US 5640002

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number.

Let me verify the CAFC docket point and retrieve the abstract/claims text.

Summary — US Patent 5,640,002

Bibliographic data (from the fetched full text and search results)

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5640002/en ; https://FreePatentsOnline.com/5640002.html ; https://ie.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/citedDocuments?CC=US&NR=[6905072B2](/patent/6905072B2) ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/52/0f/23/c3870de25c3af3/EP1255217A3.pdf

Abstract — ⚠️ uncertainty flag

I was not able to retrieve the verbatim abstract text in the search results returned to me; the pages I hit returned the "Definitions"/description sections instead. I therefore decline to reproduce an abstract as if it were authoritative. What the record does show is that the disclosure is a handheld "Personal Information Device" / "Personal Scanner™" that combines CCD barcode scanning with RF ID tag interrogation, a touchscreen, IR and spread-spectrum RF communication, and a docking/charging base unit (specification structure, FIGS. 16–26 and 43–44). Treat any abstract quoted elsewhere as needing independent verification against the printed patent.

Overview of the independent claims (plain language)

The claim set I captured includes independent claims 1 and 6, plus dependent claims 2–5. Note: my captured copy of claims 1 and 6 is partially elided in the source fragments, so the preamble wording below is reconstructed from the visible elements rather than quoted verbatim.

• Claim 1 — handheld scanner + RFID reader with paid-item deactivation. A portable information gathering apparatus with a hand-carried housing containing a barcode scan engine, a display, a memory, a touchscreen input device superimposed over the display, and a microcomputer controlling all of them (storing decoded barcode characters, driving the display, and taking control input from the touchscreen). Added to that is an RF ID tag reader whose transmitter both powers and commands a passive RFID tag (an IC with no power supply of its own), causing the tag to transmit product information back. The microcomputer interrogates tags and stores the returned product information, and — notably — also drives the reader to write "paid for" data into the tags of purchased items so those tags will not trip store-exit RFID security alarms.

• (Dependent 2–5) Add, respectively: a thermal printer under microcomputer control; an infrared transceiver for sending/receiving modulated IR data; a rechargeable battery with contacts plus a detachable base unit with a power converter (AC→DC) to charge the battery and power the device; and a base unit having a LAN interface to a host computer plus an IR transceiver in line-of-sight with the portable unit's transceiver, so data downloads to the host over the base unit.

• Claim 6 — independent, directed to the docked/charging architecture. A portable information gathering apparatus that likewise includes the hand-carried housing, display, memory, touchscreen, and microcomputer, and that additionally requires an infrared transceiver (send and receive modulated IR) and a rechargeable battery with electrical contacts cooperating with a detachable mating base unit whose power converter supplies DC charging/power — and whose base unit carries a LAN interface circuit to a host computer with an IR transceiver positioned for line-of-sight communication, with the microcomputer programmed to download information to the host upon a download command.

Claims beyond 6 may exist; I did not retrieve the full claim set, so the total claim count is uncertain. Notably, the claim language differs in emphasis from the specification, which is largely directed to consumer self-scanning shopping (price-list download, running totals, coupon matching, fuzzy-logic shopping-list matching, budget tracking, credit-card payment, and even real-estate listing scanning).

CAFC 2026 docket check — negative result

I searched for a 2026 Federal Circuit appeal involving this patent and found none. Queries combining "5640002" with Federal Circuit/2026 appeals returned unrelated matters (e.g., PTAB discretionary-denial lists, other parties' briefs, and a GEM Products, LLC v. Rupp Marine, Inc. appeal, Fed. Cir. No. 2026-1817, which involves the unrelated "Rupp Marine," not this patent). I also found no district-court infringement assertion of US 5,640,002. This is consistent with the patent having expired 2015-08-15 for failure to pay maintenance fees and being held by an individual assignee.

Confidence: High on the bibliographic data (corroborated across Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, Espacenet and the EPO annex). Medium on the claim-1/claim-6 preambles (source fragments were elided). Low/unknown on the abstract, which I could not verify verbatim. No CAFC 2026 docket for this patent exists in the results I retrieved — I cannot positively rule out a docket that is not indexed by public search, so treat that as a negative-search finding rather than certainty.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 5640002.

Let me search litigation databases directly.

Let me check litigation-specific databases.

Bottom line

I found no evidence of any litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 5,640,002. Based on the searches I was able to run, there is no known infringement suit, declaratory judgment action, ITC investigation, or PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR/CBM) asserting or challenging this patent. I want to be explicit that this is a "no results found" answer rather than a confirmed negative — I could not directly query PACER, Docket Navigator, or the Unified Patents case list (the latter returned only a patent-record page, not a case list), so I cannot rule out an unindexed or very old case.

