US 5595264

I'll run searches for this specific patent number against USPTO and CAFC litigation sources.

Let me run a couple of targeted follow-up searches on litigation/assignment status.

Search scope and a number-collision warning

I searched for the specific identifier 5,595,264 / US5595264 (and its "US 5,595,264 A" formatting) against Google Patents, USPTO-derived mirrors (uspto.report, EveryPatent, FreePatentsOnline), Espacenet/EPO search reports, and general CAFC/PTO-contested-case sources. Two caveats up front:

1. I found no CAFC 2026 docket, IPR, PGR, or district-court case naming US 5,595,264. My searches of Federal Circuit 2026 summaries and PTAB/petition material did not surface this patent. Since the term "5595264" is not unique across registers, that is a negative search result from a limited tool set — I cannot certify that no 2026 docket exists, only that nothing links this number to one.
2. Do not confuse this with JP5595264B2, which is a Japanese patent to Dentsply International for a self-adhesive dental cement (claims to a two-paste dental cement). That is a completely different patent. Also note that a "US 5,595,264" string appearing in PTAB/office actions elsewhere is usually a prior-art citation, not the patent-in-suit.

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Bibliographic data for US 5,595,264 A

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5595264/en ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/5595264 ; http://www.everypatent.com/comp/pat5595264.html

Because the patent expired in August 2014, it is unenforceable, which is consistent with the absence of any 2026 appellate activity.

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Abstract (as issued)

A system and method of automated shopping, including a portable bar code scanner for scanning bar code indicia information on items selected to be purchased, securing the scanner in a holder for limited access, and releasing the portable bar code scanner upon receiving an authorized payment card. A plurality of items for purchase are displayed in a store such that a customer can select an item to be purchased from the store display. The customer scans the bar code indicia on the selected item from the store display. The payment card is debited for the purchase price of the selected item and then returned to the customer.

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Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — Method (the "scanner check-out handshake" claim). An eight-step shopping method, in which the sequence of the last three steps matters:

• (a) accept and retain an authorized payment medium (credit/debit card);
• (b) release a portable bar-code scanner that is normally locked in a holder — released only because the card was accepted and retained;
• (c) display a plurality of items for purchase in a store (i.e., the sales floor is a display/showroom);
• (d) customer selects an item from the display;
• (e) customer scans the item's bar code with the released scanner, the bar code indicating at least the purchase price;
• (f) customer returns the scanner to the holder;
• (g) the payment medium is debited for the purchase price; and
• (h) thereafter, in exchange for the returned scanner, the payment medium is returned to the customer.

The novelty theory is the reciprocal custody exchange: the card is the collateral that gets the scanner, and the scanner is the collateral that gets the card back — with payment settlement interposed.

Claim 10 — System (the apparatus counterpart). A system comprising, in means-plus-function form: (i) portable bar-code scanner means; (ii) holder means securing the scanner; (iii) release means that releases the scanner on acceptance of a payment medium and retains that medium until the scanner is returned; (iv) microprocessor means in the scanner; (v) transceiver means for wireless communication between the microprocessor and a control means; (vi) control means that receives the scanned bar-code information and debits the payment medium; and (vii) inventory retrieval means that retrieves and accumulates the selected items from inventory, the control means telling it what to retrieve. The closing limitation is the same reciprocal-exchange condition as claim 1: the release means returns the payment medium only after the scanner is returned to the holder.

Notable dependencies: claim 2 (redundantly recites returning the medium after debiting); claim 3 adds transmission to a terminal plus receipt recording and forwarding to an inventory retrieval system; claims 4–5 add repeat-scanning and total-price debiting; claim 6 confirms the purchase after the scanner is returned (the "batch settlement" variant); claims 7–8 confirm each item before debiting and include quantity incrementing; claim 9 has the inventory retrieval system convey the item to a designated pickup location; claims 11–13 add the LCD display, a quantity selector, and a running-total/total-debit feature.

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Provenance / prior-art context worth noting

• The specification expressly incorporates U.S. Pat. No. 4,578,571 (Williams) for the bar-code reading mechanism.
• Cited prior art (21 references) includes US 4,373,133 (Clyne), US 5,047,614 (Bianco), US 5,186,281 (Jenkins), US 4,929,819 (NCR), US 5,013,896 (NCR), US 5,408,077 (Telxon) and US 5,467,942 (Ahold) — several of which are the very references discussed in the Background.
• The patent is subsequently cited as prior art (X/Y category) against later portable-scanner check-out filings, e.g. EP1120071A1 and WO2005010785A1, where the EPO cites "US 5 595 264 A (TROTTA JR FRANK P)" against them.

Uncertainty statement: I have high confidence in the bibliographic items above because they are confirmed across multiple independent mirrors and the authoritative Google Patents text supplied. I have low confidence about any post-1999 ownership transfers (no assignment record was retrieved) and I have no evidence whatsoever of 2026 CAFC activity — I could not positively verify the absence of such a docket, only that repeated searches produced no match for this specific number.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 5595264 across patent litigation databases.

Let me search the specialized litigation databases.

Let me check dedicated litigation trackers and court records directly.

Summary: No litigation found

Based on my searches, I could not identify any litigation — district court, ITC, PTAB, or CAFC — involving US Patent 5,595,264 ("System and method for automated shopping," Frank P. Trotta, Jr., filed Aug. 23, 1994, granted Jan. 21, 1997).

There are therefore no plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, case numbers, filing dates, or outcomes to report. I am stating this as a "no known results" finding rather than a guaranteed negative — see the caveats below.

What the record actually shows for US 5,595,264

The Google Patents record for this patent contains citation tables ("Patent Citations," "Cited By," "Family Cites Families") but no litigation section and no litigation entries. All 101 "Cited By" and 27 "Citing family" entries I reviewed are patent documents, not cases. Several later patents cite '264 (e.g., WO1996005758A1-family members, and it appears in the reference lists of later self-checkout patents), but citation ≠ litigation.

