US 5736721

I'll verify the patent record against live sources, particularly for any 2026 CAFC docket activity.

Verification note

I searched for US 5,736,721 specifically (and checked for 2026 Federal Circuit / PTAB activity). Findings:

• No 2026 CAFC docket activity found for 5736721. My searches returned only general 2026 Federal Circuit roundups (e.g., Gibson Dunn's July 2026 update, Patterson Sheridan's weekly summaries) with no mention of this patent, and no PTAB case for it. This is consistent with the record: the patent's anticipated expiration is 2015-04-07, and its only litigation-adjacent appearance I found is as a cited prior-art/reference in later IPRs and prosecution (e.g., it appears in a Walmart/IPR2022-01471 information-disclosure search log as prior art to Walmart's '545 application, not as an asserted patent).
• Data discrepancies to flag: Unified Patents lists priority 1987‑12‑27, application 1995‑05‑31, grant 1998‑04‑06, parent company Zebra Technologies (likely time-zone rendering and post-acquisition ownership). I treat the Google Patents/authoritative record below as controlling: priority 1987‑12‑28, filed 1995‑06‑01, issued 1998‑04‑07.

Bibliographic summary of US 5,736,721

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5736721/en ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/5,736,721 ; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-5736721-A

Abstract (verbatim)

"Commercial transactions are expedited at a point-of-transaction site by providing a customer with advance notification of the price of selected goods, by providing a workstation with an adjustable, multi-positionable scanner head, by providing a field-portable scanner arrangement worn on the customer's body, and by automatically charging one's credit account with the price of the selected goods."

Note the abstract is broader than the claims — it recites an agenda for the whole disclosure (adjustable scanning head, on-board printer, credit charging), while the 12 granted claims are directed only to (i) the customer-carried price-notification method/apparatus and (ii) the field-portable reader/peripheral/printer arrangement. The workstation and card-reader subject matter was later claimed in siblings US 5,883,373 ("object-sensing workstation with adjustable scanning head") and US 5,889,268 ("point-of-sale site with card reader").

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — Method: customer self-scans to learn a price before checkout

1. Store product identities plus price attributes in a common host-computer database.
2. Put coded tags (barcodes) next to each product.
3. Give the customer a single portable, trigger-actuated, self-scanning electro-optical reader with an on-board trigger, plus a printer unit — both entirely supported by the customer (i.e., the shopper, not a clerk, holds the hardware).
4. The customer aims the reader at a tag from a distance, actuates the trigger to sweep the emitted light beam across the code, automatically identifying the product to the host.
5. The database is accessed to retrieve the stored price attribute.
6. The printer automatically prints human-readable price data on a label.
7. Accessing and printing happen automatically, in real time, right after reading, while the customer still holds the reader and printer.

Key limitation: the reader is "self-scanning" (beam moves relative to the reader, not a moving-beam fixed scanner), is trigger-actuated, and the printer is customer-borne — so this covers mobile/portable shopper price-checking (predecessor of the modern scan-and-go handheld/wearable shopper device).

Claim 4 — Apparatus: same thing, in system form

The product/system counterpart of claim 1. A host computer with the product/price database; barcode tags at each product; a single portable trigger-actuated self-scanning reader entirely supported and actuated by the customer, with means for directing the beam exteriorly and means responsive to the trigger for moving the beam across the code to identify the product and produce a signal on successful identification; means for accessing the database in real time in automatic response to that signal to retrieve price data; and customer-supported printing means for automatically printing human-readable price data on a label in real time with the database access.

Claim 7 — Field-portable arrangement (reader + remote peripheral + user-supported printer)

A three-part architecture rather than a shopper-price-check:

• (a) a single portable hand-held trigger-actuated self-scanning reader that sweeps an emitted light beam across coded indicia and generates an electrical signal;
• (b) a peripheral unit remote from the reader containing the database of object data;
• (c) a two-way communications link between reader and peripheral for transmitting the signal and retrieving stored data while the reader is entirely supported by the user;
• (d) user-supported means for automatically "priming" the retrieved data while the reader is user-supported.

⚠️ Originality/literal-reading flag: in the authoritative text provided, the last element reads "automatically priming the retrieved data." Read literally, that is nonsensical in context and is almost certainly an OCR/typo for "printing" (the specification and every other claim in the family refer to printing). I am not auto-correcting it, per instruction — but under a literal reading, claim 7 as printed is internally inconsistent, and a court would likely look to the specification and prosecution history to construe it as printing. This is a genuine uncertainty, not a confirmed construction.

Dependent claims (brief)

• 2, 3: printing done by imprinting graphical markings on a paper roll, then tearing off a leading portion to form the label.
• 5, 6: the printing means includes a printhead for imprinting on a paper roll; printhead has a tear-off edge.
• 8, 9: the peripheral unit is worn on the user's body, and includes RF (radio-frequency) communication with a remote host device.
• 10: the hand-held head includes a keyboard for manual entry and a display for showing information.
• 11: the peripheral unit includes a belt worn about the user's waist, with the unit suspended from the belt.
• 12: the link is an electrical cable connecting the hand-held reader and the unit.

Confidence and caveats

• High confidence on title, number, application number, inventor, filing/issue dates, and the claim set — these come from the authoritative full text and are corroborated by FreePatentsOnline, Justia, and uspto.report.
• Moderate confidence on current ownership: the reassignment chain shows Symbol Technologies, Inc. → Symbol Technologies, LLC (change of name, 2015), now under Zebra Technologies; Google Patents lists current assignee as "Symbol Technologies LLC." Exact present-day chain of title should be verified in the USPTO Assignment database.
• Explicit uncertainty: I could not confirm any 2026 CAFC docket, appeal, or IPR naming US 5,736,721 as the challenged/asserted patent. Given the 2015 expiration, active 2026 litigation over the '721 patent itself is unlikely; if you need a definitive negative, that requires a direct PACER/CAFC docket or Docket Alarm query, which my web search did not surface.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 5,736,721. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me search more specifically for litigation databases and the patent's litigation history.

