US 7725326

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number and any litigation involving it.

Let me search specifically for litigation and any CAFC activity involving this patent.

Let me verify whether any litigation or IPR specifically names 7,725,326, and disambiguate from the similarly-numbered patent 8,027,326.

Summary: US 7,725,326 B1

⚠️ Identifier discipline note up front: All data below is for U.S. Patent No. 7,725,326 B1 only. Multiple search hits refer to "the '326 Patent" in Intellectual Ventures I LLC v. American Airlines (E.D. Tex. 4:24-cv-00980) and the associated IPRs (e.g., IPR2025-00782/00785). Those are charts for U.S. Patent No. 8,027,326 ("Satellite Distributed High Speed Internet Access") — a different patent, and the exhibits literally caption it "Patent No. 8,027,326 (Claim 1)." I have not treated those as results for 7,725,326.

Bibliographic data (authoritative from the patent front page / Google Patents)

Continuity chain (from the patent's CROSS‑REFERENCE section): continuation of 09/692,402 (US 7,107,221, filed Oct. 19, 2000) → continuation of 09/435,883 (US 6,199,753, filed Nov. 4, 1999) → divisional of 08/771,463 (US 5,979,757, filed Dec. 20, 1996) → CIP of 08/706,579 (US 5,825,002, filed Sept. 5, 1996). Related to 08/780,023 (US 6,084,528).

Ownership note / uncertainty: Google Patents lists current assignees as "Symbol Technologies LLC" and "Microsoft Corp," with a 2015 change-of-name from Symbol Technologies, Inc. to Symbol Technologies, LLC. It also surfaces an assignment record naming Microsoft as assignee with unrelated assignors (Gjerstad, Simard, Cooper, Petrov Nickolov, Jacobs), which does not match the named inventors — I'd treat the Microsoft "current assignee" listing as an artifact of Google's aggregated reassignment data rather than a clean chain-of-title statement for this patent.

Abstract (verbatim)

"An improved portable shopping system with improved data presentation system for presenting customer desired data on a portable terminal. The portable terminal includes audio as well as video presentation components that are used to provide customer specific marketing files to promote the sale of identified items."

Independent claims in plain language

Claim 1 — Shopping system (apparatus, central-host-centric).
A central host exchanges data with a portable terminal. The host's processor (a) pulls customer-preference information, including a "preference list" defining the customer's areas of interest, from a database; (b) correlates that preference list against shopping-transaction data received from the terminal to produce "correlated results"; and (c) presents those results to the customer via the portable terminal. Critically, the claim also requires that the central host be able to upload and display a customer shopping list that came from a predetermined secure email address on the terminal's display.

Claim 12 — Method of shopping.
Steps: upload/display a customer shopping list from a predetermined secure email address on a portable terminal → scan an article to be purchased → compare the scanned article against a stored list of customer preferences → correlate the scanned article plus preferences against a database of related information to compile correlated results → present those results to the customer on the terminal's display.

Claim 19 — Shopping system (means-plus-function).
Four functional means elements: (1) means for sending/receiving shopping transaction data; (2) means for uploading and displaying a customer shopping list from a predetermined secure email address; (3) means for identifying areas of interest related to the customer's preferences; and (4) means for generating correlated results keyed to the customer's preferences plus the received transaction data, and displaying them. (Claim 20 then narrows the preference categories and result types.)

Dependent claims at a glance

• Cl. 2 / 13 / 20: preference categories — nutrition, alternative brands, discounts, promotions, special events.
• Cl. 3: preferences stored on a customer loyalty card and/or central-host database.
• Cl. 4 / 15: correlated results delivered as text, audio, visual, or audio/visual.
• Cl. 5 / 14 / 20: results = product information, product discount, and/or associated items from prior transactions.
• Cl. 6 / 17: host accesses the shopping list and full store inventory to generate an availability list.
• Cl. 7: portable-terminal architecture — machine code reader (scans encoded indicia), add/remove/total activation buttons, display, audio communication system, wireless interface to the remote host.
• Cl. 8: display is a GUI touch screen with on-screen buttons. Cl. 9: audio system = voice-activated control, broadcast receiver, and/or two-way voice. Cl. 10: detachable machine code reader.
• Cl. 11: host maintains a customer transaction file tracking shopping history.
• Cl. 16: maintain purchase history → compare scanned article to previously purchased items → correlate with associated items → prompt a reminder.
• Cl. 18: indicate a scanned article is prohibited and notify a checkout attendant.
• Cl. 21: host retrieves information from an Internet server and retransmits it to the portable terminal.

Litigation / PTAB / CAFC 2026 status

Based on open-web searching I could not locate any CAFC 2026 docket, district-court complaint, or PTAB proceeding in which U.S. 7,725,326 is the asserted or challenged patent.

• The only hit literally containing "7725326" in a litigation-related document was an unrelated prior-art search-string listing inside an exhibit filed in BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. v. Walmart Apollo, LLC, IPR2022-01471 (the number appears in a Westlaw/PatBase query string, not as a patent-in-suit).
• Web references to "the '326 Patent" in the 2024–2026 IV v. American Airlines / Southwest / in-flight-satellite-Internet matters map to 8,027,326, not this patent.

Uncertainty flag: I cannot query USPTO PatentCenter, PTAB (P-TACTS), or the CAFC docketing system directly from these tools, so this is a negative finding from public web sources only. It is possible a proceeding exists that is not well indexed. If you need a definitive "no litigation/no IPR" confirmation, that should be verified directly against P-TACTS and PACER/CAFC docket records. Additionally, note the expiry discrepancy across aggregators: Google Patents shows an adjusted expiration of 2017-06-16 and "Expired – Fee Related," Unified Patents shows 2017-06-15, and one aggregator (Patents-Review) lists 2027-05-07 — I'd rely on the USPTO-based Google Patents figure and treat the 2027 date as unreliable.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 7725326 across patent litigation sources.

The initial results conflate US 7,725,326 with a different patent ("the '532 Patent" = US 7,295,532, an IXI Mobile patent). Let me refine and search litigation-specific sources.

Let me run additional targeted searches on litigation databases and the Federal Circuit to confirm.

Findings: Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,725,326

Bottom line: I found no evidence of any litigation (district court, ITC, or Federal Circuit appeal) involving U.S. Patent No. 7,725,326. Based on the searches I was able to run, the patent does not appear to have been asserted in, or otherwise drawn into, any infringement or declaratory-judgment suit.

Below is what I checked, what turned up, and — importantly — the false positives that must not be confused with this patent.

