US 5760916

I'll verify the litigation/docket angle and any recent activity, then summarize from the authoritative patent text.

US Patent 5,760,916 — Verification and Summary

Search-scope note first: I searched for the exact number "5760916" / "5,760,916" and also queried for CAFC 2026 activity tied to it. I found no CAFC 2026 opinion, order, or docket entry for U.S. Patent 5,760,916. My CAFC-2026 searches returned only unrelated matters (e.g., Spero v. Mercedes-Benz USA, Nos. 2025‑1306/1307/1473, Rule 36 judgment dated May 14, 2026; and various Supreme Court § 101 petitions concerning other patents such as 7,679,637). I did not find, and am not asserting, any 2026 appellate activity for the '916 patent. Treat that as "no evidence found," not as proof of absence.

One litigation data point did surface: Google Patents' page for US5760916A carries a Unified Patents litigation marker for a California Central District Court case, 2:19‑cv‑09129. I could not confirm from my searches which parties were involved or the outcome, so I flag that as uncertain.

Bibliographic data

Discrepancy flag (literal, not corrected): The Unified Patents portal lists priority date 1996‑09‑15, grant date 1998‑06‑01, and expiration 2016‑09‑15, while the authoritative patent text and Google Patents bibliographic record state filing 1996‑09‑16, publication 1998‑06‑02, and anticipated expiration 2016‑09‑16. I have used the authoritative patent text. Similar ±1‑day discrepancies appear in the non‑patent citation ("Picture Web Preview," cited as Aug. 28, 1996 on the '916 record but as Aug. 28, 1986 on the related US 6,278,531 record).

Abstract (verbatim from the patent)

"An image handling system and method which can be executed by such a system. The system comprises: a plurality of scanner stations remote from one another, each scanner station having: a scanner system which can scan a hardcopy image set to obtain a corresponding hardcopy image set signal and which can assign an associated identification signal to the set signal which comprises a scanner location identification, wherein each scanner location identification is unique; a first communication means for communicating the image set signal and the associated scanner identification signal to a remote hub station, which comprises a second communications means to receive image set signals and their respective associated identification signals from each of the plurality of scanner systems; a first storage to store the image set signals and associated identification signals; a third communication means for transmitting the image set signals to any of a plurality of terminals which are remote from the scanner stations and the hub station and connected to the hub station."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The patent has 10 claims: two independent (claim 1, system; claim 4, method) and eight dependent. Only the independent claims are summarized below, per your request.

Claim 1 — System (apparatus)

An image-handling system with two tiers of equipment:

1. A plurality of scanner stations that are physically remote from each other. Each station must have:

   • a scanner system that (a) scans a hardcopy image set (e.g., a developed negative strip or prints) to produce a corresponding image set signal, and (b) assigns an identification signal to that image set signal, where the identification includes a scanner location identification that is unique to that station; and
   • a first communication means for sending the image set signal and its associated scanner identification signal to a hub station that is remote from the scanner station.

2. A hub station, remote from every scanner station, comprising:

   • a second communications means to receive the image set signals and their respective identification signals from each of the scanner systems;
   • a first storage holding the image set signals together with their associated identification signals; and
   • a third communication means for transmitting the image set signals to any of a plurality of terminals that are remote from both the scanner stations and the hub station and are connected to the hub station.

Practical reading: the claim is the "many drop-off sites, one central clearinghouse, many viewing terminals" architecture. Its point of novelty over the prior art (e.g., US 5,272,549 and US 5,477,353, both cited on the face) is the combination of multiple mutually remote scan sites each stamping a unique scanner-location ID onto its image sets, with a single remote hub storing and serving those image sets to remote terminals. Notably, claim 1 does not require the identification to be forwarded to the user by a route independent of the hub (that is the subject of the sibling patent US 6,108,104 / 6,278,531), nor does it require encryption of the ID.

Claim 4 — Method

A method of handling images, essentially the process counterpart of claim 1, comprising:

1. Scanning a hardcopy image set at each of a plurality of mutually remote scanner stations to obtain a corresponding image set signal at each station;
2. Assigning an associated identification signal to each image set signal, the identification including a scanner location identification of the station where the scan occurred, with each scanner location identification being unique;
3. Communicating each image set signal and its associated identification signal to a hub station remote from the scanner stations;
4. Storing at the hub station the received image set signals and associated identification signals; and
5. Forwarding to a terminal location (remote from both the scanner stations and the hub) the identification corresponding to an identification signal associated with at least one of the image set signals.

Practical reading: step 5 is deliberately written to cover forwarding the identification (not the image) to the user's terminal — consistent with the specification's discussion of printing the ID on the film envelope/print set and delivering it with the hardcopies, or transmitting it by e‑mail/facsimile.

Dependent claims in brief (for context)

• Claims 2–3 (from claim 1): hub has a second storage with directory data correlating each scanner location ID to a scanner address; and the system expressly includes the plural remote terminals connected to the hub.
• Claims 5–10 (from claim 4): forward the ID to the terminal without the image set first, then have the terminal send the ID back to the hub and the hub return the image (cl. 5); and, where the hub holds directory data mapping scanner-location ID to a scanner address, have the hub check whether a stored image set of predetermined characteristics exists and, if not, look up the scanner address and send a first message (inquiry/re‑request) to that scanner station (cl. 6), via hub communication (cl. 7), via the terminal (cl. 8), or by printing and mailing the message (cl. 9). Claim 10 adds the date-indication logic: if no conforming stored image set exists, compare the ID's date against the current date; under a predetermined tolerance send a "check again later" message to the user, over it look up the scanner address and message the scanner station.

Technical substance worth noting

• The identification signal structure (FIG. 3, described in detail but not recited in any claim) is a 10‑byte binary ID presented as 16 case‑insensitive alphanumeric ASCII characters (base‑32 using 0–9 and Aa–Vv), built from: Bit Sum 100 (8 bits, checksum), ID Version 102 (8 bits), Scanner ID 104 (28 bits, unique per station, serving as the scanner location identification), Date Code 106 (16 bits: 9 for day-of-year, 7 for year), and Sequence Number 108 (20 bits, incremented per roll per day).
• The ID minus the Bit Sum and ID Version is encrypted using DES with a 56‑bit key; the ID Version maps to the encryption key and is kept at the hub. The stated purpose is anti-guessing: without encryption, a malicious user could simply increment a legitimately received ID to reach someone else's images. For a "fewer than 10" (about 34 million) ID space, this is the technical heart of the disclosure, but note it appears only in the description — no claim recites encryption.
• The cross-service architecture (FIG. 4) lets a hub forward a request to another hub over network 120 when the decrypted scanner ID indicates the images were scanned at a station feeding a different hub — i.e., an indirect scanner-to-hub communication path.
• Formats mentioned for the image set signal include TIFF, JFIF, BMP, PICT, GIF, PhotoCD, and the then-newly-announced FlashPix format (a focal point of several related Kodak patents).

Uncertainty disclosures

1. No confirmed CAFC 2026 docket for '916. Patent 5,760,916 expired (anticipated expiration 2016‑09‑16), which makes a 2026 Federal Circuit appeal on this patent unlikely but not impossible (e.g., appeals from long-running disputes or assignment/licensing matters). My searches found nothing.
2. The C.D. Cal. 2:19‑cv‑09129 marker originates from Unified Patents' litigation data republished on Google Patents. I could not independently verify the parties, the patents asserted, or the disposition.
3. Bibliographic ±1‑day discrepancies exist between the patent text/Google Patents and the Unified Patents portal, as flagged above; I did not auto-correct either set of numbers.
4. Claim text summarized above is taken verbatim from the authoritative patent HTML supplied, not from secondary aggregator pages. Note that aggregator pages for related patents in this family (e.g., US 6,278,531, US 6,283,646) display different, longer claim sets — those were not misattributed here.

Primary sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5760916/en; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-5760916-A.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 5,760,916.

Bottom line

I found one court case tied to U.S. Patent No. 5,760,916 ("Image handling system and method," Eastman Kodak, filed 1996‑09‑16, granted 1998‑06‑02, now Expired – Lifetime, anticipated expiration 2016‑09‑16), plus one non‑infringement bankruptcy proceeding in which the patent was listed as an asset. The litigation record is thin and, importantly, one link is not fully verifiable from the sources I retrieved — I flag that caveat below rather than overstate it.

