US 7171378

I'll search for authoritative information on US 7,171,378 and any related CAFC 2026 docket activity.

Let me check specifically for litigation and the claim structure.

Let me confirm the independent claim set and check for any 2026 appellate activity.

US 7,171,378 B2 — Analyst Summary

Scope note on method: I ran targeted searches against Google Patents, RPX Insight, uspto.report, PTAB/PTActs documents, and Federal Circuit 2026 materials. I did not find any CAFC docket, appeal, or oral-argument entry in 2026 (or any year) involving US 7,171,378. The 2026 Federal Circuit results returned were unrelated cases (e.g., Contour IP Holding v. GoPro, No. 2026‑2012; Boston Scientific v. Stryker, No. 2026‑1171; AGI v. Farmers Edge; Ollnova v. ecobee; Ironburg v. Valve). The patent shows a legal status of Expired – Fee Related with an adjusted expiration of 2018‑11‑15, which is consistent with there being no live appellate activity. I am flagging this as absence of evidence, not proof of absence.

Bibliographic Data

Classifications: G07F 7/02; G06Q 10/087; G06Q 20/20; G06Q 20/343; G06Q 30/06 and subclasses 30/0601, 30/0613, 30/0617, 30/0633, 30/0641.

Abstract (verbatim)

"The present invention relates to a personal shopping system for combined use in both the home of a user and a shopping establishment. The system includes a host computer which is coupled to a host modem and, optionally, to at least one wireless multi-access point. At least one shopping establishment kiosk cradle is employed to interface with a portable terminal which is also part of the system. The portable terminal can be used in both the shopping establishment and the home of the user. It is configured to read bar codes associated with items related to shopping, and includes a memory, a bar code reader, a wireless transceiver, and a data interface. The data interface of the terminal communicates with a data interface of the shopping establishment kiosk cradle. A home cradle for the portable terminal is also provided and is adapted to remain in the home of the user. It includes a home portable terminal-receiving station and a home data interface to communicate with the data interface of the portable terminal. A home data transfer circuit is also included to permit data exchange between the home data interface and the modem coupled to the host computer."

Independent Claims — Plain-Language Overview

The patent has two independent claims (1 and 6) with 10 claims total. Note a substantive divergence I want to flag explicitly: the issued claim 1 is narrower and differently framed than the specification's summary and abstract. The abstract describes a "host modem" and an optional wireless multi-access point, whereas issued claim 1 recites the wireless access point and an alert/position-sensing feature set as required elements. This is characteristic of claim amendments made during prosecution. The claim text below is drawn from the RPX Insight rendering; I could not retrieve the full official claim set from the Google Patents HTML, so minor wording differences are possible.

Claim 1 — Personal shopping system (apparatus)

A system spanning a store and a home, comprising:

• a host computer associated with the shopping establishment;
• a wireless access point coupled to that host computer;
• a mobile device provided by the shopping establishment to the customer, having a two-way data interface for reading product bar codes and exchanging bar-code data with both a home computer and the store's host computer;
• an input key for generating an alert message;
• a wireless transceiver for sending that alert message to the wireless access point;
• a position-sensing module for sensing the mobile device's location (i.e., the shopper's location in the store);
• a data transfer circuit associated with the home computer for transmitting the bar-code data to the store's host computer;
• a store kiosk cradle coupled to the store host computer, with a kiosk data interface that mates with the mobile device's two-way data interface to receive bar-code data from the device; and
• a mobile device cradle coupled to the home computer, with a data interface that mates with the mobile device's two-way data interface to receive bar-code data from the device.

In plain terms: a store-issued handheld scanner/dock combo, usable both in the store (docking at a kiosk) and at home (docking to a home PC cradle), plus a store WLAN, a "help/alert" button, and location tracking of the shopper.

Dependent claims 2–5 depend from claim 1 (specifics not retrieved — see uncertainty note below).

Claim 6 — Method for providing improved service (method)

A method for use in a store by a customer and the customer's home, comprising:

• providing a mobile device from the store to the customer, the device having a position-sensing module, a wireless transceiver, a display, and a two-way data interface for reading bar codes and exchanging bar-code data with a home computer and the store's host computer;
• transmitting bar-code data from the mobile device to the home computer when the device is directly coupled to a home computer cradle, and then transmitting that data from the home computer on to the store's host computer; and
• transmitting bar-code data from the mobile device to the store's host computer when the device is directly connected to a kiosk cradle associated with the store [snippet truncated at this point].

In plain terms: the two-path ordering method — at-home docking routes bar-code data through the user's home computer to the retailer, while in-store docking routes it directly to the retailer's host computer.

Dependent claims 7–10 are presumed to depend from claim 6 (not confirmed).

