US 6360208

I'll search for the specific patent number and check for any litigation activity.

Let me run more targeted searches for litigation and for the patent's specification/claims details.

Let me do one final targeted check for any Federal Circuit activity.

US Patent 6,360,208 — Summary

Note on scope of search: My searches surfaced the patent's bibliographic and full-text records (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, PubChem, uspto.report, Unified Patents) but no Federal Circuit or district court docket entries for 6,360,208 in 2026. I cannot confirm any 2026 CAFC activity — see the litigation caveat below.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (as published)

A method for tracking tax payment information includes fixing a unique machine readable identifier to each of a number of taxable items, storing each of the unique machine readable identifiers in a computer readable memory, and storing tax payment information in the computer readable memory for each of the items. The unique machine readable identifier may take the form of a machine readable symbol such as a barcode symbol or as a wireless memory device such as a radio frequency identification ("RFID") tag. The tax information may include the tax payment status, tax payment authority, tax payment sum, tax payment date, identity of a manufacturer, identity of a product or product type, and identity of a product origin. Tax payment information may include tax payment information from multiple taxing authorities. The method may further include reading the unique machine readable identifier and retrieving the tax payment information based on the identifier to verify that the appropriate taxes have been paid. The computer readable memory may be a centralized database, may be located in a reading device being used to verify compliance, or be located in the RFID tag secured to the taxed good.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

There are three independent claims: 1, 5, and 16. (The remaining 17 claims are dependents.)

Claim 1 — Tracking tax payment status on the item itself. Two steps: (a) attach a wireless memory device (i.e., an RFID-type tag with computer-readable memory) to each of several taxable items, and (b) store that item's tax payment status in the memory on its own tag. The key structural idea is that the tax-status record physically travels with the taxed good rather than living only in a central file.

Claim 5 — Automatically writing tax-payment data into a per-item memory. For each of a number of items, secure a computer-readable memory to the item; then, for at least one item, automatically store information about payment of tax on that item in its respective memory, where the tax-payment information is associable with the item through the item's unique identifier. In effect: an automated capture step (rather than a human filling out forms) that ties tax-paid data to a specific uniquely-identified item.

• Drafting note: Claim 5's body refers to "the unique identifier of the item," but the preamble does not itself recite associating each item with a unique identifier. That antecedent-basis gap is filled only in dependent claim 6 ("wherein associating each of a number of items with a respective unique identifier comprises: affixing a machine-readable symbol…"). This is an internal-consistency quirk in the granted claim set as printed — I'm reporting it literally rather than correcting it.

Claim 16 — Update-after-collection method for a programmable tag. Three steps: (a) secure a wireless programmable memory device to an item, (b) collect a tax for that item, and (c) update the tax information in the memory device after the tax is collected. This is the "rewrite the smart tax stamp each time tax is paid" claim; dependents 17–20 add a security code transmitted before updating, and programming (or permanently programming) a unique identifier in the device, plus updating a separate computer-readable memory with the identifier and tax information.

Representative dependent-claim coverage (for context)

• Claims 2–4: read the unique identifier (machine-readable symbol / imaged-and-decoded barcode) and retrieve tax payment status using it.
• Claims 7–13: what the "automatically stored" tax data is — payment condition, payment sum, locality, product type, product origin, date of payment, and separate conditions for two different tax collecting authorities.
• Claims 14–15: RF memory tag variants, including transmitting an access code before storing.

Litigation / docket status — explicit uncertainty

• I found no evidence of any 2026 Federal Circuit appeal involving US 6,360,208, and no district court or PTAB proceeding naming it. Two targeted docket-oriented searches returned empty or unrelated results (primarily UPC/Ericsson-Transsion, SharkNinja/SEB, and Honeywell v. Zebra matters that concern other Intermec/Honeywell patents).
• The only Intermec-family litigation that appeared in results involved different patents (e.g., U.S. 6,803/6,049 portable-computer and printer patents in Intermec IP Corp. v. Symbol Technologies, 1:04-cv-00357 (D. Del.), and Palm/Intermec and Zebra/Intermec suits). None of those results identified 6,360,208 as an asserted patent.
• Conclusion: As of my searches, the record indicates this patent simply expired for failure to reach the end of its full term on 2019-02-04 and has not been the subject of a 2026 CAFC appeal that I can locate. I cannot rule out an unindexed or very recent filing; treat the absence of a 2026 docket as "not found," not as "affirmatively non-existent."
• One record (Unified Patents) lists the priority date as 1999-02-03 rather than 1999-02-04; Google Patents and the assignment records (effective date 1999-01-27) support 1999-02-04 as the filing/priority date.

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6360208B1](/patent/US6360208B1)/en; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/6360208.html; https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US-6360208-B1; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6360208; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-[11663574](/patent/11663574)-B2 (family listing).

I'll run targeted searches for litigation involving US 6,360,208.

Let me check litigation-specific databases and Intermec's known enforcement campaigns.

Let me try two more targeted checks — a direct docket search and an RPX/Unified litigation entry search.

Litigation Report — U.S. Patent No. 6,360,208

Bottom line

No litigation is known involving U.S. Patent 6,360,208. I ran six targeted searches across Google Patents/Google web, FreePatentsOnline, PubChem, uspto.report, CourtListener-indexed content, Unified Patents' portal, RPX Insight, and general docket-oriented queries. Nothing returned a district court, ITC, PTAB, or Federal Circuit proceeding in which 6,360,208 (or the '208 shorthand for it) was asserted, challenged, or named.

This is a negative finding ("not found"), not an affirmative certification that none exists — see the coverage caveats at the end.

Case table

Why this negative result is plausible (and consistent with the file)

Three features of the patent's own record make an empty litigation history the expected outcome:

1. Term expired. The fetched authoritative record shows status "Expired – Lifetime" with an anticipated expiration of 2019-02-04 (20 years from the 1999-02-04 filing/priority date), plus maintenance-fee payments recorded at years 4, 8 and 12 (last: 2013-09-11). A patent with no remaining enforceable term is not an attractive assertion target.
2. Assignee/owner posture. Original and current assignee is Intermec IP Corp. Intermec's actual enforcement campaigns (documented in the results I reviewed) concerned different patents — e.g., the Matrics/Symbol RFID disputes, the Intermec–Symbol suits, Intermec v. Palm, and the Intermec–Alien Technology declaratory-judgment action (D.N.D. 3:06-cv-00051). None of those identify 6,360,208.
3. Subject matter. The claims are directed to tax-stamp/tax-payment tracking via RFID tags and barcodes (claims 1, 5, 16) — a narrow commercial area that generated citation interest but, on this record, no infringement suits.

Apparent "hits" that are NOT this patent (name/number collisions I examined and excluded)

Because "'208" is a common shorthand, several search results superficially matched. These are different patents and must not be reported as litigation against 6,360,208:

None of these concern Intermec's tax-verification patent.

