Challenge
The patent family pointed back to 2017 through continuity, shared inventorship, and a common autonomous-agent theme. But family-level continuity does not show whether every limitation of the final claim was disclosed that early. Treating 2017 as the cutoff could have limited the invalidity search by almost six years.
Approach
We traced each limitation of the final claim through every filing in the chain and recorded where clear support first appeared. Vector and metadata matching, the context builder, the protocol generator, and the build executor mechanism showed clear support only in later filings, several only in 2023. The applicant’s own filings supported this reading. Earlier ones described broad concepts, while later ones added specific mechanisms. This exposed a potential 2023 priority date for key limitations. It widened the search window by nearly six years and made priority a second invalidity strategy.
Watch the Claim-Level Walkthrough