US 8224707

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

Let me check specifically for litigation or PTAB activity involving this patent.

Verification notes

I searched for US 8,224,707 in patent and litigation sources. Two caveats up front:

1. No CAFC 2026 (or any) docket activity involving 8,224,707 was found. The Federal Circuit materials surfaced in my search (July 2026 oral-argument calendars, Patterson Sheridan and Gibson Dunn weekly summaries, SCOTUS petitions) contain no reference to this patent. Likewise, the USAA litigation record that does appear — the mobile check-deposit campaigns against Wells Fargo, PNC, Mitek, BBVA and Regions — involves entirely different patents ('779, '571, '517, '090, '681, '605, '432, '559, '638). At least one of those dockets (PNC's motion to stay) lists the full set of asserted USAA patents, and 8,224,707 is not among them. I therefore cannot report any suit, IPR/CBM, or appeal for this patent, and I make no positive assertion that none exists — only that my searches did not surface one.
2. Do not confuse this patent with the mobile-deposit family that shares inventor Bharat Prasad. Same assignee, different technology and different patent family.

Everything below is drawn from the authoritative full text you supplied (Google Patents, fetched 2026-09-27), cross-checked against FreePatentsOnline and Justia listings, which agree.

Bibliographic data — US 8,224,707 B1

Related applications (per the patent's own cross-reference): U.S. Ser. No. 12/195,160 and U.S. Ser. No. 12/195,174, both filed Aug. 20, 2008, both titled "Social Network For Shopping," and both incorporated by reference. No priority claim to an earlier application is recited — 2008-08-20 is the earliest date.

Maintenance history (Google Patents legal events): 4th-year fee paid 2016-01-18; 8th-year fee paid 2020-01-14; 12th-year fee paid 2024-07-11, with a late-payment surcharge (11.5-year surcharge, large entity) — i.e., the 2024 payment was made within the six-month grace period. The listed 2029-07-16 expiration reflects a PTA-based adjustment beyond the nominal 20-year term (2028-08-20); I flag that as the source's assumption, not an authoritative PTO calculation.

Abstract (as issued)

A social network for shopping may be provided in which a user may provide a listing of an item they would like and the identity of a seller the item may be retrieved from. Another user may agree to pick up the item from the seller and deliver the item, perhaps for a small fee. The listing of the item may be posted on a website, sent to other users by a web feed such as RSS, sent by a text message, instant message, email, or communicated in any other manner to one or more users, etc. Alternatively, a user may post the identity of a seller that they are going to and ask if any users would like any items picked up from the seller and delivered to them, perhaps for a small fee.

Plain-language overview of the disclosure

The patent describes a computer-implemented social network whose members arrange peer-to-peer errand-running: one member (the receiver) wants an item from a seller (store), and another member (the deliverer) picks it up and brings it to the receiver, optionally for a fee.

Two mirrored workflows are described:

• Receiver-initiated (FIGS. 2, 4, 5): the receiver posts a listing naming the item and the seller, plus location, price, fee and timing criteria. A deliverer replies; the listing is marked (shaded/grayed) to show a transaction is in progress; the parties confirm details and optionally authenticate via a shared secret code tied to the listing; the receiver pays the seller or the deliverer; the deliverer collects and delivers; feedback and ratings are exchanged.
• Deliverer-initiated (FIG. 6): the deliverer posts that they are going to a given seller or location and offers to pick things up, subject to conditions (price caps, delivery windows, geographic range, excluded goods such as perishables or bulky items). Receivers reply with requests and criteria. Digital photos (e.g., from a camera phone) may be exchanged to confirm the correct item.

A financial-institution system 305 component (FIG. 3) can host the listing site and hold deliverer account 317 and receiver account 327, acting as a funds-transfer intermediary so the parties need not deal with each other directly (FIG. 5). Item listings may be posted on a website or pushed by RSS, email, text or instant message.

Independent claims — plain language

Claim 1 — a shopping method. Steps, in order:

1. Electronically post, via a server of a computer-implemented shopping social network, a listing for a receiver for a first item available from a seller, the listing requesting pickup from the seller and delivery to the receiver.
2. Electronically receive, at the social network, a reply from a deliverer agreeing to that pickup and delivery.
3. Electronically provide the seller's identity to the social network — the identity being supplied by the deliverer — so that a user of the network can request pickup of a second item by that deliverer.
4. After the deliverer's reply, display an indication on the listing that the transaction is in progress.
5. Provide a communication pathway to an institution system that can maintain accounts and move funds, capable of holding a deliverer account and a receiver account, and capable of posting/serving the listing viewed by the deliverer or receiver.
6. Remove the listing and provide authentication and confirmation techniques to the seller, receiver and deliverer after the transaction is complete.
7. Receive feedback about the deliverer (at a computing device of the social network) from the seller or the receiver.
8. Generate a rating for the deliverer from that feedback.

Claim 8 — a non-transitory computer-readable medium carrying instructions performing the same eight steps verbatim as claim 1. This is the software/CRM counterpart; it is the only independent claim expressly limited to a "non-transitory" medium.

Claim 15 — a shopping system. The same eight operations, but implemented as "at least one subsystem of one or more computer devices" for each step (a distributed-subcomponent framing rather than a method or instruction-set framing).

Dependent claims (2–7, 9–14, 16–21) are parallel across the three families and add: posting on a social-network website (2/9/16); distribution by web feed, email, text or instant message to a plurality of users (3/10/17); paying the seller (4/11/18); paying the deliverer for the item (5/12/19); paying a pickup-and-delivery fee to the deliverer (6/13/20); and institution-system facilitation of fund transfers between receiver and deliverer (7/14/21).

Drafting observations worth flagging

• Claims 1/8/15 blend the two disclosed embodiments into a single claim. Steps 1–2 are the receiver-initiated model, but step 3 requires the deliverer to be the one who supplies the seller's identity to the network — the deliverer-initiated model of FIG. 6. The claim language ("wherein the identity of the seller is provided to the computer-implemented social network by the deliverer to provide a user … to request a pick up of a second item") reads awkwardly and arguably requires both parties' conduct. This is the kind of internal tension a validity or infringement analysis would seize on.
• Step 6 is a compound limitation: removing the listing and providing authentication/confirmation techniques to all three parties, keyed to "after the transaction for the first item is complete." Note that the specification's 215 describes authentication (e.g., a secret code assigned to the listing) as occurring during confirmation, before pickup — whereas claim 1 places it after completion.
• Alternative phrasing in the claims ("may hold a deliverer account and a receiver account," "may electronically post") is permissive rather than mandatory, which weakens the institution-system limitations as claim boundaries.
• Because the three independent claims are near-identical in substance, they share the same infringement and invalidity exposure; the medium and system claims add little scope beyond claim 1.
• Prior art cited on the face is substantive and notably includes Craigslist (multiple archived dates 2004–2007), On The Run Errands, a 1998 Supermarket Business article on home delivery, a 2008 eBay guide ("10 Easy and Fun Ways to Make Money with Your Pickup"), US 2002/0035515 (Moreno, secure remote delivery coordination), US 2003/0132298 (Swartz, consumer interactive shopping), US 7,251,621 (Weng, home delivery of local retail e-commerce orders), and US 2008/0065514 (Snitsig, personal inventory/exchange network). These suggest the examiner viewed the crowd-sourced errand concept itself as old, with allowance turning on the specific combination (progress indication, institution-system account pathway, post-completion authentication, and feedback-driven ratings).
• Forward citations include Consumeron's remote acquisition and delivery family (US 9,202,191; 10,128,867; 11,238,465; 10,628,835) and Walmart's pickup-by-friend-or-family patent (US 10,769,578) — consistent with this patent being treated as background art in the later crowd-delivery space rather than as an enforcement asset.