Uncertainty / Verification Flags

1. Full claim set not authoritatively retrieved. I obtained verbatim text for independent claims 1 and 6 and confirmation of a 10-claim total from RPX Insight, but not the complete official claim listing. Dependent claims 2–5 and 7–10 are described only by their dependency, and I have not verified their scope.
2. Claim 6 is truncated in the available source; the final method step(s) are not quoted here.
3. No CAFC 2026 docket exists for this patent per my searches — but confirm against the Federal Circuit's own docket search and PACER/PTAB if a negative result matters to your analysis.
4. Assignee chain: "Symbol Technologies LLC" is listed as current assignee, with a 2002 assignment recorded to "Symbol Technologies, Inc." Treat the entity form (LLC vs. Inc.) literally rather than harmonizing the two.
5. Priority date is an assumption per the source (1998‑05‑29 via US 09/087,086), not a legal conclusion.
6. The related family includes US 6,101,483, US 6,640,214, and an EP filing (EP 1 120 727 A3 / EP 1 124 193 A1, "Personal shopping system"), whose search division raised Article 52(2)/(3) business-method objections — useful context if you are assessing the family's prosecution history.
7. Prosecution-laches history caution: "Symbol Technologies" appears in Federal Circuit prosecution-laches jurisprudence (the Lemelson-related Symbol III/IV line), but that line concerns different patents. Do not conflate it with this patent absent direct evidence.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 7171378. Let me run several searches.

Let me dig deeper into litigation-specific sources.

Findings on US Patent 7,171,378

Short answer: I found no litigation — in the district courts, the Federal Circuit, the ITC, or the PTAB — in which US Patent 7,171,378 ("Portable electronic terminal and data processing system," Symbol Technologies) is identified as an asserted or challenged patent.

What I searched

• General web searches keyed to the exact number in both formats: 7171378 and 7,171,378
• Litigation-oriented queries (defendant/plaintiff framing, case-number framing)
• Sources surfaced included CourtListener/Harvard case PDFs, RPX Insight litigation documents, USITC § 337 notices, Docket Alarm/PTAB materials, Justia dockets, and patent-aggregator sites (PatentLeaderboard, Golden wiki, Patents Justia)

What the searches actually returned

• Patent record hits only, no litigation hits. Results for "7171378" were patent-profile pages (Golden wiki, PatentLeaderboard inventor pages listing Adam Petrovich, Thomas K. Roslak, Jerome Swartz, Raj Bridgelall) and citations/see-also lists on other patents. None referenced a case.
• Unrelated uses of the numeral string. Several "7171378" hits were foreign/non-patent artifacts (a Czech insolvency filing, a Brazilian municipal gazette entry, a Nicaraguan diploma register, an Australian drill-hole collar ID). These are not the patent and I am explicitly not treating them as litigation.
• Symbol Technologies litigation that came up is about different patents, notably:
  • Symbol Technologies, Inc. v. Lemelson Medical, Education & Research Foundation (D. Nev., Nos. CV-S-99-0397, CV-S-01-701–703), a declaratory-judgment action on the Lemelson bar-code/machine-vision patents — not the '378 patent.
  • Symbol Technologies, Inc. v. Proxim, Inc. (D. Del.), asserting the Tymes patents (e.g., 5,029,183; 5,479,441) — not the '378 patent.
  • ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-551, Certain Laser Bar Code Scanners and Scan Engines (Symbol/Metrologic), asserting 5,457,308; 5,545,889; 6,220,514; 5,262,627; 5,917,173 — not the '378 patent.
  • Earlier Symbol cases (v. Spectra-Physics, v. Opticon, v. Metrologic) concern 4,387,297 / 4,593,186.

In every instance the asserted patents are different numbers. Per your instruction, I am not conflating similar or related patents with 7,171,378.

Patent-family context (for further checking, not as litigation)

The '378 patent's own specification states it is a continuation of Ser. No. 09/232,142 (now US 6,640,214), which is a continuation-in-part of Ser. No. 09/087,086 (now US 6,101,483). If you want to find enforcement activity surrounding this family, searching those sibling patents is worthwhile — but I did not find (and cannot confirm) any case in which 7,171,378 itself was pleaded.

Important caveats

1. Absence of evidence ≠ evidence of absence. My tool access here was limited to general web search plus snippets from litigation PDFs; I could not query PACER, the Unified Patents litigation portal, Docket Alarm, or RPX's full text index directly. It is entirely possible a case exists that my queries did not surface.
2. I was cut off mid-research (tool step limit) before I could run targeted queries such as site:dockets.justia.com 7171378, Docket Alarm's patent-page lookup, or the Unified Patents case lists you cited.
3. The patent is recorded as "Expired – Fee Related," adjusted expiration 2018-11-15, with Symbol Technologies LLC as current assignee (granted 2007-01-30). A patent that expired in 2018 and was granted in 2007 would have had a litigation window of roughly 2007–2018; my searches turned up nothing in it.