Known litigation involving US 5,760,916

Sources / grounding:

• The Google Patents page for this patent carries a "litigation" record entry reading: "US case filed in California Central District Court … case/2%3A19-cv-09129" — https://patents.google.com/patent/US5760916/en (the litigation block on the Google Patents page). This is the only litigation entry on the patent's page.
• Docket/case identification: "2:19-cv-09129 — Ceiva Logic Inc v. Amazon.com Inc … Filed 10/23/19, Cause of Action: Patent Infringement, Sector: Comp. Arch. and Software … Closed (03/17/22)" — https://ai-lab-cl-prod.azurewebsites.net/case/dct/cacd/2:19-cv-09129/ceiva-logic-inc-v-amazoncom-inc

Important caveat on that one case

I was not able to independently confirm from the retrieved materials that U.S. 5,760,916 was actually one of the patents asserted in 2:19-cv-09129. There are two reasons for caution:

1. The case caption is a Ceiva Logic case, and Ceiva Logic's own portfolio patent in this space is US 6,442,573 ("Method and apparatus for distributing picture mail to a frame device community," priority 1999‑12‑10) — which appears in the Cited By list of the ‑'916 patent. A case being linked to a patent because of a citation/family relationship is not the same as the patent being asserted.
2. The patent's ownership chain on the face of the record is Kodak → Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC → Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (release by secured party, 2023‑08‑15), not Ceiva Logic.

Recommended verification (do this before relying on it): query the Unified Patents litigation caselist filtered to this patent — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist?patents=5760916 (the portal's patent page is https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-5760916-A) — and pull the 2:19‑cv‑09129 docket in PACER to read the complaint's patents‑in‑suit. That will settle whether ‑'916 was pleaded, and why the case terminated in March 2022.

Related proceedings (not infringement litigation)

• In re Eastman Kodak Company, Case No. 12‑10202‑alg (Bankr. D. Del.). U.S. Application No. 08/710,276 → Patent No. 5,760,916, grant date 06/02/1998, appears in a patent schedule filed at Doc 2612‑3, filed 12/19/2012 (Exhibit B, p. 96 of 213), listing Kodak patents by docket/country/application number/patent number/grant date. Source: https://veritaglobal.net/documents/[1210202](/patent/1210202)/1210202121219000000000021.pdf (§ p. 71/44 of the excerpt). This is an asset-schedule/security-interest filing, not an infringement action, and it is the context for the 2012 CITICORP security interest and the 2013 assignment to Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC shown on the Google Patents assignment history.

Negative findings (explicit)

• No CAFC appeal involving 5,760,916 surfaced in my searches.
• No ITC Section 337 investigation involving 5,760,916 surfaced.
• No PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR/CBM) challenging 5,760,916 surfaced. Given the patent expired 2016‑09‑16 and the 2023 assignment to Monument Peak Ventures, LLC is a release by secured party (i.e., a collateral release, not a new assertion vehicle), an IPR campaign is unlikely — but I did not exhaustively query the PTAB caselist for this number, so treat this as an absence of evidence, not proof of absence.
• I found no other U.S. district court cases naming 5,760,916. Note that the '916 patent is the parent-priority member of the Kodak "Image handling method and system" family — e.g., US 6,108,104 and US 6,278,531, both priority 1996‑09‑16, Eastman Kodak — which had their own assertion histories. Do not let search hits for those sibling patents be attributed to 5,760,916.

Confidence statement

• Case number, court, parties, filing date, and closure date for 2:19-cv-09129: medium‑high (consistent across the Google Patents litigation block and the case page).
• That 5,760,916 was a patent‑in‑suit in 2:19-cv-09129: low‑to‑medium — unverified; see the caveat above.
• Outcome of 2:19-cv-09129: unknown — I will not speculate on the disposition of an expired patent case without the docket.

If you want, I can drill into the PTAB caselist, the Unified Patents patents=5760916 caselist URL, or the PACER docket for 2:19‑cv‑09129 to close those three gaps.

I'll start by verifying the structured block against what's publicly findable, since the prompt asks me to flag anything the ODP ingest may have missed.

The first pass surfaced no PTAB proceedings. Let me run targeted checks on the litigation that's on file and on the specific proceeding-number patterns.

Let me check the litigation on file and confirm whether any proceeding exists under alternate naming.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 5,760,916: 0 — zero IPRs, zero PGRs, zero CBMs, zero institution decisions, zero Final Written Decisions, and zero settlements. The breakdown is therefore trivially: active 0 / claims invalidated 0 / claims sustained 0 / settled 0 / institution denied 0. The defensively meaningful fact is not a PTAB outcome at all — it is that the patent's entire 20-year term expired on 2016-09-16, so any defendant facing a demand letter today is dealing with an expired patent whose only reach is backward-looking damages inside the § 286 six-year lookback, not an injunction. There is no PTAB record to either harden the patent or kill it; the claims stand exactly as issued, untouched, and untested.

Proceedings

None to enumerate. Per the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block, the USPTO Open Data Portal API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest, and my independent web searches surfaced no IPR/PGR/CBM petition, institution decision, FWD, or PTAB appeal naming US 5,760,916 or application 08/710,276. I am not going to manufacture proceeding numbers to fill the template.

Search basis for the negative finding. I checked: (a) the Google Patents page for US5760916A (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5760916/en), whose "Cited By" and litigation fields list no PTAB matters; (b) the Unified Patents portal entry for US-5760916-A (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-5760916-A), which shows the full prosecution/expiry profile (priority date listed as 1996-09-15, grant 1998-06-01, expiration date 2016-09-15, current assignee Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC) and no trial history; and (c) general queries for IPR numbers alongside the patent number, title, and the IV/Kodak/Monument Peak ownership chain. All negative.

Corroborating explanation for why there is nothing. The patent's file wrapper shows "Anticipated expiration: 2016-09-16," and the record shows no assertion activity before that date that would have triggered a § 315(b) one-year clock. Petitioners do not generally spend IPR budget on a patent that is already expired or within months of expiry, because the remedy is limited to past damages. The absence of PTAB activity here is therefore the expected, not an anomalous, result — see the strategic discussion below for why the usual "absence is a signal" heuristic does not apply cleanly to this patent.

One flag on the litigation data — read this before relying on it

The Google Patents record for US5760916 carries a litigation link to California Central District Court case 2:19-cv-09129. Verifying that docket independently: 2:19-cv-09129 is Ceiva Logic, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., filed 2019-10-23 and terminated 2022-03-16 before Judge Andre Birotte Jr. — which is not an Intellectual Ventures or Monument Peak Ventures enforcement action. What connects the two documents is a citation, not necessarily an infringement theory: Ceiva Logic's own patent US 6,442,573 (picture-mail distribution to a frame device) appears in the "Cited By" list for the '916 patent. I could not confirm that '916 was actually asserted in that case, and I could not confirm any other litigation in which '916 was pleaded. Treat the Google Patents litigation badge as an unverified attribution until you pull the complaint and its patent exhibit list. This matters: if '916 was never asserted, then no defendant ever had a § 315(b) trigger or a § 315(e) estoppel event — which is consistent with the empty PTAB docket.

Strategic summary

Claim status: claims 1–10 all UNTESTED at the PTAB, all expired. No independent claim was canceled, no dependent claim was canceled, no claim was held patentable in a Final Written Decision — because no FWD exists. Do not tell a client "claims 1–5 are canceled." If a demand letter asserts claim 1 (the system claim: plurality of scanner stations, scanner system assigning "an associated identification signal ... which comprises a scanner location identification," first communication means to a remote hub, hub with second communications means, first storage, third communication means to remote terminals) or claim 4 (the mirror-image method claim), those claims are facially intact as issued. Your attack surface is validity in litigation, not a PTAB outcome, and it is a real surface: claim 1 is drafted in means-plus-function form ("first communication means," "scanner system"), which invites § 112(f) construction tied to the specification's modem/tape-transfer structures, and the pre-AIA § 102/§ 103 art cited on the face of the patent (U.S. 5,272,549 McDonald; U.S. 5,477,353 to Olympus; U.S. 5,266,215 Kodak; U.S. 5,291,420 Fuji remote management) sketches the crowded field this patent sits in.