Uncertainty statement

• Assignee/inventor data: taken from the patent face as reproduced in the Google Patents record and corroborated by FreePatentsOnline, Justia and PatentLeaderboard. I did not independently query USPTO Patent Center or the Assignment database in this session.
• Litigation/PTAB status: I found no district court, PTAB or CAFC proceeding involving 8,224,707 in the sources retrieved, including 2026 Federal Circuit material. I cannot certify a negative; confirm via USPTO Patent Center, the PTAB API, and PACER/Docket Navigator before relying on the absence of litigation.
• Expiration date: 2029-07-16 is the aggregator's adjusted-expiration figure; I did not verify the underlying PTA or any terminal disclaimer in the file history.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 8224707.

Let me search more targeted litigation databases.

Let me check specific litigation databases and portals.

Bottom line

I found no litigation—district court, appellate, ITC, or PTAB—involving U.S. Patent No. 8,224,707. Based on the searches I was able to run, there is no evidence that the '707 patent has ever been asserted in an infringement suit, challenged in a post-grant proceeding, or named as a patent-in-suit in any active or terminated case.

Because you asked for case-by-case entries, the honest answer is that the list is empty. Below I explain what I searched, what I found instead, and why some results can look like litigation hits when they are not.

Scope of the search

I want to be explicit about that last row: your two named sources (portal.unifiedpatents.com caselist and PACER/CAFC) were not successfully queried. So the negative finding is based on general web results and secondary aggregators, not on a direct docket-level verification. "No litigation found" is therefore a statement about what I could observe, not a certification that none exists.

Near-misses that could be mistaken for litigation on the '707 patent

1. IPR2023‑00865, Maplebear Inc. d/b/a Instacart v. Consumeron, LLC. The '707 number appears in Exhibit 1039 to this petition — but as one entry in a long string of patent numbers in a prior-art/classification search query (..."7954710" | "8224707" | "8321298"...). The patent-at-issue there is not the '707 patent by USAA. This is why a raw keyword search for "8224707 + IPR" produces a false positive. Source: Docket Alarm, IPR2023-00865 Ex. 1039

2. Citing patents owned by a litigious NPE. The '707 patent is cited as prior art by Consumeron, LLC patents, including US 9,202,191; US 10,115,067; US 10,628,835; and US 11,238,465 (all part of the "System and method for remote acquisition and delivery of goods" family). Consumeron has been an active litigant (e.g., against Instacart). But being cited as prior art is not the same as being asserted. There is no indication the '707 patent itself was ever asserted by USAA or by anyone else. Source: US 10,115,067 on Justia

3. USAA's other patent campaigns are unrelated. USAA has been a well-documented plaintiff on its mobile check-deposit patents (e.g., the USAA v. Wells Fargo actions in E.D. Tex./W.D. Tex., No. 2:18-cv-00366, and the Mitek declaratory-judgment litigation, Fed. Cir. Nos. 21-1989 and 23-1687). Those cases involve a different patent family and say nothing about the '707 "social network for shopping" patent. Anyone citing "USAA patent litigation" as evidence about the '707 patent is conflating unrelated families.

4. Non-patent noise. Several search results containing the string "8224707" are entirely unrelated: a Brazilian state commercial registry entry (Santos & Ribeiro Ltda.), a Czech public-contracts record, a Brazilian municipal decree (Decreto 032/2026, Balneário Gaivota), and a Korean academic classification table listing '707 under class 705/26.1 (electronic shopping). None are litigation about this patent.

Context relevant to the absence of litigation

• Ownership. The '707 patent is wholly owned by United Services Automobile Association (USAA), a large operating financial-services company—not a PAE/NPE. Per the prosecution history in the record, it was assigned to USAA on filing (Aug. 20, 2008) with inventors Arthur Q. Smith, Bharat Prasad, Bradly Jay Billman, Charles L. Oakes III, and Reynaldo Medina III.
• Family. The specification identifies two commonly assigned sibling applications filed the same day, Ser. Nos. 12/195,160 and 12/195,174, both also titled "Social Network For Shopping." This suggests USAA filed a small three-application cluster in 2008, but I found no indication that any member of that cluster was enforced.
• Status. Google Patents lists the patent as Active with an adjusted expiration of 2029-07-16, and maintenance fees through the 12th year were paid (11.5-year surcharge paid July 11, 2024). That confirms the patent remains in force despite no observed assertion activity—i.e., it is being maintained as an asset, not (so far as I can tell) litigated.

Recommended verification before relying on this

Because "no litigation found" is a negative and my two named databases failed, I would not treat this as dispositive. To confirm at a professional standard:

1. Directly query the Unified Patents litigation portal caselist and RPX / PlainSite for the exact number 8,224,707 and format variants (8224707).
2. Run a PACER "party name" search for "United Services Automobile Association" combined with a patent-case nature-of-suit (830) filter, then check whether '707 appears among the asserted patents. (The patent number itself is generally not a searchable PACER field, which is why party-based searching is necessary.)
3. Check the USPTO PTAB/Patent Center "Litigation" tab and the USPTO Patent Assignment record for any assignment away from USAA, which could signal a transfer to an asserting entity.
4. Check ITC EDIS Section 337 investigations naming USAA.

If any of those return a hit, the case details (plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, status) can be populated from that primary source.

Caveat on identifiers and currency: I have interpreted the identifier literally as US 8,224,707 / US8224707B1 ("Social network for shopping," USAA, filed 2008‑08‑20, granted 2012‑07‑17) and did not treat any similar number as equivalent. If you can supply even one primary-source citation that the '707 patent was asserted, I'll verify and, if confirmed, correct this finding—search results take precedence over any assumption, and a negative here is a search result, not a certainty.

PTAB / AIA Trial Proceedings — US Patent 8,224,707

"Social network for shopping" · USAA (United Services Automobile Association) · App. No. 12/195,148 · Filed 2008-08-20 · Granted 2012-07-17

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 8,224,707: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding naming this patent, and independent web searches of PTAB dockets, PTAB decision archives, Docket Alarm's PTAB collection, and Federal Circuit opinions surfaced none. There is therefore no breakdown by status — no active proceedings, no claims invalidated, no claims sustained, no settlements, no institution denials — and no proceeding below on which to report a judge panel, grounds, or FWD.

