US 5055660

I'll search for authoritative information on US 5055660, including any 2026 CAFC activity.

Let me check for litigation/CAFC activity and the full claim set.

Let me try to retrieve the complete claim set.

US Patent 5,055,660 — Summary

Note on scope of search. I searched for the exact number "5055660." The CAFC 2026 docket search returned no results — I found no evidence of any 2026 (or any) Federal Circuit appeal involving this patent. That is consistent with its status: the patent is Expired – Fee Related, with anticipated expiration 2008‑10‑08, so 2026 appellate activity would be very unusual. Searches also surfaced a different patent bearing the same numeral in another jurisdiction — JP5055660B2 (a Japanese gas-barrier film, granted 2012‑10‑24) — which is unrelated to this US patent and should not be conflated with it.

Bibliographic data

The specification is a continuation of Ser. No. 207,663 (filed 6/16/88, now abandoned), which was itself a continuation-in-part of PCT application Ser. No. CT/US86/00783 (filed 4/14/86) and related U.S. application Ser. No. 318,592 (filed 6/16/88). The "priority date" of 1988‑06‑16 reflects the parent application, not the 1990 filing.

Abstract (as published)

"A transaction monitoring and security system records data from the sale of articles and provides security for inventor[y] and sales receipts. The system includes container[s] for storing articles to be distributed, and computer-controlled locking system for controlling access to the articles. The initial inventory of articles stored in the container is bar-coded, and the bar code data provide a digital data record of articles stored and locked in the container. A central computing unit (CCU) includes a housing with locked compartments for receiving and storing a plurality of hand-held portable transaction monitoring units (PTMU's) used to record transaction data from the sale of articles in the container. Each PTMU contains a microprocessor and data storage for communicating with the CCU and with memory in the cart. The PTMU off-loads a digital data record of the inventory of articles stored in the container. A computer-controlled locking system permits removal of articles from the container only in response to a coded input from the PTMU. Transactions involving each article removed from the container for sale and distribution are recorded in the PTMU. After sales transactions are completed, data from the PTMU are off-loaded to the CCU by the PTMU. The PTMU can include a rotatable turret and bar code reading lens with an isolated amplifier inside the turret... Electrical shielding in the turret protects the amplifier from receiving interference signals from the electromics in the PTMU."

(The published abstract contains apparent typographical artifacts — "inventor" for "inventory," "electromics" for "electronics"; I have not corrected these per the literal‑interpretation rule.)

Claims

Important caveat on certainty. The authoritative full text I was supplied (the Google Patents fetch) truncates before the claims section, so it is not a complete claim set. I retrieved the full text of claim 1 from RPX Insight (an independent patent database, https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/[US5055660A](/patent/US5055660A)). I do not have authoritative confirmation of the total number of claims or of any additional independent claims beyond claim 1. Treat the discussion below accordingly.

Claim 1 (independent) — plain-language overview. This is the only claim I can quote verbatim with confidence. It is directed to the portable unit itself (not the overall system):

"1. A potable [portable] transaction monitoring unit comprising a generally rectangularly shaped housing having a planar face, a longitudinal axis, a plurality of openings formed therethrough, a read head, a generally cylindrically shaped turret recessed within said housing within one of said plurality of openings for limited rotational movement relative to the housing about an axis generally transverse to the longitudinal axis of said housing, said read head being fixedly mounted on said turret for movement therewith between two extreme positions, one generally normal and one generally parallel to the planar face of said housing, said read head projecting from said turret through said one opening in said housing and including a photo diode and lens means for optically reading bar codes on articles to be identified, and for converting the bar codes into electrical signals for processing by the portable transaction monitoring unit, a microprocessor with memory enclosed within said housing adjacent said turret, and amplifier means mounted within said turret for amplifying the electrical signals generated by said read head to a level sufficient to drive said microprocessor, said amplifier means electrically coupling said read head to said microprocessor whereby the electrical signals generated by said read head are formatted and stored in said microprocessor for later retrieval."

