US 5463209

Patent Overview — US5463209A

Title: Point-of-sale product information dissemination arrangement and method

Patent number / application: US5463209A; application US08/384,607, filed 1995‑02‑03; granted/publication date 1995‑10‑31. Priority date listed as 1993‑11‑29 (noted as an assumption, not a legal conclusion). Status listed as "Expired ‑ Fee Related," with anticipated expiration 2013‑11‑29.

Inventors / assignee: Inventors Jack Figh and Robert V. Cuddihy, Jr.; original assignee HMG Worldwide In Store Marketing Inc. The source's "current assignee" listing names Symbol Technologies LLC and PNC Bank NA, though Google Patents itself cautions such listed assignees may be inaccurate and that it performs no legal analysis. Per the operating rules, I do not analyze the listed reassignments or ownership transfers.

Purpose: The patent addresses disseminating product information at the point of sale. It critiques prior approaches—infomercials (costly, limited audience, easy to postpone) and in-store video displays (store-selected rather than customer-selected product, endless-loop programming rarely seen in proper sequence, and no private viewing).

Plain-language scope: An arrangement at a "vending location" (e.g., a shelf, aisle, or store) lets a customer request information about a chosen product from a group offered for sale. A carrier—such as a product label bearing the product's SKU/bar code—carries an optically distinguishable marking uniquely identifying the product type. An entry device, advantageously an optical scanner, reads the marking and generates an addressing signal. That signal directs retrieval of stored product-related data from a corresponding portion of a storage medium (e.g., video/laser disk or ROM player, or memory chip), producing driving signals fed to a presentation device (e.g., a television/monitor, possibly with sound). The entry and presentation devices sit at the vending location; the processing and storage components may but preferably need not be remote.

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5463209](/patent/US5463209)/en

What the excerpt does not establish: The supplied text is explicitly excerpted and omits claims, the full description, drawing details, and most prior-art discussion. Therefore it does not establish the exact claim scope, all disclosed embodiments, specific cited references, or file-history details.