US 8775198

I'll search for litigation/docket information on this specific patent, then summarize.

Let me check for any litigation, PTAB, or Federal Circuit activity specifically involving this patent.

Summary — US Patent 8,775,198 B2

I checked for litigation, PTAB, and Federal Circuit activity for this exact number and found none (details and caveats in the last section). The bibliographic and claim summary below is drawn from the authoritative patent text you supplied.

Bibliographic data (from the patent document)

Abstract (verbatim): "The method and system provides image data of a prepared pharmacy product for review by a pharmacist located away from the prepared pharmacy product. The method and system enables the verification process to be ported to locations in which resources may be more efficiently utilized."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — Method. A method of verifying prescription drug orders across a network of pharmacy computers, comprising:

1. Creating a first electronic image object of at least a sample of the physical drug product for the prescription order, using a computerized imaging system connected to a first computer at a first pharmacy resource in a pharmacy.
2. Directing verification processing of the order from the first pharmacy resource to a second pharmacy resource outside the pharmacy.
3. Retrieving the first image object with a second computer at the second pharmacy resource, connected to the first computer via a computer network.
4. Retrieving a reference image object of the physical drug product with the second computer.
5. Determining at the second computer whether the imaged product corresponds to the reference product by comparing the two image objects, without viewing the physical drug product. That determination specifically requires:

• (i) displaying the first image adjacent the second image, including positioning one image to align manufactured drug markings in one image with corresponding manufactured drug markings in the other; and
• (ii) visual comparison by a user at the second pharmacy resource.

1. Releasing the prescription order at the pharmacy resource to a client once correspondence is determined.

The "position/align manufactured drug markings" step is the distinguishing heart of the independent claim — the image-to-image comparison is a visually aligned comparison, not merely displaying two images side by side.

Claim 11 — System. A system including:

• A first computer at a first pharmacy resource in a pharmacy;
• A measuring device to measure a quantity of the physical drug product for filling the prescription;
• An imaging system coupled to the first computer that creates the image object during the time the product is being measured (the measure-and-image simultaneity is a claimed element);
• The first computer directs the image object over a network to a second pharmacy resource with at least one available verification pharmacist, outside the pharmacy, and displays an indication of the verification result based on a received communication;
• A second computer at that second pharmacy resource, network-connected, adapted to retrieve the image object and a reference image object, display them adjacent with alignment of manufactured drug markings, and send a communication to the first computer as to whether the products correspond — the communication including instructions to release the order at the pharmacy resource to a client upon a determination of correspondence.

Claim 12 — Method (staffing/workflow variant). A method comprising: a pharmacy employee receiving the prescription and entering prescription data into a first computer at a first pharmacy resource in a pharmacy; a verification pharmacist reviewing the entered data using a second computer at a second pharmacy resource located outside the pharmacy and having a different availability of verification pharmacists than the first pharmacy; the employee measuring a quantity of the drug product and, while measuring, creating a first electronic image using an imaging system connected to the first or a third computer in the pharmacy; directing verification processing from the pharmacy to the second resource; the verification pharmacist retrieving the first image and an electronic reference image; and the verification pharmacist determining, without viewing the physical drug product, whether the imaged product corresponds to the reference image — again including adjacent display with alignment of manufactured drug markings plus visual comparison — followed by release of the order at the pharmacy resource to a client.

Selected dependent claims: blocking delivery at a register computer until verification (cl. 2); creating the image object by photographing the drug (cl. 3); an index of reference image objects retrieved by a drug identifier (cl. 4), where the drug identifier is associated with the prescription order (cl. 5); displaying a non-match indication at the first computer (cl. 6); enabling the user to raise an exception at the second computer (cl. 7); checking for adverse reactions from prior prescriptions/patient medical data (cl. 8); exceptions comprising an error flag or a displayed non-match indication, including an "unable-to-read" error (cl. 9); and "manufactured drug markings" encompassing indicia, shape, or coloring (cl. 10).

Litigation / CAFC / PTAB status — with explicit uncertainty

I found no case, IPR/PGR, or Federal Circuit appeal involving US 8,775,198. What my searches did surface, and why none of it matches:

• VDPP, LLC v. Walgreen Co., No. 2:25-cv-01208 (E.D. Tex., filed Dec. 11, 2025; consolidated into lead case 2:25-cv-01118) — asserts "two patents related to methods for image processing," but the sources do not identify 8,775,198 among them, and VDPP's asserted family is unrelated to pharmacy fill verification. Not confirmed as this patent.
• Compufill, LLC v. Walgreen Co., No. 3:11-cv-01114 (S.D. Cal.) — involved pharmacy-related patents such as 5,500,890; not 8,775,198.
• Other Walgreen patent suits (Nearby Systems, Virulite, Voltstar, S3G, ContactWave, Walgreen v. Takeda) list different patents entirely.
• A targeted search for "8775198" "CAFC 2026 docket" returned only unrelated non-patent documents (Brazilian municipality records), i.e., no Federal Circuit docket hit.

Material caveats:

1. I could not query PACER/Docket Alarm, USPTO PatentCenter, or the CAFC docket system directly; my check was search-engine based. A complete docket sweep (district courts, PTAB, and CAFC) would require those systems.
2. Absence of a search hit is not proof that no proceeding exists — particularly for pre-2011 filings, sealed cases, or settlement-dismissed cases that are poorly indexed.
3. There is an important distinction to keep straight: this patent's prosecution involved a substantial 1,390-day term adjustment, and cited prior art includes Walgreen's own 2005 separation/distribution applications (e.g., US 2007/0088569 for prescription verification) and the related US 2008/0306761 (George et al., patient access terminal). Those are prior-art/continuity references, not litigation.
4. Post-issuance assignments recorded in 2025 are security interests held by Wells Fargo and Sixth Street as collateral agents; they do not indicate a sale, exclusive license, or litigation.

If you need a definitive litigation/PTAB/CAFC answer, the next step would be a direct PACER docket search on "8,775,198" plus a PTAB API query, which I did not have access to here. I'd flag this section as unverified beyond open-web searching.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 8775198 specifically.

Let me search more targeted litigation resources.

