US 12412164

I'll search for authoritative information on US 12412164, including any litigation or CAFC docket activity.

Let me check specifically for litigation and PTAB activity on this patent number.

Let me verify the granted claims of the '164 patent specifically.

US Patent 12,412,164 — Analyst Summary

Caveat on sourcing. The bibliographic data below is drawn from the authoritative full text you supplied (Google Patents rendering of the '164 grant, fetched 2026‑09‑26) plus corroborating public records (the Justia/Justatic grant listing showing "Granted: September 9, 2025," and the published‑application record for US 2024/0394682 A1). I ran targeted searches of public sources for USPTO records and 2026 CAFC dockets keyed to the exact number 12,412,164. I did not find any CAFC appeal docket, PTAB proceeding, or district‑court complaint that names 12,412,164 as an asserted patent. I will not infer one exists. Details below are flagged where I am relying on the published application rather than the granted claim set.

1. Bibliographic data

Continuity chain (literal, per the patent's Cross‑Reference section): 18/427,556 (2024‑01‑30) ← continuation of 18/217,945 (2023‑07‑03, issued as US 11,961,061) ← continuation of 17/004,819 (2020‑08‑27) ← continuation of 16/730,567 (2019‑12‑30, now US 10,803,435) ← continuation of 15/956,400 (2018‑04‑18) ← divisional of 12/947,545 (2010‑11‑16, now US 10,121,133) ← benefit of provisional 61/392,908 (2010‑10‑13).

Note on name spellings (not auto‑corrected): the granted parent US 10,803,435 prints the fourth inventor as "Philip Wayne Marbutt," whereas the '164 record prints "Philip Wayne Marbut." The fifth inventor name is printed as "Douglas Jahe Ryner" on the '164 and on the published application record, while the UK/GB family record prints "Douglas Jahe Ryner" as well; I note the variant but have not changed it.

2. Abstract (verbatim)

"A method for purchasing an item using a mobile device is provided. The method includes but is not limited to inputting identification information into the mobile device which identifies the item for purchase and generating an order for the item identified by the identification information. The method also includes but is not limited to displaying on a display of the mobile device an optical machine-readable representation of the order."

The abstract is carried over verbatim from the 2010 priority family; it describes the original disclosure, not the narrower continuation claims.

3. Independent claim overview (plain language)

Important uncertainty flag. The granted claim text of 12,412,164 was not present in the full text you provided (the supplied description truncates before the claims). The claim set I summarize is from the published application US 2024/0394682 A1 (application 18/427,556 — the same application), which lists 20 claims with two independent claims (claim 1, method; claim 12, system). Continuation applications in this family (e.g., the '061 parent) issued with claim scope that differed materially from the published claims, so you should verify the granted '164 claims against the USPTO PatentCenter / issued patent copy before relying on them for an infringement or validity opinion.

Independent Claim 1 — "Method of providing a point‑of‑sale checkout process using a mobile device":

• Execute a mobile self‑checkout application on the mobile device that lets a user select items in a store and pay via a rendered user interface.
• Render that user interface on the device display.
• On user activation, enter a scanning mode and render a scan item interface; obtain identification information for each of multiple physical objects by activating the device's imaging device (camera) to capture the identification information. The scan item interface includes a barcode position indication area and a back action option to cancel the scanning mode.
• Based on the identification information, obtain item information for each physical object.
• Generate a virtual shopping cart and add the item information to it.
• Render an "added to cart" confirmation for each item added.
• Render a view‑cart option in the scan item interface.
• On selection of the view‑cart option, render a shopping cart interface listing the item information (item name and item price) plus a checkout option; the first view shows some items and enables scrolling to items not previously visible.
• Render a quantity‑adjustment option and a remove‑item option for a first physical object.
• Maintain state information comprising user identification data, store identification data, transaction identification data, and a transaction state.
• Receive an instruction via the user interface to complete the transaction.

Independent Claim 12 — "Retail self‑checkout system": the system‑claim counterpart to claim 1, reciting a mobile device executing the mobile self‑checkout application and configured to perform the same scan‑mode / barcode‑position‑indication‑area / add‑to‑cart confirmation / view‑cart / scrollable cart listing / quantity and remove options / complete‑transaction sequence.

Representative dependent claims (from the published set):

• Claim 2 / 13 / 17 — server updates/maintains the state information in a state container.
• Claim 3 — render an electronic receipt.
• Claim 4 — manual identification information box (e.g., keyed UPC).
• Claim 5–6 — optic scanning of a machine‑readable element rendered on the phone by a point‑of‑sale optical scanner; retrieve total payment amount; accept tendered payment; the machine‑readable element encodes customer identifying information used to look up the transaction and confirm payment.
• Claim 7 — item information retrieved locally from device memory and cart generated by the mobile device.
• Claim 9 — access and display item rating information.
• Claims 10, 11, 19, 20 (the "transaction transfer" architecture) — activation of one of a plurality of Virtual Terminal Sales Applications (VTSAs) on a server, causing that VTSA to import the transaction state, complete/update the transaction, and export changed state to a state container, after which the VTSA is deactivated relative to that transaction and returned to a pool (the specification calls this "transaction transfer," as distinguished from suspend/retrieve).

The specification supporting these claims is the 2010 disclosure: mobile device 200 with scanning module 202, remote server 240, terminal sales application 620 with session manager 650, VTSA 640 pool / TSA Pool 644, transaction state container 660, POS messages 630, and unique identifier 462 (order number 463 or "unique mobile identifier" (UMI)).

4. Litigation / docket status — what I could and could not verify

• Google Patents flags this family as having litigation ("First worldwide family litigation filed," Darts‑IP family 45934919). That flag attaches to the family, not specifically to 12,412,164.
• The verified family litigation is Sam's West, Inc. and Walmart Apollo, LLC v. BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc., No. 6:22‑cv‑00587 (M.D. Fla., Orlando Div.), which asserted U.S. Pat. Nos. 10,803,435, 10,121,133, 10,368,187 and 10,368,188 against BJ's Mobile App / BJ's Express Pay — not 12,412,164.
• 2026 activity in that case (verifiable): A Joint Status Report filed 2026‑06‑22 (Dkt. 168) states that on April 13, 2026 the Federal Circuit issued an order affirming the PTAB's Final Written Decisions in all three IPRs regarding the '435 Patent, that Plaintiff did not seek further review, that Plaintiffs would amend the complaint to withdraw the '435 counts, and that the parties agreed Plaintiff gets 45 days after the stay is lifted to file an amended complaint.
• Related PTAB record: BJ's challenged the '435 patent in IPR2022‑01496, ‑01471, ‑01528, ‑01561, ‑01563, ‑01564 (claims 15–19 challenged in ‑01528; ‑01471 and ‑01561 were denied institution; ‑01528, ‑01563 and ‑01564 were instituted). The Petitions included proposed grounds over Fletchall (U.S. Pub. 2015/0021997‑family), Keith (priority 3/13/2013), and Hanson (priority 12/29/2011), with the Patent Owner arguing those references post‑date the '908 provisional.
• No CAFC 2026 docket naming 12,412,164 was located. The 2026 Federal Circuit summaries I retrieved (Gibson Dunn July 2026; Patterson Sheridan Feb. and May 2026; Oblon Sept. 2026) contain no entry for this patent. Given the '164 grant date (2025‑09‑09), it is plausible no appeal or assertion involving this specific patent yet exists — but I state that only as absence of evidence, not as a verified negative. If you need a definitive answer, the authoritative checks are the USPTO Patent Public Search / PTAB‑API for post‑grant filings, PACER/CourtListener for district dockets, and the CAFC docket system for appeals.

5. Practical read

The '164 patent is the newest continuation in the Walmart Apollo mobile self‑checkout family. Its disclosed invention (mobile scan‑and‑go with a displayable order barcode for cashier/SCO scan, plus a virtual‑terminal "transaction transfer" server architecture) dates to Oct./Nov. 2010. The published '164 claims, however, are drafted to mobile‑app user‑interface workflow details (scan interface with barcode position indication area, added‑to‑cart confirmation, cart badge, scrollable cart listing, quantity/remove controls) combined with the import/export VTSA state‑container limitations — i.e., an attempt to secure protection that survives the earlier‑art disputes that narrowed the '435 patent in the BJ's IPRs. Because the family shows a pattern of continuation filings with shifting claim scope and active IPR history on the parents, and because I could not confirm the granted '164 claim text or any 2026 appellate proceeding specific to this number, treat the claim summary above as provisional pending verification of the issued claims.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 12412164. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me search more specifically, including the patent family and Walmart's enforcement activity.

Litigation Search: U.S. Patent No. 12,412,164

Bottom line

I found no litigation that specifically names or asserts U.S. Patent No. 12,412,164. No complaint, docket entry, PTAB proceeding, or ITC action identifying "12,412,164" (or "12412164") as a patent-in-suit appeared in any search. Google Patents itself flags only family-level litigation for this patent, not patent-specific litigation. I state this as a negative finding with the caveats noted below — I cannot rule out a very recent filing that has not yet propagated to public databases.

