US 11961061

I'll search for this specific patent number across the requested sources.

Now let me check for CAFC 2026 docket activity and litigation involving this patent.

Summary of US Patent 11,961,061

Important scoping note: I searched for the literal identifier 11961061 (no auto-correction). I found no CAFC 2026 docket entries and no live USPTO PTAB proceeding keyed to this exact patent number. The litigation/PTAB activity I located concerns earlier family members (U.S. 10,121,133 and U.S. 10,803,435), not this patent — I flag that distinction below rather than conflate them.

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Bibliographic data (confirmed from the authoritative patent text supplied)

Continuation chain (per CROSS-REFERENCES section): 61/392,908 (2010) → 12/947,545 (filed Nov. 16, 2010, now US 10,121,133) → 15/956,400 (divisional, Apr. 18, 2018) → 16/730,567 (Dec. 30, 2019, now US 10,803,435) → 17/004,819 (Aug. 27, 2020) → 18/217,945 (this patent). Two later continuations are also noted in the family record: US 18/427,556 → US 12,412,164, and US 19/312,107 → US 2025/0390856 A1.

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Abstract (verbatim)

"A method for purchasing an item using a mobile device is provided. The method includes but is not limited to inputting identification information into the mobile device which identifies the item for purchase and generating an order for the item identified by the identification information. The method also includes but is not limited to displaying on a display of the mobile device an optical machine-readable representation of the order."

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Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The full verbatim claim set was not present in the authoritative text I was given (the fetched page omitted the claims section), so the claim numbering below is my best reconstruction from the patent's own SUMMARY "aspects." Treat this as moderately, not fully, verified.

1. Method — mobile self-checkout / order display (the headline independent claim, matching the abstract). A shopper uses a mobile device to enter identification information identifying an item (e.g., scan a UPC/barcode or key it in); the system builds an order for that item; and the mobile device displays an optical machine-readable representation of the order (e.g., a 1D/2D barcode encoding a unique identifier such as an order number or unique mobile identifier). The shopper can present that displayed code to a cashier or self-checkout scanner to retrieve and pay for the order, rather than re-scanning each physical item.

2. Computer-readable memory / software — camera-based purchasing. Program instructions cause a processor to: capture an image of an identifying portion of the item with the device's digital camera; analyze it to derive identification information (OCR/barcode decoding); generate a virtual shopping cart containing item information looked up from that identification information; and transmit payment information from the mobile device to a remote server to accept the order. Emphasizes camera capture + server-side lookup + remote payment.

3. Method — camera-based purchase-to-receipt flow. Similar capture/analyze/cart/order steps, plus tendering payment, transmitting payment information to a remote server, generating a receipt indicating acceptance of payment, and displaying that receipt on the mobile device's display. Adds the receipt/acknowledgment loop to the method.

4. Computer-readable memory / software — virtual transaction maintenance (the "terminal sales application" claim). This is the back-end/side-channel claim: program instructions to (a) access a session of a virtual terminal sales application (VTSA) upon receiving a point-of-sale (POS) message, (b) load transaction state information into that VTSA session, and (c) process the transaction state information using the open session. It underpins the "transaction transfer" concept — importing/exporting per-transaction state keyed by a unique identifier so a limited pool of virtual POS sessions can serve many concurrent shoppers.

Dependent/other disclosed features include: a quantity-select and update-quantity UI; remove-item and cancel-order confirmations; location-based store identification (GPS/triangulation); order history; shopping-list import; choice of tender (cash, credit, debit, PayPal™/Google Checkout, gift card, store credit, check, money order); and either mobile-side payment or payment at a traditional cashier/SCO.

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Litigation / PTAB context (related family members — not verified as applying to 11,961,061 itself)

Searches surfaced PTAB challenges brought by BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. v. Walmart Apollo, LLC against the parent patents in this chain:

• IPR2022-01471 — petition for inter partes review of U.S. 10,121,133 ("Method for Self-Checkout with a Mobile Device").
• IPR2022-01528, -01561, -01563, -01564 — directed to U.S. 10,803,435; per a docket-derived listing, all challenged claims were found unpatentable in 1528, 1563, and 1564, and institution was denied in 1561.

Because 11,961,061 is a later continuation in the same family, adverse outcomes on the parents could bear on its exposure, but I have no authoritative confirmation of any proceeding, court case, or CAFC appeal specifically naming 11,961,061, and I found no CAFC 2026 docket for it.

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Confidence / uncertainty statement

• High confidence: title, numbers, dates, inventors, assignee, abstract, continuation chain, and the substantive subject matter (all drawn from the authoritative patent text and corroborated by Justia/Golden/PatentLeaderboard listings).
• Moderate confidence: the exact wording and numbering of the independent claims and their total count — the verbatim claims were not in the source text I received, so the four "aspects" above are reconstructed from the SUMMARY.
• Explicit non-findings: No CAFC 2026 appeal or docket for 11961061 was located; searches for that specific docket returned zero results. I did not confirm any IPR or district-court case naming this exact patent. I cannot represent that none exists — only that my searches did not surface one.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 11961061. Let me search multiple sources.

I found a Walmart v. Q Technologies case, but note it involves US 11,991,239 B2 — a different patent. Let me search more specifically.

Key finding: the '061 patent is in the same family as US 10,121,133 and 10,803,435, which were asserted in the BJ's case. But I must verify whether the '061 patent itself is asserted. Let me search specifically.

Summary of Findings: Litigation Involving US 11,961,061

Bottom line: I could not identify any litigation that specifically asserts US Patent 11,961,061. Based on my searches, I found no complaint, judgment, ITC action, or PTAB proceeding naming US 11,961,061 as a patent-in-suit. I want to flag one important caveat about my search coverage at the end.

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1. Direct litigation on US 11,961,061

None found.

• US 11,961,061 ("Method for self-checkout with a mobile device") is owned by Walmart Apollo, LLC. It issued April 16, 2024 from application 18/217,945 (filed July 3, 2023), and claims priority to October 13, 2010.
• The Google Patents family page carries a "Family has litigation" flag with a Darts-IP family link (family 45934919). Notably, that flag is a family-level indicator, not evidence that the '061 patent itself was asserted. The '061 patent did not exist until April 2024, so any litigation captured by that flag predates its issuance and necessarily concerns related family members.

2. Related—and distinct—family litigation (not the '061 patent)

The '061 patent is a continuation in a chain: 12/947,545 → US 10,121,133 → 15/956,400 → US 10,803,435 → 17/004,819 → 18/217,945 (US 11,961,061). It shares a specification and priority with those patents.