What I searched and what came back

What the searches did surface (useful context, but not litigation)

• The patent itself: U.S. 5,640,002, "Portable RF ID tag and barcode reader," Ruppert et al., filed Aug. 15, 1995, issued June 17, 1997, Appl. No. 08/515,257, original assignee SCAN-EM CORP, later assigned to Jonathan P. Ruppert (2008).
• Status per Google Patents: Expired – Fee Related, anticipated expiration Aug. 15, 2015. A patent that lapsed for failure to pay maintenance fees and expired in 2015 is an unlikely candidate for recent assertion.
• Third-party citation only: The patent appears repeatedly as an [A] category reference in EPO/PCT search reports and as a cited prior-art reference in other patents (e.g., EP 0 919 971 A3, WO 99/045493 A3, WO 2004/059598 A1). These are prior-art citations, not litigation.

Important caveats about my search

1. No live PACER/Docket Navigator/CourtListener API access was used for a definitive docket query, so an old suit filed and terminated before broad docket digitization (the patent's relevant window is roughly 1997–2015) could exist without appearing in general search results.
2. The absence of hits is consistent with the patent's history: a shopper self-scanning patent from a small entity (SCAN-EM Corp. / individual inventors), expired for fee non-payment in 2015, with no large commercial licensor or NPE asserting it.
3. All identifiers were treated literally: I looked only for 5,640,002 / US5640002, and did not substitute near-neighbors such as US 5,640,020, US 5,640,024, or the unrelated JP5640002B2 or the various "564" patents (e.g., U.S. 10,298,564) that appeared in the search results.

Recommended verification steps (to convert this into a definitive answer)

• PACER Case Locator / CourtListener RECAP: search party names Ruppert, Fish, Yap, Ames, Scan-Em Corp., and patent number "5640002."
• USPTO Patent Assignment / litigation docket and USPTO PTAB (IPR/PGR/CBM) search for Patent No. 5,640,002.
• Docket Navigator or Unified Patents Portal → Litigation → Case List, searching the exact patent number.

If you'd like, I can draft the exact query strings for each of those databases, or — if you have access — you can run them and I can help interpret the results.

If no litigation exists (my working conclusion), the correct answer to your question is: no litigation is known involving U.S. Patent No. 5,640,002, and therefore no plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome can be provided.

I'll start by verifying whether any AIA trial proceedings exist for this patent, since the structured ODP block reports none.

The first pass surfaced mostly noise (note: hits referring to "the '564 patent" in Philips ITC matters are U.S. 10,298,564 — an unrelated patent). Let me run targeted checks on this specific patent and its owner.

Let me check for district court enforcement activity, defensive-aggregator filings, and any USPTO reexamination history, since those are the places an AIA trial would surface.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings on file. The USPTO Open Data Portal's structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition against US 5,640,002, and my independent web checks surfaced no petition, institution decision, final written decision, or Federal Circuit appeal naming this patent. The breakdown is therefore 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials — the defensive posture is not "hardened patent" but moot patent: US 5,640,002 issued 1997-06-17 from an application filed 1995-08-15, reached its 20-year term on 2015-08-15 (Google Patents lists status "Expired – Fee Related," anticipated expiration 2015-08-15), so there is nothing left to invalidate and no live damages window for a demand letter to leverage.

No proceedings to report individually

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} to populate. Rather than fabricate one, here is what I checked and what I found:

• Structured ODP data (canonical source): no AIA trial proceedings. This is the authoritative list for this task.
• Web search for IPR/PGR/CBM on "5,640,002" / "US5640002": no hits. Every appearance of this patent in the search results is as a cited prior-art reference in other parties' patents and prosecution files — e.g., KR 10-0885432 (Nokia), WO 2013/021233, WO 2016/189096, DE 19924161, and the EP 1 255 217 / EP 0919971 search reports. Being cited as prior art is not a PTAB proceeding.
• Web search for enforcement activity by SCAN-EM CORP / Ruppert / Fish / Yap / Ames: nothing. Google Patents shows a 2008-06-14 assignment from SCAN'EM CORPORATION to Jonathan P. Ruppert, and no litigation is surfaced. No identified petitioner, and no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, etc.) in the chain. — flagging as not fully verified: absence of litigation hits in general web search is weaker evidence than absence of PTAB hits in ODP.
• Federal Circuit / CourtListener: no appeal found, which is expected given there is no FWD to appeal.

⚠️ False-positive trap — read this before docketing. Searching for "the '564 patent" returns a large volume of PTAB papers, ITC briefing (Inv. No. 337-TA-823 line and successor Philips matters), and district court briefing. Those references are to U.S. Patent No. 10,298,564 (Philips), an unrelated patent about HDCP round-trip-time authentication. Sample hits: ptacts.uspto.gov/.../petitions/1545103, ptacts.uspto.gov/.../petitions/1546667. None of that is US 5,640,002. If opposing counsel's chart or a vendor docket cites "'564 IPRs" against your client, verify the number — the '564 they mean is almost certainly the Philips patent, not Ruppert's barcode reader.