Bottom-line defensive posture: the patent is completely untested at the PTAB. That cuts both ways, and a defendant should not read it as either "hardened" or "dead." Unlike USAA's mobile-deposit patents — which have been through repeated IPRs and CBMs — the '707 patent has never had its claims construed by the Board and has never been the subject of a written validity ruling. There is no FWD to cite, no cancellation to point to, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel constraining anyone. Any IPR you file would be a first impression on these claims.

Proceedings

None. No proceeding number exists to report, and I will not manufacture one.

For completeness on what was searched:

Patent status (from the patent record, not PTAB): Active, adjusted expiration 2029-07-16; maintenance fee 12th year paid 2024-07-11 (with 11.5-yr late-payment surcharge). Roughly three years of enforceable life remain as of 2026-09-27.

Strategic summary

Claim status: every claim is UNTESTED. United States Claims 1–7 (method), 8–14 (non-transitory CRM), and 15–21 (system) have never been challenged in an AIA trial. There is no canceled claim to hang a defense on and no sustained claim to respect. Independent claims 1, 8, and 15 each recite roughly the same eight-step core: (i) posting a listing for a receiver for a first item available from a seller requesting pickup + delivery; (ii) receiving a reply from a deliverer who agrees; (iii) "electronically provide an identity of the seller to the computer-implemented social network, wherein the identity of the seller is provided … by the deliverer" to let a user request pickup of a second item; (iv) indicating the transaction is in progress; (v) providing a communication pathway to an institution system holding deliverer and receiver accounts; (vi) removing the listing and providing authentication/confirmation "to the seller, receiver, and deliverer"; (vii) receiving feedback regarding the deliverer from at least one of the seller or the receiver; and (viii) generating a rating for the deliverer. Note the drafting oddities — the "deliverer-provides-seller-identity" limitation and the "seller or receiver" feedback limitation — which are the kind of claim-construction pressure points that have never been tested.

Estoppel landscape: a blank slate. Because no petition has ever been filed, no statutory estoppel under § 315(e)(1) or (e)(2) attaches to anyone. All prior art, all § 102/§ 103 combinations, and all § 112 grounds remain available in district court. Conversely, there is also no IPR "safe harbor" record for you to inherit — you cannot piggyback on someone else's petition, and the petitioner that goes first bears the cost. Two practical constraints apply:

• § 315(b) one-year bar. If your client has already been served with a complaint alleging infringement of the '707 patent, the IPR clock may have run. Determine the service date first.
• Vehicle limits. With a 2008 priority date the patent is pre-AIA, so PGR is unavailable (PGR reaches only patents with effective filing dates on/after 2026-03-16 — no, on/after 2013-03-16). PGR reaches only patents with effective filing dates on or after 2013-03-16, so IPR is your vehicle. CBM review is also gone — the transitional program sunset for new petitions on 2020-09-16 — even though a "social network for shopping" patent would have been a natural CBM candidate and USAA's related patents did draw CBM petitions.

Pattern signals. USAA is a sophisticated, serial patent enforcer, but its PTAB exposure is concentrated in a different family. From the public record:

• USAA's mobile-deposit patents ('779, '571, '517, '090) were hit by CBM petitions and IPRs from Wells Fargo (petitions filed Nov 2018; IPR instituted 2019-12-13) and by later IPRs from Mitek Systems (filed Apr–Jun 2020), which the Board denied institution on General Plastic follow-on grounds (2020-11-06 and 2020-11-17) — without reaching the merits. Related CBM and IPR petitions against the '571 and '779 patents were also denied institution (e.g., the § 101/"technical solution" CBM denial USAA noticed to the E.D. Tex. court on 2019-05-15).
• USAA litigated these patents aggressively in E.D. Tex. (USAA v. Wells Fargo, No. 2:18-cv-00245-JRG; USAA v. PNC Bank, Nos. 2:20-cv-00319-JRG and successors), winning a jury verdict against Wells Fargo and a ~$218M willfulness verdict against PNC in May 2022.
• None of that activity touches the '707 patent. No defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) appears anywhere in the '707 chain, and no petitioner has ever named this patent.
• The '707 specification cross-references two commonly-owned sibling applications filed the same day — Ser. Nos. 12/195,160 and 12/195,174, both titled "Social Network For Shopping." I did not confirm which patents (if any) issued from those, and I found no PTAB activity on them either. Treat that as a lead to verify, not a finding.

The practical inference: the '707 patent appears to have been never asserted in the public litigation record I could reach. Patents that are never asserted are never IPR'd. That is the most likely explanation for the empty docket — not that the claims are unusually strong.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant and are being asserted against on the '707 patent:

1. Say the quiet part out loud in your invalidity contentions: there is no PTAB record. No FWD to cite, no claim canceled. Do not let opposing counsel imply the patent has "survived" PTAB scrutiny — it has never been scrutinized.
2. File an IPR if the § 315(b) window is open. This patent is a strong IPR candidate on its face: a 2008 filing date with an eight-step business-method claim, a crowded 2000–2008 prior-art space for social/networked shopping, delivery, and escrow, and claim language ("may hold," "may be made," "may electronically post," "may be provided") that is permissive rather than mandatory and ripe for a Williamson/Becton Dickinson or indefiniteness challenge. Note the specification's own admission framing at ¶ [0002]-[0003] and the "perhaps for a small fee" language throughout — useful § 103 motivation evidence.
3. Check the § 112 angles early. Claim 1's "provide an identity of the seller … by the deliverer to provide a user … to request a pick up of a second item" and "authentication and confirmation techniques to the seller, receiver, and deliverer" read as functional/result-oriented limitations with thin written description support. This is exactly the ground that would be hard to raise in district court but natural in an IPR under IPR-lite — or as an indefiniteness defense under Nautilus.
4. Do not rely on CBM or PGR. Both are unavailable here. IPR is the only AIA vehicle.
5. Verify no recently-filed petition exists. The ODP ingest can lag. Confirm directly against PTAB E2E / Patent Center before finalizing: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/patents/ (search by patent number 8224707) and https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/. If a petition has just been filed it will show as a "notice of filing date accorded" within weeks.
6. Background reading on the patent owner's PTAB playbook (related patents only — none involve the '707 patent): the Wells Fargo and Mitek IPRs/CBMs are accessible via the PTAB E2E docket and the related district-court filings on CourtListener at https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/?q=United+Services+Automobile+Association. These show USAA litigating hard and successfully invoking General Plastic to knock out follow-on petitions — expect the same discretionary-denial argument if you are a supplier to an already-sued defendant, and file early if you have a common-interest relationship with a prior petitioner.

Plainest summary for the client: there is nothing on file at the PTAB for this patent, so there is nothing to cite and nothing to be estopped by. The absence of PTAB activity is a signal about assertion history, not about claim strength — and it means a well-built IPR is still on the table.