Sam's West, Inc. and Walmart Apollo, LLC v. BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc.

Critical point: The '133 and '435 patents asserted in this case are predecessors to the '061 patent — they are not US 11,961,061. This case is relevant only because the '061 patent shares that family.

3. A case that is NOT a match (explicitly excluded)

My search surfaced Walmart, Inc. v. Q Technologies, Inc., D. Del., Case No. 1:26-cv-00961 (2026). That action is a declaratory judgment for non-infringement/invalidity of US 11,991,239 B2 — a different patent number from US 11,961,061. Under the strict instruction not to auto-correct or conflate identifiers, I am treating this as unrelated and not reporting it as litigation involving the '061 patent.

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4. Limitations on this search (stated explicitly)

• I was unable to directly query the Unified Patents litigation portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist), RPX Insight, or PACER before reaching my search-step limit, so I cannot rule out a very recent or low-profile case naming the '061 patent.
• My searches were directed at the '061 number and at the Walmart/Sam's Club self-checkout family. No result named 11,961,061 as a patent-in-suit.
• Because the '061 patent issued only in April 2024, any assertion campaign would likely be recent (2024–2026). Given the active BJ's dispute over sibling patents, additional family-member assertions (potentially including the '061 patent) are plausible but were not confirmed by my searches.

Recommendation for confirmation: Run a direct docket query on PACER/RPX/Darts-IP for the '061 patent number and the Darts-IP family 45934919, which is the authoritative way to confirm whether the '061 patent itself has been pleaded in any case.

I'll verify the "no proceedings on file" default against public sources, focusing on the '061 patent specifically and its family.

Important lead: a joint status report says the '435 parent's claims were held unpatentable and appealed. Let me pull the details.

Let me confirm there's no IPR naming the '061 patent itself, and pin down the sibling-patent proceedings.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 11,961,061: 0. The canonical structured feed (USPTO Open Data Portal) returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding naming this patent, and my independent web searches likewise surfaced none — no petition, no institution decision, no FWD, no Board docket entry. Breakdown by status is therefore not applicable (0 active / 0 invalidated / 0 sustained / 0 settled / 0 denied).

The bottom line for a defendant is not "the patent has survived two IPRs and is hardened." It is the opposite of hardened: the '061 patent is an untested continuation whose direct ancestor, U.S. 10,803,435 — same specification, same title, same claimed subject matter — had every challenged claim (1–19) canceled by the PTAB, and that cancellation was affirmed by the Federal Circuit on 2026-04-13 (Rule 36, no opinion). A demand letter citing US 11,961,061 is citing a patent on which nothing has been litigated at the Board, but whose family has already lost comprehensively once.

Because the Board has issued no decision on the '061 claims, I am not going to present family-member outcomes as if they were claim-level results for '061. Instead, the sections below are labeled as family-member proceedings (NOT on the '061 patent) and are provided strictly as defensive context. I flag this distinction explicitly because conflating them would be an error — the '061 patent did not exist until 2024-04-16, so it cannot have been the subject of any of these filings.

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Related-family proceedings (context only — none are proceedings on US 11,961,061)

Ordering is by defensive impact on an assertion of the '061 patent.

IPR2022-01564 — BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. v. Walmart Apollo, LLC

Patent at issue: US 10,803,435 (parent/ancestor) — NOT the '061 patent

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2022-09-22
• Status: Final Written Decision — all challenged claims unpatentable; appealed
• Judge panel: Per the institution decision, Patrick R. Scanlon, Neil T. Powell, Mitchell G. Weatherly (per Banner Witcoff summary of Paper 9, 2023-04-11)
• Petition grounds: Claims 1–14. Ground 1: anticipation under 35 U.S.C. § 102(a)(1) (post-AIA) by Keith; Ground 2: obviousness under § 103 over Hanson in view of Keith. Both references post-date the 2010 provisional; the entire case turned on whether the claims were entitled to the '908 provisional / '545 application priority date.
• Institution decision: Instituted (claims 1–14, all grounds, all claims, per SAS). The panel found the challenged claims were not entitled to the '908 provisional or the '545 application priority date because the "rendering" and "optically scanning" limitations were first added in the 2019-filed '567 application — making Keith (earliest priority 2013-03-13) and Hanson (2011-12-29) prior art.
• Final Written Decision: Issued 2024-04-10, determining claims 1–14 unpatentable. The priority-date holding is the headline: the Board (upheld on appeal) concluded the '435 claims could not claim the 2010 priority date, so intervening 2011–2013 art applied.
• Settlement / termination: None — decided on the merits.
• Appeal: Yes. Consolidated as CAFC Nos. 2024-1952, 2024-1953, 2024-1954 (Walmart Apollo, LLC v. BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc., with the USPTO Director as intervenor). AFFIRMED by per curiam Rule 36 judgment (Moore, C.J., Mayer and Lourie, JJ.) entered 2026-04-13; nonprecedential, no opinion. Source: https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/24-1952.RULE_36_JUDGMENT.4-13-2026_2674995.pdf
• Defensive value: Highly material. It establishes, in a final, court-affirmed holding, that the specification shared with the '061 patent does not support a 2010 priority date for claims reciting the 2019-era "rendering"/"optically scanning" limitations. If the '061 claims contain those same limitations, a defendant has a ready-made priority attack that unlocks 2011–2013 prior art (Keith, Hanson) as § 102/§ 103 art against '061 — art Walmart cannot antedate.

IPR2022-01563 — BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. v. Walmart Apollo, LLC

Patent at issue: US 10,803,435 — NOT the '061 patent

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2022-09-22
• Status: Final Written Decision — all challenged claims unpatentable; appealed
• Judge panel: Scanlon, Powell, Weatherly (same panel as -01528/-01564; the three were heard together).
• Petition grounds: Claims 1–14, addressed together with -01564 at the oral hearing, involving Yong- and Fletchall-based § 102/§ 103 grounds. (Ground-to-proceeding mapping between -01563 and -01564 is not fully confirmed from the source text I retrieved; I do not assert it with certainty.)
• Institution decision: Instituted on claims 1–14.
• Final Written Decision: Issued 2024-04-11, all challenged claims unpatentable (per the expert CV of Dr. Shamos: "In 1528, 1563, and 1564, all challenged claims were found unpatentable.").
• Settlement / termination: None.
• Appeal: Yes — part of CAFC Nos. 2024-1952/-1953/-1954; AFFIRMED 2026-04-13 (Rule 36).
• Defensive value: Confirms that the '435 claims 1–14 are dead and that the invalidity was affirmed. Same priority vulnerability as -01564.

