US 4563739

I'll run targeted searches for this patent number, including any litigation/docket activity.

US 4,563,739 — Verification Summary

I searched for this patent number along with its assignees, inventors, and any court/docket activity. Below is a summary built primarily on the authoritative full text provided, with corroborating web sources noted.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (as published)

A computer-based system for taking inventory and producing inventory reports on products dispensed either in full containers or in quantities drawn from partially filled containers. Each container carries a unique code identifying the product. A code sensor (e.g., a bar-code reading wand) supplies product-identification signals to the computer, and a weighing device supplies weight signals for partially filled containers. Inventory is obtained by sensing the codes of full containers and keying in the number of full containers at a dispensing station or stockroom station; the quantity in partially filled containers is obtained by sensing the code, retrieving product information from computer memory, and applying the weight signal. Reports are produced per product, per product type, per station, or for the business as a whole.

Independent claims — plain language

Claim 1 — the broad inventory system. A system for taking inventory of, and producing reports on, many different products dispensed either as full containers or in partial (less-than-full) amounts, where each container bears a code uniquely identifying the product. The system has four cooperating parts:

1. Identifying means — senses the container code and derives a product-identification signal (plus identification of the container the product came from).
2. Weighing means — separately weighs each container of each product and any product inside it, outputting a weight signal.
3. Information entering means — lets a user enter the count of full containers and supplies a corresponding number signal.
4. Computer means — connected to all three inputs; once it receives a product-identification signal, it accepts the weight and/or number signal and correlates them to that product.

The computer includes (a) data store memory holding product records for each product — specifically the product's specific gravity, the empty-container (bottle glass) weight, and the quantity of product in a full container — plus previous and current on-hand inventory data; and (b) program memory holding data to control the computer to generate at least one inventory report from the identification, weight, number, product-record, and inventory data. The computer automatically:

• computes the quantity of each identified product in full containers by multiplying quantity-per-full-container × number of full containers;
• computes the quantity in any identified, weighed less-than-full container by subtracting the empty-container weight from the weight signal and performing at least one mathematical operation on the result using a number related to the specific gravity (note: claim 1 deliberately states this generically rather than spelling out division);
• sums the full and partial quantities to obtain a total quantity used in creating a current inventory report;
• the reports state the quantity of each product at the time of both the previous and the current inventory.
  The computer is also adapted to connect to copy-producing means (e.g., a printer) that makes perceptible copies of the reports.

Claim 18 — the liquor-specific, partial-container-focused system. A narrower independent claim limited to liquor beverage products, each dispensed from an initially full container in a predetermined quantity less than full, with a code attached to the container. It requires identifying means (code sensing → product ID signal) and weighing means (separately weighing each container and contents → weight signal), and computer means that accept the weight signal after the ID signal and correlate them. The data store memory holds product records including specific gravity and empty-container weight; the program memory controls report generation. The defining computation is explicit here: the computer subtracts the empty-container weight from the measured weight and divides the result by the specific gravity of the identified product to calculate the quantity of liquor remaining in each less-than-full, weighed container. The claim closes with means for producing perceptible information describing the amount of product in each identified and weighed container — i.e., a per-bottle readout, without necessarily requiring full-container counting or a consolidated inventory report.

Claim 19 depends from claim 18 and converts it into a full inventory system: it adds the information-entering means and number signal for full containers, adds "quantity of product in each full container" to the product record, and adds the multiply-out for full containers so the report includes total on-hand quantity of each product.

Dependent claim map (brief)

• Claims 2–9 (from claim 1) successively add: cost information and cost-of-used/added reporting (2); product-type categorization and a summary report (3); sales-signal input with cost and sales reporting (4); multi-station item records and station-selectable reports (5); per-station differentiated item records (6); nonvolatile memory in the data store (7); the liquor/glass-bottle/bar-code-wand/weigh-cell commercial embodiment (8); and a human-carryable case housing the system (9).
• Claims 10–13, 16 form a parallel chain from claim 1 (sales + cost reporting; type summaries; multi-station item records; type-descriptive reporting; station-specific reports).
• Claim 14 (depending on 3, 4, 5, 6, 11, 12 or 13) and claim 17 (depending on 1, 2, 10 or 14) require the product to be a liquid dispensed from the container that directly holds it, with the code attached to the container; claim 15 (from 14) restricts the liquid to an alcoholic beverage.

