US 12354121

I'll search for the specific patent number and related docket information.

Let me check for any CAFC/Federal Circuit activity and further patent details.

US Patent 12,354,121 — Summary

Verification note: I found the target patent directly. I did not find any CAFC/Federal Circuit 2026 docket naming this patent in the searches I ran; the activity I located is at the district-court level. Absence of a CAFC hit in my searches is not proof that no appeal exists.

Bibliographic data (from the authoritative full text)

Continuity chain (this patent is the latest link): 18/651,410 ← 18/519,550 (2023-11-27) ← 18/100,377 (2023-01-23) ← 17/590,605 (2022-02-01) ← 16/837,645 (2020-04-01, issued as US 11,301,880) ← 16/509,343 (2019-07-11, issued as US 10,853,825) ← 14/335,429 (2014-07-18, issued as US 10,360,571) ← provisional 61/856,525 (2013-07-19).

Assignment/security history noted on the face of the record: assigned to EYEQ, INC. on 2024-10-22, then to ALPHA MODUS, CORP. the same day; a security interest granted to STREETERVILLE CAPITAL, LLC on 2025-02-10 and released 2025-07-31.

Abstract (verbatim)

"Method and systems for shopping in a retail store. The methods and systems include using information monitoring devices to identify a person at a retail store, using the information monitoring devices to gather shopping information of the person at the retail store (including traffic information, product interaction information, and object identification information of the person), analyzing by the system the gathered shopping information to generate and maintain a list of the products that the person retained while shopping, using the information monitoring devices to track the first person to a point-of-sale area of the retail store, in response to the person being tracked to the point-of sale area, interfacing the system with a payment system for payment by the person of the list of the products, and transmitting a receipt to the person after payment."

Independent claims in plain language

Claim 1 — Method (the "walk out with a virtual cart" flow). Using a system of a server, information monitoring devices (cameras, displays, kiosks, WiFi devices, POS devices, etc.), and databases:

• (a) Identify a first person at a retail store when the person is in proximity to a monitoring device.
• (b) Gather shopping information via the devices, in three required parts:
  • Traffic information — including identification of the stops the person makes within and about the store;
  • Product interaction information — based on the type of interaction at each stop, i.e., products viewed, picked up, put down, or carried away (or combinations);
  • Object identification information — identifying the specific products the person interacted with.
• (c) Analyze in real time to generate and maintain a list of the products the person interacted with — expressly "a listing of the products retained by the first person while shopping," i.e., an automatic cart.
• (d) Track the person to the point-of-sale area.
• (e) In response to arriving at POS, interface in real time with a payment system for the person to pay for the retained-products list (no explicit scanning/tender step recited).
• (f) Transmit a receipt to the person after payment, the receipt comprising the purchased-products list.

Claim 21 — System. The same subject matter re-cast as an apparatus: a server, information monitoring devices operatively connected to the server, databases connected to the server and/or devices, and one or more processors with instructions that when executed perform the same identify → gather (traffic/product-interaction/object-identification) → real-time analyze/maintain list → track to POS → interface with payment system → transmit receipt steps.

Uncertainty flag: The provided text of claim 21 is truncated mid-limitation, so I cannot verify its full scope. Based on the claim count (26) and the structuring of claims 1–20 (claim 1 independent, claims 2–20 dependent), it is plausible that claims 1 and 21 are the only independent claims, with 22–26 depending from claim 21. I cannot confirm that from the available text, and the specification does also describe a computer-readable-medium implementation, so I cannot rule out a third independent claim. Treat this as unverified.

Dependent-claim themes: identification via a mobile device/cell phone (2–5); receipt transmittal to the mobile device, including coupons based on gathered shopping information (6–8); payment-system information received from the mobile device (9); signal transmittal to the mobile device with product information, advertisements, or promoted/associated additional products (10–12); using in-store displays to show product information or promote associated products (13–15); identification based on shopping-program information, registration information gathered by monitoring devices and stored in databases, and payment-system information within that program data (16–20).

Litigation context (district court; non-authoritative for legal conclusions)

The Google Patents face lists multiple E.D. Tex. suits involving this patent family, including case nos. 2:25-cv-00868, 2:25-cv-00923 (Alpha Modus v. The Kroger Co.), 2:25-cv-00947 (v. Allerin Tech Pvt Ltd.), 2:25-cv-01125 (v. Industria de Diseno Textil, S.A. / Zara), 2:25-cv-01145, 2:25-cv-01182, and C.D. Cal. 8:25-cv-02471.

• In Alpha Modus v. Kroger (2:25-cv-00923, filed Aug. 29, 2025), the complaint's Exhibit G is identified as US12354121B2. (docket)
• In Alpha Modus v. Allerin Tech, Exhibit J is identified as US Patent 12,354,121. (docket)
• Alpha Modus's July 9, 2025 press release announced issuance of U.S. Patent No. 12,354,121, effective July 8, 2025, co-invented by Michael Garel and Jim Wang. (GlobeNewswire via Yahoo Finance)
• Separately, a settlement with The Kroger Co. is referenced in a May 1, 2025 Alpha Modus release, though that predates the Aug. 29, 2025 "Second" Kroger complaint in the docket above — I flag this as a possible inconsistency in the public record rather than resolving it.

Bottom line: US 12,354,121 is the Alpha Modus continuation that claims an automated in-store shopping method — identify shopper, gather traffic/product-interaction/object-identification data, build a real-time list of retained products, track to POS, interface with payment, and send a receipt — with a corresponding system claim. It has a 2013 priority date, issued July 8, 2025, and is being asserted by a non-practicing-entity-classified plaintiff against several major retailers.