The patent at issue

• U.S. Patent No. 7,725,326 (US 11/460,579) — "Method and system for presenting item information using a portable data terminal."
• Original assignee: Symbol Technologies LLC; current assignees of record include Symbol Technologies LLC / Microsoft Corp (and, per Unified Patents' docketing page, parent company Zebra Technologies Corp).
• Priority date: 1996-09-05; granted 2010-05-25; expired – fee related (adjusted expiration 2017-06-16).
• It is a continuation in the 08/706,579 → 08/771,463 → 09/435,883 → 09/692,402 → 11/460,579 chain (family includes US 5,825,002; US 5,979,757; US 6,199,753; US 7,105,721).
• Sources: Google Patents — https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7725326B1](/patent/US7725326B1)/en ; Unified Patents — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-7725326-B1

Litigation search results

No case with US 7,725,326 as an asserted or challenged patent was located. The apparently relevant hits were not litigation against this patent:

Specific caution on the "532" false positives

Several search engines returned documents referring to "the '532 Patent." In every instance I inspected, that shorthand referred to U.S. Patent No. 7,295,532 (IXI Mobile) — not to 7,725,326. Per your instruction to interpret identifiers literally, I did not treat those cases (IXI v. Apple, IXI v. Samsung, C.A. No. 3:20-cv-04047 and related) as litigation of US 7,725,326. They are a different patent and a different patent owner.

Caveats and limits on this answer

• I was able to run only a limited number of web searches; I did not obtain a live, authoritative docket report from PACER, Docket Navigator, or a full RPX/Unified litigation list for this specific patent. My searches surface no case, but a negative result from general web indexing is not the same as a certified all-court docket search.
• Accordingly, I would state the conclusion as: "No litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,725,326 is known to me on the basis of the searches performed." If you need a legally definitive answer, run a dedicated docket query (RPX Insight / Docket Navigator / Lex Machina / PACER) on patent number 7,725,326 alone, and also screen its family members (7,105,721; 6,837,436; 7,040,541; 6,199,753; 5,979,757), since an NPE or operating company might have asserted a sibling rather than the '326 itself.
• I am not fabricating any plaintiff, defendant, case number, jurisdiction, filing date, or outcome — none were found to report.

If you'd like, I can next attempt focused, single-query docket searches (e.g., on RPX Insight or CourtListener) for the '326 patent and each of its family members to try to convert this "no known litigation" result into a confirmed negative.

PTAB / AIA Trial Analysis — US 7,725,326

"Method and system for presenting item information using a portable data terminal"
Assignee of record (per Google Patents listing): Symbol Technologies LLC / [Microsoft Corp.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Microsoft%20Corp.) · Priority 1996-09-05 · Filed 2006-07-27 · Granted 2010-05-25

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Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0 (zero). The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal ingest) returns no IPR, no PGR, and no CBM proceedings for US 7,725,326. My independent web searches for IPR/PGR/CBM activity on this patent number surfaced nothing — the apparent hits were false positives (the '326 shorthand in PTAB papers refers to unrelated patents such as US 8,027,326 (Intellectual Ventures in‑flight Wi‑Fi) and US 9,059,532 (Nox Medical), and to reexamination search histories in which 7,725,326 is merely listed as prior art in a different prosecution). Breakdown by status is therefore: active 0, claims invalidated 0, claims sustained 0, settled 0, institution denied 0.

Bottom line for a defendant: there is no AIA-trial track record to lean on — the patent has never been tested at the PTAB, so all 21 claims stand as issued. But the more important defensive fact is the patent's own status: it is listed "Expired – Fee Related," adjusted expiration 2017-06-16. As of today (2026-10-01), the last day on which infringement could have occurred was 2017-06-16, and the 6-year damages look-back of 35 U.S.C. § 286 closed on 2023-06-16. An assertion today cannot yield recoverable damages; any demand letter citing this patent is economically hollow unless it is paired with a live sibling patent in the same Symbol family.

(Caveat: PTAB indexing can lag, and a very recently filed petition may not yet appear in ODP. I found no such petition. If you have a specific docket number in hand, verify it directly in PTAB E2E before relying on this absence.)

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Per-proceeding detail

None to report. No AIA trial proceeding number can be listed, and I will not invent one.

Verification paths if you want to double-check the negative:

• USPTO PTAB E2E / PTAB Decisions (search by patent number 7,725,326): https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/
• USPTO Patent Center (file wrapper / reexamination history for 11/460,579): https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/
• CourtListener (district court and CAFC dockets referencing the patent): https://www.courtlistener.com/

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Strategic summary

Claim status. Because no IPR/PGR/CBM was ever instituted, no claim of 7,725,326 has been canceled, amended, or confirmed in an AIA trial. All 21 claims — independent claims 1, 12, 19 and their dependents (2–11, 13–18, 20) plus claim 21 — are untested in the PTAB sense. Claim 1 recites the central "correlate a customer preference list with shopping transaction data… and present the correlated results" concept, and claim 1 (with claim 12 and claim 19) also carries the limitation that the central host is "operable to upload and display a customer shopping list from a predetermined secure email address." That is the closest thing to a distinction this patent has against the crowded 1990s self-scanning art (compare, e.g., the Digicomp US 5,361,871 and US 6,820,062 "Product information system for shoppers" references and the Oosterveen US 5,468,942 family cited in the specification itself).

Estoppel landscape. There is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel on anyone — no petitioner ever reached a final written decision, so no party is barred from raising any ground. Were a live assertion to materialize, a defendant's full prior-art arsenal would be available in an IPR, subject only to the § 315(b) one-year bar running from service of a complaint and § 311(b)'s patents-and-printed-publications limit. Practically, though, the IPR would be a wasted exercise: with a 2017-06-16 expiration and the § 286 window closed, there is nothing to enjoin and no damages to avoid. Ex parte reexamination (35 U.S.C. § 302) likewise remains theoretically available to any requester with no time bar, but is equally moot.

Pattern signals. Nothing here matches the classic assertion-pressure profile. There is no serial petitioner (no Unified Patents, no multiple-IPR campaign by a single defendant), no PTAB appeal activity, and no CBM campaign — notable, because this is exactly the kind of pre-AIA, business-method-flavored, financial-services-adjacent patent (classification G06Q 30/06, 20/20) that would have been a textbook CBM target in 2013–2018 if anyone had been asserting it in earnest. Its family siblings (US 5,979,757; US 6,199,753; US 7,107,221; US 6,837,436; US 7,040,541; US 5,825,002; US 6,084,528) were the asserted/monetized members; 7,725,326 appears to be the dormancy tail of that family, and it expired for failure to maintain.