In plain language, claim 1 covers a handheld bar-code scanning unit with these elements:

1. A rectangular housing with a planar face, a longitudinal axis, and openings through it.
2. A cylindrical turret seated in one of the openings, capable of limited rotation about an axis transverse to the housing's long axis.
3. A read head fixedly mounted on the turret, movable between two extremes — one perpendicular (normal) to the housing's planar face (the "pass-over" orientation) and one parallel to that face (the "wand" orientation). The read head projects through the opening and includes a photodiode and lens for optically reading bar codes and converting them to electrical signals.
4. A microprocessor with memory inside the housing, adjacent the turret.
5. An amplifier mounted inside the turret that boosts the read head's signals to a level sufficient to drive the microprocessor, electrically coupling the read head to the microprocessor so the signals are formatted and stored for later retrieval.

The novelty emphasis in the specification is the physical placement/isolation of the high-gain amplifier inside the rotatable turret (shielded and grounded externally) so that the dual-position read head can be used without picking up interference from the unit's own microprocessors, magnetic-card reader, or display backlight inverter.

Other claims / independent claims. Based on the specification and abstract, the patent also describes a broader transaction monitoring and security system (containers with locks responsive to a PTMU, a central computing unit with locked compartments holding multiple PTMUs, data off-load on insertion, coded-input-controlled access with audit recording). It is likely that one or more additional independent claims are directed to that system (and possibly to methods of use). I cannot confirm the exact wording, numbering, or number of those claims from the sources available to me, so I am flagging that as an open uncertainty rather than reconstructing them.

If you need higher-certainty claim data

The complete, authoritative claim set would come from the USPTO PatentCenter / Patent Full-Text (PatFT) record for 5,055,660 or the official grant PDF (available via the Google Patents "Download PDF" link for US5055660A). I was unable to retrieve those full-text claim pages within this session, and I did not find any CAFC 2026 docket entry to report.

Sources consulted: Google Patents US5055660A (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5055660A); FreePatentsOnline 5055660 (https://FreePatentsOnline.com/5055660.html); RPX Insight (https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/US5055660A); SumoBrain (https://SumoBrain.com/patents/us/Portable-transaction-monitoring-unit-security/5055660.html); CAFC 2026 docket search (no results).

I'll research litigation involving US patent 5055660. Let me run several searches.

Litigation Search: US Patent 5,055,660

Summary Finding

I found no evidence of any litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 5,055,660. My searches returned no cases in which this patent was asserted, challenged, or otherwise at issue. I want to be candid that this is a negative finding based on limited search results, not a certified "no litigation exists" conclusion — see the caveats below.

Patent Identification (confirmed literal match)

Before reporting, I confirmed what US 5,055,660 actually is, so as not to conflate it with other "‑660" patents:

Important note on search noise: My searches for "5055660" returned results about a different patent — the "‑660 patent" in Cat Tech LLC v. TubeMaster, Inc., 572 F. Supp. 2d 823 (S.D. Tex. 2007). That case involves U.S. Patent No. 6,883,660 (catalyst loading devices), not US 5,055,660. Per the strict rule, I am not treating those as the same patent. They are unrelated.

Litigation Table

No cases found.

Search Approach and Evidence

Queries attempted (all for the literal number 5055660 / 5,055,660):

• US patent 5055660 litigation → no results
• "5055660" patent lawsuit defendants → no results
• patent 5,055,660 infringement case → returned unrelated Cat Tech v. TubeMaster (the '660 catalyst patent)
• unifiedpatents litigation 5055660 → no results
• "5,055,660" Avicom International patent → returned only a corporate profile for Hughes Avicom International (23 patents; part of Rockwell Automation), no litigation
• "US5055660" OR "US 5,055,660" infringement lawsuit → no results returned

Caveats (please treat as material)

1. Tool coverage. I could not directly query the Unified Patents litigation portal, PACER, or Docket Navigator as intended; the available search returned no indexed litigation for this number. A dedicated PACER/Docket Navigator query is the reliable way to confirm absence of suit.
2. Time window. The patent expired 2008‑10‑08 and was in "Expired – Fee Related" status. Its practical assertion window largely predates broad public litigation databases' digitization, so any older 1990s disputes may be poorly indexed online.
3. Possible unrecorded/other disputes. The patent passed through several assignments (Avicom → Hughes → Rockwell → Boeing North American), which is consistent with corporate transactions rather than litigation. I found no assignment documents or records indicating dispute.
4. I did not fabricate anything. I am explicitly stating that no case data was found rather than inventing parties, case numbers, or outcomes.