Evidence found that is not litigation (flagging to avoid conflation)

• EP 1120071 A1 (PSC Scanning / "Customer-operated merchandise checkout system for supermarkets") cites US 5,595,264 A as [XAY] prior art in its EPO search report — a patentability citation, not an assertion of infringement.
• WO 2005/010785 A1 (Siemens AG) cites US 5,595,264 A under category [X] as prior art.
• WO 1998/035325 A3 (Idware S.R.L., dispensing machine) cites WO 96/05758 (the '264 PCT) as prior art under categories X and A.

These are examiner/EPO search-report citations only.

Important warning about number collisions (I did not auto-correct any ID)

Searches for the bare string "5595264" returned several unrelated hits that must not be confused with US 5,595,264:

• JP 5595264 B2 — a Japanese patent (Tokkyo No. 5595264) issued to Dentsply International for a self-adhesive dental cement. This is a Japanese patent whose serial number coincidentally matches the US number's digits; it is a completely different document and different subject matter.
• Various state-court and municipal records where "5595264" is a filing ID, parcel coordinates, or a company registration number (e.g., a Montgomery County, PA certification filing ID; German geological borehole coordinate listings; a Brazilian JUcec registration). None relate to the patent.

Confidence and recommended verification

My negative finding is based on publicly indexed web search results (Google Patents, Justia, FreePatentsOnline, EPO publications, and litigation-platform pages surfaced in results). A search that returns nothing is not proof of absence. Notably, PACER, the Unified Patents litigation portal, Docket Alarm, Lex Machina, and RPX require authenticated/query-level access that I could not fully exercise here, and 1990s–2000s district court dockets are often poorly indexed.

To convert this into a defensible conclusion, I recommend confirming via:

1. Unified Patents litigation portal (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) — patent-level case list.
2. PACER / Docket Alarm / CourtListener RECAP — search the patent number and "Trotta" as party text across all districts.
3. Lex Machina or RPX — for a clean "no asserted cases" report, particularly to catch any pre-2000 filings.
4. USPTO Patent Center / Assignment records — to confirm there was no assignment to a litigation vehicle.

Given that the patent was individually held, expired, and shows no recorded corporate assignment, the practical likelihood that it was ever enforced in litigation is low — but that remains an inference, not a documented fact.

PTAB proceedings on file — US 5,595,264

Source of record: the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block supplied in this prompt (USPTO Open Data Portal ingest). Per that block, the ODP returns zero AIA trial proceedings for US 5,595,264. I ran supplemental web searches (PTAB decisions text, Docket Alarm, CourtListener, Google Patents litigation/PTAB tabs, Justia) and surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding naming this patent as the challenged patent. Nothing found requires the "flag an older/recently filed proceeding" exception — but note the caveat in the next paragraph.

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 5,595,264: 0 — zero active, zero with claims invalidated, zero with claims sustained, zero settled, zero with institution denied. No petitioner has ever attacked this patent at the Board, and consequently every one of its 13 claims is UNTESTED rather than validated or cancelled. The defensive posture this produces is unusual and, on balance, favorable to anyone currently accused: the patent's term expired on 2014-08-23, so there is no forward-looking injunction or ongoing-royalty exposure, the absence of any PTAB record means no claim has been affirmatively upheld, and a § 315(e)(2) estoppel trap does not exist because no petitioner ever triggered it. The offsetting caution is that a patent with no PTAB history has never been narrowed either — you cannot point to a canceled claim as a free kill.

No proceedings to enumerate

Because the canonical list is empty and my searches corroborated that, there is no proceeding number, petitioner, panel, institution decision, Final Written Decision, settlement, or Federal Circuit appeal to report. I will not invent one. Everything below is analysis of why the docket is empty and what it means.

Adjacent data points worth distinguishing from PTAB activity (these are NOT proceedings against the '264 patent):

• The Federal Circuit and PTAB decisions that surfaced in search under the string "559" or "5,595,264" are unrelated — e.g., IPR2024-01145 and the Fintiv / CommScope / CrowdStrike line concern U.S. Patent 9,560,559 (dual-connectivity wireless), a different patent entirely. Do not conflate the two numbers.
• IPR2022-01471 (BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. v. Walmart Apollo, LLC) surfaced because an exhibit in that proceeding reproduces the file history of a Walmart self-checkout patent — the '264 patent is cited within such exhibits as prior art, not challenged.

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Why the docket is empty — and what it tells you

Statutory windows that have now closed.

• PGR is categorically unavailable. Post-grant review applies only to patents with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16. The '264 patent's priority date is 1994-08-23 (pre-AIA). PGR was never an option.
• CBM was available and went unused. Covered business method review ran from 2012-09-16 to 2020-09-16 and applied to pre-2013-03-16 patents. The '264 patent is classified by the USPTO under G06Q20/342 — "Cards defining paid or billed services or quantities" within G06Q20/00 "Payment architectures," with further classifications in G07F7/02 and G07F7/025 (credit-registering-device actuated apparatus) and G07G1/0036 / G07G1/0045 (checkout procedures with a code reader). Those are financial-services and checkout classifications — precisely the neighborhood from which CBM petitions were drawn in the 2012–2020 window. The patent was also still in force for roughly the first two years of that window (it expired 2014-08-23). No CBM was filed. (Whether the claims would have survived the "technological invention" exception is a merits question I am not opining on; the point is that nobody tried.)
• IPR remains theoretically available but practically inert. The Board has permitted IPRs on expired patents, but as of 2026-10-01 there is no coercive reason to file one: the patent has been expired for over a decade and cannot be asserted for prospective relief.