Estoppel landscape: there is none, and that cuts in your favor. Because no IPR was ever instituted, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel never attached to anyone. No petitioner, and no privy of any petitioner, is barred from raising any § 102 or § 103 ground — including grounds that were raised in a hypothetical petition or that "reasonably could have been raised." Any defendant currently facing assertion has the full universe of prior art available: patents, printed publications, and system art predating the 1996-09-16 priority date. The two counterweights to remember are (i) the patent expired 2016-09-16, so the live exposure is only acts within six years of the complaint under § 286, and (ii) if you do file an IPR, you must still satisfy the § 315(b) one-year bar from service of your complaint, and the Board retains discretion to deny institution on an expired patent where the real dispute is damages.

Pattern signals: no aggregator, no serial petitioner, no PTAB appeal practice. There is no petitioner with multiple filings against this patent (there are zero filings), no Federal Circuit appeal of any PTAB decision (there is no decision to appeal), and while Unified Patents appears in the owner/title chain via its portal data, that reflects Unified's database coverage of the asset, not a Unified-filed challenge — I found no Unified IPR against '916. The ownership chain is the notable structural signal: Eastman Kodak (original assignee) → Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC (assignment of interest recorded 2013-04-17) → release by secured party to Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (recorded 2023-08-15). Monument Peak Ventures is a Kodak/IV-lineage monetization vehicle. A demand letter citing '916 in 2026 will most plausibly come from that lineage on an expired patent, which is a strong indicator that the play is a nuisance-value settlement against defendants who do not check the expiration date.

Recommended next steps

1. Lead with the expiration date, not invalidity. If your client is threatened with '916, the first response is that the patent expired 2016-09-16 (Google Patents "Anticipated expiration," status "Expired - Lifetime"). There is no injunctive relief available and no ongoing royalty theory; only pre-expiry damages within § 286's six-year window. Confirm this against the USPTO Patent Center maintenance-fee record for application 08/710,276 (fee lapses would shorten the term further).
2. There is no FWD to link to. I cannot link you to a PTAB Final Written Decision because none was ever issued for this patent. Do not let opposing counsel characterize the empty PTAB docket as "the patent survived multiple challenges" — the correct framing is "the patent was never challenged, and it lapsed."
3. Verify the litigation attribution before you rely on it. Pull the complaint and patent exhibit list in Ceiva Logic, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc., No. 2:19-cv-09129 (C.D. Cal., terminated 2022-03-16) — docket and PACER RECAP via CourtListener at https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/?q=%222%3A19-cv-09129%22 — to determine whether US 5,760,916 was ever actually asserted, or whether the Google Patents litigation badge is a citation artifact from Ceiva's US 6,442,573. This determines whether any § 315(b) window ever opened.
4. No trial-stage milestones are pending. Because there are no active proceedings, there is no institution-decision deadline, no oral hearing, and no statutory one-year FWD due date to track. If you intend to create PTAB activity, remember IPRs remain available against an expired patent for past-damages purposes, but the Board's discretionary-denial practice on expired patents is a real risk; budget accordingly.
5. Monitor the PTAB docket cheaply. Set a standing check on USPTO PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) and the Open Data Portal for application 08/710,276. If a petition does appear, the entity to watch is Monument Peak Ventures, LLC, and the one-year clock to file a time-bar-safe petition starts on service of the first complaint, not on the demand letter.

Caveat on confidence: the PTAB silence is a negative finding drawn from the structured ODP block plus the searches described above. The ODP ingest may lag very recent filings. If precise certainty matters for a filing decision, run the patent number directly against PTAB E2E and the PTAB "Patent Trial and Appeal Board End to End" proceeding search rather than relying on this summary.

I'll research this. Let me run several searches in parallel.

Let me dig deeper on the Monument Peak Ventures chain and the litigation linkage.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 5,760,916

Patent: US 5,760,916 B1 — "Image handling system and method"
Application: 08/710,276 · filed 1996‑09‑16 · granted 1998‑06‑02 · anticipated expiration 2016‑09‑16 · status Expired – Lifetime
Verification links: USPTO Assignment Center · Assignment Search (legacy UI) — search by patent number 5760916 · Google Patents legal events

Sourcing caveat, stated up front: Google Patents legal events for this patent list conveyance types, parties and event dates, but do not carry reel/frame numbers, and I was unable to pull the underlying Assignment Center abstracts in this session. Every reel/frame below is therefore marked "not retrieved" rather than guessed. Everything else (conveyance type, assignor, assignee, date) is taken verbatim from the Google Patents legal-events record and, where noted, corroborated by SEC filings and litigation pleadings.

Inventors

Unusual-pattern check: not present. Both inventors were employed by the assignee, the assignment to Kodak was recorded promptly (1996‑10‑21), and there is no evidence of either inventor departing within 12 months of filing. There is no inventor-side assignment traffic in the chain; the entire post-1996 chain runs through corporate transactions, not inventor activity.

Original assignee

Eastman Kodak Company (original assignee named on the face of the patent; confirmed by the 1996‑10‑21 recorded assignment from Tesavis and Dellert).

• Primary line of business: photographic film, photofinishing, and imaging systems; the patent's own specification frames the invention around Kodak's photofinishing-lab network (film processor 4 + high-volume scanner 6 per station) and explicitly references Kodak's KODAK PICTURE DISK service and the FlashPix file format "available from Eastman Kodak Company, Rochester, N.Y."
• Product embodiment: unclear / not verified. The claimed architecture (many remote scan stations → one hub → many remote terminals, keyed on a unique scanner-location ID) tracks what Kodak's photofinishing + online image-services operations of the late 1990s were building toward, but I cannot confirm from the record retrieved that Kodak ever shipped a commercial system reading on claims 1–10. No product-practice finding either way.
• Current status: Operating, but only after a Chapter 11 reorganization. Kodak filed Chapter 11 in January 2012 (Bankruptcy Court, S.D.N.Y.) and emerged in September 2013. It remains an operating company in commercial printing and advanced materials, but is no longer the owner of this patent.

Litigation note attached to the Google Patents record: the page carries a litigation link to C.D. Cal. Case No. 2:19‑cv‑09129, which docket data identifies as Ceiva Logic, Inc. v. Amazon.com, Inc. (filed 2019‑10‑23, terminated 2022‑03‑16; plaintiff characterized as an operating company). I could not verify that US 5,760,916 was actually a patent-in-suit in that case — Ceiva Logic is not a successor to any link in this chain, and Ceiva's own US 6,442,573 appears in this patent's "Cited By" list, so the linkage may be an artifact of citation-based case association. Treat as unverified.

Assignment timeline

Reel/frame column is unavailable. The Assignment Center abstracts were not retrievable in this session and Google Patents does not publish reel/frame for legal events. Each entry below is real and sourced to a dated conveyance record, SEC filing, or court filing — but the reel/frame slot is genuinely empty, not omitted for brevity. Retrieve at the Assignment Center by patent number 5760916 to fill it in.

1. ~1996‑09 (executed) / recorded 1996‑10‑21 — Reel not retrieved

• Conveyance: Assignment of interest (original assignment)
• Assignor: Carl J. Tesavis; David W. Dellert
• Assignee: Eastman Kodak Company
• Correspondent: not retrieved
• Context: Standard employment assignment of the application to the corporate employer, five weeks post-filing.

2. 2012‑02‑21 (executed/recorded as listed) — Reel not retrieved

• Conveyance: Security Interest (patent security agreement)
• Assignor: Eastman Kodak Company; Pakon, Inc. (and other Kodak debtor affiliates)
• Assignee: Citicorp North America, Inc., as Agent
• Correspondent: not retrieved
• Context: Securitization — Kodak pledging its patent estate (and affiliates' estates) as collateral in connection with its Chapter 11 debtor-in-possession financing. Not a transfer of title.

3. 2013‑02‑01 (executed/recorded as listed) — Reel not retrieved

• Conveyance: Patent Release (release of the Citicorp security interest)
• Assignor: Citicorp North America, Inc.; Wilmington Trust, National Association
• Assignee: Eastman Kodak Company, Pakon, Inc., Kodak Aviation Leasing LLC, NPEC Inc., Kodak (Near East) Inc., FPC Inc., Eastman Kodak International Capital Company Inc., Far East Development Ltd., Qualex Inc., Laser-Pacific Media Corporation, Kodak Imaging Network Inc., Kodak Realty Inc., Creo Manufacturing America LLC, Kodak Portuguesa Limited, Kodak Americas Ltd., Kodak Philippines Ltd.
• Correspondent: not retrieved
• Context: Internal reorg / lien-clearing — the 16 Kodak debtor affiliates are released from the 2012 collateral pledge as part of the reorganization. Kodak's 10-K confirms: "On February 1, 2013, Kodak entered into a series of agreements related to the monetization of certain of its intellectual property."

