An invalidity position is not an opinion about a patent. It is a demonstration, limitation by limitation, that every element of a claim was already disclosed: by one reference if you can get it, by a defensible combination if you cannot. The standard is unforgiving: miss one limitation and the argument fails, no matter how close the art feels. Which is why real invalidity work has always meant claim charts, and why claim charts have always been brutally expensive to build.
The mechanics are the problem. The claim must be decomposed into its limitations precisely, including the means-plus-function elements where the claim’s real scope lives in the specification’s corresponding structure, not in the claim language itself. Every candidate reference must predate the priority date, which means the date of each reference must actually be verified, not assumed from a database field. And the search has to keep going after the obvious hits, because the reference that completes the combination is usually the one indexed under vocabulary nobody was searching.
Esgenix runs this as a directed workflow. Capture the target by publication number and the claims and priority date are fetched; the claims are parsed into a claim ribbon: each limitation a discrete unit with its own date logic. Means-plus-function elements are flagged under §112(f), and the workflow will not proceed past them until the corresponding structure is confirmed, because a chart built on the wrong claim scope is worthless no matter how good its art is.
Any limitation still marked NOT DISCLOSED is the exact gap between your position and a complete one.
The search runs semantically across 220 million patents and the research literature, in rounds you direct, and everything it returns is filtered to art that predates the priority date. References whose dates cannot be verified are not quietly included or quietly dropped: they are parked in a date-verification tray until a person confirms them. Hits come back graded X (anticipates on its own), Y (works in combination, with the missing limitations named, not implied), or A (background), and you triage every round.
The chart builds as the rounds converge: limitations against references, with the disclosing passage quoted in every cell. A subtractive mode searches for art covering the claim without a chosen limitation: the fastest way to find which element is genuinely doing the work. An element-to-reference flow diagram keeps one thing impossible to overlook: any limitation still marked NOT DISCLOSED, the exact gap between your position and a complete one.
It closes as a claim-chart report with combination arguments assembled, reviewed, edited, and approved by you. Whether it is headed to a negotiation, a proceeding, or a decision about whether to fight at all, the position arrives the way it will eventually be judged: element by element, with the evidence attached.