Sourcing note: the proceedings list is taken from the canonical USPTO ODP structured block supplied with this task (which reports none). The web searches performed returned no PTAB or Federal Circuit proceeding naming US 8,224,707; results referencing '707 were unrelated (patent citations, IDS listings, and non-US records). All litigation and PTAB facts recited above concern USAA's other patents and are cited only as pattern evidence — they are not proceedings on the '707 patent. If the ODP ingest is incomplete, the first-filed petition on this patent would appear via PTAB E2E before it appears anywhere else.

I'll verify the assignment chain against USPTO Assignment Center records and cross-reference the legal events.

Scope note before the findings

Two integrity caveats, consistent with the earlier sections:

1. I could not execute a direct query against USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov / assignment.uspto.gov) — my retrieval attempts returned generic USPTO boilerplate from unrelated file histories, not the record for 12/195,148. Likewise I could not pull the legacy assignment PDF for the referenced reel/frame. So this reconstruction rests on the Google Patents legal-events record (which mirrors Assignment Center data), not on a direct read of the cover sheet.
2. Where the correspondent of record is not visible in the data I could retrieve, I have left it blank rather than guess. The USAA correspondence pattern that appears in other, unrelated USAA assignment filings (in-house correspondent "UNITED SERVICES AUTOMOBILE ASSOC."; submitter Jim Thomas, dykema/fyjplaw addresses, e.g. reel 041694/0894) is context only — I have no evidence it attaches to reel 021418/0883, and I do not attribute it to this patent.

Inventors

Pattern check — inventor departure / fire-sale precursor: Not determinable. All five are USAA-assigned inventors on a corporate-owned filing, and none of the retrieved records shows an inventor retaining or later acquiring rights. I have no employment-duration data for any of the five, so I cannot confirm or rule out departures within 12 months of filing. I will not infer a fire-sale precursor from the 2008 financial-crisis timing; that would be speculation.

Original assignee

United Services Automobile Association (USAA) — a large, member-owned financial-services and insurance group headquartered at 9800 Fredericksburg Road, San Antonio, TX 78288.

• Primary line of business: insurance (auto, home, life), banking, and diversified financial services for U.S. military members and their families.
• Product embodying the claims: Unclear / no evidence found. The specification describes a shopping/delivery social network with an institution-system payment intermediary (FIG. 3, institution system 305; deliverer account 317; receiver account 327). I found no USAA consumer product or service identified anywhere in the record as an implementation of the '707 claims. This is an internal R&D-style filing, not a documented product launch.
• Current status: Operating. No acquisition, dissolution, or bankruptcy appears in the record, and USAA continues to prosecute and maintain its patent portfolio (e.g., later USAA filings such as US 10,032,193, US 11,341,553, US 11,301,875 surfaced in the same searches).

Assignment timeline

One recorded conveyance appears in the legal-events record. Because the record gives reel/frame as 021418/0883, I list it as Reel 021418 / Frame 0883.

• 2008-08-18 to 2008-08-19 (executed, per the multiple signing dates) / recorded 2008-08-20 — Reel 021418/0883
  • Conveyance: Assignment (recorded as "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)" — i.e., an inventor-to-corporate assignment, not a merger, security interest, or license).
  • Assignor: Arthur Q. Smith; Bharat Prasad; Bradly Jay Billman; and others (Charles L. Oakes, III; Reynaldo Medina, III) — the five named inventors.
  • Assignee: United Services Automobile Association (USAA), San Antonio, TX.
  • Correspondent: Not visible in the record retrieved. I did not obtain the cover sheet, so I cannot name the attorney, firm, or address of record, and I will not substitute a correspondent from an unrelated USAA reel. Candidate USAA correspondents observed elsewhere (e.g. Jim Thomas, dykplaw/fyjplaw addresses; in-house "UNITED SERVICES AUTOMOBILE ASSOC.") are not attributed to this record.
  • Context: Initial inventor-to-employer assignment recorded contemporaneously with filing — routine corporate title perfection, not an acquisition, fire-sale, or transfer-to-asserter.

No later assignments, security interests, change-of-name filings, licenses, or releases appear in the retrieved record. That is a finding, not a gap: it means title has remained with USAA from filing to the present, which is consistent with the earlier section's conclusion that the '707 patent has never been asserted.

Sibling applications: the specification cross-references Ser. Nos. 12/195,160 and 12/195,174 (same day, same title, same assignee). I did not obtain their separate assignment records, so I cannot state whether they were assigned under the same reel or handled independently. Flagging this as a verification item rather than asserting a family-wide reel number.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8224707
    2008 : Filed by five USAA inventors
         : Assignment recorded 021418/0883
    2012 : Patent issued to USAA
    2016 : Year 4 maintenance fee paid
    2020 : Year 8 maintenance fee paid
    2024 : Year 12 fee paid with late surcharge

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Aggregate signal count: zero. Every signal is "not present" or (for signal 3) "unclear" solely because the correspondent field was unavailable, not because a suspicious correspondent exists.

Verdict

Insufficient data — under the rubric this is the correct box because the record contains only the original assignment. Substantively, however, the one recorded entry is unambiguous and benign: inventors → USAA, Reel 021418/0883, recorded 2008-08-20, with no subsequent transfers, no security interests, and no change of name, and maintenance fees paid through the 12th year (year-12 payment 2024-07-11 with an 11.5-year late surcharge, per the Google Patents legal events). Title has remained with a large operating insurance/banking company from filing to today, so there are no NPE or troll-pattern signals to report — but I am labeling this "insufficient data" rather than "defensive/non-asserting" because I could not complete the primary-source check.

What would move this to a higher-confidence call: (1) the actual reel 021418/0883 cover sheet, to capture the recorded correspondent of record; and (2) confirmation via Assignment Center that no post-2012 record exists for patent 8,224,707 (or for siblings 12/195,160 and 12/195,174). If a later assignment surfaces, the correspondent name and assignee address on that entry would be the first thing to test against signal 3.

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 8224707) and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html — enter 8224707 and, to be thorough, application 12195148.

Contradiction check: Nothing here contradicts the earlier sections. The prior "no litigation found" conclusion and this "single owner, no transfers" conclusion are mutually reinforcing — a patent never asserted is a patent whose title chain typically stays undisturbed. The only tension worth restating is that the earlier sections also could not complete direct docket/database verification, so two independent negatives share the same weakness: both are search observations, not certifications.

I'll verify the patent and then examine each cited reference. Let me start with the patent itself and the key prior-art citations.

Let me verify the remaining cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 8,224,707 B1 ("Social network for shopping")

Scope and method

This section builds on the bibliographic, claim-mapping, and litigation sections already generated. It does not repeat them. Two framing points before the reference-by-reference work:

1. The operative prior-art date is 2008-08-20 (the filing/priority date; no earlier priority is claimed — see the earlier bibliographic section). Every reference below predates that date and is therefore facially available as § 102 art. (Contrast the two co-pending sibling applications, Ser. Nos. 12/195,160 and 12/195,174, which are not prior art to this patent.)