Strategic summary

Claim status. No claim of US 5,640,002 has been canceled, narrowed, or confirmed by the PTAB, because no claim was ever challenged there. Every claim is simultaneously "untested" (no PTAB record) and largely irrelevant (expired). I could not verify the exact claim set from the authoritative full text in a form I'd want to state with high confidence — the OCR of the claim set I retrieved shows at least apparatus claim 1 (hand-held housing, barcode scan engine, display, touchscreen, microcomputer, and a passive-RF-ID-tag reader/writer that writes "paid for" data into tags) and a second independent apparatus claim 6, with dependent claims addressing a thermal printer (claim 2), an infrared transceiver (claim 3), a rechargeable battery plus detachable base unit (claim 4), and a base-unit LAN interface (claim 5). I am flagging that claim listing as secondary-source and not relied on for any legal conclusion.

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a non-issue here — estoppel attaches only to petitioners who obtain an FWD, and there is no petitioner. That cuts against a defendant in one narrow sense: there is no free invalidity roadmap from a prior IPR to inherit. But it is irrelevant in practice, because the far stronger bars are (a) expiration and (b) the 6-year § 286 damages lookback, which cannot reach any period when the patent was in force if a demand letter arrived now.

Pattern signals. No repeat-petitioner pattern, no patent-owner PTAB appeals (there was nothing to appeal), no aggregator involvement. The notable pattern is institutional: a 1995-filed shopping-cart self-scanner patent that lapsed for fee reasons in 2015 and was never asserted in an AIA trial. The absence of PTAB activity here is not the usual "well-asserted patents attract IPRs" signal — it's the signal of a patent that was never worth asserting.

Recommended next steps

1. If you received a demand letter citing US 5,640,002 — the patent is expired, and that is the whole defense.

• Confirm status at the source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5640002/en (status "Expired – Fee Related"; anticipated expiration 2015-08-15), and independently confirm the term calculation and any maintenance-fee lapse in USPTO Patent Center (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/).
• An expired patent cannot be infringed. Damages under 35 U.S.C. § 286 reach back only six years from suit, and there is no unexpired term to enjoin. Any demand premised on this patent should be rejected outright, not negotiated.
• Because no PTAB activity exists, there is no FWD to quote and no PTAB E2E link to cite. Do not point to PTAB papers in your response — a citation to a "'564 IPR" will almost certainly be the Philips patent and will damage your credibility.

2. Verify the numbers before you respond. If the letter or a chart cites proceedings on "the '564 patent," confirm the patent number digit-for-digit (5,640,002 vs. 10,298,564). See the false-positive note above and the ITC/PTAB filings at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ and the ITC EDIS docket for Inv. No. 337-TA-823-line matters.

3. Search the record yourself for the two things I could not fully close out. I found no evidence of, but cannot affirmatively rule out, (i) an ex parte reexamination or (ii) pre-AIA district court litigation asserting this patent in the 1997–2008 window. ODP's "PTAB proceedings" list does not cover reexaminations, so a clean ODP result does not resolve (i). Run a PAIR/Patent Center transaction-history check and a CourtListener docket search (https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%225640002%22) to close the loop.

4. If you are defending on a different patent in this family. The Ruppert/Fish/Yap/Ames family around RF-ID-plus-barcode handhelds is prior art against others — it is cited in exactly that role by Nokia, by Samsung-adjacent filings, and in multiple PCT search reports. Its highest and best use to you is as a § 102/§ 103 reference against a later-issued patent, not as a target.

Confidence statement: I have high confidence that no AIA trial proceeding exists against US 5,640,002 — the canonical ODP list says none, the patent expired in 2015, and targeted searches produced no petition or decision. I have moderate confidence that no reexamination or pre-2008 litigation exists, and I have not been able to verify the complete official claim set. Do not treat the absence of PTAB activity as evidence of a strong patent; here it reflects a patent that lapsed and was never asserted in an AIA trial.

I'll verify the chain against live sources before writing up the record.

US 5640002 — Ownership Chain Reconstruction

Data-availability caveat up front: I was unable to retrieve the Assignment Center records directly (the USPTO Assignment Search interface is not retrievable through the tools available to me, and no reel/frame numbers appear in any indexed source I could reach). Everything below is grounded in the Google Patents legal-events record as fetched 2026-09-24 from https://patents.google.com/patent/US5640002/en. Reel/frame numbers and correspondents of record are therefore missing from this report — that is a data gap, not a finding, and I flag it rather than infer it. Verify at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

Inventors

Per the Google Patents bibliographic record and the 1995-08-15 assignment record (US08/515,257, filed 1995-08-15):

Unusual patterns:

• Employer allocation of relative rights is by inference, not by statement. I found no employment agreements or SEC-type disclosure; the only evidence that all four were Scan-Em personnel is that all four assigned to SCAN-EM CORP in a single instrument at filing.
• Geographic split of the team. Three inventors are in the Santa Clara / Morgan Hill, CA corridor; Ames is in Aurora, CO. That is a far-flung-design-team pattern, sometimes consistent with contract engineering, but I have no engagement documents and will not characterize it further.
• No "inventor exit" signal in the 12 months post-filing. All four assigned to the company at filing and no inventor-directed transfer appears until 2008 (see below), so the "inventors depart, then fire-sale" precursor is not observable here.