I'll research the litigation involving US patent 12354121. Let me start with searches on patent litigation databases.

Let me search for more details on each specific case and additional cases.

Based on my research of patent litigation databases (Justia Dockets, RPX Empower, Unified Patents litigation data via the Google Patents record, PACER/CourtListener, and Alpha Modus's own press releases and SEC filings), here is what I found regarding litigation involving US Patent 12,354,121 ("Methods and systems for shopping in a retail store," issued July 8, 2025; assignee Alpha Modus, Corp.).

Important scope note

The '121 patent is the newest and last-issued member of a large Alpha Modus continuation family. Alpha Modus is a prolific filer — it has asserted 25+ patents across roughly 15–20 lawsuits in the 2024–2026 window. Not every Alpha Modus suit asserts the '121 patent. Below I list only the cases where the '121 patent is affirmatively asserted (or which the patent record ties to the '121 family), with a confidence flag where verification is partial. Cases where I could confirm the asserted patents do not include '121 (e.g., the Mood Media case asserting the '571/'825/'550/'890/'880/'120/'731 patents, and the Lowe's case asserting the '672/'890/'120/'731/'550 patents) are excluded.

Cases asserting US 12,354,121

Key confirmed outcomes

• AWM (C.D. Cal.) — the only case I can confirm reached a resolution. Per Alpha Modus's May 15, 2026 press release, all claims were resolved via a joint stipulation of dismissal with prejudice filed May 14, 2026, under a confidential settlement agreement.

• A2Z Cust2mate (E.D. Tex.) — the Ex Parte litigation database lists the case status as "Closed," but I could not retrieve a specific dismissal order, settlement terms, or judgment. I cannot state with confidence whether it settled or was dismissed on other grounds.

• All other '121 cases were still pending as of the most recent information available to me, generally in initial pleading, discovery, or claim-construction stages. Alpha Modus consistently seeks a finding of infringement, damages no less than a reasonable royalty, enhanced/treble damages for willful infringement, and injunctive relief.

Caveats

1. Date/currency: The most recent source I retrieved is dated May 2026. Statuses may have changed since; I did not retrieve a PACER docket for every case individually, and some summaries rely on the Google Patents family-litigation record and Alpha Modus's own SEC disclosures.
2. V-Count (2:25-cv-01145): flagged as unconfirmed above — do not treat the '121 assertion as verified without pulling the complaint directly.
3. Related-but-distinct: Alpha Modus filed many other suits (e.g., Brookshire Grocery, Mood Media [W.D. Tex. 1:25-cv-01527, dismissed Feb. 10, 2026], Sensormatic/Johnson Controls, Navori/meldCX, Atliq, RetailNext, Lowe's, 7-Eleven, Optisigns, Circle K, Creative Realities) that assert other members of the family. If your interest is the '121 patent specifically, those are excluded unless the complaint separately names '121.
4. Many of the underlying complaints are posted on Alpha Modus's own site (alphamodus.com/press-room and /wp-content/uploads/), which is where the PDF excerpts above originated — useful, but a party-controlled source.

If you need me to open individual PACER dockets (e.g., for A2Z Cust2mate or V-Count) to confirm exact dispositions and defendant identities, tell me which case numbers to prioritize.

I'll start by checking the structured source and then probing the web for any PTAB activity on this patent.

Let me probe for any IPR on this patent or its family, and check Unified Patents' activity.

One more confirming pass on the family and any defensive-aggregator involvement.

PTAB proceedings on file — verification status

I sourced the proceeding list two ways: (1) the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block in this prompt, which is the canonical USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) list, and (2) targeted web searches for IPR/PGR/CBM petitions naming this patent, its owner, or its family. Both come back empty. I did not find any AIA trial proceeding on US 12,354,121, and I am not going to invent a proceeding number to fill the template.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 12,354,121: 0. Breakdown: 0 active / 0 with claims invalidated / 0 with claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials.

Defensive posture for a defendant: the patent is completely PTAB-untested. Unlike a "hardened" patent that has survived an IPR, 12,354,121 has never been before the Board on any claim. Conversely, unlike a patent with a cancellation certificate, there is no dead claim to lean on. All 26 claims stand exactly as issued on 2025-07-08, and no petitioner-level estoppel exists to constrain anyone.

Why the template sections below are empty

I checked and cleared the following before concluding "no PTAB activity":

• No IPR/PGR petition indexed under the patent number via Google Patents' litigation/proceeding links (the "Family has litigation" block on the patent page lists only district-court cases — E.D. Tex. 2:25-cv-00868, -00923, -00947, -01125, -01145, -01182, and C.D. Cal. 8:25-cv-02471 — and no PTAB trial).
• No petition against owner Alpha Modus Corp. surfaced on PTAB E2E / PTAB Center (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) or in the petitions docketing that mirrors it.
• No Unified Patents or other defensive-aggregator filing naming Alpha Modus appeared. Alpha Modus is proceeding as a private enforcement campaign (outside counsel Dickinson Wright; the patent itself passed through an EYEQ, Inc. → Alpha Modus, Corp. assignment on 2024-10-22 and a Streeterville Capital security interest on 2025-02-10 that was released 2025-07-31).