Litigation / docket search — negative result, with caveats

• I found no CAFC 2026 docket, appeal, or opinion involving US 4,563,739, and no district-court case naming it that I could verify from a reliable source. I did not obtain a direct hit from a docket-specific query; my searches were general web searches rather than direct queries against the USPTO Patent Public Search or the Federal Circuit's docket system, so this is a negative finding subject to search-coverage limitations — absence of evidence here is not proof that no case exists.
• One point of interest: the Google Patents record carries a "Family has litigation / First worldwide family litigation filed" flag linked to Darts-ip family 24049887. That flag indicates at least one litigation event somewhere in this patent family was indexed by Darts-ip, but the record as fetched provides no case name, court, or date, and my search did not retrieve the underlying case. Treat this as unconfirmed.
• Practical context: the patent expired July 18, 2003, and its commercial-era assignee (Accardis Systems, Inc.) is a long-dormant Florida corporation. A 2026 Federal Circuit appeal involving the patent would be unusual, which makes the negative finding more plausible but still not conclusive.

Identifier caution (per your literal-interpretation rule)

One search result surfaced JP 4563739 B2 ("押出成形品の製造方法および製造装置" — a method/apparatus for producing extruded foamed moldings; applicant 株式会社日本製網所; filed 2004, registered 2010). That is a different, unrelated patent in a different jurisdiction that merely shares the digits "4563739." It is not a family member of US 4,563,739 and should not be conflated with it. The genuine US family members are CA1230681A, WO1985000680A1, EP0151173B1, and DE3478520D1.

Confidence statement

High confidence on all bibliographic data, the abstract, and the claim analysis — these come from the authoritative full patent text. Lower confidence, explicitly flagged, on litigation: I could not confirm any court proceeding, and specifically could not find any CAFC 2026 matter tied to this patent number.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 4563739. Let me run several targeted searches.

Those results are mostly other "739" patents. Let me search more precisely, including the Darts-IP litigation family link and the Unified Patents portal.

Let me check specialized litigation databases, including the Unified Patents portal and the Darts-IP family reference on the patent's own page.

Answer

I was unable to confirm any specific litigation involving US Patent No. 4,563,739 ("Inventory and business management system which accounts for the contents of full and partially filled product containers," filed July 18, 1983; granted January 7, 1986; inventors Gerpheide, Anderson, and Hill; original assignee Impulse Computer Systems, Inc.; later assigned to Accardis Systems, Inc.; expired – lifetime as of the anticipated expiration on July 18, 2003).

No case with a plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, and disposition could be verified for this patent number from the sources I was able to search.

What I did find — and important caveats

1. The Google Patents record for US 4,563,739 itself carries a "Family has litigation" flag. The page links to a Darts-IP family page at https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=24049887&.... This indicates that Darts-IP's dataset associates some litigation with the worldwide patent family (the US, CA 1230681, EP 0151173, DE 3478520 family). However, the Google Patents page does not reproduce the case names, courts, or docket numbers, and I could not retrieve the underlying Darts-IP record (it is behind a licensing paywall and the link did not return case-level content in my searches). I therefore cannot state plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome from this flag, or even confirm that the litigation involved the US member specifically rather than a foreign family member.

2. I could not access case-level results from the Unified Patents litigation portal, PACER/CAFC dockets, RPX Insight, or the Stanford NPE Litigation Database specifically tied to this patent number. Searches of those resources returned either no matching record or their generic site content.

3. Beware of false positives in "739" searches. Nearly every hit my searches returned was a different patent whose number merely ends in "739" and must not be conflated with US 4,563,739. Examples of these distinct, unrelated patents (each with its own separate litigation history) include:

   • U.S. 7,523,373 — VLSI Technology LLC v. Intel Corp., No. 1-19-cv-00254-ADA (W.D. Tex.), plus related IPR proceedings;
   • U.S. 10,261,739 — Pebble Tide LLC v. Logitech Inc. (N.D. Cal.);
   • U.S. 6,241,739 — Altair Instruments, Inc. v. Riiviva, LLC, No. 2:16-cv-01136 (C.D. Cal.) and related cases;
   • U.S. 7,956,739 — Vivint v. ADT LLC;
   • U.S. D563,739 — Dexas International, Ltd. v. Menard, Inc., No. 1:18-cv-01105 (S.D. Ind.).

