US 4071740

I'll run several searches targeting the patent number and any litigation docket references.

Let me run a few additional targeted checks on litigation and the inventor.

US Patent 4,071,740 — Verification Summary

Search scope note: I queried for the literal number 4071740 (and 4,071,740). The authoritative record below is the Google Patents full text of US4071740A plus corroborating mirrors (uspto.report, Justia, WO/EP search reports citing "GOGULSKI PAUL"). I found no CAFC 2026 docket involving this patent; details and caveats are at the end.

---

Bibliographic data

---

Abstract (as issued)

"An improved automated shopping system used within stores of the type utilizing shopping carts having product code scanning means and product weight sensing means located thereon in conjunction with a central computer also located within the store wherein the improvement comprises a first scanner releasably mounted on the shopping cart, a control panel mounted upon the shopping cart, means for visual display of word and numerical entries on the control panel, means for the readings of the first scanner to appear on the visual display, means for totalling numerical data that appear on the visual display, a second scanner located on the control panel, means whereby the second scanner's numerical entries are totaled and the total, with the second scanner's other readings appear on the visual display, and a printout device located in said control panel which records and totals the numerical entries and prints them on tape."

---

Plain-language overview of the claims

The patent has 4 claims total, of which only claim 1 is independent. Claims 2 and 3 depend from claim 1/2; claim 4 depends from claim 1.

Claim 1 — the independent claim. This is drafted as an improvement claim over a known store system that already has (a) shopping carts with code scanners and weight sensors and (b) an in-store central computer holding product information, communicating by radio. The improvement adds, in combination:

1. A control panel with a visual display mounted on the cart — the cart's own user interface for showing scanned product indicia.
2. A first scanner, hand-held, releasably mounted on and cabled to the control panel — reads the line-encoded (bar-code/Universal Product Code) data on a product; circuitry decodes it and displays the product information obtained by transmitting to and receiving from the central computer.
3. A second scanner mounted inside the control panel — likewise decodes and drives the display via the central computer.
4. Photocell sensing units around the perimeter of the cart opening forming a plane of light across the opening. These units are responsive to the second scanner's decoding means: they deactivate for a predetermined time after the second scanner reads and decodes a code, allowing the item to be placed in the cart; after that window elapses they reactivate to give a warning if an article is inserted without first being scanned by the second scanner.
5. Weight-sensing means in the floor of the cart with a comparator circuit in the control panel communicating with the central computer, to compare the actual weight placed in the cart against the computer-stored weight for that product, and to warn when the weights do not correspond.

Plainly: the shopper price-checks with a hand-held scanner, formally "rings up" the item by passing it over the fixed scanner on the cart console, and only then does the cart briefly open a light-curtain window so the item can be dropped in — while a scale in the basket independently verifies the item's weight against the store computer.

Claim 2 — brake on light-plane breach (depends from claim 1). Where the photocells and warning system are concerned: a wheel braking system for the cart responds to the light plane being broken, and is activated through the circuitry associated with a warning light that lights when the plane is broken. (The spec describes this as an electromagnetically engaged pawl/ratchet brake in the wheel, with the alternative that the cart simply stops registering/printing instead of physically stopping.)

Claim 3 — brake on weight mismatch (depends from claim 2). The weight-sensing means has circuitry tied to the braking system, so that when the actual weight and the stored weight do not match, the brake is activated together with the warning light. This chains the two separate security checks (light-curtain and weight) to the same physical stop.

Claim 4 — printer/tape subtotal (depends from claim 1). Adds a printer and tape responsive to the line-encoded information decoded by the second scanner and the central computer, printing a cumulative tabulation of products passed over the second scanner as stored by the central computer — i.e., the running receipt/subtotal the spec emphasizes as a customer-confidence feature.

---

Litigation check (as requested) — and an important identifier caveat

• No Federal Circuit (CAFC) 2026 docket for this patent was found. My searches for a 2026 CAFC docket tied to 4071740 returned nothing matching. Given the patent expired 1995-01-31 (anticipated expiration date of record), it would not be a live infringement vehicle in 2026, which is consistent with the absence of any 2026 appellate docket. I state this as a negative search result, not as proof of non-existence — I could not execute a direct PACER/CAFC docket query in this environment, and the results I retrieved are third-party aggregators, not the court's own docket.
• False-positive to avoid: the digit string 4071740 also appears in a Brazilian state-court matter, Agravo de Instrumento 4071740-42.2026.8.26.0000/SP (TJSP, rel. Juiz Mário Daccache; Banco Industrial do Brasil S/A v. Mixtel Distribuidora Ltda), which is entirely unrelated to this patent.
• Second false-positive to avoid: EP 4071740 A1 ("Information processing apparatus, control method, program, and storage medium"; lidar/voxel position estimation; filed 2020-12-03) is an unrelated European application that merely shares the numeric string. Per the literal-interpretation rule, I did not merge these records.
• I also found no evidence of any US district court litigation involving US 4,071,740. Its footprint in the record is as cited prior art in later self-checkout patents (e.g., cited in EP2381409A2, WO2012168515A1, WO2012168515's international search report as "US 4071740 A (GOGULSKI PAUL) 31/01/1978," and in Target Brands' US 11,734,666 listing "4071740 | January 31, 1978 | Gogulski").

Uncertainty disclosures

• The full patent text you supplied is treated as authoritative and is consistent with the search results; nothing in the search results contradicts it.
• Inventor/assignee: the record shows "Paul Gogulski" as inventor and "Individual" as assignee. I have no authoritative data on any assignment of this patent to a company (unlike, e.g., the Checkrobot/NCR lineage it foreshadows), so I make no claim either way about whether it was ever assigned.
• Claim count: the Claims section lists exactly 4 claims; only claim 1 is independent. I have not independently verified whether a reissue or certificate of correction exists, as I could not reach USPTO PatentCenter directly.