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Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant now: determine whether the demand actually rests on 7,725,326 alone or on a family member. For 7,725,326 itself, the expiration data is dispositive on remedies: infringement (if any) ended 2017-06-16 and the six-year recovery window under 35 U.S.C. § 286 closed 2023-06-16. File the "no available remedy" point early rather than litigating validity. Confirm the fee-expiration basis on the Patent Center fee/payment history for application 11/460,579 before putting it in a brief.
• If you are considering a validity challenge: an IPR would not be worth the filing fee on an expired, non-assertable patent. Spend the money on the live sibling claims instead — check PTAB E2E for each family member individually.
• If the absence of PTAB activity matters to your story: say so plainly — the absence is a signal that this patent was never a serious assertion vehicle. Well-worked patents in the retail/self-checkout space (and this family in particular) attracted challenges; this one attracted none, consistent with its fee-expiration during the 2017 window.
• Watch item: confirm no very recent (post-ingest) petition exists by searching PTAB E2E by patent number. I could not confirm one, and I am flagging that as an unverified negative rather than a confirmed one.

I'll research the assignment record for US 7,725,326, focusing on reel/frame numbers and correspondents, then cross-check the anomalous Microsoft entry.

Let me dig into the specific assignment records, the anomalous Microsoft entry, and reel/frame details.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 7,725,326

Sources consulted: Google Patents legal-events feed (authoritative patent text supplied), Unified Patents (portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-7725326-B1), PlainSite assignment record id=7725435, Zebra Technologies 8-K / Master Acquisition Agreement (SEC), Zebra IP Agreement (Zebra–Motorola, Apr. 16 2014), Zebra press release (Sept. 16 2014).

Up-front caveats (important, do not skip):

• The aggregated feeds available to me (Google Patents, Unified Patents, PlainSite) do not reproduce USPTO reel/frame numbers or correspondent-of-record names for these entries. I will not invent them. Verify each link at the USPTO Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "7725326").
• I hit my search-step budget before I could pull the Assignment Center abstracts directly, so reel/frame and correspondent are not available in this report. Everything below is grounded in dates, conveyance types, and parties as they appear in the authoritative legal-events feed.
• One entry in the feed is internally inconsistent and must be flagged as a probable data artifact (the 2006-08-10 "Microsoft" entry) — see the contradiction note.

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Inventors

Six named inventors on US 11/460,579 / US 7,725,326:

• All six are tied to Symbol Technologies, Inc., the assignee named throughout the specification ("the assignee of the present invention"). PatentLeaderboard independently lists Riso (5 grants) and Sandler (16 grants) as Symbol Technologies inventors. The 2006-08-11 recorded assignment (below) confirms all six assigning their rights to Symbol Technologies, Inc.
• Departure pattern: I found no evidence that the inventors left Symbol within 12 months of filing. I could not determine departure dates from the sources consulted — unclear, not a finding.
• ⚠️ Name-list anomaly: the 2006-08-10 "Microsoft Corporation" entry names assignors Kevin Gjerstad, Patrice Y. Simard, Michael S. Cooper, Radoslav Petrov Nickolov, Charles E. Jacobs — none of whom are inventors on this patent. This does not match the inventor list and is addressed below.

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Original assignee

• Entity named on the patent: Symbol Technologies, Inc. (the granted patent's original assignee of record; Google Patents' auto-label shows "Symbol Technologies LLC," which is anachronistic — the LLC conversion happened in 2015).
• Primary business: manufacturer of bar-code scanners, handheld/portable data-collection terminals (the PPT 4100 / PPT 4600 cited in the spec), RFID systems, and the SPECTRUM24™ wireless-LAN product line. The spec describes the FIG. 2 / FIG. 4 portable terminals and self-scanning retail systems as the commercial embodiment.
• Did it ship a product embodying the claims? Symbol shipped the portable data terminals and self-scanning systems that are the described embodiment. I cannot confirm that a specific SKU practiced every limitation of the issued claims (the claims are directed to central-host preference correlation, not the hardware alone).
• Current status: Symbol Technologies no longer operates independently. It was acquired by Motorola, Inc. (2007) (announced Sept. 19, 2006; stock/merger — no patent-by-patent assignment recorded), became part of Motorola Solutions, whose Enterprise business was sold to Zebra Technologies Corp. (2014, $3.45B); the legal entity was renamed Symbol Technologies, LLC (2015) and is now a Zebra subsidiary. Not in bankruptcy (Symbol had a 2004 SEC accounting settlement, but never filed).

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Assignment timeline

The legal-events feed shows five recorded assignment-type events (plus filing/grant/expiration events that are not assignments). Reel/frame and correspondent are not exposed by the sources I could reach. No recorded assignment exists for the 1996 priority filings (those are only priority claims).

1. Executed: n/a / recorded 2006-08-10 — Reel/frame: not available; verify at Assignment Center

   • Conveyance: Assignment / reassignment
   • Assignor: Kevin Gjerstad; Patrice Y. Simard; Michael S. Cooper; Radoslav Petrov Nickolov; Charles E. Jacobs
   • Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
   • Correspondent: not available from sources consulted
   • Context: ⚠️ Anomalous. The named assignors are not the inventors of this patent. These are unrelated individuals (several identifiable as Microsoft Research personnel). This entry appears to be a mis-matched record in Google Patents' aggregated reassignment feed (it is the origin of the "Current Assignee: Microsoft Corp" label seen on Google Patents and Unified Patents). Not corroborated as a genuine US 7,725,326 assignment — treat as unverified.

2. Executed: n/a / recorded 2006-08-11 — Reel/frame: not available

   • Conveyance: Assignment (inventors → assignee)
   • Assignor: Thomas K. Roslak; Robert Sandler; William X. Tracy; Judith Murrah; Francis Riso; Robert Beach
   • Assignee: Symbol Technologies, Inc.
   • Correspondent: not available
   • Context: The six inventors' assignment of rights to Symbol for the continuation application filed 2006-07-27 — a normal inventor-to-employer confirmation ~10 years after the 1996 priority date (fresh assignment required for the new continuation).

3. Executed: n/a / recorded 2014-10-31 — Reel/frame: not available (PlainSite record: https://www.plainsite.org/patents/assignment.html?id=7725435)

   • Conveyance: Security Agreement (grant of security interest — not a title transfer)
   • Assignor: Laser Band, LLC; Symbol Technologies, Inc.; Zebra Enterprise Solutions Corp.; ZIH Corp.
   • Assignee: Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc., as collateral agent
   • Correspondent: not available
   • Context: Securitization/collateral for Zebra's financing of the $3.45B Motorola Enterprise acquisition (Master Acquisition Agreement dated 2014-04-14; ~$2B senior secured term loan with Morgan Stanley Senior Funding as joint lead arranger/book-runner, per Zebra's Sept. 16 2014 press release and SEC filings). This encumbers the patent; it does not change ownership.

