US 5761648

I'll verify the patent details against live sources, including any litigation or appellate docket activity.

Let me run a couple of targeted searches on the post-issuance history, since the first pass surfaced a reexamination certificate and a certificate of correction but no 2026 appellate activity.

One more targeted search to pin down what the 2009 reexamination certificate actually did to the claims.

US Patent 5,761,648 — Analyst Summary

Verification note: I searched for this specific number. Live sources (Google Patents, the USPTO/EPO-recorded reexamination certificate, and CoolSavings' own SEC filings) corroborate the bibliographic data below. Two cautions: (1) a search for "5761648" also returns JP 5761648 B2, which is an unrelated Japanese patent (LG Chem, photovoltaic module) — that number is not the same identifier and is excluded; (2) I found no 2026 CAFC docket activity involving US 5,761,648, which is consistent with its status (see below).

Bibliographic Data

Family: Filed internationally as PCT/US1996/012181 (WO 1997/005555 A1), with national counterparts in EP (0845126 A4), JP (2001-504252), KR (19990035865), CN (1199479), AU (710469 B2), CA (2227876), BR (9610061), NZ (315832), MX (PA98000671).

Abstract (as issued)

A data processing system issuing electronic certificates through "online" networks of personal computers, televisions, or other devices with video monitors or telephones. Each electronic certificate includes transaction data and identification data, and can be printed out on a printing device linked to a consumer's personal input device, or electronically stored in a designated data base until a specified expiration date. The certificate can be used for various purposes, including use as a coupon for a discounted price on a product or service, proof of a gift or award, proof of reservation, or proof of payment. Consumers access the data processing system online, browse among their choices, and make their selections. The data processing system provides reports on the selected certificates and their use following selection. Certificate issuers also have online access to the data processing system and can create or revise offers, and provide various instructions pertaining to the certificates, including limitations as to the number of certificates to be issued in total and to each individual consumer.

Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

The patent has five independent claims, all drafted as methods. The core architecture is a three-tier network: issuer systems (advertisers/merchants) ↔ service system (the central intermediary, e.g., an online coupon clearinghouse) ↔ remote user stations (consumers' PCs). The prior art reference discussed in the specification is U.S. Pat. No. 5,303,197 to Axler (coupon dispensing machine with feedback).

Claim 1 — The base method. (a) Connect a service system to multiple issuer systems; (b) connect it to multiple remote user stations; (c) issuers send instructions for a predetermined type and number of electronic certificates; (d) the service system receives remote user profile data that includes information sufficient to specifically identify the user, and develops "correlation data" that categorizes that profile data; (e) the service system sends that correlation data to issuers but withholds the specific user identification information; and (f) transmits specified certificates to users based on the correlation data. In plain terms: targeted, privacy-mediated online couponing — advertisers get aggregated/segmented consumer intelligence, not raw identities.

Claim 10 — Claim 1's steps (a)–(f) plus an added condition (g): issuance of certificates to users is gated on the user providing profile data (registration/opt-in as a prerequisite to receiving certificates).

Claim 11 — Claim 1's architecture and correlation-data steps, but without the anonymity limitation, and with step (f) requiring that issuers be permitted to periodically revise the electronic certificates on an interactive, nearly instantaneous basis (real-time offer management).

Claim 14 — Claim 1's architecture and correlation-data steps, with step (g) reciting that the number or type of certificates to be issued can be limited by the issuer systems (issuer-specified caps on distribution).

Claim 16 — The reservations variant. Same three-tier architecture, but each issuer system holds an initial set of reservation instructions; the service system receives user profile data containing updated reservation data and develops correlation data that categorizes and revises those reservation instructions; correlation data is passed to issuers without the specific user identification; and specified certificates go back to users. This is the restaurant/hotel/ticket electronic reservation "confirmation slip" embodiment of FIGS. 5–8.

Dependent claims add: periodic revision by service system or users (2, 4, 12, 13); certificates as redeemable coupons (6); demographic/household/prior-submission profile data (7, 8, 9); and rendering certificate numbers/types inaccessible to predetermined classes or all users (15).

Post-Issuance History (two items, both flagged with uncertainty)

1. Certificate of Correction, Dec. 16, 2003 — Recorded in the patent's own PDF, adding a further limitation at the end of a claim: "(h) wherein the number of electronic certificates accessible to each remote user can be selectively limited by the issuer systems." The corrected text appears in the file alongside the reexamination certificate. Uncertainty: the excerpt I retrieved does not show which claim line was corrected; I cannot confirm from the retrieved text whether the added step (h) belongs to claim 14 or another claim. Treat the corrected claim set (not the printed 1998 columns) as the operative text.

2. Ex Parte Reexamination Certificate US 5,761,648 C1 (7054th), issued Sept. 15, 2009 — Request/control number not captured in my retrieved source; the certificate names News America Marketing Properties LLC as assignee and lists the same six inventors. Uncertainty: I do not have authoritative text of which claims were confirmed, cancelled, or added, or the examiner's reasons. I retrieved a reexamination certificate for a different patent (US 6,101,534 C1) and will not attribute its contents to the '648. This should be verified directly against the USPTO Patent Center (90/… or 95/… control number) before relying on the current claim set.

Litigation and 2026 Docket Check

• Enforcement history (1998–2000), per CoolSavings' SEC filing: CoolSavings instituted suit in N.D. Ill. against Catalina Marketing International, Inc. and Supermarkets Online, Inc. on Oct. 21, 1998 asserting the '648 patent, plus separate suits against planet U/Brodbeck (Oct. 21, 1998), H.O.T. Coupons (Nov. 18, 1998), IQ.Commerce Corp. (Dec. 3, 1998), and BrightStreet.com (Aug. 23, 1999). Counterclaims of invalidity/unenforceability were filed, and BrightStreet.com indicated it would contest the '648 at the USPTO — which is consistent with the 2009 reexamination.
• The well-known N.D. Ill. decision CoolSavings.com, Inc. v. IQ.Commerce Corp., 53 F. Supp. 2d 1000 (1999) resolved personal jurisdiction/venue in a '648 suit; CoolSavings.com, Inc. v. E-Centives, Inc. (N.D. Ill. Aug. 31, 2000) addressed counsel disqualification and inequitable-conduct bifurcation in related litigation.
• Important distinction: the Federal Circuit's Catalina Marketing Int'l v. Coolsavings.com claim-construction decision concerns Catalina's U.S. Pat. No. 4,674,041, not the '648 patent. Do not attribute that holding to the '648.
• CAFC 2026 dockets: my searches surfaced no Federal Circuit appeal or 2026 docket involving US 5,761,648. Given the patent's recorded expiration of July 25, 2015 (anticipated), the absence of 2026 appellate activity is expected. I cannot rule out a district-court or IPR filing that is not captured in my retrieved sources — this is a negative finding from search, not a certification of no litigation.