Recommendation to Confirm

To reach a higher-confidence answer, run this specific number through:

• Unified Patents Portal – https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation (search District Court cases by patent number)
• PACER / CourtListener RECAP – docket search on patent number 5055660
• USPTO Patent Litigation Docket (Patent Docket / "Patent Litigation" dataset) and the USPTO Assignment database for the recorded transfers noted above

If you'd like, I can attempt a narrower re-search once tool coverage allows, targeting CourtListener/RECAP and the Federal Circuit for the exact string "5,055,660."

Bottom line: On the available evidence, no litigation is known involving US 5,055,660.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" default against public sources before writing.

PTAB / AIA Trial Analysis — US 5,055,660

Canonical source: the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal ingest) returns no AIA trial proceedings. I independently web-searched for IPR/PGR/CBM activity tied to 5,055,660, Avicom International, Bertagna, Berry, Boeing North American, Rockwell, and Hughes Electronics; the searches surfaced only the patent text and bibliographic pages (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, SumoBrain) and no PTAB proceeding, petition, or Board decision. The two searches most likely to catch one — an exact-number IPR query and a "5055660 + IPR/CBM" query — returned zero results.

I could not open a live PTAB E2E docket search inside this session, so my confidence rests on the ODP block plus negative search results, not on a portal screenshot. That distinction matters and is flagged in the next steps.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 5,055,660: 0. There is nothing to break down by status — no institution denials, no FWDs, no settlements, no CAFC appeals. For a defendant, this is not the "hardened by surviving IPRs" posture and it is not the "claims canceled, ignore the demand letter" posture either; it is the rarer third posture: the patent was never worth challenging at the PTAB because it has been expired and unasserted for nearly two decades.

Two structural facts explain the absence, and both cut in the defendant's favor:

1. The patent is expired. Google Patents lists legal status Expired – Fee Related, with anticipated expiration 2008-10-08 (17 years from the 1991-10-08 issue date, pre-URAA term). By today (2026-09-17) the patent has been dead for roughly 18 years.
2. AIA venue fit is poor. PGR is unavailable — it reaches only patents with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16, and this patent's priority reaches back to 1988-06-16. CBM was sunset for new petitions on 2020-09-16 and, in any event, would have required a non-technological-business-method claim. IPR remains theoretically available against an expired patent for historical-damages purposes, but the § 286 six-year damages lookback from an October 2008 expiry closed around 2014. There is no live money to chase, which is precisely why no petitioner ever filed.

Proceedings

None. No IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding number can be reported, and per the operating rules I will not invent one. Because there is no Final Written Decision, there is no claim-level verdict to quote, no APJ panel to name, no institution reasoning to characterize, and no appeal docket to link. Any claim that a particular claim of 5,055,660 was canceled, confirmed, or construed by the Board would be fabricated; I am making no such claim.

Strategic summary

Canceled vs. sustained vs. untested. With no PTAB proceedings, every claim of 5,055,660 is "untested" in the AIA-trial sense — no claim has been canceled or confirmed by the Board. From the earlier section of this analysis, claim 1 is the one claim I could quote with confidence (the rotatable-turret bar-code scanner with the amplifier mounted inside the turret). The system-directed independent claims described in the specification — containers with PTMU-responsive locks, a CCU with locked PTMU compartments, off-load on insertion, coded-input access with audit recording — remain unconfirmed as to exact wording, numbering, and count; the authoritative Google Patents fetch truncated before the claim set, and I have not closed that gap. That limitation is now largely academic: no live claim of this patent is enforceable, so claim mapping only matters if you are evaluating a historical period.

Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel to reckon with, because there has been no petitioner and no instituted trial. No real party in interest or privy is barred from raising any ground. Practically, though, the more relevant bar is temporal, not estoppel: § 286's six-year limitations period and the 2008-10-08 expiry mean that, as of 2026-09-17, there is no time-bar-free window in which a damages claim could be pleaded. If you are a defendant receiving a demand today, your first move is not an IPR petition — it is a Rule 12(b)(6) motion pointing to expiry, with an IPR as a fallback that would almost certainly be denied as moot or as an inefficient use of Board resources given the absence of any recoverable damages.