Let me check a few more specialized litigation sources and related family patents.

Summary of Findings — US Patent No. 5,736,721

Bottom line: I found no litigation (district court, Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit, ITC, or PTAB) in which U.S. Patent No. 5,736,721 was asserted as a patent‑in‑suit or challenged. Based on the sources searched, no known case lists this patent number as an asserted or challenged patent. I state this as a negative finding from the databases I could reach, not as a certified "no litigation ever existed" conclusion (see caveats below).

What the patent is (for context)

• Patent: US 5,736,721 A — "Arrangement for and method of expediting commerical product transactions at a point-of-sale site"
• Inventor: Jerome Swartz
• Original assignee: Symbol Technologies, LLC (later acquired by Zebra Technologies Corp)
• Application: 08/457,507; filed 1995‑06‑01; granted 1998‑04‑07
• Priority date: 1987‑12‑28 (earliest claim via US 07/138,563)
• Legal status: Expired – Lifetime; anticipated expiration 2015‑04‑07/2015‑04‑07
• Provenance: Division of US 08/292,584 (now US 5,448,046)

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5736721A](/patent/US5736721A)/en

Litigation records checked

Related Symbol Technologies litigation (NOT involving the '721 patent)

To be clear about "similar but not the same," these are real Symbol cases I encountered, but none assert US 5,736,721:

• Symbol Techs. v. Spectra‑Physics, No. C‑84‑20051 (N.D. Cal. filed Jan. 27, 1984) — resolved by consent judgment Jan. 6, 1986 (patents '297, '186).
• Symbol Techs. v. Opticon, Inc., No. 86‑8736 (S.D.N.Y.), aff'd 935 F.2d 1569 (Fed. Cir. 1991) — '297/'186 patents; infringement found, patents valid.
• Symbol Techs. v. Metrologic Instruments (and related) — several actions and appeals (e.g., 254 F. App'x 128 (3d Cir. 2007)); concerned license royalties on other Symbol patents.
• Symbol Techs. v. Hand Held Products, Inc., No. 03‑102‑SLR (D. Del. Nov. 14, 2003) — asserted a different set of Symbol patents.
• Symbol Techs. v. Lemelson Med., Educ. & Research Found., No. 99‑CV‑0397 (D. Nev.), rev'd 00‑1583 (Fed. Cir. Jan. 24, 2002) — declaratory judgment on Lemelson patents.
• PSC, Inc. v. Symbol Techs. — patent misuse/royalty dispute over the '297 and '186 patents.

Important caveats (so the negative finding isn't overstated)

1. Search tools were not exhaustive. The Unified Patents litigation caselist, Docket Navigator, Lex Machina, and PACER itself sit behind paywalls/logins. I could reach the public Unified Patents patent page and free dockets/courtlistener results, plus general web search, but I could not run a full PACER party/patent docket query.
2. The patent expired in 2015, predating much of the current NPE‑driven litigation activity, which reduces the likelihood of recent assertions.
3. Portfolio/cross‑license context. The '721 patent belonged to a large Symbol Technologies bar‑code‑scanner portfolio that was heavily cross‑licensed (e.g., with Metrologic, Telxon, PSC). It is plausible it was covered by licenses rather than litigated, but I did not verify a specific license agreement naming the '721 patent.
4. Do not treat "no litigation found" as "no assertion ever." A demand letter or a since‑settled case that never generated a searchable opinion could exist without appearing in my results.

If you need a definitive answer, the authoritative next step is a paid Docket Navigator / Lex Machina query for the patent number, or a PACER full‑text search, which I could not execute here.

If any of the searches above surfaced a specific case number, plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, and outcome for US 5,736,721, it is not present in the results returned to me — none of the results tie that exact patent number to a lawsuit.

I'll verify the "no PTAB activity" baseline against public sources before writing the analysis.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks for CBM/PGR proceedings and any litigation-linked petitions.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file for US 5736721. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal) returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and my web searches surfaced no petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or appeal referencing it — so the breakdown is: 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. There is therefore no claim-level PTAB outcome to report, and I will not manufacture one. The defensive posture is not "the patent was hardened in IPR" and not "the claims are canceled" — it is something stronger and simpler: US 5736721 expired on 2015-04-07, so a defendant facing a demand letter today has an expiration/standing defense that is more decisive than any PTAB outcome would have been. (Expiration is confirmed by the Google Patents structured data — "2015-04-07 Anticipated expiration … Expired - Lifetime" — and by the Unified Patents portal listing an expiration date of 2015-04-06.)

No proceeding sections follow, because there are no proceedings. What follows is the evidentiary basis for that conclusion, the cross-cutting strategic picture, and next steps.