Original assignee

SCAN-EM CORP (also rendered in the record as "SCAN'EM CORPORATION"), original assignee of record and the assignee named on the issued patent.

• Line of business: handheld barcode / RF-ID "Personal Scanner™" and "Personal Information Device (PID)" hardware for self-scanning grocery checkout. The specification describes the physical product in detail (FIGS. 16–23; on-board Seiko-Epson MTP201-G128B thermal printer; HSDL-1000 IR transceiver; PCMCIA Type I/II/III slot; charging base unit) and refers at FIG. 16 to "a commercial embodiment of a Personal Information Device (PID) according to the teachings of the invention." That is the specification's own characterization of a commercial product, not independently corroborated market evidence.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Unclear. The specification's "commercial embodiment" language plus the level of mechanical/electrical detail (down to vendor part numbers and a designed docking station) indicates a product program that was at minimum near-production. I found no independent evidence of retail deployment, and no revenue, catalog, or FCC ID record.
• Current status: No trace found. The determinative datum is the 2008 transfer of the patent out of SCAN'EM CORPORATION to a single named inventor (Google Patents legal event, 2008-06-14). A 15-year-old single-patent company conveying its crown asset to an individual co-founder is consistent with wind-down/dissolution, but I have no bankruptcy filing, no state dissolution record, and no SEC filing — so "dissolved/dormant" is an inference from the transfer, explicitly labeled as such.
• Note the patent itself reached end of life as "Expired – Fee Related" with legal-status "Anticipated expiration 2015-08-15" — i.e., it lapsed for non-payment of maintenance fees rather than being asserted to term.

Assignment timeline

Two recorded transfers exist in the Google Patents legal-events record. Reel/frame and correspondent are not exposed by that source and I could not obtain them; I am not going to invent them.

• 1995-08-15 (executed) / recorded date not exposed — Reel not retrievable

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (expressly, per record text: "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: Ronald Craig Fish; Jonathan Paul Ruppert; Thomas Allan Yap; Ronald Merle Ames (all four, jointly)
  • Assignee: SCAN-EM CORP
  • Correspondent: not retrievable — cannot assess recurrence
  • Context: Founding-company assignment — all four inventors convey their rights to the employer-entity at filing, the standard new-company capitalization event.

• 2008-06-14 (date as recorded by Google Patents; whether this is execution or recording date is not determinable from the source) / recorded date not exposed — Reel not retrievable

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest ("ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: SCAN'EM CORPORATION (note the apostrophe variant in the assignment record vs. "SCAN-EM CORP" on the patent face — same entity, differing transcription)
  • Assignee: RUPPERT, JONATHAN P (the first-named inventor, taking as an individual, not through an entity)
  • Correspondent: not retrievable — cannot assess recurrence
  • Context: Corporate wind-down / asset return to founder. The patent was then ~11 years post-issuance and ~7 years from expiry, being conveyed back to a named inventor with no intervening licensee, aggregator, or holding entity. Google Patents currently lists "RUPPERT JONATHAN P" as current assignee.

No records of any kind were found for: any assignment to an "IP/Holdings/Licensing/Ventures"-suffixed entity; any assignment to Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or any Spangenberg-linked entity; any transfer to RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN; any security agreement, license, merger, or release instrument.

⚠️ Verification request to close the gap: the two items above should be confirmed with reel/frame and correspondent pulled from Assignment Center. The correspondent is the single highest-value missing datum in this file — if a repeat-player NPE-recording attorney appears on the 2008 entry, the reading of that transaction changes materially.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5640002
    1995 : Four inventors file application
         : All rights assigned to Scan Em Corp
    1997 : US patent issues
    2008 : Reassigned to inventor Jonathan P Ruppert
    2015 : Patent lapses for unpaid maintenance fee

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No entity with an "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix ever appears in the chain. The only post-issuance transfer (2008-06-14) moved the patent from a corporation to a natural person, the inverse of the shell-formation pattern. No single-member Delaware/Texas LLC, no registered-agent service address, and no commercial-product gap to exploit (the patent was 7 years from expiry). Cite: Google Patents legal event 2008-06-14.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Neither assignee of record (SCAN-EM CORP; Jonathan P. Ruppert, individually) matches any entity on the Acacia / Marathon / IV / IPNav / Wi-LAN / Mosaid-Conversant / Vringo / Pendrell / Innovatio / MPHJ / Lumen View / Round Rock / Document Generation Corp lists, nor did any entity surfaced by Unified Patents or RPX appear. Neither name appeared in any of the assertion-oriented sources I searched.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear, and unassessable on current data. Correspondent of record is not exposed by Google Patents legal events and I could not reach Assignment Center. With only two links in the chain and neither party being an entity, the a priori likelihood of an NPE-recording repeat player is low — but I will not call this "not present" when I simply could not read the field.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. There are two recorded transfers, 13 years apart (1995-08-15 → 2008-06-14). The chained-LLC-in-under-24-months pattern requires shared correspondent addresses, shared correspondents, or common principals — none visible, and the second link terminates at an individual rather than feeding another entity.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. I located no infringement litigation ever naming US 5640002. The 2008 transfer precedes expiry by seven years and precedes nothing litigable; the patent's late term ran unasserted. (Note for the record: I did surface an E.D. Tex. RFID/retail-inventory case from 2006 against Wal-Mart, Gillette, and Target — that suit involved US 5,865,563, a 2005 patent, not this patent. Do not conflate them.)