   None of these involve US 4,563,739, and I have deliberately excluded them from the answer above.

Bottom line

Based on my searches, no litigation specifically involving US Patent 4,563,739 can be confirmed. There is a family-level "litigation" indicator on the patent's Google Patents record (Darts-IP family 24049887) suggesting some dispute activity somewhere in the international family, but I cannot verify its details and cannot confirm any US district court or Federal Circuit case for this patent. Given the patent expired on July 18, 2003, any enforcement action would necessarily predate that date.

Caveat on confidence: My inability to find a case does not prove none exists. I could not obtain direct, case-level access to Darts-IP, Unified Patents, PACER, or the NPE Database for this specific number within my search limits. To reach a definitive "no litigation" conclusion, you would need to run a docket-level query (e.g., Lex Machina, Docket Navigator, or PACER's patent docket history) and a Darts-IP family lookup for family 24049887.

I'll verify the canonical (empty) list against public sources before writing anything up.

Note: several hits above are for a different patent — U.S. 7,523,373 (VLSI v. Intel). Let me run targeted checks on 4,563,739 specifically.

Let me do two final confirmation checks — PTAB E2E / decision databases, and any assertion history for this patent family.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 4,563,739: zero. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal) returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and my independent web checks surfaced no proceeding naming US 4,563,739 as the challenged patent — so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials.

Defensive posture: the patent is not "hardened" — it is inert. All 19 claims are untested before the Board, but that is academic: US 4,563,739 issued 1986-01-07 on an application filed 1983-07-18 and reached its anticipated expiration on 2003-07-18 (Google Patents legal status: "Expired - Lifetime"). Its term ended roughly nine years before the first AIA petition could be filed (AIA trial practice began 2012-09-16). A defendant today faces a patent that cannot be infringed by post-expiration conduct and whose past-damages window under 35 U.S.C. § 286 closed long ago. Absence of PTAB activity here is not a "nobody bothered to test it" signal — it is a "there was never a viable trial target" signal.

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No proceedings to report

There is no PTAB proceeding to place first, so the required per-proceeding blocks would be fabricated if I supplied them. I will not invent proceeding numbers, panels, institution dates, or FWD dispositions.

For completeness, here is what I affirmatively checked and what I could not verify:

• USPTO ODP (canonical): no AIA trial proceedings indexed. Treated as authoritative.
• Public web search for IPR/PGR/CBM naming 4,563,739: no hits. Every apparent match was a false positive for a different patent — U.S. 7,523,373 B2 (the VLSI v. Intel / PQA / OpenSky litigation, IPR2020-00158, IPR2021-01229, IPR2022-00479, IPR2022-00645, IPR2023-00203, Fed. Cir. No. 22-1906), and a Japanese patent JP 4563739 B2 (extrusion molding, Nippon Steel Net). Neither is related to this patent. Note the traps: "the '373 patent" in PTAB literature almost never means 4,563,739.
• Litigation flag — unverified: the Google Patents page carries a Darts-ip "Family has litigation" indicator for the family (family=24049887). I could not confirm any specific case name, court, or docket through search. Treat this as an open lead, not a fact. If any case existed, it predates the AIA and would have been litigated when the patent was live (pre-2003).
• Ownership chain (from the record): original assignee Impulse Computer Systems, Inc.; security interest recorded 1987-10-19; assignment to Accardis Systems, Inc. (a Florida corporation) recorded 1989-12-27. That is the last recorded owner in the file — relevant because a pre-suit demand today would need to come from whatever entity currently holds title, and I found no evidence of recent assertion activity.

Static facts about the patent itself (useful for any invalididity work, since none of it was ever adjudicated at the Board):

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all 19 claims UNTESTED — none canceled, none sustained, none held unpatentable. Claims 1, 2, 10, 13, 14, 16, 17, 18 and 19 have never been through an AIA trial; claims 3–9, 11, 12 and 15 likewise. There is no narrowing history to rely on and no claim-level holding to cite. Any prior-art position you want is still open as a defensive matter — but there is no estoppel and no administrative record to leverage either way.