Related activity that is not litigation (for completeness)

• Prior-art/ISR citation usage. US 6,360,208 is cited as an "X" (particularly relevant) reference against claims 1–6 of WO 2006/079663 A1 (PCT/EP2006/050538), International Search Report completed 23 March 2006 — identified as Ohanian et al., 19 March 2002, cited to col. 4, 6, 7–8 and FIGS. 2, 8, 9, 10. This is a citation in prosecution, not an enforcement or validity challenge to 6,360,208 itself.
• Family/citation presence. It appears in citation lists of later Intermec and third-party families (e.g., Neology/UniQard secure-identification patents on Unified Patents' portal; WO 2004/089119, a tobacco-RFID application). Again, citation only — no adversarial proceeding.
• Continuation. The divisional US 10/073,509 → US 2002/0097282 A1 was Abandoned; the PCT PCT/US2000/002812 → WO 2000/046734 A2 went Ceased. Neither is litigation.

Caveats on search coverage (stated explicitly)

• I cannot certify a true negative. PACER's full-text docket search and Unified Patents' case list are not fully crawlable by these searches, and very old or never-indexed complaints (especially pre-2000s, or state-court actions) may not surface.
• I found no 2026 activity of any kind naming 6,360,208. As with the earlier-generated section, treat the absence of a 2026 docket as "not found," not "affirmatively nonexistent."
• Contradiction flag with the prior section: the previously generated summary described the patent as having "expired for failure to reach the end of its full term on 2019-02-04." Those two ideas are mutually inconsistent — 2019-02-04 is the end of the full 20-year term from 1999-02-04, and the authoritative record's status field says "Expired – Lifetime" (which in Google Patents' taxonomy denotes natural end-of-term expiry, as distinct from "Expired – Fee Related"/lapse). The fetched legal-events list is truncated at the year-12 fee (2013-09-11), so the fee record after 2013 is not fully visible here. The status and anticipated-expiration fields are the better basis, and they indicate full-term expiry at 2019-02-04 — not premature lapse. This does not affect the litigation conclusion either way.

Recommended next steps to close the gap

1. PACER — run a party search for "Intermec IP Corp." and "Intermec Technologies" (all districts, 2002–2019) and cross-check each complaint's asserted-patent list for 6,360,208.
2. Unified Patents litigation case list (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) and RPX Insight — search the patent number directly; both index PTAB and district-court filings.
3. USITC EDIS — check Section 337 investigations involving Intermec in the 2003–2010 window.
4. Note: the legal-status record must not be auto-corrected; the patent is reported literally as US 6,360,208 B1, filed 1999-02-04, issued 2002-03-19, status Expired – Lifetime. (One aggregator, Unified Patents, lists the priority date as 1999-02-03; Google Patents, PubChem, FreePatentsOnline and the assignment records support 1999-02-04 — a discrepancy already flagged in the prior section and not resolved by anything I found.)

Sources consulted: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6360208B1](/patent/US6360208B1)/en; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/6360208.html; https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US-6360208-B1; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6360208; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-[11663574](/patent/11663574)-B2; https://www.courtlistener.com; https://law.justia.com/cases/federal/appellate-courts/F2/925/1480/[366035](/patent/366035)/; https://www.drugpatentwatch.com; https://insight.rpxcorp.com; https://www.eweek.com/mobile/intermec-symbol-step-up-rfid-patent-war/.

I'll verify the structured ODP result against public sources before drafting.

Let me check the structured record's counterpart and look specifically for CBM/reexam activity (this patent issued in 2002, so CBM and inter partes reexam were both theoretically available).

Let me run two final checks: a docket-level search for any litigation asserting the patent, and a PTAB-specific search.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 6,360,208: zero (0). There is nothing to break down by status — no IPRs, no PGRs, no CBM reviews, no institution decisions, no final written decisions, no settlements, no PTAB appeals. The USPTO Open Data Portal structured block included in this prompt states plainly that no AIA trial proceedings are on file, and my independent web checks returned nothing to contradict it.

Bottom-line defensive posture for a defendant: this is not a "hardened patent that survived IPRs," and it is not a "claims 1–5 are already canceled" situation either. It is the third, less common posture: a completely untested patent whose entire claim set (claims 1–20) remains as granted, never construed by the Board, and battered only by age. Nothing in the public record estops you from anything, but nothing has been cleared out for you either. The leverage against this patent comes from its expiration on 2019-02-04, not from any PTAB record.

No proceeding-specific entries

The template asks for one ### {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner} block per proceeding. There are none, and I will not manufacture numbers to fill the format — any "IPR20XX-0XXXX" I typed here would be fabricated.

Search coverage I ran, and what came back:

• Query returned only unrelated patents that happen to share digits (9,269,208, 7,948,208, 10,596,190) or the unrelated Peruvian municipal budget line item "6360208." None involve US 6,360,208.
• No PTAB docket, no Paper 1 petition, no institution decision, and no FWD naming this patent appeared in any result.
• The Google Patents record for this patent shows no post-grant proceeding entries at all — only the ordinary legal-events stream (assignment to Intermec, KeyBank security agreement in 2004, release in 2007, and maintenance-fee payments at the 4-, 8-, and 12-year marks).
• No reexamination certificate is associated with the patent, so there was no ex parte or inter partes reexamination that narrowed the claims post-issuance. The claims in the printed record are the originally granted claims.

Doors a challenger would have used — all now closed or unavailable

Because this patent is untested, it is worth being explicit about which post-grant vehicles a defendant could even use today. This is the substantive answer to "tell a defendant what actually happened":

Why an IPR today would be uphill even if filed: since 2025, the Office has been actively denying institution on long-expired, long-unasserted patents under the "settled expectations" line of authority. In an expired-patent IPR I reviewed, the patent owner argued for denial on the ground that the petitioner had known of the patent for over 15 years and the patent would be expired over four years by the projected FWD, citing iRhythm Techs., Inc. v. Welch Allyn, Inc., IPR2025-00363, Paper 10 (PTAB June 6, 2025) (Director denying institution where petitioner was aware of the challenged patent for over a decade), and Dabico Airport Solutions Inc. v. AXA Power ApS, IPR2025-00408, Paper 21 (Acting Dir. Stewart June 18, 2025) (six-year "settled expectations" benchmark). Those authorities are described in a patent owner's preliminary response and in the NYIPLA February 2026 PTAB committee materials, both of which I located via search; I did not retrieve the underlying decisions themselves, so treat the parentheticals as second-hand. The point for your case: US 6,360,208 is a 1999-priority, 2002-granted, 2019-expired, never-asserted patent — close to the strongest possible fact pattern for discretionary denial. That cuts against the value of filing an IPR as a defensive move, because a denial leaves you with no estoppel and no claim cancellation.

Strategic summary

Claim status: 20 of 20 claims UNTESTED. There is no PTAB narrowing or broadening to map. Claims 1–20 stand exactly as granted. That means:

• No claim is CANCELED. Any demand letter citing claim 1, 5, or 16 cites a claim that still legally exists (though as of 2019-02-04 it no longer excludes anything going forward).
• No claim is SUSTAINED by the Board. There is no FWD, no advisory "the patent survived" signal, and no Board claim construction you can borrow or attack.
• The prior section's internal-consistency flag on claim 5 stands unaddressed by any PTAB record — the antecedent-basis quirk in claim 5 (the body's "the unique identifier of the item" has no antecedent in the preamble; it is supplied only in dependent claim 6) has never been litigated or construed. It is a § 112(b) vulnerability that a defendant can raise in district court, but you cannot now raise it at the Board because CBM (the vehicle that allowed § 112 challenges on this pre-AIA patent) is gone, and IPR is limited to § 102/§ 103 on patents and printed publications.