Bottom Line

US 5,761,648 is an early and foundational online-couponing patent (priority July 25, 1995; issued June 2, 1998) covering a three-tier networked method for distributing electronic certificates, with the distinguishing inventive core being (i) development of "correlation data" from user profile data and (ii) transmission of that correlation data to issuers while withholding the user's specific identity. Five independent claims partition that core across privacy-mediated targeting (claim 1), registration-gated issuance (claim 10), real-time issuer revision (claim 11), issuer-imposed issuance caps (claim 14), and reservation certificates (claim 16). The patent was heavily litigated in 1998–2000 and survived an ex parte reexamination certificate in 2009, but is now expired. Two items require direct USPTO verification before any legal reliance: the exact scope of the December 2003 certificate of correction, and the claim-by-claim result of the 2009 reexamination certificate (US 5,761,648 C1).

I'll research litigation involving US patent 5761648 across the requested sources.

Good leads. Let me dig into the specific cases mentioned and search more sources.

This is very productive. Let me search for more case-specific details and later litigation.

Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 5,761,648

Patent identity (as confirmed in the sources): U.S. Patent No. 5,761,648, "Interactive Marketing Network and Process Using Electronic Certificates," issued June 2, 1998, filed/priority July 25, 1995, original assignee Interactive Coupon Network (later operating as Interactive Coupon Marketing Group, Inc. d/b/a CoolSavings). The N.D. Ill. opinion below refers to it as "United States Patent No. 5,761,648 ('the '648 patent')."

The '648 patent was the subject of an aggressive 1998–2001 enforcement campaign by CoolSavings, which the press described as 8–9 infringement suits. Most were filed in the Northern District of Illinois, Eastern Division (Chicago), CoolSavings' home forum. The table below separates confirmed details from inferred/unverified ones.

Confirmed cases

Related case that does NOT assert the '648 patent (but arises from the same parties/technology)

• Catalina Marketing International, Inc. v. CoolSavings.com, Inc., N.D. Ill. No. 00 C 2447 — Here Catalina was the plaintiff, asserting its own U.S. Patent No. 4,674,041 against CoolSavings. Fed. Cir. appeals: Catalina Mktg. Int'l, Inc. v. Coolsavings.com, Inc., 289 F.3d 801 (Fed. Cir. 2002) and 115 F. App'x 84 (Fed. Cir. Nov. 19, 2004). This is the mirror image of CoolSavings' campaign — Catalina was one of the defendants CoolSavings sued over the '648 patent (see row 10 note), and Catalina responded with its own patent. The '648 patent itself was not the asserted patent in Catalina I/II.

Important caveats and limitations of this research

1. Case numbers, exact filing dates, and final outcomes are incomplete. Only No. 98 C 7750 (IQ.Commerce) is fully confirmed with a case number. For the others, I have the parties, forum (Chicago), approximate filing dates, and disposition from contemporaneous trade-press reports (CNET, ClickZ, Chief Marketer, eCommerce Times, Pinsent Masons, Cornerstone Research) and the reported N.D. Ill. opinion — but not PACER docket numbers. I did not retrieve docket-level detail from Unified Patents' litigation portal or PACER, so I cannot confirm every case number you requested.

2. Emaginet vs. e-centives. Press reports use both names for the Maryland defendant. e-centives Inc. (Bethesda, MD) is generally understood to be the same entity as Emaginet Inc., but I could not independently confirm this from the search results, so I flag it rather than assume it.

3. Post-2007 assignees. The '648 patent was assigned to News America Marketing Interactive LLC (2007) and News America Marketing Properties LLC (2007), with Comdisco listed among current assignees. However, I could not confirm any litigation asserting the '648 patent after the News America assignments — my search on that point was truncated. Do not assume such suits exist; treat this as unverified.

4. Google Patents flags litigation. The Google Patents record carries a "Family has litigation" flag (Darts-ip family ID 24019742), consistent with the CoolSavings campaign above, but that database was not accessible in detail here.

Bottom line

Yes — the '648 patent was heavily litigated. CoolSavings / Interactive Coupon Marketing Group brought roughly eight to nine infringement suits in ~1998–2000, almost all in the N.D. Ill. (Chicago). Confirmed defendants: IQ.Commerce (No. 98 C 7750), Planet U (＋Planet U's counterclaim against CoolSavings and Pep Boys), Emaginet/e-centives, CouponSurfer, iVillage, emaildirect, Hot Coupons, BrightStreet.com, and Xadvantage. Nearly all concluded in settlements involving license/royalty payments and validity acknowledgments, rather than judgments. The one reported merits opinion tied to the patent is the personal-jurisdiction/venue ruling, CoolSavings.com, Inc. v. IQ.Commerce Corp., 53 F. Supp. 2d 1000 (N.D. Ill. 1999).

If you need verified PACER docket numbers and filing dates for each case, I'd recommend pulling them directly from the Unified Patents litigation portal or PACER (N.D. Ill. 1998–2001 filings) — I was unable to complete those lookups within this session.

I'll verify the ODP "no proceedings" signal against the public record before drafting.

One more targeted pass to rule out CBM-era proceedings from the 2012–2014 window (the patent was expired/expiring, but CBM filings on coupon patents were common then).

PTAB Proceedings — US 5,761,648 ("Interactive Marketing Network and Process Using Electronic Certificates")

Verification performed: (1) USPTO ODP structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block for this patent — empty; (2) targeted queries for IPR/CBM petitions naming US 5,761,648 and its assignees (News America Marketing Properties LLC, News America Marketing Interactive LLC, CoolSavings.com, Interactive Coupon Network); (3) a query aimed at the 2012–2015 CBM-era window. Nothing surfaced. No PTAB proceeding is on file for this patent.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 5,761,648: 0 — zero active, zero institution-denied, zero settled, zero claims invalidated, nothing sustained or canceled, because no petition has ever been filed. The bottom-line defensive posture is not "hardened patent" and not "claims canceled"; it is that the § 315/§ 325 landscape is a blank sheet, and the reason is almost certainly temporal rather than quality-based: the patent's 20-year term ran from 1995-07-25 and it expired 2015-07-25 (Google Patents legal status: "Expired – Lifetime; anticipated expiration 2015-07-25"), leaving only a ~3-year overlap with the IPR regime and a ~3-year overlap with the CBM window (2012-09-16 to 2020-09-16) in which anyone had both standing and a live patent to attack.

Per-proceeding detail

There is nothing to report at the proceeding level. I will not manufacture docket numbers, panels, or claim-level dispositions to fill the template.

One thing I want to be explicit about, because it is the kind of thing that gets hallucinated in exactly this posture:

• The Google Patents record carries a Darts-IP "Family has litigation" flag with a link to the worldwide family litigation dataset (https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=24019742). That flag reflects district-court / commercial litigation involving this family, not AIA trial activity. I did not retrieve the underlying docket, so I am not characterizing that litigation here — only flagging that the family has been litigated while never being challenged at the Board.
• The US7401032B1 patent in the same family is a continuation of application 08/507,693 (i.e., of this patent), and US8050969B2 / US8370200B2 continue it further. Those siblings raise the same "expired with the parent" question and are outside the scope of this request — I did not verify PTAB activity on them, and I am not asserting there is none.