Let me check specific litigation databases directly.

Litigation Search: US Patent 8,775,198

Bottom line

Based on my searches, I found no litigation specifically involving US Patent 8,775,198. I could not identify any district court case, CAFC appeal, ITC investigation, or PTAB proceeding in which US 8,775,198 was asserted or challenged.

Per your instruction to interpret identifiers literally and not return similar numbers, I limited results to the exact patent number 8,775,198.

What I searched

I queried multiple litigation-facing sources, including:

• General web queries for US 8775198 litigation, "8,775,198" lawsuit, and Walgreen patent 8775198 infringement
• Docket Alarm indexes
• Unified Patents litigation resources (portal.unifiedpatents.com)
• PTAB / PTACTS petition documents

No returned record named US 8,775,198 as an asserted or challenged patent. The litigation-style hits that did appear concerned different patent numbers and must not be attributed to this patent (see "False positives" below).

Concerning context about the patent

• Patent: US 8,775,198 B2 — "System and method for performing a remote verification of a pharmacy fill utilizing an image to image comparison"
• Assignee: Walgreen Co. (recorded assignments; most recent 2025 security-interest filings to Wells Fargo and Sixth Street Lending Partners)
• Inventors: Adam S. Wiener; Rong Huang
• Filing / priority date: July 25, 2007
• Grant date: July 8, 2014
• Status: Active; adjusted expiration listed as 2031-05-15

The patent sits in Walgreen's pharmacy-verification family. Notably, U.S. patent 8,775,198 cites family-member material such as US 2008/0306761 A1 ("System and Method of Performing Remote Verification of a Prescription in Combination with a Patient Access Terminal"), also Walgreen. The existence of a patent family does not itself establish litigation.

False positives explicitly excluded

These appeared in my searches but do not involve US 8,775,198 and should not be reported as its litigation:

Caveats and confidence

• Confidence: moderate-to-high that no litigation exists as of today (April 26, 2026), based on the searches performed. However, my search tools returned a limited set of results and I was unable to fully page through the Unified Patents litigation portal or Docket Alarm case lists for this exact number before hitting a tool-call limit.
• Litigation databases are not perfectly complete; a case could exist that was not captured by these searches.
• To be fully certain, the authoritative checks would be:
  • PACER docket search across all districts for civil actions naming "8,775,198"
  • Unified Patents Litigation Portal case list filtered to this patent
  • Docket Alarm / Lex Machina exact-number search
  • USPTO PTAB (PTACTS) search for IPR/PGR/CBM proceedings on this patent

If you'd like, I can run a follow-up pass targeting the Unified Patents portal and PACER-style databases specifically. Based on the evidence gathered so far, the correct answer is that no litigation involving US 8,775,198 is known.

PTAB / AIA Trial Landscape — U.S. Patent No. 8,775,198

Patent: US 8,775,198 B2 — System and method for performing a remote verification of a pharmacy fill utilizing an image to image comparison
Patent Owner: Walgreen Co. (current assignee of record; Google Patents legal status: Active, adjusted expiration 2031-05-15)
Application: 11/881,365 · Filed 2007-07-25 · Priority 2007-07-25 · Granted 2014-07-08
Inventors: Adam S. Wiener, Rong Huang

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) structured feed returned no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings for US 8,775,198 as of the most recent ingest, and my web searches (Google Patents, PTAB-tracking pages, litigation dockets, general web) surfaced no petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, termination, or Federal Circuit appeal naming this patent — the breakdown is therefore 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials.

Bottom line for a defendant: there is no PTAB shortcut and no canceled-claim ammunition, but also no PTAB-estoppel bar working against you. This is an untested-at-the-PTAB patent that is still fully alive through 2031-05-15, so an invalidity defense must be built from scratch — and conversely, you are free to be the first petitioner, with the entire pre-2014 prior-art record available and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel from anyone else's earlier trial. The absence of PTAB activity here is not a "hardened patent" signal; it is an "unattacked patent" signal, and one that has never been through an adversarial validity test at the Board.

Proceedings on file

None. The canonical structured source (USPTO ODP "PTAB proceedings on file" block) is empty, and no older or recently-filed proceeding was found via web search.

I did not locate — and will not invent — any of the following for this patent:

• an IPR, PGR, or CBM petition number;
• an institution decision (grant or denial);
• a Final Written Decision;
• a settlement/termination;
• a PTAB or Federal Circuit appeal.

Because there is no Final Written Decision, there are no claim-level outcomes to report. Claims 1–12 stand exactly as issued on 2014-07-08. Nothing below should be read as suggesting otherwise.

Verification trail (what I checked, and the limits of it)

Confidence and caveats: I have high confidence that no CBM or PGR was ever filed (CBM sunset for new petitions on 2020-09-15; this is a pre-AIA patent). My confidence is moderate-to-high on the absence of IPRs — ODP is authoritative but lags recent filings, and a very recent petition filed in the last ingest window could be missing. Low confidence / expressly unresolved: whether the '198 patent has ever been asserted in district court by Walgreen. I found no such assertion, but my search coverage of E.D. Tex./N.D. Ill./D. Del. dockets for this specific patent number is not exhaustive; treat "never asserted" as unverified. Validate both points in PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) and Patent Center (https://patentcenter.uspto.gov) before relying on them.

Strategic summary

Claim status. All twelve claims — independent claims 1, 11, and 12, plus dependents 2–10 — are SUSTAINED in the sense that they have never been canceled, disclaimed, or narrowed by any AIA trial. There are no CANCELED claims and no UNTESTED-in-IPR claims in any meaningful sense, because every claim is untested: the patent has never been through institution, let alone an FWD. If a demand letter or complaint asserts claims 1, 11, or 12, there is no PTAB disposition you can point to that weakens them. The only narrowing on record is whatever occurred during original prosecution (2007–2014), which I have not audited here.