Estoppel landscape: entirely empty — which is good news and bad news. No petitioner has ever been estoppelled under § 315(e)(1) or § 315(e)(2) against this patent, so no prior-art ground has been foreclosed by anyone. But estoppel is a shield against your opponent, not a sword for you; you gain no free invalidity findings, no admitted prior art, and no narrowed claims to design around. Practically, your § 102/§ 103 position is a clean slate limited only by the eight references the examiner cited during prosecution and the three non-patent citations (the Businessworld Nov. 1998 cigarette-barcode article and the Dec. 1998 Material Handling Engineering roundtable), all of which carry the § 325(d) "substantially the same art" risk if you refile them at the Office.

Pattern signals. There is no petitioner pattern to observe because there is no petitioner. No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) appears anywhere in this patent's chain — the Unified Patents page that surfaced in earlier research is a family listing for a different patent (US 11,663,574, a Neology case), not an intervention against 6,360,208. Patent owner Intermec IP Corp. never had to defend a post-grant challenge on this patent, and there is no PTAB appeal by Intermec on it either. The related family member — divisional application US 10/073,509, published as US 2002/0097282 A1 — went abandoned, so there is no continuing prosecution or continuation patent in this family to assert in place of the expired parent. That is a meaningful negative: a troll asserting 6,360,208 today has no live sibling patent to fall back on.

One correction to the previously generated summary, flagged as requested. The earlier section stated the patent "simply expired for failure to reach the end of its full term on 2019-02-04." That characterization is wrong and internally contradictory. 2019-02-04 is exactly twenty years after the 1999-02-04 filing date, i.e., the full statutory term under § 154(a)(2) — the patent did not expire early. The legal-events record confirms this: maintenance fees were paid at the 4-year (2005-08-30), 8-year (2009-08-19), and 12-year (2013-09-11) intervals, so there was no lapse for fee nonpayment. The status "Expired – Lifetime" with an anticipated expiration of 2019-02-04 reflects a normal end-of-term expiration, not a failure to reach full term. This matters for the defensive posture: a defendant cannot argue the patent was abandoned or fee-lapsed.

Recommended next steps

1. Lead with expiration and § 286, not with PTAB record. Since the patent expired 2019-02-04, there is no ongoing infringement to enjoin. Under 35 U.S.C. § 286, damages are limited to infringement committed within six years before the complaint or counterclaim is filed. In a suit filed on or after 2020-09-27, the entire recoverable window falls after expiration — meaning, on the face of the statute, the damages case is essentially empty absent a tolling agreement, a pending pre-2019 suit, or an unexpired continuation claim (and there is none, because US 10/073,509 was abandoned). Verify the docket for any earlier-filed complaint against your client that could have started the § 315(b) clock; if one exists, the IPR window may be open and the damages window may not be closed.

2. Because there is no PTAB activity, do not represent that claims have been canceled. If opposing counsel cites a claim of 6,360,208, the accurate statement is: "the claim is untested, unconstrued by the Board, and expired on 2019-02-04." Cite the Google Patents legal-status record showing "Expired – Lifetime" and the anticipated expiration date, and the three maintenance-fee payments, as the evidentiary anchor — https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6360208B1](/patent/US6360208B1)/en.

3. If you nevertheless want Board relief (e.g., to moot a co-pending case or to defeat a willfulness narrative), recognize that IPR is your only vehicle and that it is now a discretionary-denial minefield for expired, long-dormant patents. Before spending the filing fee, confirm (a) that a § 315(b) triggering complaint exists within one year, and (b) that you have art that is not "substantially the same" as the examiner's eight references, or you risk a multi-factor denial under § 325(d) and the settled-expectations authorities described above.

4. Preserve the § 112(b) point on claim 5 for district court. The missing antecedent for "the unique identifier of the item" in claim 5's body is a live indefiniteness argument that no tribunal has addressed. Note that it is not available in IPR (no § 112 in IPR) and was only available in CBM, which is sunset.

5. Verify the absence yourself before relying on it in a brief. Confirm via PTAB E2E / the PTAB public API and CourtListener that no petition exists and no FWD or CAFC opinion names this patent:

   • PTAB E2E and decisions: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/
   • PTAB API/ODP: https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-api/
   • CourtListener search for 6,360,208: https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%226%2C360%2C208%22

   I found no 2026 filing, but an unindexed or very recent petition cannot be ruled out. Treat this as "none found," not as an affirmative certification of nonexistence.

Sources consulted: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6360208B1/en (bibliographic, legal events, cited/citing references, no post-grant entries); https://pubchem.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/patent/US-6360208-B1 (priority, grant, citations); https://patents.justia.com/patent/[8560403](/patent/8560403) (family/citation cross-check); https://www.freepatentsonline.com/6360208.html and https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6360208 (via prior section); https://www.nyipla.org/images/nyipla/Programs/2026/Feb17PTAB/February%20PTAB%20Committee%20Meeting%20.pdf and https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/ (expired-patent discretionary-denial practice, cited second-hand); https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[4620855](/patent/4620855)/alien-technology-llc-v-intermec-inc/ and https://dockets.justia.com/docket/circuit-courts/cafc/11-1296 (Intermec-family CAFC matters, none involving this patent).

I'll verify the assignment chain via live sources before reconstructing the record.

Let me verify the assignment reel/frame details and check for any later transfers, including through the Honeywell acquisition.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 6,360,208 B1

Scope note / source limitation: The USPTO Patent Assignment Search (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) and its legacy mirror (assignment.uspto.gov) were not directly retrievable in this session; the assignment data below is taken from the Google Patents "Legal Events" record for US 6,360,208 (which republishes USPTO assignment reel/frame data), cross-checked against the FTC/SEC record of the Intermec–Honeywell transaction and the W.D. Wash. Honeywell v. Maltseff docket. The "correspondent of record" field — the attorney/agent who filed each recording — is not exposed in the Google Patents legal-events view, and I could not retrieve it from a second source. I flag that gap explicitly rather than guess. Everything I do state is tied to a reel/frame or a cited source.

Flagged contradiction with the earlier section: The previously generated summary lists prior art "US 5,876,437" among the examiner-cited references. The authoritative patent text lists US 6,076,064 (Rose, Jr.) in that slot, not US 5,876,437. Treating the full patent text as controlling, the correct citation set is US 5,805,082; US 5,160,023; US 5,521,815; US 6,076,064; US 5,788,796; US 6,097,301; US 5,874,896; US 6,025,784. This does not affect the ownership analysis but should be corrected.

Inventors

Pattern assessment:

• No "inventor flight within 12 months of filing" signal. Both inventors executed their assignments pre-filing (effective 1999-01-27) and remained with Intermec for years afterward. The Maltseff departure was in 2013 — 14 years post-filing — and is a post-acquisition mobility/trade-secret story, not a precursor to a portfolio fire-sale.
• Unusual but benign: one named inventor (Maltseff) was simultaneously the company's IP counsel of record on the corporate side. This is a governance curiosity, not an NPE indicator.
• Data-quality caveat: a third-party aggregator (patentleaderboard.com) attributes Michael P. Ohanian's patents to "Baker Hughes Holdings." That appears to be a misattribution (same-name aggregation), not a change of employment; the WO/PCT record and co-inventor address place Ohanian squarely at Intermec's Everett, WA facility.

Original assignee

Intermec IP Corp. — the IP-holding subsidiary of the Intermec group.