Unverified lead — flag for follow-up, not a finding

One public item could not be tied to a PTAB docket and I am explicitly not counting it as a proceeding: a GlobeNewswire release dated 2026-08-25 headlined "Alpha Modus Clears Major Federal Court Hurdle as MNTN Patent Challenge Is Denied" (surfaced via a stock-data aggregator). "Patent challenge" is ambiguous — it may be an IPR institution denial, or it may be a district-court invalidity challenge in the Alpha Modus v. MNTN litigation. I could not confirm (a) that it is a PTAB proceeding, (b) the proceeding number, or (c) which patent in the family was challenged. MNTN is reported as one of roughly 19 Alpha Modus defendants, and the '718 patent (US 12,423,718) and other family members are asserted alongside 12,354,121. Do not rely on this headline as evidence about 12,354,121. Verify directly on PTAB E2E before using it.

Strategic summary

Claim status — CANCELED / SUSTAINED / UNTESTED. There is nothing in the CANCELED column and nothing in the SUSTAINED column, because no claim has ever been adjudicated by the Board. Every one of the 26 claims is UNTESTED. From the claim text in the patent, claim 1 is the sole independent method claim (with claims 2–20 depending from it), and claim 21 is an independent system claim. The provided text truncates mid-claim 21, so I cannot verify the dependency structure of claims 22–26 — do not assume they all depend from claim 21 without pulling the full claim set. Practically: if you are accused under the receipt/point-of-sale method of claim 1, there is no prior PTAB ruling, no claim-construction order from a panel, and no cancellation certificate to cite. The patent is at full breadth.

Estoppel landscape. 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only to grounds "raised or reasonably could have been raised" by a petitioner that obtained a final written decision. No FWD exists, so zero estoppel exists — for you or anyone else. That is the key tactical upside of the empty PTAB record: your prior-art universe is unconstrained. You may raise § 102, § 103, § 101, and § 112 grounds, and you are not limited to patents and printed publications. Two vehicle limitations matter, though: PGR is unavailable (the patent claims priority to 2013-07-19 and issued from a pre-AIA family, so it is not a first-inventor-to-file patent eligible for PGR), and CBM review is unavailable (the CBM program sunset on 2020-09-16 for newly issued patents). IPR is therefore the only AIA trial vehicle available. For pre-AIA patents, IPR may be filed at any time after issuance — but § 315(b) imposes a hard one-year clock from service of an infringement complaint on the petitioner, its real parties in interest, and privies.

Pattern signals. Two things stand out. First, Alpha Modus is a high-volume, licensing-oriented assertion campaign (public statements and filings describe ~19 active suits with a stated ambition to reach triple digits, plus licenses with GZ6G and CashXAI/Xalles, and a C.D. Cal. action against Adroit Worldwide Media that resolved in settlement around 2026-05-15). Second, and more striking: that volume of assertion has produced no IPR on this patent. Well-asserted patents normally attract IPRs from at least one well-funded defendant or a defensive aggregator. The absence here likely reflects timing (the patent issued only 2025-07-08, and most defendants' § 315(b) windows are still open) rather than any presumption of validity — but it means the first petitioner will set the template. There is no Alpha Modus PTAB appeal history to read for panel signals.

Recommended next steps

1. There is no FWD to cite, because there is no IPR. Do not build a demand-letter response around a non-existent cancellation. If your adversary's letter asserts claim 1 or claim 21, note that both remain presumptively valid under § 282 and unadjudicated by the Board.
2. Calendar the § 315(b) deadline immediately. Under § 315(b), an IPR petition is time-barred if filed more than one year after the petitioner, RPI, or privy is served with a complaint alleging infringement of 12,354,121. For each of the E.D. Tex. cases in the structured block (2:25-cv-00868, -00923, -00947, -01125, -01145, -01182) and C.D. Cal. 8:25-cv-02471, confirm your service date and back-calculate. This is your single most time-sensitive item — the entire PTAB option disappears on day 366.
3. Because no estoppel exists, build the fullest ground set you can. A No. 12,354,121 IPR is limited to § 102/§ 103 over patents and printed publications, but parallel district-court invalidity contentions are not — include § 101 and § 112 written-description/enablement theories, which is where a 2024-filed continuation claiming 2013 priority is most exposed. The claim recites a specific, ordered real-time pipeline (identify → gather traffic + product-interaction + object-identification info → real-time analysis to maintain a "retained products" list → track to POS → real-time payment-system interface → transmit receipt). Attack the priority claim's support for that pipeline in the 2013 provisional, and separately attack the technical specificity of the POS/payment interfacing steps.
4. Consider joinder discipline. With ~19 co-defendants, the first filed IPR will likely attract joinder motions. If you intend to file, file independently rather than relying on later joinder — joinder under § 315(c) is discretionary and does not cure a missed § 315(b) window for a new petitioner.
5. Verify the MNTN headline before relying on it. Check PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) and CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com/) directly for any proceeding whose real party in interest is MNTN and whose challenged patent is 12,354,121 (as opposed to a family member). If a proceeding does exist and was denied institution, the institution decision would be highly useful prior-art intelligence for your own petition.
6. Track the family for collateral rulings. A Board or court outcome on sibling patents — US 10,360,571, 10,853,825, 10,977,672, 11,042,890, 11,049,120, 11,301,880, 12,026,731, 12,039,550, 12,423,718 — is not binding on 12,354,121, but any invalidity finding on the shared 2013-priority disclosure is directly transferable argument material.

Confidence note: The zero-proceeding finding is as reliable as the ODP ingest plus my searches permit as of 2026-10-01. Because PTAB filings often post publicly within days but can lag in third-party indexes, re-run PTAB E2E against the patent number and against "Alpha Modus" before you finalize any filing or settlement strategy.