4. 2013‑04‑17 (recorded) — Reel not retrieved

• Conveyance: Assignment of interest
• Assignor: Eastman Kodak Company
• Assignee: Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC
• Correspondent: not retrieved. For reference (transaction counsel, not confirmed as recording correspondent): the Kodak–IV Patent Sale Agreement dated 2012‑12‑18 lists buyer notices to Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC, 7251 W Lake Mead Blvd., Ste. 300, Las Vegas, Nevada 89128, and copies to Intellectual Ventures Management, 3150 139th Avenue SE, Building 4, Bellevue, WA 98005, with counsel at Shearman & Sterling LLP, 599 Lexington Avenue, New York. That Las Vegas address is a service-style mailbox rather than an operating site.
• Context: Bankruptcy fire-sale. Kodak's §363 sale of its digital-imaging portfolio (~1,100 patents) to IV Fund 83 for $527 million (Sale Agreement executed 2012‑12‑18; Kodak 8-K filed 2012‑12‑21; closing 2013). The purchaser entity was financed by an RPX-organized licensee consortium (Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, FUJIFILM, Google, HTC, Microsoft, RIM, Samsung, Shutterfly), with Kodak receiving a grant-back license.

5. ~2017‑02 (executed, per transaction reporting) / recorded not retrieved — Reel not retrieved

• Conveyance: Assignment of interest (title transfer)
• Assignor: Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC / Intellectual Ventures LLC
• Assignee: Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (Dallas, TX)
• Correspondent: not retrieved
• Context: Transfer to asserter. RPX and IAM/LEXOLOGY reporting: MPV, a Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC affiliate, took the former Kodak digital-imaging portfolio (reported at "nearly 4,000 patent assets," of which ~1,057 had been allocated to IV out of the Kodak bankruptcy sale) in February 2017. MPV was incorporated in Texas in December 2016 by Monument Patent Holdings, LLC, Dominion's litigating affiliate. Announced as a "comprehensive global plan to commercialize" the Kodak portfolio, with Parallel North IP AB as European licensing agent.

6. 2023‑08‑15 — Reel not retrieved

• Conveyance: Release by secured party
• Assignor (as recorded): Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC
• Assignee/party (as recorded): Monument Peak Ventures, LLC
• Correspondent: not retrieved
• Context: Most likely reading: IV Fund 83 held a security interest in the MPV-acquired assets (acquisition financing/collateral), and released it in 2023 — a collateral release, not a new title transfer. Google Patents lists Monument Peak Ventures, LLC as the current assignee. Flagging the ambiguity: the conveyance label and assignor/assignee orientation in the legal-events feed are inconsistent with a plain assignment, so confirm the instrument type at the Assignment Center.

Post-2017 assertion activity (context, not a recorded assignment): MPV's first suits on the Kodak portfolio were filed 2018‑03‑16 (GoPro; SZ DJI Technology; Victor Hasselblad). It subsequently sued Xerox (WDNY, 6:20‑cv‑6263 declaratory judgment; Xerox described MPV as "one of a vast array of patent assertion entities associated with Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC" that "does not exist to invent new ideas, make products or provide services to consumers"), Tesla (6:23‑cv‑00750, W.D. Tex.), TP-Link (6:22‑cv‑01250, W.D. Tex.), and Bosch (1:20‑cv‑00611, D. Del.). US 5,760,916 is not identified in any of these complaints I located — consistent with it having expired on 2016‑09‑16, before MPV's campaign began.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5760916
    1996 : Filed by Dellert and Tesavis
         : Assigned to Eastman Kodak
    1998 : Patent issued
    2012 : Kodak files Chapter 11
         : Security interest to Citicorp
    2013 : Kodak affiliate lien release
         : Kodak bankruptcy sale to IV Fund 83
    2017 : Acquired by Monument Peak Ventures
    2023 : Secured party release recorded

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT.
Two consecutive transfers land the patent in licensing-only vehicles. (a) 2013‑04‑17 recorded assignment, Kodak → Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC, an IV special-purpose acquisition vehicle addressed at 7251 W Lake Mead Blvd. Ste. 300, Las Vegas, NV (per the 2012‑12‑18 Sale Agreement notices). (b) Agreement ~2017‑02, recorded thereafter, IV → Monument Peak Ventures, LLC, a Texas LLC incorporated December 2016 by Monument Patent Holdings, LLC, with no products — a characterization not from naming but from the plaintiff's own adversary: Xerox's WDNY complaint (6:20‑cv‑6263) ¶2: "MPV does not exist to invent new ideas, make products or provide services to consumers," and ¶7 gives its address as 200 Crescent Court, Suite 1550, Dallas, TX. Stanford's NPE Litigation Database lists MPV's suits under the asserter category "Acquired patents"; Unified Patents' litigation portal classifies the plaintiff entity type as "NPE (Patent Assertion Entity)."

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT.
Two links match public NPE/PAE inventories. Intellectual Ventures (Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC) is a canonical entry on the standard NPE lists; here it is the 2013‑04‑17 assignee. Monument Peak Ventures, LLC is a Dominion Harbor Enterprises, LLC affiliate — Dominion was founded by David Pridham, co-founder and former CEO of IP Navigation Group (IPNav) — and is tracked as an active asserter by Unified Patents (PATROLL contests against MPV-owned patents, e.g. US 7,233,684) and by the Stanford NPE Litigation Database. Chain: Kodak → IV (2013) → Dominion Harbor/MPV (2017) → MPV assertion campaign from 2018‑03‑16.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (not determinable from sources retrieved).
No correspondent of record is retrievable for any of the six recorded events above; Google Patents legal events do not expose the correspondent field, and I could not open the Assignment Center abstracts. This is the single highest-value field still to check, because the identifying patterns to test are concrete: (i) whether one IV-side firm recorded both the 2013 Kodak→IV Fund 83 assignment and the release-of-security-interest entries, and (ii) whether a single Dominion Harbor-side correspondent recorded the IV→MPV assignment and the 2023 secured-party release. A recurring correspondent across the 2013, 2017 and 2023 entries would convert this signal to present; a single appearance would not. Note that the Shearman & Sterling LLP reference in the Sale Agreement is transaction counsel and is not evidence of the recording correspondent — do not treat it as one.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT (weak at most).
The title-transfer chain is two NPE links about 3.8 years apart (recorded 2013‑04‑17 → executed ~2017‑02), not multiple consecutive transfers inside 24 months. The 2012 security interest and 2013 release are a bankruptcy collateral cycle, not an NPE cascade. No shared-principal or shared-address LLC hopscotch is visible within the 24-month window on this patent. The adjacent Dominion family (Monument Peak / Liberty Peak / Vista Peak / Sovereign Peak, all 2016–2018) shows the pattern at the portfolio level, but that is a family observation, not a finding about this patent's record.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT for this patent.
The relevant transfer (executed ~2017‑02) precedes MPV's first suits (2018‑03‑16) by roughly 13 months, outside the 6-month window. More decisively, this patent appears never to have been asserted at all: it expired 2016‑09‑16 and became "Expired – Lifetime," and it does not appear in the MPV complaints I located. The C.D. Cal. 2:19‑cv‑09129 link on the Google Patents page (Ceiva Logic v. Amazon) is unverified as to this patent and, if genuine, would be an operating-company plaintiff unrelated to this chain — not evidence of chain-arranged assertion.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — PRESENT.
The single most important event in the chain. Eastman Kodak Company, Chapter 11 (S.D.N.Y., filed January 2012); the patent was swept into the debtor's digital-imaging portfolio and sold by court-approved §363 sale to Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC for $527 million (Sale Agreement dated 2012‑12‑18; Kodak Form 8-K dated 2012‑12‑21; closing 2013; recorded at USPTO 2013‑04‑17). The 2012‑02‑21 Citicorp security interest and the 2013‑02‑01 release across 16 Kodak affiliates are the collateral bookends of the same proceeding.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT (with a nuance worth recording).
The 2013 sale was structured with a licensee consortium organized by IV and RPX Corporation (Adobe, Amazon, Apple, Facebook, FUJIFILM, Google, HTC, Microsoft, RIM, Samsung, Shutterfly), with Kodak receiving a grant-back license — i.e., the original transaction had a strong defensive/settlement character (it also settled Kodak's adversary proceeding against Apple and FlashPoint). This is not an operating company hiring an NPE to sue competitors on its behalf. The nuance: whatever defensive character the 2013 deal had was not preserved for this patent, because IV later sold the portfolio into an assertion vehicle in 2017.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT.
The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents or OIN. RPX's involvement was as consortium organizer for the 2013 acquisition, after which title passed out of any defensive arrangement: 2013‑04‑17 to IV Fund 83, then ~2017‑02 to Monument Peak Ventures, a self-described commercialization vehicle that filed infringement suits. The inverse signal (patent neutralized) does not apply. This patent is also past its 2016‑09‑16 expiration, so it is moot rather than neutralized.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