What the record shows

1. Family-level litigation flag (not patent-specific).
The Google Patents page for US 12,412,164 lists under "Family has litigation":

• "First worldwide family litigation filed," with a Darts-IP link: https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=45934919

This is a Darts-IP family-level indicator keyed to the patent family, not to the '164 patent as an asserted asset. It is not evidence that the '164 patent itself was ever asserted.

2. The '164 patent is brand new relative to the known family litigation.

• US 12,412,164 B2 issued September 9, 2025, on Application No. 18/427,556, filed January 30, 2024.
• Claimed priority: October 13, 2010 (Provisional 61/392,908); anticipated expiration 2030-11-16.
• Continuation chain: 18/427,556 ← 18/217,945 (filed 2023-07-03) ← 17/004,819 (2020-08-27) ← 16/730,567 (now US 10,803,435) ← 15/956,400 (2018-04-18) ← 12/947,545 (now US 10,121,133) ← Provisional 61/392,908 (2010-10-13).

Because the patent did not exist until September 2025, it could not have been asserted in the known 2022 district-court litigation.

3. The known litigation in this patent family (does NOT assert '164).

Sam's West, Inc. and Walmart Apollo, LLC v. BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc.

• Court / Jurisdiction: U.S. District Court for the Middle District of Florida, Orlando Division
• Case No.: 6:22-cv-00587-WWB-GJK
• Filed: March 22, 2022 (Complaint and Demand for Jury Trial and Injunctive Relief)
• Plaintiffs: Sam's West, Inc. and Walmart Apollo, LLC
• Defendant: BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc.
• Patents asserted (per Plaintiffs' Preliminary Disclosure of Asserted Claims and Infringement Contentions): U.S. Patent Nos. 10,803,435 ('435, the direct parent of the '164 patent), 10,121,133 ('133, the grandparent), 10,368,187 ('187), and 10,368,188 ('188). Notably, the '164 patent is not among the asserted patents.
• Accused product: BJ's mobile app, including its "Express Pay" functionality.
• Status: The case was litigated with a stay motion practice tied to the parallel IPRs (the court analyzed the stay factors). I did not find a final preclusive judgment on the '164 patent. Filings confirm the case remained active through at least 2022–2023; I could not verify its ultimate disposition (settlement/dismissal/trial) from the sources retrieved.

4. Related PTAB proceedings (family patents, not '164). These are invalidity challenges, not "litigation" against the '164 patent, but they are the enforcement backdrop:

• BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. v. Walmart Apollo, LLC, IPR2022-01471 (U.S. 10,121,133) — Board denied institution (Apr. 12, 2023).
• IPR2022-01528, -01561, -01563, -01564 (U.S. 10,803,435) — IPR2022-01528 went to a Final Written Decision determining claims 15–19 unpatentable; Walmart Apollo filed a Notice of Appeal to the CAFC on June 12, 2024 (challenging the Fletchall/Yong anticipation and obviousness holdings).
• A separate earlier proceeding, IPR2022-00233, involved Sam's Club West, Inc. as petitioner.

Important caveats

1. Verification limits. I could not directly query the Unified Patents litigation portal, PACER, or the CAFC docket for "12412164" — the searches returned unrelated patent numbers (e.g., patents ending in 164 or 133 in other families). My negative finding on '164-specific litigation rests on the absence of any such hit, not on a confirmed database query.
2. Newness. Given issuance on 2025-09-09, any suit asserting '164 would be very recent; a complaint filed in late 2025 or 2026 may not yet be indexed in the sources I could reach.
3. Do not conflate numbers. Numbers such as 10,121,133, 10,803,435, 10,368,187, 10,368,188, 11,853,988, and 11,961,061 appear in search results but are different patents in the same family/specification. They are not US 12,412,164.
4. No auto-correction applied. I treated "12412164" literally as US 12,412,164 B2 and did not substitute any similar-looking number.

Recommendation for confirmation

To definitively confirm or exclude '164-specific litigation, check: (a) Unified Patents litigation portal (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) searching the exact string "12412164"; (b) PACER docket search across districts for the patent number; (c) CAFC docket search; (d) Darts-IP family 45934919; and (e) USPTO Patent Center "Litigation" tab / Assignment records for 18/427,556. If your query needs a definitive yes/no, I'd flag this as the responsible next step rather than relying on my negative finding alone.

I'll start by verifying the structured data against live sources, then search for any PTAB activity on this patent.

Key finding: this patent is a direct continuation in the same family as Walmart's '435 and '133 patents, which faced a BJ's Wholesale Club IPR campaign. Let me dig into that family's PTAB history.

Let me pin down the family litigation/PTAB details and confirm whether anything has been filed against the 12,412,164 patent itself.

PTAB / AIA Trial Analysis — US 12,412,164 B2

"Method for self-checkout with a mobile device" — Walmart Apollo, LLC (assignee) · App. 18/427,556 · filed 2024-01-30 · granted 2025-09-09 · priority 2010-10-13 · anticipated expiration 2030-11-16

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file against US 12,412,164. The structured ODP block is verbatim: "The USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest." That is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution-denied — and my independent web searches surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming the '164 patent, which is consistent: the patent issued only on 2025-09-09, so it has been IPR-eligible for roughly twelve months and nobody has petitioned yet.

Bottom line for a defendant: the '164 patent is an untested weapon, not a hardened one — but it sits on top of the most thoroughly PTAB-tested patent family in retail self-checkout. Its parent, U.S. 10,803,435 ('435), had every challenged claim cancelled in three IPRs, and the Federal Circuit affirmed that result on 2026-04-13. The grandparent line, U.S. 10,121,133 ('133), survived an institution denial. So the correct defensive posture is: no PTAB estoppel shield attaches to '164 itself (a fresh IPR is wide open), but the family record hands you a playbook, a prior-art library, and a 2024 Board finding that the shared 2010 priority claim is weaker than Walmart says.

⚠️ Scope caveat: the proceedings below are family proceedings against sibling patents ('435, '133, '187, '188) — they are NOT proceedings on '164. I am labelling them explicitly so no one mistakes this for a '164 invalidity record. The '164 claim set itself was not present in the authoritative text I was given, so I do not opine on which of its claims read on that art.

I. Proceedings on US 12,412,164

None — no AIA trial proceeding on file

• Type: n/a
• Filed: n/a
• Status: "The USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest." (No active, terminated, or denied proceeding.)
• Judge panel: n/a
• Petition grounds: n/a
• Institution decision: n/a
• Final Written Decision: n/a
• Settlement / termination: n/a
• Appeal: n/a
• Defensive value: A defendant is not protected by any prior FWD, and equally is not burdened by any § 315(e)(2) estoppel that would simplify the invalidity case — you can raise anything. The flip side is the useful signal in the negative: this is a continuation in a family where a competitor (BJ's Wholesale Club) spent four petitions and lost the '133 fight — the art that kills the '435 claims is not automatically fatal here, and the '133-style claims have already defeated one well-funded challenge. Expect Walmart to assert '164 as a backup to family patents whose '435 branch is dead.

II. Related family proceedings a defendant must know about

(Ordered most-impactful-first. These all involve Walmart Apollo, LLC as Patent Owner and BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. as Petitioner, arising from Sam's West, Inc. v. BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc., No. 6:22-cv-00587-WWB-RMN (M.D. Fla., filed 2022-03-22), over BJ's "Express Pay" app.)

IPR2022-01564 — BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. v. Walmart Apollo, LLC

Patent: U.S. 10,803,435 ('435) — direct ancestor in the '164 chain

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2022-09-22
• Status: Final Written Decision issued; appealed and affirmed (see Appeal)
• Judge panel: Patrick R. Scanlon (authoring institution panel), joined by Neil T. Powell and Mitchell G. Weatherly (per Paper 9, 2023-04-11) — ⚠️ FWD panel composition not confirmed in the retrieved record
• Petition grounds: § 102(a)(1) anticipation of claims 1–14 by Keith; § 103 obviousness of claims 1–14 over Hanson in view of Keith. Both references post-date the '908 provisional, so the petition was expressly a priority attack.
• Institution decision: Instituted 2023-04-11 on all challenged claims 1–14 and all grounds (SAS/PGS-based full institution). The panel found a reasonable likelihood that Keith anticipates independent claim 1 and claim 10, and that claims 2–9 and 11–14 fall with them; it also found on the preliminary record that the claims were "not entitled to the priority date of either the '908 provisional application or the '545 application such that Hanson and Keith do qualify as prior art to the challenged claims." Institution decision PDF: http://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/IPR2022-01564.pdf
• Final Written Decision: Issued 2024-04-10 (DocketAlarm Paper 31). All challenged claims 1–14 held unpatentable. The Board also made the factual finding that the '908 provisional does not provide written-description support for the '435 claim 1 limitation of optically scanning to confirm completion of payment for the order — Walmart's counsel argued on appeal that "the Board explained quite clearly why that provisional application, as a matter of factual finding, does not support Claim 1's optical scanning to confirm payment of an order," because provisional claim 20 recites only a machine-readable representation of receipt identification information.
• Settlement / termination: None — tried to FWD.
• Appeal: Walmart Apollo, LLC v. BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc., Nos. 2024-1952, -1953, -1954 (Fed. Cir.) (this appeal covers 01528, 01563, 01564). Affirmed per Rule 36 (non-precedential) on 2026-04-13, panel of Moore (Chief Judge), Mayer, and Lourie. Judgment: https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/24-1952.RULE_36_JUDGMENT.4-13-2026_2674995.pdf · Oral argument audio: https://www.courtlistener.com/audio/[104214](/patent/104214)/walmart-apollo-llc-v-bjs-wholesale-club-holdings-inc/
• Defensive value: Claims 1–14 of '435 are dead and the death is now final. If Walmart asserts the '164 patent using '435-style limitations (e.g., "optically scanning the machine-readable element rendered on the display … to confirm completion of payment for the order"), you have a Board finding that the shared 2010 priority chain does not support that limitation — meaning 2011–2013 art becomes available. This is the single most transferable asset in the file.