I'll research this patent's assignment history and ownership chain. Let me start with several targeted searches.

Let me dig deeper into the specific assignment records and the EyeQ/Alpha Modus relationship.

I hit the research step limit, but I gathered enough from Google Patents legal events, USPTO-derived mirrors, SEC filings, and NPE directories to reconstruct the record. One important limitation up front: I could not directly query assignmentcenter.uspto.gov, and the sources I could reach did not expose the reel/frame numbers or the correspondent of record for the four recorded events. I flag those as unverified rather than guess.

Ownership Chain & NPE Analysis — US 12,354,121 B2

Patent: US 12,354,121 B2 — "Methods and systems for shopping in a retail store"
App. No.: 18/651,410 · filed 2024-04-30 · issued 2025-07-08 · priority 2013-07-19
Assignee of record (Google Patents): Alpha Modus Corp. (subsidiary of Alpha Modus Holdings, Inc., NASDAQ: AMOD)
Verification links: USPTO Assignment Center · USPTO Assignment Search (legacy) · Google Patents legal events

Inventors

Unusual-pattern check: No "inventors depart within 12 months" red flag. The opposite occurred — the equity in the invention moved with a corporate acquisition. eyeQ "was founded in 2013 and was an operating entity until December 2018, when it was acquired by Alpha Modus" (Alpha Modus S-4 / 10-K language, e.g. capedge S-4 excerpt). Garel then remained a director of the acquirer/holding company (Alpha Modus Holdings insider/management records).

Original assignee

The patent names Alpha Modus Corp. as both original and current assignee. Company profile:

• Entity: Alpha Modus, Corp. — a Florida corporation; parent is Alpha Modus Holdings, Inc. (Delaware), NASDAQ: AMOD, HQ 20311 Chartwell Center Dr. #1469, Cornelius, NC. Public via a SPAC merger with Insight Acquisition Corp. that closed 2024-12-13.
• Product: No evidence of a shipping product embodying the claims. The company's own filings state it "is currently a non-revenue producing company" whose "core asset is the '571 patent family" and that it "intends to monetize its patent portfolio through licensing" (Alpha Modus 424B3 / S-4 language, e.g. advfn mirror). The filing also states Alpha Modus "has engaged Dickinson Wright PLLC to lead licensing and enforcement efforts" and retained Stout Financial Services to model damages "in excess of $200 million."
• Primary line of business: IP licensing/enforcement of retail-analytics method patents; "investment solutions" per its own press boilerplate.
• Current status: Operating as a public licensing/assertion entity (not dissolved, not in bankruptcy). A related entity, Alpha Modus Ventures, was reportedly stood up to finance the litigation campaign (invidis / sixteen-nine coverage).

Assignment timeline

Recorded events as surfaced in Google Patents legal events / reassignment records. Reel/frame and correspondent of record could not be retrieved from accessible sources — flagged, not guessed.

• Executed ~2024-10-22 / recorded 2024-10-22 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Michael Garel; Jim Wang
  • Assignee: eyeQ, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — verify at Assignment Center
  • Context: Confirmatory/late recording of the inventors' original assignment into the operating entity (eyeQ was founded 2013 and ran as an operating company until its Dec-2018 acquisition).

• Executed ~2024-10-22 / recorded 2024-10-22 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: eyeQ, Inc.
  • Assignee: Alpha Modus, Corp.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved — this is the entry where the recording attorney's identity matters most; see Signal 3 below
  • Context: Internal reorganization / acquisition cleanup — moves the family from the acquired operating entity to the acquirer's patent-holding subsidiary; part of the same-day two-link chain.

• Executed ~2024-12-13 (note issued/SPA 2024-10-23) / recorded 2025-02-10 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Security interest / IP security agreement (not a title transfer)
  • Assignor: Alpha Modus, Corp.
  • Assignee: Streeterville Capital, LLC (Utah LLC)
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Securitization — first-priority lien on "all assets of Alpha Modus, Corp., including all of Alpha Modus' intellectual property (and including Alpha Modus' patent portfolio)" securing a $2,890,000 secured convertible note (8-K / 10-K disclosure; IP Security Agreement schedule listing 12,354,121).

• Executed on/after 2025-07-23 (note paid in full 2025-07-23) / recorded 2025-07-31 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Release by secured party
  • Assignor: Streeterville Capital, LLC
  • Assignee: Alpha Modus, Corp.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Lien release — the Streeterville convertible note was satisfied in July 2025 and the encumbrance was cleared, leaving Alpha Modus Corp. with unencumbered title roughly a month before the first suit asserting the newly issued '121 patent.

No pre-2019 assignments for this specific patent number are expected — US 12,354,121 issued in 2025 — but note that the family chain of title for this application's direct parent is Alpha Modus-owned, and no assignment of US 12,354,121 away from the Alpha Modus group appears anywhere in the record.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 12354121
    2013 : Priority application filed
    2014 : Parent application filed by eyeQ era inventors
    2018 : eyeQ acquired by Alpha Modus
    2024 : App 18651410 filed by Alpha Modus Corp
         : Inventors Garel and Wang assign to eyeQ Inc
         : eyeQ assigns rights to Alpha Modus Corp
         : Streeterville security interest recorded
    2025 : Patent US 12354121 issued
         : Streeterville release recorded
         : Suits filed against Kroger and others

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present (in the defined form). The chain does move rights from an operating entity (eyeQ, operating until Dec-2018) to a non-practicing licensor (Alpha Modus Corp., self-described as "non-revenue producing"). But none of the enumerated shell tells apply: the assignee is a named subsidiary of a NASDAQ-listed parent, HQ is a North Carolina corporate address, not a registered-agent maildrop, and it is a Florida corporation, not a single-member Delaware/Texas LLC. The non-practicing character is captured under Signal 2 instead.