Recommended next steps to confirm

• Unified Patents litigation case list: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist (search the patent number)
• Docket Alarm / CourtListener RECAP docket search on 7171378
• RPX Insight patent page for 7,171,378
• PACER case search across likely venues (E.D.N.Y., D. Del., E.D. Tex., C.D. Cal.) for Symbol Technologies / Motorola Solutions / Zebra as plaintiff
• Also check the sibling patents 6,640,214 and 6,101,483, which may have been the patents actually asserted

If you can confirm a specific case number or party, I can pull the plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, filing date, and status. On the current record, I cannot report any known litigation for US 7,171,378.

I'll verify the ODP "no proceedings" default against live sources before finalizing.

Let me run a couple more targeted checks to be thorough before finalizing.

PTAB / AIA Trial Proceedings — US 7,171,378

Note on sourcing. I began from the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block in this prompt — the canonical list drawn from the USPTO Open Data Portal — which states that the ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent. I then ran live web searches to catch anything the ODP ingest might have missed (PTAB E2E/P-TACTS results, Board decisions, CBM/PGR database mentions, and family-level challenges). Nothing surfaced identifying US 7,171,378 as the subject of any IPR, PGR, CBM, or derivation proceeding. I found no evidence of AIA trial activity — stated as absence of evidence, not proof of absence.

Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings on file against US 7,171,378. The breakdown requested by status (active / claims invalidated / sustained / settled / institution denied) is therefore 0 / 0 / 0 / 0 / 0 — the patent was never put in front of the Board. Defensively, this is not the "hardened survivor of two IPRs" posture; it is the untested-patent posture: no claims of '378 have been canceled, but none have been confirmed patentable by the Board either, and there is no PTAB record a defendant can lean on. The absence of any IPR is itself a signal: patents that are actively asserted against deep-pocketed defendants tend to attract IPRs, and there is no such proceeding here. Combined with the patent's recorded status (Expired – Fee Related, adjusted expiration 2018-11-15), the practical significance of the "no proceedings" result is that the patent is already past its enforceable life — an IPR would be moot for ongoing-infringement purposes, and there was apparently no commercial incentive to challenge it administratively during its 2007–2018 window.

Per-proceeding detail

None. There are no proceedings to describe. Because the ODP structured block lists no proceedings and no web source contradicts it, I am not creating placeholder proceeding sections and am not inventing proceeding numbers, petitioners, panels, or dispositions — per your constraint against fabrication.

What I searched (to justify the negative)

Several "7171378" search hits were non-patent artifacts (a Brazilian commercial-registry gazette entry for "ADAO CARLOS DA SILVA GAS," a Czech insolvency filing). These are not the patent and I do not treat them as proceedings.

Strategic summary

Cancelled vs. sustained vs. untested. All ten claims (independent claims 1 and 6, plus dependents 2–5 and 7–10) are UNTESTED at the PTAB. No claim has been canceled, narrowed, or confirmed through an AIA trial. This is materially different from a patent that has survived a Board challenge: here, the patent's validity has never been litigated administratively, so a defendant gains no free "claims are dead" argument — but also inherits no estoppel-protected prior-art roadmap from a prior petitioner.

Estoppel landscape. Because there has never been a petitioner, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is entirely absent. No party is barred from raising any § 102/§ 103 ground in a district court or before the Board. Any future challenger would start with a clean slate. That said, the practical window for a new IPR is closed by the patent's expiration (adjusted expiration 2018-11-15) and the live-person status of the claims: institution on an expired patent is generally denied as moot for forward-looking relief, though there are narrow exceptions (e.g., pending infringement damages for pre-expiration conduct, or to clear a cloud). Any challenge today would more plausibly be pursued defensively in a declaratory-judgment posture than via the Board.

Pattern signals. No repeated-petitioner pattern (there is no petitioner at all). No patent-owner PTAB appeal activity. No defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) appears in any chain involving this patent. The patent is recorded as "Expired – Fee Related" with Symbol Technologies LLC as current assignee, consistent with the family's commercial lifecycle winding down rather than generating active enforcement.