The inference. Well-commercialized patents attract IPRs — typically when the owner sues a cohort of defendants who pool resources or when a defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, Open Invention Network) files prophylactically. A 1994-priority self-checkout patent with 101 forward citations from Symbol Technologies, Telxon, Datalogic, ECR Software, NCR, Alert Innovation and Walmart-lineage filings is exactly the kind of foundational reference that would normally draw a CBM in the 2012–2020 window. The most parsimonious explanation for the empty docket is that the patent was never asserted in a campaign large enough to make a post-grant challenge economically rational.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: 1–13 all UNTESTED; nothing CANCELED, nothing SUSTAINED. The patent carries 13 claims — claims 1–9 are method claims directed to accepting and retaining an authorized payment medium, releasing a holder-secured portable bar-code scanner, scanning a displayed item, returning the scanner, debiting the payment medium, and returning the medium (claim 1, with dependents adding receipt/inventory-transmission, repetition, per-item vs. total debiting, pre- and post-return confirmation, quantity increase, and inventory retrieval to a pickup location); claims 10–13 are system claims covering the scanner, holder, release means retaining the payment medium, microprocessor, wireless transceiver, control means, and inventory retrieval means, with dependents reciting a display, a quantity selector, and running-total debiting on return. No claim has ever been construed by the Board. Any statement that claims of the '264 patent are "hardened" by surviving IPR would be false — there is no such record.

Estoppel landscape: none exists. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel is petitioner-specific — it bars the petitioner and its privies from raising in a civil action any ground raised or reasonably raisable in an instituted IPR. Because no IPR was ever instituted, no party is estopped, and no art has been "burned." For a defendant today, that cuts both ways: the entire universe of prior art remains available in a district-court invalidity defense with no PTAB-threshold framing to satisfy, but you also get no benefit from an instituted trial, no stay leverage, and no Board finding to borrow. Two pieces of art cited on the face of the patent are worth immediate attention for a § 102/§ 103 defense — US 5,468,942 (Ahold Retail Services, "Dispensing device for hand scanners accessible from two sides," filed 1994-04-18, granted 1995-11-21) and US 5,397,882 (Ahold, "Method for spot checking a client in a self-service store," filed 1993-05-14) — along with US 4,373,133 (Clyne, portable scanner on a cart), US 4,929,819 (NCR, customer-performed article scanning), US 5,013,896 (NCR, cashierless checkout using customer passcard), and US 5,047,614 (Bianco) and US 5,186,281 (Jenkins), both discussed in the specification's own Background section. The inventor's admitted incorporation by reference of US 4,578,571 (Williams, Numa Corp., portable bar code scanning device) narrows the claim-drafting room considerably.

Pattern signals: none. No petitioner has filed any IPR on this patent, let alone multiple; the patent owner (an individual — Frank P. Trotta, Jr. is listed as original assignee, and Google Patents shows "Individual" as current assignee) has never pursued a PTAB appeal because there was never a PTAB case; and there is no defensive aggregator in the chain — no Unified Patents or RPX filing exists. The foreign family (EP 0777432, WO 1996/005758, AU 34904/95, CA 2198221) all went abandoned, withdrawn, or ceased, which is consistent with a patent that was never commercialized as an assertion vehicle.

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Recommended next steps

1. If you have received a demand letter or complaint citing US 5,595,264, check the term first. The patent's anticipated expiration was 2014-08-23 (20 years from the 1994-08-23 filing), and maintenance fees were paid through the 12-year window in 2008; Google Patents reports legal status "Expired – Lifetime." A demand premised on prospective or post-2014 conduct is facially meritless. Add 35 U.S.C. § 286's six-year damages lookback measured from the date any complaint is filed — from 2026-10-01 that reaches back only to 2020-10-01, years after expiry — and the recoverable-damages theory collapses.
2. Confirm the absence of PTAB activity yourself before relying on it. Pull the patent's post-grant tab in USPTO Patent Center / the Open Data Portal and search PTAB E2E / PTAB Decisions (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) for the patent number. My conclusion is "no PTAB activity on file," sourced from the ODP block in this prompt plus corroborating web searches — it is not a substitute for a docket check in a litigation-grade opinion.
3. Because there is no FWD, there is no opinion to link or quote. Do not represent to a court or adversary that any claim has been cancelled, construed, or sustained. The accurate and defensible statement is: no AIA trial proceeding has been instituted against US 5,595,264; all 13 claims are untested at the Board; and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to any party.
4. Build the invalidity case on the art, not on the PTAB record. The Board's institution standards and the Fintiv-era discretion framework are irrelevant here. The strongest immediate levers are the on-face prior art (US 4,373,133, US 4,929,819, US 5,013,896, US 5,186,281, US 5,047,614, US 5,468,942, US 5,397,882) and the specification's own admissions about the state of portable bar-code scanning.
5. Docket and opinion checks, if you need primary sources: CourtListener full-text search for the patent number (https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%225595264%22), the Federal Circuit's docket (https://cafc.uscourts.gov), and the patent's Google Patents page (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5595264/en). My searches returned no litigation or appeal naming this patent, but I could not complete an exhaustive litigation-history pull within this session — treat that specific negative as unverified rather than established.

I'll verify the assignment record and any litigation history before drafting.

Let me check for any recorded assignment activity and litigation history specifically.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 5,595,264

Scope note / source caveat: I was not able to execute a direct query against the USPTO Patent Assignment Search database in this session; the findings below rest on (a) the full Google Patents record including its Legal Events and Patent Citations / Cited By tables, (b) uspto.report's grant page, and (c) web searches against USPTO-indexed and third-party patent data. Where I could not verify something, I say so rather than fill the gap. The applicable Assignment Center entry points are https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

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Inventors

Pattern flags:

• Single-inventor patent. There is no co-inventor group, so the "all inventors departed within 12 months" fire-sale precursor cannot be assessed and, in any event, is not observable from the record.
• No inventor-to-employer assignment. The absence of any recorded assignment means there is no evidence the inventor was under a corporate obligation to assign at filing. This is consistent with an independent inventor filing, not with a corporate R&D pipeline.
• Name-adjacency caution (unverified): Search results surfaced EP 0 442 520 A3, "Promotional scanning and validating device," applicant Trotta, Frank A., 8 Beach Street, Maplewood, NJ, co-applicant George Feldstein. The middle initial differs (A. vs. P., Jr.) and the subject matter differs. I cannot confirm any relationship between Frank A. Trotta and Frank P. Trotta, Jr. and I would not treat this as part of the same ownership family. Flagged only for completeness.

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Original assignee

None — the patent issued to the inventor individually.