2. Known asserter in the chain — present. Current assignee Alpha Modus, Corp. is classified as "Non Practicing Entity" in Stanford's NPE litigation database (case 2:25-cv-00923, NPE Status: Non Practicing Entity; also 2:25-cv-01000, 4:25-cv-01727). It is tracked as a recurring high-frequency plaintiff in the retail patent-litigation NPE reports (Retail Patent Litigation, Sept/Oct 2025) and is described by trade press as litigating "the typical pattern of patent trolls… companies that hold patents but don't actually use them because they don't have an operating business" (invidis; sixteen-nine). Caveat: Alpha Modus does not appear on the classic named-NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi-LAN, etc.) in my searches — the match is to the Unified/Stanford/RPX-style directories rather than to a legacy troll roster.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not verified. This is the signal the record most needs, and it is the one I could not confirm: the sources I could reach do not expose the attorney of record who recorded each assignment. Note for follow-up — do not conflate the two roles: Dickinson Wright PLLC is disclosed as licensing/enforcement litigation counsel (SEC filings, from Q4 2023) and Christopher Hanba signed the Texas complaints, but neither is confirmed as the assignment-recording correspondent. A single repeat recording attorney across the 2024-10-22 pair and the 2025-02-10 / 2025-07-31 pair would materially strengthen Signal 3; a different attorney on the Streeterville lender filings (versus the Alpha Modus internal pair) would weaken it.

4. Cascading transfers — present (weak form). Four recorded events in roughly nine months: two back-to-back same-day assignments (2024-10-22), a security interest (recorded 2025-02-10), and a release (2025-07-31). What is absent is the classic tell of several genuinely unrelated chained LLCs — here the links are two corporations inside one corporate family plus a single lender. So the cadence is dense but the entity variety is low.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The '121 patent issued 2025-07-08 and the earliest suit asserting it is Alpha Modus v. Kroger, filed 2025-08-29 (Exhibit G = US12354121B2, docket 2:25-cv-00923). The only record set within six months before that is the release of the Streeterville lien (2025-07-31, 29 days prior) — a lien clearance, not a transfer to an asserter. There is no assignment-to-new-plaintiff immediately preceding the suit; the plaintiff has been the patent's owner throughout.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 involving eyeQ, Alpha Modus, or Alpha Modus Holdings appears in the record. The Streeterville convertible debt was repaid, not restructured through bankruptcy.

7. Privateering — not present. This is not an operating company using a proxy to assert against competitors. Alpha Modus owns the patents outright (it acquired eyeQ), and Alpha Modus Holdings is itself the public registrant and enforcement driver. There is no separate operating-company beneficiary behind the curtain.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN. The inverse condition holds: the chain terminates at the asserting entity.

Verdict

NPE — high confidence.

Two strong signals drive this. First, the current assignee is designated a "Non Practicing Entity" in Stanford's NPE database and is tracked as a repeat filer by Unified/RPX-style sources, with a 2025 campaign naming this very patent against Kroger, Lowe's/7-Eleven, Navori/meldCX and others. Second, the recorded chain (2024-10-22 eyeQ → Alpha Modus, Corp.; 2025-02-10 Streeterville security interest; 2025-07-31 release) consolidates title in a patent-holding subsidiary that publicly describes itself as "non-revenue producing" with a licensing/enforcement-only model, while the only non-title interest ever recorded against the patent was a lender's lien that was cleared one month before assertion — exactly the clean-standing posture an enforcement campaign wants. The one signal that could sharpen or soften this call — a recurring recording correspondent across the four entries — remains unverified, and I recommend pulling it directly from the Assignment Center before relying on this verdict.

Verification: assignmentcenter.uspto.gov → search patent 12354121 → capture Reel/Frame and "Correspondent" for each of the four entries.

I'll research the cited references for US 12,354,121. Let me run several searches in parallel.

Let me dig into the citation lists and the PTAB/reexam challenges I noticed in the results.

Search report: prior art citations for US 12,354,121

Verification performed (USPTO / Google Patents / PTAB). I searched for the patent number itself and for its citation record. Two things need to be said up front, because they materially limit what I can deliver:

1. The authoritative full text you supplied does not contain the "References Cited" / "Patent Citations" section. Google Patents renders that table dynamically, and it was not captured in the fetch. Every other section (abstract, description, all 26 claims, CPC classes, "Prior art keywords") is present — the citation table is not.
2. My searches did not return the citation table for US 12,354,121 specifically. I retrieved citation tables for related family members (US 12,026,731 shows "Patent Citations (13)"; WO2015010086A3 shows "Patent Citations (8)") but those are the citations of the ancestors, not of the '121.

Per your strict rule, I will not invent a citation list. Below I separate (A) what I verified, (B) references I actually retrieved from the record with their provenance and confidence level, and (C) the §102 mapping, flagged for uncertainty.

A. The target patent — verified bibliographic anchors

The asserted-claim set in Alpha Modus v. Kroger was independently confirmed in a docket document: the Plaintiff's Preliminary Infringement Contentions chart for U.S. Patent No. 12,354,121 reproduces claim 1 verbatim, including the "list … comprises a listing of the products retained by the first person while shopping at the retail store" and the POS/payment/receipt steps.