Pattern signals. None of the classic markers is present:

• No repeat petitioner — there are no petitioners at all.
• No PAE ownership. The chain runs through operating companies: original assignee Avicom International Inc.; listed current assignees Boeing North American Inc. and Avicom International Inc.; reassignment to Rockwell International Corporation recorded 1998-01-13 (assignor Hughes Electronics Corporation). That is aerospace/corporate deal flow, not assertion-entity acquisition.
• No defensive aggregator involvement — I found no evidence of a Unified Patents or similar challenge, which is exactly what you would expect for a 1991-issue, 2008-expiry patent outside any defendant's commercially relevant window.
• No aggressive PTAB-appeal posture by the patent owner, because there has been no PTAB proceeding to appeal.

One conflation hazard, carried forward. As noted in the summary section, there is an unrelated JP5055660B2 (Japanese gas-barrier film, granted 2012-10-24). It has no relationship to US 5,055,660 and must not be cited as evidence of family, litigation, or trial activity here.

Recommended next steps

• Open the authoritative docket yourself before relying on "zero." The canonical negative comes from the ODP ingest; confirm it with a live PTAB E2E patent-number search (https://ptab.uspto.gov/) and cross-check PTAB Decisions (https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions). My in-session web searches returned nothing, but a portal check is the gold standard, and I could not complete one here.
• Lead with expiry, not invalidity. Have counsel confirm the 2008-10-08 anticipated expiration and the pre-URAA term calculation (17 years from the 1991-10-08 issue date) against the official USPTO file wrapper, and confirm no later maintenance-fee-driven extension or reissue exists. Assuming both hold, the demand letter fails on its face: no enforceable claim in 2026.
• If a demand letter is on your desk, scrutinize what it cites. Because the full claim set is unconfirmed in this analysis, ask the sender to identify the exact claim numbers and verbatim text it alleges. Under the literal-interpretation rule, do not accept a paraphrased or renumbered claim. If the letter cites claim 1 as I quoted it, note that claim 1 is directed to the portable unit's turret/amplifier architecture — not to the overall inflight-sales system — and that no Board has ever construed it.
• Run the § 286 clock explicitly. Establish the last date within the limitations period on which any accused act could have occurred. If that date predates the filing of any complaint, the § 286 and laches-adjacent defenses are dispositive before any invalidity work is funded.
• Do not budget for an IPR. With no recoverable damages window and no unexpired claim term, an IPR petition would be an expensive answer to a question no tribunal needs to reach. Treat the zero-proceeding history as corroboration, not as a gap to fill.
• Note for the record what I could not verify. (a) The complete claim set of 5,055,660 — unresolved from the truncated fetch, per the earlier section. (b) A live portal-confirmed PTAB docket — I relied on the ODP block plus negative search results. Neither gap changes the bottom line, but both should be closed before the analysis is filed or relied on externally.

I'll search for the assignment/ownership records for US 5055660, including reel/frame data and correspondent information.

Assignment / Ownership Reconstruction — US 5,055,660

Critical sourcing caveat up front. I was not able to reach the USPTO Assignment Center or its API within this session, and my web searches for reel/frame data returned no indexed assignment records for this patent number (searches for US5055660 assignment Avicom Hughes Rockwell reel frame, "Avicom International" patent assignment reel frame, and Hughes Avicom International assignment Rockwell returned nothing relevant). The only assignment data I can actually point to is the Google Patents "Legal Events" block embedded in the authoritative full text I was supplied. That block records conveyance type, date, assignor, and assignee — but not reel/frame, and not the correspondent of record. Per the operating rules, I will not fabricate reel/frame numbers or attorney names. Where a field is unavailable, I say so.

Inventors

Unusual-pattern check. The instruction asks whether all inventors departed the original assignee within 12 months of filing. I have no evidence either way. The applicant-side record (inventor assignment documents) is precisely the material I could not retrieve. I am marking this unclear, not "absent" — I don't want a missing-data gap read as a clean bill of health.