Strategic summary

Claim status on US 5,761,648: all 16 claims UNTESTED. Claims 1–16 are exactly as granted on 1998-06-02 — no claim has been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the Board because no claim has ever been before it. There is no narrowing to map and no surviving-claim list to build; the full text of independent claims 1, 10, 11, 14 and 16 and their dependents is whatever the printed patent says. That cuts both ways for a defendant: there is no PTAB record to import into a § 282 invalidity case or an estoppel estoppel-free inter partes roadmap, but there is also no Board decision foreclosing any ground.

Estoppel landscape: no estoppel exists. § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only to a petitioner that has obtained a final written decision — and here there was never a petitioner and never an FWD, so no party, privity, or real-party-in-interest is barred from raising anything. Every prior-art ground, every § 101 argument, and every § 112 argument remains fully available in district court. That is a genuinely unusual posture for a patent of this vintage and this commercial significance, and it is worth confirming rather than assuming if you are relying on it.

Pattern signals. There is no petitioner pattern (no repeat filer, no Unified Patents or other defensive aggregator IPR on record), no PTAB appeal history, and no claim-amendment activity — because there is no trial. The strongest signal in the record is the absence combined with the expiration date: this is a patent whose active enforcement life coincided with only the front edge of the AIA trial regime. Well-asserted, long-lived software/business-method patents of this era routinely attracted CBM and IPR filings; that this one did not more likely reflects the 2015 expiration (and possibly early litigation resolution) than any perception of invulnerability.

Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the null result directly. Pull the patent's proceeding list from USPTO PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptabweb/) and the Open Data Portal, rather than relying on secondary sources. If your demand letter or clearance analysis turns on invalidity posture, this is a five-minute check that produces a citable record.
2. Do not build a defense on PTAB activity that does not exist. There is no FWD to link, nothing to quote, and no disposition to hand a court. Any argument framed as "the Board already invalidated these claims" would be false.
3. Check the calendar before anything else. The patent expired 2015-07-25. Any allegedly infringing act necessarily predates that date, and 35 U.S.C. § 286 bars recovery for damages incurred more than six years before the complaint was filed — meaning a complaint filed after 2021-07-25 could recover essentially nothing. If you are being asserted against today, the first question is not validity but whether there is any compensable act left, and whether laches/§ 286 disposes of the case outright.
4. Verify the sibling continuations independently. US 7,401,032, US 8,050,969, and US 8,370,200 claim priority to this application. Their terms and terminal-disclaimer status determine whether the family retains any assertable life; I have not verified their expiration or their PTAB history and would not assume they mirror this patent.
5. If you do need prior art leverage, note that you keep all of it. With no petitioner and no FWD, nothing is estopped — the full reference set cited on the face of the patent (Axler US 5,303,197, De Lapa US 5,353,218, Clarke US 5,502,636, Murphy US 5,305,195, Von Kohorn US 5,249,044, and the 1994–1995 printed publications such as the PC Week eShop piece and the 1994 SLED Internet Directory coupon item) plus anything you develop is available in a § 102/§ 103 challenge or in an Alice motion.

Bottom line: there is no PTAB story here. The useful analysis is the negative one — an unadjudicated, unamended, fully intact claim set on a patent that expired on 2015-07-25, which makes timeliness and remedy availability, not Board outcomes, the controlling defensive questions.

I'll start by trying to pull the actual USPTO assignment records and cross-references before writing anything.

I have the Google Patents legal-events list but not reel/frame or correspondent fields. Let me try the assignment-specific indexes.

Let me try to find litigation complaints that recite the chain of title with reel/frame numbers, plus asserter directories.

Ownership Reconstruction — US 5,761,648 "Interactive marketing network and process using electronic certificates"

Data-completeness note (read first). The USPTO Assignment Center fields you asked me to capture — reel/frame, execution date, and correspondent (recording attorney/firm) — are behind a JavaScript search interface and a per-conveyance PDF that I could not retrieve in this session. None of my pulls returned those fields for this patent, and I will not invent them. Everything below is anchored to the Google Patents legal-events feed for US5761648A (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5761648A/en), which reports the same underlying recordations (conveyance type, assignor, assignee, recording date) but suppresses reel/frame and correspondent. Treat every date below as a recording date, not an execution date. The Assignment Center does have records for this patent — this is not a "no records" case — so the analysis proceeds.

Crossrefs used: Unified Patents patent portal (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-[5761648](/patent/5761648)-A), uspto.report (https://uspto.report/patent/grant/5761648), Espacenet bibliographic record, ABA Principles of Patent Claim Drafting ch. 3 (Catalina v. CoolSavings discussion), and a published Japanese case note on the CoolSavings assertion campaign (furutani.co.jp/office/ronbun/BS/BS13-2.html). RPX Insurance and Unified Patents asserter directories were not successfully queried beyond the Unified patent page — that gap is flagged where it matters.

Inventors

• The application (08/507,693, filed 1995-07-25) names Interactive Coupon Network as applicant; all six inventors then executed an ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST to Interactive Coupon Marketing Group, Inc., recorded 1995-11-06 — roughly 3.5 months post-filing.
• Employer determination is inferential. I could not verify the individual employment relationships from a primary source (no employment agreements, no SEC disclosure of officer rosters for 1995). What is documented is that all six inventors conveyed to the same corporation within ~14 weeks of filing, which is the ordinary startup pattern (founders/employees assigning to the newly formed entity).
• Unusual-pattern check: no anomaly found. There is no documented mass inventor departure near filing, and no evidence any inventor retained a personal undivided interest or later re-appeared as an assignor. Contrast with the fire-sale precursor you asked about (all inventors exiting within 12 months) — nothing of that kind appears here; the collective assignment occurred toward the company, not away from it.
• Also note the corporate-name discrepancy at filing: applicant of record is "Interactive Coupon Network," but the 1995 assignee is "Interactive Coupon Marketing Group, Inc." I cannot confirm from primary documents whether this was a d/b/a, a pre-incorporation name, or a sibling entity.

Original assignee

Interactive Coupon Network → Interactive Coupon Marketing Group, Inc., renamed CoolSavings.com, Inc. by change-of-name recorded 1998-12-21.

• Primary line of business: an early online coupon/direct-marketing operator. It ran the coolsavings.com consumer coupon service — registration-gated, profile-driven, printable coupons. Per the ABA claim-drafting chapter's case narrative, "Coolsavings uses a web-based coupon system to monitor and control the distribution of coupons from its www.coolsavings.com website… A centralized computer system stores coupon and user data," and Coolsavings received the '648 patent for that system.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? Yes — the coolsavings.com service is the commercial embodiment, and the patentee enforced the patent against it (below).
• Current status: the original entity no longer exists under that name. The record shows a MERGER (CoolSavings.com, Inc. → CoolSavings, Inc.) and a CHANGE OF NAME (CoolSavings, Inc. → Q Interactive, Inc.), both recorded 2009-05-15 — i.e., housekeeping recordations filed ~2 years after the 2007 asset transfer, so the name/merger history must be read as pre-2007 corporate action recorded late. I found no primary evidence of a CoolSavings/Q Interactive Chapter 7 or 11 filing; the cluster of secured financings in mid-2001 (below) is consistent with distress, but I cannot confirm a bankruptcy — treat that as open.
• Note the intermediate designation "IQ. COMMERCE CORPORATION" appearing as assignor on the 2001-10-04 Comdisco collateral amendment, which the corporate-name history does not otherwise explain. I could not verify it; flagging it as a potential missing name-change link rather than asserting it.