IPR2022-01528 — BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. v. Walmart Apollo, LLC

Patent at issue: US 10,803,435 — NOT the '061 patent

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2022-09-22
• Status: Final Written Decision — claims 15–19 unpatentable; appealed
• Judge panel: Patrick R. Scanlon, Neil T. Powell, Mitchell G. Weatherly
• Petition grounds: Claims 15–19 of the '435 patent, asserted as anticipated (§ 102) and obvious (§ 103) over Korean Patent Publication No. 10-2007-087811 ("Yong") with translation, plus Fletchall. Petitioner submitted supplemental translation/authenticity exhibits (Exs. 1027–1030) by order of 2023-06-06.
• Institution decision: Instituted 2023-04-12.
• Final Written Decision: Issued 2024-04-11 ("Judgment — Final Written Decision Determining All Challenged Claims Unpatentable, 35 U.S.C. § 318(a)"). Holding: "Petitioner has shown by a preponderance of the evidence that claims 15–19 of the '435 patent are unpatentable."
• Settlement / termination: None.
• Appeal: Yes — CAFC Nos. 2024-1952/-1953/-1954; AFFIRMED 2026-04-13 (Rule 36).
• Defensive value: Claims 15–19 (the "converting a mobile phone into a mobile point-of-sale device" claims) are canceled with court-affirmed finality. Notably, these claims are the closest in scope to what the '061 patent likely claims (wireless mobile self-checkout with virtual terminal sales application); the Yong/Fletchall combination is a proven, Board-tested kill shot against that architecture.

IPR2022-01561 — BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. v. Walmart Apollo, LLC

Patent at issue: US 10,803,435 — NOT the '061 patent

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2022-09-22
• Status: Institution denied
• Judge panel: Same three-judge panel (Scanlon, Powell, Weatherly).
• Petition grounds: Claims 1–14, Fletchall-based § 103 grounds.
• Institution decision: DENIED. The panel construed the repeated "server" recitations in claims 1 and 10 as referring to the same server, and found BJ's motivation to modify Fletchall (combine its product-database server and payment server onto one) to be "unconvincing" — reasoning that a rationale based merely on components being on the same network and able to communicate would lead to "absurd results."
• Final Written Decision: None (institution denied; not appealable, § 314(d)).
• Settlement / termination: N/A.
• Appeal: None — institution denials are final and nonappealable.
• Defensive value: This is the patent owner's one genuine win in the '435 set, and it is a warning. It shows the Board will construe a "single/ same server" limitation favorably to Walmart, so any '061 invalidity theory built on a multi-server prior-art system must supply a strong, articulated reason to combine — not merely "they're on the same network."

IPR2022-01471 — BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. v. Walmart Apollo, LLC

Patent at issue: US 10,121,133 (grandparent) — NOT the '061 patent

• Type: Inter Partes Review
• Filed: 2022-08-29
• Status: Institution denied (decision dated 2023-04-12)
• Judge panel: Neil T. Powell, Mitchell G. Weatherly, Arthur M. Peslak; opinion authored by Weatherly, A.P.J.
• Petition grounds: Claims 1–6. Four grounds: (1) claims 1–5 as obvious over Watanabe + Giordano; (2) claim 6 over Watanabe + Giordano + Ogilvy; (3) claims 1–5 over O'Hagan + Watanabe + Giordano; (4) claim 6 over O'Hagan + Watanabe + Giordano + Ogilvy. All § 103.
• Institution decision: DENIED — the Board concluded "Petitioner is not reasonably likely to prevail with respect to at least one of the challenged claims."
• Final Written Decision: None.
• Settlement / termination: N/A.
• Appeal: None.
• Defensive value: The '133 claims survived a full merits-level preliminary attack on the Board's reasonable-likelihood standard. Do not assume the '061 patent's optical-barcode/order-display claims are easy kills — the Watanabe/Giordano/O'Hagan art has already been tried and rejected against the sibling '133 claims.

Two further instituted IPRs on US 10,368,187 and US 10,368,188 (proceeding numbers not confirmed)

Patents at issue: US 10,368,187 / US 10,368,188 — NOT the '061 patent

• Per the parties' Joint Status Report (M.D. Fla., Dkt. 142, 2024-07-29), the PTAB issued FWDs in all five instituted IPRs, and concluded that "no claims challenged as to the '187 and '188 Patents are unpatentable" — i.e., Walmart prevailed on those two patents. I was unable to confirm the two proceeding numbers before reaching my search limit, and I decline to guess them.

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Strategic summary

Claim status on US 11,961,061 itself: entirely UNTESTED. No claim of the '061 patent has been canceled, sustained, or even construed by the Board. The family picture, however, is lopsided: the '435 patent's claims 1–19 are all canceled and the cancellation is final after the Federal Circuit's 2026-04-13 Rule 36 affirmance, while the '133, '187, and '188 patents have survived every challenge (two institution denials on '133; FWDs finding no challenged claims unpatentable on '187/'188). Walmart's continuation strategy appears to be repopulating the family with new claims after the '435 wipeout — the '061 patent (issued 2024), US 12,412,164, and US 2025/0390856 A1 are the post-wipeout vehicles. Because '061 issued from application 18/217,945, a 2023 continuation, the intervening-art surface is enormous if its priority date is vulnerable.

Estoppel landscape. IPR estoppel under 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) is claim-scoped: BJ's estoppel from the '435 FWDs bars BJ's (and its privies/RPIs) from re-asserting, in the M.D. Fla. action and before the Office, grounds it raised or reasonably could have raised against the '435 claims. It does not bar a challenge to the claims of US 11,961,061, a different patent — though a defendant who is a BJ's privy would face § 325(d)-style and General Plastic headwinds on the same art. Conversely, because estoppel in district court reaches only § 102/§ 103 patent/printed-publication grounds, a defendant retains § 101, § 112 (written description/enablement — precisely the theory that killed the '435 priority claim), on-sale bar, and inequitable-conduct/unenforceability defenses against '061 free of any estoppel. Two clean, non-estopped avenues therefore exist: (a) a priority/written-description attack replicating the -01564 theory to strip the 2010 date and bring in Keith (2013) and Hanson (2011) as art; and (b) the Yong + Fletchall combination that succeeded in -01528, adapted to whatever the '061 independent claims recite.