Original assignee

• Entity on the issued patent: Avicom International, Inc. (original assignee, per the grant front page and the "Original Assignee" field on Google Patents).
• Line of business: Based on the specification, Avicom operated in airline onboard-sales / transaction-monitoring and security-control systems — i.e., a small avionics-adjacent systems company targeting inflight duty-free, liquor and headset sales (the specification's stated commercial motivation, Background of the Invention, US5055660 col. 1). Whether Avicom actually shipped a commercial product embodying the claims is not determinable from the documents I have. The specification is written as a system disclosure, not a product launch.
• Current status: Unresolved and internally inconsistent on the record I hold. Google Patents lists two "current assignees" — "Boeing North American Inc" and "Avicom International Inc." Meanwhile the Legal Events block shows Avicom's interest passing out to the Hughes/Rockwell family by 1998. I flag this as a contradiction in the source data rather than resolving it: either (a) Avicom was acquired/renamed into a "Hughes Avicom International" entity that retained the name in some records, or (b) Google Patents is carrying a stale assignee string. I could not confirm Avicom's dissolution, acquisition, or bankruptcy.

Assignment timeline

What is actually recorded (Google Patents Legal Events, embedded in the supplied full text):

• Executed date not shown / recorded 1998-01-13 — Reel/Frame not exposed by Google Patents; unavailable

  • Conveyance: Assignment / "reassignment" (Google's label: "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: Hughes Electronics Corporation
  • Assignee: Rockwell International Corporation
  • Correspondent: unavailable — not exposed in this record; I will not guess an attorney or firm.
  • Context: internal corporate reorganisation / portfolio transfer within the Hughes–Rockwell aerospace-electronics lineage. Note the direction is anomalous and unverified: Hughes Electronics (historically a GM subsidiary) as assignor to Rockwell International sits awkwardly against the well-known 1996 transfer of Rockwell's aerospace and defense units to Boeing. I flag this as a possible transcription artifact in the Google Legal Events feed, not as a settled fact.

• Data artifact to flag: this single 1998-01-13 Rockwell/Rockwell event is duplicated roughly 14 times verbatim in the Google Patents legal-events block. I cannot tell from the source whether that reflects multiple distinct reel/frame recordings on the same date or a rendering duplication. I am therefore not reporting 14 separate assignments. This is exactly the kind of anomaly a live Assignment Center pull would resolve.

Gap I must name plainly: the Avicom → Hughes-family link is not shown in the Legal Events block at all. If Avicom's interest passed to a "Hughes Avicom International" entity, the instrument(s) effecting that — and any name-change record from Avicom International, Inc. — are simply not in the source I hold. That missing link is where an acquisition or fire-sale would hide.

Bottom line for this section: the Assignment Center record for this patent could not be retrieved, so the timeline below is partial and unverified as to reel/frame and correspondent. It is not the case that there are "no records" — Google Patents evidences at least one 1998 recorded transfer — but it is also not a complete chain. I stop short of asserting anything beyond the entries listed.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5055660
    1988 : Priority application filed
    1990 : Application filed
    1991 : Patent issued to Avicom International
    1998 : Assigned to Rockwell International

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data.

Every NPE-typifying signal is either not present (shell-entity transfer, known asserter, cascading transfers, pre-litigation transfer, privateering, defensive aggregator) or unclear for want of records (correspondent recurrence, bankruptcy). The chain as evidenced runs Avicom International, Inc. → [unrecorded link] → Hughes Electronics Corporation → Rockwell International Corporation, i.e. through operating corporations, not asserters, and the prior litigation section found no suit on this patent. But because I could not retrieve the Assignment Center reel/frame entries or any correspondent of record, and because the Avicom-to-Hughes link is entirely missing from the available data, a "clean" call would overstate what the record supports. I therefore decline to label this an operating-company assertion or a defensive termination; the honest answer is the ownership chain cannot be fully reconstructed from the sources available in this session.

Verification links: USPTO Assignment Center search — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ ; USPTO Patent Assignment Search (patent number lookup) — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html . Query the literal number 5055660; the key records to pull are (a) the Avicom International, Inc. → Hughes-family instrument, (b) any name-change record, and (c) the 1998-01-13 Rockwell recording, specifically for its reel/frame and correspondent of record — the two fields this analysis is missing.