Recommended next steps

• Do not build a defense around a PTAB record that does not exist. If your client received a demand citing US 7,171,378, the correct first inquiry is not "what did the Board say" but whether the patent was still in force at the time of the accused conduct. With an adjusted expiration of 2018-11-15, assertion of the '378 patent against post-2018 activity faces an immediate, threshold problem.
• If assertion concerns pre-expiration (2007–2018) conduct, the useful work is conventional invalidity analysis on the merits (the Oosterveen '942, Bianco '614, and Green '110 references in the specification are the natural starting points, alongside the admitted Palm Pilot™/Sharp Wizard prior art), because no estoppel is available and no Board FWD exists to quote or link.
• If you want to close the loop on the negative result, verify directly against: PTAB E2E / P-TACTS patent-number lookup (https://ptacts.uspto.gov), Docket Alarm's patent page, Unified Patents case list (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist), and CourtListener/RECAP. My web-search-based result is consistent with the ODP block, but I could not query those databases' full text indices directly, so this is corroboration, not an independent audit. If a proceeding number turns up in any of those sources, I can pull the petition grounds, panel, FWD claim-level disposition, and any CAFC appeal immediately.
• Cross-check the family. The '378 patent's specification states it is a continuation of Ser. No. 09/232,142 (US 6,640,214), which is a CIP of Ser. No. 09/087,086 (US 6,101,483). Those siblings are the likelier candidates for any enforcement or administrative challenge in this family; my searches did not surface IPR activity on them either, but confirm before relying on that.

Caveats (restated)

1. No proceeding numbers are cited because none exist in my sources — I have not fabricated any.
2. This is a negative finding; absence of evidence is not proof of absence, though it is strongly corroborated by the ODP structured block.
3. Expiration status is per the record ("Expired – Fee Related," adjusted expiration 2018-11-15) — treat as informative, not a legal conclusion.
4. I was not able to open a specific PTAB or CAFC opinion for this patent because none appears to exist; there is therefore no FWD or opinion to link.

I'll research the assignment record for US 7,171,378 across USPTO assignment records, Google Patents legal events, and corporate-chain sources.

Let me pull the patent's USPTO.report page and attempt direct assignment-search queries.

I hit the tool-step limit before I could query the USPTO Assignment Center API directly. Below is what the available records support — with explicit flags on what I could not retrieve rather than filling gaps with plausible-looking data.

Assignment Record Reconstruction — US 7,171,378 B2

Verification status: I could not retrieve the USPTO Patent Assignment Center record (reel/frame, correspondent, execution/recording dates) for this patent. My searches returned patent-profile aggregators (Google Patents, Golden wiki, PatentLeaderboard, uspto.report) but not the Assignment Center entries themselves. The Google Patents "Legal Events" block in the authoritative text does show one recorded assignment (2002‑08‑14), but it displays no reel/frame and no correspondent. Treat every reel/frame below as NOT RETRIEVED. Do not treat my inability to see it as proof it does not exist — cross-check at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 7171378).

Inventors

Unusual-pattern note (flagged, not asserted as a problem): Jerome Swartz retired from Symbol in 2000, i.e. before the 2002‑05‑02 filing of this continuation. That is not a "departure within 12 months of filing" fire-sale tell — it is the reverse (a founder-inventor still assigning to his former employer two years after retirement, which is normal for continuation families). No evidence that Petrovich, Roslak, or Bridgelall left Symbol within 12 months of filing. The single recorded assignment (below) captures all four inventors on one instrument, which is the ordinary employment-assignment pattern, not a fragmented pre-sale pattern.

Original assignee

Named on issued patent: the authoritative Google Patents text lists original assignee = Symbol Technologies LLC and current assignee = Symbol Technologies LLC. The 2002 assignment event, however, records the assignee as SYMBOL TECHNOLOGIES, INC. — an Inc. vs. LLC discrepancy that I am reproducing literally rather than harmonizing.

• Business: barcode scanners, mobile computers, RFID, WLAN infrastructure.
• Product embodying the claims: Yes in the practical sense — Symbol shipped the Spectrum 24™ wireless LAN (expressly named in the spec) and the SE‑900 laser scan engine and the InfoPen scanner (both expressly named), i.e., the enabling hardware of claim 1's mobile device / wireless access point combination.
• Current status: Not operating as an independent entity. Well-established corporate chain: Symbol acquired by Motorola (completed Jan 2007, ~$3.9B), folded into what became Motorola Solutions (2011), whose enterprise business — including Symbol — was acquired by Zebra Technologies (Oct 2014, $3.45B cash). Sources: Wikipedia Symbol Technologies and SEC EDGAR press‑release exhibit (2007‑01‑09). These transitions are corporate context; I did NOT confirm a USPTO reel/frame recording of either transfer against this patent.
• Bankruptcy: Symbol did not enter bankruptcy. It restated earnings 1998–2001 and paid SEC/shareholder settlements following a 2002–2004 accounting-fraud scandal (CEO Tomo Razmilovic indicted 2004, fled). The 2007 Motorola deal was a going-concern acquisition — not a bankruptcy fire-sale of patents.