• Google Patents lists Original Assignee: Individual and Current Assignee: Individual (Individual, 5595264). There is no "Assignee" field naming a company on the grant.
• Primary line of business: Not applicable. The named owner is a natural person.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? No evidence found. The specification describes a store-format concept (showroom shelves with sample/empty prototype packaging, wireless hand-held scanners, an in-store computer, and an automated conveyor/box-pickup warehouse), plus FIG. 3's scanner terminal/holder and FIG. 4's scanner block diagram. I found no commercial product, no press coverage, and no corporate entity associated with it. The drawing set is schematic; there is no evidence of a reduction to a deployed retail installation by the patentee.
• Current status: The patent itself is expired. Google Patents records "Anticipated expiration 2014-08-23" (20 years from the 1994-08-23 filing). Maintenance-fee events of record: 2000-07-18 (year 4), 2004-06-16 (year 8), 2008-07-08 (year 12) — i.e., all three maintenance fees were paid and the patent lapsed by expiration, not by non-payment.
• Continuity: No continuation, divisional, or reissue is of record for this family.

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Assignment timeline

There are no recorded assignments for US 5,595,264.

This is a substantive finding, not a data gap. The complete set of Google Patents Legal Events for this patent consists of only:

There is no "Assignment" / "AS" conveyance line, no reel/frame citation, no security agreement, no merger, no change of name, and no correspondent of record anywhere in the chain. The "small entity" status noted at the 1999 fee event is consistent with individual (non-corporate) ownership and reinforces that no operating company ever took title.

Consequently: no assignor, no assignee, no reel/frame, and no correspondent can be reported, because none exist. Per the protocol, the analysis could stop here. The remaining sections are provided only to record the negative findings, since a clean chain is itself the answer to the NPE question.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5595264
    1994 : Filed by Frank P Trotta Jr
         : Individual owner no corporate assignee
    1997 : Patent issued
    2008 : Final maintenance fee paid
    2014 : Patent expired

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

Additional observation on the forward-citation list: the "Cited By" set for this patent is dominated by operating companies (Symbol Technologies, NCR, Telxon, Visa, IBM, Wal-Mart, Symbotic, Alert Innovation/Retail, Restaurant Technology) and by the RPX-LV Acquisition portfolio (originally L.V. Partners / "Portable scanner for enabling automatic commerce transactions" family, asserted-era filings). None of those entities is in this patent's ownership chain — they are downstream citers only. Care is warranted here: citation breadth is a technical-relevance signal, not an ownership signal, and should not be reported as one.

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Verdict

Insufficient data — and more precisely, no post-issuance ownership activity of any kind.

Justification: the record contains zero recorded assignments. The complete legal-events set is grant (1997-01-09), small-entity status (1999-12-07), and three maintenance-fee payments (2000-07-18, 2004-06-16, 2008-07-08), terminating in anticipated expiration on 2014-08-23. Sole inventor and owner throughout was Frank P. Trotta, Jr., individually — Google Patents states "Original Assignee: Individual" and "Current Assignee: Individual" and no corporate assignee appears. All eight NPE signals are therefore not present, not because a chain was cleaned up, but because no chain exists to run through. This is the classic profile of an unmonetized, unassigned independent-inventor patent that simply ran to expiry.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 5595264, or application 08/294,016) — cross-checked against https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html and the legal-events table at https://patents.google.com/patent/US5595264/en. If the Assignment Center returns records I could not reach in this session, the reel/frame and correspondent data should be layered on top of this analysis; nothing I found suggests any such records exist.

I'll verify the key records before analysis.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 5,595,264 (Trotta)

1. Record verification (USPTO / Google Patents)

The record confirms the number as cited. I did not locate any "similar-number" record that should be substituted; all analysis below is confined to US 5,595,264 A.

Legal frame. Filing is 1994-08-23, so pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs. The § 102(b) statutory-bar date is 1993-08-23. Because § 102 anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every element of the claim as arranged, a reference can only anticipate a dependent claim if it also discloses every element of the independent claim it depends from (claim 1 for claims 2–9; claim 10 for claims 11–13).

The 21 references below are the examiner-cited references printed on the face of the patent ("Patent Citations (21)"). All 21 appear as examiner citations in the grant record.

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2. The claim set that prior art must meet

Claim 1 (independent, method):
(a) accepting and retaining an authorized payment medium → (b) releasing a portable bar-code scanner upon acceptance and retention, the scanner secured in a holder for limited access → (c) displaying items → (d) selecting an item → (e) scanning bar-code indicia indicating at least a purchase price → (f) returning the scanner to the holder → (g) debiting the payment medium for the purchase price → (h) thereafter, in exchange for the returned scanner, returning the payment medium.

Claim 10 (independent, system): portable scanner means; holder means; release means releasing the scanner upon acceptance of a payment medium, said release means retaining the payment medium until return of the scanner; microprocessor means; wireless transceiver means; control means that debits the payment medium; inventory retrieval means; and release means returning the payment medium after return of the scanner.

Dependent claims: 2 (return card after debiting), 3 (transmit to terminal; receipt; forward to inventory retrieval), 4 (repeat d–e), 5 (repeat d–e; debit total), 6 (confirm after returning scanner), 7 (confirm each scanned item before debiting), 8 (confirming includes increasing quantity), 9 (inventory system conveys item to designated pickup location), 11 (scanner display of price + item ID), 12 (quantity selector), 13 (running total, debit total after return).

The hinges of novelty are therefore the "card-as-collateral" exchange (a)/(f)/(h) and point-of-selection debiting (g) — i.e., the payment medium is retained while the scanner is out, and is released only in exchange for the returned scanner.

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3. The 21 cited references

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4. Detailed analysis of the top candidates

A. US 5,468,942 (Ahold) — the closest structural reference to claim 10

• Discloses: holder/rack with per-scanner cavities (holder means), selective release via controllable locking means, and an identification device that reads a card-shaped pass and unlocks a scanner for that customer.
• Anticipation risk: high for the holder/release sub-elements of claim 10 and for claim 1 steps (a)–(b) and (f).
• Gap preventing clean § 102 anticipation: the reference discloses identity clearing of a scanner, not retention of the payment medium until the scanner is returned, and it shows no debiting of the payment medium for the price of each selected item. Under § 102, a missing element defeats anticipation of claims 1 and 10 in their entirety (all dependent claims fail with them). It is, however, the strongest § 103 combination partner, especially with US 5,397,882.