I'll research the prior-art references cited on the face of US 5,055,660. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me search specifically for the cited references table on this patent.

Let me dig specifically for the front-page "References Cited" and "Patent Citations" list of this patent.

I have the citations to this patent but not yet the references cited on its face. Let me make targeted attempts to retrieve that front-page list.

I'll research the prior art relevant to US 5,055,660 before constructing the § 103 analysis. Let me note upfront: the "Prior Art section" you reference was not included in the material provided to me in this session, so I'll need to reconstruct candidate references from searches and flag that gap explicitly.

Let me find the specific references cited on the face of US 5,055,660 and related inventory-control systems.

Let me retrieve the full claim set of US 5,055,660 and identify the strongest structural prior art on rotatable scanner heads and shielded preamps.

Obviousness Analysis — US 5,055,660 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Critical preliminary caveats (please read before relying on this)

1. The "Prior Art section of this page" was not supplied to me in this session. I searched for and reconstructed candidate references myself. If the page's prior-art section names a different set of references, my mapping below must be re-anchored to those references; treat what follows as a framework + the references I could actually verify.
2. The full granted claim set of US 5,055,660 is still unconfirmed. The only verbatim claim I can stand behind is claim 1 (retrieved via RPX Insight, and identical at FreePatentsOnline/Google). I do not know how many claims exist, nor whether additional independent claims are directed to the overall system. I analyze claim 1 (device) fully and treat the system claims as a flagged contingency.
3. Date discipline matters enormously here. The patent carries a priority date of 1988‑06‑16 (continuation of Ser. No. 207,663) and a still-earlier PCT parent PCT/US86/00783 (filed 1986‑04‑14). Because the turret/amplifier subject matter appears to be the CIP-added material, its effective date is most likely mid‑1988, whereas the system material may reach back to 1986‑04‑14. Several references I found post-date one or both dates and therefore may not be § 102/§ 103 prior art at all. I flag each.
4. Per operating rules, I do not auto-correct identifiers, and I prefer search results over recollection. Where I am unsure of a reference's date or content, I say so.

1. Governing legal standard

Obviousness under § 103 is judged from the perspective of a person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA) at the time of the invention, using the Graham v. John Deere factors (scope/content of prior art; differences; level of ordinary skill; secondary considerations), as refined by KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (2007):

• A combination is obvious where the elements are known, the combination does no more than yield predictable results, and there is an articulable reason to combine (design incentive, known need, market/industry pressure, "obvious to try").
• A predictable variation of a known structure is obvious, even absent an explicit teaching, where the improvement is a "design choice" or "obvious to try" with a finite number of identified, predictable solutions.
• The problem the patent itself identifies can supply the motivation to combine — a point that is unusually damaging here because the patent expressly recites the problem (self‑generated electrical interference) and the solution (put the amplifier in the turret, shield it) in the specification.

2. Claim 1 — what must be taught

Claim 1 is directed to the portable unit itself, not the system, and requires:

Nothing in claim 1 recites the external grounding / internal shielding as a positive claim element (that is described in the spec as the enabling detail, and may appear in dependent claims). Claim 1's only genuinely "packaging-specific" requirement is that the amplifier physically resides inside the turret. That is a location-of-components limitation, and location limitations are the classic fact pattern where § 103 bites.

3. Candidate prior-art references (as surfaced by search — verify dates)

Same-family note (not prior art): The system claims recited in the summary/quotes — containers with locks responsive to the portable unit; a central computing unit with locked compartments holding multiple portable units; off-load-on-insertion; coded-input access with audit logging — appear verbatim as the claims of the sibling patents US 5,057,677 and EP 0 293 366 B1, which share the same Avicom/1986 PCT priority chain. A commonly-owned, co-pending family member is not § 102/§ 103 prior art against 5,055,660. Its value is evidentiary: it shows the system concept was already claimed on the 1986 PCT priority, so 5,055,660's incremental contribution is the PTMU hardware (turret + in-turret amplifier).