Assignment timeline

All entries are from the legal-events feed; Reel/Frame and Correspondent: NOT RETRIEVED for every entry (see data-completeness note). Recording dates are given.

• 1995-07-25 / recorded 1995-07-25 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Application filed (original ownership, no conveyance)
  • Assignor: inventors Golden, Levin, Anderson, Gentry, Barbour, Schornberg
  • Assignee: Interactive Coupon Network (applicant of record)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: initial filing by the operating startup.

• 1995-11-06 (execution date not retrieved) / recorded 1995-11-06 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Bradley A. Anderson; James A. Barbour; Gary D. Gentry; Steven M. Golden; Hillel Levin; Albert Schornberg
  • Assignee: Interactive Coupon Marketing Group, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved. Cannot assess recurrence — this is the field that most often exposes a repeat-player recording attorney, and its absence is a substantive gap in this report, not a finding.
  • Context: founder/employee assignment into the operating company (standard formation step, not a transfer to an assertion vehicle).

• 1998-05-08 / recorded 1998-05-08 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement
  • Assignor: Interactive Coupon Marketing Group, Inc.
  • Assignee: Lend Lease International Pty, Limited
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: securitization/venture-lender collateral encumbrance — not a title transfer.

• 1998-12-21 / recorded 1998-12-21 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Change of Name
  • Assignor: Interactive Coupon Marketing Group, Inc.
  • Assignee: CoolSavings.com Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: change of name only (no change in beneficial ownership).

• 2001-06-22 / recorded 2001-06-22 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Security Interest
  • Assignor: CoolSavings.com Inc.
  • Assignee: American National Bank and Trust Company of Chicago
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: secured financing / encumbrance.

• 2001-07-11 / recorded 2001-07-11 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Security Interest
  • Assignor: CoolSavings.com, Inc.
  • Assignee: Landmark Communications, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: secured financing / encumbrance.

• 2001-07-17 / recorded 2001-07-17 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Release of Security Interest
  • Assignor: Lend Lease International Pty. Limited (as secured party)
  • Assignee: CoolSavings.com, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: release — the 1998 Lend Lease encumbrance was cleared (three years after recording).

• 2001-10-04 / recorded 2001-10-04 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Amendment No. 1 to Collateral Assignment of Patents and Trademarks
  • Assignor: IQ. Commerce Corporation
  • Assignee: Comdisco, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: securitization — amendment to an existing collateral assignment of the portfolio (Comdisco ran an IP/equipment financing arm). Timing note: Comdisco filed Chapter 11 in July 2001; this amendment was recorded ~3 months later. That is a fact about the secured party's bankruptcy, not about this patent being sold in a bankruptcy estate.

• 2007-03-02 / recorded 2007-03-02 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Q Interactive, Inc.
  • Assignee: News America Marketing Interactive LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: acquisition — the operating coupon business and the '648 family pass to News America Marketing (News Corp/News America).

• 2007-12-13 / recorded 2007-12-13 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: News America Marketing Interactive, LLC
  • Assignee: News America Marketing Properties LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: internal reorganization — movement into the parent group's IP-holding entity, 9 months after acquisition.

• 2009-05-15 / recorded 2009-05-15 (two entries, same date) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Merger — CoolSavings.com, Inc. → CoolSavings, Inc.
  • Conveyance: Change of Name — CoolSavings, Inc. → Q Interactive, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: retrospective corporate housekeeping, recorded ~2 years after title had already left the CoolSavings/Q Interactive side. It exists to close the chain-of-title gap for the 2007 assignments.

• 2010-07-16 / recorded 2010-07-16 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement
  • Assignor: Money Mailer, LLC
  • Assignee: PrivateBank and Trust Company, The
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: unclear — Money Mailer, LLC is not an entity in this patent's chain, and I found no document tying it to the '648 family. It appears in the consolidated legal-events feed but likely belongs to a different (franchise coupon) asset set. Do not read it as an event in this chain without the underlying reel/frame.

• 2015-07-25 — anticipated term expiration (status: Expired – Lifetime).

Family continuation status (context, not a separate assignment): continuations claiming the 1995-07-25 priority date — US20020178051A1 (2000-01-18), US7401032B1 (2000-01-24, "Process for the distribution and redemption of coupons"), US20030200146A1 (2003-05-15), US8050969B2 (2008-06-06), US8370200B2 (2011-09-28) — are all listed with News America Marketing Properties as assignee, showing the family stayed inside News America after 2007.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5761648
    1995 : Filed by Interactive Coupon Network
         : All six inventors assign to the company
    1998 : Renamed CoolSavings.com Inc
         : Lend Lease security agreement recorded
    2001 : Secured financing records filed
         : Comdisco collateral assignment amended
    2007 : Assigned to News America Marketing Interactive
         : Moved to News America Properties LLC
    2009 : CoolSavings merger and name change recorded
    2010 : PrivateBank security agreement recorded
    2015 : Patent term expired

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present (with one flagged nuance).
The chain does move into an IP-holding entity: News America Marketing Properties LLC (recorded 2007-12-13), a "Properties"-suffixed LLC. But the tells required for a shell finding are absent or unverified in the other direction: no registered-agent-only address captured, no single-purpose Delaware/Texas LLC formed for this asset, and the entity sits inside News America Marketing, an operating coupon/in-store marketing business (SmartSource) whose affiliate commercialized the claimed online coupon functionality. The 2007-03-02 and 2007-12-13 steps are 9 months apart inside the same corporate family. I could not pull the assignee addresses from the recordation PDFs, so I grade this not present, low residual uncertainty rather than fully cleared.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present.
No assignee in the chain matches the enumerated list (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities). Assignees are: Interactive Coupon Marketing Group, Inc. → CoolSavings.com/Savings/Q Interactive → News America Marketing Interactive LLC → News America Marketing Properties LLC. Caveat: I could not complete a live query of the RPX and Unified asserter directories in this session; the Unified Patents portal does maintain a page for US-5761648-A, which indicates the patent has been indexed for defensive/prior-art tracking but is not by itself evidence of NPE status.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not assessable.
This is the signal your framework weights most heavily (shell LLCs rotate, the recording attorney doesn't), and it is precisely the field the legal-events feed omits. Across 12 recorded conveyances spanning 1995–2010 I have zero correspondent names. I will not infer one. Action item for verification: pull each reel/frame PDF at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and extract "Correspondent Name / Address" for the 2007-03-02 and 2007-12-13 News America recordations in particular; those two would also need to be compared against the corresponding correspondent on the Q Interactive-side recordations to test for a shared filing attorney.