What I checked, and what I found

• USPTO structured data (canonical): no AIA trial proceedings listed.
• USPTO PTAB E2E / PTAB decisions: no hits tying any IPR/PGR/CBM number to this patent.
• Google Patents legal-events timeline (linked from the patent record): prosecution, assignments, reexaminations/security interests, anticipated expiration — no PTAB trial events.
• Unified Patents portal (a common defensive aggregator): the US-5736721-A page shows the patent, its assignment history (Symbol Technologies LLC → Zebra Technologies Corp), routing scores, and expiration — no IPR filed by Unified or anyone else.
• Related-family check: the same family produced US 5,448,046, US 6,131,814, US 6,308,888, US 6,937,998, US 5,883,373, US 5,889,268, and US 6,644,549. I found no evidence of AIA trials against the '721 patent specifically. (I did not exhaustively verify each sibling; treat the siblings as untested by me unless separately checked.)
• Enforcement context (not PTAB): Symbol's notable scanner campaigns of the 1980s–2000s — Symbol v. Opticon (S.D.N.Y., aff'd 935 F.2d 1569 (Fed. Cir. 1991)) and Symbol v. Metrologic — and ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-551 Certain Laser Bar Code Scanners were litigated in district court and the ITC, not the PTAB, and centered on other patents (e.g., the '297 and '186 patents). I found no source tying US 5736721 to a specific district-court or ITC assertion, so I do not assert one.

Strategic summary

Claim status: all 12 claims UNTESTED — but all are expired. US 5736721 issued 1998-04-07 with 12 claims (claims 1–3 method of advising a customer of prices via a customer-supported self-scanning reader with printer; claims 4–6 the corresponding arrangement; claims 7–12 a field-portable reader/remote-peripheral arrangement with printing). Every one of those claims ran its full term and lapsed on 2015-04-07. There are no canceled claims and no sustained claims, because no third party ever petitioned. For an accused infringer, the practical hierarchy is: (1) expiration/no prospective infringement — no injunction, no ongoing royalty, eBay is moot; (2) § 286 six-year damages lookback measured from the filing of the complaint, which for an expired patent means any recoverable window closed years ago for conduct after 2015-04-07 and is in any event bounded by the lookback; and (3) invalidity, which you would now litigate in district court rather than the PTAB.

Estoppel landscape: none created, and none available as a shield. Because no IPR was ever instituted, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel does not exist against anyone — no petitioner, no privy, no real party in interest is barred. Conversely, that cuts against a defendant who wants to rely on a prior PTAB loss: there is no prior PTAB record to borrow. If the patent were still live, any IPR path would be governed by § 315(b) (one-year bar from service of a complaint) and § 315(a)(1) (bar if petitioner filed a DJ of invalidity first); but with expiration in 2015, an IPR is largely academic — the Board can still cancel claims of an expired patent for past-damages purposes, but there is no realistic payoff. Prior-art grounds are entirely unconstrained by PTAB estoppel because no PTAB ground was ever raised.

Pattern signals. (1) Same petitioner? No petitioner at all, so no repeat-filer pattern. (2) Patent owner appeals? None — Symbol/Zebra never had an adverse FWD on this patent to appeal. (3) Defensive aggregator? Unified Patents' portal lists the patent but shows no Unified-filed challenge — so the absence of a defensive IPR was a deliberate market judgment (very likely because the patent expired), not an oversight. (4) Assertion signal: the paucity of PTAB activity is consistent with a patent that, while commercially important in the 1990s bar-code/POS space, was not a serial-assertion vehicle in the AIA era.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant and received a demand citing US 5736721: the dispositive response is expiration. Confirm the expiry computation before you rely on it — this is a pre-URAA patent (earliest priority 1987-12-28, granted 1998-04-07), and the term is 17 years from grant, i.e., 2015-04-07, matching the Google Patents timeline (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5736721A/en) and the Unified Patents portal (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-5736721-A). There is no FWD to quote, because none exists — do not let an adversary characterize this patent as "PTAB-validated."
• If any live assertion is nonetheless made: demand that the plaintiff identify (a) the accused product, (b) the specific claims and limitations practiced, and (c) the allegedly infringing acts occurring on or before 2015-04-07 that fall within the § 286 six-year lookback from the complaint's filing date. Damages for any post-expiration conduct are unavailable.
• Do not budget for an IPR. With no pending PTAB matter, there are no trial-stage milestones (no institution-decision deadline, no oral hearing, no statutory one-year FWD date). An IPR filing today would build no estoppel benefit and would spend money against an expired claim set.
• Caveat on completeness: my conclusion rests on the USPTO structured data plus public indexing tools (Google Patents, Unified Patents, PTAB decisions). If you need litigation-grade certainty, run a PTAB E2E search on the patent number and the 08/457,507 application number, and cross-check litigation dockets, before finalizing an opinion. I found no contrary evidence, but absence of indexed hits is not the same as an exhaustive records search.

I'll research the assignment record for US 5736721 using web search and cross-reference the legal events in the patent data.

Let me dig into the specific recorded assignments and reel/frame numbers.

US 5736721 — Assignment & Ownership Analysis

Patent: US 5,736,721 — "Arrangement for and method of expediting commercial product transactions at a point-of-sale site"
App. No. 08/457,507 · filed 1995-06-01 · granted 1998-04-07 · priority 1987-12-28
Source used: Google Patents legal events / reassignments table and USPTO Assignment Center / USPTO Assignment Search.

Data limitation (read first). I was able to retrieve the conveyance types, parties, and dates from the Google Patents legal‑events table, but I was not able to pull the underlying USPTO assignment records to confirm reel/frame numbers, execution‑vs‑recording dates, or the correspondent of record. I will not invent those fields. Every reel/frame below is marked not retrieved and should be verified at the Assignment Center before being relied on. This is a genuine gap, not a "no records" finding — records clearly exist (six events).

Inventors

Unusual pattern worth flagging: a Swartz → Symbol Technologies, Inc. "assignment of assignors' interest" was recorded 2014-05-13 — roughly 19 years after the 1995 filing. That is a classic late/confirmatory inventor assignment (title cleanup during M&A due diligence), not a fresh acquisition. See timeline entry 3.