4. Element-by-element mapping (claim 1)

• (a) housing / planar face / longitudinal axis / openings — ubiquitous in hand-held scanners and terminals (US 4,409,470; US 4,766,300).
• (b) read head: photodiode + lens — squarely met by US 4,766,300 ("photodetector," "lens means … casting an image … onto said photodetector") and by the Swartz heads (US 4,387,297 / 4,409,470).
• (c) cylindrical turret, limited rotation, transverse axis — met in substance by rotatable scanner-head/housing art (US 4,766,297's repositionable scanner; rotatable-window housings; the general class of "multi-position scan heads"). A "generally cylindrical" housing with "limited rotational movement" between detents is a design choice.
• (d) read head movable between normal and parallel positions — this is the wand ⇄ pass-over dichotomy, explicitly old (US 4,766,297; the "combination of hand-held and fixed scanner" problem recited in EP 0 490 601 A1's background).
• (e) microprocessor + memory in the housing — routine in the 1980s portable data-capture terminals (the Norand/Koenck family; US 4,766,300's decoder/terminal architecture).
• (f) amplifier within the turret — the only structurally distinctive limitation. Prior heads universally place the preamplifier/analog front-end adjacent the photodetector (Swartz heads; Chadima reader). Placing it in the rotatable head module is therefore the natural, predictable location, and shielding it is standard EMI practice.

Result of mapping: every element of claim 1 appears in the prior art, and the only "new" element — amplifier location — is a placement/design choice with a predictable result.

5. The § 103 combinations

Combination A — Device claims (claim 1 and dependents): the primary theory

Primary reference: a hand-held bar-code reader head with photodiode/lens and analog front-end — e.g., US 4,766,300 (Chadima) and/or US 4,387,297 / US 4,409,470 (Swartz).
Secondary reference: a dual-mode/repositionable scanner — US 4,766,297 (portable-vs-stationary scanner on a fixture).
Tertiary/conventional: a microprocessor-with-memory portable terminal housing of the era (Norand/Koenck-type).

Why a PHOSITA would combine:

• Same field of endeavor and same problem (capture bar-code data with a hand-held unit and also in a hands-free pass-over mode).
• The secondary reference expressly addresses the identical objective (one scanner usable both hand-held and fixed); substituting its repositionable head/fixture concept for a fixed head is a predictable improvement.
• Replacing a separate fixture with an integral rotatable turret merely eliminates a separate part — a recognized, results-predictable design streamlining (KSR "design choice"; "merely a change in form/location").
• Adding a microprocessor/memory to a portable reader was conventional (the entire portable-terminal art).

Combination B — The "amplifier inside the rotatable turret" limitation

References: the same bar-code-reader art (Swartz/Chadima) for the amplifier-in-head teaching, plus any rotatable-head reference for the turret.

Why a PHOSITA would place the amplifier in the turret:

• Known, universal design rule in optical readers: locate the high-gain front-end as close as possible to the photodetector to minimize lead length, parasitic capacitance, and noise pickup — exactly the same rationale taught by the Swartz heads and the Chadima reader.
• Once the read head is put on a rotatable turret (Combination A), the only sensible place for its dedicated amp is on/in the turret with the detector — a finite, predictable choice.
• The patent's own specification supplies the motivation: it identifies the compact unit's internal microprocessors, magnetic-card reader, and LCD back-light inverter as interference sources, and states the fix is to house the amp in the turret and shield/ground it. A recitation in the specification of the problem and the solution is powerful evidence that the solution was within the ordinary skill and needed no invention.
• EMI shielding of a high-gain amplifier (conductive coating interior + external ground — the spec's copper-coated end caps and ground wire) is textbook Faraday-cage practice, i.e., a predictable engineering result.

"Obvious to try": With a small number of candidate amp locations (main board vs. head vs. turret), the art provides a finite, identified set of predictable solutions and a clear reason to pick the one nearest the detector. That is the KSR "obvious to try" posture.