B. US 5,397,882 (Ahold) — the closest functional reference to claims 1 and 7/8/12

• Discloses in substance: pass presented → scanner released; customer scans each article at the point of selection; LCD shows item/total; enter button to confirm a scanned code; erase button to cancel a mis-scanned/put-back item; total computed in scanner's microprocessor.
• Anticipation risk: very high for dependent claims 7 and 8 (confirming the purchase of each scanned item; quantity/data entry via buttons) and 12 (quantity selection), if the reference is held to disclose retaining the pass. The reference states the pass "may for instance be in the form of a credit card or a conventional bank pass" — a strong reading against claim 1(a) "authorized payment medium."
• Gap: payment is by normal means at a cash desk after read-out (not a debit of the payment medium at the moment of selection), and the pass is not described as retained against return of the scanner. So claims 1 and 10 in their entirety are not anticipated on the face of the reference as I retrieved it.

C. US 5,186,281 (Jenkins / NCR) — closest to customer-card + warehouse picking

• Discloses: card at each display area (magnetic-stripe reader) → selection transmitted to pre-check terminal and to the product stocking area for bagging/boxing → purchase record printed → finalizing terminal reconciles records and then charges the customer's account and the goods are loaded for the customer.
• Anticipation risk: high for claim 3 (transmit indicia to a terminal, record price on a receipt, transmit selection to an inventory retrieval system) and claim 9, and substantial overlap with claim 1(a)/(c)–(e).
• Gap: no portable scanner released from a holder, no retention of the card as security for a loaned scanner, and no per-item debit at the point of selection. Anticipates elements, not the claim as a whole.

D. US 4,929,819 (NCR) — customer-performed scanning with detachable module

• Discloses a detachable electronic module with scanner (secured to a cart, removed at checkstand), customer scanning during shopping, and POS-coupled verification before payment.
• Anticipation risk: moderate for claims 1(d)–(e) and 4; supports the "customer-scans-during-shopping" element.
• Gap: payment and verification occur at an attended checkstand; module is not released against a retained payment medium; no point-of-selection debit. No anticipation of claims 1 or 10 as a whole.

E. US 5,013,896 (NCR / Ono) — cashierless passcard checkout

• Discloses scanning, a card medium, a control/processing unit (CPU) coupling terminals, and an exit gate ensuring payment.
• Anticipation risk: moderate for claims 1(c)–(e) and 3, and for the "control means coupled to terminals" concept in claim 10.
• Gap: the passcard is issued to and carried by the customer, cash is paid at a separate terminal, and the card is collected at the exit gate — the opposite of "retaining the payment medium until the scanner is returned." No anticipation of claims 1 or 10.

F. US 4,373,133 (Clyne) — portable scanning + item collection + bill

• Discloses customer scanning of bar codes during selection, weight/price capture, item collection, and bill production — the general architecture Trotta acknowledges in its Background.
• Anticipation risk: high as to the general method elements 1(c)–(e) and 4, and as the primary § 103 base. Gap: verification is by weight comparison at a sales terminal, with a clerk producing the bill; no card retention/return exchange and no per-selection debit.

G. US 4,578,571 (Numa) — expressly incorporated prior art

• Trotta's own specification states the bar-code reading mechanism of scanner 14 is "as is well-known in the prior art and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,578,571 to Williams." This is an applicant admission that the scanning element (claim 1(e); claim 10 "portable bar code scanner means") is old and known. It cannot anticipate the claims alone, but it removes any argument for novelty in that element.

H. Remaining references

• US 4,814,592 (Videomat), US 4,803,348 (Lohrey), US 3,920,100 (Dunphy) — directed to automated storage/retrieval and drop-off/pickup; implicated only as to claim 9 and the "inventory retrieval means" of claim 10 (secondary considerations, unlikely alone to anticipate).
• US 4,509,123 (Vereen) and US 3,737,631 (Super Key) — inventory/checkout tracking; implicated as to claim 3/10's inventory-update function.
• US 5,101,098 (Brother) — prepaid/stored-value card processing; implicated as to claim 1(a)/(g) and 10's "control means … debiting."
• US 5,408,077 (Telxon) and US 5,361,871 (Digicomp) — portable data-capture/POS terminals and shopper product-information systems; implicated as to claim 10's microprocessor/transceiver means and claim 11's display.
• US 3,532,184, 3,716,697, 3,746,130, 3,836,755 — early automated/semi-automated store systems; general environment art, no card-retention or portable-scanner-release teaching.
• US 5,345,071 (Dumont) — shopper purchase monitoring; general art.

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5. Bottom line

1. No single one of the 21 cited references appears to disclose every element of claim 1 or claim 10, and therefore none of them alone appears to effect a clean § 102 anticipation of a granted claim. This is consistent with the grant having issued over all 21.
2. The unclaimed-away element in every case is the same: the retention of the authorized payment medium as consideration for release of the portable scanner, and its return only in exchange for the returned scanner (claim 1(a)/(f)/(h); claim 10's "release means retaining the payment medium"), coupled with debiting at the point of selection (claim 1(g)).
3. Highest § 102 exposure (if the "payment medium" reading holds): US 5,397,882 (Ahold) — released scanner on a card, point-of-selection scanning, enter/erase confirm buttons, LCD, and self-computed total; plus US 5,468,942 (Ahold) — locking holder/release structure with a card-driven identification device. I would expect these to have been the examiner's principal § 103 combination rather than § 102 art.
4. Highest § 103 exposure: US 5,397,882 or US 5,468,942 in view of US 5,186,281 (card-driven store picking + account charging) and/or US 5,013,896 (scanner + card medium + central control unit) — with US 4,373,133 and the expressly-incorporated US 4,578,571 supplying the admitted portable-scanning art.
5. § 102(e) note: five references (US 5,345,071; 5,361,871; 5,407,077; 5,397,882; 5,468,942) published after the 1994-08-23 filing. They are usable only under pre-AIA § 102(e) (US patents granted on applications filed before the applicant's invention), not under § 102(a) or § 102(b).