Original assignee

• Entity named on the issued patent: Symbol Technologies, Inc. (Holtsville, NY, USA).
• Line of business: the pioneering manufacturer of laser bar‑code scanners, rugged mobile computers, RFID readers and POS/enterprise‑mobility hardware. It was a genuine operating company, not a holding vehicle.
• Product practice: Symbol commercially shipped hand‑held and fixed laser scanners of exactly the architecture described in the specification (see U.S. Pat. No. 4,387,297, incorporated by reference in the patent). I could not confirm a specific commercial product embodying these claims (a customer‑operated portable reader + on‑board printer for pre‑checkout price retrieval, claims 1 and 4) — treat product‑practice for this specific claim set as unconfirmed.
• Enforcement reputation: Symbol was a famously litigious operating‑company patent enforcer — e.g., Symbol v. Spectra‑Physics, Symbol v. Opticon (S.D.N.Y., aff'd Fed. Cir. 1991) and Symbol v. Metrologic over its scanner patents.
• Current status: Acquired, then re‑organized into an LLC under a different parent.
  • Symbol Technologies, Inc. acquired by Motorola, Inc. — announced Sept 2006, closed Jan 2007 (~$3.9 B).
  • Motorola Solutions' Enterprise business (containing Symbol) acquired by Zebra Technologies Corporation — announced Apr 2014, closed 27 Oct 2014 (~$3.45 B).
  • Current owner of record: Symbol Technologies, LLC, a Zebra Technologies subsidiary (Unified Patents lists parent = Zebra Technologies Corp).

Assignment timeline

Dates below are the dates shown in the Google Patents legal‑events table (Google renders a single date per event; I could not separate execution vs. recordation without the Assignment Center record). All reel/frame fields are "not retrieved."

1. 2005-01-05 — Reel not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Security Interest (see document for details)
   • Assignor: Symbol Technologies, Inc.
   • Assignee: JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved (typically lender's counsel on such recordings)
   • Context: Securitization — collateral pledge under Symbol's Dec 29, 2004 Credit Agreement with JPMorgan Chase as administrative/collateral agent (filed as an exhibit to Symbol's SEC filings; corroborated by Law Insider' Credit Agreement and the Symbol 10‑K). Not an ownership transfer.

2. 2010-12-03 — Reel not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
   • Assignor: JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.
   • Assignee: Symbol Technologies, Inc.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Securitization unwind — release of the 2005 security interest. Ownership never left Symbol.

3. 2014-05-13 — Reel not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
   • Assignor: Swartz, Jerome
   • Assignee: Symbol Technologies, Inc.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Title cleanup / confirmatory inventor assignment — the named inventor formally assigns to the assignee ~19 years post‑filing, consistent with diligence for the pending Motorola→Zebra carve‑out. Not an arm's‑length acquisition.

4. 2014-10-31 — Reel not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Security Agreement (collateral assignment / first‑priority lien)
   • Assignors: Laser Band, LLC; Symbol Technologies, Inc.; Zebra Enterprise Solutions Corp.; ZIH Corp.
   • Assignee: Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc., as Collateral Agent
   • Correspondent: not retrieved. (Note: in unrelated, contemporaneous Morgan Stanley Senior Funding patent‑security recordings, the recurring correspondent of record is National Corporate Research, Ltd. — attorneys Joanna McCall, Darlena Bari Stark, Stewart Walsh. I could not confirm that firm recorded the US 5736721 instrument; do not treat it as verified for this patent.)
   • Context: Securitization — the collateral package for the Zebra/Motorola‑Enterprise acquisition financing (closed 27 Oct 2014). The co‑assignors are all Zebra‑family entities, confirming this is ordinary acquisition lending, not a transfer to an asserter.

5. 2015-07-08 — Reel not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Change of Name
   • Assignor: Symbol Technologies, Inc.
   • Assignee: Symbol Technologies, LLC
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Internal reorganization / change of name only — corporate conversion of the Zebra subsidiary; no change in ultimate ownership.

6. 2015-08-17 — Reel not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
   • Assignor: Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc.
   • Assignee: Symbol Technologies, Inc.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Securitization unwind — release of the 2014 collateral lien. Ownership stays with the Symbol/Zebra family.

(Post‑2015: []Google Patents notes "2015-04-07 Anticipated expiration"; the patent's 17‑year term ran from the 1998‑04‑07 grant, so US 5736721 expired 7 Apr 2015 and is no longer assertable.)

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5736721
    1987 : Priority application filed
    1995 : Application 08457507 filed
    1998 : Patent granted to Symbol Technologies Inc
    2005 : Security interest to JPMorgan Chase
    2010 : JPMorgan security interest released
    2014 : Swartz confirmatory assignment recorded
         : Security lien to Morgan Stanley as agent
    2015 : Name change to Symbol Technologies LLC
         : Morgan Stanley lien released
         : Patent term expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The only "LLC" in the chain is Symbol Technologies, LLC (2015‑07‑08), and that entry is expressly a Change of Name from Symbol Technologies, Inc. — an internal conversion of a Zebra operating subsidiary, not a transfer to a licensing vehicle. No "IP/Patents/Licensing/Holdings/Ventures" entity ever appears; the assignees (Symbol, JPMorgan, Morgan Stanley, Laser Band/Zebra Enterprise/ZIH) are an operating company, two lenders, and Zebra affiliates.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No assignee matches any public NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi‑LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, Spangenberg, etc.). The terminals of the chain are Symbol Technologies / Motorola / Zebra — operating companies. (Symbol was an aggressive operating‑company litigant in the 1980s–90s, which is a different category.)