Pattern signals. The same petitioner (BJ's, through Vorys Sater) filed four concurrent IPRs on one patent ('435) and one on its sibling ('133) — an aggressive, rank-and-file strategy, not a Unified Patents–style defensive aggregator (I found no Unified Patents involvement in this family). The patent owner (Walmart, through Jones Day, with Jones Day appellate counsel Jennifer L. Swize) did appeal aggressively, taking all three adverse '435 FWDs to the Federal Circuit — where it lost on a Rule 36 summary affirmance, i.e., without even securing a precedential opinion. The absence of any IPR on the '061 patent is explainable and not a validation signal: the patent is young (issued 2024-04-16) and, per my litigation research, has not yet been asserted against anyone.

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Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant served with a complaint alleging infringement of US 11,961,061: a § 315(b) one-year clock runs from service. Calendar it immediately. Confirm the earliest possible filing date by pulling the E2E docket for application 18/217,945 at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/.
2. Do not cite the '435 FWDs as if they canceled '061 claims — they did not. You can and should cite them for their priority/§ 112 reasoning. Pull the -01564 FWD (2024-04-10) and the -01528 FWD (2024-04-11) and read the priority-date analysis carefully — the "rendering"/"optically scanning" written-description holding is the asset. The affirmance is here: https://www.cafc.uscourts.gov/opinions-orders/24-1952.RULE_36_JUDGMENT.4-13-2026_2674995.pdf. Note it is a nonprecedential Rule 36 summary affirmance with no opinion — persuasive, but not binding authority.
3. Run a claim-chart against the '061 claims. The claims were not in the source text I retrieved, so I cannot tell you whether '061 recites the 2019-added "rendering"/"optically scanning" limitations. If it does, the priority attack is live; if it does not, '061 may actually be entitled to 2010 priority and the Keith/Hanson route closes. This is the single most important open question and it is answerable from the issued patent in minutes.
4. PGR is unavailable. The 9-month post-grant window from the 2024-04-16 grant closed on 2025-01-16. IPR (or district-court/ITC invalidity) is the remaining PTAB route, subject to the § 315(b) year.
5. Confirm the null result directly. The ODP feed shows zero proceedings, but the ODP ingest lags recent filings. Verify on PTAB E2E and the Unified Patents PTAB caselist (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/ptab/case/IPR2022-01528 shows the family pattern) — a petition filed within the last few weeks naming '061 could exist without appearing in the structured data I was given. I cannot represent that none exists; I can only report that the canonical feed and my searches found none.
6. Track the two other post-'435 continuations, US 12,412,164 and US 2025/0390856 A1 (application 19/312,107). Walmart is clearly continuing to file in this family; expect any future assertion campaign to be waged with the newest claims, and expect the same priority/§ 112 vulnerability to recur in each.

Please flag if you have the '061 claim text — the whole defensive posture hinges on whether those claims carry the 2019-era limitations that cost the '435 patent its 2010 priority date.

I'll research the assignment record for US 11,961,061 using the authoritative patent text and targeted searches.

Let me search for the specific assignment records and correspondent information.

Let me search for the specific assignment records keyed to this patent's application number.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US Patent 11,961,061

Scope note. I attempted to pull the patent-specific records from USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) and its legacy mirror (https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html), searching by patent number 11961061 and by application 18/217,945. I was able to retrieve the two post-filing reassignment events from the authoritative patent text (Google Patents legal events), but I could NOT retrieve the exact reel/frame numbers or the recorded correspondent of record for the 061-specific entries within this search window. I flag every place that data is missing rather than inventing it. Corroborating records from other Walmart Apollo applications are labeled as such and not attributed to this patent.

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Inventors

Employer determination caveat: I do not have a direct employment record for any inventor. The inference rests on (a) all listed residences clustering in Walmart's Bentonville/Rogers/Lowell, AR home-office corridor, (b) the application being filed with Walmart Apollo, LLC as applicant, and (c) the inventors executing an assignment to Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. This is strong circumstantial evidence of Walmart/Sam's Club employment but is not a documented personnel record.

Unusual patterns: None of the tell-tale "mass inventor departure within 12 months of filing" pattern appears — and it could not here, because the assignment to the corporate parent was executed in 2023, roughly 13 years after the 2010 priority filing, as a batch confirmatory recording (see timeline). There is no evidence any inventor left the assignee to form a competing entity, and no inventor is named as an assignor to any third party.

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Original assignee

• Named on the issued patent: Walmart Apollo, LLC (Bentonville, AR) — a Delaware-organized limited liability company; Walmart's IP-holding subsidiary.
• First assignee of record (per the Aug. 9, 2023 assignment chain): Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. (the pre-2018 corporate name; now Walmart Inc.). Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. then assigned to Walmart Apollo, LLC.
• Primary line of business: Walmart Apollo, LLC is a patent/trademark-holding subsidiary of Walmart Inc., the world's largest retailer (per Walmart's own TTAB filings, "more than 5,000 stores in the United States"). It is not itself a products company; it holds IP for the Walmart/Sam's Club enterprise.
• Does Walmart ship a product embodying the claims? Yes. The claimed mobile self-checkout flow corresponds to Sam's Club "Scan & Go" and, per the family litigation, is asserted against BJ's "Express Pay" mobile app. The specification's user interface (scan an item, build a virtual cart, pay from the phone or display a barcode for a cashier) tracks the Scan & Go experience.
• Current status: Operating. Walmart Inc. / Walmart Apollo, LLC is an active, solvent operating enterprise — not acquired, dissolved, or in bankruptcy.

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Assignment timeline

Only two post-issuance/post-filing assignment events are evidenced in the authoritative patent text (Google Patents legal events). Reel/frame and correspondent were not retrievable for these two entries; I mark them accordingly and do not guess.

• 2023-08-09 (executed) / recorded 2023-08-09 — Reel not retrieved / not confirmed

  • Conveyance: Assignment (Google Patents tags it "reassignment")
  • Assignor: TODD, JASON RICHARD; WEBB, TIMOTHY WAYNE; MARBUT, PHILIP WAYNE; NELMS, DAVID MARTIN; RYNER, DOUGLAS JAHE (all five named inventors)
  • Assignee: WAL-MART STORES, INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved (Google Patents legal events omit correspondent; USPTO Assignment Center record not confirmed within search window). Pattern note: on a parallel 2023 Walmart Apollo recording for a different application (App. 18/462,588, Reel 064827/0881, recorded 2023-09-07) the correspondent of record was Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP (Palo Alto), submitter Manita Rawat; and an earlier Walmart recording (App. 16/752,521, Reel 051617/0927, recorded 2020-01-24) used Duane Morris LLP (Walmart), submitter also Manita Rawat. This recurring-submitter pattern is Walmart's own outside-counsel docketing, i.e., operating-company patent work — not an NPE tell — and I explicitly do not attribute those reel/frame entries to the 061 patent.
  • Context: Inventor-to-corporate confirmatory assignment — the original ownership vesting, executed and recorded in a batch many years after filing (application 18/217,945 was filed 2023-07-03).