• Line of business: automatic identification and data capture (AIDC) — barcode scanners and scan engines, rugged handheld computers, and RFID readers and tags. This is squarely an operating-industry technology family; Intermec IP Corp. is the holding entity through which Intermec centralizes patent title.
• Address of record: WO 2000/046734 lists Intermec IP Corporation, 21900 Burbank Blvd., Woodland Hills, CA 91367. Later recordings (e.g., the KeyBank release) style the owner as Intermec IP Corp., Washington, consistent with the group's relocation to Everett, WA.
• Product embodiment: Intermec shipped the underlying hardware (laser/imager symbol readers and RFID interrogators — the exact "reader 12 / wireless interrogator 28" classes recited in FIGS. 1–2). I found no evidence of a commercial Intermec product marketed as a tax-stamp/tax-verification system; this patent reads as a portfolio/defensive filing in the tax-and-excise-verification application space rather than a flagship product patent.
• Assertion posture (company level, not this patent): Intermec-family entities are documented patent asserters against competitors — e.g. Alien Technology v. Intermec / Intermec IP Corp. v. Alien Technology (D.N.D. 3:06-cv-00051; D. Del. 1:06-cv-00411), the 2004 Intermec v. Matrics RFID campaign, Intermec Techs. v. Palm (D. Del. 1:07-cv-00272), and Intermec IP Corp. v. TransCore (Delaware). Stanford's NPE database classifies "Intermec IP Corp." as "IP subsidiary of product company" and "Intermec, Inc." as a "product company" — i.e., a classic operating-company IP sub, not a shell.
• Current status: Operating, as a wholly-owned subsidiary of Honeywell International Inc. Honeywell's ~$600M stock-and-merger acquisition of Intermec, Inc. (agreement signed 2012-12-09) was cleared by the FTC on 2013-09-13 subject to a 12-year patent-license remedy to Datalogic IPTECH (2D scan-engine patents only). Intermec's then-parent went private/independent along the way through its UNOVA lineage, but no Chapter 7/11 sale of this patent occurred. The patent itself expired 2019-02-04 (anticipated expiration; listed "Expired – Lifetime").

Assignment timeline

The assignment chain for US 6,360,208 is short and entirely intra-family. Every title-related recording runs to the original assignee; the only outsider is a secured lender whose lien was later released. There is no post-issuance title transfer to any third party or licensing vehicle.

1. 1999-01-27 (executed) / 1999-02-04 (recorded) — Reel 012210/0496

• Conveyance: Assignment (of inventors' rights)
• Assignor: Ohanian, Michael; Maltseff, Paul A.
• Assignee: Intermec IP Corp. (California)
• Correspondent: not exposed in the legal-events record. The prosecution firm of record for this family was Perkins Coie LLP, Seattle (agent Frank Abramonte et al., per WO 2000/046734) — the likely recording correspondent, but I cannot confirm the recording-attorney field.
• Context: Initial pre-filing assignment of inventors' rights to the employer's IP-holding entity; executed 8 days before the 1999-02-04 filing.

2. 1999-01-27 (executed) / 1999-02-04 (recorded) — Reel 012209/0930

• Conveyance: Assignment
• Assignor: Ohanian, Michael; Maltseff, Paul A.
• Assignee: Intermec IP Corp. (California)
• Correspondent: not exposed.
• Context: A second, near-identical recording of the same inventors-to-Intermec conveyance appearing on the same day under a different reel/frame. Two reel/frames (012209/0930 and 012210/0496) record the same grant — a duplicate/corrective recording, not a second transfer of title. (Worth a manual check of both reel/frames to confirm identical text.)

3. 2004-09-30 (executed) / 2004-12-07 (recorded) — Reel 016059/0047

• Conveyance: Security Agreement (collateral grant — not a title transfer)
• Assignor: Intermec IP Corp. (grantor/borrower)
• Assignee/Secured party: KeyBank National Association (Ohio)
• Correspondent: not exposed.
• Context: Securitization — Intermec pledged its IP (this patent included) as collateral under a credit facility. A senior lender lien, not an acquisition.

4. 2007-09-27 (executed) / 2007-10-03 (recorded) — Reel 019910/0215

• Conveyance: Release of Security Interest (at Reel/Frame 016059/0047)
• Assignor/Releasing party: KeyBank National Association
• Assignee: Intermec IP Corp. (Washington)
• Correspondent: not exposed.
• Context: Lien release — the security interest was extinguished; title remained continuously with Intermec IP Corp. throughout.

Post-2007 — no further recordings:

• The 2013 Honeywell acquisition produced no recorded assignment of this patent, because it was structured as a stock purchase of Intermec, Inc. (100% of voting securities) — a change of corporate control of the parent, not an assignment of individual patents. Intermec IP Corp. therefore remained the record owner as a Honeywell subsidiary; Google Patents still lists "Current Assignee: Intermec IP Corp."
• No assignment to any Acacia / Marathon / IV / Wi-LAN / Conversant / Pendrell-type entity, and no assignment to RPX / AST / LOT / Unified. The chain terminates with the original family.
• Maintenance fees paid at 4, 8, and 12 years (2005-08-30, 2009-08-19, 2013-09-11); the patent then reached its 2019-02-04 anticipated expiration ("Expired – Lifetime"). Note the 12-year fee (Sept. 2013) fell just after the Honeywell close — consistent with continued internal maintenance by the acquiring family.

Because there is an assignment record and a full timeline (not merely the original grant), I do not apply the "no records → stop" rule. But note the ownership substance: the only title event is the original 1999 assignment; entries 3–4 are a lien and its release.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6360208
    1999 : Inventors assign to Intermec IP Corp
         : Duplicate recording reel 012209 and 012210
    2004 : Security agreement to KeyBank reel 016059
    2007 : KeyBank releases lien reel 019910
    2013 : Intermec Inc acquired by Honeywell
    2019 : Patent expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. No transfer to any licensing-only LLC. Title stayed with Intermec IP Corp., the IP-holding subsidiary of an operating product company (Palo Alto/Stanford NPE database categorizes it as "IP subsidiary of product company"). No "IP/Holdings/Ventures" shell appears at any reel/frame. The only outsider in the chain is a secured lender (KeyBank, Reel 016059/0047), whose interest was released (Reel 019910/0215) — the opposite of a shell conveyance.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. No assignee matches the named NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Conversant/Mosaid, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation, Spangenberg entities). Assignees of record are Intermec IP Corp. and KeyBank National Association only. Nuance: the Intermec corporate family did assert unrelated RFID/data-capture patents (Alien Technology, TransCore, Matrics, Palm), but that is operating-company-versus-competitor litigation, and this patent was never asserted in any proceeding I found.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR (data unavailable). The correspondent field is not exposed in the Google Patents legal-events record, so I cannot test for recurrence. The prosecution agent of record for the family was Perkins Coie LLP, Seattle (Frank Abramonte), per WO 2000/046734 — a mainstream IP firm doing ordinary operating-company work. I will not treat a single, firm-level appearance as a finding. This is the one signal I could not evaluate.

4. Cascading transfers (chained LLCs < 24 months) — NOT PRESENT. Four events total across 1999–2007; only one involves a title transfer, and it is the original inventors→assignee grant. No chained assignees sharing an address, attorney, or principals.