I'll search litigation databases for US patent 4071740.

Let me search more targeted litigation sources.

Bottom line

I found no litigation — none — involving US Patent 4,071,740. Based on every search I could run, there is no record of any district court action, CAFC appeal, ITC investigation, or PTAB proceeding in which US 4,071,740 was the patent-in-suit or was otherwise at issue as an asserted patent. The requested table cannot be populated with real data; I will not fabricate cases, case numbers, or dates to fill it.

What US 4,071,740 actually is (for identification discipline)

• Patent: US 4,071,740, "Mobile automated shopping system"
• Inventor / original assignee: Paul Gogulski (individual — no corporate assignee ever recorded)
• Filed / priority: May 26, 1976 (App. No. US05/689,968)
• Granted: January 31, 1978
• Anticipated expiration: January 31, 1995; legal status "Expired – Lifetime"
• Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4071740/en

That status is the single most important fact driving the answer: any US infringement claim had to be filed on or before the expiry window in the mid-1990s, and no such suit appears in any index I could reach. An individually owned, 1970s-vintage, long-expired cart patent with no assignment history is not the profile of a litigated patent.

Litigation search results by requested field

What I searched and what the number string actually returned

I searched the number in both literal forms ("US 4,071,740", "4071740", "4,071,740"), and searched for the inventor/title in a litigation context. Every hit resolved to something that is not litigation against this patent:

1. Prior-art citations to the patent in later patents and PCT international search reports — e.g., the ISR for WO 2012/168515 A1 lists "US 4071740 A (GOGULSKI PAUL), 31.01.1978" as a cited document, and Google Patents shows it cited by later shopping-cart patents such as US 5,418,354 and US 11,080,680. Citation to a patent is not litigation of a patent.
2. A USPTO petition search-strategy document (PTAB/PTACTS petition 1516516) that lists "4071740" as one of many patent numbers in an examiner's prior-art search query, alongside (3910659), (4440096), (6435407), etc. That is a prior-art search string, not a cause of action.
3. A BPAI (predecessor to the PTAB) §103 appeal, Ex Parte SHIMIZU et al., which relies on "Gogulski" as prior art against the appellant's claims. This is an ex parte prosecution appeal by a third party — not litigation involving US 4,071,740.
4. Unrelated documents that merely collide on the number string — I flag these so you don't mistake them for the patent:
   • EP 4071740 A1 — a wholly unrelated 2020 application ("Information processing apparatus…," LiDAR/voxel position estimation). This is an EPO publication, not US 4,071,740.
   • An Argentine Official Bulletin entry "N° 4071740/17" (2017) — a domestic case/docket number, unrelated to any US patent.
   • A Google Patents hit for US 7,407,740 — a different patent (different series, different number). Per your instruction I did not substitute or auto-correct to this number, and I am not reporting results for it.

Caveats on coverage (stated honestly)

• I could not directly load the Unified Patents litigation caselist (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) or query PACER in this session; my results come from web-search indexing of those and related sources. The absence of a hit is strong but not the same as a certified null result from PACER's docket database.
• Because the patent expired January 31, 1995, any litigation would necessarily be roughly three decades old. Pre-1990s federal dockets are incompletely digitized, so a purely paper-era suit could in principle exist outside the indexes I could reach. I found no indication of one.

To obtain a certified negative or confirm a null result

If you need a defensible clearance statement, run these directly:

1. PACER — Docket Search / Case Locator (nationally) for "4,071,740" or "4071740" across all district courts and the Federal Circuit.
2. Unified Patents Portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist (district court) and .../ptab/caselist (PTAB), searching by patent number.
3. CourtListener / RECAP (courtlistener.com) and Docket Navigator or Lex Machina for patent-case indexing with pre-digital backfill.
4. USPTO Patent Center / Assignment record for US 4,071,740 — the assignment history shows no corporate owner, which is consistent with the absence of enforcement activity.
5. CAFC opinion search (cafc.uscourts.gov) for the patent number.

If those confirm no hits, the correct representation for any opinion or brief is: "No litigation involving US Patent 4,071,740 has been identified. The patent is recorded as Expired – Lifetime, with an anticipated expiration of January 31, 1995, and its significance in the art is as a cited prior-art reference in later shopping-cart and self-checkout patents rather than as an asserted patent."

I'll verify the structured data against public sources before writing this up.

Nothing yet. Let me run a couple more targeted checks before concluding.

PTAB / AIA Trial Activity — US Patent 4,071,740

"Mobile automated shopping system" — inventor Paul Gogulski; filed 1976-05-26; granted 1978-01-31; anticipated expiration 1995-01-31; status: Expired – Lifetime.

---

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings on file. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings for US 4,071,740, and independent web verification (PTAB petition/exhibit repositories, Google Patents "Cited By" and litigation docket aggregations, CourtListener-facing searches) surfaced no AIA trial, no PTAB appeal, and no asserted-litigation history for this patent. Breakdown by status is therefore: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied. The defensive posture this gives a defendant is not "hardened patent" or "dead claims" — it is something more fundamental: there is no live patent to defend against. The '740 patent expired on 1995-01-31, roughly 17 years before the first IPR petition was even filed under the AIA (§ 311 et seq. became available 2012-09-16). Any infringement theory today would have to rest on pre-1995 conduct, which is decades outside the § 286 six-year damages lookback. The absence of PTAB activity here is not a strategic signal about patent quality — it is a timing artifact.

---

Proceedings

None. No AIA trial proceeding has ever been instituted or filed against US 4,071,740.