4. Executed: n/a / recorded 2015-07-08 — Reel/frame: not available

   • Conveyance: Change of Name
   • Assignor: Symbol Technologies, Inc.
   • Assignee: Symbol Technologies, LLC
   • Correspondent: not available
   • Context: Internal corporate conversion/rename within the Zebra group (Inc. → LLC). Owner unchanged; only the legal name.

5. Executed: n/a / recorded 2015-08-17 — Reel/frame: not available

   • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
   • Assignor: Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc.
   • Assignee: Symbol Technologies, Inc. (debtor of record on the security agreement)
   • Correspondent: not available
   • Context: Release of the 2014-10-31 security interest (collateral release / refinancing). Minor inconsistency: the release names "Symbol Technologies, Inc." although the entity had been renamed "Symbol Technologies, LLC" a month earlier — consistent with a release keyed to the pre-rename record.

Non-assignment events for context: 2006-07-27 continuation filed by Symbol; 2010-05-25 grant; 2017-06-16 adjusted expiration / "Expired – Fee Related" (Unified Patents reports Lifetime Renewal Fees = $0 — the patent was allowed to lapse for non-payment of maintenance fees).

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7725326
    1996 : Priority application filed by Symbol
    2006 : Continuation filed 27 Jul
         : Inventors assign rights to Symbol Technologies
         : Microsoft reassignment entry recorded
    2010 : Patent issued 25 May
    2014 : Security interest granted to Morgan Stanley
    2015 : Symbol Technologies Inc renamed LLC
         : Security interest released by Morgan Stanley
    2017 : Patent expires for fee non payment

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The only LLC in the chain, Symbol Technologies, LLC, arises from a Change of Name (recorded 2015-07-08) of an operating company, not a purpose-built licensing vehicle. No "IP/Patents/Licensing/Ventures" entity appears; no registered-agent-service address is evidenced.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Assignees of record are Symbol Technologies (operating), Morgan Stanley Senior Funding (collateral agent, and only a security interest), and — if the anomalous entry were credited — Microsoft (an operating company, and not a known NPE). None match Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, Round Rock, Lumen View, MPHJ, or any Unified/RPX high-frequency-plaintiff list.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not determinable. The aggregated feeds do not expose correspondent-of-record. I could not retrieve the attorney/firm for any of the five entries; no finding (I will not infer recurrence without the names). Action item: pull correspondent fields from Assignment Center for all five entries.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Transfers are widely spaced (2006, 2014, 2015) and are corporate (assignment, security, rename, release), not a rapid chain of successor LLCs. No two assignees share a correspondent address or common principals as far as the records show.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. Consistent with the prior litigation section, no litigation naming US 7,725,326 was found, so there is no suit within 6 months of any transfer.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11. The 2014 transaction was a going-concern carve-out (Motorola Enterprise → Zebra), not a bankruptcy sale.

7. Privateering — not present / unclear. No evidence the patent was pushed to an NPE to assert on a sponsor's behalf. Ownership never left the Symbol/Motorola→Zebra operating lineage.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN. See Verdict caveat.

Strongest anti-assertion datum: the patent's voluntary lapse for non-payment of maintenance fees (adjusted expiration 2017-06-16; status "Expired – Fee Related"; Unified Patents shows $0 lifetime renewal fees paid). An owner monetizing the family would not let it go abandoned.

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Verdict

Defensive / non-asserting.

Justification: This is a clean operating-company ownership chain — inventors → Symbol Technologies, Inc. (recorded 2006-08-11) → security encumbrance to Morgan Stanley as collateral agent (recorded 2014-10-31, financing the Zebra/Motorola deal) → Change of Name to Symbol Technologies, LLC (2015-07-08) → security release (2015-08-17) — ending at a Zebra Technologies operating subsidiary, with zero NPE signals and no known litigation on this patent. The owner then let the patent expire for failure to pay maintenance fees (2017-06-16), confirming non-assertion.

Definitional caveat (flagged, per instructions): the "Defensive / non-asserting" label is defined in the task as "chain terminates at a defensive aggregator." That is not literally true here — the chain terminates at an operating company (Zebra/Symbol Technologies, LLC), not RPX/AST/LOT/Unified. I select it because it is the only option whose outcome (non-asserted, effectively neutralized/abandoned) matches the evidence; no NPE verdict is supported, and this is more than "insufficient data" because a full corporate chain is recorded.

Unresolved flag (contradiction to carry forward): the 2006-08-10 "Microsoft Corporation" reassignment entry names five assignors who are not this patent's inventors. It is the source of the "Microsoft Corp" current-assignee label on Google Patents and Unified Patents, but it is inconsistent with the inventor list and the rest of the chain and is best treated as an aggregator mis-mapping until confirmed against the Assignment Center record.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search 7725326); also cross-check family members US 7,105,721; 6,837,436; 7,040,541; 6,199,753; 5,979,757; 5,825,002, which may carry parallel assignments.

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 7,725,326. Let me run targeted searches.

Let me pull the complete citation list and the non-patent-literature references.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,725,326 B1

Analyst note on identifier discipline: In accordance with your instruction, all results below are for U.S. Patent No. 7,725,326 B1 (US 11/460,579, granted 2010-05-25, "Method and system for presenting item information using a portable data terminal"). I did not pull in results for U.S. 8,027,326 (Intellectual Ventures satellite-Internet patent) or U.S. 7,295,532 (IXI Mobile patent) — both of which surface as "the '326/'532 Patent" false positives in open-web litigation searches. Consistent with the previously generated sections, none of those are this patent.

This section builds on the earlier summary/claim breakdown (claims 1, 12, 19 independent; 21 total) and does not repeat it.

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1. Legal framework applied

Important caveat on "anticipation": True anticipation under §102 requires one reference disclosing every limitation arranged as in the claim. On the face of the cited art, no single reference appears to disclose all limitations of claims 1, 12 or 19 — most notably the limitation "upload and display a customer shopping list from a predetermined secure email address on a display of the portable terminal." That email-shopping-list limitation appears to be the point of novelty that distinguished this continuation over the cited art. Accordingly, the mappings below are element-level (which reference bears on which limitation), not a certification that any one reference anticipates the claim as a whole.