5. Pre-litigation transfer (assignment within 6 months before a suit on this patent) — NOT PRESENT. No suit on US 6,360,208 exists in any source I checked, and the last recording (2007-10-03) predates all Intermec assertion activity by years and is unrelated to it.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 sale of this patent. Intermec's exit was a stock acquisition by Honeywell (FTC cleared 2013-09-13), not a bankruptcy estate liquidation.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No transfer to an NPE to assert against the operating company's competitors. The only third-party patent rights touching the family are the FTC-mandated license to Datalogic (so the FTC conditioned the 2013 merger) — and that remedy is limited to 2D scan-engine patents/related devices, not this tax-verification patent. No privateering evidence in 10-K/8-K or press coverage.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN. It terminates at a Honeywell operating-company subsidiary, and the patent then expired. (So the asset is neutralized by expiry on 2019-02-04, not by defensive aggregation.)

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The complete recorded chain runs inventors → Intermec IP Corp. (Reels 012209/0930 and 012210/0496, executed 1999-01-27), with the only outside appearance being a secured lender lien to KeyBank (Reel 016059/0047, executed 2004-09-30) that was released back to the owner (Reel 019910/0215, executed 2007-09-27). No title ever passed to a licensing shell, a known NPE, or a chained LLC; the 2013 Honeywell deal moved stock, not this patent, leaving Intermec IP Corp. (now a Honeywell International Inc. subsidiary) as record owner until the patent's 2019-02-04 expiration. In short: zero NPE signals — the single unexplained gap is the unavailable correspondent field, which is insufficient to support an NPE call, so the honest classification is a non-NPE, operating-company-owned asset. Caveat: the "assertion" component of this verdict reflects the Intermec/Honeywell family's documented competitor litigation over other patents (e.g., Alien Technology, TransCore, Palm); US 6,360,208 itself was never asserted and reads as a defensive portfolio filing that simply aged out.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Search — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and legacy https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search "6360208"); reel/frame cross-checks: 012209/0930, 012210/0496, 016059/0047, 019910/0215.

Open items for a human reviewer (I could not resolve these):

1. Correspondent of record for each recording — pull directly from assignmentcenter.uspto.gov, since Google Patents omits it. This is required to fully clear Signal 3.
2. Confirm Reels 012209/0930 and 012210/0496 are duplicate recordings of the same 1999 conveyance (corrective recording) rather than two distinct grants.

I'll verify the patent record and dig into each cited reference. Running several searches in parallel.

Let me pull the remaining cited references directly.

Handling notes before the analysis

On the "USPTO database" search. I was able to retrieve the bibliographic and full-text record through USPTO-mirroring sources (Google Patents' authoritative text you supplied, uspto.report/patent/grant/6360208, Espacenet, FreePatentsOnline). I was not able to open PatentCenter/PAIR or the USPTO full-text search UI directly in this session, so the grant date, filing date, assignee, and cited-reference list below come from the front page of the patent record rather than a live PatentCenter query. The cited-reference list is internally consistent across the sources I did reach.

Contradiction flag (per operating rules). The previously generated "Patent summary" section lists the fourth examiner-cited reference as "US 5,876,437." The authoritative record you supplied lists US 6,076,064 (Rose, Jr., Uniform system for verifying and tracking the title of articles or objects of value, 1992-01-31 / 2000-06-13). There is no US 5,876,437 anywhere in the 6360208 citation list. I treat US 6,076,064 as correct and flag US 5,876,437 as an error in the earlier section.

Verification level per reference. I verified full text/claims for US 5,805,082, US 5,521,815, US 6,076,064, and US 6,097,301. My verification searches for US 5,160,023, US 5,788,796, US 5,874,896, and US 6,025,784 were truncated by a tool-step limit, so for those four I am working from the citation metadata on the 6360208 face plus the titles — I say so explicitly below rather than padding with invented disclosure detail.

1. The reference patent and its statutory posture

US 6,360,208 B1, Method and apparatus for automatic tax verification, Ohanian & Maltseff, Intermec IP Corp., Appl. 09/244,611, filed 1999-02-04, granted 2002-03-19, expired for failure to reach full term on 2019-02-04. Filed before the AIA's first-inventor-to-file provisions took effect, so pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs, with an invention date no later than the 1999-01-27 assignment effective date.

Because the filing date is 1999-02-04, the critical dates are:

The § 102(e) point matters a lot here: three of the eight examiner-cited patents (US 6,097,301, US 6,025,784, US 5,874,896) and one more (US 6,076,064) issued after the 6360208 filing date. They can only be § 102(e) art, through their earlier US filing dates. This is a common analytical trap.

2. The eight examiner-cited patent references

2.1 US 5,805,082 — the most structurally relevant reference

Brief description: An in-vehicle component ("IVC") with a processor and non-volatile memory stores a "toll-money-available" balance and a vehicle-specific identifier. Roadside transmitters (T0/T1) broadcast toll-facility identity and toll schedules; a T2 transmitter at the toll plaza sends a COLLECT signal; the IVC debits the toll and updates its stored balance, then transmits its identity, the toll paid, and the balance to a reader. A Toll Transaction Management (TTM) subsystem maintains central records, reconciles the IVC-reported balance against the central record, and flags discrepancies; an INVALID IVC list is broadcast to disable offenders; encoding is "dynamically varied to reduce the possibility of fraud." Notably, a single IVC stores separate balances for a plurality of toll-authority accounts.

Claims potentially affected under § 102:

• Claim 16 — the closest fit: a wireless programmable memory device secured to an item (the vehicle); a government levy is collected; tax information in the memory device is updated after collection. If "tax" is read to cover a toll, this is a genuine anticipation argument, not merely obviousness.
• Claim 20 — updating a computer-readable memory separate from the device with the unique identifier and the tax information: the TTM's central records receive IVC identifier + toll + balance.
• Claims 18, 19 — programming (including permanently programming) a unique identifier in the memory device: the IVC carries a pre-assigned vehicle identifier/class code.
• Claim 1 — "affixing a respective wireless memory device … to each of the taxable items; and storing a tax payment status" maps onto the IVC's per-authority debit/balance state, if the vehicle is treated as the "taxable item."
• Claim 13 (first and second tax payment conditions for two tax collecting authorities) — § 103 material: the IVC holds multiple toll-authority accounts.
• Claim 12 (payment condition + locality + date) — § 103 material: the TTM records toll-facility/booth identity and date-time stamps.

Assessment: The single most relevant reference in the set. It is the only cited patent that supplies the full loop — per-item programmable memory, RF read/write, update on collection of a public levy, plus a separate central record reconciled against the on-item memory. It is also the only one that expressly contemplates multiple taxing authorities on one item (6360208 claim 13).

2.2 US 6,076,064 — the most on-point tax disclosure (note: earlier section mis-cited this as 5,876,437)

Brief description: A centralized computer database ties a coded registration/title/identification number to an article of value. Claim 14 recites "means for determining that no duplicate second identifying number exists; and, means for determining that the coded first identifying number and second identifying number are mathematically linked." Claims 15–16 recite "means for transmitting and storing tax data in said centralized computer data base; means for determining whether said taxes have been paid; and, means for issuing a statement responsive to a determination that taxes have not been paid." Claim 29 states the coded identifying number "may be applied directly to the article for easy identification."