For completeness, here is what the negative search did and did not establish:

• What I checked: Google Patents' prosecution, "Cited By," and "Patent Citations" tables for US4071740A; PTAB petition and exhibit document repositories surfaced via search; general web queries pairing the patent number with "IPR," "CBM," "PTAB," and "AIA trial."
• What the hits actually were: Every occurrence of "4071740" in the search corpus is a prior-art citation to the Gogulski patent inside some other matter — e.g., a foreign search report ("US 4071740 A (GOGULSKI PAUL) 31/01/1978, columna 5, líneas 10–30" cited against PCT/ES2012/000166), a petitioner's exhibit listing, and reference tables in later shopping-cart patents (US 11,080,680; US 2019/0156319 A1). Being cited as prior art is the single most common fate of a 1978 patent and is not evidence of a proceeding against it. I note this explicitly because a naive keyword search on this patent number returns hits that look like proceedings and are not.
• Confidence level: High that no AIA trial proceeding exists. One residual caveat: I could not query the PTAB E2E docket directly in this session, so I am relying on the ODP structured block as canonical plus corroborating public search. If a proceeding were filed in the last few weeks and not yet ingested by ODP, it would not appear — but a petition against a patent that expired in 1995 would be extraordinary, and no trace of one exists.

Notes on the "no proceedings" finding

Three structural reasons a challenge never materialized, none of which reflect on the merits:

1. Expiration predates the forum. The AIA trial regime began 2012-09-16. The '740 patent's enforceable term ended 1995-01-31 (17 years from the 1978-01-31 grant, pre-URAA). There was no window in which the patent was both enforceable and IPR-eligible. An IPR can technically be filed against an expired patent to obtain a validity ruling, but no rational petitioner spends the filing fee to invalidate a patent that has been unenforceable for three decades.
2. CBM was theoretically available but never used. The claims (a scanner-and-weight-verified automated checkout with radio communication to an in-store computer) read plausibly as a "covered business method" patent under AIA § 18(d)(1), and CBM review was available for pre-AIA patents. The CBM program closed to new petitions on 2020-09-16. No CBM was filed. That is unsurprising given (1).
3. No assertion campaign to respond to. I found no evidence the patent was ever asserted in district court or the ITC. IPRs overwhelmingly follow infringement suits (§ 315(b) one-year bar, settlement leverage). No suit, no petition.

---

Strategic summary

Claim status: all four claims are UNTESTED — and unenforceable. US 4,071,740 issued with four claims. Claim 1 is the sole independent claim (the automated shopping system with the dual-scanner cross-check, the photocell light-plane over the cart opening, and the weight-sensing comparator); claims 2–4 depend from it (claim 2 adds the wheel braking system; claim 3 ties the weight comparator to the brake; claim 4 adds the printer and tape). None of these claims has ever been construed or adjudicated by the PTAB. There is no canceled-claim list to hand a defendant, because nothing was ever challenged. But this is not a "survived two IPRs and is hardened" situation either: the claims were never tested because the patent term ran out in 1995, before the modern validity-challenge machinery existed.

Estoppel landscape: § 315(e)(2) is a non-issue. Because no IPR or PGR ever reached a final written decision, no petitioner, real party in interest, or privy is subject to any estoppel bar on any ground. Symmetrically, there is no FWD to rely on defensively. In a hypothetical assertion, prior-art grounds against claims 1–4 would be entirely unconstrained — the entire universe of § 102/§ 103 art printed before the 1976-05-26 filing date remains available, including the references the patent itself distinguishes: US 2,919,851 (Otis), US 3,637,989 (Howard), US 3,716,697 (FMC), US 3,836,755 (Gretag — the "Self-service shop" cart the specification expressly builds on), US 3,949,195 (Nixdorf), and US 3,947,816 (IBM). That is academic, however: the § 286 damages window is closed.

Pattern signals: none, and none expected. No petitioner filed even once, so there is no serial-petitioner pattern and no serial-petition discretionary-denial dynamic. The patent owner never pursued a PTAB appeal (there being no FWD to appeal). No defensive aggregator — Unified Patents or otherwise — appears anywhere in the chain; the assignee is listed as "Individual," consistent with an unmonetized 1970s inventor patent. The '740 patent's actual modern footprint is as prior art that other patent owners must design around: it appears as a cited reference against later self-checkout and smart-cart filings (e.g., the PCT/ES2012/000166 search report, and reference lists in US 11,080,680 and US 2019/0156319 A1). If you are a patent owner in this space, that is the relevant risk vector — Gogulski is a § 102(a)/(b) landmine in the scanner-plus-scale checkout art, not a troll's weapon.

---

Recommended next steps

• If a demand letter or complaint cites US 4,071,740: do not build an IPR budget. First confirm the expiration date against the face of the patent and the PTO maintenance-fee record. The structured data on file states an anticipated expiration of 1995-01-31 and current legal status "Expired – Lifetime." A 1978 grant with no maintenance fees (pre-URAA patents issued from applications filed before 1995-06-08 had a 17-year term from grant and were not subject to maintenance fees) cannot support a claim for post-1995 sales. Combine that with 35 U.S.C. § 286's six-year damages lookback and there is no recoverable period.
• If you nonetheless need a validity ruling (e.g., a licensee defending a contract, or a declaratory-judgment posture), an IPR against an expired patent is legally permissible, and the full pre-1976 prior-art record is available with no estoppel encumbrance. Expect the Board to apply the Phillips-style district-court construction framework used for patents expiring during the proceeding, since the claims expired decades ago.
• Trial-stage milestones: not applicable. There is no institution decision deadline, no oral hearing date, and no statutory one-year FWD due date to track, because there is no proceeding.
• Bottom line: there is no PTAB activity on file, and there is unlikely ever to be. The correct defensive move against this patent is a term-and-expiration argument under § 286, not an AIA petition. If the citation to '740 is coming from a third party's invalidity contention rather than from an assertion of the patent, treat it as an art reference and evaluate it on its 1978 disclosure — the cart-mounted scanner, the second stationary scanner in the product-entry area, the photocell light curtain across the basket opening, the weight comparator against a stored weight, and the wheel brake — which is a genuinely broad teaching that has been cited against smart-cart patents for years.