B. References retrieved from the record — with provenance and confidence

These are the reference-level items I could actually retrieve. None of them is confirmed as appearing in the '121's own examiner citation list — I could not retrieve that list. They are drawn from (i) a Google Patents citation-table snippet that appears to implicate the '121, and (ii) PTAB filings involving the Alpha Modus portfolio, plus (iii) the '121 specification's own non-patent-literature citations.

Lead, not a citation: The PTAB petitions themselves are retrievable at ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1554707, /1550216, and /1554697 (Exhibit sets including EX1004–EX1006, EX1008, EX1030, EX1031, Ex. 1005, Ex. 2002, Ex. 2003). I could not verify which patent(s) these challenge. The O'Hagan/Brice/Watanabe/Howell arguments concern shopping-cart scanning and self-checkout recall, which is thematically aligned with the '121's claim 1(c)–(e) — but the Shanman/Ogasawara/"product location information within a first store" framing does not match the '121's claims, so at least some of these petitions are likely directed at a different family member. Do not assume these petitions target the '121.

C. Potential §102 analysis (with explicit assumptions)

Threshold point on the statutory framework. The '121 claims a 2013-07-19 priority date but was filed 2024-04-30 as a continuation. To the extent claim 1 is supported by the 2014 application (14/335,429) and the 2013 provisional, the pre-AIA §102(a)/(b)/(e) regime applies and a reference must predate 2013-07-19 (or qualify under §102(e) with an earlier effective filing). If a defendant successfully argues the broad "retained products list / payment interface / receipt" limitations lack §112 support in the 2013–2014 disclosures, the effective date could shift later — which would materially enlarge the §102 field. I flag this because it is the single largest variable in any §102 attack.

Claim 1 requires the conjunctive combination of six things — no reference I retrieved teaches all six, so I have no reference I can responsibly call a §102(a) anticipation of claim 1:

1. 1(a) identification of a person by an information monitoring device;
2. 1(b)(i) traffic information including identification of stops the person makes;
3. 1(b)(ii) product interaction information by type — viewed / picked up / put down / carried away — at each stop;
4. 1(b)(iii) object identification identifying the specific products;
5. 1(c) real-time analysis generating/maintaining a retained-products list;
6. 1(d)–(f) tracking to POS → real-time payment-system interface → receipt.

Claim-by-claim §102 posture on the retrieved references:

Bottom line on §102: on the record I was able to retrieve, I cannot identify a single reference that anticipates claim 1, claim 21, or any dependent claim under §102, and I am not willing to assert one. The scan-to-cart references (Brice, O'Hagan, Howell, Watanabe) come closest on the retained-products-list and checkout-recall limitations (1(c)–(e)) but uniformly lack the passively sensed traffic-stop + typed-product-interaction + object-identification triad of 1(b), which is what distinguishes the '121 from the 2000s-era scan-based cart art. The realistic attack surface on this patent is §103 (e.g., a scan-to-cart reference combined with a camera-based traffic/demographic reference), not §102 — which is consistent with the PTAB grounds I retrieved, which are all framed as "renders obvious."

D. What you should pull to complete this properly

Because I could not retrieve the authoritative citation list, three primary sources will settle it:

1. USPTO PatentCenter for application 18/651,410 → "References Cited" / "Patent Citations" tab. This is the definitive list of what the examiner actually cited, and it is what your task asks for.
2. PTAB P-TACTS — ptacts.uspto.gov petitions 1554707, 1550216, 1554697. Pull the captions first; that instantly tells you whether they challenge the '121 or a sibling. If any targets the '121, its Exhibit 1002 (declaration) and Exhibit 1004 (file history) will contain the most probative prior-art mapping available anywhere.
3. The '121's own file history via PatentCenter — the examiner's reasons for allowance will show which references were distinguished, and the Brice/"most relevant reference" statement I retrieved (if it belongs to this file) will identify the closest art on the record.

Once you have item 1, I can map each cited reference to specific claims under §102 with a defensible chart rather than the flagged inferences above.

Confidence summary: Bibliographic data for the '121 — high. Forward/backward citation candidates in section B — low to medium and labeled per row. §102 claim mappings — reasoned, not verified, and I have affirmatively declined to identify any anticipating reference.

I'll investigate the prior-art references associated with this patent and the relevant state of the art, since the "Prior Art" section wasn't included in the text you provided.

Let me look for the specific prior-art references cited against this patent and its family, plus the key state-of-the-art systems.

Preliminary: two issues I have to flag before the analysis

1. The "Prior Art section of this page" was not included in the material you gave me. The authoritative full text you provided (Google Patents rendering of US12354121B2) contains the abstract, description, figures list, classifications, landscape tags and claims — but no "References Cited," "Cited By," or "Similar Documents" block. Google Patents does not render a conventional "Prior Art" section for this patent page beyond the "Prior art keywords" line (person, information, retail store, products, gathered) and the "Prior art date 2013-07-19" field. So I could not literally "use the results from the Prior Art section." Rather than fabricate a cited-reference list, I reconstructed the relevant art from verified external sources (search results returned to me, plus art cited in related documents). Every identifier I use below is one I actually retrieved; where I could not confirm a number I say so rather than inventing one. Treat this as a candidate ground set, not as the prosecution file wrapper.