Estoppel landscape: none, and none needed. Because no petition was ever filed, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches to no one, and no petitioner or privy is barred from any § 102/§ 103/§ 112 ground. Conversely, for a defendant being asserted against today, the procedural posture is not the problem — the expiration is. An AIA petition against an expired patent is legally possible (the Board can institute on a lapsed patent) but forensically pointless: there is no prospective injunctive relief to defeat, no live royalty base, and amendment is unavailable to the patent owner. The economically rational challenge is not an IPR; it is (a) non-infringement as a matter of law because no post-2003 acts can infringe an expired claim, (b) the § 286 six-year damages bar for any pre-2003 conduct, and (c) § 101/§ 112 invalidity under Alice/Mayo-era law if anyone were to plead otherwise.

Pattern signals. No repeat petitioner (there are no petitioners). No PTAB appeals by the patent owner. No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) ever challenged this patent — and their absence is consistent with the expiration date, not with respect to any licensing campaign. Structurally, the patent was also never CBM-eligible in practice: PGR was impossible (effective filing date 1983-07-18, well before the 2013-03-16 statutory cutoff), and CBM review under AIA § 18 (i) required a petitioner who had been sued or charged with infringement and (ii) sunset for newly filed petitions on 2020-09-16, both of which close the door now. So the "no activity" finding is over-determined — procedural unavailability and commercial irrelevance.

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Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the null set yourself before relying on it. Run the patent number through USPTO PTAB E2E (https://e2e.uspto.gov/) and the PTAB decisions database (https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions) as of the date you file anything. The ODP block is the canonical list; the web checks above merely failed to contradict it.
2. If you are a defendant and have been contacted, lead with expiration, not validity. Demand the patent owner identify the asserted claims, the accused acts, and the dates of those acts. US 4,563,739 expired 2003-07-18; absent some exotic theory I have not seen, there are no actionable post-expiration acts, and pre-2003 damages are time-barred under 35 U.S.C. § 286. Paper that before you ever brief an IPR.
3. Do not file an IPR as a reflex. With no live claims to invalidate, a petition buys nothing and forfeits the filing fee. If you need an administrative kill for settlement optics, an ex parte reexamination under 35 U.S.C. §§ 301–307 is available to any person at any time and survives expiration — but confirm the cost/benefit first.
4. Run down the "Family has litigation" flag. The Darts-ip indicator on the Google Patents record (https://patents.google.com/patent/US4563739/en) suggests some historical dispute in this family. I could not verify it and will not guess at a case name or docket. If your adversary is asserting a chain of title from Impulse Computer Systems → Accardis Systems, Inc., pull the USPTO Assignment records and confirm the current owner has standing — that is a cheaper and more likely winner than any PTAB argument here.
5. Watch for a claim-construction-only posture. If a suit somehow proceeds, the only adjudicated issues would be infringement/validity in district court; there is no FWD to link because none exists.

Nothing above should be read as a claim-level holding by the Board — none exists for this patent. Where I could not verify something (the litigation flag), I have said so explicitly rather than filling the gap.

I'll research the assignment record and litigation history before writing anything.

Useful. Now let me check the patent front page and any litigation history.

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — US 4,563,739

Important sourcing caveat up front: I could not directly query assignmentcenter.uspto.gov or assignment.uspto.gov in this session, and no search result I retrieved surfaced the reel/frame numbers or the correspondent of record for this patent's recordings. Pre-1990 assignment records for this family do exist in the USPTO system, but I have not verified reel/frame values, and I will not invent them. Everything below that is dated comes from the Google Patents legal-events record reproduced in the authoritative patent text supplied to me, plus independent corroboration (USPTO trademark records, Computer History Museum oral histories, Cirque/Alps corporate history). Reel/frame fields are marked [NOT RETRIEVED] rather than guessed. Treat this section as incomplete pending a manual Assignment Center pull.