Assignment timeline

Chronological list of records I could confirm:

• 2002‑08‑14 (date shown) — Reel/Frame NOT RETRIEVED
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (Google Patents legal-event label: "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: Swartz, Jerome; Petrovich, Adam; Bridgelall, Raj; Roslak, Thomas K. (all four named inventors, one instrument)
  • Assignee: SYMBOL TECHNOLOGIES, INC.
  • Correspondent: NOT RETRIEVED — cannot confirm the recording attorney/firm
  • Context: Ordinary inventor-to-employer assignment, executed ~3 months after the 2002‑05‑02 filing of this continuation.

No further recorded assignment appeared in any source I searched. If the Assignment Center likewise shows nothing after 2002‑08‑14, that is itself the finding — but given that both the Motorola (2007) and Zebra (2014) acquisitions moved this entire portfolio, I would expect at least a merger/blanket conveyance to be on record and my searches simply failed to surface it. This is absence of evidence, not evidence of absence.

Stopping-point caveat: The task instruction says to stop after this section if there are no records. There is one record (2002‑08‑14), so I am continuing — but with the explicit warning that my post-2002 assignment data is incomplete.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7171378
    1998 : Priority application filed
    2002 : US application filed
         : Inventors assign to Symbol
    2007 : Patent granted
    2007 : Motorola acquires Symbol
    2011 : Symbol into Motorola Solutions
    2014 : Zebra buys Motorola enterprise
    2018 : Patent expired fee related

Note: the 2007 / 2011 / 2014 entries are corporate-transaction context, not confirmed reel/frame recordings against this patent. The 2002 entry is the only confirmed USPTO assignment event.

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data.

The only assignment I could confirm is the 2002‑08‑14 inventor→Symbol Technologies, Inc. instrument (Google Patents legal events; reel/frame and correspondent not retrieved). Every NPE signal is either not present or (for the repeat-correspondent signal) unclear because the correspondent field is blank in my sources, and the surrounding corporate context (Symbol → Motorola → Zebra) points to operating-company ownership, not an NPE — but I could not verify the post-2002 assignment record, so I will not overstate it. Justification against the template's own definition of this verdict: I have only the original assignment, which is precisely the "Insufficient data" case. If you confirm on the Assignment Center that (a) the 2002 link is the sole recorded assignment or (b) it is followed by merger/blanket conveyances to Motorola Solutions and Zebra, the verdict should be restated as Operating-company, non-asserting (Zebra ships products embodying the claims; no assertion of this patent found).

Verify here: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ — search patent number 7171378. Pull the reel/frame and the correspondent of record for the 2002‑08‑14 entry; that is the one field that would let me close or escalate signal #3, and any post‑2002 Merger/Security‑Agreement entries are what I am currently missing.

Where this materially contradicts the previously generated sections

• No contradiction with the prior "Litigation summary" (no suit naming the '378 patent found) — this ownership analysis independently finds no pre‑litigation transfer, consistent with that.
• Adds a specificity the prior sections lacked: the prior summary already flagged the "Symbol Technologies LLC" vs. "Symbol Technologies, Inc." mismatch. This section confirms the assignment instrument itself names the Inc., while Google Patents lists the LLC in both original- and current-assignee fields — kept literal, unresolved.
• Correction to any assumption that the patent is still Symbol-owned: the corporate record strongly indicates the '378 patent passed with the Symbol portfolio to Motorola (2007) → Motorola Solutions (2011) → Zebra Technologies (2014); the assignment filings for those transfers were not retrieved, so this remains context, not a confirmed reel/frame.

I'll research the prior-art citations specific to US 7,171,378. Let me run targeted searches against Google Patents, USPTO, and prior-art aggregators.

Let me pull the actual "References Cited" tables from FreePatentsOnline and Justia, which reproduce the examiner-cited prior art lists.

Prior-Art Analysis for US 7,171,378 B2

1. Scope / method note (important)

I was unable to retrieve the front-page "References Cited" table (the examiner-cited U.S. Patent Documents / Foreign Patent Documents list) for US 7,171,378 itself. My searches returned (a) the Google Patents HTML you already supplied — which omits the citation tables — (b) forward-citation data (later patents that cite the '378, e.g., US 7,613,345; US 7,443,295; US 8,626,712), and (c) international search reports belonging to different applications. I hit the tool step limit before I could open the FreePatentsOnline/Justia "References Cited" tab for this number.

Therefore the list below is drawn from the authoritative full text you provided — i.e., the prior-art references the applicant itself identified in the "Background of the Invention," plus the incorporated-by-reference applications and the patent's own family. This is the best-grounded list available on the current record, but it is not a substitute for the official PTO-892 / front-page citation list, and I flag that gap explicitly rather than fill it with guesses.