Caveats. For references #1–#6, #8, #10, #11, #15 and #17–#19 I relied on the titles of record plus their role as cited art; I did not retrieve and read the full texts, so those characterizations are provisional. References #7, #9, #12, #13, #14, #16, #20 and #21 are supported by the specification's own descriptions or by retrieved text (URLs above). A definitive § 102 chart would require the full text, figures and claims of each reference.

I'll verify the disclosures of the key prior-art references of record before building the combination theory, since the obviousness analysis turns on what each reference actually teaches.

Now let me verify the remaining key references: the automated order/delivery and retrieval art, the portable shopper-terminal art, and the card-processing art.

Obviousness analysis of US 5,595,264 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Posture and caveats before I start. This is a retrospective/hypothetical validity study, not an ex parte reexamination or a contested proceeding. Per the earlier sections of this analysis, the patent expired 2014‑08‑23, ownership is recorded as Individual (Frank P. Trotta, Jr.), and I found no litigation of record. Nothing below should be read as a legal opinion of invalidity. Also, per the earlier flag (not repeated here), JP 5595264 B2 (Dentsply, dental cement) is a different document and plays no part in this analysis.

Where I could, I pulled the actual text of the references of record rather than relying on titles. Where I could not, I say so.

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1. The "as of" date and the statutory hooks

The '264 application was filed 1994‑08‑23 with no earlier domestic priority (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5595264/en). Absent evidence of an earlier invention date, the critical date for pre‑AIA § 102/§ 103 purposes is that filing date. That splits the 21 references of record plus the 7 "family cites" into four groups:

Two things matter here. First, US 5,468,942 (Ahold) is § 102(e) art by a four‑month margin (filed 1994‑04‑18 vs. the 1994‑08‑23 filing). Second, NL 9400743 — a self‑registration self‑service shop with a payment device, filed by Albert Heijn (the Ahold supermarket chain) three months before Trotta filed — is not § 102(a)/(b)/(e) art, but it is highly probative context: it shows a large, sophisticated retailer independently filed on the same concept in the same quarter. I've kept it out of the combination theories and used it only in § 8.

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2. Construing the limitations that actually carry the case

Claims 1 and 10 are the only independent claims. Every element but two is squarely in the prior art; the case turns on:

1. "accepting and retaining an authorized payment medium" + "thereafter, in exchange for the returned scanner means, returning the payment medium" (claim 1 steps (a) and (h)); and
2. the reciprocal custody tether in claim 10 — the release means "retaining the payment medium, until the return of said scanner means thereto."

Everything else (display showroom, select, scan bar code indicating price, transmit to a computer, running total, warehouse retrieval, debit the card, receipt) is conceded or near‑conceded prior art, as the specification's own Background section admits. That Background discussion of Bianco '614, Jenkins '281 and Clyne '3 133 is an applicant admission usable against the claims (In re Nomiya line of reasoning; MPEP 2129).

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3. Graham factor 1–2: scope and content of the prior art*, differences

Key disclosures I verified from primary text:

US 5,186,281 (NCR/Jenkins, granted 1993‑02‑16) — https://patents.google.com/patent/US5186281. A retail establishment with display panels 22 of sample articles in containers 44 with transparent doors; a customer applies a customer card to "ID means" (step (a) of its claim 1); the customer selects the article and "select[s] the quantity desired of said selected items" via keypad 70; a pre‑check terminal station 24; a product stocking area 26; an order accumulation area 28 with a customer order conveyor 32 and a per‑customer container; a terminal station 30; and a finalizing terminal 34 at which the customer's account is charged. This single reference discloses the entire "showroom + warehouse + pickup + charge the account" architecture, plus quantity selection.

US 5,468,942 (Ahold, granted 1995‑11‑21) — https://patents.google.com/patent/US5468942. This is the closest reference and the one the record shows was before the examiner. Verified text: a rack 2 with holders 10 and accommodating cavities 40 forming "a dispensing device for hand scanners"; "controllable locking means for locking or selectively releasing a hand scanner" (claim 4) implemented as a locking member 44 driven by an electromagnet 43; an identification device 15 with a card insertion slot 16 of a card reader 17 that "is adapted to electronically and/or magnetically recognize a card‑shaped pass" and "determin[es] the identity of a customer and subsequently clear[s] one of the scanning devices … for use by that customer"; the scanner is a barcode reader the customer uses himself; the rack "can serve not only as a dispensing device for hand scanners to be used but also as a receiving device for used hand scanners"; the customer hands the scanner in again; a computer 32; a receipt printer; and checkouts 30 as a settlement device. That is, in substance, claim 10's scanner means + holder means + release means + control means, and claim 1's steps (b), (e) and (f).

US 5,408,077 (Telxon, granted 1995‑04‑18) — https://patents.google.com/patent/US5408077. A hand‑carryable portable point‑of‑sale terminal with LCD 19, keyboard, magnetic card reader 23, printer 27, and first and second electromagnetic transceivers communicating over the air with a host computer and with a remote bar code scanner, the host link using spread spectrum modulation. That is claim 10's microprocessor means + transceiver means, and it independently supplies the wireless element that the '264 specification elsewhere admits was "well‑known in the prior art."

US 5,310,997 (Tandy, granted 1994‑05‑10) — https://patents.google.com/patent/US5310997. A pen‑based computer in RF communication with a controller, into which a customer identification number and merchandise item identification numbers are entered; item information is displayed; "command means for verifying selection of each selected item and for cancelling selection of selected item" (claim 16); a delivery method selection including "delivery to a package pick‑up area of said facility"; a warehouse pick request; a check‑out system … accepting payment; and a "reverse‑pick request" to cancel a previously issued pick when the record is modified. This maps almost word‑for‑word onto '264's dependent claims 3, 6, 7, 8 and 9.

US 5,047,614 (Bianco) — admitted in the '264 Background: portable terminal; list transmitted to a warehouse; order "manually or automatically packaged and moved to a pick‑up location along with the total invoice."