2. Reality check on § 102 versus § 103. You asked which claims each reference "potentially anticipates." Strictly, § 102 anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every limitation of the claim, arranged as claimed. As the earlier "drafting observations" section flagged, claim 1 (and its twins 8 and 15) is an eight-step compound that requires, inter alia, (a) a receiver-posted listing naming a seller, (b) a deliverer reply, (c) the deliverer supplying the seller's identity to the network, (d) a progress indication, (e) a communication pathway to an institution system holding deliverer/receiver accounts, (f) listing removal plus post-completion authentication/confirmation to all three parties, and (g) feedback → rating. None of the twelve cited references discloses all of these. Accordingly, in this record the citations function almost entirely as § 103 obviousness art (and as background/§ 102 art only for discrete dependent claims or sub-elements). I flag this explicitly rather than overstate anticipation.

The twelve patent citations and nine non-patent citations below are taken from the authoritative full text you supplied (Google Patents citation tables, fetched 2026-09-27). I verified the four most substantive references (Moreno, Weng, Widjojo, Snitsig) against live sources; the remaining eight I describe from the face citation and did not open in full in this session (their searches were not completed), so their descriptions are drawn from title/subject matter only and are flagged as such.

Overview table — the 12 patent citations

The four references that matter most

US 7,251,621 B1 — Weiwen Weng (the primary reference) (verified live)

• Full citation: Method and apparatus for the home delivery of local retail e-commerce orders, US 7,251,621 B1; App. No. 11/617,989 (also published as US 2007/0185778 A1, App. No. 11/307,379); inventor Weiwen Weng (Sunnyvale, CA).
• Dates: priority 2006-02-02/03; granted 2007-07-30/31. Predates '707 by ~19 months.
• Description: A crowd-sourced delivery system in which ordinary members of the public ("patrons") deliver e-commerce orders from retail stores to nearby buyers. It discloses a database of patrons/deliverers, a database of orders, a database of buyers, a matching engine that pairs "acceptable orders" to a patron's "acceptable delivery criteria," a dynamic pricing model for the delivery fee, a feedback system, delivery-status updates ("selected by a patron," "carried out of a store and is being delivered," "delivered, thereby closing the transaction"), and acceptable-patron criteria that expressly include "a minimum percentage of positive feedback scores of the patron" and proximity within "a certain number of people connections" (a social-network trust metric). Source: FreePatentsOnline 7251621; Google Patents.
• Claim overlap / § 102: This is the closest single reference to '707. It maps to claim 1 elements (b) deliverer agreement to pick up/deliver, (d) transaction-status indication, and (g) feedback-driven rating, and to dependent claims 6/13/20 (delivery fee) and the payment mechanics of 5/12/19. It is also the strongest § 103 springboard for the whole receiver/deliverer matching concept.
• Why it does not anticipate: Weng's orders originate from an e-commerce retailer's order queue, not from a receiver-authored listing that names a specific seller and is posted on a social network; and Weng discloses no institution-system account pathway limitation. So it is an anticipation candidate only for the discrete fee/feedback claims, and a § 103 reference against claim 1.

US 2005/0192958 A1 — Surjatini Widjojo / eBay (granted US 7,774,350 B2) (verified live)

• Full citation: System and method to provide and display enhanced feedback in an online transaction processing environment; US 2005/0192958 A1, App. No. 11/027,782; granted as US 7,774,350 B2 (2010-08-10); assignee eBay Inc.
• Dates: priority (provisional 60/548,526) 2004-02-26; published 2005-09-01; app. filed 2004-12-30.
• Description: A feedback-collection module that receives feedback information responsive to completion of a transaction, a feedback score generator that computes a performance score for a buyer/seller across performance categories, and a display module that lets another user access the score. Source: Google Patents US20050192958; Patents-Review.
• Claim overlap / § 102: Directly maps to the final two elements of claims 1, 8, and 15 — "receive feedback regarding the deliverer" and "generate a rating for the deliverer using the feedback." Under a broad reading this reference is the most defensible § 102 candidate for those sub-limitations (though the claim requires the feedback to be about the deliverer and at a computing device of the social network, which eBay's marketplace environment supplies only by analogy).

US 2002/0035515 A1 — Eli Moreno (granted US 6,882,269 B2) (verified live)

• Full citation: System and method for remotely coordinating the secure delivery of goods; US 2002/0035515 A1; App. No. 09/905,383; granted US 6,882,269 B2 (2005-04-19); inventor Eli Moreno / assignee Darren Murrey.
• Dates: priority 2000-07-14; published 2002-03-21.
• Description: A server-coordinated secure-delivery system using lockers/kiosks; a customer orders goods from a vendor, the server coordinates delivery of the goods to a secure locker, and access is controlled by a transaction-specific entry code communicated to the locker and the delivery party — expressly to solve missed deliveries and secure hand-off without the customer waiting. Source: Google Patents US20020035515; US6882269 PDF.
• Claim overlap / § 102: Maps to the authentication/secure-identification element of claims 1/8/15 ("provide authentication and confirmation techniques") and the broader "pick up from the seller / deliver to the receiver" concept. But it discloses no social network, no receiver-authored listing, and no deliverer-supplied seller identity — so anticipation fails; it is § 103/background art.

US 2008/0065514 A1 — Snitsig, Inc. (verified live)

• Full citation: Personal inventory management and item exchange network; US 2008/0065514 A1; App. No. (2006-09-08 filing); assignee Snitsig, Inc.
• Dates: priority/filing 2006-09-08; published 2008-03-13. Predates '707 by ~5 months — closest in time.
• Description: A social-network + personal-inventory system: users generate an item listing in an interface, the listing is presented on a network, and a marketplace performs an activity (buy/sell/rent/lend/trade) on that listing, with peer-to-peer rental/loan/swap. Source: Google Patents US20080065514; Justia – Snitsig.
• Claim overlap / § 102: Maps well to claim 1 elements (a) posting an item listing on a computer-implemented social network and to dependent claims 2/9/16 (post on a social-network website) and 3/10/17 (distribution to users). It does not disclose third-party pick-up-and-deliver or the institution-system pathway. Anticipation fails against claim 1; strong § 103 art on the "social network + item listing" piece.

Remaining patent citations (described from the face record)

These I did not open in full; descriptions are from title/subject matter and their role is peripheral.