2. Date conflict across the dossier. The task header states Current Date: April 26, 2026; the system context states today is 2026-10-01; and the previously generated Litigation and PTAB sections describe events dated May 2026 (AWM dismissal with prejudice 2026-05-14; a 2026-08-25 MNTN headline). Under the rule to prefer retrieved results, I am treating the later of these as the operative date and will not rely on the April 26, 2026 framing for anything time-sensitive. Nothing in this § 103 analysis turns on that choice, but you should resolve it before calendaring anything.

1. The legal frame, and why the effective filing date decides everything

US 12,354,121 claims priority to provisional 61/856,525 (2013-07-19) through a chain of continuations (14/335,429 → 16/509,343 → 16/837,645 → 17/590,605 → 18/100,377 → 18/519,550 → 18/651,410). That chain makes this a pre-AIA patent family (pre-March 16, 2013 priority), so § 103 is applied under pre-AIA § 103(a) with Graham v. John Deere factors and KSR Int'l v. Teleflex's expanded "predictable combinations / obvious to try" doctrine. Critically, under pre-AIA law a reference qualifies as prior art as of the date of invention, which the applicant may be able to prove is earlier than the 2013-07-19 filing — and which the applicant can also be forced to prove if the examiner did not. Third-party 2013 art filed after July 19 is therefore contestable under § 102(e)/swearing-behind in a way it would not be post-AIA.

The single most consequential § 103 question is therefore: does the 2013 provisional/parent disclosure actually support issued claim 1?

Claim 1 as issued recites a very specific, ordered, real-time pipeline:

identify person → gather (i) traffic info including identification of the stops → (ii) product interaction info typed as viewed / picked up / put down / carried away → (iii) object identification info → analyze in real time to generate and maintain a list of products retained → track person to the POS area → in response, interface in real time with a payment system → transmit a receipt.

If that pipeline is not supported by the 2013 provisional under § 112 ¶1 (written description + enablement), claim 1 gets an effective filing date of 2023-11-27 or 2024-04-30. That move matters enormously, because it converts the entire Amazon Go art corpus (2014–2016) and Walmart's "Scan & Go" era art from later than the priority date into § 102(a)/(e) prior art. This is the highest-yield § 103 attack on the patent, and the earlier PTAB section already flagged priority support as the exposure point.

Below, I analyze both scenarios: (A) 2013 art date holds, and (B) effective date slips to 2023/2024.

2. The art I verified as available

Two things worth noting about this list. First, WO '865 is the closest thing to a direct § 102 reference on the "product interaction" limitation — a camera at the cart detecting items inserted or removed — and it was filed in March 2013, i.e., before the 2013-07-19 priority date; its § 102(e) status depends on its international filing/PCT publication posture, which I could not fully verify and which you should confirm. Second, the Amazon references are, on their face, dead-on for claim 1 — but they are 2014–2016, so they are only available in Scenario B.

3. Element-by-element mapping of claim 1

I do not see a limitation in claim 1 that is not disclosed or rendered obvious by the Scenario-B set. Claim 1's only arguable point of novelty relative to Scenario-B art is the ordering and packaging of these steps as a single recited pipeline — which is exactly the kind of thing KSR says is not patentable when each step was known and the combination does no more than each does separately, unless there is unexpected results or a teaching-away.

4. Four concrete § 103 grounds

Ground 1 (Scenario B — strongest): Amazon A2 + Amazon A1 + Amazon Go disclosure

Claim 1. A2 supplies (b)(ii) and (b)(iii): camera image comparison determines whether a shopper picked up or put back a specific product. A1 supplies (a), (b)(i), (c), (d), (e), (f): user identification on entry, continuous position tracking, automatic accumulation of picked items onto a user-associated item list, detection of the user reaching the transition area, and automatic charging without the user stopping. The Go FAQ supplies the receipt.

Motivation. A1 and A2 are commonly owned, contemporaneous, same-field Amazon filings that expressly reference each other's subject matter; GeekWire reported that the same Amazon personnel (Kessel et al.) led both the filings and the Go team — i.e., actual, documented combination intent. KSR rationale: "a court must ask whether the improvement is more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions" — here, item-interaction detection (A2) feeding an item identifier list (A1) is the established function of each. No teaching-away exists.

Claim 21 falls with claim 1 (same limitations recast as an apparatus).

Ground 2 (works in Scenario A or B): WO '865 + US 7,118,026 + US 2011/0239497 + Bolle/Ogasawara + a MAC/WiFi tracking reference + Symbol/EP

This is the ground to run if the 2013 priority holds. Build it as:

• WO '865 + US 7,118,026 (Harris) + US 2011/0239497 (McGuire) — the WO examiner already treated Harris and McGuire as Y-art against every claim 1–77 of a cart-camera item-detection case, i.e., the PTO itself has found these references combinable with camera-based item insert/remove detection. That is a ready-made KSR motivation, and it is pre-July-2013 if the WO filing date controls.
• Bolle (or Ogasawara) for the object-identification step without a barcode.
• A WiFi/MAC-address tracking reference for (a) and (d). The patent's own specification describes the mechanism in generic terms — devices "continuously broadcasting a header which contains… MAC address," triangulation from "multiple receivers/transmitters… with a pre-determined or known location" — as ordinary WIFI/Bluetooth behavior. Cisco Connected Mobile Experiences, Euclid Analytics, and RetailNext all published in-store WiFi/MAC analytics material in 2012–2013, establishing this as routine. (I did not individually verify a specific Cisco/Euclid printed publication date in this session — confirm before filing.)
• Symbol/EP 1 202 200 and its X-citations (Sloane, Roslak, Fish, Trotta) for wireless-terminal shopping, product identification, and payment/checkout integration.
• US 7,930,204 B1's background for path/stop analysis feeding in-store targeted display messaging.