The chain is Kodak → Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 LLC (recorded 2013‑04‑17, following the Kodak Chapter 11 §363 sale tied to a $527M Sale Agreement dated 2012‑12‑18) → Monument Peak Ventures, LLC (executed ~2017‑02, a Texas LLC incorporated December 2016 by Monument Patent Holdings, LLC, a Dominion Harbor Enterprises affiliate) — two shell-entity transfers into licensing-only vehicles plus two known public asserters in the chain, satisfying three of the signal tests on dated, documented events. The bankruptcy fire-sale signal is independently present, and privateering is expressly absent, so the NPE character originates with IV's monetization of a distressed portfolio rather than with Kodak. Two material caveats: (i) no reel/frame or correspondent data could be retrieved, so signal 3 (repeat correspondent) remains the decisive open item — pull the 2013‑04‑17 and 2017 assignment abstracts at the Assignment Center and compare the correspondent blocks; and (ii) the patent expired 2016‑09‑16 ("Expired – Lifetime"), so this is a historical-chain finding — the patent is unassertable going forward and no assertion of it has been confirmed.

I'll research US patent 5760916 and its cited prior art references. Let me start with several searches.

Let me gather details on a few more key references.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 5,760,916

1. The patent under analysis

I confirmed the bibliographic data and the citation list against the Google Patents record for US5760916A (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5760916/en) and the Unified Patents record (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-5760916-A). The examiner of record listed 23 patent citations and 1 non-patent citation. Those are the references I analyze below.

Key nuance on dates: the '916 patent has a filing/priority date of 1996-09-16. Therefore, references published before 1995-09-16 are statutory-bar art under § 102(b); references published between 1995-09-16 and 1996-09-16 are § 102(a) art; and U.S. patents/applications with earlier effective filing dates but published later can be § 102(e) art. I flag this per reference.

2. Scope of the claims (for the § 102 mapping)

• Claim 1 (independent, system): (a) a plurality of mutually remote scanner stations, each having (i) a scanner that scans a hardcopy image set to produce an image-set signal and assigns an associated identification signal comprising a unique scanner-location identification, and (ii) first communication means to send the image-set + identification signals to a remote hub; (b) a hub remote from the stations with (i) second communication means to receive from each station, (ii) first storage for the image sets and identification signals, and (iii) third communication means to transmit image sets to remote terminals.
• Claim 2: hub has a second storage with directory data correlating each scanner-location ID with a scanner address.
• Claim 3: plus the plurality of remote terminals.
• Claim 4 (independent, method): scan at each of a plurality of remote stations; assign a unique scanner-location-bearing identification signal; communicate to a remote hub; store at hub; forward the identification to a remote terminal.
• Claim 5: identification forwarded without the image; terminal sends ID to hub; hub returns the image.
• Claims 6–9: failure-tracing — hub checks for an image set of predetermined characteristics; if absent, resolves the scanner address from the directory data and forwards a "first message" to that scanner (via communication, or via the terminal, or printed and mailed).
• Claim 10: date indication in the ID compared to the current date against a tolerance; second message to the terminal if within tolerance, otherwise forward a first message to the resolved scanner address.

3. Examiner-cited prior art (23 patent references)

Note on completeness/confidence: Full claim-text element-by-element comparison is not reproducible within this session's search budget for all 23 documents. The § 102 mapping below is a reasoned assessment grounded in each reference's title, abstract/description as surfaced, and the '916 examiner's own field of search. It is not a legal conclusion.

A. Film-order identification / matching references (relevant mainly to the "identification signal" concept)

1. U.S. 4,508,438 – Kanaoka et al., "Side printing method and apparatus therefor" – Fuji Photo Film; priority 1982-06-15, published 1985-04-02. § 102(b).
   Description: Prints order/identification data on the edge ("side") of film for correlating film with its order. Potential § 102: does not anticipate any claim; relevant only to the general idea of associating an identifying code with a film order (a subordinate element of claims 1/4).

2. U.S. 4,519,701 – Kanaoka et al., "Side printing apparatus" – Fuji Photo Film; priority 1982-12-10, published 1985-05-28. § 102(b). Description: Apparatus variant of the above for side-printing identification marks. Potential § 102: none; background only.

3. U.S. 4,574,692 – Wahli, "Process and apparatus for the preparation of photographic copies" – Gretag AG; priority 1983-10-05, published 1986-03-11. § 102(b). Description: Photofinishing order/copying workflow. Potential § 102: none; background.

4. U.S. 4,746,207 – Selin, "Automatic printing machine for printing text on cinematographic film" – AB Film Teknik; priority 1985-02-20, published 1988-05-24. § 102(b). Description: Film marking/printing machine. Potential § 102: none.

5. U.S. 4,779,122 – Signoretto, "Apparatus for creating and checking correlation between negatives and prints in photographic laboratories" – Roberto Signoretto-Photo Engineering Int. S.R.L.; priority 1985-11-11, published 1988-10-18. § 102(b). Description: Correlating negatives with their prints in a lab. Potential § 102: none for the independent claims; relates only to a single-lab correlation element.

6. U.S. 4,760,574 – Budworth et al., "Photographic order matching method and apparatus" – CX Corporation; priority 1986-07-23, published 1988-07-26. § 102(b). Description: Matching developed orders to customers. Potential § 102: none.

7. DE 3644630 A1 – Hübel, "Method for developing and copying photographic films"; priority 1986-12-29, published 1988-07-07. § 102(b). Description: Film developing/copying method. Potential § 102: none.

8. U.S. 5,281,993 – Crochetierre et al., "Photofinishing apparatus and method" – Gretag Imaging; priority 1987-02-20, published 1994-01-25. § 102(b). Potential § 102: none; single-site photofinishing equipment.

9. U.S. 4,823,162 – Renn et al., "Method and apparatus for marking photographic orders" – Ciba-Geigy; priority 1987-05-15, published 1989-04-18. § 102(b). Potential § 102: none; order-marking.

10. U.S. 4,929,972 – Anderson et al., "Method and apparatus for electronic and photographic image recording" – Large Scale Biology; priority 1987-05-15, published 1990-05-29. § 102(b). Potential § 102: none for the independent claims; electronic image recording generally.

11. U.S. 5,160,952 – Iwashita et al., "Print control apparatus" – Canon; priority 1988-05-09, published 1992-11-03. § 102(b). Potential § 102: none.

12. U.S. 5,126,540 – Kashiwagi et al., "Image recording apparatus for selective recording of originals" – Canon; priority 1989-05-15, published 1992-06-30. § 102(b). Potential § 102: none.

13. U.S. 5,291,420 – "Remote management system for photographic equipment" – Fuji Photo Film; priority 1990-02-19, published 1994-03-01. § 102(b). Relevant to claims 6–10.
    Description: A system in which photographic processing equipment at dispersed sites is remotely monitored/managed from a central location, so the central site can diagnose equipment status/faults and dispatch support. Potential § 102: Its remote-management/central-diagnosis architecture is the closest cited art to claims 6–9 (hub contacting a specific equipment site when something is missing). However, it addresses equipment status, not the status of a specific customer image set keyed to a unique scanner-location ID, so it likely does not anticipate claims 6–9 outright; it is strong § 103 material.