Sources consulted: the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal, no proceedings); Google Patents US4071740A (bibliographic data, claims, cited-by and citation tables); uspto.report/patent/grant/4071740; PTAB petition and exhibit repositories surfaced via search. No USPTO PTAB E2E or CourtListener entry exists for this patent to link to.

I'll start by checking the assignment and ownership records for this patent.

Let me verify whether any assignment records exist in the USPTO assignment database and check supplemental sources.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 4071740 ("Mobile automated shopping system")

Sourcing note / limitation. I could not directly execute a live query against the USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) in this session; the searches returned no assignment-database hit for patent number 4071740. The findings below are grounded in (a) the legal-events block of the Google Patents record for US4071740A, (b) the Espacenet INPADOC family record (which returns "None" for family members), and (c) secondary indexes. Where I could not confirm a record, I say so rather than infer one. No reel/frame numbers appear anywhere in this analysis because none could be located — I will not fabricate them.

Inventors

• The patent carries one inventor only and no assignee at filing. Under the Google Patents "Original Assignee" field the entry is literally "Individual" (and the "Current Assignee" field likewise reads "Individual").
• Pattern note: A lone independent inventor with no corporate co-assignee, no foreign family (Espacenet INPADOC returns "None"), and no continuation/divisional progeny is the profile of an unfunded independent filing — not a corporate portfolio. The "all inventors departing within 12 months" fire-sale tell is inapplicable: there was never a corporate assignee for inventors to leave. There is no evidence of any pre-issuance assignment from Gogulski to a company.

Original assignee

• Entity on the issued patent: none — the patent issued to the inventor, Paul Gogulski, individually. Both the Original Assignee and Current Assignee fields resolve to "Individual."
• Product embodiment: No evidence found that the claimed system was ever manufactured, sold, or deployed. The specification describes a system concept assembled from then-commercially-available components (Singer Dual Maxi Scanner, Radio Shack TRC101B transceiver, Eagle photocells, an NCR 255 in-store computer, multipart NCR paper tape) — i.e., a design built around third parties' off-the-shelf parts, not a product of the assignee.
• Primary line of business: Not applicable / not determinable — an individual, not an operating company.
• Current status: Patent expired. Google Patents records an "Anticipated expiration" on 1995-01-31 (17-year term measured from the 1978-01-31 grant). Legal status is "Expired – Lifetime." The subject matter has therefore been in the public domain for roughly three decades.
• Downstream relevance: Google Patents shows 199 third-party "Cited By" entries (361 in the expanded family view) — the patent is a foundational prior-art reference for self-checkout / self-scanning shopping-cart art (e.g., Checkrobot US4676343, NCR US4929819, Fujitsu US5557088, Symbol US5412193, Target US10807627). Forward citation is not an ownership finding; it does not imply anyone ever bought or asserted this patent.

Assignment timeline

No recorded assignments exist for US 4071740.

The complete legal-events block for US4071740A as published by Google Patents contains only filing, priority, grant/publication, and expiration events — there is no Assignment, no Security Agreement, no Merger, no Change of Name, no License, and no Release entry of any kind:

Consequently:

• There is no reel/frame to cite for any conveyance — none exists in the record.
• There is no correspondent of record — no attorney or firm is associated with any assignment recording for this patent.
• There is no chain. The patent was owned by the inventor from filing through expiration, and ownership never changed hands in the USPTO record.

This is itself the finding and it is consistent with the source page, which simultaneously lists the original assignee, the current assignee, and the family assignee as "Individual." Had any post-issuance assignment been recorded, it would normally surface as an "Assigned to …" legal event on the Google Patents record; none appears.

Because the Assignment Center shows no records, per the analysis protocol I flag it here plainly and note that the remaining signal sections are assessed for completeness but are constrained by that absence of records.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 4071740
    1976 : Filed by inventor Paul Gogulski
         : No assignee named on application
    1978 : Patent US 4071740 issued
    1995 : Patent expires
         : No assignments ever recorded

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Insufficient data (no records; only original individual ownership).

Justification. The USPTO/Google Patents record for US 4071740 contains no assignment events whatsoever — only filing (1976-05-26), grant (1978-01-31), and anticipated expiration (1995-01-31) — so there is no reel/frame, no conveyance, no correspondent, and no chain to evaluate; the original assignee, current assignee, and family assignee are all recorded as "Individual." Every NPE signal is therefore not present on affirmative evidence rather than from absence of investigation. Moreover, the patent expired in 1995, so it has been unassertable for ~30 years; its prominence today is as a heavily forward-cited prior-art reference (199 Cited By entries), not as an enforcement asset.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search "4071740"); mirror: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Cross-checks: Google Patents legal events https://patents.google.com/patent/US4071740A/en and Espacenet INPADOC family (family members = "None").

I'll research US patent 4071740 and its cited prior art references. Let me start with targeted searches.

I have the core patent and the key prior art (US3836755). Let me research the remaining five cited references.

US Patent 4,071,740 — Prior-Art (Patent Citation) Analysis

Part 1 — Patent Identification (verified)

A USPTO-family check confirms only one application/one publication in this family (US 05/689,968 → US4071740A). No similar-number patent was substituted.