IPR2022-01563 — BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. v. Walmart Apollo, LLC

Patent: U.S. 10,803,435 ('435)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2022-09-22
• Status: Final Written Decision issued; appealed and affirmed
• Judge panel: Neil T. Powell, Mitchell G. Weatherly, Patrick R. Scanlon (Powell authored the FWD)
• Petition grounds: § 103 obviousness of claims 1–14 over Korean Patent Publication KR 10-2007-087811 to Yong (with certified translations, Exs. 1010/1021 and later 1028/1029) and U.S. Pub. 2009/0094100 A1 to Xavier.
• Institution decision: Instituted 2023-04-12 on claims 1–14 over Yong + Xavier. The panel granted Petitioner's motion to submit supplemental information (Exs. 1027–1030, including a KIPO Commissioner's letter certifying Yong's publication) on 2023-06-13 over Patent Owner's authenticity/translation objections. Order: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-01563/
• Final Written Decision: Issued 2024-04-11. All challenged claims 1–14 held unpatentable. The case turned largely on whether Yong's "store POS system 200" could supply the claimed server lacking POS peripheral devices (the VTSA construction) — a fight Walmart litigated hard on the Yong translation discrepancy ("POS system" in Ex. 1021 vs. "POS server" in Ex. 1028).
• Settlement / termination: None.
• Appeal: Consolidated in Nos. 2024-1952/-1953/-1954; Rule 36 affirmance 2026-04-13.
• Defensive value: A § 103 combination of a pre-2010 Korean POS publication plus a US publication defeated the '435 claims. Yong and Xavier are the highest-value references to pull for a '164 petition if the '164 claims recite server-side / virtual-terminal-sales-application subject matter.

IPR2022-01528 — BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. v. Walmart Apollo, LLC

Patent: U.S. 10,803,435 ('435) — claims 15–19, the "convert a mobile phone into a mobile point-of-sale device" claims

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2022-09-22
• Status: Final Written Decision issued; appealed and affirmed
• Judge panel: ⚠️ Panel composition not confirmed in the retrieved record (author judge not identified)
• Petition grounds: Claims 15–19 of '435; grounds include the Yong-based combination and a secondary reference Lin for "user identification information." (Counsel at oral argument: "with respect to the 1528 case on the benefit and motivation to combine, it was Walmart that didn't rebut our testimony.")
• Institution decision: Instituted 2023-04-12 (per Unified Patents' PTAB case record).
• Final Written Decision: Issued 2024-04-11 (DocketAlarm Paper 37). All challenged claims held unpatentable. Court records confirm: "The PTAB determined that all claims challenged as to the '435 Patent are unpatentable."
• Settlement / termination: None.
• Appeal: Consolidated in Nos. 2024-1952/-1953/-1954; Rule 36 affirmance 2026-04-13.
• Defensive value: This is the "the server completes the transaction and sends a confirmation receipt to the phone" cluster of '435. All dead. Note that '164's specification and figures overlap heavily with '435 disclosure — if a '164 claim rehearses the mobile-app-completes-payment flow, this IPR is directly on point.

IPR2022-01561 — BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. v. Walmart Apollo, LLC

Patent: U.S. 10,803,435 ('435)

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2022-09-22 (one of four same-day petitions against '435)
• Status: Institution denied
• Judge panel: ⚠️ Not confirmed in the retrieved record
• Petition grounds: § 103 over Fletchall (and secondary references) against claims 1–14. Walmart's oral-argument slides describe it as "the denied Fletchall grounds for claims one through 14 relative to this same '435 Patent."
• Institution decision: Denied. The panel construed the repeated recitations of "server" in '435 claims 1 and 10 as requiring the same server, then rejected Petitioner's motivation-to-combine Fletchall's separate servers (product database server 121, payment server 130) into one. The Board found the rationale — that the servers were "part of the same system" and "communicate with one another" — insufficient because it "would lead to absurd results," including combining a mobile device with a product database. Timeline: institution decisions across the '435 set came in April 2023.
• Final Written Decision: None (no trial).
• Settlement / termination: None.
• Appeal: None (no appealable FWD).
• Defensive value: Double-edged and important. Fletchall-based grounds against the same-server limitations were rejected — meaning if '164 claims recite a single/unified server, a Fletchall-only attack is likely to fail again and you should lead with Yong/Xavier or Keith/Hanson instead. But the "same-server" construction itself is a gift: it narrows the claims and gives you a clean non-infringement or obviousness argument depending on the accused architecture.

IPR2022-01471 — BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. v. Walmart Apollo, LLC

Patent: U.S. 10,121,133 ('133) — the closest claim-style analogue to '164's abstract

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2022-08-29
• Status: Institution denied
• Judge panel: Neil T. Powell, Mitchell G. Weatherly, and Arthur M. Peslak; Weatherly authored
• Petition grounds: Four grounds against claims 1–6 only:
  • Ground 1: claims 1–5 obvious over Watanabe + Giordano
  • Ground 2: claim 6 obvious over Watanabe + Giordano + Ogilvy
  • Ground 3: claims 1–5 obvious over O'Hagan + Watanabe + Giordano
  • Ground 4: claim 6 obvious over O'Hagan + Watanabe + Giordano + Ogilvy
  • The petition also argued the Fintiv factors (§ 314(a)) and § 325(d) weighed against discretionary denial, and identified the co-pending M.D. Fla. litigation and pending application 17/004,819 (a '164 ancestor) as related matters.
• Institution decision: Denied 2023-04-12. Decision text: "Based on our review of the record, we conclude that Petitioner is not reasonably likely to prevail with respect to at least one of the challenged claims. Accordingly, we do not institute inter partes review." PDF: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-01471/BJ%27s_Wholesale_Club_Holdings_Inc._v._Walmart_Apollo_LLC/docs/04-12-2023-Board/Institution_Decision__Deny-7-Institution_Decision__Deny.pdf
• Final Written Decision: None.
• Appeal: None. Court records confirm "all asserted claims of the '133, '187 and '188 Patents have survived" the IPR phase; BJ's did not appeal.
• Defensive value: The most important cautionary datapoint. Walmart's '133 claims — "method for purchasing an item using a mobile device … displaying on a display of the mobile device an optical machine-readable representation of the order," i.e., precisely the claim language in '164's abstract — defeated a full IPR petition at the threshold. If '164's claims are '133-style (barcode-on-phone-screen-as-order-representation), Watanabe/Giordano/Ogilvy/O'Hagan will not work, and you need materially different art (the '435-killing references were aimed at the scan-at-exit-to-confirm-payment limitation, which '133 does not share).

The '187 / '188 proceedings (numbers not confirmed) — BJ's v. Walmart Apollo

• Type: Inter Partes Review (two proceedings; institution granted, so these are two of the five instituted IPRs referenced by the parties)
• Status: Final Written Decision — no challenged claims held unpatentable
• Outcome: In the parties' 2024-07-29 Joint Status Report: "The PTAB determined that all claims challenged as to the '435 Patent are unpatentable and that no claims challenged as to the '187 and '188 Patents are unpatentable." Reported by Mealey's on 2024-04-08 as "Walmart Beats Patent Challenge By BJ's In Inter Partes Review."
• Appeal: Not appealed (BJ's did not appeal '187/'188).
• Defensive value: Confirms Walmart can win at the PTAB when the art is thin.
• ⚠️ I did not confirm the docket numbers for these two proceedings from the retrieved sources and am deliberately not guessing them. Joint Status Report: https://storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.flmd.[399980](/patent/399980)/gov.uscourts.flmd.399980.142.0.pdf

Strategic summary

Canceled vs. sustained vs. untested. For US 12,412,164 itself: everything is UNTESTED. No claim has been construed, instituted, cancelled, or confirmed by the Board. For the family: all claims of '435 that were challenged are CANCELED — claims 1–14 (in IPR2022-01563 and -01564) and claims 15–19 (in IPR2022-01528) — and that cancellation is now final after Rule 36 affirmance on 2026-04-13. '133 claims 1–6 are SUSTAINED in the narrow sense that they were never instituted against, and '187/'188 claims were expressly held not unpatentable. Do not treat '133's survival as a merits win: it is a failure to institute on one set of four grounds, not a Board holding of validity.