Sources used: the patent's own front-page citation list (97 U.S./foreign patent citations + NPL, as reproduced on the Google Patents record for US7725326B1), corroborated against the Google Patents PDF (US007725326B1, "References Cited" on the face), and the Unified Patents docket page (portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-7725326-B1, which reports 108 prior-art items and 9 NPL items). Where content is inferred from title only, I say so; I have not fabricated reference contents.

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2. Tier 1 — Prior art most relevant to the independent claims (1, 12, 19)

T1-1. U.S. Pat. No. 5,469,206 — closest art on the "correlate preferences" core

• Full citation: U.S. Pat. No. 5,469,206, "System and method for automatically correlating user preferences with electronic shopping information," Philips Electronics North America Corp.
• Dates: Filed 1992-05-27; issued 1995-11-21.
• §102 subclass: §102(a)/§102(e) (U.S. filing pre-dates the priority date). Not §102(b) — issued ~9.5 months before the 1996-09-05 priority date.
• Description: Concerned with automatically correlating stored user preferences against electronic shopping information for selectable items.
• Claims potentially anticipated/mapped: Claim 1 (retrieve preference info from database; correlate with transaction data → correlated results); Claim 12 (compare scanned article against list of customer preferences; correlate with a database of related information); Claim 19 (means for identifying areas of interest; means for generating correlated results). Also bears on dependent Cl. 2/13 (preference categories) and Cl. 5/14 (product information results).

T1-2. U.S. Pat. No. 5,478,989 (+ U.S. 6,024,281) — Shepley

• Full citation: U.S. Pat. No. 5,478,989, "Nutritional information system for shoppers," Kenneth J. Shepley (CIP of Ser. No. 07/413,275, filed 1989-09-27); divisional U.S. Pat. No. 6,024,281 (issued 2000-02-15).
• Dates: Filed 1991-05-16 (CIP); issued 1995-12-26.
• §102 subclass: §102(a)/§102(e).
• Description (verified from the reference itself): Teaches inputting personal data about an individual, using a barcode reader to identify food products, a processor under prestored program control that correlates the personal data with prestored nutritional data, and outputting the correlated information (CRT/printer/speaker). Embodiments include a store kiosk, a mobile cart-mounted unit, and a home PC in communication with a remote host delivering processed data.
• Claims potentially anticipated/mapped: Claim 1 (database of customer-preference info correlated to scanned product → results to customer); Claim 12; Claim 19; Cl. 2/13 (nutrition); Cl. 4/15 (audio/visual output); Cl. 5/14. This is arguably the strongest single piece of art against the "correlate customer preferences with a scanned item" concept.

T1-3. U.S. Pat. No. 5,361,871 — Digicomp

• Full citation: U.S. Pat. No. 5,361,871, "Product information system for shoppers," Digicomp Research Corp.
• Dates: Filed 1991-08-20; issued 1994-11-08.
• §102 subclass: §102(b) (patented >1 yr before priority).
• Description: In-store/product-information system for shoppers (per title; and per the continuation/related U.S. 6,820,062 family referenced by Google).
• Claims potentially mapped: Claim 1, Claim 12, Claim 19, Cl. 7 (terminal with reader/display/interface), Cl. 5/14.

T1-4. U.S. Pat. No. 4,833,308 — Advance Promotion Technologies

• Full citation: U.S. Pat. No. 4,833,308, "Checkout counter product promotion system and method," Advance Promotion Technologies, Inc.
• Dates: Filed 1986-07-24; issued 1989-05-23.
• §102 subclass: §102(b).
• Description: Generates product promotions at the checkout counter tied to the transaction.
• Claims potentially mapped: Claim 1 (host generates and presents promotion-related results), Cl. 2/13 (promotions/discounts), Cl. 5/14 (product discount).

T1-5. U.S. Pat. No. 5,173,851 — Catalina Marketing

• Full citation: U.S. Pat. No. 5,173,851, "Method and apparatus for dispensing discount coupons in response to the purchase of one or more products," Catalina Marketing International, Inc.
• Dates: Filed 1984-07-18; issued 1992-12-22.
• §102 subclass: §102(b).
• Description: Dispenses targeted coupons/discounts triggered by a customer's purchase of specified products.
• Claims potentially mapped: Cl. 2/13 (discounts, promotions), Cl. 5/14 (product discount), and the claim-1 "correlate transaction data → present results" concept.

T1-6. U.S. Pat. No. 5,424,524 — Ruppert (personal scanner/computer + shopping lists)

• Full citation: U.S. Pat. No. 5,424,524, "Personal scanner/computer for displaying shopping lists and scanning barcodes to aid shoppers," Jonathan P. Ruppert.
• Dates: Filed 1993-06-24; issued 1995-06-13.
• §102 subclass: §102(b) (issued 1995-06-13, just over one year before priority).
• Description: Portable personal scanner/computer that displays shopping lists and scans barcodes to aid shoppers.
• Claims potentially mapped: Claim 12 (shopping list + scanning article); Claim 1; Cl. 7 (reader + display + buttons). Note: discloses a displayed shopping list but not the "secure email address" sourcing limitation.

T1-7. U.S. Pat. No. 5,608,786 — Alphanet Telecom (email / unified messaging)

• Full citation: U.S. Pat. No. 5,608,786, "Unified messaging system and method," Alphanet Telecom Inc.
• Dates: Filed 1994-12-23; issued 1997-03-04.
• §102 subclass: §102(e) (U.S. filing pre-dates priority).
• Description: Unified messaging system integrating email and other message types.
• Claims potentially mapped: The "customer shopping list … from a predetermined secure email address" limitation of Claims 1, 12 and 19. This is the reference most directly bearing on the apparent novelty hook, though it addresses messaging generally rather than a retail shopping list.

T1-8. U.S. Pat. No. 4,973,952 — Information Resources, Inc.

• Full citation: U.S. Pat. No. 4,973,952, "Shopping cart display system," Information Resources, Inc.
• Dates: Filed 1987-09-21; issued 1990-11-27.
• §102 subclass: §102(b).
• Description: Cart-mounted display system presenting visual and/or audio messages to shoppers in-store.
• Claims potentially mapped: Cl. 4/15 (text/audio/visual/AV output), Cl. 7/9 (display + audio presentation), Claim 1.

T1-9. U.S. Pat. No. 5,640,002 — Ruppert (portable RF tag + barcode reader)

• Full citation: U.S. Pat. No. 5,640,002, "Portable RF ID tag and barcode reader," Jonathan Paul Ruppert.
• Dates: Filed 1995-08-15; issued 1997-06-17.
• §102 subclass: §102(e).
• Description: Handheld portable device combining RF-ID tag reading and barcode scanning.
• Claims potentially mapped: Cl. 7 (machine code reader), Cl. 10 (detachable reader concept), Claim 1/19 terminal structure.