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not retrievable. The correspondent of record for each of the six events could not be pulled. Because four of the six events are lender security instruments and two are the same Symbol→Symbol‑LLC conversion, the expectation is different correspondents (lenders' counsel vs. Symbol's corporate counsel) rather than a single repeat NPE lawyer — but this is unverified. Do not treat the National Corporate Research pattern seen in unrelated Morgan Stanley recordings as a finding here.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Events are spread across 2005 → 2010 → 2014 → 2015, with no cluster of chained LLC‑to‑LLC conveyances inside 24 months. The 2014 (two events) and 2015 (two events) pairs are: title cleanup + acquisition lien, and name change + lien release — routine corporate activity, not rapid‑fire reassignment.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present / unclear. No infringement suit naming US 5,736,721 was identified. The patent appears in the record only as prior art / file‑history citation (e.g., it is cited against Walmart's US 10,121,133 in IPR2022‑01471). No assignment dated within 6 months of any suit.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. Neither Symbol Technologies nor Motorola Solutions/Zebra filed Chapter 7/11; the 2006 and 2014 transactions were solvent M&A. (Misleading look‑alike: an unrelated 2014-era Las Vegas/consumer‑electronics Morgan Stanley security agreement and the Freescale/Citibank Morgan Stanley release records surfaced in search — not part of this chain.)

7. Privateering — not present. No operating‑company→NPE transfer, and no evidence the portfolio was pushed out to assert against competitors via a proxy.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN; it terminates at Zebra's operating subsidiary, followed by patent expiry.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The entire recorded chain stays inside the Symbol → Motorola → Zebra operating‑company family: collateral security interests to JPMorgan Chase (2005) and Morgan Stanley Senior Funding (2014), both later released (2010, 2015), a late confirmatory inventor assignment from Jerome Swartz (2014), and a change‑of‑name conversion to Symbol Technologies, LLC (2015) — with no NPE, shell LLC, or known asserter ever appearing. Symbol Technologies ships (and Zebra continues to ship) bar‑code scanning hardware, and Symbol historically enforced its scanner patents against actual competitors, so the chain is operating‑company in character rather than NPE. Two caveats keep this from being a slam‑dunk: (a) I could not retrieve reel/frame or correspondent data, so the record is not fully documented; and (b) US 5736721 expired 2015‑04‑07, so whatever assertion posture ever existed is now moot.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search US 5,736,721) and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html — pull the six records to fill in reel/frame, execution dates, and correspondents.

I'll research US patent 5736721 and its cited prior art references.

Let me look for the examiner-cited "References Cited" section specific to this patent.

Let me check the USPTO full-text and FreePatentsOnline for the front-page "References Cited" of US5736721 itself.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 5,736,721

⚠️ Retrieval limitation (read first)

I ran targeted searches for the identifier 5736721 / US 5,736,721 and excluded look-alikes (e.g., 5736720, 5736722, 5736723, which appear as adjacent neighbors in classification listings — not returned here).

What I could verify:

• The patent is real and is the one you specified: "Arrangement for and method of expediting commerical product transactions at a point-of-sale site," Jerome Swartz, original assignee Symbol Technologies; Appl. No. 08/457,507; priority claimed from US 07/138,563 (Dec. 28, 1987); issued 1998-04-07; 12 claims (1–12).
• Unified Patents' record for US-5736721-A indicates "Patent Art (12)" and "Non-Patent Literature (2)" references cited, and "Referenced By (25)."

What I could NOT retrieve: The exact examiner-cited "(56) References Cited" front-page list for 5,736,721. The authoritative full text you supplied does not reproduce the (56) section, and my searches did not surface it. Google Patents/FreePatentsOnline renderings returned the specification and forward citations but not the examiner's (56) list.

Consequence: A definitive, complete § 102 anticipation opinion requires the actual (56) references. Below I give (A) what the patent itself expressly cites, and (B) the references on the front pages of the related family patents, clearly labeled by source. Dates are marked [verified] when they appeared in a retrieved document, and [unverified] otherwise. I have not fabricated any citation.

Part A — References expressly cited inside US 5,736,721

These appear in the specification as the background "incorporated herein by reference" art. They are candidate prior art of record for the electro-optical reader subject matter.

A1. US 4,251,798 — [unverified issue date/assignee/title]

• Description: Cited as signal-processing circuitry for converting the analog photodetector signal into a digitized video signal (spec.: "Suitable signal processing circuitry for this purpose was described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,251,798").
• § 102 relevance: Pertinent only to the reader element ("means for processing electrical signals… into data identifying the product") of claims 4 and 7. It does not disclose price retrieval, label printing, or customer self-scanning, so it cannot anticipate claims 1, 4, or 7 as a whole.

A2. US 4,387,297 (background list) and US 4,387,397 (detailed description — note: two different numbers appear in the text; I do not auto-correct them) — [unverified dates]

• Description: Cited as the high-speed scanner motor type ("a high-speed scanner motor 46 of the type shown and described in U.S. Pat. No. 4,387,397, the entire contents of which are incorporated herein by reference").
• § 102 relevance: Pertinent to the scanning means element of claims 4 and 7 (moving the beam across the indicium). Not anticipatory of any full claim.

A3. US 4,794,239 — [unverified date]

• Description: Cited for "multi-track bar code symbols used for greater spatial efficiency."
• § 102 relevance: Pertinent to the coded-indicia/tag element (claims 1(b), 4(b)). Not anticipatory of any full claim.

A4. US 4,871,904 — "Multidirectional optical scanner"; filed Dec. 28, 1987 (priority date stated in the patent itself); issued Oct. 3, 1989 [issue date unverified]; assignee Symbol Technologies.

• Description: The root priority document for the family; a multi-directional optical scanner.
• § 102 relevance: This is the family ancestor; like the other reader patents it supports the scanning element but is the same inventive entity, so it is not "by another" and is not available as anticipatory art against 5,736,721.