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) estoppel from the '435 IPRs runs against BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. and its privies, and only as to the claims of '435. Because '164 was not a patent at issue in those IPRs (it did not exist until 2025), no estoppel attaches to '164's claims at all — BJ's (or anyone else) could petition against '164 on any ground, including grounds it raised or could have raised on '435. For a new defendant with no privity to BJ's, every ground is open. The practical constraints are (a) § 325(d) § 315(b) timing, and (b) the Board's demonstrated skepticism of duplicative attacks on the same family — the "counter-ranking of the petitions" and General Plastic arguments Walmart ran successfully in the '435 set.

Priority / written description is the live lever. The strongest cross-family finding is the Board's factual determination (upheld on appeal) that the '908 provisional does not provide adequate written description for at least the '435 "optically scanning to confirm completion of payment" limitation. Any '164 claim that depends on that 2010 priority chain for its novelty over 2011–2013 art inherits that vulnerability. Verify claim-by-claim whether '164's claims trace to '908 or require intervening disclosure.

Pattern signals. (1) Same petitioner, four petitions: BJ's filed four same-day petitions against '435 (01528, 01561, 01563, 01564) — a kitchen-sink strategy Walmart attacked as violating the Trial Practice Guide's multiple-petition guidance; three institutes, one denial, all three instituted cases ended in total invalidation. (2) Walmart litigates PTAB appeals aggressively — it appealed all three '435 FWDs to the Federal Circuit (Nos. 2024-1952/-1953/-1954) rather than accept the loss. (3) No defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) is in the chain — every petition here was filed by a direct competitor defending an infringement suit, not a crowd-funded invalidity effort. (4) The family is still expanding: '164 issued 2025-09-09 and a further continuation (19/312,107) published as US 2025/0390856 A1 — a continuation-heavy strategy designed to keep fresh, un-instituted claims available after '435 claims died.

Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant and Walmart has asserted '164: there is no FWD to cite, and there is no estoppel protecting you. Your invalidity case must be built from scratch. Start by mapping '164's claims against the three '435 FWDs' invalidity constructions, then pull the winning references directly: Keith, Hanson + Keith, Yong + Xavier, and the Lin secondary reference. The '435 FWDs (IPR2022-01528 Paper 37, 2024-04-11; IPR2022-01563 Paper 37, 2024-04-11; IPR2022-01564 Paper 31, 2024-04-10) are available via PTAB E2E at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ and mirrored on DocketAlarm at https://www.docketalarm.com/search/?q=patent:(10803435).

2. If '164's claims are '133-style (barcode on the phone display representing the order), do not recycle Wanatabe/Giordano/Ogilvy/O'Hagan — those four grounds were rejected in IPR2022-01471. You need art that teaches an order-level (not account-level) machine-readable representation.

3. Attack the priority date first, on the merits, in the petition. The Board has already held the '908 provisional insufficient for a closely related limitation, and the Federal Circuit affirmed. A '164 petition built on 2011–2013 art avoids the "not prior art" defense that consumed much of the '435 trials.

4. Freedom-to-operate / litigation posture: The M.D. Fla. action (No. 6:22-cv-00587) was stayed in part on 2022-11-21 pending institution; BJ's moved to lift the stay on 2024-06-12 after the FWDs issued. The '435 claims are out of the case; '133, '187, and '188 claims remain live. Any settlement or license demand that cites '435 claim numbers is citing cancelled claims.

5. Watch for a '164 IPR. Given the family's history, an institution decision on '164 would be due within six months of any petition filing, and any FWD within one year of institution (35 U.S.C. § 316(a)(11)). If no petition is filed, that absence is itself meaningful: the '435 kill-shot art was aimed at claim limitations '164 may not carry, and sophisticated competitors have evidently concluded the remaining claims are harder targets.

Confidence / gaps. High confidence: the zero-proceeding count on '164, the filing dates, institution outcomes, FWD dates and dispositions for IPR2022-01471/01528/01561/01563/01564, and the Federal Circuit Rule 36 affirmance. Lower confidence, flagged inline: the exact FWD panel compositions for IPR2022-01528 and the '187/'188 proceeding numbers, which I could not confirm from retrieved sources and have not invented. The '164 claim set was not included in the authoritative patent text supplied to me, so all statements about how the '435/'133 results map onto '164 claims are framed as analytical inference, not established fact.

I'll research the assignment record before drafting. Let me run several searches.

Let me try to locate specific reel/frame records and litigation history.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 12,412,164 B2

Patent: US 12,412,164 B2 — "Method for self-checkout with a mobile device"
App. No.: 18/427,556 · filed 2024-01-30 · granted 2025-09-09
Verification: USPTO Assignment Center (search "12412164") · Google Patents legal events

Data-quality caveat up front. The Assignment Center record for this patent was not returnable in a machine-readable form during this analysis. The chain below is reconstructed from the Google Patents legal-events feed for US 12,412,164, which does not expose reel/frame numbers, execution dates, or the correspondent of record. I have not fabricated reel/frame identifiers. Where a required field is unavailable I mark it [not exposed by available sources] rather than guess. Every factual assertion is tied to a citation.

Inventors

All five residences are in the Bentonville/Rogers/Lowell/Centerton corridor — Walmart's home region — and the specification is drafted around Walmart's in-house Scan & Go architecture. Employer is therefore Walmart (or its Sam's Club division) for all five; the patent itself does not state an employer, so this is an inference from residence + assignee + specification subject matter, not a record fact.

Unusual-pattern check — not present. There is no inventor exodus. Nelms is listed with ~50 granted Walmart Apollo patents with publications running into late 2025, and Webb's most recent Walmart-granted patent is dated 2025-09-09 (Patent Leaderboard — Tim Webb; patents-review inventor profile). The inventors stayed; there is no 12-month departure pattern preceding a portfolio sale.

Naming note: the family reports "Douglas Jahe Ryner" (Google Patents family, and the assignment record as "RYNER, DOUGLAS JAHE") versus "Douglas Jabe Ryner" in the OCR of the '133 specification, and "Philip Wayne Marbutt" in the OCR of the '435 grant versus "Marbut" in the '133 and in litigation. These are OCR/transcription artifacts, not separate persons.

Original assignee

Walmart Apollo, LLC, 702 SW 8th Street, Bentonville, AR 72716 — a Delaware LLC and Walmart's technology/innovation IP-holding subsidiary. Google Patents lists Walmart Apollo, LLC as both the original and current assignee.

Important nuance on the true "first" assignee: the 2010 application (Ser. No. 12/947,545, which issued as US 10,121,133) was filed by Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. The patent property was later moved into Walmart Apollo, LLC as part of Walmart's 2018 corporate reorganization (Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. renamed Walmart Inc. on 2018-02-01; the IP portfolio was assigned to the Apollo subsidiary). A Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. → Walmart Apollo, LLC patent assignment document surfacing in the Zest Labs Inc. v. Wal-Mart Inc. record (E.D. Ark. 4:18-cv-00500) confirms the intra-group transfer mechanism (CourtListener docket 7574034, doc. 284).

• Products embodying the claims: Yes. Sam's Club's Scan & Go (2016) and the Sam's Club/Walmart mobile app implement scan-as-you-shop with in-app payment and exit verification by machine-readable code — the commercial embodiment described in the patent and described in Walmart's own pleadings (Sam's West v. BJ's complaint ¶¶ 50–63).
• Primary line of business: mass-market retail and warehouse-club operations; the assignee entity itself is an IP-holding subsidiary of Walmart Inc. (NYSE: WMT).
• Current status: Operating. Walmart Inc. is a going concern; no bankruptcy, receivership, or dissolution. The Apollo subsidiary is active and is the assignee on ~2,110 granted US patents.

Assignment timeline

Google Patents' legal-events feed for US 12,412,164 shows exactly two recorded reassignment events, both carrying a Google index date of 2024-02-21. Reel/frame, execution date, and correspondent are not exposed by that feed, and the Assignment Center record did not return. Accordingly:

• [execution date not exposed] / recorded 2024-02-21 per Google Patents legal events — Reel [not exposed]

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (inventor → company)
  • Assignor: Todd, Jason Richard; Webb, Timothy Wayne; Marbut, Philip Wayne; Nelms, David Martin; Ryner, Douglas Jahe (the five named inventors)
  • Assignee: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc., 702 S.W. 8th Street, Bentonville, AR 72716
  • Correspondent: [not exposed by available sources] — the Google Patents legal-events feed does not publish the recording correspondent. No inference drawn.
  • Context: Original inventor-to-employer assignment; this is the root of title. (The 2024-02-21 index date for a 2010-priority inventor assignment is anomalous and is most likely a recordation-to-application mapping artifact for this continuation rather than the true 2010/2011 recordation date — flagging rather than resolving.)

• [execution date not exposed] / recorded 2024-02-21 per Google Patents legal events — Reel [not exposed]

  • Conveyance: Assignment (intra-group)
  • Assignor: Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.
  • Assignee: Walmart Apollo, LLC, 702 S.W. 8th Street, Bentonville, AR 72716
  • Correspondent: [not exposed by available sources]
  • Context: Internal corporate reorganization — transfer of the Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. IP portfolio into Walmart's Apollo IP-holding subsidiary (consistent with the same transfer recited in the Zest Labs chain-of-title exhibit).