---

Part 2 — The Cited Prior Art ("Citations (6)")

The examiner-cited references of record for US 4,071,740 are the following six documents. (This is distinct from the 199–361 forward citations, i.e., later patents that cite 4071740 as background.)

1. US 2,919,851 A — "Automatic checking machine"

• Inventor: Samuel S. Otis; filed 1950-11-13; granted 1960-01-05.
• Description: A very early automated check-out/"checking" machine for self-service merchandising — one of the foundational self-service accounting patents. It predates the barcode era and concerns automated registering of items rather than consumer-operated scanning.
• §102 relevance: Because it issued more than one year before the 1976 filing, it qualifies as §102(b) prior art. On its face it addresses automated item check-out, but it does not disclose a cart-mounted control panel, hand-held scanner, second scanner, or photo-light curtain. It is background/§103 material at most; it does not anticipate claims 1–4. (Note: I could not retrieve the full text in this session, so the description is based on the title/general art knowledge and is flagged as such.)

2. US 3,637,989 A — "Automatic pricing and inventory control apparatus"

• Inventor: Joseph D. Howard; filed 1969-07-14; granted 1972-01-25.
• Description: An automated pricing/inventory-control apparatus — an early point-of-sale/"automated register" concept tying item registration to a price/inventory function.
• §102 relevance: §102(b) art. Relevant to the "price lookup" and "inventory control" concepts recited generally in the specification, but it does not disclose the claim-1 combination (two cart scanners + light curtain + cart-mounted comparator). Not a full anticipation. (Description flagged as based on title/general knowledge; full text not retrieved.)

3. US 3,716,697 A — "Automatic marketing system"

• Assignee/inventor: FMC Corporation (S. Weir); filed 1971-05-05; granted 1973-02-13.
• Description (confirmed from text): A self-service store in which the sales display fixtures carry weight-sensing means and card readers. Data-processing equipment scans the weight sensors and card readers while customers shop and, at completion, prints an invoice of selected items and cost. Includes anti-shoplifting safeguards; a check-in card dispenser issues machine-readable customer cards; output is produced on printing terminals.
• §102 relevance: §102(b) art. Discloses self-service automated item accounting with weight sensing + central data processing + printed invoice, which is relevant to the general system and to claim 4's printout concept, but the weight-sensing is located at the shelf/fixture, not on a cart, and there is no dual scanner or light curtain. It does not anticipate claims 1–3 and only touches claim 4 conceptually.

4. US 3,836,755 A — "Self-service shop" ← most pertinent reference

• Assignee: Gretag AG; priority 1972-02-14; filed 1973-02-12; granted 1974-09-17. Family: CA 1004361 A, CH 548073 A, GB 1422881 A.
• Description (confirmed from the claims): Purchase trolleys each having a container forming the weighing pan of weight-difference scales; a reading device for machine-reading identifying data on each article placed in/removed from the container; electronic circuits responsive to the reader and the weighing means to signal (a) data read correctly but no weight change, and (b) weight change but data not read correctly. Claim 2 adds an intermediate weight store and comparator comparing read article-weight data against measured weight. Claim 9 adds an appliance connector linking the trolley to the check-out station; claims 10 and 12–14 add radio transmission from the trolleys to the check-out station and time-multiplexing of transmissions; claim 15 claims the trolley itself.
• §102 relevance: This is the single closest prior-art reference and the direct antecedent of claim 1's preamble. It anticipates the following claim-1 elements: (i) a shopping cart/trolley associated with product-code reading means; (ii) weight-sensing means in the trolley; (iii) comparison of measured weight against stored/read weight data; (iv) a warning/alarm when weights do not correspond; and (v) radio transmitting/receiving communication between the trolley and a central computer/check-out station, including time-sharing. It does not, however, disclose: the first hand-held scanner releasably mounted on a bracket; the second scanner mounted in a control panel; the visual display unit on the cart; or the plurality of photocell units forming a light plane across the cart opening that deactivates for a predetermined period after the second scanner reads and then reactivates to warn of unscanned insertion. Accordingly, US 3,836,755 anticipates the weight-comparison/warning subject matter (cf. claim 1's last element and the weight/alarm concept underlying claim 3) but does not fully anticipate any of claims 1–4. It is the leading §103 combination reference against claim 1 and is highly material to claim 3.

5. US 3,949,195 A — "Sensing rod for the manual scanning of graphic information"

• Assignee: Nixdorf Computer AG; filed 1973-04-25; granted 1976-04-06.
• Description (confirmed): A hand-held opto-electronic sensing rod for manually scanning graphic/line-encoded information — hollow shaft, sensing tip, light-conducting fibers, miniature glow-lamp illumination, and optical signaling of a successful/faulty read. It is a hand-held scan-pen/sensing-rod implementation.
• §102 relevance: §102(b)/(a) art directed at the first hand-held scanner element of claim 1. It discloses a hand-held manual scanner only and nothing of the cart, display, second scanner, weight comparator, or light curtain. It cannot anticipate claims 1–4; it is at most a secondary reference bearing on the "hand-held scanner releasably mounted" limitation.

6. US 3,947,816 A — "Omnidirectional optical scanning apparatus"

• Assignee: International Business Machines Corporation; filed 1974-07-01; granted 1976-03-30.
• Description (confirmed): A point-of-sale laser omnidirectional bar-code scanner — laser source, beam-splitting, multifaceted rotating mirror, crossed/interlaced scan segments producing an X-shaped scan pattern, photodetectors and video processing to decode a bar-coded label irrespective of its orientation; the scan window is at the top of a market check-out stand housing. (Related IBM art in the same vein includes US 3,919,527, "Omnidirectional optical scanner.")
• §102 relevance: §102(a)/(e)-type art. This reference corresponds to the second scanner element of claim 1 (the specification itself describes second scanner 46 as a "low power helium neon laser ... directed by moving mirrors sweeping the light through a pattern of overlapping sine waves ... detected by a photomultiplier tube"). US 3,947,816 discloses that fixed scanner mechanism but not its mounting in a cart control panel, nor the dual-scanner cross-check, nor the light curtain or weight comparator. It cannot anticipate claims 1–4 standing alone; it is a §103 reference for the second-scanner limitation.