• US 2003/0132298 A1 — Jerome Swartz, "Consumer interactive shopping system" (priority 1996-09-05; pub. 2003-07-17). Portable consumer shopping/scanner system. Relevant only to the generic concept of an electronic item listing (claims 1–3); no delivery/deliverer/feedback teaching. Weak.
• US 6,360,209 B1 — Walker Digital, LLC, "Credit card billing method and system" (priority 1997-02-28; pub. 2002-03-19). Billing/account architecture. Maps to the payment claims (4–7, 11–14, 18–21) and the "institution system … maintain accounts and move funds" element — but as a generic payment rail, not a shopping social network.
• US 2001/0025271 A1 — Allen Douglas G., "Commercial transaction system and method for protecting the security and privacy of buyers transacting business over a communication network" (priority 1999-12-14; pub. 2001-09-27). Buyer-security/privacy intermediary concept. Peripheral support for the authentication and institution-as-intermediary elements of claims 1/8/15.
• US 2004/0064376 A1 — Takehiko Yoshida, "Eyeglasses order/sale system over network and its method" (priority 2000-11-24; pub. 2004-04-01). Network ordering/selling of a specific good. Peripheral; generic listing/ordering (claims 1–3).
• US 2002/0128949 A1 — IBM, "Read-only user access for web based auction" (priority 2001-03-08; pub. 2002-09-12). Access-control in an online auction. Peripheral; at most supports the "other users may view the listing" concept.
• US 2003/0004831 A1 — Owens Cstephani D., "Interactive internet shopping and data integration method and system" (priority 2001-06-07; pub. 2003-01-02). Interactive e-shopping integration. Peripheral to the e-shopping listing element.
• US 2003/0023537 A1 — Joshi Rohit Ricky, "System and method for negotiating prices in an automated auction forum" (priority 2001-07-26; pub. 2003-01-30). Automated price negotiation. Maps loosely to the price criteria and fee elements (claims 1, 6, 13, 20).
• US 2003/0177072 A1 — Carlos Bared, "Internet-based grocery ordering system and method for providing drive-through customer pickup of grocery orders at multiple locations as selected by customer" (priority 2002-03-12; pub. 2003-09-18). Order-online/pick-up-locally model. The nearest "receiver orders an item from a seller and it is picked up" concept, but pickup is by the customer, not a third-party deliverer — so it supports at most claims 1–5 piecemeal, not anticipation.

Non-patent citations (9)

The two On The Run Errands and the eBay Guides items are, together with Weng, the references that most directly target the "member picks up an item for another for a fee" core — but each lacks the receiver-authored seller-specific listing and the institution-system account pathway.

Forward citations are not § 102 art. The "Cited By" lists (Consumeron's remote-acquisition family — US 9,202,191; 10,128,867/10,115,067; 10,628,835; 11,238,465; Walmart's US 10,769,578; etc.) post-date '707 and cannot anticipate it; they are relevant only as evidence of the crowded later field (see the earlier "drafting observations" and "litigation" sections).

Bottom line

• Most relevant prior art, in order: (1) US 7,251,621 B1 (Weng) — crowd-sourced/local delivery with feedback and fees; (2) US 2005/0192958 A1 (Widjojo/eBay) — transaction feedback and rating generation; (3) US 2008/0065514 A1 (Snitsig) — social-network item listing/marketplace; (4) US 2002/0035515 A1 (Moreno) — secure delivery coordination and code-based authentication; plus the Craigslist and On The Run Errands non-patent items for the user-listing and pick-up-for-a-fee concepts.
• No cited reference individually anticipates claim 1, claim 8, or claim 15. The allowance appears to have turned on the combination — specifically (i) the deliverer supplying the seller's identity so other users can request a second item, (ii) the in-progress indication on the listing, (iii) the institution-system account pathway (deliverer + receiver accounts), and (iv) post-completion authentication to all three parties — none of which any single reference shows. A § 102 challenge on this record is weak; a § 103 challenge built on Weng + Widjojo + Snitsig (and/or Craigslist) is the more plausible attack, and would target the rating, listing, and fee elements while stressing the informal "institution system may hold … may post" permissive claim language flagged earlier.
• Contradiction check: None found between this section and the previously generated material. This section is consistent with the earlier note that the examiner treated the crowd-errand concept as old; it adds the per-reference § 102 mapping that the earlier "drafting observations" only summarized.

Uncertainty statement. Dates and titles for references 1–3, 5–9 are taken from the authoritative full-text citation table; I did not open those eight documents in full (their verification searches were not completed), so their descriptions are subject-matter-level and should be confirmed against the primary documents before being relied on. Whitepaper-level accuracy on anticipation also requires a limitation-by-limitation chart against the actual claim language (including the amended/prosecution-history record), which I have not performed here.

I'll verify the key prior-art references before building the obviousness analysis.

Obviousness Analysis Under 35 U.S.C. § 103 — US 8,224,707 B1 ("Social network for shopping")

Builds on the earlier sections (bibliography, abstract, claim breakdown, drafting observations, no-litigation finding). I do not repeat those; I use the claim breakdown as the analytical spine and the face-of-record prior art as the reference set, as instructed.

Two housekeeping flags before I start.

1. Date discrepancy: my operating date is 2026‑09‑27 (the patent page fetch timestamp), while the task header says 2026‑04‑26. Nothing in this analysis turns on the difference; I note it only because you asked contradictions be surfaced.
2. Verification levels. I re-verified US 7,251,621 (Weng), US 2008/0065514 (Snitsig) and US 2002/0035515 / US 6,882,269 (Moreno) against live sources this session; the quoted language below is from those retrievals. For the remaining face-of-record references (Walker '209, Allen '271, Swartz '298, Joshi '337, IBM '849/'949, Owens '831, Bared '072, Widjojo '958) I was not able to pull full text this session, so I rely on their titles, the examiner's citation of them, and general knowledge — and I mark those spots "title-level, unverified." I also could not retrieve the specific archived Craigslist and ontherunerrands.com pages; I treat them as the record describes them.

1. Governing standard and level of ordinary skill

• Priority / critical date: 2008‑08‑20 (filing = earliest date; the patent claims no earlier priority, only two same-day siblings, Ser. Nos. 12/195,160 and 12/195,174).
• Pre‑AIA § 103 applies (filed before 2013‑03‑16). Craigslist, ontherunerrands.com (printed 2007‑07‑04/05) and the July 1998 Supermarket Business article are § 102(b) art. The Randalls eBay guide (2008‑06‑24) is less than one year before filing, so it is § 102(a)/(e)-type art at best — a challenger must show publication and that it predates applicant's invention. This is the weakest link in that one reference; do not lead with it.
• Framework: Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966); KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (predictable combinations of known elements; design incentives and market forces; "obvious to try" where a finite set of identified, predictable solutions exists); In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413 (CCPA 1981) (a proposed combination is judged on what the combined teachings suggest as a whole); In re O'Farrell, 853 F.2d 894 (Fed. Cir. 1988) (reasonable expectation of success).
• POSITA (proposed): a bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, or business, plus ~2–4 years designing web/database e-commerce applications, including listing/reply systems, reputation/feedback systems, and third-party payment or escrow integration — or equivalent experience. The claims are pure software/network method steps; no asserted art-critical hardware or algorithm.
• Key observation that frames everything: the specification itself concedes the individual building blocks are each conventional — listings "may be posted on a website, sent to other users by a web feed such as RSS, … text message, instant message, email" (¶ "listing of the item"), payments "using any known payment method," authentication "Any known authentication techniques may be used." The claimed advance is therefore a combination, which is exactly the fact pattern KSR governs.

2. Claim 1, limitation by limitation (claims 8 and 15 recite the same eight steps)

Reading note that matters for validity: limitation (g) is written in the alternative ("seller or the receiver"). Weng's buyer-side feedback therefore alone satisfies it; the absence of merchant-side feedback in Weng is not a gap. That is a significant concession in the claim's own text.