Anti-conflation note (per your strict rule): A search returned an ISR for PCT/US2004/025117 citing US 2003/127401 (Benesi), US 2,851,161 (Silverblatt), US 5,707,512 (Riemer), DE 16 19 940 (Western Electric) and EP 1 080 768 (Infraserv). Those documents are NOT citations of US 7,171,378 — they belong to a different application and must not be attributed here. I list them only to mark them as excluded.

2. Prior-art references cited in / identified by US 7,171,378

All citations below are quoted from the patent's own specification (the "Background of the Invention" and "Related Applications" sections of the text you supplied), which is authoritative for this patent.

3. Family references (relevant to § 102 analysis, with caveats)

The '378 states it is a continuation of Ser. No. 09/232,142 (now US 6,640,214), which is a continuation-in-part of Ser. No. 09/087,086 (now US 6,101,483).

4. Honest § 102 assessment

• No single cited reference above appears to anticipate issued claim 1 in its entirety. Issued claim 1 (as summarized earlier) requires a wireless access point coupled to the store host computer, a wireless transceiver in the mobile device, an input key generating an alert message, and a position-sensing module. Bianco '614, Oosterveen '942, and Green '110 address bar-code scanning, memory, home modem/PC transfer, and kiosk docking — but none of the three (per the descriptions in the '378 specification) discloses the wireless-alert + location-tracking combination. These are therefore § 103 candidates, not clean § 102 anticipations, for claim 1.
• Claim 6 (method) is more exposed. Its core steps — reading bar codes on a portable terminal, storing them in memory, and transferring them either from a home cradle (via home computer/modem) to the store host or from a store kiosk cradle to the store host — map closely onto Bianco '614 (home scanning + modem ordering + kiosk docking) and Green '110 (local list building + transfer to central computer). If claim 6 omits the wireless/positioning features (the snippet was truncated), Bianco alone or Bianco+Green could support a § 102/§ 103 challenge.
• Dependent claims 2–5 and 7–10 could not be verified (I never obtained their text), so any anticipation mapping to them is necessarily incomplete. Optimized-list-with-directions, customer-preference-file, and multiple-store-list features are all arguably disclosed by Bianco '614 and by the incorporated-by-reference 08/866,690 family.

5. What I could not confirm (flags)

1. The official examiner-cited "References Cited" list for US 7,171,378 was not retrieved. The references above are the applicant-identified prior art in the specification. The PTO-892 list may contain additional U.S. patent documents and foreign documents I have not seen.
2. Issue/filing dates shown as "verify" (Oosterveen '942, Bianco '614, Green '110, Symbol '717) are from my own knowledge, not confirmed against the fetched record; do not treat them as established.
3. Claim 6's text is truncated in the source available to me; the anticipation assessment for claim 6 is provisional.
4. Family-reference § 102(e) treatment depends on inventor-identity and common-ownership facts I cannot verify here.

Recommended next steps to complete the record: open the FreePatentsOnline page freepatentsonline.com/7171378.html → "References Cited" tab; Justia patents.justia.com/patent/7171378; and the USPTO PatentCenter "Bibliographic Data → References Cited" for application 10/137,922. Those will supply the authoritative citation table and the examiner's own § 102/§ 103 characterizations (PTO-892 / Notice of Allowance reasons).

I'll ground this analysis in the prior-art references identified on the patent page and verify their disclosures before building the § 103 combinations.

Good — I've confirmed the three core references. Let me verify the co-assigned Symbol family reference (EP 0 856 812 A2) and search for prior art bearing on the narrower claim-1 elements (in-store position sensing, wireless access points, customer alert/help buttons).

Obviousness Analysis — US 7,171,378 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst note on inputs. This analysis builds on the two previously-generated sections (Patent summary; Litigation summary) and does not repeat them. It uses the prior art identified on the patent page — principally the references discussed in the specification's own Background/Definitions and the Prior-art keywords (shopping, home, portable terminal, cradle, mobile device) — together with the co-assigned family publications. I verified the key references against Google Patents, uspto.report, FPO and the file-wrapper PDFs surfaced in search. Per the standing rule, all patent numbers are read literally.

Cross-reference flag (contradiction / uncertainty). The prior section flagged that independent claim 1 as issued is broader/differently framed than the abstract, reciting the wireless access point, alert key, and position-sensing module as required elements, and that the full text of dependent claims 2–5 and 7–10 was not authoritatively retrieved. That limitation governs everything below: my element-by-element mapping is keyed to the plain-language rendering of claims 1 and 6 in the prior section, and the dependent-claim analysis (Part 6) is provisional.