Claims potentially affected under § 102:

• Claim 5 — "automatically storing information concerning payment of tax on the item in the respective computer readable memory … associable with the item through the unique identifier." The tax-data + taxes-paid + statement-issuance claim set is expressly on point; the weak link is that in '064 the computer-readable store is the central database, not a memory "secured to the item," so this is a § 102(e) anticipation argument only if claim 5's "respective computer readable memory" is read to include the central record — which the specification does not support.
• Claim 7 (tax payment condition) and claim 12 (condition + locality + date).
• Supporting § 103 evidence for the duplicate-unique-identifier check of the 6360208 spec's step 124 (FIG. 8) — '064's claim 14 is explicit on duplicate detection.

Assessment: High-value § 102(e) reference for the substantive tax limitations; weaker on the "memory on the item" architecture.

2.3 US 5,521,815 — same family as '064, but § 102(b) art

Brief description (verified): Centralized computer database; a shortened registration number bar-coded onto the license plate and affixed to the vehicle; registration, title and VIN numbers "remain with the article throughout the life of the article," and a tag is "applied in a permanent fashion to the article where it would be practical." The title history includes ownership, liens, inspections, and fee/tax handling — the specification expressly lists disbursement to "municipal/state/federal taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes" and municipal/financing liens. The system rejects or accepts entries by mathematical comparison of the coded numbers, and includes a "triangulated data check" for verifying entered data.

Claims potentially affected under § 102:

• Claim 5 (preamble + the concept of tax-payment data tied to a per-item unique identifier). Same limitation gap as '064: the per-item carrier is a bar code, not a computer-readable memory.
• Claims 2, 3 (reading a machine-readable symbol encoding the unique identifier) — but claims 2–4 depend from claim 1, which requires a wireless memory device, so '815 cannot anticipate them.
• § 103 evidence for the anti-swap/no-duplicate rationale and for permanent affixing of the identifier to the item.

Assessment: Because '815 is § 102(b) art it is a statutory-bar-grade reference, but it is a tracking/titling reference, not a wireless-memory reference. Best used in combination, not alone.

2.4 US 6,097,301 — RFID hardware reference

Brief description (verified): RFID tag transceivers each with an antenna, transmitter, receiver, control logic and a semiconductor memory programmed with object-identifying data, mounted on each of a plurality of tagged objects; a handheld/man-worn interrogator transceiver that broadcasts interrogation messages and receives identifying messages; adjustable two-way communication range; and a central computer with an RF receiver and memory storing the data received from the tags for tracking. The specification states the invention "is equally applicable to any other objects to which RFID tags may be attached."

Claims potentially affected under § 102:

• Claim 1 — "affixing a respective wireless memory device having a computer-readable memory to each of the taxable items": structurally disclosed, but the stored content ("tax payment status") is absent, so this is a § 103 reference for the apparatus, not an anticipation.
• Claims 14, 15 (RF memory tag variants) and claim 16 (programmable memory device secured to an item) — hardware-level support.
• Claim 20 — data from tags re-transmitted to a central computer with memory.

Assessment: The best cited reference for the RF-memory-on-item hardware element; silent on tax.

2.5 US 6,025,784 — attaching RFIDs to vehicles

Claims potentially affected under § 102:

• Claim 1 and claim 5 as applied to the 6360208 automobile 48 / yacht 50 embodiments (FIG. 3): attaching RFIDs/transponders to vehicles, including in license-plate frames and concealed locations, supports the "affixing … to each of the taxable items" and "securing a respective computer readable memory to the item" steps for high-value vehicle goods. It also corroborates the 6360208 specification's anti-tampering rationale of hiding the tag "on the interior of a body panel of the automobile 48 or within the hull of the yacht 50."

Assessment: A § 102(e) apparatus reference; no tax content. Useful because it maps to a specific disclosed taxable-good embodiment.

2.6 US 5,874,896 — RFID tag on articles (anti-shoplifting)

Claims potentially affected under § 102: Claim 1 and claim 5 (RFID tag affixed to each of a number of articles in a retail/security context) and claims 14, 15 (RF tag with memory). No tax or payment data.

Assessment: Hardware/affixing reference only. The near-miss issue date makes the § 102(e)-only characterization important — a § 102(b) rejection on this reference would be legally wrong.

2.7 US 5,788,796 — decal assembly

Claims potentially affected under § 102: At most the physical affixing/securing steps of claims 1 and 5 and the corresponding apparatus aspects of the printer claim family discussed in the 6360208 summary. The 6360208 specification describes tags "includ[ing] a pressure sensitive adhesive and release liner," and a decal assembly reference is presumably why the examiner cited it. I could not verify whether '796 discloses tamper-indicating or frangible features that would also touch the 6360208 specification's "destroyed upon opening" rationale at FIG. 3 — I flag that as unverified rather than assert it.

Assessment: Weakest of the eight on the merits of the tax claims; a labeling-art reference.

2.8 US 5,160,023 — cigarette carton construction

Claims potentially affected under § 102: Tenuous. It relates to cigarette carton packaging — i.e., an exemplar "taxable item" of the 6360208 specification and figures (package of cigarettes 42) — and potentially to the specification's statement that the tag/symbol "covers the opening of the packaging … ensures the destruction of the RFID tag 30 or machine readable symbol 14 upon the opening of the bottle 40 or package 42." It does not anticipate any claim of US 6,360,208 on its face: it discloses no machine-readable identifier, no memory, and no tax data.

Assessment: Background/packaging art only. I could not verify whether it contains any tax-stamp or tamper-evident teaching.

3. Non-patent citations (3 of record)

All three were published in Nov–Dec 1998, i.e. roughly two to three months before the 1999-02-04 filing. They are therefore § 102(a) printed publications (known/described before the applicant's invention) and not § 102(b) art, because they fall inside the one-year grace period.

4. Additional prior art in the file (family-cited) worth elevating

The 6360208 record also lists 14 references cited in the family (IDS-style). Three of these are, in my judgment, more dangerous than several of the eight examiner-cited patents and should not be overlooked in any validity analysis:

5. Bottom line — ranking and the anticipation question

Ranking by relevance to the claims of US 6,360,208:

1. US 5,805,082 — per-item programmable memory updated on collection of a public levy, RF read/write, separate central record reconciled against on-item memory, multiple authority accounts. The only reference that spans claims 16–20 and touches claim 13.
2. US 6,076,064 (§ 102(e)) — express "tax data / whether taxes have been paid / statement" claiming plus duplicate-identifier detection. (The earlier section's "US 5,876,437" appears to be erroneous.)
3. US 5,521,815 (§ 102(b)) — uniform per-article verification/tracking with coded identifier permanently applied to the article and fee/tax handling; same family as '064.
4. US 6,097,301 § 102(e) — RFID tag + programmable memory + central computer.
5. US 6,025,784 § 102(e) — RFIDs attached to vehicles.
6. US 5,874,896 § 102(e) — RFID tag on articles (retail/anti-shoplifting).
7. US 5,788,796 — decal/label assembly.
8. US 5,160,023 — cigarette carton construction (no claim-specific disclosure apparent).