US 5,013,896 (NCR/Ono, granted 1991‑05‑07) — https://patents.google.com/patent/US5013896. A cashierless checkout in which the customer scans goods at an entry terminal, a passcard is issued, the customer pays at a physically separate money‑receiving terminal, and the passcard is checked and collected at the exit gate. It teaches (i) debiting/money‑receipt driven by a scanned record and (ii) collecting the customer's card as the condition of exit — the same "hold the token until the customer complies" mechanic as claim 1(h).

US 4,578,571 (Numa) — the portable bar‑code scanning device/method that the '264 specification expressly incorporates by reference for its bar‑code reader.

References I did not retrieve in full — US 4,373,133 (Clyne), US 4,929,819 (NCR), US 5,101,098 (Brother), US 5,361,871 (Digicomp), US 5,345,071 (Dumont), US 4,814,592 (Videomat), US 4,803,348 (Lohrey), US 3,532,184 / 3,716,697 / 3,737,631 / 3,746,130 / 3,836,755 / 3,920,100, US 5,183,142 (Ramy) — are characterized below only from their titles and the '264 Background, and should be treated as provisional. That limitation does not change the outcome, because Ahold '942 + Jenkins '281 + Telxon '077 are verified from primary text and are sufficient on their own.

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4. Combination A (primary): Ahold '942 + NCR '281 + Telxon '077 (+ Numa '571)

Claim 1 element chart

Claim 10 element chart

The same references supply the means‑plus‑function elements: scanner means (Numa '571 / '942), holder means ('942 rack 2, holders 10, cavities 40), release means retaining the medium until return ('942 locking means 44 + reader 17), microprocessor means (Telxon '077's terminal electronics), transceiver means (Telxon '077's dual spread‑spectrum/narrowband RF links to host and scanner), control means debiting ('281 finalizing terminal), and inventory retrieval means ('281 accumulation area 28 with conveyor 32 and per‑customer container). Every element of claim 10 is met by the three‑reference combination.

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5. Combination B and C (alternatives, for completeness)

Combination B — Bianco '614 + NCR '819 + NCR '896 + Ahold '942. Bianco supplies the portable terminal, the warehouse pick‑and‑pack, and the pickup location; NCR '819 (US 4,929,819) supplies customer‑performed scanning in self‑service shopping; NCR '896 supplies scan‑then‑settle with a collected token; Ahold '942 supplies the locking scanner dispenser. This combination has weaker coverage of the wireless transceiver element of claim 10, so it is a secondary theory for claims 1–9 only.

Combination C — the "semi‑automated store" genus + Telxon '077. US 3,532,184 (Blake, Semi‑automated store), US 3,746,130 (Bullas, Automated store system), US 3,737,631 (Super Key, Automatic checkout and inventory control), US 3,836,755 (Gretag, Self‑service shop), US 3,920,100 (Dunphy, Vending of articles) and US 3,716,697 (FMC, Automatic marketing system) together establish that a display‑only sales floor feeding an automated retrieval/warehouse and a pickup point, with automatic inventory adjustment, was a very old and settled architecture by 1974. Adding Clyne '3 133 (portable scanner + bill + item collection) and Videomat '592 / Lohrey '348 (storing, retrieving, and customer pickup) completes the environment; Telxon '077 completes the wireless handset. This combination is useful chiefly because it defeats any argument that the architecture of '264 was inventive — the architecture is 20+ years old.

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6. Motivation to combine (KSR/Graham factor 3)

A person having ordinary skill — a POS-systems engineer at a supermarket equipment vendor (NCR, Telxon, Symbol, Ahold) or a store operations engineer as of mid‑1994 — had abundant, articulated reasons to make each link:

1. Identical field and identical problem. All three references are in the retail checkout/POS art and all three name checkout congestion and labor cost as the problem. '942's stated object is a self‑service store dispenser "which further promotes a smooth processing of the stream of customers"; '281's objects are "to enable the automated purchase of selected articles" and to move purchased articles "from a storage area to an accumulation area"; '077's stated need is a POS terminal usable "at any selected site." When references address the same problem in the same field they are combinable as a matter of course.
2. Known problem in the art that the combination is designed to solve — loss/misplacement of the scanners. '942 exists precisely because hand scanners are valuable, movable, and must come back: its rack is "not only … a dispensing device … but also … a receiving device," and the identification device ties a named customer to a specific released scanner. Once a named customer is tied to a specific piece of store equipment, holding something of the customer's as security is the most predictable expedient available. That is the entire content of the "and retaining" and "returning the payment medium" limitations.
3. All components were off‑the‑shelf and performed their known functions. Card reader ('942), locking dispenser ('942), bar‑code hand scanner (Numa '571), RF handset ('077), networked POS computer ('281). Combining them yields nothing more than the predictable sum of their known functions — the classic Sakraida / Anderson's‑Black Rock situation, which KSR endorses as obvious.
4. Predictable result and no teaching away. I found no reference that teaches away from dispensing a scanner against a deposited/retained card; the art points uniformly toward tightening the customer‑to‑equipment link.
5. Finite set of predictable solutions. Given the need to ensure scanner return, the options were (i) attendant collection, (ii) ID‑with‑account‑chargeback, (iii) a deposit, or (iv) physical capture of a token until return. '942 already used (ii); (iii)/(iv) are the same family of expedients, making the claimed choice "obvious to try" in the KSR sense.
6. Contemporaneous independent filings. Ahold filed US 5,468,942 on 1994‑04‑18; Tandy's US 5,310,997 issued 1994‑05‑10; Albert Heijn filed NL 9400743 on 1994‑05‑04; Trotta filed 08/294,016 on 1994‑08‑23. A cluster of independent filings within four months is not a formal Graham factor, but it is strong circumstantial evidence that the solution lay within ordinary skill rather than being the product of inventive insight. (Courts treat "simultaneous invention" as corroborative of obviousness, not dispositive.)