1. Governing standard and level of ordinary skill

Under Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), a claim is obvious if the differences between the claimed invention and the prior art are such that the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious to a person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA) at the time of invention. The four Graham factors: scope/content of prior art; differences between prior art and claims; level of ordinary skill; and objective indicia (secondary considerations).

PHOSITA (proposed): a person with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, computer science, or equivalent, and 2–4 years of experience designing or integrating portable data-collection terminals, bar-code scanning systems, and retail/point-of-sale data networks, including familiarity with wireless LANs and cradle/docking data-transfer peripherals. This is the artisanship the patent itself assumes (it describes adding a two-way data interface and buttons to an off-the-shelf "Palm-Pilot" device — a routine integration the spec treats as within ordinary skill).

2. Prior art references (as identified on the page)

Legal caveat on EP 0 856 812 A2 (read this before relying on it). EP 0 856 812 A2 is a foreign publication and, more importantly, is the publication of the co-assigned application that the '378 specification expressly incorporates by reference (Ser. No. 08/866,690). That creates two problems for using it as § 103 prior art: (i) a foreign publication is not § 102(e) art; and (ii) material incorporated by reference functions as part of the '378 disclosure, not as separate prior art against it. I therefore treat EP 0 856 812 A2 as corroborating evidence of what was known/among the co-assignee's own disclosures, and rest the combination on the independent references (Bianco, Oosterveen, Green) plus admissions in the '378 specification and general knowledge (commercially available SPECTRUM24 WLAN). This is the single biggest vulnerability in any § 103 case built on the family.

Independent vs. non-independent art: Bianco (1991), Oosterveen (1995) and Green (1997) each independently qualify as prior art (§ 102(a)/(b)) relative to the 1998-05-29 / 1999-01-16 priority, and Green also predates the earliest priority by more than the critical period measured against the 1999 CIP filing. None requires the EP reference to be prior art.

3. Claim 1 — element-by-element mapping to the primary combination

Primary combination: Bianco + Oosterveen, in further view of Green, with WLAN access points supplied by general knowledge/admitted art.

Conclusion on claim 1: Every element is either expressly disclosed by Bianco/Oosterveen/Green, admitted as known in the '378 specification (position sensing; WLAN access points), or a predictable application of a known technique (docking cradles, RF alert to an access point). The claim as a whole would have been obvious.

4. Motivation to combine (the heart of the § 103 case)

A § 103 combination needs a reason a PHOSITA would have made it. Here there are several, and they satisfy the KSR rationales (A) combining known elements by known methods to yield predictable results; (B) simple substitution of known elements; (C) using a known technique to improve similar devices in the same way; (D) applying a known technique to a device ready for improvement.

1. Same field, same problem, same commercial ecosystem. Bianco, Oosterveen and Green all address portable bar-code shopping/ordering terminals. Bianco and Oosterveen were both implemented/known in Symbol's "Personal Shopping System" (uspto.report for US 5,468,942 and US 6,354,496 both cross-reference Oosterveen and Symbol's Personal Shopping System). A PHOSITA in 1998 would naturally look to both when designing a store-issued terminal usable in home and store.

2. Bianco already bridges home and store — the combination is a one-device consolidation of two known paths. Bianco teaches the same portable terminal being read (a) at the store kiosk and (b) at home over a modem. Making a single store-issued device serve both is not a new function but a known-function consolidation — classic predictable variation.

3. Oosterveen supplies precisely the missing "issued by the store" feature. Bianco's terminal is consumer-carried; Oosterveen teaches store-issued, dispenser-returned terminals with download ports. Substituting Oosterveen's issuance/dispenser model for Bianco's terminal is an obvious substitution to gain terminal control, security, and auditability (Oosterveen's stated purpose).

4. The WLAN access point + alert + location features are the natural extension of the references' own stated aims. The co-assigned/Symbol WLAN disclosure expressly motivates, in the field, using the store radio network to (i) obtain assistance from a store operator, (ii) broadcast location-relevant specials ("Soda is on sale… in aisle five"), and (iii) track shopping. Bianco independently motivates route optimization ("the customer will take a preferred route through the store"). Once you accept in-store wireless messaging and an optimized route, adding a help/alert key and position sensing to detect deviation from that route is the obvious way to make the known system work better — a "known technique to improve a similar device in the same way."

5. The '378 specification itself supplies the admissions. The position-sensing element is described as "known in the art of patient monitoring for hospitals," and the access point is described as an off-the-shelf "Spectrum 24™" product. Applicant's own characterizations of these features as known weigh heavily toward obviousness.

6. Reasonable expectation of success. Each sub-combination (store terminal + home cradle; bar-code data → modem → host; WLAN radio + access point; help key; GPS/RF location) was individually proven, and their aggregation adds no unpredictable interaction. The result is the predictable sum of the parts.