A5. The remaining background scanner patents (all [unverified] dates/titles): US 4,360,798; 4,369,361; 4,593,186; 4,496,831; 4,409,470; 4,460,120; 4,607,156; 4,673,805; 4,736,095; 4,758,717; 4,760,248; 4,806,742; 4,808,804; 4,825,057; 4,816,661; 4,816,660; 4,845,350; 4,835,374; plus design patents D-306,434 and D-306,435.

• Description: All are cited as POS scanners/readers of the general laser-scanning type (housing, laser diode, photodetector, scanning mirror, decode).
• § 102 relevance: Collectively pertinent only to the hardware elements of claims 4 and 7. None alone discloses the distinguishing features of the independent claims (below).

A6. Cited pending applications: Ser. Nos. 193,265; 265,143; 265,548; 265,149; 264,693; 367,335; 367,007; 429,198; 392,207; 349,860; and 236,249 (tag deactivator; filed Aug. 25, 1988, "now abandoned"). [All unverified — these are applications, not issued patents, so their § 102 effect would depend on later publication/issuance.]

Part B — References cited on the FRONT PAGES of related family patents

Important caveat: The following references are taken from the front-page "References Cited" lists of the sibling/continuation patents (US 6,131,814 and US 6,937,998), not from 5,736,721 itself. They are strong candidates for overlap with 5,736,721's own (56) list, but I cannot confirm they appear on 5,736,721's front page. Dates below are [verified] from the retrieved front pages (month/year only, as printed).

From the US 6,131,814 front page (US 6,131,814 is a continuation of 5,736,721, filed Sep. 26, 1997, issued Oct. 17, 2000 [verified]):

• US 5,448,046 is the direct parent (filed Aug. 18, 1994; issued Sep. 1995 [verified]). It is the same inventive entity/family. It is not available as § 102 prior art against 5,736,721 (not "by another"; and it did not issue until after 5,736,721's June 1, 1995 filing). It is the closest whole-claim match on substance (scanner + host database + thermal printer + tear-off label), but as the parent it forecloses, rather than supplies, anticipation.

From the US 6,937,998 front page (also a family continuation), additional listed art includes US 4,372,741; 4,377,741; 4,766,297; 4,789,983; 4,879,650; 5,108,052; and foreign DE 3413887; EP 0 199 252; JP 61-123563 [all listed; dates unverified]. These pertain to wireless/local-area and information-display systems, not to the price-label printing combination.

Part C — Non-Patent Literature

Unified Patents records 2 NPL items for 5,736,721, but I could not retrieve their identity. I will not speculate.

§ 102("potential anticipation") synthesis — by claim

The independent claims require, in combination:

• Claim 1 — customer-held, trigger-actuated, self-scanning reader; real-time database access on product identification; automatic printing of human-readable price on a label by a customer-supported unit.
• Claim 4 — apparatus counterpart of claim 1.
• Claim 7 — field-portable reader + remote database + two-way link + customer-supported printer.
• Claims 2–3, 5–6 — paper-roll/tear-off printing limitations.
• Claims 8–12 — body-worn/belt unit, RF link, keyboard+display, cable link.

Assessment:

• No single reference in Parts A or B discloses every element of claims 1, 4, or 7. The reader patents (4,251,798; 4,387,297/397; 5,142,131; 5,149,947; 5,340,971) supply the scanning element but are silent on real-time price retrieval by a customer's own hand-held unit and on-board/portable label printing.
• Closest whole-claim candidates — US 5,382,779 (Gupta) and US 5,083,638 (Schneider), and the parent US 5,448,046 — are the references most worth obtaining in full to test § 102 against claims 1 and 4. Because 5,448,046 is the parent/same entity, a genuine anticipation defense would most plausibly rest on Gupta or Schneider.
• Given the combination-based claim language, § 103 (obviousness) over the reader art + a price-display reference is the more likely examiner posture than clean § 102 anticipation.

Recommended next step

To produce the exact deliverable you asked for (full citations, dates, descriptions, and per-claim § 102 mapping for every cited reference), the authoritative source is the front page "(56) References Cited" of US 5,736,721 at the USPTO PatentCenter / Patent Public Search (and the printed PDF at patentimages / Google Patents PDF). Those 12 patent references + 2 NPL items are precisely the set that the examiner considered, and my searches could not surface them. If you can supply that (56) list or the front-page PDF, I will map each reference to claims 1–12 with dates and full descriptions.

Would you like me to attempt a direct fetch of the 5,736,721 front-page PDF (patentimages/Google Patents) to extract the (56) list?

I'll research the key references and prior-art landscape before building the § 103 analysis.

Key finds include US5107100 (Symbol, on-board printer/keyboard/display/transceiver) and several pre-1987 handheld scanner-art references. Let me pin down dates and content.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Pat. No. 5,736,721 (35 U.S.C. § 103)

Grounding note: All quotes/claim text below are from the authoritative full text of US 5,736,721 supplied for this task (Google Patents, https://patents.google.com/patent/US5736721/en). Reference dates I could verify from the prior-art listings on that page and from search results are cited with URLs; where I could not verify a date, I say so explicitly rather than guess.

1. Threshold issue: the effective filing date drives the prior-art universe

US 5,736,721 (appln. 08/457,507, filed 1995‑06‑01; granted 1998‑04‑07) is a division of 08/292,584 (filed 1994‑08‑18, now US 5,448,046), which is a CIP of 07/921,414 (1992), a continuation of 07/553,559 (1990‑07‑16), a CIP of 07/392,207 (1989‑08‑10), itself a CIP of 07/138,563 (1987‑12‑28, now US 4,871,904). Google lists the "Priority date" as 1987‑12‑28.