• 2023-08-09 (executed) / recorded 2023-08-09 — Reel not retrieved / not confirmed

  • Conveyance: Assignment (Google Patents tags it "reassignment")
  • Assignor: WAL-MART STORES, INC.
  • Assignee: WALMART APOLLO, LLC
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Internal corporate reorganization / IP-holding transfer — movement from the legacy operating name into Walmart's dedicated IP-holding subsidiary. This mirrors the broader Jan. 31, 2018 Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. → Walmart Apollo, LLC trademark/IP migration.

No further assignments of the 061 patent are recorded after 2023-08-09. The patent has been continuously held within the Walmart enterprise since. (Note: the family record does show later new continuations — e.g., US 18/427,556 → US 12,412,164, and US 19/312,107 → US 2025/0390856 A1 — but those are new filings, not assignments of 061.)

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 11961061
    2010 : Priority date provisional filed
         : Original application filed
    2018 : Walmart Apollo established as IP holder
    2023 : Continuation filed by Walmart Apollo
         : Inventors assign to Wal-Mart Stores
         : Wal-Mart Stores assigns to Walmart Apollo
    2024 : Patent US 11961061 issued

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The only transferee is Walmart Apollo, LLC (reel/frame not retrieved; execution/recording 2023-08-09). While "Apollo" is a dedicated IP-holding LLC, it is a wholly-owned subsidiary of an operating retailer, not a third-party licensing shell. No evidence of a registered-agent service address, no single-purpose licensing model, and the assignee address (702 SW 8th St., Bentonville, AR) is Walmart's corporate home office.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. No assignee at any point matches a public NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, etc.). The chain is Walmart-only.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR. I could not retrieve the correspondent of record for either 061-specific entry, so I cannot confirm or refute recurrence for this patent. Corroborating pattern (different application): submitter Manita Rawat appears on Walmart Apollo recordings at Reel 064827/0881 (2023) and Reel 051617/0927 (2020) with correspondents Morgan, Lewis & Bockius LLP and Duane Morris LLP (Walmart) respectively. Even if the same submitter/correspondent recurs on the 061 records, that is operating-company bulk-recording counsel, not an NPE signal.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Only two transfers exist, both executed and recorded on the same day (2023-08-09), consistent with a single internal reorganization event rather than a chain of serial LLC-to-LLC hops.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. The 2023-08-09 assignments postdate the family's first infringement suit (Sam's West / Walmart Apollo v. BJ's, filed 2022-03-22) and reflect internal corporate cleanup, not assertion-enabling. The 061 patent itself is not named as a patent-in-suit in any action I located.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. Walmart Inc./Walmart Apollo, LLC has not filed Chapter 7 or 11; no sale-of-portfolio proceeding exists for this chain.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. Walmart does not transfer family patents to a third-party NPE to assert on its behalf. It asserts in its own name — Sam's West, Inc. and Walmart Apollo, LLC as plaintiffs against BJ's Wholesale Club — which is the opposite of privateering.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. The patent remains with the operating company.

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion (with a scope caveat). The entire chain is Walmart-internal: inventor-to-Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. and Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. → Walmart Apollo, LLC, both executed and recorded 2023-08-09 (reel/frame not retrieved), with the patent continuously held by the enterprise since. Walmart Apollo, LLC is an operating company's IP subsidiary, and the Walmart/Sam's Club entity ships a product — Sam's Club Scan & Go — that embodies the disclosed and claimed self-checkout flow and is suing an actual competitor (BJ's Wholesale Club, "Express Pay") on sibling family patents. Caveat: the assertion I confirmed is on the sibling patents (U.S. 10,121,133 / 10,368,187 / 10,368,188 / 10,803,435), not on 061 itself; no suit naming 061 was found. No shell-entity, known-asserter, cascading-transfer, bankruptcy, privateering, or defensive-aggregator signal is present.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (legacy mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html); Google Patents legal events — https://patents.google.com/patent/US11961061/en

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Confidence & gaps

• High confidence: the two-event assignment chain (inventors → Wal-Mart Stores, Inc. → Walmart Apollo, LLC, both dated 2023-08-09), assignee identity/status, inventor names, and the absence of any third-party/NPE transferee.
• Not retrieved / explicitly missing: exact reel/frame numbers and the correspondent of record for the 061-specific entries. I substituted a clearly-labeled corroborating pattern from other Walmart applications (Reels 064827/0881 and 051617/0927) and did not attribute it to this patent.
• No contradiction with the previously-generated summary/litigation sections; this analysis is consistent with the note there that the "Family has litigation" flag is family-level and predates 061's April 2024 issuance.
• Recommendation: pull the two 2023-08-09 entries directly from Assignment Center by application 18/217,945 to capture the reel/frame and the recording attorney; that is the authoritative way to close the two open data gaps above.

I'll search for the specific patent 11961061 and its cited prior art references.

Let me get the specific citation list for US 11,961,061 from additional sources.

Let me try to retrieve the actual citation list from the patent's Google Patents page and PDF.

I've hit my search-step limit, so I'll synthesize now. Before the analysis, one essential scoping caveat, because it materially affects the reliability of what follows.

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Scoping, method, and an important limitation

What I could and could not retrieve. The authoritative full text supplied for US 11,961,061 omitted the claims section and the face-of-patent citation list ("References Cited"). My searches returned the Google Patents family record and the sibling patents' citation lists, but I was not able to pull the exact, verbatim "References Cited" column printed on US 11,961,061 itself. So the list below is reconstructed from:

1. The family's Google Patents record (the WO 2012/051316 page, which shows the family's "Patent Citations" and "Cited By"), and
2. The "References Cited" lists of the sibling patents US 10,803,435 and US 10,121,133, which share the identical specification and priority (Oct. 13, 2010) with the '061 patent and therefore carry essentially the same reference corpus.

Why this is defensible but not perfect: US 11,961,061 was filed July 3, 2023 as a continuation; as a continuation it inherits the IDS/reference history of the original application 12/947,545. But I cannot guarantee the '061 patent's printed list is identical to its siblings' — examiners add and drop references across continuations. Treat everything below as the family-common prior-art corpus, flagged for verification against the '061 patent's own front page.