3. Combination Set 1 — Weng (§ 102(b) art) as primary, in view of Craigslist / ontherunerrands and optionally Snitsig and Widjojo

Status of Weng: US 7,251,621 B1, "Method and apparatus for the home delivery of local retail e-commerce orders," granted 2007‑07‑31, priority 2006‑02‑02, published as US 2007/0185778 A1 (2007‑08‑16) — solidly § 102(b) art. Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7251621 ; https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[7251621](/patent/7251621).html ; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-7251621-B1

What Weng alone supplies: a database of crowd patrons, a database of retail-store e-commerce orders, a database of buyers, a database of delivery transactions, a database of feedback for patrons, a matching application that filters pending orders against a patron's acceptable delivery criteria, a dynamic pricing model that sets the delivery fee, a feedback system, order-status lifecycle management, and a service guarantee. It even uses UI language that maps onto the '707's steps: create account/login UI, specify delivery criteria, show pending orders, accept/decline, communicate the order set, add delivery fee to the patron's account, close the transaction on delivery.

Gaps Weng leaves (and the reason the examiner could allow over it): (i) the peer-to-peer social-network framing and receiver-authored listings; (ii) limitation (c), the deliverer publishing the seller's identity into the network so other users can requisition a second item from that same trip; (iii) the institution-system account pathway (1e) as a financial-institution-hosted site/escrow; (iv) the compound (f) limitation keyed to "after the transaction … is complete."

Gap fillers and motivations:

• Craigslist (record: archived 2004‑12‑10, 2005‑02‑04/19/07‑20/23/08‑09, 2006‑05‑13, 2007‑03‑05). Provides exactly the missing peer-to-peer piece: an ordinary individual posts a "wanted" item and the store/seller they want it from, or posts under gigs/errands that they are making a trip and will pick things up for others. Motivation: Weng is a purpose-built database version of the same human arrangement that classified-ad bulletin boards already hosted, and the '707 itself lists "email, text message, instant message, RSS feed" distribution — the bulletin-board distribution model. Automating a known manual practice with a database and web forms is the paradigm KSR predictable-combination case. Reasonable expectation of success: both are browser/database posting-and-reply systems.
• Snitsig US 2008/0065514 (published 2008‑03‑13, filed 2007‑09‑07). Supplies "a personal inventory management and item exchange network" with "social interaction between the one or more accounts," an item-listing interface, a marketplace activity on the listing, and — importantly for (d) — "presenting a status associated with the item listing[,] the status changes and the item listing are updated when an action associated with an item is detected," plus "confirming an exchange of the item, wherein a status associated with the item is updated when the exchange is confirmed." Motivation: uniting Weng's delivery-matching engine with Snitsig's social listing/status engine is the combination of two references in the same field (networked item exchange) addressing the same problem (trustworthy person-to-person transactions). Source: https://patents.justia.com/patent/20080065514
• Widjojo US 2005/0192958 (title-level): "System and method to provide and display enhanced feedback in an online transaction processing environment." Motivation for (g)–(h): the claimed rating generation is the ordinary use of a feedback database; Weng already uses "positive feedback scores" as a filter, so producing a displayable/publishable rating from them is a design choice with a stated purpose (trust).
• Institution system (1e): Weng's "patron's account" plus the record's Walker '209 ("Credit card billing method and system") and Allen '271 ("Commercial transaction system and method for protecting the security and privacy of buyers transacting business over a communication network"). Motivation: the '707 itself supplies it — the institution system "may act as an intermediary … [t]his may provide additional security to the receiver and the deliverer" and "the receiver and deliverer may not be in direct contact." Integrating a trusted payment intermediary into a person-to-person exchange between strangers was market-driven and routine by 2008 (escrow/third-party processor functionality). Note also that claim 1's language is permissive — "may hold a deliverer account and a receiver account," "may electronically post" — which invites the reading that any system capable of routing funds through a financial-institution account satisfies it.
• Moreno US 2002/0035515 / US 6,882,269 for (f): a server/controller system with a "user verification device" that "determine[s] to whom, when, and where access … is to be provided" and directs release of stored goods to an authorized party. That is the same species of actor as the '707's step 225 ("the deliverer may provide identification or other information to the seller regarding the purchase and/or authorization to pick up the item on the receiver's behalf") and its secret-code authentication at ¶ 215. Motivation: preventing release of a paid-for item to the wrong person — a recognized problem whenever a third party takes possession for another.

Assessment: Set 1 is the strongest single combination. Weng alone renders most of claim 1 obvious; a two- or three-reference combination (Weng + Craigslist + Moreno/Snitsig, with Widjojo or Walker for the remainder) covers all eight steps with articulated motivations drawn principally from the references' own statements of purpose and from the '707's own specification.

4. Combination Set 2 — Craigslist / ontherunerrands as primary, in view of Weng, Moreno, Walker/Allen, Snitsig

This set is worth developing because it neutralizes the strongest patentee distinction against Set 1: Weng's orders originate as retailer/e-commerce orders filtered to patrons, and the patentee will argue that is not a "social network for shopping" with receiver-authored listings.

• Primary: Craigslist errands/gigs + ontherunerrands.com (both § 102(b), printed 2007). Together they disclose the claimed commercial behavior in full: a person states the seller they are going to and offers to collect items for others; another person posts the item they want and the store it comes from; a fee is negotiated.
• Secondary: Weng supplies every automated element the claim recites as "electronically" performed: the database matching, the status indications, the fee accounting, the feedback store and scores, the account/login verification. Motivation: it is the automation of the very marketplace the primary references show being run manually through message boards — a routine application of known web application techniques to a known business arrangement (KSR: predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions).
• Moreno for the authorization/release step; Walker '209 / Allen '271 for the account-holding intermediary; Snitsig for the social-network account structure and listing status.
• Efficiency motivation, express in the art: Weng states the goal directly — patrons delivering "a plurality of e-commerce orders placed by a plurality of buyers … [o]verall system efficiencies generally increase," and identifies the motivation of "extra income" for delivering patrons. That is the same motivation that drives the '707's FIG. 6 embodiment.

5. Combination Set 3 — the deliverer-initiated model (limitation 1c) specifically

Because 1c is the most distinctive step, a challenger should plead it separately and with more than one independently sufficient theory:

1. Craigslist gigs/errands + ontherunerrands.com — a user advertises the seller/location they are traveling to and invites others to request items; a second user then requests "a second item for delivery to the user by the deliverer." This is the claim language almost verbatim as a human practice.
2. Weng's patron-side interface — the patron (deliverer) supplies to the system their destination, delivery criteria, geographic range, order criteria and time limits; the system then presents other buyers' pending orders satisfying those criteria. Functionally, "the identity of the seller is provided to the … network by the deliverer" so that another user can obtain a second item from the same trip. Weng even contemplates multiple buyers per patron.
3. Motivation: trip consolidation (marginal-cost delivery), already expressly recited in Weng ("the additional distance of travel required by the deviation is less than a preset limit") and inherent in the errand-advertisement model.
4. '707's own text as evidence of obviousness of the concept: the specification presents the FIG. 6 embodiment as a mere mirror of the FIG. 2 embodiment ("Alternatively, a user may post the identity of a seller that they are going to") — a two-way listing board, i.e., a design choice of which party authors the post.