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — unclear. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding involving SCAN-EM CORP was located, and there is no Kodak/Nortel/Polaroid-style sale. The 2008 conveyance of a near-expiry patent by a dormant-looking corporation to its own named inventor is consistent with a quiet wind-down but is not documented as a bankruptcy sale. Because the asset moved to an insider rather than to a buyer, this is the weakest possible version of the signal even if a proceeding were later found.

7. Privateering — not present. Privateering requires an operating company conveying rights to an NPE that asserts on its behalf. Here nothing was conveyed to any NPE, and nothing was ever asserted. There is no SEC 10-K/8-K (Scan-Em was not public as far as I can determine) and no Patent Progress/EFF coverage involving this patent number.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, and OIN appear nowhere in the chain. The chain terminates at an individual. However, note the practical inverse: the patent is recorded as "Expired – Fee Related" with legal-status entry 2015-08-15 Anticipated expiration. Whatever offensive value it had has been neutralized by its own abandonment, not by a defensive purchase.

Additional observation, clearly labeled as inference: the reassignment to Ruppert in June 2008 fell within roughly six months of the opening of the 11.5-year maintenance-fee window (due 2008-12-17 on a 1997-06-17 grant). That proximity is suggestive of a controlled lapse — the founder taking a patent the company had decided not to maintain — but I found no fee-payment record confirming the lapse date, so treat this as a lead to check, not as evidence.

Verdict

Insufficient data.

The record contains exactly two ownership events, both of which I can date but neither of which I can fully document: the 1995-08-15 founder assignment to SCAN-EM CORP and a 2008-06-14 assignment from SCAN'EM CORPORATION to the inventor Jonathan P. Ruppert individually. With no reel/frame and no correspondent of record obtainable, signal 3 — the one signal most likely to change the picture — cannot be evaluated, which is precisely the "no records / incomplete records" condition this verdict is reserved for.

Bearing the caveat in mind, the affirmative evidence points away from an NPE: a two-link chain spanning 13 years, terminating at a natural person rather than a licensing entity, with the patent recorded "Expired – Fee Related" at the 2015-08-15 term end and no infringement suit found naming US 5640002 in any source I searched. If the reel/frame and correspondent pulled from Assignment Center confirm only these two entries with no aggregator or repeat-player filer, the file should be re-scored as an expired single-patent operating-company asset with no NPE involvement — a clean negative rather than a troll finding.

Verify the chain directly: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 5640002) or the legacy index at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html.

I'll research US patent 5640002 and its cited prior art references.

Let me get the specific "References Cited" section from the patent's front page.

Let me search for the specific references cited on the face of US 5,640,002.

Identification Confirmed — US 5,640,002

Before the prior-art analysis, I must flag an important limitation and then give you what I could verify.

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5640002/en

⚠️ Limitation on the "References Cited" list

I was not able to retrieve the complete statutory "References Cited / U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS" list that appears on the printed front page (56) of US 5,640,002. My searches returned (a) the patent's own text and claims, (b) the large body of forward citations (later patents citing 5640002), and (c) foreign search-report citations of 5640002 — but not the examiner's/backward reference list printed on the patent face.

Per your strict rule, I will not invent reference numbers, dates, or anticipatory mappings. Everything below is either (1) directly verified from the patent text, or (2) explicitly flagged as unverified.

Verified prior art expressly cited in the patent specification

The full text of US 5,640,002 contains exactly one patent document incorporated by reference:

US 4,204,636 — Hayman

• Full citation: U.S. Pat. No. 4,204,636 to Hayman, "bar code scanner" (cited in the specification as an alternative to the CCD scan engine).
• Date: U.S. patents in the 4,204,xxx series issued in 1980 (May 1980). I have not verified this date from a primary source in this session — treat the exact issue date as unconfirmed.
• Brief description: A bar code scanning device offered as an alternative bar-code scanner design; the specification states: "Other bar code scanners will also work such as the bar code scanner disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 4,204,636 to Hayman, which is hereby incorporated by reference."
• Potential § 102 relevance: Only the bar-code scanning element. As cited, it could at most bear on the "barcode scan engine ... capable of scanning barcodes and decoding and outputting alphanumeric characters" limitation of claim 1 and its dependents. It does not appear to disclose the RF ID tag reader, touchscreen, or the paid-for-tag deactivation feature that distinguish claim 1 — so a § 102 anticipation theory on Hayman alone is not supportable on the face of the record.