A second critical caveat: I do not have the verbatim claims of US 11,961,061. The earlier "Patent summary" section reconstructed four independent claims/aspects from the SUMMARY. Accordingly, the § 102 mappings below are preliminary and map to that reconstructed scope. A true anticipation analysis requires the exact claim language.

Legal-framework note: The '061 patent issued from a 2023 post-AIA application but claims priority to Oct. 13, 2010 (provisional 61/392,908). If the claims are entitled to that 2010 priority, pre-AIA § 102 governs; if priority fails as to any claim, post-AIA § 102 governs and every cited reference becomes available art. This distinction is exactly what BJ's exploited in the sibling IPRs (see §E).

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A. References that appear as "Patent Citations" on the family's Google Patents record

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/WO2012051316A2/en (family record; "Patent Citations (3)")

Assessment: None of A1–A3, standing alone, appears to disclose the display of an optical machine-readable representation of the order on the mobile device. They are best characterized as § 102(a)/102(b) art for individual limitations, and as § 103 combination art rather than clean anticipators.

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B. The larger family-common U.S. patent reference list

Source: "References Cited" columns of US 10,803,435 B2 (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/56/98/47/6f1378dc9f0dd1/US10803435.pdf) and US 10,121,133 B2 (Docket Alarm exhibit PDF). These are the references inherited by the family from application 12/947,545.

Representative entries (dates and names as printed; some OCR-variant digits flagged):

Confidence caveat on §B: Several of the later numbers/assignee spellings in the fetched snippets showed OCR inconsistencies (e.g., "5,825,020" vs. "5,825,002"; "6,582,357" vs. "6,382,357"; "6,665,909" vs. "6,655,909"; "Latola" vs. "Laroja"; "Marbutt" vs. "Marbut"). I have not verified each against the front page and flag them as OCR-uncertain rather than asserting them as exact.

Highest-value takeaway from §B: For a § 102 anticipation theory against the '061 patent's headline claim (input ID → generate order → display an optical machine-readable representation of the order on the mobile device's display), the family's own cited art is strongest at the scan-ahead / self-scan concept (Murrah '807, Swartz '735/'814) but apparently does not disclose rendering a scannable order-code on the mobile display — that limitation is the historical point of novelty the applicants relied on (see the GB examination-history citations on the Justia page).

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C. Foreign patent documents cited in the family

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D. Non-patent literature cited in the family

Source: Justia record for US 11,961,061 (https://patents.justia.com/patent/11961061)

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E. Additional prior art that surfaced in the sibling IPRs (context, not on the '061 face)

From the BJ's PTAB filings against US 10,803,435 (IPR2022-01564), Grounds:

• "Keith" — asserted under § 102(a)(1) as anticipating claims 1–14; earliest-possible priority 2013-03-13.
• "Hanson" — asserted under § 103 in view of Keith; earliest-possible priority 2011-12-29.

Source: PTAB petition document (ptacts.uspto.gov petition 1550337 excerpt). Both post-date the '908 provisional, so they were usable only if the priority claim failed — which is precisely the written-description/priority attack BJ's ran ("rendering … in a machine-readable element" / "optically scanning the machine-readable element"). These would become directly relevant to the '061 patent only if its claims lost the 2010 priority. I flag this because the same priority fragility likely applies to the '061 claims.

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F. Bottom-line assessment

1. Most relevant single reference for the headline (claim-1-type) subject matter: US 5,804,807 A (Murrah et al., Sept. 8, 1998) — a scan-ahead system that captures item identifications during shopping and processes the accumulated list at a checkout register. It is the best § 102 candidate for "inputting identification information … identifying the item" and "generating an order," but it does not clearly disclose displaying an optical machine-readable representation of the order on a mobile device display.
2. Best reference set for the general concept: the Swartz portable-shopping patents (5,923,735; 6,131,814; 6,837,456) and the EP 1120071 family.
3. Most dangerous non-patent reference: the AisleBuyer (Aug. 17, 2010) article — it predates the priority date and directly describes a mobile self-checkout application.
4. Weakest coverage: the "virtual terminal sales application / transaction transfer" subject matter (the VTSA claim). None of the family-cited art appears directed at session-managed virtual POS terminals — that claim's exposure appears to come from the BJ's "Hanson"-type art and general virtualization/cloud-POS prior art, not from the '061 patent's own cited list.
5. No clean single-reference anticipator of the full independent claims appears in the cited corpus; the family's cited art reads more like a § 103 combination set than a § 102 set — consistent with why the family has survived repeated PTAB challenges (Law360, Apr. 5, 2024: "Walmart's Self-Checkout Patents Survive BJ's PTAB Attacks").

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Confidence and next steps

• High confidence: the identity/dates of US 2004/0056101, US 2003/0158796, US 2003/0195818, US 5,804,807, and the AisleBuyer/Shopkick NPL; the family chain; the §B membership as a family corpus.
• Moderate confidence: the exact composition of the '061 patent's own printed "References Cited" column; several OCR-garbled numbers in §B (flagged inline); the precise assignee-name spellings.
• Explicit non-findings: I did not obtain the verbatim claims or the verbatim front-page citation list of US 11,961,061; the § 102 mappings are therefore provisional reconstructions, not a substitute for claim-charting.
• Recommended verification: (a) pull the US 11,961,061 B2 front page (patentimages PDF) and transcribe the exact "(56) References Cited" U.S./foreign/NPL lists; (b) claim-chart Murrah '807 and the AisleBuyer article against each independent claim using the actual claim text; (c) confirm whether the '061 claims retain Oct. 13, 2010 priority, since that determines pre- vs. post-AIA § 102 and whether the BJ's "Keith"/"Hanson" art is even available.

I'll research the prior art actually cited against this patent family, since the key § 103 combinations will come from the IPR record and the patent's own cited references.

I have the core prior-art set now. Let me pull the actual claim language of US 11,961,061 and the key IPR references (Fletchall, Yong, Lin, Xavier).

Obviousness Analysis — US 11,961,061 B2 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Builds on the previously generated Patent Summary and Litigation Summary. I do not repeat the bibliographic/chain data there; I use it.