Estoppel landscape. With zero IPRs, § 315(e)(2) estoppel is not in play for anyone — no petitioner, real party in interest, or privy has raised (or reasonably could have raised) § 102/§ 103 grounds before the Board on this patent. Practically, for a defendant being asserted against today:

• All prior-art grounds remain available, both in district court and in a first-filed IPR.
• If you file an IPR, you will be the one creating estoppel — so sequence your contentions carefully: an early IPR that is instituted and then loses (or wins only on some claims) will bar you from re-running those grounds in the litigation.
• Because the patent is pre-AIA (filed 2007-07-25), IPR is available but limited to patents/printed publications under § 102/§ 103; § 112 and § 101 are not IPR grounds. If your theory is that the imaging/alignment claim limitations lack written-description support or are directed to an abstract idea, IPR is the wrong vehicle — district court or (for § 112 only) an ex parte reexam track is the fit.

Pattern signals. There is no petitioner pattern to analyze: no serial filer, no defensive aggregator (nothing in the chain suggests Unified Patents or an RPX-style challenger ever touched this patent), and no PTAB appeal activity by Walgreen on this asset. Two adjacent signals are worth noting for context: (1) the patent's corporate-security history shows a 2025-08-28 security-interest grant to Wells Fargo as collateral agent (with Duane Reade, Walgreens Boots Alliance, Walgreens Specialty Pharmacy as co-assignors) and a 2025-08-28 free-form IP security agreement with Sixth Street Lending Partners — i.e., the portfolio is encumbered collateral, which can matter if you are negotiating a license or evaluating settlement authority; and (2) Walgreen holds later, same-space continuations-in-family and follow-ons, notably US 11,581,079 B1 ("System and method for virtual review of a pharmaceutical product filling process," Walgreen Co., priority 2012-04-10), plus US 2008/0306761 A1 ("System and Method of Performing Remote Verification of a Prescription in Combination with a Patient Access Terminal"). Confirm the exact family relationship of US 11,581,079 to the '198 patent through the Priority Applications tab before treating it as an extension of this patent — I have not verified a formal continuation link, only a shared assignee and technical subject matter.

The real defensive asset here is the record, not the Board. Although no one has petitioned, the patent's own citation record is a roadmap. The 116–123 cited references include art that goes directly to the core image-comparison concept: US 6,535,637 B1 (Esco Electronics — Pharmaceutical pill recognition and verification system, 2003-03-18), US 7,796,799 B2 (HD Medi — Inspection device for loose objects, such as tablets), US 5,597,995 (Automated Prescription Systems — imaging/filling/checking dispensed drug product), US 2004/0172289 A1 (Kozic — Method and system for remotely verifying a prescription), and Walgreen's own earlier US 2007/0088569 A1 (System for separating and distributing pharmacy order processing for prescription verification). Any of these, combined with a secondary reference on image alignment/marking-overlay, is a natural starting point for a § 103 challenge to claim 1's alignment limitation.

Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the negative on the authoritative systems before relying on it. Run the patent number in PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov) and the PTAB decisions search (https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions). ODP is the canonical feed, but it lags; a petition filed within the last ingest cycle would not yet appear. Also check CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com) and the Federal Circuit docket for any appeal originating from a PTAB proceeding on this patent — none is expected given zero proceedings.
2. Because there is no FWD to point to, the "claims are dead" argument is unavailable. Do not represent to a court or an adversary that any claim of the '198 patent has been canceled or narrowed by the Board — it has not. Your defenses are (a) non-infringement / claim-construction on the alignment and "without viewing the physical drug product" limitations of claims 1, 11, and 12, (b) § 102/§ 103 in district court, and (c) a first-filed IPR using the cited art above, which would carry no § 315(e)(2) estoppel burden because no prior petitioner exists.
3. Budget for the 2031-05-15 term. Any license or settlement valuation should assume a patent that is active until 2031-05-15 with all claims intact and no PTAB history to depress its settlement value. Conversely, the zero-challenge history means there is no existing invalidity record you can license cheaply off of.
4. Calendar IPR deadlines if you petition. Institution decision by § 314(b) (6 months from a complete petition), and a Final Written Decision by § 316(a)(11) (no later than 1 year from the institution date, extendable up to 6 months for good cause) — so a petition filed now would ordinarily reach FWD in roughly 18 months. No oral-hearing date, institution deadline, or FWD due date exists today because no proceeding is on file.
5. If the missing-PTAB premise matters to your strategy, re-run this check at the next ODP ingest. The patent is encumbered collateral owned by a large operating company with an active continuation practice in the same technology space; a change in assertion posture (e.g., if Walgreen begins enforcing remote-verification claims) is the most likely trigger for a first IPR, and that filing would show up in ODP before anywhere else.

No PTAB activity exists on US 8,775,198 as of 2026-09-28. That absence is itself the signal: an eleven-year-old patent in an actively practiced pharmacy-verification space that has never drawn a single IPR petition has simply never been adversarially tested — it is neither hardened by survival nor weakened by cancellation.

I'll research the assignment record for US 8775198, focusing on USPTO Assignment Center records, the original assignee's status, and any NPE signals.

I hit my tool-call budget before I could pull the underlying USPTO Assignment Center records for this specific patent number. Here is what the authoritative material I do have supports, with the gaps flagged rather than filled in.

Note: the authoritative patent text you supplied contains a Google Patents legal-events feed (which mirrors recorded USPTO assignments) but it does not expose reel/frame numbers for this patent. I could not retrieve reel/frame from the Assignment Center search pages within my tool budget. I am not inventing reel/frame values — see the caveat in the timeline.

Inventors

• Both inventors are listed on the filing-date assignment record as assignors to Walgreen Co. (per the Google Patents legal-events entry for 2007-07-25: "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST … Assignors: HUANG, RONG, WIENER, ADAM S."). That is the ordinary "employee assigns to employer" pattern and supports, but does not by itself prove, employment.
• The Illinois residences (Lake Zurich / Buffalo Grove) are consistent with Walgreen Co.'s Deerfield, IL headquarters.
• Unusual-pattern check: none observed. There is no record of the inventors assigning away from Walgreen Co., no personal (non-corporate) ownership interval, and nothing indicating inventor departure within 12 months of filing. This is a clean corporate-employee filing.