---

Part 3 — References cited in the specification body (not in the examiner list)

For completeness, the specification also expressly relies on these, which are part of the disclosed combination even though they are not in the "Citations (6)" list:

• US 3,920,959 (Welsh Allen No. 81000) — cited as an exemplary hand-held reader for the Universal Product Code.
• US 3,532,184 ("and related patents") — cited as the automated tag/card selection system.
• US 3,836,755 — cited in the body for the cart weight-sensing device (also examiner-cited, see above).

These should be considered in any validity assessment of the "dual-scanner" and "weight-sensing" limitations, but they were not part of the examiner's cited-art record.

---

Part 4 — Anticipation Summary (35 U.S.C. § 102)

Key conclusion: No single cited reference discloses every element of claim 1 — in particular the combination of (a) a first hand-held scanner releasably mounted on the cart, (b) a second stationary scanner mounted in a cart control panel with a visual display, (c) photocell sensing units forming a light plane across the cart opening that deactivate for a predetermined period after the second scanner reads and then reactivate to warn of an unscanned insertion, and (d) a cart-mounted weight-sensing means with an associated comparator in the control panel. The examiner's citations map onto individual elements (US 3,836,755 → weight/comparator + radio link; US 3,949,195 → hand-held scanner; US 3,947,816 → fixed laser scanner; US 3,716,697 → self-service weight + central processing + invoice/printout), which is characteristic of a §103 obviousness rejection rather than a §102 anticipation. Claims 2 and 3 (braking mechanism tied to the broken light plane and to a weight mismatch) and claim 4 (printer/tape cumulative tabulation) likewise find no full anticipatory disclosure in any single cited reference.

---

Part 5 — Confidence & Caveats

• The patent bibliographic data, the six examiner citations, and the full text of US 3,836,755, US 3,716,697, US 3,947,816, and US 3,949,195 are confirmed from the sources cited above.
• Full claim text for US 2,919,851 and US 3,637,989 was not retrieved in this session; their descriptions above rest on title/assignee/date and general art knowledge and are explicitly flagged. If an exact element-by-element §102 mapping for those two is required, their full texts should be pulled (USPTO PatentCenter / Google Patents) before being asserted as anticipatory.
• Patent numbers are reported exactly as they appear (e.g., US3836755A, US3947816A) and were not auto-corrected. Note the specification's in-text renaming ("patent 3,836,755" appears as issued US 3,836,755; the scanner reference US 3,920,959 is a separate document from US 3,947,816).

I'll ground this analysis in the actual cited references. Let me pull what I can on each of the six examiner-cited prior-art documents from the page's Prior Art section.

Strong results. Now let me pull the specifics on the two scanner references (IBM '7816, Nixdorf '9195) and Howard '989's cart-mounted unit, plus check whether a light-curtain/beam-break teaching existed in the cited art.

Obviousness Analysis — US 4,071,740 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Scope of this section. This builds on the bibliographic, claim-construction, and litigation sections already generated (not repeated here). It uses the six references listed in the Prior Art section of the record — the examiner's citations: US 2,919,851 (Otis); US 3,637,989 (Howard); US 3,716,697 (FMC/Weir); US 3,836,755 (Gretag/Ehrat); US 3,947,816 (IBM); US 3,949,195 (Nixdorf). I retrieved and read the text of Otis, Howard, FMC, Gretag and IBM. The search budget expired before I could retrieve the text of US 3,949,195 (Nixdorf); I flag that limitation expressly below rather than assert its contents.

Governing law. The application was filed 1976-05-26, so this is a pre-AIA § 103 analysis. A contemporary challenge (hypothetical only — the patent expired 1995-01-31 per the record) would apply pre-AIA § 103 as construed by KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) and Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966). KSR controls the analysis below: "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious unless its actual application is beyond his or her skill," and a combination of familiar elements yielding only predictable results is obvious.

---

1. Level of ordinary skill in the art (Graham factor 1)

A POSITA at the May 1976 filing date would be a retail-systems engineer or applied electromechanical designer with roughly a bachelor's degree in EE/ME and 2–4 years' experience in point-of-sale, weighing, or optical-scanning systems, working in a field (automated checkout) that the record shows was already crowded — six issued U.S. patents cited by the examiner alone, with issuance dates spanning 1960–1976. Critically, the applicant himself supplies the skill-level admission:

"The component parts and the computer technology needed to build and operate the system of this invention are now known in the art." ('740 spec, Summary)

and, on the second scanner:

"There are several of these systems now in use and any of them can be adapted to work with this invention." ('740 spec, col. re: scanner 46)

and, on the weighing means:

"This weight-sensing device can be similar to the weight-sensing device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,836,755…" ('740 spec, re: element 24)

These are admissions that the constituent hardware was known and interchangeable/adoptable, which materially lowers the § 103 bar for each individual element.

---

2. The references — verified disclosure content

---

3. Claim 1 — element-by-element gap analysis

'740 claim 1 is an improvement claim, so everything in the preamble is an admission of prior art: carts with "product code indicia scanning means and weight sensing means… in conjunction and communication with a governing central computer… by means of radio transmitting and receiving units." That preamble is substantially met by Gretag '755 (trolley reading device + weighing means + radio + check-out computer with time multiplexing).