Non-patent technical references incorporated by reference (background art)

These are commercial/official documents the applicant incorporated by reference. They are technically "prior art" in the specification but are not the statutory patent citations you asked for, and I have not verified their publication dates:

• Photonics (San Jose, Calif.) infrared transceiver — data-communication interface.
• IEEE 802.11 Wireless Networking Work Group — infrared/radio wireless transmission.
• Densei Nippon Electric Industries (Tokyo) — CCD bar code scanner, Model BCH5532 Bar Code Reader.
• Disys Inc. (Toronto, Canada) — 90 Series RF ID tags; "90 Series RF/ID System Applications Manual for CRM-90 Readers and 90 Series Tags."
• Hughes ID Corporation (Mission Viejo, Calif.) — RF ID tags and reader/writer circuits.
• Atmel Corp. (Colorado Springs, Colo.); Eurosil (Daimler Benz, Munich); Indala (Motorola, San Jose); AEG Telefunken (Daimler Benz division) — RF ID tags and reader/writer IC sets.
• Hewlett-Packard (Santa Clara, Calif.) — HSDL-1000 infrared module; HP2310 series bar-code decoder chip.
• Seiko-Epson (Japan) — thermal printer Model MTP201-G128B; Seiko Instruments LCD G321EX5B00X and touchscreen.
• Touch Tech / Inforite Corp. (San Mateo, Calif.) — signature-capture overlay screens.
• Proxim, Inc. (Mountain View, Calif.) and Wireless Logic, Inc. (San Jose, Calif.) — RF transceivers.
• Global Equipment (Oakland, Calif.) — Kobota FP900 series scale.

Forward citations (context only — NOT § 102 anticipatory art)

The search results show US 5,640,002 is heavily cited by later patents (e.g., 6,314,406; 6,400,272; 7,392,945; 8,032,453; 6,757,553). These are not prior art against 5,640,002 because they post-date its 1995-08-15 priority date. I mention them only to correct a possible confusion between "cited by" (forward) and "references cited" (backward) lists.

What I recommend to complete your request

To build an accurate § 102 claim-by-claim anticipation chart, we need the face-of-patent (56) reference list. You can pull it directly from:

1. USPTO PatentCenter / Public PAIR for application 08/515,257 → "References Cited" and "Foreign References."
2. Google Patents > US5640002 > "Citations" tab (Patent Citations / Non-Patent Citations).
3. FreePatentsOnline page https://FreePatentsOnline.com/5640002.html (front-page "References Cited" block).
4. USPTO PTAB/EPO search reports referencing US 5 640 002 (e.g., WO 2005086073, WO 2004036490, EP 1 255 217), which list the examiner-considered art.

Honest bottom line: On the evidence I actually retrieved, the only patent document expressly identified as prior art in the four corners of US 5,640,002 is US 4,204,636 to Hayman, and it can only be mapped to the bar-code-scanning limitation of claim 1 — not to the RF-ID/touchscreen/paid-for-tag elements. I could not verify the examiner-cited (56) list, and I am declining to fabricate citations, dates, or anticipation mappings for references I did not actually retrieve. If you can supply the (56) list (or approve a direct PatentCenter lookup), I'll produce the full per-reference § 102 chart you requested.

I'll start by pulling the claim text and the prior-art citation records for US 5,640,002 so the analysis is grounded in specific references.

I have partial claim text. Let me retrieve the full claim set and the cited prior-art reference list.

Let me retrieve the front-page U.S. references cited in the patent itself, plus key related pre-1995 art.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Pat. No. 5,640,002 ("Portable RF ID Tag and Barcode Reader")

1. Record limitations and confidence flags (read first)

• The document I was given (fetched from https://patents.google.com/patent/US5640002/en on 2026‑09‑24) is truncated. It ends mid‑description at FIG. 26M and does not contain the patent's own "References Cited" list, the claims, or the prosecution history. I therefore cannot reproduce the examiner's cited art or the applicant's remarks.
• The only "Prior Art" metadata present on the supplied page is the auto‑generated Prior art keywords: data, portable information, information gathering, block, tag. These are Google‑generated search terms, not references; they do, however, map onto the claim preamble ("portable information gathering apparatus") and the RFID limitation.
• Full claim text was obtained from FreePatentsOnline (https://FreePatentsOnline.com/5640002.html) via search; claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5 and a fragment of 6 were retrieved. I could not confirm the total claim count.
• Where I rely on a reference I could not open directly in this session, I say so explicitly. Nothing below should be treated as a legal conclusion; legal status shown is "Expired – Fee Related" (anticipated expiration 2015‑08‑15).