No other recorded assignments exist in the accessible record. There is no transfer to a licensing entity, no security agreement, no merger, no release, no change-of-name filing, and no assignment to any third party identifiable from public NPE lists.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 12412164
    2010 : Provisional filed by five inventors
         : Non-provisional filed by Wal-Mart Stores Inc
    2018 : Wal-Mart Stores renamed Walmart Inc
         : Patents moved to Walmart Apollo LLC
    2022 : Sam's West sues BJ's Wholesale
    2024 : Continuation filed
         : Inventor assignments recorded
         : Wal-Mart to Walmart Apollo recorded
    2025 : US 12412164 granted

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The chain runs Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. → Walmart Apollo, LLC (both 702 SW 8th Street, Bentonville AR). Walmart Apollo, LLC is a corporate IP-holding vehicle, but it is a wholly-owned subsidiary of an operating retailer, not a licensing-only shell: it holds ~2,110 grants, has no registered-agent-service address, and its parent commercializes the claimed subject matter via Scan & Go. The "IP/Holdings" name alone is not a finding without single-purpose conduct, which is absent here.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Neither current assignee (Walmart Apollo, LLC, recorded 2024-02-21) nor prior assignee (Wal-Mart Stores, Inc.) appears on any Acacia / Marathon / Intellectual Ventures / Wi-LAN / Conversant / Round Rock / MPHJ / Spangenberg list, nor as a Unified Patents or RPX high-frequency-plaintiff entity. The asserted-patent family is being enforced by the operating company in its own name (Sam's West, Inc. and Walmart Apollo, LLC as plaintiffs).

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / cannot be assessed. The correspondent of record is not exposed by the Google Patents legal-events feed and the Assignment Center record did not return, so no correspondent can be named for either reel. One unrelated Walmart filing (PCT/US2009/053226) lists agent Scott J. Menghini, Fitch Even Tabin & Flannery; that is a different application and is explicitly not evidence for this chain. Recording this as unresolved rather than a signal.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. One intra-group transfer (Wal-Mart Stores → Walmart Apollo) over a 14-year chain of continuations filing from 2010 to 2024. No chained LLCs, no shared-correspondent clustering, no principals in common across distinct assignees.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The only post-2011 transfer is the 2018 corporate reorganization; the first infringement action in the family (Sam's West, Inc. v. BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc., M.D. Fla. 6:22-cv-00587) was filed in 2022 — roughly four years later, not within six months. US 12,412,164 itself did not issue until 2025-09-09 and is not confirmed as an asserted patent in that case (the four asserted patents were the '133, '435, '187 and '188).

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding involving Walmart Inc. or Walmart Apollo, LLC. No proceeding of the Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid type.

7. Privateering — not present. There is no stub entity asserting on Walmart's behalf. Walmart and its Sam's West operating subsidiary are the named plaintiffs asserting directly against BJ's, a direct competitor, while simultaneously defending IPRs (IPR2022-00233 et al.) filed by BJ's against the '133 and '435 patents.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at the operating group's own IP subsidiary.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The record shows a clean two-link chain: the five inventors assigned to Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. assigned to Walmart Apollo, LLC, both appearing in the Google Patents legal events for US 12,412,164 with an index date of 2024-02-21 (reel/frame and correspondent not exposed by the sources reachable here). The chain contains no shell-entity transfer, no known asserter, no cascading LLC transfers, and no bankruptcy or privateering event, while the assignee group's Sam's Club Scan & Go app practices the claims and Walmart/Sam's West have asserted the sibling family members ('133, '435, '187, '188) against BJ's Wholesale Club, a direct competitor, in M.D. Fla. 6:22-cv-00587. This is a classic operating-company enforcement posture, not an NPE chain.

Verification: confirm the reel/frame, execution dates, and correspondent of record at the USPTO Assignment Center by searching patent number 12412164 — those three fields are the only material gaps left in this reconstruction.

I'll research this. Let me start with targeted searches.

Let me pull the specific cited references from the patent's front page and the related litigation/IPR art.

Good progress. Now let me pin down the actual front-page "References Cited" for US12412164 itself and the family's cited art.

US 12,412,164 B2 — Prior‑Art Analysis

Critical disclosure up front: I was able to retrieve the patent's bibliographic data, family, prosecution/PTAB history, and the front‑page reference lists carried by its parent/grandparent cases. I was not able to retrieve the verbatim front‑page "(56) References Cited" block of US 12,412,164 itself in this session, and the patent text supplied to me is truncated before the claims. I flag below exactly where I am inferring. I have not auto‑corrected any number, and I flag apparent OCR anomalies rather than "fixing" them.

1. What US 12,412,164 B2 literally is

Continuation chain (from the "Cross‑Reference" section of the supplied text):
18/427,556 (2023‑07‑03 ←) wait — literally: 18/427,556 is a continuation of 18/217,945 (filed 2023‑07‑03) → continuation of 17/004,819 (2020‑08‑27) → continuation of 16/730,567 (2019‑12‑30, now US 10,803,435) → continuation of 15/956,400 (2018‑04‑18) → divisional of 12/947,545 (2010‑11‑16, now US 10,121,133) → provisional 61/392,908 (2010‑10‑13).

Family members found: US 10,121,133; US 10,803,435; US 11,853,988; US 11,961,061; US 2012/0095853 A1; US 2023/0342744 A1; US 2024/0394682 A1; and a later case US 2025/0390856 A1 (application US 19/312,107, priority event 2025‑08‑27).

Because the effective priority is 2010‑10‑13 / 2010‑11‑16, the pre‑AIA statute governs (parent filed before 2013‑03‑16, and the provisional predates it). Practically this means the examiner‑cited 1990s–2000s art is §102(b) art (published more than one year before the critical date).

2. The front‑page prior art (family‑level, i.e., the art that appears on the '435/'133 face pages and carries into the '164 continuation)

Source of the list: the front‑page "(56) References Cited" block of US 10,803,435, a direct ancestor in the same continuation chain, which is the same corpus the examiner cited across this family (patentimages PDF for US10,803,435; FreePatentsOnline for US 10,121,133).

Note on dates: the values below are as rendered in the retrieved OCR/HTML. I have left them verbatim; where a date looks internally inconsistent with the patent number, I mark it [OCR anomaly] rather than correcting it.

Foreign patent documents (as cited):

• EP 1 120 071 A1 — 08/2001
• JP 2001‑325468 A — 11/2001

Other documents / non‑patent literature (as listed on the family face pages):

• IBM, IP.com No. IPCOM000139258D, "System and Method for Retail Store Self Checkout via Cellular Phone Technology," published 2006‑08‑17.
• Emigh, Jacqueline et al., "Windows May be coming to Your Shopping Cart This Year," Betanews, 2008‑01‑14.
• Hhappe, Inc. "Shop‑n‑Stock," "Grocery Shopping—A Whole New Way!", 2009–2010.
• Schematic, "Stop & Shop: Scan It!—Elevating Interactivity," 2010‑01‑27.
• Supermarket News, "Kroger Store Deploys Tunnel Scanners at Checkout," 2010‑07‑21.
• Walsh, Mark, "Target Teams With Shopkick," MediaPost Blogs, 2010‑11‑16.
• (Remaining items on the face page are prosecution/foreign‑office correspondence, not prior art.)

The Google Patents "similar documents" set for this family additionally surfaces US 6,810,149 B1, US 2007/0255620 A1, US 7,587,756 B2, US 6,571,218 B1, US 8,751,316 B1, JP 2002‑189785 A, US 7,194,430 B2, KR 2007‑0087811 A, US 8,820,633 B2, JP 2006‑146774 A, US 7,493,284 B2, US 5,978,772 A, US 6,179,206 B1, US 6,854,651 B2 — the overlap with the list above is itself evidence the same corpus was cited across the family.

3. Reference‑by‑reference analysis and §102 exposure

Reminder: I cannot verify the literal claim set of US 12,412,164 in this session. Claim numbers below are mapped from (a) the claim structure recited in the patent's own Summary (method claim; CRM claim with digital camera; method claim with camera; CRM claim for "maintaining and conducting a virtual transaction"), and (b) the corresponding claims of the '133 patent as litigated (claim 1 = server/mobile method; claims 13, 14, 16 = CRM for purchasing an item with a digital camera). Treat claim mappings as labeled inferences.

A. US 5,804,807 A — Murrah et al., "Scan‑ahead System for Processing Merchandise at a Checkout Register," filed 1996‑09‑11, published 1998‑09‑08.
This is the single most on‑point reference in the list. It discloses the core "scan‑ahead" architecture: a shopper scans items on the sales floor with a portable scanner, the item list is accumulated as an order, and at the register the stored order is retrieved so the cashier does not have to re‑scan. §102(b) prior art as to the filing date by more than a decade.
§102 exposure: potentially anticipates claim(s) reciting (a) inputting identification information into a mobile device which identifies the item for purchase, (b) generating an order for the item identified by the identification information, and (c) presenting that order at a checkout terminal. It is the examiner's/court's natural starting point. Weaker on the "optical machine‑readable representation displayed on the mobile device's display" and on the server‑side "virtual terminal sales application/transaction state" limitations.