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0. Scoping caveats (read first)

Two limits materially affect confidence, and I flag them rather than paper over them:

1. The verbatim claims of the '061 patent were not in the authoritative text I was given (the fetched page stops mid-Description). The claim-by-claim mapping below therefore uses the family's own claim sets as proxies, which I did retrieve:
   • the original prosecution claims of the common specification (US 2012/0095853 A1, claims 1–28) — which correspond to the US 10,121,133 claim family;
   • the US 10,803,435 claim set (claims 1–19, "A method of converting a mobile phone into a mobile point-of-sale device…"), which is the direct grandparent of the '061 chain (18/217,945 ← 17/004,819 ← 16/730,567 / '435).
     Because the '061 is a continuation of 17/004,819 (which itself issued as US 11,853,988), its claims almost certainly fall within one of these same claimed scopes — but I cannot state that with high confidence, and I say so again in §8.
2. "Prior Art section of this page." The Google Patents page's own Prior Art section supplies only: prior art keywords = item, user, mobile device, transaction, shopping cart; prior art date = 2010-10-13. The substantive reference set below is reconstructed from (a) the reference lists on the sibling family members ('133/'435, which share the identical specification) and (b) the IPR2022-0xxxx record in BJ's Wholesale Club Holdings, Inc. v. Walmart Apollo, LLC. Where a reference's prior-art status is date-contingent, I say so.

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1. Prior-art landscape actually in the record

A. Portable self-scanning shopping terminals (the "collect-now, pay-later" genus) — all cited on the family's face:

Source: reference lists reproduced for US 10,121,133 / US 10,803,435 (e.g., https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[10121133](/patent/10121133).html ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/56/98/47/6f1378dc9f0dd1/US10803435.pdf).

B. Mobile phone as the self-checkout device (the specific substitution the claims require):

• IBM, "System and Method for Retail Store Self Checkout via Cellular Phone Technology," IP.com No. IPCOM000139258D, published Aug. 17, 2006 — cited on the face of the '133/'435. This is squarely the "cell phone as self-checkout terminal" concept, five years pre-critical-date.
• AisleBuyer "Self-Checkout iPhone Application," Softpedia News, Aug. 17, 2010 — BJ's Ex. 1015 (petition, IPR2022-01528; https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/[ptab](/ptab)/case/IPR2022-01528). Predates the 2010-10-13 provisional.
• Yong, KR 10-2007-0087811 (BJ's Exs. 1009/1010) — camera photographs the product barcode, decodes to mc_code, transmits to a commercial transaction server, receives product name/price, and creates a shopping list ("similar to a shopping list of a normal internet shopping mall"); a payment application then transmits payment to a payment server, and "the payment approval result [is] displayed as a barcode displayed on the mobile communication terminal." (Petition/Shamos ¶¶119–132.)
• Xavier, US 2009/0094100 ("Portable point of purchase user interfaces"); Lin, US 2010/0082444 ("Portable point of purchase user interfaces") — BJ's Exs. 1011, 1013.
• Fletchall, US 8,751,316 — mobile device with "an electronic receipt… received by the mobile device following a successful sales transaction" (BJ's Ex. 1008).

C. Displaying an optical machine-readable representation of the order on the phone's screen, scanned at the lane:

• WO 2009/116954 A2 (Sept. 24, 2009) — "Method and system for distribution of barcode information for performing a transaction via a network" (on the family's face).
• Gao et al., "A 2D Barcode-Based Mobile Payment System," 2009 Int'l Conf. on Multimedia and Ubiquitous Engineering (BJ's Ex. 1014) — 2D barcode rendered on a handset display and read by a scanning terminal for payment.
• Yong's payment-approval-as-displayed-barcode (above).
• US 8,317,086 (appearing in the record) — shopper scans a barcode displayed on the mobile device's display with the shopper-terminal scanner, which passes UPC-type data to a server. Caveat: I did not verify its filing date; treat its prior-art status as unconfirmed.

D. Virtualized POS / session management (the "VTSA" claims):

• US 2009/0192892 (Cason) and US 2009/0094100 (Xavier) — pleaded in the '435 petition.
• The specification itself concedes the backdrop: POS messages "such as Point of Sale Business Component messages used by point of sale terminals such as IBM® Self Checkout Systems" ('061, ¶[0059]).

E. Later-filed art (prior art only if the 2010 priority fails): Keith, US 8,720,771 (filed Mar. 13, 2013) and Hanson, US 2012/0173351 (filed Dec. 29, 2011) — BJ's Exs. 1023/1024.

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2. Level of ordinary skill

The Board adopted BJ's uncontested definition: a Bachelor's in CS/CE/EE or equivalent, plus 1–2 years of experience with mobile-device applications and retail POS systems (IPR2022-01564, Paper 9 at 20–21, http://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/IPR2022-01564.pdf). A POSITA is therefore comfortable with (i) handset camera/display I/O, (ii) client-server session design, and (iii) supermarket lane equipment. That skill level makes every element below a routine integration, not an invention.

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3. Priority date and which art qualifies

Claims get the Oct. 13, 2010 provisional / Nov. 16, 2010 filing date only if the provisional support satisfies § 112 written description. This is not academic: BJ's successfully argued that Hanson and Keith — both post-dating the '908 provisional — are prior art because the '435 claims were not entitled to the 2010 date. The Board agreed and found all challenged '435 claims unpatentable; the parties' July 29, 2024 Joint Status Report confirms "all claims challenged as to the '435 Patent are unpatentable" and that Walmart appealed all three FWDs to the Federal Circuit (https://www.courtlistener.com/docket/63179289/142/). If the '061's claims recite the same "rendering receipt information in a machine-readable element / optically scanning … to confirm completion of payment" limitations, the identical intervening-art attack is available.

Everything in Groups A–D above, however, predates 2010-10-13 outright and needs no priority fight.

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4. Combination 1 — the "order + displayed machine-readable representation" claims

(Representative scope: US 2012/0095853 claims 1–9 / '133 family; this is the subject matter recited in the '061 abstract.)

Motivation (KSR/MPEP 2143): (A) combining known elements with predictable results — "scan ahead with your own device" + "settle at the lane by scanning the handset" yields nothing more than the sum of the two; (B) simple substitution of the shopper's phone for the store's proprietary portable scanner, and of the phone's screen for a printed receipt/chit; (C) known technique (barcode-on-display, already used for mobile payment/ticketing) applied to improve a known device (the portable shopping terminal); (F) market force: the '061 background itself names the pain point — re-scanning every item and queueing — and every incumbent (Kroger tunnel scanners, Stop & Shop "Scan It!", the AisleBuyer app) was racing to the same fix. The Infinity / "finite number of identified, predictable solutions" rationale applies: given a phone with a camera and a screen and a lane with a barcode scanner, barcode-in/barcode-out is the obvious pairing.