5. Claim 6 — method mapping

Claim 6 (per prior section; snippet-truncated) requires: providing a store-issued mobile device (with position-sensing module, wireless transceiver, display, two-way data interface), transmitting bar-code data to the home computer when docked in the home cradle and from there to the store host, and transmitting bar-code data to the store host computer when the device is docked in the kiosk cradle.

The two-path method is the stated method of Bianco; claim 6 largely recites Bianco's operation plus the location/wireless elements already addressed. Claim 6 would have been obvious over Bianco in view of Oosterveen and Green, for the same motivations above.

6. Dependent claims 2–5 and 7–10 (provisional)

Because the dependent-claim text was not authoritatively retrieved (prior section, Uncertainty Flag #1), the following is contingent:

• If dependents 2–5 add security/identification features (intrinsic identifying indicia, PIN, caller-ID), these are disclosed by Green (user identification code card) and by the store's customer-data-file/authorization-card art (US 6,354,496 and the family; Oosterveen's identification device 15 with card reader 17 and PIN keypad 17'). Obvious.
• If any dependent recites multiple shopping lists for multiple establishments, that is a routine data-partitioning step over Bianco/Green's single-list databases and the family's customer preference files. Obvious, and strongly suggested by Green's multi-merchant DPU database.
• If any dependent recites optimized/route-ordered lists, that is expressly disclosed by Bianco (preferred-route sequencing). Anticipated/obvious.

I cannot opine further on the dependents without their literal text; any dependent that adds a genuinely non-predictable interaction is where a non-obviousness argument would have to be made.

7. Secondary considerations (objective indicia)

• No commercial-success / nexus evidence is available for the claim scope. Nothing in the retrieved record ties the claimed combination (store-issued device + store WLAN access point + alert key + position sensing) to a product, and there is no known litigation (per the prior Litigation section) to supply a validity record.
• Patent status: Expired – Fee Related (adjusted expiration 2018-11-15), so the obviousness question is academic on the current record.
• Family prosecution context (from prior section): the EP counterpart drew Article 52(2)/(3) (business-method / non-technical) objections — not a § 103 finding, but it corroborates that the subject matter was viewed as the application of known computing/retail techniques rather than a technical advance.
• No unexpected results, long-felt need, or failure-of-others evidence appears in the record.

Secondary considerations therefore do not overcome the prima facie case.

8. Where the obviousness case is weakest (and how it would be attacked)

1. The "single store-issued device used in both home and store, with both a home-computer cradle and a store kiosk cradle" as an integrated whole. A patentee would argue Bianco's consumer-carried terminal and Oosterveen's dispenser-returned terminal have different issuance/handling models, and that consolidation is not a mere substitution. Rebuttal: both are portable bar-code shopping terminals in the same field, and consolidation achieves only predictable benefits (control, security, one-device convenience) — KSR predictable variation.
2. Position sensing as an element of the claimed system. A patentee would stress that the specific combination of in-store position sensing plus route-deviation messaging plus the wireless alert is the point of novelty. Rebuttal: the '378 specification itself concedes both the position-sensing technique (patient monitoring) and the access-point hardware (SPECTRUM24) are known, and Bianco supplies route optimization — the combination is the predictable union.
3. The EP 0 856 812 / incorporated-by-reference problem cuts against the analyst, not the patentee, if relied on as prior art (see caveat in Part 2). The fix is to rest on Bianco/Oosterveen/Green + the specification's admissions + general knowledge, which suffices.

9. Bottom line

• Claim 1: obvious. Bianco discloses the home-scan / store-kiosk / host-computer / home-modem architecture and route optimization; Oosterveen discloses the store-issued terminal with a download dispenser; Green discloses the display/DPU with local memory and identification. The added WLAN-access-point, alert-key, and position-sensing elements are (a) disclosed by co-assigned/known WLAN art and (b) admitted as known in the '378 specification itself (SPECTRUM24; patient-monitoring location tracking). Motivation: same field/problem, consolidation of two known data paths, and the references' own stated goals (assistance, location specials, route deviation).
• Claim 6: obvious over Bianco + Oosterveen + Green for the same reasons.
• Dependents 2–5, 7–10: provisional, but any security/identification, multi-list, or route-ordering limitations are met by Green/Bianco/the store-authorization art.
• No objective indicia overcome the prima facie case on the available record.

Flags to carry forward: (i) dependent-claim scope is unverified — do not treat Part 6 as final; (ii) EP 0 856 812 A2 is not clean prior art given express incorporation by reference and common ownership — the combination should be re-papered on the independent references; (iii) the claim-1 element mapping rests on the prior section's plain-language rendering, which may differ from the literal claim language.