2. Claim 1 deconstructed

Claim 1 (as retrieved) is a single independent apparatus claim. Its limitations:

Dependent/related claims: 2 (thermal printer), 3 (IR transceiver, bi‑directional), 4 (rechargeable battery + detachable base unit with AC→DC power converter/charging contacts), 5 (base unit with LAN interface + IR transceiver in line‑of‑sight with the portable unit's IR transceiver, download-on‑command), 6 (independent apparatus claim emphasizing the IR‑transceiver + rechargeable‑battery + detachable‑base combination).

Key observation: the specification itself concedes that essentially every hardware block is off‑the‑shelf. It names Densei (CCD scan engine BCH5532), Hewlett‑Packard (HSDL‑1000 IR module), Disys Inc. (90 Series RF ID tags and "90 Series RF/ID System Applications Manual for CRM‑90 Readers and 90 Series Tags"), Hughes ID Corp., Atmel, Eurosil/Daimler‑Benz, Indala (Motorola), AEG Telefunken, Photonics (IR transceiver), Seiko‑Epson (MTP201‑G128B thermal printer), Inforite/Touch Tech (touchscreens), Proxim and Wireless Logic (RF transceivers), plus the PCMCIA standards. It also expressly incorporates U.S. Pat. No. 4,204,636 to Hayman (bar code scanner) by reference. Under §103 these admissions are prior art against the claims whether or not they were cited on the front page.

3. Candidate prior art (with dates and grounding)

Solidly grounded, pre‑1995:

Retrieved but unverified as to content:

• U.S. 5,382,784 (Eberhardt), 17 Jan 1995 — cited as X art in EPO search report EP 02 25 2460. My recollection is that this is a hand‑held dual‑technology reading head for both bar codes and RF identification tags (Indala). If that is correct, it is the single most damaging reference against the barcode‑plus‑RFID combination in claim 1. I could not verify the disclosure in this session; treat as a lead, not a finding.
• U.S. 5,543,607 (Akimoto), 6 Aug 1996 — cited as A art in EP0903683A3. Issued after the 15 Aug 1995 filing date; potentially §102(e)/§103 art only if its filing predates the '002 filing. Content unverified.
• EP 0 918 085‑family EAS references (US 4,686,513 Farrar; US 5,264,829 Paul; EP 0 798 681 Sensormatic; EP 0 020 062 Parmeko; EP 0 449 173 Braehler) — surfaced as A art in EP0919971A3; relevant to alarm‑at‑exit/EAS deactivation, but I did not verify each.

4. Obviousness combinations

Combination A — Claims 1 (1a–1h), 2, 3

Primary: IBM "Grocery Buggy" (1988) or Kipp U.S. 5,250,789, in view of the admitted CCD scan engine art (Densei BCH5532 / Hayman '636) and a passive RF‑ID reader/writer system (Disys CRM‑90 or Hughes ID).

• "Grocery Buggy"/Kipp disclose the portable, hand‑carried/cart‑mounted information‑gathering terminal with scan engine, display, memory and microcomputer — limitations 1a–1f and 1h's storage function, and motivation (faster checkout, shopper‑assisted item entry).
• The admitted commercial systems supply 1g in full: the specification states that the RF ID tag "is powered by power derived from rectification of incoming RF signals" and that "the RF ID reader/writer unit 314 knows the unlock sequence … and transmits that sequence plus interrogation or other commands," with "Read Word n / Write Word n" commands — i.e., a reader whose transmitter both powers and commands a passive IC tag and receives product data back.
• Motivation to combine: both Kipp/IBM and the applicant frame the problem identically — get item identity into a portable terminal without a clerk. A POSA facing grocery items that carry either bar codes (low‑value, ubiquitous) or RF tags (higher‑value, EAS‑relevant) would combine two known reading technologies into one hand‑held housing because it (i) eliminates a second device, (ii) allows mixed inventories, and (iii) yields nothing more than the predictable aggregation of two known readers with a known microcomputer bus. KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007): combination of familiar elements according to known methods, yielding predictable results, is obvious.
• Dependent claim 2 (thermal printer): the specification itself names a commercially available Seiko‑Epson MTP201‑G128B and analogizes to the TI‑59 print cradle. Portable data terminals with integral printers were a recognized class (see, e.g., the "PORTABLE WORK STATION‑TYPE DATA COLLECTION SYSTEM," U.S. 5,710,728, retrieved as an exhibit; date of its underlying filing not verified). Adding a printer to print receipts/coupons is a predictable, market‑driven addition.
• Dependent claim 3 (IR transceiver): admitted — Photonics IR transceiver, HP HSDL‑1000 (1 cm–1 m, 30° cone, 2.4–115.2 KBd, IrDA‑compatible), and the applicant's citation of the IEEE 802.11 working group. Point‑to‑point IR data transfer between a portable terminal and a fixed host was a standard, well‑understood substitution for a cable.

Combination B — Claim 1 (the RFID subcombination specifically)

Eberhardt U.S. 5,382,784 (if confirmed as a dual‑technology bar‑code/RF‑ID hand‑held reading head) in view of Kipp/IBM "Grocery Buggy" and the admitted Disys/Hughes reader‑writer systems.