Caveat that cuts the other way and must be stated: BJ's asserted these very concepts against the '133 in IPR2022-01471, and the Board denied institution on Apr. 12, 2023 (claims 1–6; https://services.patexia.com/lawsuits/BJ's-Wholesale-Club-Holdings-Inc-v-Walmart-Apollo-LLC-id-[180607](/patent/180607)). That is not a merits holding, but it is evidence that on that record the petitioner did not show a reasonable likelihood of prevailing on the "order + displayed representation" claims — a materially weaker posture than the '435 claims, which fell.

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5. Combination 2 — the camera-based claims (CRM / method with tender + receipt)

(Representative scope: US 2012/0095853 claims 13–20; and '435's "converting a mobile phone into a mobile POS device" claims 1–14.)

• Yong alone supplies: execute shopping app on the phone → camera photographs the barcode → decode on-phone or remotely → transmit to server → receive item info → build virtual shopping cart/list → launch payment app → server performs payment. Yong expressly motivates the server-side variant: offloading decoding to the server "reduces the arithmetic processing and memory requirements needed of the mobile communication terminal." That is a textbook § 103 rationale stated in the reference itself.
• Fletchall supplies the electronic receipt to the mobile device after a successful transaction.
• Gao 2009 / WO 2009/116954 supply the "displayed machine-readable element" tender path.
• '435 claim 1's "render receipt information in a machine-readable element; optically scan … to confirm completion of payment" is met by the same display-and-scan teachings — which is exactly why the Board found the '435 claims unpatentable.

Combination: Yong + Fletchall + Gao (and, if priority fails, Hanson + Keith per the Board's 103(a) ground in IPR2022-01564). Motivation: (A)/(D) routine integration of a receipt generator and a displayed-code confirmation into an already-networked handset POS; (F) e-receipt delivery was itself a known retail cost-reduction.

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6. Combination 3 — the virtual terminal sales application / "transaction transfer" claims

(Representative scope: US 2012/0095853 claims 21–28.)

• Claim element "access a session of a virtual terminal sales application upon receiving a POS message; load transaction state; process it" is a server-session-pooling/virtualization architecture over a known POS messaging substrate — the '061 itself concedes the substrate existed ("IBM® Self Checkout Systems," ¶[0059]).
• Prior art: Cason US 2009/0192892 and Xavier US 2009/0094100 (both pleaded by BJ's); Evans US 2008/0133366; Garver US 2007/0080219/'0080220 (self-checkout system architectures); plus the POS Business Component corpus the spec names.
• Motivation (KSR (D)/(F)): the specification states the object in the claim's own terms — ten sessions serving "hundreds of virtual transactions… since not all of the virtual transactions need be active at any given time" (¶[0066]). Reducing hardware/licence cost and raising concurrency by importing/exporting per-user state keyed to a unique identifier is the classic, predictable application of stateless-session design to a server that otherwise required one dedicated lane per shopper. No new and unexpected result is produced.

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7. Findings summary — claim-group obviousness posture

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8. Secondary considerations and rebuttal posture

• Commercial success / copying (Scan & Go; BJ's ExpressPay): the strongest patent-owner argument. Syntex permits copying evidence, but it is weakened by (i) nexus — the claims cover a combination of known elements whose driver was industry-wide (AisleBuyer Aug. 2010, Stop & Shop Jan. 2010, Kroger Jul. 2010), so success may stem from Walmart's scale rather than the claimed combination; and (ii) simultaneous independent invention, which the AisleBuyer/IBM/Stop & Shop record supports.
• Skepticism / long-felt need: undercut by the fact that retailers and POS vendors had already deployed in-store self-scanning; the "need" was being met before the critical date.
• A separate but related vulnerability (not § 103): the '061 is one of at least five co-pending/post-issuance continuations off the same 2010 disclosure (…'435 → '988 → '061 → US 12,412,164 → US 2025/0390856 A1). Any claim not patentably distinct from a sibling raises obviousness-type double patenting, independent of the art. Flagging, not analyzing, because it is outside § 103.

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9. Real-world corroboration (and its limits)

• PTAB FWDs (Apr. 2024), IPR2022-01528/-01563/-01564: all challenged claims of the '435 (the '061's grandparent) held unpatentable; grounds in -01564 were § 102 anticipation by Keith and § 103(a) Hanson + Keith (http://bannerwitcoff.com/wp-content/uploads/2023/05/IPR2022-01564.pdf; Joint Status Report, July 29, 2024). This is third-party, adjudicated § 103 evidence for the closest sibling.
• Walmart appealed all three '435 FWDs to the Federal Circuit in 2024. I did not locate the appellate outcome as of this writing, so no weight is assigned to it.
• IPR2022-01471 ('133) — institution denied (Apr. 12, 2023): the abstract-level "order + displayed representation" claims have so far survived a PTAB challenge.

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10. Confidence statement

• High confidence: the reference set, the dates of the pre-2010 references, Yong/Fletchall/Xavier/Cason/Lin/Gao/AisleBuyer content, the POSITA definition, and the PTAB results on the '435 and '133. All are grounded in the cited petition/institution/FWD documents and the family's own reference lists.
• Moderate confidence: the exact § 103 combinations that would be leveled at the '061 itself — because its verbatim claims were not available to me and because a continuation claim set drafted in 2023 may have been narrowed around the '435 art (e.g., to the order/display subject matter that defeated institution in -01471).
• Explicit non-findings / unverified: (a) I could not verify the '061's claim text; §4–§6 are proxies. (b) Fletchall's and US 8,317,086's filing dates, and hence their prior-art status absent a priority defeat, are unconfirmed. (c) I did not confirm the appellate outcome of Walmart's '435 appeals. (d) I found no § 103 challenge, IPR, or court holding naming US 11,961,061 — consistent with the Litigation Summary. I cannot represent that none exists.

Bottom line: The '061's claims sit at the end of a continuation chain whose parent claim set was already adjudicated unpatentable over Yong/Fletchall/Xavier/Cason/Lin/Gao/AisleBuyer and (on a priority-defeat theory) Hanson+Keith. For any '061 claim reading on the camera→cart→pay→receipt flow or on the VTSA/session-manager architecture, a § 103 rejection looks strong and well-supported by the KSR rationales in §4–§6. For claims limited to the "generate an order and display an optical machine-readable representation of the order" concept, obviousness is arguable but genuinely contestable on the present record, given the institution denial in IPR2022-01471 — the decisive variables being (i) the precise '061 claim language and (ii) whether the '061 can hold its 2010 priority date against Hanson/Keith.