Original assignee

• Walgreen Co., Deerfield, Illinois — named assignee on the issued patent and still the current assignee of record per Google Patents.
• Primary line of business: the largest U.S. retail drugstore/pharmacy chain (retail pharmacy, front-of-store retail, specialty pharmacy, and health services).
• Does it ship a product embodying the claims? Substantially yes. The claimed subject matter — a networked pharmacy workflow that captures an image of a prepared drug and lets a remote pharmacist verify the fill by image-to-image comparison — is a Walgreens internal pharmacy-operations practice, and Walgreen Co. built a patent family around it (e.g., the related US 2008/0306761 A1 and the later Walgreen Co. patent US 11,581,079, "System and method for virtual review of a pharmaceutical product filling process," which cites this patent). This is an operating-company patent covering the assignee's own pharmacy workflow.
• Current status: Operating. Walgreen Co. became a subsidiary of Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc. (WBA) in the December 2014 holding-company reorganization, and following WBA's take-private by Sycamore Partners (deal closed 2025-08-28), Walgreen Co. now operates as a private standalone company under Sycamore. It is not dissolved and is not in bankruptcy.

Assignment timeline

Important limitation: the sources I could reach establish the existence, dates, and parties of the recorded events below, but not their reel/frame numbers. I list reel/frame as not retrieved rather than guess.

• 2007-07-25 (executed; recording date not retrieved) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)
  • Assignor: Adam S. Wiener and Rong Huang
  • Assignee: Walgreen Co., Deerfield, IL
  • Correspondent: not exposed in the available record
  • Context: Original employment/inventor assignment of rights to the operating company.

• 2025-08-28 (executed; recorded 2025-08-28 per legal-events feed) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: SECURITY INTEREST (patent security agreement / collateral grant)
  • Assignor: Walgreen Co.; Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc.; Walgreens Specialty Pharmacy LLC; Duane Reade (all as grantors)
  • Assignee: Wells Fargo Bank, National Association, as Collateral Agent
  • Correspondent: not exposed in the available record (Wells Fargo is acting as collateral agent — a lender-side role, not an owner)
  • Context: Securitization — collateral grant in connection with the Sycamore take-private financing (recorded on the same date the Sycamore acquisition closed). Not a transfer of ownership.

• 2025-08-28 (executed; recorded 2025-08-28 per legal-events feed) — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: FREE FORM MESSAGE INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY SECURITY AGREEMENT (security interest)
  • Assignor: Walgreen Co.
  • Assignee: Sixth Street Lending Partners, as Collateral Agent
  • Correspondent: not exposed in the available record
  • Context: Securitization — second/parallel collateral agent under the same 2025 financing package.

No other recorded transfers appear. In particular, despite the December 2014 creation of the Walgreens Boots Alliance holding structure, no change-of-name or intra-group ownership assignment is reflected for this patent — the assignee of record remained Walgreen Co. throughout.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 8775198
    2007 : Filed by Walgreen Co
         : Inventors assign rights to Walgreen Co
    2009 : Pre-grant publication
    2014 : Patent issued
    2025 : Security interest recorded to Wells Fargo
         : Security interest recorded to Sixth Street

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. No licensing-only LLC ("IP / Holdings / Ventures / Licensing") ever appears in the chain. Assignee of record has been the operating company Walgreen Co. continuously.
2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither Walgreen Co., Walgreens Boots Alliance, Inc., Walgreens Specialty Pharmacy LLC, nor Duane Reade matches any public NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, Spangenberg entities, etc.). Wells Fargo and Sixth Street appear only as collateral agents — creditors, not owners or asserters.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Not determinable / not present. The available record does not expose the correspondent of record for any of the three events, so I cannot assess recurrence. I am not inferring a correspondent from the collateral-agent bank's identity, since the recording attorney is not the bank itself.
4. Cascading transfers — Not present. There are no chained LLC-to-LLC transfers; the only post-issuance recordings are two same-day 2025 security interests, both to lenders.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No assignment precedes any known suit (no suit identified — consistent with the earlier litigation section of this analysis).
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. Walgreen Co. did not file Chapter 7/11; the 2025 event is a take-private acquisition (Sycamore) plus financing, not a bankruptcy sale.
7. Privateering — Not present. No transfer to a third-party NPE to assert on Walgreen's behalf. Walgreen Co. retains title.
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The chain never leaves the operating company: assignee of record is Walgreen Co., a retail pharmacy that itself practices the claimed remote-fill-verification workflow, and every post-issuance recording (2025-08-28, to Wells Fargo and Sixth Street as collateral agents) is a security interest, not an ownership transfer — zero NPE signals are present (no shell LLC, no asserter, no cascading or pre-litigation transfers, no bankruptcy sale, no privateering). Caveat: I identified no affirmative infringement suit by Walgreen on this patent, so the "assertion" limb is unproven; the accurately supported conclusion is "non-NPE, operating-company-owned," and the verdict would be Insufficient data only if the rubric strictly requires an actual filed suit.

Verification link: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 8,775,198) — also indexed at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. A direct query there is the missing piece needed to fill in the three reel/frame entries and the correspondent of record fields above.

I'll verify the patent's citation list against USPTO records and research the most relevant references.

Let me research several more key references from the citation list.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 8,775,198 B2

Patent: US 8,775,198 B2 — "System and method for performing a remote verification of a pharmacy fill utilizing an image to image comparison"
App. No.: 11/881,365 · Filed/Priority: July 25, 2007 · Granted: July 8, 2014 · Assignee: Walgreen Co. · Inventors: Adam S. Wiener, Rong Huang

Methodology / source note. The citation list below is taken from the authoritative full text you supplied (the "Patent Citations (123)" table). I attempted to cross-check the face of the patent against USPTO PatentCenter and to pull full text on the highest-value references; my tool budget was partly exhausted mid-run, so a few lower-tier entries are characterized from the title/assignee/date fields only. Where a figure came from a non-USPTO secondary source, I say so. I did not find any reference whose disclosure is confirmed on the record to be a § 102 anticipation — see the "Bottom line" below.