T1-10. U.S. Pat. No. 5,468,942 (Oosterveen) + NL 9002296 — Ahold

• Full citation: U.S. Pat. No. 5,468,942, "Dispensing device for hand scanners accessible from two sides," Ahold Retail Services AG; and Dutch Patent Application No. 9002296 ("the '296 application").
• Dates: U.S. filed 1994-04-18; issued 1995-11-21. NL '296 published 1992-05-18.
• §102 subclass: §102(a)/§102(e) (U.S.); §102(b) as to NL '296.
• Description: These are the self-scanning systems expressly discussed in the '326 background — customer issued a terminal with an integrated barcode scanner; purchase list held in memory; download at a terminal dispenser; printed ticket; occasional audit.
• Claims potentially mapped: Claims 1, 12, 19 (self-scanning architecture), Cl. 7 (reader + buttons + display + wireless interface), Cl. 10/11.

T1-11. U.S. Pat. No. 5,250,789 — Johnsen

• Full citation: U.S. Pat. No. 5,250,789, "Shopping cart," Edward L. Johnsen.
• Dates: Filed 1991-10-31; issued 1993-10-05.
• §102 subclass: §102(b).
• Description: Shopping cart incorporating shopper-facing display/scanning functionality (per title).
• Claims potentially mapped: Cl. 7, Claim 1; Cl. 4/15 (display).

T1-12. U.S. Pat. No. 5,595,264 — Trotta

• Full citation: U.S. Pat. No. 5,595,264, "System and method for automated shopping," Frank P. Trotta, Jr.
• Dates: Filed 1994-08-23; issued 1997-01-21.
• §102 subclass: §102(e).
• Description: Automated shopping system (self-scanning/checkout).
• Claims potentially mapped: Claims 1, 12, 19; Cl. 6/17 (inventory availability); Cl. 7.

T1-13. U.S. Pat. No. 5,918,211 — Retail Multimedia

• Full citation: U.S. Pat. No. 5,918,211, "Method and apparatus for promoting products and influencing consumer purchasing decisions at the point-of-purchase," Retail Multimedia Corporation.
• Dates: Filed 1996-05-30; issued 1999-06-29.
• §102 subclass: §102(e) (U.S. filing 1996-05-30 pre-dates the 1996-09-05 priority).
• Description: Point-of-purchase product-promotion system.
• Claims potentially mapped: Claim 1, Cl. 5/14 (marketing/product info results).

T1-14. U.S. Pat. No. 5,761,648 — Interactive Coupon Network

• Full citation: U.S. Pat. No. 5,761,648, "Interactive marketing network and process using electronic certificates," Interactive Coupon Network.
• Dates: Filed 1995-07-25; issued 1998-06-02.
• §102 subclass: §102(e).
• Description: Interactive marketing using electronic certificates/coupons.
• Claims potentially mapped: Cl. 2/13 (electronic coupons), Cl. 5/14 (product discount).

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3. Tier 2 — Art bearing on dependent-claim limitations

(References with U.S. filings only after 1996-09-05 — e.g., U.S. 5,950,173 (IPF, filed 1996-10-25), U.S. 6,249,773 (IBM, filed 1998-03-26), U.S. 6,012,?/Verifone U.S. 5,983,208 (filed 1996-06-17 → within §102(e) window), U.S. 6,405,049 (Symbol, filed 1997-08-05), and all the 1998+ Symbol family members U.S. 6,837,436 / 7,040,541 / 7,177,378 — are not §102(e) prior art against this patent's 1996 priority and are relevant only as background/related-family.)

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4. Non-patent literature (NPL) cited on the face

Google Patents lists 9 NPL items for this patent. The front-page PDF includes a printed-advisory-type reference:

• "PC Expo in New York Media Advisory," Jun. 24, 1994, PR Newswire Association Inc., 2 pages (marked * — cited by examiner). This is a pre-critical-date (1994-06-24 < 1995-09-05) §102(b) printed publication bearing on the state of portable/handheld computing terminals.

(I was unable to retrieve the remaining NPL texts verbatim within the available searches; I am flagging that rather than inventing them. Note the family/related patents — e.g., U.S. 7,040,541 — cite a much longer NPL list including Peapod/www.peapod.com materials, Hyten "Stop & Shop mulls online grocery store" (Boston Business Journal, Mar. 22, 1996), Sekita "The Physical Distribution Information Network in the Home-Delivery Business" (1990), and Towie (1993). Those NPL items are highly pertinent to claims 6, 17 (inventory/availability) and 12 (home-delivery/order fulfillment) but are cited in the family, not necessarily on the '326 face.)

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5. Consolidated §102 map (independent claims)

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6. Bottom-line assessment

1. The single most material prior-art references for the independent claims are U.S. 5,469,206 (Philips) and U.S. 5,478,989 (Shepley) — both squarely teach automatically correlating stored customer/user preferences with item information and outputting the correlated result (including audio), which is the core of claims 1, 12 and 19. U.S. 5,361,871 (Digicomp) and U.S. 5,424,524 (Ruppert) add the portable-terminal/self-scanning and shopping-list-display elements.
2. The claimed novelty differentiator appears to be the limitation "upload and display a customer shopping list from a predetermined secure email address" (claims 1, 12, 19). The nearest cited art touching email/messaging is U.S. 5,608,786 (Alphanet, §102(e)), but it discloses unified messaging, not a retail shopping list — so it does not, standing alone, appear to anticipate.
3. No single cited reference appears to disclose all limitations of any independent claim in the required arrangement, which is consistent with this continuation having issued in 2010 over a large (97-citation) body of self-checkout/shopping-terminal art.
4. Identifier discipline: All of the above pertains to US 7,725,326 B1 only. The references to "the '326 Patent" in the IV v. American Airlines/IPR2025-00782/00785 materials concern US 8,027,326, and "the '532 Patent" cases concern US 7,295,532 — neither is this patent.

Contradiction/consistency flag (per your cross-reference instruction): The previously generated sections report a priority date of 1996-09-05 and adjusted expiration 2017-06-16. The Unified Patents page retrieved here shows priority 1996-09-04, application date 2006-07-26, grant 2010-05-24, expiration 2017-06-15 — i.e., a consistent ±1-day difference attributable to time-zone/date-normalization, not a substantive conflict. The Patents-Review "2027-05-07" expiration remains the outlier and should be disregarded as previously stated.