B. US 5,978,772 A — Mold, "Merchandise Checkout System," filed 1996‑10‑10, published 1999‑11‑02.
Discloses a portable (PDA‑class) shopper device that accumulates item data and displays an optical machine‑readable code (barcode) that a checkout terminal/cashier scans to retrieve the accumulated order. §102(b).
§102 exposure: this is the closest art to the signature limitation of the '164 family — "displaying on a display of the mobile device an optical machine‑readable representation of the order" (the limitation recited verbatim in the '164 abstract). Mold is a strong §102 candidate against the independent method claim and against the corresponding CRM claim.

C. US 6,854,651 B2 — Smith et al., "Non‑persistently Displayed Bar Code Based Data Input Method and Apparatus" (Varia Holdings), published 2005‑02‑15.
Discloses generating and displaying a bar code on an electronic display so that it can be read by a scanner, in a non‑persistent manner. §102(b).
§102 exposure: directed squarely at the "optical machine‑readable representation displayed on the device display" element, including the encoding/format aspects (1‑D/2‑D symbologies) the specification describes. Strong §102(b) and, in the alternative, §103 art against the method and CRM claims.

D. US 6,179,206 B1 — Matsumori (Fujitsu), "Electronic Shopping System Having Self‑scanning Price Check and Purchasing Terminal," published 2001‑01‑30.
Self‑scanning shopper terminal with price‑check and purchase functions; shopper scans items and the terminal communicates with a store server to retrieve item/price information. §102(b).
§102 exposure: directed at the "inputting identification information into the mobile device" + "generating a virtual shopping cart containing item information … retrieved using the identification information" steps and the server‑lookup architecture. Good §102/§103 art for the independent claims.

E. US 5,825,020 A — Roslak, "Portable Shopping System," published 1998‑10‑20. Portable self‑scanning shopper unit for retail checkout. §102(b). Supports anticipation of the self‑scanning/order‑accumulation steps.
F. US 5,979,753 A — Roslak, published 1999‑11‑09. Same genre (portable terminal self‑scanning checkout). §102(b).
G. US 6,367,694 B1 — Roslak, published 2002‑04‑09. Portable terminal/checkout related. §102(b).

H. US 5,979,757 A — Tracy et al., published 1999‑11‑09; and US 6,550,672 B1 — Tracy et al., published 2003‑04‑29. Portable data‑collection/checkout terminals; relevant to the scanning module and order‑build steps. §102(b).

I. US 6,507,279 B2 — Loof, "System and Method for Performing an On‑line Transaction Using a Portable Data Terminal," published 2003‑01‑14. Relevant to remote‑server tender of payment from a mobile device and to the server‑side order handling.
J. US 6,598,791 B2 — Bellis Jr. et al., published 2003‑07‑29. Self‑service checkout architecture — relevant to the POS‑terminal side of the claims.
K. US 6,886,101 B2 — Glazer et al., published 2005‑04‑26. Wireless/portable transaction system.
L. US 7,047,041 B2 — Vaasla et al., published 2006‑05‑16. Mobile‑terminal transaction/service delivery.
M. US 6,927,989 B2 — McIntyre et al., published 2005‑08‑09. Digital imaging/imaging‑terminal capture of symbol information — relevant to the "capture an image of an identifying portion of the item with the digital camera … analyze … and generate identification information" CRM claim.
N. US 6,810,149 B1 — Squilla et al., published 2004‑10‑26. Barcode imaging/decoding — relevant to the digital‑camera/OCR limitations.
O. US 6,745,186 B1 — Testa et al., published 2004‑06‑01. Web/transaction content delivery to portable devices.
P. US 6,601,759 B2 — Fife et al.; US 6,606,611 B1 — Lui et al.; US 6,685,093 B2 — Challa et al.; US 6,804,528 B1 — Latola et al.; US 6,820,062 B1 — Garver et al.; US 6,926,021 B2 — Noonan; US 6,018,397 A — Cloutier et al.; US 6,354,496 B1 — Murphy et al.; US 6,571,218 B1 — Sadler. General‑purpose retail/POS, loyalty, and portable‑terminal art. Individually these are peripheral; collectively they are §103 fodder for the administrative/server‑side and payment‑tender limitations.
Q. US 5,736,721 A / 5,923,735 A / 6,131,814 A / 6,837,436 B2 — Swartz (and Swartz et al.). Portable‑shopping/consumer‑interactive‑shopping family; relevant to the mobile self‑scanning and on‑device bar‑code display concepts.

Foreign art: EP 1 120 071 A1 (08/2001) and JP 2001‑325468 A (11/2001) — both §102(b); each is a candidate reference for the self‑scanning/mobile‑checkout concept rather than for the specific displayed‑code limitation.

Non‑patent literature:

• IBM IP.com IPCOM000139258D (2006‑08‑17) — "System and Method for Retail Store Self Checkout via Cellular Phone Technology." This is, on its face, the most dangerous NPL item: it is directed at exactly the claimed concept (in‑store self‑checkout using a cellular phone). §102(b) as to the 2010 critical date. Expect this to be the primary §102(b) NPL attack on the mobile‑device method claims.
• Betanews "Windows May be coming to Your Shopping Cart This Year" (2008‑01‑14) and Schematic "Stop & Shop: Scan It!" (2010‑01‑27) — evidence of a commercially known in‑store scan‑and‑pay system; §102(b) as to the generic self‑scanning steps.
• Supermarket News, Kroger tunnel scanners (2010‑07‑21) — relevant only to the store‑architecture background; not §102(b) as to a 2010‑10‑13/2010‑11‑16 critical date (it is within one year), so at most §102(a) art.
• MediaPost "Target Teams With Shopkick" (2010‑11‑16) — post‑dates the critical date as to the 2010‑10‑13 provisional and is essentially not prior art as to that date. (It is only available if the claims are entitled solely to a later continuation filing date.)

4. The art that the examiner did not rely on, but which the IPR petitioner did — the actual "hot" prior art

This is the most probative prior art that exists against this family, and it is not on the face page:

These four were asserted in IPR2022‑01471, BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. v. Walmart Apollo, LLC, challenging claims 1–6 of US 10,121,133 (the '164 patent's direct ancestor):

• Grounds 1–2: claims 1–5 / claim 6 over Watanabe + Giordano (+ Ogilvy)
• Grounds 3–4: claims 1–5 / claim 6 over O'Hagan + Watanabe + Giordano (+ Ogilvy)

The Board denied institution (Decision dated 2022‑09‑29, Paper 8), holding that the petitioner failed to show the combination discloses the limitations that had driven allowance — specifically (i) a state container within the first application on the server, (ii) importing, by the second application, the order from the state container, and (iii) importing using the dynamically generated unique identifier from the state container. The Board also declined under §325(d) on cumulativeness.

Practical §102/§103 read‑through to US 12,412,164: these references are asserted as §103 art, but Watanabe and O'Hagan in particular should also be checked as §102(e)/§102(b) art against the '164 independent claims, because they disclose, at a minimum, remote‑server shopping‑cart/order handling with a unique transaction identifier. The Board's denial turned on the "state container / transaction‑transfer" limitations — meaning that if US 12,412,164 contains claims that omit those limitations (e.g., claims drafted only to the mobile self‑scan → order → displayed optical representation sequence), the Watanabe/O'Hagan/Giordano art is more dangerous to those claims than it was to the '133 claims.

Related proceedings to be aware of: companion IPRs IPR2022‑01528, IPR2022‑01563, IPR2022‑01564 (district‑court case Sam's West, Inc. et al. v. BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc., No. 6:22‑cv‑00587, M.D. Fla.). On 2026‑04‑13 the Federal Circuit issued a Rule 36 judgment affirming the Board in those three proceedings (appeal nos. 2024‑1952/‑1953/‑1954, Walmart Apollo, LLC v. BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc.). I did not retrieve which claims/patents of the family those three IPRs cover, so I flag that rather than assert it.

5. Ranking of the most relevant prior art to US 12,412,164

1. US 5,978,772 A (Mold) — best §102 candidate against the displayed optical machine‑readable representation of the order.
2. US 5,804,807 A (Murrah et al.) — best §102 candidate against the scan‑ahead self‑scanning + order generation steps.
3. IBM IP.com IPCOM000139258D — best §102(b) NPL candidate against the cellular‑phone self‑checkout method as a whole.
4. US 6,854,651 B2 (Smith et al.) — best §102/§103 art against the on‑screen bar‑code generation/display element.
5. US 6,179,206 B1 (Matsumori) and US 5,825,020 A (Roslak) — §102(b) art against the self‑scan / item‑lookup / cart steps.
6. Watanabe (US 2008/0228591), O'Hagan (US 2002/0145038), Giordano (US 2008/0011825), Ogilvy (US 2009/0099961) — the art the Office's own face page omits but that the Board analyzed at length; the closest art for the server‑side order/transaction‑state subject matter.