Bottom line up front

The cited art splits cleanly into two families that the patent itself combined for the first time in this claim set:

• Image-based drug-product verification — systems that image a prepared drug and compare it to a reference image or to the actual product (US 5,597,995; US 6,535,637; US 6,779,679; US 6,771,369).
• Remote/"telepharmacy" verification and work distribution — systems that move verification work and/or prescription images between sites or to a remote pharmacist (US 2004/0172289; US 6,711,460; Walgreen's own US 2007/0088569 and sibling 2005 applications).

The patent's point of novelty sits in the intersection: remote image-to-image comparison without viewing the physical product, where the display step specifically aligns manufactured drug markings so a human at the remote site can visually compare (claim 1(i)–(ii); same limitation appears in claims 11 and 12). No single cited reference that I reviewed discloses that full combination, so I do not assert a clean § 102 anticipation. What follows distinguishes (a) references with genuine § 102 bite on individual limitations from (b) art that is relevant only as § 103 background.

Legal frame: filed 2007-07-25, this patent is governed by pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 (including § 102(e) for published applications and § 102(g)). Post-2007 publications (e.g., US 2007/0214014, US 2008/0306761) can only be prior art via their earlier filing/priority dates, not their publication dates.

Tier 1 — References with the most direct § 102 relevance

1. US 6,535,637 B1 — "Pharmaceutical pill recognition and verification system"

• Assignee/inventors: Esco Electronics, Inc. (Wootton, Reznack, Hobson)
• Priority date: listed by Google Patents as 1997-04-04; granted 2003-03-18. (The related PCT, WO 00/06078, PCT/US99/17451, claims priority to US 09/126,296 filed 1998-07-30; the priority dating between these records is inconsistent across sources — flag as uncertain.)
• Disclosure: A pill-dispensing machine (Opti-fill II) images the contents of the filled vial with a color camera. An image of the bottle contents Ib is displayed on a video monitor "alongside a stored reference image Ir," and a pharmacist E compares them. Reference image Ir "represents one pill, or a prior sample of the type of pills for the medication indicated in prescription P." The system extracts color, shape, size, and markings/indicia, and uses a database of possible medications for classification. If the pharmacist rejects, the bottle is removed and the fill is repeated.
• § 102 assessment: This is the single closest reference on the image-to-image visual comparison concept of claim 1(ii) and claim 11's display step. It discloses displaying the captured product image adjacent a stored reference image object and having a human compare them. It is a strong § 102/§ 103 reference against the "retrieve a reference image object," "display adjacent," and "visually compare" limitations. However, it does not disclose remote verification (the pharmacist is at the machine), and it does not clearly disclose the claimed alignment of manufactured drug markings. Its disclosed comparison is largely machine classification corroborated by a human. → Best cited art for the image-comparison limitations of claims 1(i)–(ii), 11; not a standalone anticipation of claim 1.

2. US 5,597,995 A — "Automated medical prescription fulfillment system having work stations for imaging, filling, and checking the dispensed drug product"

• Assignee/inventors: Automated Prescription Systems, Inc. (Williams et al.)
• Filed 1995-11-08; granted 1997-01-28.
• Disclosure: Three-workstation retail pharmacy system (imaging → filling → checking). The checking station displays a digitized image of the prescribed drug product (16) and a digitized image of the original prescription (14); the pharmacist makes a first visual comparison between the drug-product image and the dispensed product in the vial, and a second visual comparison between the prescription image and the dispensed product. Includes a zoom feature on both images, bar-coded sign-off, and a will-call/bin queue with scan-based retrieval. The spec notes a stored "compilation of medical product visual images."
• § 102 assessment: Directly anticipates several structural limitations of claim 11 (first computer + imaging system + display of drug-product image + a reference/compilation) and the queue/blocking concepts behind claim 2 (in-process holding; scan-and-retrieve before release). Critically, it is an onsite system comparing image-to-actual-product, not remote image-to-image without viewing the product, and it lacks the manufactured-markings alignment. → Relevant to claims 1 (partial), 2, 11 (partial); not an anticipation of the independent claims as a whole.

3. US 2007/0088569 A1 — "System for separating and distributing pharmacy order processing for prescription verification"

• Assignee: Walgreen Co. · Filed 2005-10-18; published 2007-04-19 (app. 11/253,185).
• Disclosure (same corporate family as the patent-at-issue): Work on a prescription order is separated into portions and distributed among organizational units in a pharmacy network, with the workflow shown in FIG. 15, "a possible order verification workflow." The task object and original order data object are passed along queues defining work sequence; the application expressly addresses prescription verification as a distributable work type.
• § 102 assessment: This is the strongest cited art on the "directing verification processing of the prescription order from the first pharmacy resource … to a second pharmacy resource outside the pharmacy" limitation of claim 1 (and the analogous "different availability of verification pharmacists" language in claim 12). It is Walgreen's own earlier-filed application, so it is § 102(a)/(e) art. It does not, however, disclose imaging the prepared drug product, a reference image object, or image-to-image comparison. → Relevant to the routing/distribution limitation of claims 1 and 12; the imaging/comparison limitations are absent.

4. US 6,711,460 B1 — "Pharmaceutical system in which pharmaceutical care is provided by a remote professional serving multiple pharmacies"

• Assignee/inventor: Diebold Incorporated (Rod Reese)
• Provisional 60/299,116 filed 2001-06-18; app. 10/172,391 filed 2002-06-14; granted 2004-03-23. (Continuation US 7,630,788, 2009-12-08.)
• Disclosure: A single remote pharmacist oversees multiple pharmacies over a network. Prescription data and a "prescription image" are transmitted to the remote pharmacist, who directs a robot to prepare the item; a "robot observation camera" sends images to the pharmacist terminal (dependent claims recite the camera and that the pharmacy computer "cause[s] signals from the robot observation camera to be sent to the pharmacist terminal").
• § 102 assessment: Discloses remote professional verification across sites plus remote image observation of preparation — relevant to the "second pharmacy resource … outside the pharmacy" and remote-image limitations of claims 1 and 11. But (a) the transmitted image is the prescription document, not a reference drug-product image; (b) the camera shows robotic handling, not an image-to-reference-image comparison of the filled product; (c) no manufactured-markings alignment. → Relevant to claims 1 (remote-resource limitation) and 11 (remote resource, imaging); not an anticipation.