Observation that frames the whole exercise: every one of the four claims carries the light-curtain interlock limitation (claims 2–4 all depend, directly or through claim 2, on claim 1). Therefore the entire validity question collapses to element (d). Everything else in claim 1 is disclosed by Gretag '755 or is a predictable substitution of a known component.

---

4. Grounds of rejection

Ground 1 (primary): Gretag '755 in view of Nixdorf '9195, IBM '7816, and Howard '989

Where each limitation is met is shown in the §3 chart. The only unmet limitations are (i) the second, in-panel scanner, (ii) the first, hand-held scanner as a distinct "preview" reader, and (iii) the light curtain. (i) and (ii) are met by IBM '7816 and Nixdorf '9195 respectively; Howard '989 supplies the central-computer price lookup and display.

Motivation to combine (KSR rationales):

1. Same field, same problem. Gretag '755's own "PRIOR ART" section states that checkout queues at the reading device "result[] in a further delay in each customer passing through the check-out station" — the identical problem '740 attacks ("lengthy waiting periods in check-out counter lines"). Gretag and '740 are directed to the selfsame improvement.
2. The applicant's own teaching. The '740 specification expressly incorporates Gretag's weighing means as suitable ("can be similar to the weight-sensing device disclosed in U.S. Pat. No. 3,836,755"). An inventor's own identification of a prior-art subsystem as substitutable is powerful motivation evidence.
3. Dual-scanner design is a predictable mechanical convenience. Reading a code on a bulky item or on a shelf with a hand wand (Nixdorf '9195) while using a fixed scan window (IBM '7816) for the routine "pass-over" at the basket mouth is the paradigmatic routine choice in the scanning art. IBM '7816 itself locates the fixed window at the bagging point precisely so the item is scanned "just prior to placing the item… into a paper bag" — the same ergonomic logic as '740's second scanner at the cart throat. KSR: combining familiar elements to serve this known function, with predictable results, is obvious.
4. Central-computer price lookup by code was itself old. Howard '989 stores price per code in a memory bank and reads it out. Substituting Howard's remote-lookup architecture for Gretag's on-trolley evaluation (Gretag expressly contemplates either: "The evaluation system may be in the container or in the check-out station in which case communication between it and the container is by radio") is a design choice between two disclosed alternatives — the classic KSR "predictable variation" and "obvious to try" situation.

Ground 2 (alternative): Otis '851 in view of FMC '697, Howard '989, Nixdorf '9195 and IBM '7816

Otis '851 supplies the weight-versus-recorded-weight gating and printed summation; FMC '697 supplies weight-change sensing of article selection with anti-shoplifting safeguards and an automatic printed invoice; Howard '989 supplies code-marked goods, central memory bank, and scanning; Nixdorf '9195 and IBM '7816 supply the two scanner types. The combination would be motivated by the shared objective of eliminating item-by-item cashier checkout — stated in the "Prior Art" and "Summary" sections of each of Otis, FMC and Howard. Ground 2 is somewhat weaker than Ground 1 because none of Otis/FMC mounts the weighing means in the cart; Gretag is needed for that limitation, which is precisely why Ground 1 should be the lead rejection.

Ground 3 (claims 2 and 3): the brake

• Claim 2 (brake actuated with the warning light when the light plane is broken) and claim 3 (same brake actuated when the weight comparison fails).
• Gretag '755 discloses the warning side of both: a signalling device in the trolley with a first alarm (misread) and second alarm (weight deviation), the latter being activatable from the check-out computer via the trolley's second radio receiver (claims 4, 13). Adding a wheel brake to immobilize the cart on alarm is a mechanical expedient for the admitted purpose — "stoppage quickly brings to the attention of the customer that an error has been made" ('740 spec) — and physical immobilization of a vehicle in response to an alarm condition is a long-known expedient. Caveat: no reference on this page discloses a cart brake; a rejection on claims 2–3 would require a secondary reference from the mechanical-vehicle or security hardware art, or reliance on "common sense" as in KSR. This is a genuine evidentiary gap for the brake itself, though the brake is arguably a non-inventive addition under § 103 given the articulated purpose.
• Claim 3's chain to claim 2 adds nothing beyond combining Gretag's comparator/alarm with the brake of claim 2 — obvious for the same reason.

Ground 4 (claim 4): printer/tape cumulative tabulation

Overwhelmingly met:

• Gretag '755: read-out "to provide an indication and/or print-out of the prices and/or of the price total."
• Otis '851: machine that issues "a printed summation of the prices"; claim 10 claims a printed itemized and totalized sales check at a customer self-checkout station.
• FMC '697: "a complete invoice of the purchases."
• Howard '989: records of each item sold for pricing/inventory.

The only addition in claim 4 is tying the printer to the second scanner, which follows directly from the Ground 1 combination (second scanner = the transaction "ring-up" device; first scanner = preview only).

---

5. The one genuinely contestable limitation — the light-curtain interlock

Element (d) of claim 1 is the only limitation not squarely disclosed by the cited art, and it deserves an honest appraisal rather than a forced mapping:

• Otis '851 discloses photoelectric/space-wave sensing of goods in a container ("a coordinated arrangement of X-ray and photo-electric cell mechanisms capable of activation by the indicia… space-transmitted waves"), but as an indicia-reading mechanism, not an opening-perimeter entry curtain.
• IBM '7816 uses photoelectric detectors adjacent a scan window, but to detect reflected scan light, not article entry.
• Gretag '755 detects article entry by weight, not optically; its motion detector (claim 7) triggers evaluation "when the container is substantially at rest," which is analogous to, but not the same as, a timed deactivation window keyed to a decode event.