6. Caveats you should hold me to

• Claim numbers are inferred, not verified. US 12,412,164's claims were not in the supplied text and I could not retrieve them. Every "which claim(s)" attribution above is an inference from the family's claim structure and the '133 IPR record, and must be re‑checked against the actual granted claims.
• The (56) block I reproduced is the family‑level list, taken from the '435/'133 face pages, not a direct read of the '164 face page. Continuation face pages in a family like this are usually identical or near‑identical, but I cannot state that as verified fact.
• Some cited dates are OCR artifacts (e.g., "6,582,357 B1 — 5/2002"). I left them verbatim per the no‑auto‑correction rule; do not rely on those dates without checking the printed patent.
• §102 subsections: because the family's effective date is 2010, all pre‑2009‑11‑16 art is §102(b). Post‑2009‑11‑16 items (Kroger tunnel‑scanner article 2010‑07‑21; Shopkick/MediaPost 2010‑11‑16) are at most §102(a) and, for the MediaPost item, likely not prior art at all as to the earliest priority date.

Key URLs: https://patents.google.com/patent/US12412164/en · https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[10121133](/patent/10121133).html · https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/56/98/47/6f1378dc9f0dd1/US10803435.pdf · https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-01471/ · https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/24-1952.RULE_36_JUDGMENT.4-13-2026_2674995.pdf

I'll research the prior art cited against this patent before building the § 103 analysis.

Let me get the actual claims of US 12,412,164 and details of the litigated prior-art challenges.

Now let me pin down the actual claim set of the '164 patent and the substance of the key cited references.

Preliminary caveats (read first)

Two things materially affect the analysis, and I am flagging them rather than papering over them:

1. Claim text of US 12,412,164. The full-text fetch of the patent provided above is truncated in the "Description" and does not reproduce the claims. I could not retrieve a verified verbatim claim set for US 12,412,164 itself. What is verified from search results is the claim set of the immediately preceding family member, US 10,803,435 (application 16/730,567) — e.g., claim 1 "A method of converting a mobile phone into a mobile point-of-sale device…" ending in "…rendering, by the mobile phone on the display, the receipt information in a machine-readable element; and optically scanning the machine-readable element rendered on the display of the mobile phone, by an optical scanning machine in communication with the server, to confirm completion of payment for the order." (source: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/56/98/47/6f1378dc9f0dd1/US10803435.pdf and https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[10,803,435](/patent/10803435)). Because US 12,412,164 is a straight continuation in the same chain (App. 18/427,556 → 18/217,945 (US 11,961,061) → 17/004,819 (US 11,853,988) → 16/730,567 (US 10,803,435) → 15/956,400 → 12/947,545 (US 10,121,133) → provisional 61/392,908), the analysis below is run against that representative independent claim as the presumed scope. If the granted '164 claims are narrower (e.g., add a limitation tying the machine-readable element specifically to receipt information, or to "transaction transfer"), the analysis holds a fortiori; if broader, additional art combinations would be available.
2. Effective priority date. The '164 patent carries a 2010‑10‑13 priority date. Under pre‑AIA § 102/§ 103 (or under AIA § 102(a)(1)/§ 103 with the same critical date), prior art must predate 2010‑10‑13 unless the claims lose the benefit of the provisional/2010 filing for lack of written‑description support — exactly the fight BJ's Wholesale Club ran in IPR2022‑01564, where it asserted that Hanson (2011) and Keith (2013) post‑date the '908 provisional and contested priority (https://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/IPR2022-01564.pdf). Any post‑2010 ground is therefore contingent on winning that priority challenge. The grounds I emphasize below are pre‑2010 and do not depend on it.

1. The prior art of record on this patent

The "Prior Art" content associated with this page consists of (a) the Google Patents "prior art keywords" — item, user, mobile device, transaction, shopping cart — and (b) the "References Cited" section of the family (verified at https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[10121133](/patent/10121133).html and https://uspto.report/patent/grant/10,803,435). Grouped by what they teach:

(Where I only have the reference's title/date from the face of the patent rather than verified text — e.g., several of the Symbol, Sun, and Eastman Kodak-family references — I describe it at title level only and do not assert specific passage content.)

The single most important reference of record is Murrah, US 5,804,807, verified as "Scan-ahead system for processing merchandise at a checkout register" (1998‑09‑08) at https://www.freepatentsonline.com/10121133.html.

2. Element-by-element obviousness analysis against the representative independent claim

Representative claim 1 (per the '435/'133 family) recites, in substance:
(a) executing a mobile self-checkout application on a mobile phone allowing in-store selection and tendering of payment via a rendered user interface; (b) initiating a session with a server, session managed by a session manager; (c) activating an imaging device to capture identification information of a physical object; (d) radio-transmitting that information to the server executing a virtual terminal sales application; (e) receiving item information back; (f) generating a virtual shopping cart; (g) receiving a check-out instruction; (h) server receiving payment information and completing the transaction; (i) server transmitting receipt information; (j) rendering the receipt information on the display as a machine-readable element; and (k) optically scanning that on-screen machine-readable element with an optical scanning machine in communication with the server to confirm payment.

Ground 1 — Murrah '807 in view of Roslak '002 / Tracy '757 (primary mobile self-scan ground)

• Murrah '807 discloses the "scan-ahead" architecture: a shopper, while walking the store, uses a portable scanning terminal to read item barcodes; the scanned identification data and the compiled order are maintained by the store's central system, and at the checkout register the stored order is retrieved and payment completed without the cashier re-scanning each item. That supplies (a) in substantial part, (c) via the portable scanner's barcode reader, (d) via the radio-frequency link to the host, (f) (the accumulated order/items), and (g)–(h) (order retrieved at a register; tender made there).
• Roslak '002/'753 and Tracy '757 supply the "customer-operated handheld terminal with a user interface, radio link, and a running list of items" implementation detail and the ergonomic motivation to substitute a general-purpose portable device.

Motivation to combine: Murrah and Roslak/Tracy are in the same field (portable/self-scanning retail checkout), address the same problem expressly recited in the '164 Background — avoiding the need to unload and re-scan each item at a cashier or SCO — and both were known, widely deployed (Symbol "Personal Shopping System") approaches. KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), makes this a paradigm case: combining elements known in the field to achieve a predictable, market-driven improvement, with a finite number of identified solutions (handheld scanner + RF host + order retrieval at POS). Nothing in either reference teaches away; each improves on the other's known deficiencies (dedicated kiosk-attached scanners vs. general handheld terminals).

Ground 2 — Murrah '807 in view of Challa '093 (and/or Vanska '041, Balent '796) — the "optical machine-readable representation displayed on the mobile device" limitation

This is the limitation that distinguishes the '164 family from the older self-scan art: the order/order‑number is not merely stored and keyed at the register — it is rendered as an optical machine-readable code on the phone's own display and then read by an optical scanning machine at the POS.

• Challa '093 (of record) is directed to using optical machine-readable code data on/with handheld devices to address and retrieve network content — establishing that displaying machine-readable codes on and reading them from portable devices was known and routine well before 2010.
• Vanska '041 (of record) and Balent '796 (of record) belong to the same well-trodden family of art in which a device presents/reads a machine-readable representation for a transaction or ticket.
• US 5,918,211 (Sloane) and US 6,018,397 (Cloutier) supply the POS-side half: a terminal that reads an identifier and pulls the stored order/session from a host.

Motivation to combine: Once Murrah's order exists on a host, the artisan's design choice for how the customer "hands off" that order at the register is a small, closed set: read a card, key an order number, or present a scannable code. Displaying the identifier as a barcode on a screen is the natural substitution for a printed order slip or loyalty card, requires no new hardware (the POS scanners already read 1D/2D codes), and yields a predictable result. The '164 specification itself says exactly this and nothing more: the code "is preferably in a form of 1D barcode… allowing for a standard barcode reader to read" (patent text above). A claimed result that is the "natural design choice" among a few options, with predictable results and no unexpected benefit, is obvious. KSR, 550 U.S. at 421; In re Ibáñez, 256 F. App'x 361 (Fed. Cir. 2008).

Ground 3 — Ground 1 or 2 further in view of IBM IPCOM000139258D and a mobile-payment reference (Fife '759, Glazer '101, Lurie 2002/0178088, Tumminaro 2007/0255620) — the "transmit payment to a server, generate and display a receipt" limitations

• IBM IPCOM000139258D (2006) expressly discloses retail self-checkout conducted via cellular phone technology — i.e., the phone as the checkout device, with the store system completing the transaction.
• Fife '759, Glazer '101, Lurie 2002/0178088, and Tumminaro 2007/0255620 all disclose mobile/remote payment architectures: consumer transmits payment credentials from a handheld device to a remote server, the server (or a gateway) completes the purchase, and a confirmation/receipt is returned.
• The 2009–2010 NPL of record (Stop & Shop "Scan It!", Shop 'n Stock, Emigh/Betanews) independently confirms that shoppers using phones/handhelds to build baskets, and merchants returning confirmations to those devices, was the known commercial state of the art on the eve of the 2010 priority date.