That 1987‑12‑28 date is only an assumption. Under § 120, each claim gets an earlier date only for subject matter with § 112 support in the earlier disclosure. The 1987 application (07/138,563) issued as US 4,871,904, which is directed to a multidirectional optical scanner — scan-pattern geometry — not to customer-operated price notification. The customer-self-scanning / label-printing subject matter asserted in claims 1–6 (and the field-portable subject matter of claims 7–12) appears to have entered the chain through the later CIPs. A challenger should therefore plead, in the alternative, effective dates of 1989‑08‑10 / 1990‑07‑16 / 1994‑08‑18, and pick art that predates the earliest date it needs.

Practical consequence: the strongest art is either (a) very early (pre‑1988) handheld-scanner/terminal art, or (b) the same assignee's 1992 patent US 5,107,100 — which is prior art only if the operative date is 1992 or later, but which is textually the closest thing in existence to the '721 claims.

§ 103(c) caveat (be candid): most of the '721 "related art" list is Symbol-assigned (4,251,798; 4,496,831; 4,409,470; 4,460,120; 4,871,904; 5,107,100…). For an application filed before 2013, commonly owned, "by another" subject matter is disqualified as § 103 prior art. That materially strengthens the patent against a combination built only from Symbol references, and a valid attack must lean on third‑party art (Lockwood, Kumar, Mars, Chadima, Williams, Fujitsu, Clinicom, Intermec) or on the patent's own admissions.

2. Claim scope in one paragraph

• Claims 1–3 (method): store product ID + price in a host database; tag each product with coded indicia; give the customer (i) a single portable trigger-actuated self-scanning reader with an on-board trigger and (ii) a printer unit, both entirely supported by the customer; aim and trigger-scan at a distance; automatically access the database for price; automatically print human-readable price on a label; all on a real-time basis while customer-supported. Dep. 2–3 add paper-roll printing and tearing off a leading portion.
• Claims 4–6 (arrangement): apparatus counterpart, plus printhead on a paper roll (5) with a tear-off edge (6).
• Claims 7–12 (field-portable): hand-held trigger-actuated reader; peripheral unit remote from the reader including the database; two-way communications link; printing means supported by the user. Dep.: unit worn on the body (8), RF link to a remote host (9), keyboard + display on the head (10), belt-suspended unit (11), electrical cable link (12).

The claims are, in substance, a known laser scanner + known host price database + known portable thermal label printer + known RF/cable link, relocated into a customer-operated, pre-checkout context. Under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), that is the paradigm of a combination of known elements yielding predictable results.

3. Primary reference: US 5,107,100 (Shepard et al., Symbol) — "Portable scanner with on-board keyboard, display, transceiver and printer"

https://patents.google.com/patent/US5107100 ; https://FreePatentsOnline.com/5107100.html (granted 1992‑04‑21; priority chain reaching back through applications Ser. Nos. 342,231 / 519,107 / 831,415 to the early 1980s).

This reference discloses nearly every structural element of claims 1–12:

What 5,107,100 does not literally say is that the person holding the reader is the customer, and that the price is advised prior to checkout. Everything else in claims 4, 5, 6, 8, 9, 10, 11 and 12 reads on it directly.

4. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — Claims 1–6 obvious over US 5,107,100 in view of Lockwood (US 4,359,631) and/or the admitted art

• US 4,359,631 (Lockwood et al.), "Self-service terminal," 1982‑11‑16 (listed in the reference table of US 4,916,441, https://FreePatentsOnline.com/[4916441](/patent/4916441).html) discloses a terminal operated directly by an end user to complete a retail transaction without a clerk. Combined with 5,107,100, the only missing element — customer-operated scanning with pre-checkout price advice — is supplied.
• Alternatively, the admitted prior art in the '721 specification itself supplies the motivation and part of the teaching: "some customers wish to know the price of a product before standing in line at the checkout counter… some stores post price signs… those signs are sometimes removed and not replaced… the price information is outdated" (US 5,736,721, Background). An admission of the problem, coupled with known art solving other parts of it, is classic § 103 evidence.
• Motivation (KSR): the '721 patent frames the objective as eliminating stale/removed shelf signs and letting customers learn price before checkout; self-checkout lowers labor cost and queue length. A POSITA would have been motivated to move the already-known Symbol handheld reader/printer (5,107,100) from clerk to customer, since the reference expressly contemplates the head being "supported by an operator" with on-board printer and RF link — the only change is which person supports it.
• Dependent claims 2, 3, 5, 6 are met by 5,107,100's thermal printhead 102 on journaled roll 104 with tear-off edge 106.

Ground 2 — Claims 1–6 obvious over the '721 patent's own cited scanner art + a portable printer/data terminal

Should § 103(c) disqualify the Symbol references, use third-party art:

• US 4,578,571 (Williams), "Portable bar code scanning device and method," 1986‑03‑25; US 4,570,057 / 4,766,300 (Chadima), "Instant portable bar code reader," 1986‑02‑11 — handheld, trigger-operated electro-optical readers that read indicia and output decoded data. (Both appear in the reference table at https://FreePatentsOnline.com/4916441.html.)
• US 4,621,189 (Kumar et al.), "Hand held data entry apparatus," 1986‑11‑04 — a handheld unit integrating a bar code reader, a magnetic credit-card reader, data entry and a printer; the Kumar reference was applied in a real IPR against a handheld scanner/terminal patent (petition record: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1534401](/patent/1534401)/…). This is powerful: it supplies the "portable reader + printer + card charging in one handheld unit" concept years before the critical date — matching the '721 specification's slot 244 for magnetically encoded credit cards.
• US 4,146,417 (Wald), "Portable data-gathering apparatus formed by modular components," 1979‑03‑06; US 4,279,021 (See), "Portable data entry apparatus…," 1981‑07‑14; US 4,180,204 (Koenig), "Automatic inventorying system," 1979‑12‑25; US 4,523,087 (Benton), "Transaction verification system using optical coupling data communication link," 1985‑06‑11 — establish that portable terminals that interrogate a remote database and print/record results were old.
• US 4,639,070 (Fujitsu), "Beam scanning type information readout device," priority 1980‑01‑11, granted 1987‑01‑27 (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-[4639070](/patent/4639070)-A) — hand-carried laser bar-code reader with beam scanner and detector in a grip housing.
• WO 88/02520 (Mars Inc.), "Portable data scanner apparatus," priority 1986‑09‑28, published 1988‑04‑06 (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/WO-1988002520-A1) — an integrated self-contained scanner module + data module (keyboard 33, display 35, microprocessor 37) + removable rechargeable power module, specifically designed so the scanner "can be held within reasonable proximity to the bar code."

Motivation: all of these solve the same problem the '721 patent identifies (fast, error-free optical identification feeding a database), and it was known to print the resulting data locally (Kumar) or remotely (Wald/Benton). Substituting a customer for a clerk is a change in the intended user with no new technical result; per In re Casey / KSR, that is not inventive.

Ground 3 — Claims 7–12 obvious over handheld scanner art + a body-worn/remote peripheral unit with a two-way link

Claim 7 (portable reader + remote peripheral unit containing the database + two-way communications link + user-supported printing) is met by:

• US 5,107,100 — head 10 with RF transceiver communicating with terminal 122 having data base 136 (radio claim 9), plus the shoulder-worn off-board printer (body-worn, claim 8) and cable connection (claim 12). Claim 10 (keyboard + display on the head) is the title of the reference.
• Additionally, EP 0 667 019 / WO 90/16033 family (Clinicom Inc., "Hand-held data capture system with interchangeable modules," priority US 364,594 filed 1989‑06‑07), which discloses battery-powered hand-held data-entry terminals with an interchangeable peripheral module containing a reader and a wireless communication unit (https://patentinfo → EPO publication EP 0 667 019 A4). And US 4,916,441 (Gombrich, Clinicom), "Portable handheld terminal," filed 1988‑09‑19, granted 1990‑04‑10 — a pocket terminal with display screen 40 and bar code reader 42 (https://FreePatentsOnline.com/4916441.html).
• The cable alternative (claim 12) is squarely disclosed in the '721 patent's own cited US 4,251,798 (Swartz) and the analogous disclosures in US 5,581,070 (Symbol): "the digital signal is conducted … along an electrical cable 20 to a decode module 22 located exteriorly of the head … An external host device 24, usually a computer, serves mainly as a data storage."

Motivation: delivering the database locally (worn on the body) frees the user from the checkout lane — precisely the "field-portable application" the '721 specification describes as the data base being "incorporated in a portable housing held in one's other hand, or supported on the operator's person, for example, suspended from a belt or shoulder strap." That sentence is itself an admission that the body-worn configuration was known/obvious.

5. Anticipated counter-arguments and how they fare

1. "The references are all for clerk-operated POS, not customers." Weak. Relocating a known tool to a new but obvious user category, with no change in how the tool works, is not inventive (KSR; change of intended user). Lockwood's self-service terminal and Kumar's handheld reader/card reader/printer undercut this.
2. "Real-time access + printing was not suggested." Weak — Wald, Benton, Koenig and the '721 patent's own admitted art all couple a portable data collector to a host and produce printed output.
3. § 103(c) common ownership. Strong defensive point. Because 5,107,100, 4,871,904, 4,251,798, 4,496,831, 4,409,470 and 4,460,120 are all Symbol-assigned, they may be disqualified from § 103 as commonly owned "by another" art. Any credible obviousness case must be built on the third-party references (Lockwood '631, Kumar '189, Chadima '057/'300, Williams '571, Wald '417, See '021, Benton '087, Fujitsu '070, Mars WO 88/02520, Clinicom '441).
4. Objective indicia. There is no visible evidence of unexpected results; commercial success of Symbol's handheld scanner line is attributable to the underlying scanner art, not the customer-notification feature (no nexus). Long-felt need for price-before-checkout and elimination of stale shelf signs would, if anything, cut toward obviousness as a recognized problem, though a patentee could argue the industry's failure to solve it earlier is evidence of non-obviousness — this is the weakest link in the invalidity case.

6. Bottom line

• Claims 4–6, 8–12 are the most vulnerable: US 5,107,100 alone discloses the handheld self-scanning reader, on-board thermal printer/roll/tear-off label, on-board keyboard, display, RF/cable link to a host database with price retrieval, and the body-worn alternative. Combine with Lockwood '631 for the self-service/customer element; add Kumar '189 for reader-plus-printer-plus-card-reader integration. Expect a § 103 rejection over 5,107,100 + Lockwood, alternatively Kumar + 5,107,100.
• Claims 1–3 and 7 are nearly as vulnerable — the "customer," "prior to checkout," and "real-time" limitations are the only meaningful distinctions, and each is a known use/design choice supported by the '721 patent's own admission of the problem.
• Outcome prediction: a strong prima facie § 103 case exists, but its viability depends heavily on (i) the as-applied § 120 priority date and (ii) whether § 103(c) common ownership disqualifies the Symbol-family references. I could not verify from the available sources every reference's exact filing/issue date (e.g., US 5,107,100's precise continuation filing date, or Kumar's '189 and Lockwood's '631 specification content beyond their citation in US 4,916,441's reference list); those should be confirmed against the actual documents before filing any invalidity contention.