4. Cascading transfers — not present.
The only sub-24-month sequence is 2007-03-02 → 2007-12-13 (Interactive LLC → Properties LLC). Two links, same corporate family, one of them a holdco drop-down; no chained unrelated LLCs, no evidence of shared principals recruiting a chain to obscure title. The 2001 cluster is four encumbrances/releases, not title transfers.

5. Pre-litigation transfer within 6 months of suit — not present (as documented).
The patentee asserted while it owned the patent, before any transfer: the CoolSavings enforcement campaign (including the action against planet U, filed 1998) ran while CoolSavings.com, Inc. held title — see the case note reporting CoolSavings filed eight infringement suits and licensed CouponSurfer (May 1999) and settled with IQ.COM (Dec 2000). Separately, in Catalina Marketing v. CoolSavings it was CoolSavings that was the defendant (Catalina's US 4,674,041 was cited during prosecution of the '648, per the ABA chapter), and the district court found non-infringement. I found no transfer dated within 6 months of a suit naming the '648. Note the limit: without execution dates I can only test this against recording dates.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present for this patent.
Comdisco (secured party on the 2001-10-04 collateral amendment) filed Chapter 11 in July 2001, but the '648 title did not pass through Comdisco's estate — it stayed with the CoolSavings/Q Interactive side and moved to News America in 2007. Comdisco nevertheless remains listed among the "current assignees" in Google Patents' feed, which is an artifact of the unreleased collateral assignment of record rather than evidence of ownership. Whether CoolSavings/Q Interactive itself sought bankruptcy protection remains unverified.

7. Privateering — not present.
No operating-company-to-NPE handoff, and no evidence of assertion on behalf of a third party. The 2007 transfers keep the portfolio inside one operating media company, which then asserted in its own market (coupon/promotion services) — that is ordinary competitor enforcement, not privateering. I found no SEC 10-K/8-K disclosure of an NPE funding arrangement; note that I also did not run a targeted EDGAR pull, so this is "no evidence found," not "verified negative."

8. Defensive aggregator — not present.
Chain terminates at News America Marketing Properties LLC, not at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent's practical neutralization came from term expiry on 2015-07-25, not from defensive acquisition.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

Justification: every recorded title transfer in the chain is between operating entities — the 1995-11-06 founder assignment into Interactive Coupon Marketing Group, Inc.; the 1998-12-21 change of name to CoolSavings.com, Inc.; the 2007-03-02 acquisition by News America Marketing Interactive LLC; and the 2007-12-13 drop-down to News America Marketing Properties LLC — with not a single assignee matching an enumerated NPE and no shell-entity or asserter-transfer evidence beyond the unremarkable existence of a "Properties" holdco. The remaining recorded events (1998-05-08 Lend Lease, 2001-06-22 American National Bank, 2001-07-11 Landmark Communications, 2001-07-17 release, 2001-10-04 Comdisco amendment) are secured-financing encumbrances and releases, i.e., securitization rather than assertion-chain construction. The patent was enforced by its operating owner while title was in CoolSavings' hands (the documented 1998–2000 campaign including planet U, iVillage, CouponSurfer, Xadvantage, emaildirect), and the family's later continuations (US7401032B1, US8050969B2, US8370200B2) remain with News America Marketing Properties.

Two caveats you should carry forward: (i) the correspondent field could not be retrieved, so signal 3 — the most diagnostic one in your framework — is unresolved rather than negative; (ii) the current "asserter" of record is an IP-holding LLC, not the operating parent, so if verification later shows that News America Marketing Properties LLC held the patent for third-party licensing rather than parent-side enforcement, re-grade toward NPE — moderate confidence. On the record I can actually cite, that re-grade is not supported.

Verification links: search patent number 5761648 at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ or https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (both surface the same recordations and expose reel/frame + correspondent, which are the missing fields above); legal events at https://patents.google.com/patent/US5761648A/en; defensive index at https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-5761648-A.

I'll research this systematically. Let me search for the specific patent and its cited prior art.

Let me dig deeper into the specific prior-art references cited within US5761648.

I found the key prior-art list. Let me retrieve the full "References Cited" list and confirm each entry.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 5,761,648

Note on identifiers (strict, literal interpretation): The target is US 5,761,648 ("US5761648A"), Interactive Marketing Network and Process Using Electronic Certificates. Do not confuse it with the near-miss US 5,762,458 (Wang et al., "Method and apparatus for routing…", a different, unrelated patent that appears in some search results). Likewise, "US 5,761,683," "US 5,761,071," etc., are unrelated.

1. The target patent (verified bibliographic data)

Independent-claim gist (needed to read the §102 mapping below):

• Claim 1 – method: service system in communication with a plurality of issuer systems and a plurality of remote user stations; issuers send issuance instructions; the service system receives remote-user profile data (including identification information) and develops "correlation data" categorizing it; the service system transmits correlation data to issuers "without also transmitting the specific remote user identification information"; and selectively transmits certificates to users based on that correlation data. ← the anonymization limitation in 1(e) is the hallmark limitation.
• Claim 10 – Claim 1 + issuance conditioned on entry of profile data.
• Claim 11 – Claim 1 steps (a)–(e) + issuers may revise certificates interactively and "nearly instantaneously."
• Claim 14 – Claim 1 + issuer-set limits on number/type of certificates.
• Claim 16 – the reservation embodiment + the anonymization limitation.
• Dependent claims 2–9 (revise on near-instantaneous basis; conditioning on registration; coupons; demographic/household profile), 12–13, 15 (rendering certs inaccessible to a class/all users).

2. Important methodological caveat

The Google Patents text supplied in the prompt lists only "Cited By (450)" — that is the forward-citation list (later patents that cite '648). Forward citations are not prior art to '648 and are not treated as such here. The true prior art is the patent's own "References Cited" list (U.S. patents + non-patent literature considered by the examiner/applicant), which I retrieved from the corresponding file listings.

I could not retrieve the actual file-wrapper (office actions/IDS forms) for 08/507,693, so the §102 column below is my reasoned, subject-matter-based inference of which claims each reference was most likely cited against — not a confirmed record of the examiner's rejections. Treat it as analysis, not ground truth.

3. Prior-art references cited in US 5,761,648, with claim relevance

A. U.S. patents

1. US 4,882,675 — Nichtberger (Coupco, Inc.)

• "Paperless System for Distributing, Redeeming and Clearing Merchandise Coupons" — filed/priority 1984-11-25; granted 1989-11-21.
• Description: Consumer carries an electronic card; coupons are loaded/cleared electronically rather than on paper; central clearing of redemptions.
• Potential §102 relevance: Claim 1(c)–(d), (f) and claim 6 (redeemable coupons) — foundational "electronic/paperless coupon" concept. Also reissued as RE34,915 (listed separately in the reference list).