On § 102 anticipation specifically: On the face of the record, I do not see a clean single-reference anticipation of independent claims 1, 5, or 16. The reason is uniform across the set: each cited reference supplies either (a) the wireless-memory-on-an-item architecture with no tax content ('301, '896, '784, '796), or (b) tax/fee-payment data and unique-identifier tracking held in a central database with the identifier carried by a bar code rather than a memory on the item ('815, '064). Claim 1 requires a wireless memory device having a computer-readable memory affixed to the item; claim 5 requires a computer-readable memory secured to the item. That conjunction is what the cited references individually lack.

The nearest thing to a genuine § 102 theory is US 5,805,082 against claims 16 and 20, if "tax" is construed to encompass a toll and the vehicle is treated as the "item." That is a defensible but contestable reading — it turns on claim construction of "tax," and the 6360208 specification's own framing (sales tax, excise tax, duties on goods such as spirits, cigarettes, furs, perfume, automobiles, yachts) cuts both ways: it treats taxes as levies on goods, but its FIG. 3 goods list includes an automobile and a yacht, which are precisely what '082 taxes.

The realistic posture of the cited art is therefore a § 103 combination: for example, US 5,805,082 (programmable on-item memory updated when a levy is collected, plus central reconciliation and multiple-authority accounts) in view of US 5,521,815 or US 6,076,064 (tax-paid determination and statement issuance, duplicate-identifier safeguards), and further in view of US 6,097,301 / US 5,874,896 / US 6,025,784 (RFID tag affixed to an article/vehicle). Dependent claims 7–13, 14–15, and 17–20 each have at least one cited reference supplying the added limitation.

Two things I could not confirm and am not asserting: (i) the specific disclosure content, figures, and claim language of US 5,160,023, US 5,788,796, US 5,874,896, and US 6,025,784 — my verification steps were cut off, so the descriptions of those four rest on their titles and face-of-record metadata; and (ii) whether any of those four contains a tax-stamp, tamper-evidence, or payment-status teaching that would sharpen the § 102 mapping.

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6360208/en; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6360208; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/6360208.html; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[5805082](/patent/5805082); https://patents.google.com/patent/US5521815; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[5521815](/patent/5521815).html; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[6076064](/patent/6076064).html; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6076064; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[6097301](/patent/6097301); https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6097301A](/patent/US6097301A)/en; https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=[6097301A](/patent/6097301A)&KC=A&FT=D

I'll ground this obviousness analysis in the actual cited prior art. Let me pull details on the key references from the patent's Prior Art section.

Let me pull details on the remaining cited references to characterize them accurately.

Obviousness analysis of US 6,360,208 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Basis of this analysis: I use the references listed in the patent's own Prior Art section — the eight examiner-cited U.S. patents on the face of US 6,360,208, plus the additional references appearing in that section's "Citations," "Family Cites," and "Non-Patent Citations" blocks. I do not repeat the bibliographic/claim-summary material already generated; this section builds on it.

0. Contradiction to flag up front

The previously generated Patent summary listed the examiner-cited references as including "US 5,876,437" and did not list US 6,076,064. The authoritative patent page shows the eight cited references are: US 5,805,082; US 5,160,023; US 5,521,815; US 6,076,064; US 5,788,796; US 6,097,301; US 5,874,896; US 6,025,784. US 5,876,437 does not appear anywhere in the citation record and appears to be a transcription error for US 5,874,896. This matters substantively because US 6,076,064 is the single most on-point cited reference (it expressly claims storing tax data in a database, determining whether taxes have been paid, and issuing a statement when they have not). I treat the patent page as controlling.

1. Level of ordinary skill and the legal frame

• POSITA (proposed): a person with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, computer science, or an equivalent, plus ~2–4 years of experience in automated identification (bar code/RFID) and database-backed transaction systems; or a lesser degree with more experience. This is the art of the named inventors (auto-ID at Intermec).
• Frame: Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966) factors; KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (predictable combination of known elements, each performing its known function, is obvious; motivation may come from "market demand," "design incentives," or the background knowledge of the skilled artisan; the reference need not be combined for the inventor's own reason — In re Beattie).
• Critical context: the applicant's own Background of the Invention is an admission of the problems solved and of the prior-art landscape: tax stamps are easily forged ("high quality color copying machines"), carry little information, cannot hold multiple authorities' stamps, and are not amenable to "automatic collection and compliance verification." Under § 103, these admitted problems supply the motivation the applicant cannot deny.

2. Reference inventory (what each cited reference teaches)

3. Claim 1 — Grounds for obviousness

Claim 1: (a) affix a respective wireless memory device having computer-readable memory to each taxable item; (b) store a tax payment status for each item in its respective memory.

Ground 1A — US 6,097,301 in view of US 6,076,064 (or US 5,805,082).

• 6,097,301 supplies (a) verbatim in substance: an RF tag is attached to each article, and the interrogator is expressly capable of "updating the status of the article" stored in the tag. Its examples of "status" (name, owner, address, destination, pertinent dates, weight) are a genus that plainly encompasses a payment status field.
• 6,076,064 supplies (b)'s substance: storing tax data, determining whether taxes have been paid, and issuing a statement when they have not. The only difference from claim 1 is where the tax-paid record is kept (6,076,064's database/tag record vs. the on-item tag memory).
• Motivation: 6,076,064 itself teaches affixing a durable, machine-readable tag bearing the unique number to the article and notes the record should "remain with the article throughout its life-cycle." Once the skilled artisan is told to keep the tax-paid record with the article, putting it in the article's own rewritable RF tag memory (Micron '301) is the predictable, known use of that memory — 6,097,301 had already taught writing/updating an article's status in its tag. There is no new principle of operation; each element performs exactly its known function (KSR).

Ground 1B — US 5,805,082 alone or in view of US 5,491,740.

• At/Comm's in-vehicle transponder is a wireless memory device affixed to the taxed/charged item (the vehicle), and its stored balance/debit record is functionally a "payment status" for that item, updated automatically each time a levy is collected. If a toll is treated as a levy on the item's use, claim 1 reads on the combination of At/Comm + any of the cited tagging references (e.g., 6,025,784, which puts the RFID on the vehicle specifically and teaches anti-swap mounting).
• 5,491,740 ("electrically powered postage stamp … operative with RF communication") makes the tax/levy-on-item application explicit and supplies motivation.

Predicted rejection posture: claim 1 is broad, essentially functional, and recites no more than the recognized automation of an admitted manual process (paper tax stamps). Expect an examiner to rely on 6,097,301 + 6,076,064.

4. Claim 5 — Grounds for obviousness

Claim 5: (a) for each of a number of items, secure a respective computer-readable memory to the item; (b) for at least one item, automatically store information concerning payment of tax on the item in the respective memory, the tax-payment information being associable with the item through the item's unique identifier.

This is the strongest § 103 target, because the two pieces are each squarely disclosed:

• (a) US 6,025,784 mounts an RFID/transponder to each vehicle (a taxed item), and US 6,097,301 attaches a tag with memory to each article. (Or, for the non-wireless reading, 6,076,064's bar-coded tag applied to each article.)
• (b) US 6,076,064 discloses "means for transmitting and storing tax data … means for determining whether said taxes have been paid, and means for issuing a statement responsive to a determination that taxes have not been paid" (cl. 16). US 5,521,815 corroborates with receipts for "municipal/state/federal taxes, sales taxes, excise taxes." US 5,805,082 supplies the "automatic" storing/updating of a collected levy in a memory device.
• The "associable through a unique identifier" element is met by 6,076,064 (each article has "one and only one" identifying number linked to its history file) and by 6,097,301/5,805,082 (each tag transmits its own identifying data).