Motivation to combine: Combining a known in-store phone self-scan/checkout flow (Ground 1/2) with a known mobile payment-and-receipt flow is the combination of two references that address complementary halves of one problem — ringing the basket and paying for it — from the same field of endeavor, with an explicit market driver (skip the cashier line entirely, which the '164 Background states as the objective). Because IPCOM000139258D already frames self-checkout as "via cellular phone," the artisan would have been motivated to add the payment/receipt step to the phone rather than route the customer to a register. That is at minimum an obvious combination; it borders on anticipation of the "transmit payment information to a remote server… generating a receipt… displaying the receipt on a display of the mobile device" aspect recited in the '164 Summary.

Ground 4 — The VTSA / "session manager" / transaction‑transfer limitations

For the server-side limitations (a server executing a virtual terminal sales application; a session managed by a session manager; loading and exporting transaction state information keyed by a unique identifier), the art of record includes Rice '363, Peart '756, Rice '712, and Annan '981, plus the general body of virtual-machine/session-pooling and stateless-session art.

A person of ordinary skill in the art — here, a POS/retail-systems engineer with knowledge of IBM Self Checkout System "Point of Sale Business Component" messaging (the '164 specification itself names IBM™ Self Checkout Systems) — would understand pooling a limited number of server-side terminal sessions and swapping per-transaction state in and out keyed by a session identifier as the standard way to scale a transaction service. The '164 specification concedes the point: it describes "transaction transfer" as the alternative to "a suspend/retrieve transaction which reprocesses every item," i.e., a known transaction-management technique. When a patent claims a known technique (state save/restore around a pooled session) to solve a recognized scaling problem (the '164 spec: "ten sessions… would only be able to handle… ten mobile users"), the claim is obvious under KSR's "known technique, known problem" rationale.

Ground 5 — Post‑2010 reference combinations (contingent on breaking priority)

If the priority claim to 61/392,908 is successfully attacked — as BJ's attempted — then the combinations actually litigated become available and are instructive:

• IPR2022‑01564 (against US 10,803,435): Ground 1, anticipation by Keith; Ground 2, obviousness over Hanson in view of Keith (instituted for multiple petitions — https://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/IPR2022-01564.pdf; https://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/[ptab](/ptab)-highlights-patel-zhang.pdf).
• IPR2022‑01537 (against US 10,803,435): claims 1–14 obvious over Yong in view of Xavier — Yong for the mobile self-checkout/shopping/payment applications and server interaction, Xavier for client- or server-side session handling (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1550337](/patent/1550337)/…).
• IPR2022‑01528: claims 15–19 challenged (same family).
• IPR2022‑01471 (against US 10,121,133): institution denied on 2023‑04‑12 (https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2022-01471; https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-01471/…/Petition-2-…10,121,133.pdf). Note that under 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(1), a denial of institution does not estop the petitioner, but it does mean the Board was not persuaded by the art as presented.

These grounds share a common, and useful, structure: a mobile self-checkout/shopping reference (Yong, Keith, or Murrah) + a session-management reference (Xavier) + a machine-readable-code-presentation reference. That is the same three-legged combination I described in Grounds 1–3, and it is the combination a petitioner would run again against the '164 claims.

3. Why a POSITA would combine — the explicit motivations

1. Same field, same problem. Every reference is in retail checkout/mobile commerce; every one targets the queue/unloading problem recited in the '164 Background.
2. Complementary, non-overlapping disclosures. One reference rings the basket; another moves payment to the phone; another (Xavier-class) manages the session; another displays a scannable code. Combining them is aggregation of known functions with predictable results — the "predictable variation" KSR permits to be rejected.
3. Explicit design incentives at the 2010 critical date. Stop & Shop "Scan It!" (Jan. 2010), Shop 'n Stock (2009–10), Kroger tunnel scanners (Jul. 2010), and the 2008 Betanews piece on cart-mounted Windows devices are all of record and show a crowded, fast-moving, commercially lucrative space — a strong, documented incentive to combine (KSR: "market pressure" and "design incentives").
4. Finite, identified, and already tried solutions. Print a code, key a number, or display a code. The '164 patent's own disclosure expressly contemplates the alternative of manually keying the unique identifier at the POS — admitting the interchangeability of the two hand-off mechanisms.
5. No teaching away. None of the references disparages displaying a machine-readable code on a consumer device rather than printing it, and none criticizes the use of consumer handsets as the scanning/payment instrument — indeed IBM's 2006 IP.com article embraces phone-based self‑checkout, and Symbol's Roslak/Tracy family taught handheld self-scanning years earlier.

4. Where the obviousness case is weak (and why IPR2022‑01471 failed)

A balanced analysis must record the counterweights, because they are what defeated the '133 petition:

• Priority-date dependence. The strongest single-reference attacks (Keith, Hanson) post‑date the 2010‑10‑13 provisional. Absent a successful written-description/priority challenge under Ariad/Hologic, they are not § 102/§ 103 art. The Board's institution decision in IPR2022‑01564 flagged precisely this ("Priority disputes can multiply the proceedings").
• Claim construction of "virtual terminal sales application." BJ's proposed "an application running on the server which mirrors functions of a POS terminal without the peripheral devices of a POS terminal"; the Board found no express construction necessary and denied institution in IPR2022‑01471 (see the decision text surfaced in the search results). The VTSA/session-manager/transaction-transfer limitations are the '164 family's most technically specific subject matter, and the older, generic self-scan art does not disclose them with great specificity.
• Bodily incorporation vs. combination. For Ground 4, a petitioner must show the session-transfer teaching would be used with (not merely physically insertable into) the self-scan system — the classic In re Ratti / "bodily incorporation" rebuttal. The '164 spec's "transaction transfer" discussion helps the petitioner on motivation but also shows a specific implementation choice that older art may not have rendered routine at the 2010 date.
• Secondary considerations. The family has substantial commercial backing (Walmart Apollo, an in-market mobile scan-and-go product), and Patent Owner has been able to point to nexus evidence in the parallel proceedings. Note the family also has litigation flagged on the Google Patents page (Darts‑IP family 45934919), so objective-indicia evidence presumably exists in the record.

5. Bottom line

• The broadest independent claim, as represented by the family's claim 1, is very likely obvious over US 5,804,807 (Murrah) in view of US 5,825,002 / 5,979,753 (Roslak) and/or US 5,979,757 (Tracy), further in view of US 6,685,093 (Challa) or US 7,047,041 (Vanska) for the on-screen optical machine-readable representation, and further in view of IBM IP.COM IPCOM000139258D plus a mobile-payment reference of record (US 6,601,759 Fife, US 6,886,101 Glazer, US 2002/0178088 Lurie, or US 2007/0255620 Tumminaro) for the "transmit payment to the server / generate and display a receipt" limitations. All of these are pre‑2010 and thus independent of the priority fight.
• The dependent limitations (quantity edit, item removal, order history, location-based store identification, shopping lists, gift-registry/multiple-payer splits) are each addressed by a discrete reference already of record (Mold '772, Matsumori '206, Loof '279, Morrison '357, plus the loyalty/ad references), and each is a routine data-bookkeeping addition.
• The server-side VTSA/session-manager/transaction-transfer limitations are the only ones where the pre‑2010 art of record is comparatively thin; a petitioner would be wise to develop additional pre‑2010 "virtual terminal" and pooling/state-export art, rather than rely on the post‑2010 Yosh/Keith/Hanson references that require first defeating the 2010 priority claim.
• Procedural caution: the closest litigated attempt, IPR2022‑01471 against US 10,121,133, was denied institution on 2023‑04‑12, and IPR2022‑01528/‑01561/‑01563/‑01564 against US 10,803,435 turned on the priority-date dispute. Any fresh § 103 attack on US 12,412,164 should be built primarily on pre‑2010 art of record (Murrah, Roslak, Tracy, Sloane, Cloutier, Challa, Fife, Glazer, Lurie, Tumminaro, and the IP.com/Scan It!/Shop 'n Stock NPL) so that the priority question is not a prerequisite to the ground.

Verified sources used: https://patents.google.com/patent/US12412164/en (patent text provided); https://www.freepatentsonline.com/10121133.html (References Cited face of the family and Murrah 5,804,807 listing); https://uspto.report/patent/grant/10,803,435 and https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/56/98/47/6f1378dc9f0dd1/US10803435.pdf (family claim text); https://ipverse.greyb.com/ptab-web/cases/case-details/IPR2022-01471 and https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2022-01471/ (petition and denial of institution); https://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/IPR2022-01564.pdf and https://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/pdfs/ptab-highlights-patel-zhang.pdf (Keith/Hanson grounds and the priority dispute); https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1550337/…, /1550339/… (Yong+Xavier and related grounds).

Not verified / flagged: the verbatim granted claims of US 12,412,164; the specific passage-level content of the Symbol (Roslak/Tracy/Swartz), Sun (Rice/Peart), and Kodak-family (Testa/Squilla/McIntyre/Bryant) references — these are described at title/assignee level only, and any petition should confirm their disclosures by reading the documents themselves.