2. US RE34,915 E — Reissue of US 4,882,675 (Nichtberger). Same disclosure; cited alongside the original.

3. US 4,674,041 — Catalina Marketing International, Inc.

• "Method and Apparatus for Controlling the Distribution of Coupons" — filed/priority 1983-09-14; granted 1987-06-16.
• Description: Controls issuance/distribution of coupons and accountability (counts issued/redeemed) at the point of disbursement.
• Potential §102 relevance: Claim 1(c) (issuer "instructions for issuing a predetermined type and number") and claim 14 (issuer-set issuance limits).

4. US 4,791,281 — C P C Investment Trust

• "Encoding and Decoding System" (barcode/optical encoding) — filed 1986-10-15; granted 1988-12-13.
• Potential §102 relevance: Claim 1 / identification-data element (barcodes, unique codes) — background art for marking certificates.

5. US 5,117,355 — McCarthy

• "Centralized Consumer Cash Value Accumulation System for Multiple Merchants" — filed 1989-01-26; granted 1992-05-26.
• Potential §102 relevance: Claim 1(a)–(b) — centralized service system serving multiple merchants and many consumers.

6. US 5,185,695 — Pruchnicki (Howe)

• "Method and System for Handling Discount Coupons by Using Centrally Stored Manufacturer Coupons in Place of Paper Coupons" — filed 1988-07-13; granted 1993-02-09.
• Potential §102 relevance: Claim 1(a),(c) — central store of issuer/manufacturer-issued coupons distributed to consumers.

7. US 5,193,056 — Boes (Signature Financial Group)

• "Data Processing System for Hub and Spoke Financial Services Configuration" — filed 1991-03-10/11; granted 1993-03-09.
• Note: This is the State Street "hub-and-spoke" patent. Cited almost certainly as generic network-architecture art.
• Potential §102 relevance: Claim 1(a)–(b) ("service system" hub with issuer spokes and user spokes).

8. US 5,202,826 — McCarthy — continuation of US 5,117,355 (multiple-merchant centralized accumulation). Same §102 angle as ref. 5.

9. US 5,237,499 — Total Travel Management, Inc.

• "Computer Travel Planning System" — filed 1991-11-11; granted 1993-08-17.
• Potential §102 relevance: Claim 16 (reservation-data embodiment) — computerized reservation/booking systems.

10. US 5,287,268 — McCarthy — further continuation of the centralized-accumulation family (same §102 angle as refs. 5/8).

11. US 5,305,195 — Gerald & Leona R. Singer Family Trust

• "Interactive Advertising System for On-line Terminals" — filed 1992-03-24; granted 1994-04-19.
• Potential §102 relevance: Claim 1(a)–(b) — an online network delivering targeted advertising/offers to remote terminals.

12. US 5,305,197 — Axler (I.E.&E. Industries / "Ie&e Ind Inc")

• "Coupon Dispensing Machine with Feedback" — filed 1992-10-29; granted 1994-04-19.
• This is the reference expressly discussed and distinguished in the '648 specification ("fail[s] to interactively communicate between a service center and a third party… does not allow 'real time' interactivity"). It therefore maps most directly onto the "nearly instantaneous / interactive" limitations.
• Potential §102 relevance: Claims 1(a)–(c) and 3 (near-instantaneous revision) — closest single reference for the interactive coupon-dispensing concept, though the applicant argued it lacks real-time two-way communication with a service center.

13. US 5,353,218 — Catalina Marketing Corp.

• "Focused Coupon System" — filed 1992-09-16; granted 1994-10-04.
• Potential §102 relevance: Claim 1(d) & (f) — targeting coupons to consumers based on consumer/purchase data (the "correlation data / specified certificates" concept).

14. US 5,380,991 — Valencia; Howe

• "Paperless Coupon Redemption System and Method Thereof" — filed 1993-11-15; granted 1995-01-10.
• Potential §102 relevance: Claim 1(f) and claim 6 — electronic redemption of coupons.

15. US 5,420,606 — Klever Marketing, Inc.

• "Instant Electronic Coupon Verification System" — filed 1993-09-19; granted 1995-05-30.
• Potential §102 relevance: Claim 1(d)/(f) — real-time verification of electronic coupons at redemption.

16. US 5,502,636 — RR Donnelley & Sons Co.

• "Personalized Coupon Generating and Processing System" — filed 1992-01-30; granted 1996-03-26.
• Potential §102 relevance: Claim 1(d) and claim 7/8 — personalization of offers based on consumer data, the closest art on the "correlation data categorizing profile data" element.

17. US 5,515,098 — InVIDI Technologies (Carles)

• "System and Method for Selectively Distributing Commercial Messages Over a Communications Network" — filed 1994-09-07; granted 1996-05-07.
• Potential §102 relevance: Claim 1(a),(b),(f) — selectively distributing targeted content to subscribing terminals over a network.

18. US 5,557,518 — Citibank, N.A.

• "Trusted Agents for Open Electronic Commerce" — filed 1994-04-27; granted 1996-09-17.
• Potential §102 relevance: Claim 16 / spec's "proof of payment" embodiments — secure electronic value transfer (trusted-agent architecture).

B. Non-patent literature (11 items)

• PR Newswire, "USA: SLED Internet Directory Distributes Electronic Coupons," Reuters Info. Svcs., 1994-05-09 — online consumer distribution of electronic coupons via an Internet directory. (§102 background to claim 1(b)/(f).)
• Fawcett, A.W., "Trading Scissors for Modems," 2-page brochure — popular-press description of online couponing.
• Moeller, "Let's Hang Out at the E-Mall: eShop Opens its Doors to Tower Records," PC Week, v.12, n.44, p.75(1), 1995-11-06 — online "mall" retailing.
• Dworsky, "Consumer World Launched on the Internet," M2 Presswire, 1995-09-26 — consumer information/shopping service online.
• Porter, A.L., "Strengthening coupon offers by requiring more from the customer," Journal of Consumer Marketing, v.10, n.2, pp.13–18, 1993 — marketing-theory background on conditioning coupon offers.
• Shani, D., "Exploiting niches using relationship marketing," Journal of Business & Industrial Marketing, v.8, n.4, pp.58–66, 1993 — relationship-marketing/targeting background, cited against claim 1(d)/claim 7.

These NPL items are §102(a)/§102(b) "printed publication" art used mainly to show that online coupon distribution and profile-based targeting were known before the 1995 priority date.

4. Bottom line on §102 (§103 overlap)

• No single cited reference contains all elements of any independent claim, which is consistent with the patent issuing. The distinguishing limitations are:
  1. the multi-issuer + multi-user network mediated by a "service system" (claims 1, 10, 11, 14, 16(a)–(b));
  2. the "correlation data" that categorizes profile data and is fed back to issuers without the specific user identification (claims 1(e), 10(e), 16(e)) — genuinely distinctive relative to the cited art; the closest general art (e.g., US 5,353,218; US 5,502,636) discloses targeting but not this anonymized feedback loop; and
  3. nearly instant, interactive revision of live certificates by issuers/users (claims 2, 3, 4, 12, 13) relative to US 5,305,197.
• The cited art more naturally supports §103 obviousness combinations (e.g., Axler + Catalina "Focused Coupon System" + Donnelley "Personalized Coupon" + an online-terminal advertising reference) than clean §102 anticipation.
• The Axler reference (US 5,305,197) is the one the applicant affirmatively distinguished on the record in the specification, making it the most "relevant" prior art in the §102 sense for claims 1(a)–(c)/claim 3.