14. U.S. 5,159,385 – Imamura, "Total photofinishing laboratory system" – Fuji Photo Film; priority 1990-07-11, published 1992-10-27. § 102(b). Description: Integrated lab (process + print) system. Potential § 102: none for the independent claims (single lab).

15. U.S. 5,388,252 – "System for transparent monitoring of processors in a network with display of screen images at a remote station for diagnosis by technical support personnel" – Eastman Kodak; priority 1990-09-07, published 1995-02-07. § 102(b). Relevant to claims 6–10.
    Description: A network of processors monitored transparently, with screen images displayed at a remote technical-support station for diagnosis — i.e., remote detection of a malfunctioning node and routing of a diagnosis task. Potential § 102: Like the Fuji reference, this is close to the concept behind claims 6–9 (hub detecting that something is missing and contacting the source site), but it concerns processor fault monitoring, not image-set retrieval keyed to a unique location identifier. Best characterized as § 103 art against claims 6–9, not clean § 102 anticipation.

16. U.S. 5,264,683 – Yoshikawa et al., "Method of collating photographic prints with photographic film" – Fuji Photo Film; priority 1990-10-04, published 1993-11-23. § 102(b). Potential § 102: none; collation only.

17. U.S. 5,428,747 – Kitamoto, "Print management system utilizing separate storage units…" – Dainippon Screen; priority 1991-07-26, published 1995-06-27. § 102(b). Potential § 102: none; prepress job management.

B. Remote image-database / retrieval references (relevant to claims 1, 3, 4, 5)

1. U.S. 5,272,549 – McDonald, "Apparatus for electronic editing of integrated color images with related text material and employing an image frame" – priority 1991-11-01, published 1993-12-21. § 102(b).
   Description: A user's PC communicates over telephone lines with a remote copy/print center ("telecommunication processor") holding an image database; images are retrieved to the user for editing, and the integrated document is printed at the center. The '916 background expressly identifies this patent ("a customer can connect his computer to a remote print or copy center to retrieve digital image signals").
   Potential § 102: It discloses a remote image store retrieved by a remote user terminal, but not a plurality of mutually remote scanner stations each assigning a unique scanner-location identification to a freshly scanned film image set. It therefore does not anticipate claim 1 or claim 4. It is relevant to the general "hub stores images and serves remote terminals" element and is strong § 103 material against the terminal-retrieval concepts in claims 3/5.

2. U.S. 5,428,423 – Clark, "Photographic printed cards and apparatus and method of making same" – priority 1991-11-26, published 1995-06-27. § 102(b). Potential § 102: none; print-product making.

3. U.S. 5,493,408 – Kurogane et al., "Image processing system having facilitated communication between an image data transmitter and an image processor" – Fuji Xerox; priority 1992-02-28, published 1996-02-20. § 102(a)/(e) (published less than one year before the '916 filing).
   Description: Facilitated communication between an image-data transmitter (sender) and a remote image processor. Potential § 102: Relevant to the transmitter↔processor (station↔hub) communication element of claims 1/4; unlikely alone to anticipate because it lacks the plurality of remote scanning stations with unique location IDs and the hub-to-many-terminal distribution. § 103 candidate.

4. U.S. 5,327,265 – McDonald, "Modem accessable image database system for on-demand printing" – priority 1992-05-01, published 1994-07-05. § 102(b).
   Description: A modem-accessible remote image database (user-supplied or stock images on optical media) searched at low resolution and retrieved by a remote user for on-demand printing at a copy center. Companion to the '549 patent.
   Potential § 102: Discloses remote retrieval of stored digital images from a central facility, but again not multiple scanner stations assigning unique scanner-location IDs to newly scanned film sets. Does not anticipate claims 1/4; relevant § 103 art for the hub/terminal elements.

5. U.S. 5,477,353 – Yamasaki et al., "Photographic image processing system having laboratory unit for processing film and photographer unit for supplying printing information" – Olympus Optical; priority 1993-04-21, published 1995-12-19. § 102(a)/(e).
   Description: A centralized laboratory unit (film processor + scanner + printer) plus one or more remote "photographer units." Film is processed and scanned at the lab, each film assigned a unique identification code, and the images are retrieved at the remote photographer unit using that code, edited, and printed at the lab. The '916 background cites this patent by number ('353).
   Potential § 102: This is the single most structurally analogous cited reference. It discloses scanning→unique ID→remote retrieval→editing→printing at a hub. But it is a single central laboratory, and the '916 independent claims 1 and 4 require a plurality of scanner stations remote from one another, each with its own unique scanner-location identification. The '916 specification itself distinguishes the '353 patent on exactly this ground (the '353 system "require[s] that all … hardcopy film … must be conveyed to only one central processing center"). Accordingly, the '353 patent is likely § 103 art combined with a multiple-station/network teaching, rather than a § 102 anticipation of claims 1/4. It is relevant to claims 5/10-style retrieval/ID-indexing elements.

6. U.S. 5,666,215 – Fredlund et al., "System and method for remotely selecting photographic images" – Eastman Kodak; priority 1994-02-25 (CIP of Ser. No. 08/201,735), published 1997-09-09. § 102(e) (published after the '916 filing, but with an earlier effective filing date).
   Description: A customer sends negative film to a photofinisher, which develops, scans and stores the images; the photofinisher transmits a display (preview/thumbnail set) over a network to the customer's remote terminal; the customer selects images and orders prints/services, which are produced and delivered.
   Potential § 102: This is arguably the strongest § 102(e) candidate among the cited references for the method concepts of scanning at a processing site, storing scanned images at a hub, and serving them to a remote terminal for selection. Its weakness against claims 1/4 is the same as the others — it does not appear to require a plurality of mutually remote scanner stations each embedding a unique scanner-location identification — and it is a single-photofinisher model. It is directly relevant to claim 5 (image served to a remote terminal upon customer ID/selection).

4. Non-patent citation

1. "Picture Web Preview," Aug. 28, 1996, 16 pages, from http://www.pictureweb.com/ and http://www.pictureplace.com/ (cited by the examiner).
   Date note: Dated ~3 weeks before the '916 filing; it is at most § 102(a) art (public prior use/knowledge or a printed publication), not § 102(b), and its enablement/public-accessibility as of that date is uncertain from the citation alone. Description: An online photo-preview/ordering service (PictureWeb/"PicturePlace") allowing users to view photographs over the then-emerging web and order prints. Potential § 102: Relevant to the "image signals retrieved/distributed by a user over a network" environment, but as a service brochure/website capture it is unlikely, standing alone, to anticipate claims 1/4; most useful as § 103 context.

5. Ranking — most relevant prior art to US 5,760,916

1. U.S. 5,477,353 (Yamasaki / Olympus) — closest structural analog: processor + scanner + unique film ID + remote retrieval + printing at the lab. Primary § 103 reference; the '916 specification distinguishes it by its single centralized lab.
2. U.S. 5,666,215 (Fredlund / Kodak) — scanned images stored at a finisher and served to a remote customer terminal for selection/ordering. Best § 102(e) candidate for the "scan → store → serve remote terminal" method elements; does not clearly reach the "plurality of remote scanner stations, each with a unique scanner-location ID."
3. U.S. 5,272,549 (McDonald) and U.S. 5,327,265 (McDonald) — remote image-database retrieval from a central facility by a remote user; expressly acknowledged in the '916 background. Relevant to the hub/terminal claims (3, 5).
4. U.S. 5,291,420 (Fuji) and U.S. 5,388,252 (Kodak) — remote monitoring/diagnosis of dispersed equipment from a central site. The most relevant cited art for the failure-tracing claims 6–9, though directed at equipment faults rather than per-image-set status.
5. U.S. 5,493,408 (Fuji Xerox) — facilitated transmitter↔remote- processor communication (station↔hub element).
6. The remaining film-marking/collation/order-matching references (items 1–12, 14, 16, 17, 19) — background only; they support the "identification code associated with a film order" concept but do not approach the network architecture of claims 1/4.

6. Bottom line and caveats

• No single examiner-cited reference appears to anticipate independent claims 1 or 4 outright, because the claimed combination—a plurality of mutually remote scanner stations, each generating a unique scanner-location identification that is used to route/serve image sets at a remote hub—is not clearly disclosed by any one cited document. The two closest (§ 5,477,353 and § 5,666,215) both use a single processing/scanning site.
• The cited art is therefore best understood as § 103 obviousness material (e.g., '353 or '215 in view of a networked multi-site/distributed scanning teaching, or in view of the McDonald remote-database references), rather than as clean § 102 anticipatory art against claims 1/4.
• For dependent claims: claims 6–9 (failure tracing) map most closely to U.S. 5,291,420 and U.S. 5,388,252; claim 5 (ID forwarded ahead of the image, then image delivered on ID) maps most closely to U.S. 5,666,215 and the McDonald references.