Combination C — Contingent "system" claims (if any exist in 5,055,660)

If the granted set includes the system/security claims (as the abstract and the sibling US 5,057,677/EP 293 366 suggest), they would be obvious over:

• Computer-controlled inventory/product-control systems (US 3,836,755 Gretag; US 4,419,734 Indata; US 4,521,677 Sarwin; US 4,563,739 Impulse), which teach inventory records + sales accounting + controlled access to goods;
• Container-lock-responsive-to-logging systems (US 4,891,755 Asher, filed 1987 — potential § 102(e) art);
• Docking/offload terminals in the portable data-capture art (the Norand/Koenck docking disclosure, and later equivalents), which teach off-loading terminal data and recharging in a cradle/dock — the analog of the CCU compartments;
• Access-control-with-audit-logging using magnetic cards/PINs, which was notoriously well known.
• Motivation: the patent's own background recites a strong, longstanding industry need (airline onboard-sales shrinkage of "several millions of dollars annually"), which is precisely the "market pressure / recognized problem" motivation KSR endorses.

6. Anticipation vs. obviousness (double-check)

• § 102: The individual sub-elements are anticipated by scattered references (e.g., US 4,766,300 for the reader head; US 4,766,297 for dual-mode). A **single **reference is unlikely to disclose all of claim 1, so the better (and safer) examiner posture is § 103, which is what I emphasize.
• Same-family caution: Do not cite US 5,057,677 or EP 0 293 366 B1 as § 102/§ 103 art — commonly-owned, co-pending family members sharing the 1986 PCT priority are not prior art. (Using them as prior art would be a legal error.)

7. Secondary considerations (would they save the claim?)

• Long-felt need: The background's airline-shrinkage narrative is a need for the system, not for the turret/amp placement of claim 1. Under the nexus requirement, a system-level need does not rebut obviousness of a device-packaging claim; absent a nexus to the amp-in-turret feature, this factor carries little weight.
• No evidence of unexpected results: The spec claims only improved immunity to interference and faster data capture — both predictable consequences of (i) locating the amp near the detector and (ii) shielding it.
• No known commercial-success evidence with nexus; the patent is Expired – Fee Related (anticipated expiration 2008‑10‑08), and no litigation or secondary-considerations record was found in the earlier sections of this analysis.
• No teaching away: Nothing in the cited art discourages placing a preamp in a rotatable head or shielding it. If anything, the art teaches toward it.

8. Conclusion and confidence

Bottom line. On the references I could verify, claim 1 would likely have been obvious under § 103 as a combination of:

• a portable bar-code reader head with photodiode + lens and analog front-end (US 4,766,300; US 4,387,297 / US 4,409,470),
• a dual-mode/repositionable scanner teaching (US 4,766,297, and the general multi-position/extended-head scanner art), and
• the conventional microprocessor-with-memory portable terminal,

with the only distinctive limitation — the amplifier mounted inside the rotatable turret — being an obvious placement (proximity-to-detector rationale) whose shielding is routine EMI practice, motivated in part by the patent's own admission of the interference problem. Any system/security claims would be obvious over the crowded inventory-control/POS, container-lock, docking, and access-logging arts, with the KSR-recognized motivation of a documented, longstanding shrinkage/revenue problem.

Confidence levels:

• Legal framework and the device claim's obviousness structure: high.
• Precise reference identity/dates (esp. US 4,766,297 and the inventory references): medium. Verify before filing any office action or brief.
• Existence of a § 102 single-reference anticipatory disclosure: low — I did not find one.

9. What must be verified to firm this up

1. The page's actual "Prior Art section" (not provided to me) — re-map against those named references.
2. Full granted claim set of 5,055,660 and the examiner's "References Cited" face sheet (USPTO PatentCenter / grant PDF), to confirm which references the examiner actually relied on and whether additional independent system claims exist.
3. Exact issue dates of US 4,766,297, US 4,387,297, US 4,409,470, and the inventory references, plus the effective filing/priority date properly attributable to the turret subject matter (1986 PCT vs. 1988 CIP) — this controls whether some references are prior art at all.
4. Whether any of the candidate secondary references were already cited on 5,055,660's face and distinguished, which would change the § 103 narrative from "combine" to "overcome the distinction."

If you paste the page's Prior Art section, I will re-anchor this analysis reference-by-reference and produce a formal claim-chart (reference × limitation) with the combination rationales keyed to those specific documents.