If Eberhardt '784 discloses a hand‑held head that reads both symbologies, claim 1's 1b + 1g combination is met by a single reference, and only 1e (touchscreen) and 1i remain — the touchscreen being admitted commercial art (Inforite/Touch Tech) and 1i addressed below.

Combination C — Claim 1 limitation 1i ("write paid data so exit readers don't alarm")

Grocery Buggy/Kipp + admitted RFID reader/writer commands (Write Word n) + electronic article surveillance (EAS) deactivation art (e.g., Farrar U.S. 4,686,513; Sensormatic EP 0 798 681; and the '002 specification's own discussion of magnetic security‑strip deactivation by permanent magnets 120/122 or switched DC electromagnets).

• EAS tags were already deactivated at the point of sale; the '002 specification devotes several paragraphs to exactly this (magnets mounted at the scan window, switched only when the scan button is pressed to prevent abuse), which is an admission that "neutralize the alarm at exit upon payment" was a known requirement.
• Given a writable passive tag (the admitted Disys tags accept "Write Word n"), writing a paid‑status datum instead of magnetically killing the strip is a substitution of one known deactivation mechanism for another, producing the same predictable result (no alarm at exit). The functional language "such that said RF ID tags do not cause activation of store alarms" recites the intended result of that substitution, not a new structure.

Combination D — Claims 4, 5 and 6 (base unit, charging, LAN, IR docking)

Portable terminal of Combination A/B + conventional docking/charging cradle art + LAN drop.

• Claim 4 is a charging cradle with an AC→DC converter and mating contacts — ubiquitous (the specification itself refers to a TI‑59 print cradle; the retrieved U.S. 5,710,728 lists U.S. 4,845,419 (Hacker), a battery‑charging reference).
• Claim 5 adds an IR transceiver aligned with the portable unit's IR window and connected to a LAN interface: the specification describes precisely such a base unit (base unit 312 with an IR transceiver behind a window in charging unit 316, plus an RF module/LAN interface card). Combining a known cradle with a known IrDA link and a known Ethernet/LAN interface to a host is a routine, predictable aggregation; the only added feature is a "download command" flag, i.e., software.
• Claim 6, as retrieved, is essentially the claim‑1 housing/display/memory/touchscreen/microcomputer core plus the IR transceiver and the rechargeable‑battery/detachable‑base subcombination — so it falls with Combination A plus the admitted IR art, and does not require the RFID limitations at all.

5. Rebuttal considerations (arguments against obviousness)

A rigorous §103 analysis should flag the counters a patent owner would raise:

1. "The references teach killing (deactivating) a tag, not writing a persistent 'paid' semantic datum into it." This is the strongest non‑obviousness argument. Sensormatic‑type EAS art disables a resonant element; the claim requires the RF ID tag to remain functional and carry state. Counter: the admitted Disys tag supports "Write Word n," and the advantage (a tamper‑evident, auditable paid record) is a predictable benefit of a writable memory the artisan already had in hand.
2. Cost/availability of RF tags on grocery items in Aug. 1995. Tags were then economic only for higher‑value goods; applying a tag reader to a grocery self‑scan terminal could be argued non‑obvious. Counter: the '002 specification itself uses inventory/factory and authentication applications, which undercuts an argument that the inventors recognized a grocery‑only obstacle.
3. Separate‑accommodation argument — that the '002 device integrates barcode, RFID, spread‑spectrum RF, IR, printer, magnetic stripe and smart card in one hand‑held unit. But each peripheral is individually admitted as off‑the‑shelf, and the claim does not recite any unforeseen interaction among them.
4. No secondary‑considerations record was available to me (no evidence of commercial success, copying, licensing, or long‑felt need in the retrieved material). Absent such evidence, KSR's "predictable results" standard is likely controlling.

6. Bottom line

• Claims 1–5 are, on the available record, prime §103 candidates. The overwhelming majority of limitations are the applicant's own admitted prior art (off‑the‑shelf CCD scan engines, IR modules, PCMCIA cards, thermal printers, touchscreens, and — critically — commercially available passive RF‑ID tag reader/writer systems with "Read/Write Word n" command sets). Adding "Grocery Buggy" (Nov. 1988) or Kipp U.S. 5,250,789 for the self‑scanning shopping terminal, plus EAS deactivation art for limitation 1i, supplies every remaining element with a strong, problem‑driven motivation to combine.
• If U.S. 5,382,784 (Eberhardt, 17 Jan 1995) is indeed a hand‑held bar‑code/RF‑ID dual‑technology reading head, claim 1 is very likely obvious as a two‑ or three‑reference combination. I could not verify that reference's disclosure in this session — it is the single most important item to pull before finalizing any invalidity contention.
• The only genuinely contestable feature is limitation 1i (writing paid‑status data into tags rather than deactivating them). Expect the obviousness case to turn on whether the EAS‑deactivation art plus the admitted writable tags is accepted as a predictable substitution under KSR.