5. US 2004/0172289 A1 — "Method and system for remotely verifying a prescription"

• Inventor: Dejan Kozic · Filed/priority 2003-02-28; published 2004-09-02.
• Disclosure: A first site (pharmacy) sends prescription information and a prescription image (scan of the hard-copy Rx) to a remotely located second site pharmacist, who reviews and compares the prescription information and the prescription image and also reviews patient medical information to detect potential adverse effects (allergies, health conditions, current medications). Claims expressly cover the medical-information/adverse-reaction step.
• § 102 assessment: Closest cited art to the remote-review workflow and to claim 8 (checking for adverse reactions based on prior prescriptions and patient medical data). It does not disclose creating/retrieving a drug-product image object, a reference drug-product image, or an image-to-image comparison of the filled product. → Relevant to claims 1 & 12 (remote-resource/staffing aspects) and claim 8; not an anticipation of claim 1.

Tier 2 — References relevant to specific limitations

Each of these supplies at most one or two limitations and would function as § 103 combinable art, not § 102 anticipation. The identifier-indexed retrieval of claims 4–5 is well represented by the bar-code art (Gomez; and US 5,597,995's bar-code/POS index).

Tier 3 — Cited art that is not § 102-relevant to the claims

The large majority of the 123 citations are scheduling, workflow-balancing, EMR/telemedicine-transport, and general commerce references that predate the patent but do not touch the drug-product-imaging/comparison limitations. Representative groups:

• Workload/job scheduling & resource allocation: US 4,452,772; US 4,852,001; US 5,053,970; US 5,289,370; US 5,549,518 (sic — 5,548,518); US 5,630,070; US 5,737,728; US 5,765,139; US 5,826,236; US 6,202,080; US 6,266,655; US 6,666,740; US 2005/0125798; US 2004/0117046; Walgreen's own US 5,772,738/5,735,753-family and 2007/0088594, 2007/0088568, 2007/0088566, 2007/0088567, 2007/0088596, 2007/0088565, 2007/0088590.
• Pharmacy/healthcare information management, e-prescribing, EMR, telemedicine data transport: US 5,072,383; US 5,291,121; US 5,611,591; US 5,748,907; US 5,758,095; US 5,809,175 (sic — 5,801,755); US 5,911,687; US 5,915,240; US 5,924,074; US 6,347,329; US 6,523,009; US 6,463,417; US 5,987,519; US 2004/0220829; US 2004/0260577; US 7,769,601; EP 0 921 488; US 6,024,984 (sic — 6,025,984); US 6,763,745 (sic).
• Dispensing hardware/automation: US 5,337,919; US 5,797,515; US 5,946,883; US 6,364,517; US 6,370,841; US 6,625,952; US 6,874,684; US 6,464,142; US 7,139,639; US 7,111,780; US 7,171,992; US 6,299,999; US 5,852,259 (capsule weight measuring — note: measurement is relevant to claim 11's "measuring device," but the reference itself is about weighing capsules, not a measuring-plus-imaging verification workflow).
• General commerce/IT: US 4,457,772; US 5,260,868; US 5,551?, etc.; US 4,?? — plus the trademark/administrative and non-pharmacy entries (US 4,457,772 management control; US 5,071,? etc.).

The later documents in the record — e.g., US 2013/0238120 (CareFusion), US 9,930,297 / US 10,679,342 (Becton Dickinson), US 11,581,079 (Walgreen Co.) — appear under "Cited By," meaning they cite this patent. They are not prior art to it, and should not be treated as such.

Anticipation vs. obviousness — candid conclusion

For a pre-AIA § 102 anticipation of claim 1, one reference must disclose all of: (1) first image object of the drug sample; (2) routing verification from a first pharmacy resource to a second resource outside the pharmacy; (3) retrieval of the first image object and a reference image object by the second computer; (4) comparison without viewing the physical product; (5) adjacent display with alignment of manufactured drug markings; and (6) visual comparison by the user; plus release of the order.

• US 6,535,637 covers (1), part of (3), and (6), and is the best single reference on the adjacent image display — but is onsite, image-vs-stored-reference, and not shown to align manufactured markings.
• US 5,597,995 covers (1), the drug-product image display, and bin/scan release — but compares against the actual product, onsite.
• US 2007/0088569 / US 6,711,460 / US 2004/0172289 cover (2) and remote review — but transmit prescription data/document images, not a prepared-product image compared to a reference-product image.

Because no single reference I reviewed supplies the remote + image-to-image + manufactured-markings-alignment combination, the realistic citation posture is § 103 obviousness over combinations (e.g., US 6,535,637 or US 5,597,995 in view of US 2007/0088569 or US 6,711,460), not § 102 anticipation.

Caveats and confidence

1. Tool limits reached mid-analysis. I completed full-text review of US 6,535,637, US 5,597,995, US 2004/0172289, US 6,711,460, US 2007/0088569 (family context) and the Walgreen/Dickinson landscape; several Tier-2/3 entries are characterized from bibliographic fields only. Their § 102 conclusions should be regarded as preliminary.
2. Dating discrepancies. Source records disagree on priority dates for at least US 6,535,637 (Google shows 1997-04-04; the corresponding PCT shows a 1998-07-30 US priority). I have flagged rather than resolved this.
3. I did not independently confirm the complete citation list against USPTO PatentCenter/Global Dossier; counts in the supplied text differ between the "Citations" table (~116) and "Patent Citations" table (~123), and the tail of the second table is truncated. Some real citations may therefore be missing from this analysis.
4. Contradiction with the earlier generated summary (flagged as requested): the earlier "Patent summary" listed classification as "IPC G06Q 10/00, G06Q 50/00; current CPC G16H 20/10, G16H 40/67, G06Q 50/22." The authoritative supplied text shows only G16H classifications (G16H 20/00, 20/10, 40/00, 40/60, 40/67) and no G06Q entry. Treat the G16H-only listing as correct.
5. Nothing here is legal advice or a freedom-to-operate/invalidity opinion; a definitive § 102/§ 103 analysis requires the full file wrapper (Office actions and applicant responses), which I did not retrieve.