Motivation to combine: The record establishes a clear reason to move the tax-paid record from a purely central file onto the per-item memory:

1. Tamper resistance / anti-swap: 6,025,784 is explicitly about preventing thieves from swapping or stealing the RFID device (screws held between frame and vehicle; anti-theft heads) — precisely the "'washing'"/refill/swap problem the '208 patent identifies.
2. Point-of-verification access without a live database link: the '208 specification and 6,097,301 both contemplate on-the-spot status reading; 6,076,064's dependence on a centralized DB for tax-status statements is the admitted weakness the artisan would seek to cure.
3. Automatic capture to replace paper: the admitted deficiencies of tax stamps and manual forms (Background) and the Nov. 1998 Businessworld article on mandated cigarette-pack bar codes.

Each element does what it is known to do; the combination is a predictable improvement — obvious under KSR.

Drafting note already flagged in the summary carries over: claim 5's body relies on "the unique identifier of the item" while the preamble does not recite associating each item with a unique identifier; dependent claim 6 appears to fill the gap. For § 103 purposes this doesn't help patentability — the missing antecedent is supplied by the prior art regardless (6,076,064; 6,097,301).

5. Claim 16 — Grounds for obviousness

Claim 16: (a) secure a wireless programmable memory device to an item; (b) collect a tax for the item; (c) update the tax information in the memory device after collecting the tax.

Ground — US 5,805,082, alone or in view of US 6,097,301 / US 6,025,784.

• At/Comm's transponder is a programmable, wireless memory device secured to the chargeable item; a levy (toll) is collected, and the device updates its stored value after collection (debits the balance; the stored records are rewritable/overwritten — e.g., the toll-facility-identifier is overwritten by the next facility). This maps element-for-element onto claim 16 with "toll" ≡ levy and "balance/account" ≡ tax information.
• US 6,097,301 independently teaches the "update the memory after an event" step ("updating the status of the article" via the interrogator).
• US 5,491,740 supplies the postage/levy-on-item framing and the rewriteable RF-label concept.

Motivation: keep the on-item record current so it reflects the most recent payment — exactly the stated purpose of the '208 "smart tax stamp." 5,805,082 expressly couples the update to collection and notes the fraud-reduction benefit (dynamic encoding/encryption), supplying the same rationale.

Dependent claims 17–20:

• 17 (security code before update): US 5,805,082 discloses encoded/encrypted RF transaction signals with dynamically varied encoding "to reduce the possibility of fraud," and black-list handling (shut-down/offender messaging) — i.e., access/authorization gating before a transaction is written. US 6,076,064 recites "security means."
• 18/19 (program a unique identifier; permanently program it): US 6,097,301 and US 5,805,082 (pre-assigned transponder identity) teach unique identifiers resident in the tag; 6,076,064 teaches assigning a unique number that "remain[s] with the article throughout the life of the article," i.e., effectively permanent.
• 20 (update a separate memory with identifier + tax info): US 6,076,064 (centralized DB history file updated with tax data keyed to the item's unique number) and US 5,521,815 (electronic transfer of collected tax/fee data to the central DB).

6. Dependent claims 2–15 — mapping (in brief)

7. Why a POSITA would have combined these references (KSR rationales, consolidated)

1. Same field, same problem, same known solution. Every reference is either (i) tax/levy tracking (5,521,815; 6,076,064), (ii) automatic levy collection with a memory-carrying wireless device (5,805,082), or (iii) RF tags affixed to articles/vehicles that store and update item status (6,097,301; 6,025,784; 5,874,896; 5,491,740). Combining (i)+(iii) is not a leap.
2. Predictable use of a known technique. Storing and updating a status/value in an RF tag's memory was notoriously known (5,805,082; 6,097,301); using it to hold the tax-paid status that 6,076,064 already tracked is the application of a known technique to a known problem, yielding predictable results.
3. The inventor's own admissions supply motivation. The Background concedes tax stamps are forgeable, information-poor, incapable of holding multiple authorities' stamps, and non-automated. Those are the exact deficiencies the combination cures.
4. Anti-fraud rationale is express in the art. 5,805,082's dynamic encoding/encryption and 6,025,784's anti-tamper mounting both target counterfeit-avoidance/tamper-evidence — the same goal motivating the '208 patent (duplicate-identifier detection, access codes, encryption).
5. Commercial/industry demand. The cited Nov. 1998 Businessworld piece (government-mandated cigarette-pack bar coding) and Dec. 1998 Material Handling Engineering roundtable show the market was already moving this way at the priority date.

8. Objective indicia (secondary considerations) and caveats

• No evidence of secondary considerations is in the record. The patent expired for failure to pay/reach full term (anticipated expiration 2019-02-04); no unexpected results, licensing, industry praise, or copying evidence appears in the sources reviewed. There is likewise no litigation or PTAB record identified (consistent with the earlier litigation caveat). A prima facie § 103 case therefore stands unrebutted.
• Confidence levels: High for the identities and general subject matter of the cited references. Medium for the specific internal teachings I attribute to US 6,076,064/US 6,097,301/US 5,805,082 — these are grounded in the passages surfaced in the search results and the patent's own citation record, but I did not read every column of each reference. I could not retrieve full text for US 5,874,896, US 5,788,796, and US 5,160,023 within the tool budget; their characterizations above rest on the patent page's titles/assignees and should be verified against the full documents before being relied on in a formal office action.
• Treating a toll as a "tax": Ground 1B and the claim-16 ground lean on equating At/Comm's toll with a tax. A rigorous examiner would more safely pair 5,805,082 (for the automatic memory-update mechanics) with 6,076,064/5,521,815 (for the tax characterization) rather than relying on the toll≡tax analogy alone.

9. Bottom line

US 6,360,208's three independent claims (1, 5, 16) appear obvious under § 103 on the art already cited against it:

• Claim 1 — US 6,097,301 (tag memory, article status) + US 6,076,064 (tax-data/paid-status determination), or US 5,805,082 + US 6,025,784.
• Claim 5 — US 6,097,301 / US 6,025,784 (per-item memory) + US 6,076,064 (automatic tax-data storage & paid determination) + US 5,805,082 (automatic update), motivated by the anti-swap/anti-forgery and point-of-verification rationales express in those references and admitted in the patent's Background.
• Claim 16 — US 5,805,082 (programmable wireless memory, levy collected, memory updated after collection, fraud-resistant), with US 6,097,301 and US 5,491,740.
• Dependents 2–15 and 17–20 map onto the same references with no additional inventive concept (see § 6), the strongest dependent-specific supports being US 5,521,815 (origin, product type, multiple authorities) and US 5,805,082 (dates, encryption/access code).

Principal caveat: the conclusions for US 6,076,064, US 6,097,301, and US 5,805,082 are well-grounded; the conclusions resting on US 5,874,896, US 5,788,796, and US 5,160,023 rest on titles/assignees only and should be confirmed against the full texts before formal reliance.

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6360208B1](/patent/US6360208B1)/en (full text & citation list); https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5805082A](/patent/US5805082A)/en; https://FreePatentsOnline.com/6076064.html; https://patents.google.com/patent/US5521815; https://FreePatentsOnline.com/6097301.html; https://patents.google.com/patent/US6025784; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/6076064.