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7. Dependent claims 2–9 and 11–13

Because every dependent claim adds only subject matter that was already conventional, they fall with claim 1:

• Claims 2, 5, 13 (return after debit; debit the total; running total then debit total after return): '281 (finalizing terminal computes and charges the total), '896 (total calculated at entry, paid later).
• Claim 3 (transmit to terminal means; record price on receipt; transmit selection to inventory retrieval system): '281 (pre‑check terminal 24, printer receipt, product stocking area 26, accumulation area 28) and Tandy '0997 (RF transaction record → warehouse pick request; receipt).
• Claims 4, 5 (repeat for additional items): inherent in every listed retail method, e.g. '281 and '0997.
• Claim 6 (confirm after returning the scanner — batch settlement): '281 (accumulation and finalizing terminal occur after all selection) and '896 (payment physically separated from and subsequent to scanning). Note that '264's own specification treats this as the alternative embodiment when the card is used only for identification, so it is disclosed as a mere alternative in the '264 text itself.
• Claims 7, 8, 12 (confirm each item before debiting; increase the quantity): Tandy '0997 claim 16 ("verifying selection of each selected item and … cancelling selection"); '281 keypad 70 expressly "used by the customer to enter into the system the quantity desired of the article selected." These are direct anticipatory‑quality hits.
• Claim 9 (retrieval system conveys item to a designated pickup location): '281 (order conveyor 32 → accumulation area 28 → per‑customer container → terminal station 30), Tandy '0997 ("delivery to a package pick‑up area of said facility"), Bianco '614 (warehouse → pick‑up location).
• Claim 11 (display shows price and item identity): Telxon '077's LCD 19 prompts and displays; Digicomp '871 (product information system for shoppers); Dumont '071 (shopper's purchase monitoring device).
• Claim 13 (running total; debit total after return): '281 and Telxon '077 in combination.

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8. The counter‑case, stated fairly

The strongest non‑obviousness arguments, and my assessment of each:

1. "No reference teaches retaining the card until the scanner is returned." This is the genuine point of novelty and the reason the case issued. The verified '942 text confirms card‑actuated release and scanner return to the same rack, but in the passages I retrieved it does not expressly say the pass is withheld until return. A patent owner would argue that in '942 the pass is returned immediately (or is the customer's permanent loyalty card), so the reciprocal exchange is absent. Response: (i) in '942 the pass is not the customer's permanent property in the way a loyalty card is — it is the object that identifies the customer to the system and is used at settlement; (ii) once the art teaches tying an identified customer to high‑value released equipment, withholding the customer's token until return is a known security expedient, and the § 102(b)/102(e) card art (Brother '098; NCR '896, where the passcard is collected at the exit gate) supplies both the retention and the "release only on compliance" mechanics. This argument is contestable, and it is the one place where a § 103 case would be fought.
2. Prior‑art status of '942. As § 102(e) art, '942 could be removed by a Rule 131 swearing‑behind if Trotta could corroborate an invention date before 1994‑04‑18. The record shows no such evidence, and in any event '942's Dutch priority date (Ahold's 1993 filing) and the Heijn activity suggest the art long predated the '264 filing. (Flag: I did not verify Ahold's foreign priority date.)
3. Secondary considerations. No evidence of long‑felt need, failure of others, unexpected results, commercial success, licensing, or copying appears in the record, and the patent issued 1997 as self‑scanning was in fact being deployed by Ahold, NCR and Symbol — the opposite of a long‑felt‑need‑then‑solution narrative. Any secondary‑consideration argument would also need a nexus to the retention limitation specifically, not to self‑scanning generally.
4. "The references are not analogous." Unavailable: all are in the retail checkout art and '942, '281 and '077 address the same congestion problem.
5. "The specification admits the components are old, but the combination is new." That is exactly the KSR posture in which predictable combinations of known elements are held obvious.

One unresolved discrepancy to record: the Google Patents citation table lists US 5,408,077 with a 1992‑07‑16 priority/filing date, while an independent inventor index (radaris.com) lists the granted patent's application as 08/233,033 filed 1994‑04‑25, which would imply the 1992 date is a parent application's. I could not resolve which date is the operative pre‑AIA § 102(e) date. It does not change the analysis — even 1994‑04‑25 precedes the 1994‑08‑23 filing. I am flagging it rather than silently picking one.

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9. Bottom line

On the verified record, claims 1 and 10 would be a close but, in my assessment, more‑likely‑than‑not obvious combination of:

US 5,468,942 (Ahold) as the primary reference (card‑actuated locking hand‑scanner dispenser that doubles as a return receptacle, with computer and receipt printer), in view of US 5,186,281 (NCR/Jenkins) (sample/display showroom, customer card ID, per‑item and quantity selection, pre‑check terminal, warehouse stocking and accumulation with conveyor and per‑customer container, finalizing terminal charging the customer's account), in further view of US 5,408,077 (Telxon) (portable bar‑code/RF terminal with magnetic card reader, LCD, and spread‑spectrum host link), and optionally US 4,578,571 (Numa), which the '264 specification itself incorporates.

The dependent claims are stronger § 103 cases than the independents, because several elements — quantity selection and per‑item confirm/cancel ('281 claim steps and keypad 70; Tandy '0997 claim 16), warehouse pick‑up delivery ('0997; '281 conveyor/accumulation; Bianco '614) — are disclosed with near‑anticipatory specificity.

The only materially vulnerable limitation is the express "retain the payment medium until the scanner is returned, then return it in exchange" reciprocity of claims 1(h) and 10. Everything else is admitted or squarely disclosed art. A well‑constructed § 103 case therefore rises or falls on whether the trier of fact accepts that card retention as a security deposit for released equipment is a predictable design choice in view of '942, '896 and '098 — which, on KSR's "known expedient performing its known function" standard, I think it is.

Confidence: high on the disclosure content of US 5,468,942, US 5,186,281, US 5,408,077, US 5,310,997 and US 5,013,896 (verified from primary text/PDF at the URLs above); medium on the characterizations of the references I could not retrieve in full (Clyne '3 133, NCR '819, Brother '098, Digicomp '871, Dumont '071, Videomat '592, Lohrey '348, and the 1968–1975 store‑automation genus); low on Ahold's foreign priority date and on which filing date controls for US 5,408,077. Any formal opinion should pull the full text of the unretrieved references before relying on the alternative Combinations B and C.