I'll ground the analysis in the prior-art references listed on the patent's own face. Let me verify the disclosures of the key references.

Obviousness Analysis — US 8,775,198 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Patent: US 8,775,198 B2, "System and method for performing a remote verification of a pharmacy fill utilizing an image to image comparison" (Walgreen Co.; filed 2007‑07‑25; granted 2014‑07‑08).
Source of record: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US8775198B2](/patent/US8775198B2)/en

Note on scope and evidence. Per your instruction, I used the prior art listed on this patent's own face — the "Patent Citations (123)" / "Citations (116)" tables and the "Families Citing this family" list. Because I do not have the full text of every listed reference, I retrieved and relied on the full text/disclosure of the load‑bearing references (US 5,597,995; US 6,535,637; US 6,711,460; US 2004/0172289) and the titles/metadata of the rest. Where a conclusion rests on a reference I could not open, I say so. This builds on the earlier summary sections (which cover bibliographic data and the litigation posture); I do not repeat that material.

Minor inconsistency flagged: the fetched page is timestamped 2026‑09‑28 while this task states the current date as 2026‑04‑26. Not material to the §103 analysis, but noted per your "flag contradictions" instruction.

1. Governing standard and premises

• Pre‑AIA § 103(a) applies. The application was filed 2007‑07‑25, before the AIA's first‑inventor‑to‑file provisions took effect (March 16, 2013). Prior art therefore arises under pre‑AIA §§ 102(a), (b), (e), and (g). Critically, pre‑AIA § 103(c)(1) permits disqualification of §102(e)/(f)/(g) art that was commonly owned at the time the invention was made — which matters because several cited references are Walgreen's own applications (see §3).
• Legal framework: Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966); KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (motivation may come from design incentives, market forces, "known technique to improve similar device," "obvious to try"); MPEP § 2143 (exemplary rationales). A reference is considered for everything it fairly teaches, In re Sneed; the references need not be physically combinable, In re Keller; art in the same field addressing the same problem is combinable, In re ICON Health & Fitness.
• Proposed PHOSITA: a person with a bachelor's degree in pharmacy, computer science, or a related engineering discipline, plus ~2 years of experience in pharmacy workflow systems and/or machine‑vision image processing, or equivalent. The specification does not define a PHOSITA and the claims add no special definition.
• What the independent claims actually add over the art. Claims 1, 11, and 12 share a common core: (a) image capture of the drug product at a first pharmacy site; (b) directing verification to a second site outside the pharmacy; (c) retrieving the captured image and a reference image object; (d) image‑to‑image correspondence determination without viewing the physical product, including adjacent display with alignment of manufactured drug markings plus human visual comparison; and (e) release of the order at the pharmacy on a match. The only sub‑element lacking a clean textual hit in the cited art is the alignment step — which is the focus of §6.

2. The prior‑art corpus on the patent's face (what each reference supplies)

3. § 103(c) caution on Walgreen's own cited applications

The five Walgreen applications published 2007‑04‑19 (US 2007/0088565, ‑8566, ‑8567, ‑8568, ‑8569, ‑8594, ‑8596) have a priority date of 2005‑10‑18 and a publication date less than one year before the '198 filing — so they are §102(e) art only, and because they were commonly owned by Walgreen at the time of invention, pre‑AIA §103(c)(1) could disqualify them as §103 prior art. The obviousness case below therefore stands on non‑Walgreen §102(b) art (Esco '637, APS '995, Diebold '460, Kozic '289/‑287, Medco '584, Si/Baker '142), which cannot be disqualified. By contrast, Walgreen's US 2006/0041330 (published 2006‑02‑23) is §102(b) art and remains available.

4. Does any single reference anticipate (§102)?

No cited reference appears to disclose all elements of claim 1 in one disclosure:

• APS '995 teaches adjacent display of a reference drug‑product image with the dispensed product and pre‑release pharmacist sign‑off, but its first comparison is image vs. the physical dispensed product, and it is a single‑site retail system with no remote second pharmacy resource.
• Esco '637 teaches image‑to‑image comparison (captured container image vs. stored reference image on one monitor) but performs it automatically by machine on site; its human review is a fallback.
• Kozic '289 and Diebold '460 teach remote verification, but the prescription image is of the prescription document, not a manufactured‑marking image of the dispensed drug product.

The combination, not any single reference, supplies every element. This is a §103 case.

5. Combinations that render the claims obvious

Combination A (primary) — APS '995 + Esco '637 + Kozic '289 (or Diebold '460)

Combination B — Esco '637 + Kozic '289 + Diebold '460

Same result, with Esco as the primary image‑comparison reference and Kozic/Diebold supplying the remote‑verification and staffing‑flexibility elements. Particularly clean for claim 12, whose "different availability of verification pharmacists" limitation is met almost verbatim by Diebold's stated problem (critical pharmacist shortage; underutilized pharmacists across sites) and Kozic's "bottleneck/overloaded" rationale.

Combination C (claim 11) — Diebold '460 + APS '995 + Esco '637, optionally + US 5,852,259 / US 6,364,517 / US 6,371,841

Claim 11's added elements are the measuring/counting device and imaging during measurement. Diebold '460 expressly discloses the preparation area containing "various automated counting or measuring devices" plus a robot observation camera; APS '995 discloses counting devices and weighing scales in the filling station. Mounting a camera at the count/measure station to capture the drug image contemporaneously is a routine engineering choice (a known technique applied to a known device ready for improvement).

Combination D (claim 2) — add Si/Baker '142 (or APS '995's will‑call compartments)

"Automatically blocking … delivery … at a register computer before determining [correspondence]" is met by Esco's "set aside and not released," APS '995's will‑call holding compartments, and prior automated will‑call systems (US 6,464,142; US 6,874,684).

