO 02/099134, and that the scoring is a "simple scoring system" that is "widely applicable, on a disease-by-disease basis."

The dependent marker-panel claims (2–25) are weaker still — each recited association is independently taught in the identified NPL, and combining them is routine optimization.

The strongest defense available to the patent owner is field unpredictability (the candidate-gene replication problem circa 2005). That defense is real but is undercut by the specification's own predictability admissions, and it does nothing for the specific-panel claims where the individual associations were already published.

Two global caveats: (i) verify maintenance-fee status first — if the patent has lapsed for non-payment (the "Expired – Fee Related" status with a co-listed 2029-07-14 expiration), validity analysis is commercially moot even though a lapsed patent can still be the subject of an IPR; and (ii) treat this as a pre-AIA, IPR-only analysis limited to §§ 102/103 patents and printed publications — § 112 and public-use/on-sale theories are unavailable.

Primary sources for the references: US 7,933,722 text — https://patents.google.com/patent/US7933722/en; face copy — https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/2a/10/63/af9b6937d67cca/US7933722.pdf. Reference-level citations are those catalogued in the Prior Art section above.