Confidence and limits: Bibliographic data (numbers, dates, assignees, titles) is taken directly from the Google Patents and Unified Patents records for US5760916A and should be treated as reliable. My claim-by-claim § 102 mapping is an analytical assessment, not an infringement/validity opinion, and I was unable to retrieve and read the full claim text and complete specifications of every one of the 23 references within this session. A definitive anticipation determination requires an element-by-element comparison of each claim against the full disclosure of each reference, and I recommend that step before relying on any "anticipates" characterization above.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual prior-art references listed on the patent page. Let me pull details on the key cited references.

Let me pull details on the remaining key references.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent 5,760,916 ("Image Handling System and Method")

Note on scope of this analysis: I am working from the full text of US 5,760,916 (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5760916/en) and the prior-art references listed in its "Citations (23)" and Non-Patent Citations sections. I retrieved full or partial text for US 5,272,549, US 5,477,353, US 5,291,420, and the citation context for US 5,493,408. I could not retrieve the full text of US 5,157,385, US 5,266,483, US 5,327,265, US 5,661,215, US 5,388,252, or the "Picture Web Preview" non-patent citation within this session. Where I rely on title/abstract/citation-context rather than verified full text, I say so explicitly. Those items should be verified before this analysis is used in a validity opinion or a filing.

1. Governing framework

Because the application was filed in 1996, pre-AIA § 103 governs, with pre-AIA § 102(a)/(b)/(e) defining what is prior art. No earlier priority is claimed on the face of the patent, so 1996-09-16 is the presumptive critical date unless the inventors can swear behind it under Rule 131 (the ID-generation scheme described in the specification suggests actual reduction to practice in mid-1996; the figures reference the "recently announced FlashPix format," consistent with a 1996 invention date).

Prior-art date categories for the cited references:

• § 102(b) (published more than one year before 1996-09-16, i.e., before 1995-09-16): US 5,157,385 (1992-10-27), US 5,266,483 (1993-11-23), US 5,272,549 (1993-12-21), US 5,291,420 (1994-03-01), US 5,327,265 (1994-07-05), US 5,388,252 (1995-02-07). These are the strongest references — they cannot be antedated.
• § 102(a)/102(e) (before the critical date): US 5,477,353 (issued 1995-12-19; US filing 1993-04-21 → also § 102(e) art as of its filing date), US 5,493,408 (issued 1996-02-20).
• § 102(e) only: US 5,666,215 (issued 1997-09-09, after the critical date, but carries a 1994-02-25 priority date and therefore qualifies as § 102(e) prior art only if its US filing predates the invention date). I have not verified the full text or the US filing date of US 5,666,215; treat this reference as conditional.
• Non-patent citation: "Picture Web Preview, Aug. 28, 1996 … from HTTP://WWW.PICTUREWEB.COM/ and HTTP://WWW.PICTUREPLACE.COM/" — dated 19 days before the filing date. Its status as a "printed publication" under § 102(a) is arguable (publicly accessible web pages), and I could not verify its content. Flagging it as a candidate reference only.

Level of ordinary skill (proposed): a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or computer science, or equivalent experience, plus 2–3 years of experience in photofinishing equipment and/or networked image-handling systems; or, in the alternative, 5+ years of practical experience in photofinishing lab equipment and data communications. This is a systems-integration art, which matters under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007): predictable combination of known elements with known functions is obvious.

2. What the claims actually cover (and what they leave out)

This is critical to the analysis. The specification devotes substantial space to the FIG. 3 identification structure — Bit Sum 100 (checksum), ID Version 102, Scanner ID 104, Date Code 106, Sequence Number 108 — and to DES encryption with a 56-bit key, explicitly motivated as an anti-fraud measure ("If nothing further was done to the ID, a malicious user at a remote terminal could simply increment a received ID and thereby access another's digital image set").

None of that is claimed. The claims require only "an associated identification signal … which comprises a scanner location identification, wherein each scanner location identification is unique" (claim 1); the encryption, checksum, versioning and sequence numbering are disclosed but unclaimed subject matter. The claims are therefore directed to a distributed scanning / central-hub / remote-retrieval architecture, not to a cryptographic access-control scheme.

Likewise claimed, and worth noting as the narrower features:

• Claim 2: hub-side directory mapping scanner location ID → scanner address.
• Claim 5: ID sent to the user without the image, user returns the ID, hub returns the image.
• Claim 6: hub checks for a stored image set of "predetermined characteristics"; if absent, looks up the scanner address and sends a "first message."
• Claim 7: hub communicates the message to the scanner.
• Claim 8: hub gives the user the scanner address, and the user forwards the message.
• Claim 9: hub prints the first message for forwarding.
• Claim 10: date-of-scan is in the ID; hub compares it to the current date and, if the gap is under a predetermined tolerance, sends a "second message"; otherwise it forwards the first message to the scanner.

3. The cited prior art, mapped to the claim elements

4. Proposed § 103 grounds

Ground 1 (primary) — Claims 1, 3, and 4: US 5,477,353 in view of US 5,291,420

Claim 1 is a system claim with three groups of elements. The '353 patent discloses the scanner-station side: an ID code reader, a scanner producing digital image data from film, a memory that stores the digital data keyed to the identification code, and transmission means that sends that data over a line to a remote unit. The remaining differences are:

1. A plurality of scanner stations "remote from one another";
2. That each station's identification include a unique scanner location identification; and
3. A hub station that receives from all of them, stores, and serves a plurality of remote terminals.

The '353 patent, as the '916 specification itself concedes, is "constructed with the purpose that a given user's films are processed and scanned at one central processing center." The '420 patent supplies precisely the missing teaching: a plurality of geographically dispersed lab shops, each with its own computer, all tied by communication lines to a headquarters main computer that individually addresses, fetches from, and manages each shop — which necessarily entails a unique per-shop identity/address at the hub.

Motivation to combine (KSR rationales):

• Same field, same problem. Both are networked photographic processing systems; the art is analogous and the references are combinable by design.
• The '916 specification's own stated problem supplies the motivation: the '353/'549 single-center model "require[s] that all digital image storage media … or hardcopy film … carrying images from multiple users, must be conveyed to only one central processing center. This is inconvenient and may cause delays in such a system implemented on a country wide basis." '420's whole purpose is to avoid that bottleneck by distributing processing across many shops under one headquarters computer.
• Predictable result. Combining a known distributed lab architecture ('420) with a known scan-and-transmit-by-identifier system ('353) yields nothing more than the expected sum of the parts: film dropped at any shop, digitized and identifier-tagged there, forwarded to a central computer, and retrieved later.

The "unique scanner location identification" element is satisfied in substance by '420's per-shop addressing (a hub that polls and controls individual lab sub-computers must distinguish them), and by '353's ID code reader. Making the identifier unique per station is a definitional/arithmetical difference, not a technical one — the kind KSR treats as within the skill of the artisan.

Claim 3 (plurality of remote terminals connected to the hub) is met by '353's photographer/terminal unit read in light of '549 (customer PC dialing the copy center through a MODEM) and/or '265 (modem-accessible image database for on-demand printing).

Claim 4 (method counterpart of claim 1) fails for the same reasons. Its last step — "forwarding to a terminal location which is remote from the scanner stations and the hub station, the identification" — is taught by the photofinishing order-identification art generally (US 5,266,483; US 4,779,122; US 4,760,574; US 4,823,162; US 4,508,438 printing data alongside the images) and by '353's use of an identification code by which the customer's film/order is identified and later retrieved. The '916 specification's FIG. 2 route 12 (printer 8 prints hardcopy identification 60, delivered with the prints, independent of the hub) is exactly conventional order-collation practice.