Combination E (claims 6, 8, 9) — add Kozic '289 and Suwalski '014

• Claim 8 (adverse‑reaction screening from prior prescriptions and patient medical data) is expressly disclosed by Kozic '289 (allergy, health condition, current medication). Medscreen '121 and Advanced Health Med‑E‑Systems '255/'539 add further support.
• Claims 6/9 (non‑match display; error flag; "unable‑to‑read" exception) are met by Esco's alarm/"human inspection" staging and by Suwalski '014's pharmacy quality alert. Esco expressly provides for the "cannot categorically accept or reject" output — the essence of an "unable‑to‑read" exception.

Combination F (claims 4–5) — Esco '637 + bar‑code/identifier lookup

An index of reference images retrieved by a drug identifier is routine: Esco's extracted‑feature database keyed to the prescribed medication, APS '995's bar‑coded vial + drug‑graphics file, and Gomez '346's identifier‑driven verification all supply it.

6. Motivation to combine (KSR‑compliant rationales)

1. Same field, same problem, predictable result. APS '995, Esco '637, Diebold '460, and Kozic '289 all address the same problem — ensuring the correct drug reaches the patient while relieving pharmacist workload. Combining image‑based drug verification with a network that ports verification to a remote pharmacist is the combination of prior‑art elements "according to known methods" producing nothing more than the predictable sum of their parts (KSR).
2. Known technique applied to a known device ready for improvement. Esco's image‑to‑image reference comparison was a known technique for verifying a drug product. APS '995's checking station was a known device for pharmacist sign‑off. A POSITA facing APS '995's limitation — the pharmacist still had to look at the physical vial — had an obvious reason to substitute Esco's image‑to‑image comparison, which removes the need to handle the physical product.
3. Market/administrative pressure expressly in the art. Diebold '460 states the critical pharmacist shortage and underutilization problem; Kozic '289 states the bottleneck/overload problem and the need to "optimize resources." These are the very design incentives KSR recognizes as supplying motivation for the claimed "direct verification to a second resource outside the pharmacy."
4. Error‑reduction and safety incentive. Esco and APS '995 both tie verification to release control ("not released to the patient"; "before it is given to the customer"), motivating the claim's "releasing … after determining correspondence."
5. No teaching away. None of the cited art disparages remote or image‑based verification; Esco, Diebold, and Kozic all embrace it.

7. The crux: "positioning one image to align manufactured drug markings"

This is the element the patentee would rely on, and the strongest §103 argument against it is built directly from Esco '637's own disclosure:

• Esco teaches that "features such as scores and markings appear different from different pill orientations" and that the "final distinguishing feature is to recognize the alphanumeric markings on the individual pills." A POSITA implementing markings‑based visual comparison is thereby expressly taught that orientation matters and would orient/rotate one image relative to the other so the imprints line up — otherwise the comparison of markings is unreliable. That is precisely the claimed step.
• Esco already displays the captured image "alongside" the stored reference image for a pharmacist's visual comparison. Given that architecture plus the orientation disclosure, adding an alignment/orientation control is a predictable variation of a known UI (KSR: "if a technique has been used to improve one device … a person of ordinary skill … would recognize that it would be obvious to use the same technique to improve similar devices in the same way").
• The '198 patent's own specification undercuts any argument that alignment was a non‑obvious discovery: FIG. 10 and the corresponding description present the crop/align feature as an optional, selectable display tool ("This positioning may be automatic or may simply be provided as an option to the user"). It is presented as convenience, not as an inventive advance.
• Claim 10 broadly defines "manufactured drug markings" as "(i) indicia … (ii) a shape … or (iii) a coloring," i.e., exactly the Esco feature set (imprint, shape, color), further collapsing the gap.

Net: alignment of drug markings is obvious in view of Esco '637 alone or in combination with APS '995, and the claim does not recite any non‑routine algorithm or unexpected result for performing it.

8. Dependent-claim summary

9. Counterarguments and the weak points of the §103 case

Fairness requires stating what could defeat or weaken the challenge:

1. No single reference discloses the alignment step verbatim. A patentee will argue the examiner did not rely on any reference that explicitly aligns two pill images by their imprints, and that the '198 patent's narrowing from its own disclosed automated image‑comparison embodiment to a user‑performed, alignment‑based comparison signals deliberate distinguishing design. The rebuttal is KSR's "ordinary creativity" plus Esco's orientation teaching — but this element is the least bullet‑proof.
2. §103(c) common‑ownership shield. Walgreen's 2007‑published applications (2007/0088565–8596, ‑8594) may be disqualified as §103 art. Any challenge built on those must be rebuilt on the non‑Walgreen §102(b) references in Combination A/B, which is why those are the recommended primaries.
3. Secondary considerations are unassessed. There is no secondary‑considerations record in the material provided (commercial success, long‑felt need, industry praise, copying, failure of others). The Diebold/Kozic express statements of a long‑felt pharmacist shortage could be co‑opted by the patentee as evidence of a long‑felt need — but that need was already articulated in the prior art itself, which cuts against non‑obviousness of the solution rather than for it.
4. Reference‑status uncertainties I could not fully verify: US 7,796,799 (HD Medi) and the exact pre‑filing §102(e) dates for US 2006/0253346 and US 2007/0214014. None are load‑bearing for the primary combinations.

10. Bottom line and confidence

• Claims 1, 11, and 12 are, on the face of the cited art, likely obvious over APS '995 + Esco '637 + Kozic '289/Diebold '460, and a proper §103 rejection would likely be made in that or a similar three‑reference combination.
• Highest confidence (explicit textual support): elements (a) through (f) of claim 1, and claims 2, 3, 8, 10, 11, 12.
• Moderate confidence: the "adjacent display" element (supported expressly by Esco's "alongside" and APS '995's dual‑image checking screen).
• Lowest confidence / the only genuinely contestable element: the "positioning one image to align manufactured drug markings" limitation — obvious by design choice given Esco's explicit orientation teaching, but not disclosed verbatim by any one reference I examined.

Verification caveat: This is an attorney‑style obviousness assessment based on the patent's own citation list plus the full texts of four key references; I did not obtain full texts or file histories for every one of the ~120 cited documents, nor the '198 prosecution record (its 1,390‑day term adjustment implies substantial prosecution activity that could reveal what the examiner did and did not rely on). Confirming a real‑world rejection would require the file wrapper, the full reference texts, and any secondary‑considerations evidence.