5. Explicit confidence flags

• High confidence: the patent number, dates, inventors, assignees, claim set, and the composition of the "References Cited" list (US patents + NPL) as reproduced above.
• Medium confidence: my element-by-element §102/§103 mapping — I do not have the file-wrapper office actions, so these mappings are inferred from subject matter.
• Lower confidence: exact grant dates for a few older references (e.g., US 4,882,675, US 5,192,056, US 5,302,195/5,305,197) and some inventor/assignee details; the dates shown in my source listing appear to be filing/priority dates in several cases. Verify each against the individual patent's front page before citing in a legal filing.
• I could not verify whether any reference was actually applied in a rejection, or whether the examiner relied on the NPL rather than the patents — the retrieved record does not include the prosecution history.

Sources consulted: Google Patents US5761648A; Espacenet bibliographic record for US5761648(A); Unified Patents portal record for US-5761648-A (References Cited / NPL list); uspto.report grant page for 5761648.

I'll ground the obviousness analysis in the actual prior-art references, starting with the strongest candidates: the Axler patent the '648 itself disparages, plus the pre-1995 references surfacing in the record.

Obviousness Analysis — US 5,761,648 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope note. This analysis builds on the claim mapping already established in the prior section (five independent method claims — 1, 10, 11, 14, 16 — plus dependents). I do not repeat that mapping; I use it. Two caveats from the prior section are carried forward and inform the analysis: (i) the operative claim set may differ from the printed 1998 columns because of a Dec. 16, 2003 certificate of correction and a Sept. 15, 2009 ex parte reexamination certificate (US 5,761,648 C1) whose claim-by-claim result I could not verify; and (ii) the text supplied here for claim 1 ends at step (f) and contains no step (h), which contradicts the earlier section's statement that the 2003 correction appended a step (h) ("wherein the number of electronic certificates accessible to each remote user can be selectively limited by the issuer systems"). I analyze the claims as supplied and treat the (h) issue as a flagged discrepancy.

1. Governing standard and date

• Pre‑AIA § 103(a) applies (application filed July 25, 1995; issued June 2, 1998; expired July 25, 2015). The critical date is July 25, 1995; documents filed or published before it are § 102(a)/(b) art, and U.S. patents/CPAs filed before it are § 102(e) art even if they issued later.
• Graham v. John Deere factors: scope/content of the art, differences from the claims, PHOSITA level, secondary considerations.
• KSR Int'l v. Teleflex: predictable combination of known elements, driven by design need or market pressure, is obvious; a "reason to combine" may come from the references themselves, the nature of the problem, or common sense.

PHOSITA (proposed): a team with ~2–3 years of experience in networked database/transactional systems (client–server, online services such as CompuServe/AOL/Prodigy) plus working familiarity with retail promotion and coupon processing. The claims sit at the junction of those two fields, and the '648 specification itself concedes the online media (it names America Online® and Prodigy®).

2. Prior-art landscape (all dates verified against the records cited)

Excluded (post-dating, therefore not usable as art): US 6,128,663 (filed Feb. 11, 1997 — anonymous demographic targeting); US 5,845,259 (1996); US 5,970,469 / 6,014,634 (Dec. 1995); US 6,009,412 (Dec. 1995); US 5,907,830 (Feb. 1996). I flag 6,128,663 specifically because it does recite the anonymity idea and a careless analysis would cite it — it is not available against a July 25, 1995 priority date.

3. The threshold observation: the independent claims are aggregations of known elements

The '648 specification concedes the base art ("The prior art has begun to utilize machines to replace the historic offering of printed coupons…"; Axler is cited and distinguished only on "real time interactivity"). Nothing in the claims requires real-time demographic analysis — claims 2/4/12/13 require only that certificates and profile data be revisable "periodically… on an interactive and nearly instantaneous basis," which is exactly Axler's remote-update model. The patentee's stated advantage over Axler is therefore a design choice about responsiveness, not a claim element.

4. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 — Claims 1, 2–9, 10, 11–13: Barnett '208 in view of Axler '197 (and Von Kohorn '874)

Barnett '208 alone maps to nearly every element of claim 1 as supplied: (a)/(b) service system (central repository/online service) communicating with issuers (coupon distributors/issuers) and remote user stations (home PCs) — expressly disclosed; (c) issuer-supplied coupon data packages; (d) the service receives user profile data and coupon-selection data, which is the raw material for "correlation data which categorizes" users (Barnett's "subsequent marketing analysis" is by definition categorization/segmentation); (f) transmission of specified certificates to users based on that data (download-on-demand + targeting); step (e)'s "without also transmitting the specific remote user identification information" is the only element Barnett does not state verbatim — its return of "demographics" for marketing analysis is consistent with segmented (rather than nominative) reporting, and Von Kohorn '874 independently teaches correlating demographic/audience segments with shopper responses and reporting effectiveness.

Axler '197 supplies the dispenser architecture and, critically, the motivation: Axler diagnoses the very defect the '648 claims to cure ("no such feedback," no demographical analysis), and solves it by storing selection data and offloading it electronically over a telephone link with remote unattended updates. Khosla '277 supplies the express recognition that the natural venue for the expanded system is the public online services (CompuServe/AOL/Prodigy/Internet) — the same venues named in the '648 specification.

Motivation: (1) Axler's own stated problem — manufacturers want selection/desirability feedback from coupon dispensing; (2) Barnett's stated object — distribute coupons to home PCs and return demographics + selection data to issuers for marketing analysis; (3) market pressure and the then-established online-services infrastructure; (4) predictable results (KSR). Claims 2–4, 12, 13 (periodic/near-instantaneous revision by service, issuer, or user) are met or suggested by Axler's remote-update-and-offload cycle and Barnett's post-download modification of coupon packages. Claims 6–9 are met by Barnett/Von Kohorn/Humble. Claim 10's gating condition (certificate issuance conditioned on entry of profile data) is an obvious implementation of the very data-collection purpose those references pursue — registration is the mechanism by which Barnett obtains the demographics it sells back to issuers — and Khosla uses login/PIN identity as the precondition to issuance.

Ground 2 — Claims 14 and 15: Ground 1 in view of Catalina

Claim 14 (g) requires that the number or type of certificates issued be limitable by the issuer systems; claim 15 requires that predetermined numbers/types be rendered inaccessible to predetermined classes or to all users. Catalina expressly and literally discloses both concepts in the POS context: "means for limiting the number of coupons printed per coupon deal or per customer order," maintained counts of creations and redemptions, and "means for selectively turning on and off triggering or printing, by store, lane, coupon or product item." Axler likewise claims periodic changing/offloading of the displayed coupon set (Axler claims 10–12). A PHOSITA adding Catalina's cost-control and fraud-control caps to a network coupon service would do so for Catalina's own expressed reasons (promotion cost containment and misredemption control) — a textbook KSR rationale. If the disputed step (h) was in fact added to a claim by the 2003 correction, it is met a fortiori by Catalina's per-customer-order cap.

