US 6199753

I'll run targeted searches for this patent number and related litigation, then summarize.

Summary: US 6,199,753 B1

Important caveat up front: The full claim text of US 6,199,753 was not included in the authoritative patent text supplied to me (that excerpt ends mid-Description, and the claim set is not reproduced), and my web searches returned only fragments of the claim set. Where I cannot verify claim language verbatim, I flag it below rather than reconstruct it.

Bibliographic data (from the authoritative full text + Google Patents record)

Priority chain (per the specification's RELATED APPLICATIONS section, which controls over third-party databases): 09/435,883 is a division of 08/771,463, filed Dec. 20, 1996 (now US 5,979,757), which is a continuation-in-part of 08/706,579, filed Sep. 5, 1996 (now US 5,825,002). It is also related to then-pending 08/780,023, filed Dec. 20, 1996. Continuations of the '753 include 09/692,402 (now US 7,107,221) and 11/460,579 (now US 7,725,326).

Two notes on identifiers/dates, taken literally:

• The issue date is 2001-03-13; today's date environment (2026) is well past the 2016-09-05 anticipated expiration, consistent with the "Expired – Lifetime" status.
• The specification text contains the transcription artifact "uniform resurrect locators ('URLS')" for what is plainly meant as uniform resource locators. I am not auto-correcting it; I note it only as it appears in the source.
• The description also refers to "the central processor (shown in FIG. 2)," although the central processor is elsewhere described in connection with the controller/host — an internal inconsistency in the source, again not auto-corrected.

Abstract (verbatim, as provided)

"The present invention relates to an improved portable shopping system. The system is provided with improved data presentation system for presenting customer desired data on a portable terminal. The portable terminal includes audio as well as video presentation means which are used to provide customer specific marketing files to promote the sale of identified items."

Plain-language overview of the disclosure

A self-scanning ("self-checkout"/"self-shopping") retail system in which a shopper is issued a portable terminal with an integrated machine-code reader (bar code laser scanner, CCD, or RFID tag reader) and a wireless radio. The terminal communicates over a LAN (e.g., Symbol's SPECTRUM24™ frequency-hopping system, IEEE Draft D5 / 802.11) and/or a WAN (e.g., CDPD), with the central host performing most computing so the terminal can be architecturally simple while still supporting graphics and audio. Data files — prices, nutrition data, coupons, promotions, advertising, video, audio — are retrieved from local or remote addresses (including URLs encoded in high-density codes such as PDF417, and Internet/Intranet servers via TCP/IP) and presented at the terminal as hyperlinked data. A customer preference list stored in a central customer data file drives selective display of item-specific information on scanning. The terminal also supports a voice/telephony subsystem with a unique IP address (help desk, paging, emergency broadcast), EAS tag deactivation, kiosk reconfiguration (landscape/portrait), and marketing/couponing functions.

Independent claims — plain-language overview

I can verify claim 2 verbatim. From a full-text reproduction of the patent (EveryPatent, http://www.everypatent.com/comp/pat6199753.html), claim 2 reads:

2. A method for updating a customer data file generated by a customer in a self-scanning system employing portable self-scanning terminals, said method comprising:
generating the customer data file with a portable terminal having a machine code reader and a radio for communicating the customer data file contents over a wireless network;
downloading the customer data file to a point-of-sale terminal from a data collection controller which transmits the customer data file from the portable terminal received over the wireless network; and
updating the customer data file at the point-of-sale terminal to add items on the customer data file which were not included in the customer data file contents transmitted by the portable terminal to the data collection controller.

Plain language: A shopper builds a purchase list on a hand-held scanner/radio terminal; the list is relayed via a controller to the checkout POS; at checkout the POS can add items the shopper never scanned (e.g., items missed by hand or damaged codes), yielding a corrected, complete transaction file.

Claim 1 — I have only a verified fragment of it (same source): step "(g) recording the marketing messages which influenced the user's shopping decision, wherein the marketing messages are selected from the group comprising a discount coupon and competitive product availability." The same fragment indicates claim 1 is a method claim with an ordered series of steps culminating in that recitation (i.e., steps (a) through (g)), and that it concerns delivering/presenting marketing messages to a user and recording which messages influenced the shopping decision. I do not have the complete (a)–(f) text and will not reconstruct it. Anyone relying on claim 1's scope should pull the granted claims from USPTO Patent Public Search / PatentCenter or the printed patent (the patentimages PDF for this family, e.g., https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/80/6a/64/d6c8faad9ccb9f/US7725326.pdf for the continuation, which shows the related claim set).

Other independents: Based on the fragmentary record, US 6,199,753 appears to contain at least two independent method claims (claims 1 and 2) with dependent claims depending therefrom. My searches did not yield a verified total claim count or a verified list of every independent claim for the '753 specifically — the "21 claims" figure I encountered belongs to the later continuation US 7,725,326, not necessarily to the '753, so I am expressly not attributing that count to the '753.

USPTO / litigation status

• USPTO record: Application 09/435,883; granted 2001-03-13. The file shows a chain of security-interest/reassignment events (JPMorgan Chase security interest 2005; release 2010; inventors' assignment to Symbol Technologies, Inc. 2012; Morgan Stanley Senior Funding collateral agreement 2014; change of name to Symbol Technologies, LLC 2015; release 2015). None of these is a validity or scope determination.
• CAFC 2026 dockets: I found no Federal Circuit docket activity in 2026 tied to patent number 6199753. My searches surfaced only generic 2026 PTAB/CAFC-related materials (e.g., an NYIPLA March 2026 PTAB committee list of IPR numbers) with no nexus to the '753. I cannot rule out the existence of a lower-visibility or recently filed matter; I simply have no authoritative hit. Given the patent expired in 2016, active appellate litigation is unlikely.
• Prior-art/ownership noise to ignore: Third-party aggregator pages (Unified Patents, Patsnap) list NCR Voyix Corp and Microsoft Corp in proximity to this number. The NCR hits are cited prior-art references (e.g., US 5,457,307, "Portable Self-service Bar Code Marker and Reader for Purchase Monitoring"), not assignees of the '753. Patsnap's "Owner: Microsoft Corp" label appears on the continuation US 7,725,326 page, and conflicts with Google's listed assignee (Symbol Technologies LLC) for the '753. Treat both as unverified.

Uncertainty statement

High confidence: patent number, title, inventors, assignee-as-listed, application number, filing date, priority date, issue date, expiry status, abstract, and claim 2 verbatim. Low confidence / unverified: the complete text of independent claim 1 and the total number of claims in the '753. These should be confirmed against the granted patent document itself.