Ground 2 — Claims 2, 5, and 6: adding US 5,291,420 (directory) and US 5,388,252 (remote diagnosis)

Claim 2 (hub's second storage with directory data correlating each scanner location identification with a scanner address): '420's central computer maintains the data necessary to communicate with each shop's sub-computer over the communication line; a directory of lab addresses keyed to lab identity is inherent in "the main computer (191) fetches the data of the sub-computer via a communication line." Where a hub must contact a specific site based on an identifier decoded from customer input, storing the mapping is an obvious implementation choice (a routine data-structure decision). '252's networked-processor monitoring likewise requires the monitoring station to know the addresses of the processors it monitors.

Claim 5 (ID forwarded to user without the image; user transmits ID to hub; hub transmits image): '353 already has the customer-side terminal returning an identification to the lab so the lab can print the corresponding images. The "without the associated image set signal" limitation is a natural consequence of the token/index paradigm and is squarely taught by '549 and '265 — a user dials a central database, identifies the desired record, and the image is downloaded. Additional motivation: transmission economics (the specification and '549 both discuss the cost of transmitting multi-megabyte images over telephone lines; '549 expressly describes sending only a compressed image or an image frame rather than the full image). Security is a further, articulated motivation: an identifier/code that grants access is useful precisely because it is not bundled with the data itself.

Claim 6 (hub determines whether it has a stored image set of "predetermined characteristics"; if not, looks up the scanner address from directory data and forwards a "first message" to the scanner): this is the failure-tracing feature the '916 specification advances as a principal advantage — "the use of a unique identification signal associated with each scanner location facilitates a determination of the source of any failure in the system … the scanner location which was to communicate the images can be contacted to determine if the scanned images were in fact completely communicated to the hub station."

US 5,388,252 is the key reference here and it is § 102(b) art. A Kodak patent issued 1995-02-07, more than a year before the critical date, disclosing transparent monitoring of processors in a network with screen images displayed at a remote station for diagnosis by technical support personnel. That is the same problem in the same field: something has gone wrong at a remote image-processing site; a central station detects it, identifies the site, and communicates with it to diagnose the fault. Combining that known diagnostic workflow with the '353/'420 hub architecture is the combination of familiar elements according to known methods, yielding the predictable result of being able to tell a customer why an image set is unavailable and to ask the originating site to re-transmit. Motivating factors: customer-service cost, avoidance of repeat customer visits/orders, and the well-known desirability of centralized fault management for widely dispersed equipment (also '420's explicit "centralized management of a plurality of minilab shops" objective).

The "predetermined characteristics" language is deliberately broad — the specification defines it as "any suitable predetermined characteristics determined by the operator," including merely "a complete image set" versus an incomplete/corrupt one. That breadth defeats any argument that the limitation adds a technical advance; it is an operator-selected threshold.

Ground 3 — Claims 7, 8, and 9: manner of forwarding the message

Claim 7 (hub communicates the message to the scanner) is the plain continuation of Ground 2 and is met by '252's network monitoring station and '420's HQ→lab communication line. No additional reference is needed.

Claim 8 (hub forwards the determined scanner address to the remote terminal, and the terminal then forwards the message): weaker. This is a distribution-of-function choice — the hub discloses the routing information and delegates the contact. Supportable as an obvious alternative in view of '549's peer-to-peer MODEM dialogues between customer PC and copy center, and '252's remote-support model, but the record is thinner on an express motivation. This is one of the claim's better non-obviousness arguing points: one could contend there is no articulated reason in the prior art to route diagnostic traffic through the end user, and that this inverts the hub's role as the system's control point. Expect the answer that it merely shifts a known step to a known actor to save hub resources, which KSR treats as obvious.

Claim 9 (hub prints the first message, which is then forwarded to the scanner — e.g., by mail): also thinner. The specification justifies it only as a fallback "if the scanner station has the capacity to receive such a message," i.e., a capacity-driven design choice. The physical-delivery alternative is well known ('549 expressly discloses hand-carry/mail transfer of media to and from the copy center; the '916 specification itself treats physical transfer as a recognized communication mode). Still, "print the diagnostic message and mail it" is an administrative convention more than a technical teaching; a patentee would press here.

Ground 4 — Claim 10: the date/tolerance branch

Claim 10 requires an indication of the date on which the image set was obtained within the identification signal, and, on a miss, a comparison of that date with the current date:

• gap < predetermined tolerance → send a second message to the remote terminal ("check again later");
• gap > tolerance → look up the scanner address from the directory and forward the first message.

'353's identification code is read from the film; date-coded identifiers are routine in photofinishing order handling (date/frame coding appears throughout the cited collation and side-printing art). '420 discloses centralized monitoring of production state, and the whole '252 diagnostic concept is triggered by an evaluation rather than raw alarm. The specific two-branch threshold rule finds no express home in the cited references.

Nevertheless, under KSR the claim is vulnerable: the "invention" is a design choice among a small number of known options for handling the well-known problem that a transit delay produces false "missing image" reports. Everyone in the art understood that a just-dropped-off roll could not yet be at the hub; selecting an arbitrary tolerance (the specification's own example is "less than 5 days") is the kind of non-technical parameter optimization that KSR and In re Aller hold obvious. Why the artisan would be motivated: to avoid generating spurious failure inquiries, and to ensure that real failures still get resolved (which is why the branch reverts to the Ground-2/3 message). Reasonable expectation of success is high; no new technology is required.

5. Claim-by-claim summary

6. Where genuine non-obviousness arguments remain

1. The system-level insight of decoupling drop-off from retrieval is not literally in any single reference. '353 keeps images at the lab; '420's hub manages labs but is a management system, not an image-delivery system. The '916's claimed architecture lets a user deposit rolls at multiple, unrelated scanner stations and retrieve everything from one hub without tracking which station was used. The patentee would argue that no cited reference teaches or suggests a hub as the single user-facing point of access for images scanned at a plurality of independently operated stations. The counter is KSR-style: the combination of '420's distributed-lab hub with '353's scan-and-return architecture yields exactly that, with predictable results, and the industry's own direction (country-wide service; '549's remote access) supplied the motivation.

2. The ID generation and access-control scheme (FIG. 3 + DES) is genuinely unusual for 1996 — encrypted, checksummed, versioned, sequence-based tokens delivered to the customer out-of-band. This is the most inventive material in the document. But it is unclaimed, so it cannot support the validity of claims 1–10. Its relevance is twofold: (a) it may be relevant to any later Kodak/IV family member (e.g., US 6,108,104 / US 6,278,531), which are not prior art to the '916; and (b) it supplies context showing the inventors were solving a fraud problem the asserted prior art does not address — useful only as a narrative, not as a claim limitation.

3. Claims 8, 9, and 10 have materially thinner support than claims 1–7. Notably, none of the cited references is identified in the citation table as expressly disclosing a user-initiated diagnostic message relay (claim 8), a printed-and-mailed diagnostic message (claim 9), or a date-tolerance gating rule (claim 10). Any invalidity challenge should lead with claims 1–7 and treat 8–10 as the harder row.

4. No secondary considerations of record. I found nothing in the cited materials establishing unexpected results, industry praise, copying, or a nexus between a claimed feature and commercial success. Note the litigation history — the patent was asserted in the Central District of California (case 2:19-cv-09129, per the Google Patents litigation entry) and passed through Kodak → Intellectual Ventures Fund 83 → Monument Peak Ventures; that history does not itself supply § 103 evidence.

7. Caveats

• Verify before relying on: US 5,493,408, US 5,157,385, US 5,266,483, US 5,327,265, US 5,388,252, US 5,666,215, and the "Picture Web Preview" non-patent citation. I have full/partial text only for US 5,477,353, US 5,272,549, and US 5,291,420 in this session, plus the '916 record itself.
• US 5,666,215 is conditional. Its 1997-09-09 issue date is after the '916's filing date, so it is available only as § 102(e) art via its 1994-02-25 priority/apparatus filing date, and only relative to the invention date. If its content is as its title suggests (remote user selection of photographic images from a service provider), it may supply the "identification forwarded to the user, user retrieves images" element of claims 4–5 more directly than '353 does.
• Rule 131 / invention-date risk. If the inventors established an earlier invention date, references publishing between that date and 1996-09-16 (notably '353 and '408) could be removed from § 102(a)/(e). The § 102(b) references ('385, '483, '549, '420, '265, '252) would remain available regardless.
• Interim rule. This analysis assumes pre-AIA § 103. The file history, if a reissue or ex parte reexam were contemplated, would need to be checked for any narrowing amendments or representations that could affect claim scope.