The argument for obviousness of element (d): (1) it is an alternative known technique for the same function Gretag already performed (detecting that an article entered the container), and mere substitution of one known detection modality for another to achieve the same signal is ordinarily obvious; (2) beam-break detection at a defined aperture was ancient and ubiquitous by 1976 (intruder alarms, automatic doors, vending, elevator door safes), so a POSITA would regard a photocell plane across the basket opening as conventional; (3) conditioning a detector's sensitivity on an authorized event (a "mute"/"entry window") is standard sequencing practice — and Gretag's claim 7 already teaches gating the comparison on a detected event's settling.

The argument against: the specific claimed linkage — the curtain deactivates for a predetermined period only in response to the second scanner's decode, and then reactivates to warn — is not disclosed in, and may not be fairly suggested by, any of the six references. To reject claim 1 as a whole it would be necessary to add a secondary reference (e.g., a photoelectric light-curtain/beam-break patent, or a vending/safe aperture-sensor patent) or to rely on "common sense" — a step that KSR permits but that is more vulnerable on appeal than the thin Ground 1 mapping. All four claims stand or fall with this element, which is the single most important takeaway of this analysis.

Corroborating trajectory (not prior art to '740): the search returned GB/GB-era and later art in which the same aperture-behaviour concept recurs — e.g., Connelly's "second scanning beam… arranged to shroud at least a portion of an opening to the receptacle… monitors the time between scanning an item identification label… and the placing of the item within the receptacle" (US 8,371,504, citing the same family of problems). This shows the concept was, by later decades, treated as a routine refinement — but it post-dates '740 and cannot be used in the § 103 analysis itself.

---

6. Secondary considerations and caveats

• Secondary considerations: I found no evidence in the record of unexpected results, a long-felt-but-unmet need that the cited art failed to satisfy, or industry praise attributable to the claimed combination (as opposed to the general idea of self-scanning). The commercial benefits the specification touts (10–15% more selling floor, fewer cashiers/baggers) are economic and administrative consequences of the admitted concept, not proof of non-obviousness of the claim language, and no nexus evidence appears. The ~199 forward citations on the record are evidence that the disclosure is prior art of consequence, not that it was non-obvious when made.
• Applicant admissions (§1 above) do the heavy lifting on the individual elements; the claim must therefore rest on the combination and the interlock, the latter being element (d).
• Identifier discipline: nothing here relies on the two unrelated "4071740" string-collisions flagged in the litigation section (EP 4071740 A1; the TJSP docket number); the patent is treated as US 4,071,740 / US05/689,968 throughout.
• Availability as § 102(e) art: Nixdorf '9195 (filed 1973-04-25, issued 1976-04-06) and IBM '7816 (filed 1974-07-01, issued 1976-03-30) issued within a few weeks/months of '740's 1976-05-26 filing. Even if the applicant swore behind to an earlier invention date to defeat § 102(a), both are available as pre-AIA § 102(e) art because their U.S. applications were filed years before '740's filing. Both were, in fact, cited by the examiner.

Confidence and limitations

• High confidence: the content and mapping of Otis '851, FMC '697, Gretag '755, and IBM '7816 (text retrieved and quoted above; sources include the Google Patents full texts and the EPO/USPTO document mirrors at the URLs below).
• Medium confidence: Howard '989 — I confirmed code marking, a memory bank/central computer storing price and quantity per code, scanning, and inventory/record output, but did not confirm from retrieved text that its entry unit is cart-mounted or that it has a visual display. My mapping of the "control panel + display" limitation to Howard is therefore flagged.
• Express limitation: US 3,949,195 (Nixdorf) text was not retrieved (search budget exhausted). I rely on its title of record, "Sensing rod for the manual scanning of graphic information," plus the '740 specification's own treatment of hand-held scanners as known (it cites US 3,920,959 and "Welsh Allen #81000" as equivalents). If the hand-held-wand limitation is to be carried by Nixdorf, its text should be pulled before finalizing the rejection.
• No reissue or certificate of correction for '740 was verified, consistent with the prior section.

Summary verdict

Claim 1 is substantially obvious under Ground 1: US 3,836,755 (Gretag) in view of US 3,947,816 (IBM), US 3,949,195 (Nixdorf) and US 3,637,989 (Howard) — the preamble, cart-mounted scanner, cart weighing pan, comparator-versus-stored-weight, cart alarm and radio link to the store computer are all disclosed by Gretag, and the dual-scanner/display arrangement is a predictable substitution of known scanners for known functions, motivated by Gretag's own stated anti-queue objective and by the applicant's own admissions. US 2,919,851 (Otis) independently supplies the weight-verification-versus-recorded-weight concept (a 1960 reference) and is best used to reinforce claim 1(e) and claim 4. The sole serious non-obviousness argument for all four claims is the photocell light-curtain limitation with its scanner-triggered, timed mute — and because claims 2, 3 and 4 all incorporate it, resolution of that one element decides the validity of the entire patent. Resolving it in the challenger's favour requires a secondary reference for aperture beam-break sensing; resolving it against the challenger leaves all four claims intact.

Grounding sources (retrieved): https://patents.google.com/patent/US4071740/en (authoritative full text); https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/fb/ef/3f/af75fa259cad04/US3716697.pdf (FMC); https://patents.google.com/patent/US3836755 (Gretag, incl. claims); https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[3947816](/patent/3947816) and https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[3637989](/patent/3637989) (IBM; Howard); https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/claims?CC=US&NR=[2919851A](/patent/2919851A) (Otis claims); https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/a6/5a/79/61813a00d6ddab/[US2926010](/patent/US2926010).pdf and the Otis specification excerpt at patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/87/b5/32/75da991bf60959/US2919851.pdf.