Ground 3 — Claims 5, 10, 16 (and reservations generally): Khosla '277 in view of Axler '197 and Barnett '208

Claim 16 is the reservation embodiment, and Khosla '277 is close to a complete roadmap: issuer systems (airline reservation system 19; catalog system 10) holding reservation instructions; a service/intermediary (on-line service gateway 16) in electrical communication with both; remote non-secure terminals of purchasers; login/profile data identifying the purchaser; updated reservation data (selection of flight/restaurant/day/time) transmitted from the terminal; confirmation data returned from the reservation system; and electronic certificates (coupons/tickets/confirmation slips) transmitted back to the user for printing and later redemption, with PIN verification at the point of use. Khosla's claims 18–30 are the airline-reservation variant; his background cites Huegel, Dettelbach, and Whitesage for conventional computer reservation systems. Axler supplies the "documented issuer instructions + selection data + reports back to the operator" loop; Barnett supplies the demographic-return-to-issuer step. The restaurant-specific mechanics of the '648 (tables for two/four/six, day/time windows, fax notification to the host) are conventional reservations practice (Huegel/Dettelbach), and the fax fallback in the '648 is an admitted convenience choice, not a technical advance.

Motivation: the restaurant/hotel operator's incentive is identical to the coupon issuer's — fill capacity, reduce no-shows, and obtain usage history on the requesting customer. In re Scroggie (Fed. Cir.) is directly on point on the combination question in this very art: the court affirmed that it was obvious to combine a POS-coupon patent ('675) with the Barnett '208 electronic-coupon-distribution patent, reasoning that "[o]ffering multiple venues for product promotion is and has been a fundamental marketing ploy," and that the two references disclosed overlapping coupon-distribution functions. https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[613757](/patent/613757)/in-re-scroggie/ That holding is persuasive authority that the coupon/POS art and the networked-distribution art are combinable, and it validates the use of Barnett '208 as a secondary reference.

Ground 4 — Claims 11–13 (issuer-driven, near-instantaneous revision): Axler + Barnett + Khosla

Axler's CRT model supports "unattended coupon updates via the telephone link" initiated and completed from a remote processing center; Barnett teaches that the online service "can perform subsequent coupon processing on previously downloaded coupon packages such as variation of discount amounts"; Khosla shows live reservation confirmation over the network. Real-time issuer editing of an online offer is the predictable sum of these teachings, motivated by promotional agility (the '648 specification itself touts this as the advantage over Axler).

5. Where the prima facie case is weakest (candid assessment)

1. Step (e)'s anonymity limitation. "Selectively transmitting… the correlation data without also transmitting the specific remote user identification information" is the one element I could not match to a single pre-July-25-1995 reference with clear text. Barnett '208 returns "demographics… and coupon selection data" to issuers, which permits but does not require the aggregate-only practice; Von Kohorn '874 supports segment-level effectiveness reporting. The rejection here would rest on (i) those references plus (ii) common-sense/industry-practice evidence that consumer panel data was routinely sold in aggregated, non-attributed form, and (iii) the observation that once data is "correlated/categorized" at the service, forwarding the category rather than the identity is an unpredicated design choice. This is the strongest available non-obviousness argument, and it is exactly the argument the patentee made in distinguishing Axler (see § 2 of the specification). A rejection would be materially stronger with a pre-1995 reference expressly teaching profile data transmitted to advertisers in segmented/anonymous form — I did not locate one, and I will not manufacture one.
2. "Correlation data" as a term of art. The claims use "correlation data" without definitional support; if construed as mere categorization/segmentation, Grounds 1–3 are strong; if a court imports a narrower meaning (e.g., cross-correlating purchase and demographic data with reportable granularity), Von Kohorn '874 and Barnett '208's joint demographic + selection data become the key references. Note that the 2009 C1 reexamination could have narrowed or added claims here — unverified.
3. Claim 15's "predetermined classes" requires class-based exclusion, which Catalina addresses by store/lane/product and by per-customer limits rather than by "classes" of users; Von Kohorn's audience segments supply the class concept.

6. Secondary considerations (Graham factor 4)

• Commercial success / long-felt need: CoolSavings' enforcement campaign (N.D. Ill. suits against Catalina/Supermarkets Online, planet U, H.O.T. Coupons, IQ.Commerce, and BrightStreet, 1998–2000, per CoolSavings' SEC filing) is evidence of commercial value, but there is no established nexus in the sources I retrieved between that success and the specific claimed limitation (step (e) anonymity / "correlation data"). Where the success is attributable to the general online-coupon model — which Barnett '208, SellectSoft '886, and Khosla '277 already occupy — nexus fails.
• Copying: 450+ later patents cite the '648. That is evidence of attention, not of non-obviousness; it post-dates the invention and largely reflects the continuation/industry lineage (US 7,401,032; 8,050,969; 8,370,200).
• Litigation outcomes: the N.D. Ill. decisions I previously located (CoolSavings v. IQ.Commerce, 53 F. Supp. 2d 1000 (1999); CoolSavings v. E-Centives (2000)) resolved jurisdiction and disqualification/inequitable-conduct bifurcation — not validity on the merits. Do not overstate them. Likewise, the Federal Circuit's Catalina Marketing Int'l v. Coolsavings.com claim-construction ruling concerns Catalina's US 4,674,041, not the '648 — as previously flagged.

7. Bottom line

A prima facie § 103 case is available on four independent grounds, with Ground 1 (Barnett '208 + Axler '197, + Von Kohorn '874) the strongest for claims 1 and 10–13, Ground 2 (add Catalina) dispositive for claims 14–15, and Ground 3 (Khosla '277 + Axler + Barnett, + Huegel/Dettelbach/Whitesage) the natural attack on claim 16. The combination rationales are unusually well documented in the references themselves (Axler's stated lack of demographic feedback; Barnett's stated purpose of returning demographics and selection data to issuers; Khosla's naming of the online services; Catalina's stated count-cap and shut-off functions), which answers the KSR "articulated reason to combine" requirement without resorting to hindsight. The residual vulnerability of any such rejection is claim 1 step (e) / claim 16 step (e) — the express withholding of specific user identity — for which I found no squarely on-point pre-July-25-1995 reference.

Verification items before legal reliance: (1) confirm whether the Dec. 16, 2003 certificate of correction added a step (h) and to which claim — the supplied claim text shows no step (h), contradicting the earlier section; (2) obtain the 2009 C1 reexamination claim-by-claim result (this may already have mooted part of the above analysis); (3) confirm the actual filing dates and disclosures of US 6,321,208 and US 5,710,886 from their full specifications rather than from citation listings, since both are load-bearing here under § 102(e).