Motivation. All references are in the same field of endeavor (in-store shopping/checkout/retail analytics) and address the same problem the patent's own Background concedes: showrooming ("It is estimated that over 47% of consumers showroom today"), lost sales at the shelf, and the absence of pre-POS behavioral data. A PHOSITA facing that admitted market pressure had strong reason to combine camera-based item detection with wireless shopper tracking and automated payment. Under KSR, "market forces" and "design incentives" supply the motivation; the combination is the predictable aggregation of known elements.

Ground 3 (both scenarios): wireless-terminal shopping system + automated checkout

Ogasawara (filed March 1999) alone teaches capture of a product image, pattern-recognition identification without barcode, addition to a grocery list, and on-line payment using stored billing information. Combined with Symbol/EP / US 5,918,211 / US 5,979,753 (wireless terminals in stores reading product codes, marketed for "marketing and/or shopping"), this renders obvious: identify shopper via mobile/wireless device; identify products the shopper selects; maintain a list; pay; receipt. What remains is the passive camera detection of pick-up/put-down — supplied by A2/Bolle/WO '865. This ground has the advantage of using art that comfortably predates 2013, so it survives even if the priority date holds.

Ground 4 (dependent claims, both scenarios)

Dependent claims 2–20 are, individually, unremarkable in view of the art:

Because these are conventional refinements of what the independent claim already renders obvious, they would be obvious as a matter of KSR "obvious to try" and "predictable variation" reasoning. Claims 7–8 (coupon based on the gathered shopping information) are the most defensible of the dependents, because they tie the coupon to the sensor-gathered behavior rather than to purchase history — but the advertising-broker art in the same field reaches that too.

5. Where the patent may survive, and what to attack

Honest counterweights. Claim 1 requires all three information categories (traffic/stops, product interaction typed by pick-up/put-down, object identification) to be gathered and analyzed in real time into a retained-products list, then handed to payment in response to reaching the POS area. Pre-2013 art tends to disclose these in piecemeal fashion: cart-camera systems (WO '865) don't do the store-wide shopper tracking; WiFi-tracking systems don't do object identification; classical wireless-terminal shopping (Symbol/Ogasawara) requires the shopper to actively scan, whereas claim 1 is passive. Alpha Modus's best argument is that no single pre-2013 reference and no KSR-sanctioned combination put the whole passive pipeline together, and that the Amazon references are too late to count.

That argument collapses if the priority claim fails. So the two highest-value § 103 projects are:

1. Priority/§ 112 ¶1 challenge to claim 1's support in the 2013 provisional (61/856,525) and the 14/335,429 parent — specifically the "list of products retained," the "in response to… tracked to the point-of-sale area… interfacing in real time with a payment system," and the "carried away" interaction type. If those limitations have no written-description support before 2023, Ground 1 becomes available and is close to dispositive.
2. A § 102(e)/102(a) attack on WO '865's priority position (PCT/CA2013/000260) and on Ogasawara's § 102(b) status, both of which are robustly pre-2013 and thus survive a priority fight.

Also note the vehicle limits carried over from the earlier PTAB section: only IPR is available (PGR unavailable — pre-AIA; CBM sunset 2020-09-16), so an IPR ground must be § 102/§ 103 over patents and printed publications only. Amazon Go's public system and Walmart's Scan & Go are district-court § 102(a)/§ 103 system art (public use/on sale), not IPR art — unless reduced to the FAQ whitepaper/printed materials, which is a thin reed for IPR purposes. Plan the IPR on A1/A2/WO '865/Ogasawara/Bolle/Symbol; save Amazon Go's public use for the district court.

6. Confidence and verification to-dos

• High confidence: the Amazon A1/A2 disclosures (as reported by contemporaneous 2016–2017 press coverage quoting the filings), the Amazon Go FAQ receipt/charge language, WO '865's subject matter and its ISR's Y-citations of Harris and McGuire, and the X/Y citations in EP 1 202 200 A3. These are quoted directly from retrieved sources.
• Medium confidence: the exact patent number for Ogasawara and for Bolle — I retrieved them only as IPR Exhibits 1005/1006 in an unrelated '529-patent proceeding. I have deliberately not assigned them numbers. Pull the petitions at ptacts.uspto.gov to obtain the correct citations.
• Low confidence / must verify: (i) WO '865's § 102(e) date and any earlier priority it claims; (ii) any specific Cisco CMX / Euclid / RetailNext printed publication dated before 2013-07-19 (I asserted the state of the art, not a specific exhibit); (iii) whether the 2013 provisional supports claim 1 — this is a file-wrapper question I could not resolve from the sources available.
• Not verified, do not rely on: any suggestion that the Google Patents "Prior art date 2013-07-19" reflects an adjudicated date of invention. It is a priority-date assumption, expressly labeled as such on the face of the record.
• Cross-reference check: nothing in this analysis contradicts the earlier Patent Summary, Litigation Summary, or PTAB sections. The PTAB section's conclusion that all 26 claims are UNTESTED and that zero estoppel exists is consistent with the position here: an IPR ground set is wide open, and Ground 1 (Amazon) is only reachable if the priority claim is first displaced.

If you want, I can next build a limitation-by-limitation claim chart for claim 1 against Ground 1 (A2 + A1 + Go FAQ) with the exact quoted passages, or a priority-support matrix comparing claim 1's terms against the 2013 provisional text — the latter is the gate that unlocks the former.