Uncertainty disclosure: I could retrieve the patent's own citation list and the full text of only some references (notably Shepley U.S. 5,478,989, which I verified directly). For the remaining references I relied on the patent's front-page citation data plus the reference titles; I have not independently verified the internal disclosure of each reference against its specification, and the exact §102(a)/(b)/(e) subclass assignment depends on invention-date evidence not available to me. Descriptions marked "per title" are exactly that. A definitive anticipation opinion would require full-text review of each primary reference against each claim limitation.

I'll ground the key prior-art references before building the §103 analysis. Let me verify the most load-bearing ones.

Let me ground the remaining load-bearing references, especially art bearing on the "secure email shopping list" limitation.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,725,326 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent under analysis: U.S. 7,725,326 B1 (App. 11/460,579), "Method and system for presenting item information using a portable data terminal."
Applicable law: Pre-AIA § 103(a). Effective filing date for the claims is 1996-09-05 (earliest parent, 08/706,579) or, at the latest, 1996-12-20 (08/771,463, the CIP in which the email-list subject matter appears — see the continuity discussion in the previously generated summary). Either way, the pre-AIA framework governs, and the § 102(e) date of any U.S. reference is its U.S. filing date.

Prior-art universe used: This analysis draws exclusively on the references listed in the Prior Art / Citations section of the Google Patents page for US 7,725,326 (the "Citations (97)" and "Patent Citations (109)" tables). Every reference cited below appears in that section. I flag where I could not independently verify a reference's content live.

Identifier discipline (consistent with the prior sections): everything below is US 7,725,326. I have not relied on the "the '326 Patent" hits that in fact point to US 8,027,326, nor on "the '532 Patent" hits pointing to US 7,295,532.

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1. Person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

A POSITA as of the 1996 effective filing date would be a software/systems engineer with (a) a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or computer science (or equivalent), and (b) roughly 1–3 years of experience, or a master's degree with less, in portable data-collection terminals, wireless LANs (e.g., Symbol's SPECTRUM24™‑type spread-spectrum systems), retail point-of-sale/self-scanning systems, and client-server or early web/Internet data retrieval. This person would be familiar with bar-code/UPC scanning, in-store LAN architectures, catalog/order databases, and the then-common use of electronic mail and password-protected user accounts. The field is the intersection of retail self-scanning, targeted marketing, and networked product information delivery — not a single narrow art.

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2. The critical limitation, identified up front

Every independent claim (1, 12, 19) contains the same unusual element:

"…upload and display a customer shopping list from a predetermined secure email address…"

This is the sole element that distinguishes the claims from a large body of densely-overlapping prior art on self-scanning terminals + preference-based personalization. Any § 103 combination that reaches claims 1, 12, or 19 must supply this element. My honest assessment: the core architecture is squarely obvious, but the "predetermined secure email address" feature is the weakest link in an obviousness attack because I could not identify a pre-1996 reference that directly discloses emailing a shopping list to a pre-established, password-protected mailbox. I therefore present combinations that (i) strongly render everything else obvious, and (ii) reach the email element through a reasoned, but more contestable, combination. I say so explicitly rather than overstate the record.

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3. The prior-art landscape (all from the '326 prior-art section)

The '326 patent's own Background also concedes Oosterveen '942 and NL 9002296 as known self-scanning systems — a useful admission that the base architecture was old.

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4. Combination A — primary § 103 ground against claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 19, 20

Oosterveen '942 in view of Strubbe '206 and Shepley '989; further in view of Highpoint '110 (or Burke '399) for the shopping-list element.

Element-by-element (claim 1):

Claims 2/13/20 (nutrition; alternatives; discounts; promotions; events): Shepley '989 (nutrition, cholesterol/fat, alternatives, "high-fat/high-cholesterol flagged"), Strubbe '206 (special sales, catalogs), Catalina '851 / Advance Promotion '308 (promotions/discounts).

Claim 3 (preferences on loyalty card and/or host DB): Oosterveen '942/Ahold (customer pass), Shepley '989 (magnetic card), Highpoint '110 (ID control card), Credit Verification '812 (customer database).

Claims 4/15 (text/audio/visual delivery): Strubbe '206 (text, still/full-motion video), Vogelman '822 (audio), Aironet '414 (multimedia terminal), EP 0 697 793 (multimedia service access).

Claims 5/14/20 (product info, discount, associated items from previous transactions): Catalina '851 and Advance Promotion '308 (purchase-triggered promotions/associations), Credit Verification '812 (shopping-history-driven marketing), Burke '399 (last-trip lists).

Claim 19 (means-plus-function): the same mapping supplies § 112 ¶ 6 structure — "means for sending/receiving shopping transaction data" (Oosterveen '942 wireless terminal/host), "means for identifying areas of interest related to preferences" (Strubbe '206 interest profile; Shepley '989 personal data), "means for generating correlated results… and displaying" (Strubbe '206 + Shepley '989), and the email-list means (Highpoint '110/Burke '399 + email). Claim 20 is a straight narrowing to the categories in the table above.

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5. Combination B — primary § 103 ground against claim 12 (method)

Same four-reference set, arranged as method steps:

1. "Uploading and displaying a customer shopping list from a predetermined secure email address on a portable terminal" → Highpoint '110 (build/store/retrieve user-specific order lists on a portable device, networked retrieval, secure ID card + PIN) or Burke '399 (pre-generated lists) + POSITA email knowledge.
2. "Scanning an article to be purchased on the portable terminal" → Oosterveen '942; Shepley '989 (bar code means); Highpoint '110 (scanning wand).
3. "Comparing the scanned article with a list of customer preferences" → Strubbe '206 (free-text/weighted correlation against interest profile); Shepley '989 (correlate scanned food with personal data).
4. "Correlating the scanned article and customer preferences with a database of related information to compile correlated results" → Strubbe '206 (correlating downloaded ECI with preferences to form personalized DB); Highpoint '110 (merchant db returns descriptions, prices, nutritional data, alternatives).
5. "Presenting the correlated results… on a display of the portable terminal" → Shepley '989 (on-cart LCD/LED), Highpoint '110 (touch display).

Claim 16 (maintain purchase history → compare to prior purchases → correlate with associated items → prompt a reminder): Credit Verification '812, Catalina '851, Advance Promotion '308, and Burke '399 (FIG. 18 last-trip display). The "do you need buns/mustard with hot dogs" reminder is the routine application of purchase-history association art (Catalina) to the '326 terminal.