6. Dependent claims 2–7 / 9–14 / 16–21

Claims 2–7 add nothing that requires separate motivation; each is a known technique applied to the Set 1 combination with a predictable result.

7. Motivation-to-combine synthesis (KSR categories)

No teaching away appears in any cited reference: Weng and Snitsig both endorse multi-user peer/mixed-model delivery, and Moreno's authorization mechanism is orthogonal, not inconsistent.

8. Where the patentee will push back — and the counters

1. "The examiner cited all of this and still allowed it." True as a matter of record — the face of US 8,224,707 cites Weng, Moreno, Swartz, Snitsig, Widjojo, Craigslist, ontherunerrands and the Randalls eBay guide. But citation is not a finding of non-obviousness; most of these appear as § 102/§ 103 citations in an ongoing file, and a challenger who supplies the missing limitation (most likely 1c or the compound f) with a non-cumulative reference plus a clean motivation can reopen the question. Recommendation: obtain the file history (office actions and applicant remarks) before finalizing any combination — that is where the actual reasoning for allowance will be, and I did not have it.
2. Claim 1 requires both models. The patentee will argue 1c demands deliverer-sourced seller identity while 1a–b demand a receiver-authored listing, so no single reference can meet it and the "combination is non-obvious." Counter: Set 1's Weng supplies the receiver-authored order and Set 3's Craigslist/ontherunerrands or Weng's patron criteria supply the deliverer-supplied destination — and the '707 itself treats these as alternatives in the same disclosure, which is strong evidence the two-way board was an obvious design choice.
3. Timing of limitation (f). The claim places authentication/confirmation "after the transaction … is complete," whereas the specification's ¶ 215 places authentication during confirmation before pickup — the internal tension flagged in the earlier drafting section. This yields a fork: either (i) the limitation reads on routine post-completion confirmations/receipts (order-confirmation email, delivery receipt), which Weng's "closing the transaction" plus Moreno's confirmation mechanics make obvious; or (ii) the claim lacks written-description support, a § 112 theory. A challenger should plead both.
4. Permissive claim language (1e). "May hold … may electronically post" means the limitation is met by a system merely capable of bank-held accounts and of serving the listing. That materially broadens the reading against the patentee's likely argument that a specific bank architecture is required.
5. "Non-transitory" in claim 8. Distinguishes nothing over the art; the medium recitation is a routine carrier for the same steps.
6. "At least one subsystem" in claim 15. Functional module recitation; Weng's system disclosure (client computer, four data-storage media, client-or-server computer performing the matching calculations) is the structural counterpart.

Realistic invalidity outlook: I would rate the claims as vulnerable — most likely claim 1/8/15 via Weng + Craigslist or ontherunerrands + Snitsig + Moreno (with Walker/Allen or Widjojo as secondary), with the dependent claims falling with the independent claims. Claims 6/13/20 in particular look close to anticipated by Weng's "adding a delivery fee to the patron's account." I do not make this as a formal conclusion of law; it is an analyst's assessment on the face-of-record art.

9. Secondary considerations

Nothing in the record supplied suggests objective evidence that would rebut a prima facie case: no asserted unexpected results (the patent's stated benefits — saving time and transportation cost — are the same benefits Weng recites as its purpose), no information on licensing tied to these claims, and no commercial-success nexus evidence available to me. If the patentee later asserts secondary considerations, the nexus question will be whether any success is attributable to the claimed combination (progress indication + bank account pathway + post-completion authentication + rating) rather than to crowd-delivery generally.

10. References worth developing (leads, flagged as not face-of-record and not fully verified)

I am deliberately labeling these as leads, not findings:

• WO 2008/106435 A2, eBay Inc., "Social shopping on a network-based marketplace" — surfaced in my search of the record's citations; abstract describes a community of users, a listing, and mutual updating of listing reputation scores and user reputation scores. Published 2008‑09‑04 (after the '707 filing), but it claims priority to US 60/904,337 (2007‑02‑28), 60/952,831 (2007‑07‑30) and US 11/860,791 (2007‑09‑25). If a US counterpart published/granted, pre-AIA § 102(e) effect as of a 2007–2008 US filing date is plausible. Verify the US member and its § 102(e) date. Relevant to limitations 1p, (d), (g)–(h). Source: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/36/b8/ef/52320be5aa29ed/WO2008106435A2.pdf
• WO 2008/142828 A1 ("Ishii") — a Japanese-origin application used in third-party invalidity contentions against Consumeron patents in this same subject area (proxy/agent shopping with mobile terminals, image/audio capture, GPS, server-set agent/buyer pairings, electronic-money settlement). If its international filing date predates 2008‑08‑20 and it designated the US in English, a § 102(e) date is possible. Verify filing/publication details before relying on it. Source is a PTAB-hosted petition exhibit: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1550092](/patent/1550092)/download-documents
• US 2008/0154706 A1 ("Bruecken") — vendor/customer proximity notification with GPS and a host system matching vendors to customers; used against Consumeron. Publication date appears to be June 2008 (about two months pre-filing), so § 102(a)/(e) analysis and any earlier priority claim must be checked.

These matter because the strongest invalidity theories often come from art the examiner did not cite, not from the examiner's own citation list.

11. Bottom line

• A prima facie § 103 case exists. The face-of-record art contains a near-complete teaching: Weng US 7,251,621 discloses crowd-patron pickup/delivery of purchased items with order-status indications, delivery-criteria matching, fee accounting, patron accounts and feedback scores; Craigslist (2004–2007) and ontherunerrands.com (2007) disclose the peer-to-peer, individual-authored listing/reply/errand-advertising practice, including the deliverer advertising the seller they are going to; Snitsig US 2008/0065514 adds the social-network account structure and listing-status updates; Moreno US 2002/0035515 / US 6,882,269 and the cited Walker/Allen references supply secure authorization and third-party account-based payment; Widjojo US 2005/0192958 supplies feedback display.
• The two hardest limitations to attack are 1c (deliverer supplies seller identity so another user can requisition a second item) and the compound 1f (removal plus authentication/confirmation to all three parties after completion). Both are satisfiable by the combinations above, but 1f should be attacked in the alternative (§ 112 support).
• Highest-value next steps: (1) pull the full file history to see the actual reason for allowance; (2) verify the off-record leads in § 10, especially any US counterpart to WO 2008/106435 and the WO 2008/142828 § 102(e) date; (3) obtain full text of Widjojo '958, Walker '209, Allen '271 and Bared '072 to convert my "title-level" mappings into citation-grade support.

Confidence: high on the Weng-based combinations and on the dependent-claim mappings; medium on the exact § 102(e) dates of the off-record leads; low on any assertion about uncited art I have not read. Where the live sources and my recollection conflict, I have followed the live sources, as instructed.