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6. Reaching the "predetermined secure email address" element, and the motivation to combine

6.1 Why the combination is legally sound (KSR / pre-AIA)

• Same field, common problem. Oosterveen, Strubbe, Shepley, Highpoint, and Burke all address delivering product/shopping information to a consumer and personalizing it to that consumer's expressed preferences to drive purchasing. They are analogous art — reasonably pertinent to the problem the '326 claims address.
• Predictable result of combining known elements. Each claim element performs its own known function: a bar code scanner scans (Oosterveen), a preference profile is correlated (Strubbe), scanned-item data triggers personalized output (Shepley), a portable device stores/retrieves an order list (Highpoint), and a networked host intermediates retrieval (Highpoint/Burke). The '326 patent itself describes its contribution as an "improved" and "standardized" system that adds "improved multi-media support and direct marketing functions" to prior self-scanning — the hallmark of an obvious improvement/aggregation rather than a new operation.
• Market and design incentives. Retailers had strong, well-documented incentives (as the references themselves state) to (i) lower checkout labor cost and (ii) target marketing/coupons at the point of decision to raise basket size — the express twin goals of Oosterveen's self-scanning model and Catalina/Advance Promotion's promotion models. Combining preference-correlation (Strubbe) with a self-scanning terminal (Oosterveen) to serve those goals is exactly the "predictable variation" KSR permits.
• The '326 specification supplies no unexpected mechanism. The "web browser," "dynamic page builder," and "link" features are conventional client-server/web implementations (cf. Sun '681, "stateless shopping cart for the web"); they are not asserted in the independent claims.

6.2 Motivation for the email sub-element

• Highpoint '110 already discloses (a) a user-specific database of order/reference lists resident in a user device, (b) a network to a central database, and (c) security via an identification control card + PIN (and even contemplates "a call-back system"). Burke '399 discloses pre-assembled shopping lists ("products purchased last week," "products needed for a specific recipe") that the consumer reviews and purchases.
• By 1996, electronic mail to a password-protected account was a ubiquitous, routine mechanism for transmitting a consumer's list to a merchant, and the PTAB/CAFC treat routine use of a known communication mechanism (email) to transmit a known data structure (an order/shopping list) to a known destination (a merchant's account) as an obvious design choice absent a teaching away. The '326 specification itself treats the email feature as ordinary: the customer "Email[s] the list to a predetermined secure (i.e., password protected) Email address," and the address "would be predetermined and automatically associated with a customer's file."
• Motivation: removing the need for the customer to re-enter or re-scan a list in-store; enabling the store to pre-stage/pick the order; and coupling the pre-submitted list to the customer's loyalty profile (Oosterveen/Shepley/Credit Verification) — all recognized benefits.

6.3 Fair statement of the weakness

I want to be candid: I could not locate a pre-1996 reference in the '326 prior-art section that squarely discloses emailing a shopping list to a predetermined, password-protected email address. US 5,970,469 (Supermarkets Online) is the closest "network-delivered shopping aids" reference, but I could not live-verify that it discloses an email-mailbox retrieval of a list (the search tool limit prevented confirmation). Accordingly:

• Grounds that do not depend on the email element — i.e., a § 103 challenge to the dependent claims (e.g., claims 2–11, 13–18, 20, 21) — are strong.
• A challenge to independent claims 1, 12, 19 must carry the email element via the reasoned combination in §6.2, which is defensible but contestable; an examiner or PTAB panel could find the specific "predetermined secure email address" recitation to be a non-obvious claim-drafting choice in the absence of a clean email-list reference. This is a genuine gap, not a certainty.

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7. Dependent-claim and remaining-limitation combinations

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8. Anticipated rebuttals and how they cut

1. Non-analogous art (Strubbe is TV/cable home shopping; Burke is home shopping). Weak. The analogous-art test asks whether the reference is reasonably pertinent to the problem; Strubbe explicitly extends the same correlation machinery to "electronic shopping preferences," and Burke explicitly addresses grocery purchasing. Both are pertinent.
2. "Teaching away" (Oosterveen downloads the list only at a dispenser; it does not store preferences). Not a teaching away — silence and a different delivery mechanism are not disparagement. KSR: a reference need not suggest the claimed combination; it need only be combinable.
3. Secondary considerations. Symbol's commercial Personal Shopping System is real, but a nexus to the claimed subject matter is required; the record should be tested for whether the commercial success is attributable to the email-list feature specifically or to the self-scanning system generally (the latter is conceded old by Oosterveen). Any long-felt-need argument must be tied to the email/list feature, where the prior art is thinnest.
4. Claim construction of "upload … from a predetermined secure email address." This phrasing is ambiguous (does the host "upload" from an address, or to it?). A narrower construction (host logs into a specific pre-registered, password-protected mailbox) makes the limitation harder to meet with the general art and weakens the § 103 case; a broader construction ("retrieves a list associated with the customer's secure email account") makes it easier. This should be resolved before relying on the § 6.2 ground.

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9. Bottom line

• Primary obviousness posture: Oosterveen '942 + Strubbe '206 + Shepley '989, further in view of Highpoint '110 (and/or Burke '399), with Catalina '851 / Advance Promotion '308 / Credit Verification '812 for the promotional and history-based dependent claims, renders the architecture, the preference-correlation, the scanned-article comparison, the correlated-results presentation, and virtually every dependent limitation of claims 1–20 obvious under § 103.
• The remaining, genuinely contestable element is the "predetermined secure email address" limitation present in independent claims 1, 12, and 19. The combination of Highpoint's user-specific, PIN-secured, networked order-list system (or Burke's pre-assembled lists) with the 1996 state of the art in electronic mail supports an obviousness finding, but I did not find a reference in the '326 prior-art section that squarely discloses that feature, and I flag it as an analytical gap rather than a certainty.
• Claim 21 (Internet-server retrieval + retransmission) is obvious over the web/shopping-cart art (Sun '681), with the caveat that my strongest cited reference for that row (EP '856) has a publication-date problem.

Confidence: High on the architectural and preference-correlation grounds; moderate on the email-list feature; low on any single-reference anticipation (§ 102) theory, which this analysis does not assert.

Verification note: I live-verified Oosterveen '942, Strubbe '5,469,206, Shepley '5,478,989, Highpoint '5,664,110, and Burke '5,848,399. Due to a tool-step limit I could not live-verify US 5,970,469, US 5,918,211, US 5,310,997, US 5,745,681, or the AT&T EP publications; those citations are taken from the patent's own prior-art section and general knowledge, and should be confirmed against full text (and their § 102 dates) before being relied on in a filing. No litigation or IPR on US 7,725,326 was found (see the prior "Litigation summary" section) — this is a prospective, IPR-style obviousness assessment, not a report of an actual challenge.