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Inventors

Unusual-pattern note: the classic "all inventors leave within 12 months" fire-sale precursor is not evidenced. What is evidenced is a single-inventor trajectory: Gerpheide went on to found a materially more successful company (Cirque) roughly eight years later, while the original assignee's product line was transferred to a successor entity (see below). Only one of three inventors has a public post-filing track record; I could find nothing on Anderson or Hill, so any general statement about inventor retention/departure would be speculation. This is a weak/unclear observation, not a finding.

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Original assignee

Impulse Computer Systems, Inc. — named as assignee on the issued patent (confirmed by the Justia assignee index and by the 1984-07-09 assignment of inventors' interest).

• Primary line of business: point-of-sale / back-office computer systems for beverage-dispensing establishments. The company filed trademark serial 73513577 for "ACCARDIS" on 1984-12-14 (Reg. No. 1,467,007, registered 1987-12-01), describing the goods as a "liquor inventory control and accounting system comprising a computer, weighing scale, product code reader and data keyboard" — i.e. the Figure 1 carrying-case apparatus of this patent.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Yes, on the evidence of record. The ACCARDIS mark recites first use in commerce 1984-10-16 and first use anywhere 1983-10-10 (trademark record). The claimed combination — bar-code wand + weigh cell + keypad + programmed computer producing full/partial-container inventory reports — is exactly the ACCARDIS description. That is a genuine operating-company product, not a paper right.
• Current status: the original Montana corporation is not traceable as an active registrant in any source I retrieved. Its patent and (per the trademark owner history) its ACCARDIS mark passed to Accardis Systems, Inc. by 1989. I found no bankruptcy filing, no assignment to a monetization entity, and no dissolution record. Status: unclear / presumed wound down or absorbed into Accardis Systems, Inc.

Successor: Accardis Systems, Inc. (recorded as a Florida corporation per Google Patents; the trademark record gives a Montgomery Village, MD 20886 address, suggesting a Florida incorporation with Maryland operations). The ACCARDIS mark was still being renewed in 2007 (Section 8 & 9 accepted 2007-08-08) and was finally cancelled for non-use on 2020-03-20, indicating the business continued using the mark for at least two decades after the patent issued. Accardis is the current assignee of record on Google Patents.

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Assignment timeline

Every dated event below is from the Google Patents legal-events feed for US4563739A (recording dates as listed; execution dates not exposed). No reel/frame values were retrievable in this session. I flag each one rather than substitute an invented number.

• 1984-07-09 (executed; recording date shown as 1984-07-09) — Reel/Frame [NOT RETRIEVED]

  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: George E. Gerpheide; B. Craig Anderson; Linda Hill (individually)
  • Assignee: Impulse Computer Systems, Inc.
  • Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED] — no attorney of record surfaced for this recording. Therefore no recurrence analysis is possible for this chain.
  • Context: Ordinary founder/inventor-to-company assignment contemporaneous with the 1983-07-18 filing; this is the original assignment, not a post-issuance transfer.

• 1987-10-19 — Reel/Frame [NOT RETRIEVED]

  • Conveyance: Security Interest (Google Patents annotation: "SECURITY INTEREST (SEE DOCUMENT FOR DETAILS)")
  • Assignor: Accardis Systems, Inc. (i.e. the debtor/encumbering party)
  • Assignee: Impulse Computer Systems, Inc. (i.e. the secured party)
  • Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
  • Context: Securitization / secured financing. Accardis encumbered assets (patent rights among them) in favor of Impulse — meaning by October 1987 Accardis, not Impulse, was already the party holding and operating the patent rights, and the two entities were in a commercial lending or earn-out relationship. This is not a shell transfer; both parties are operating businesses, and the lien runs toward the original assignee, which is the opposite of the standard NPE direction of travel.

• 1989-12-27 — Reel/Frame [NOT RETRIEVED]

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: Impulse Computer Systems, Inc.
  • Assignee: Accardis Systems, Inc., a Corp. of FL
  • Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
  • Context: Internal/commercial reorganization — the product-line and patent move together. The assignment is from the original assignee to the operating successor that already held the ACCARDIS trademark and had already been granting liens against the patent. Consistent with the ACCARDIS business being carried on by Accardis after Impulse's exit, not with a rights-only transfer to a monetization vehicle.

• 2003-07-18 — Anticipated expiration (statutory term end). Legal status today: "Expired – Lifetime." No post-1989 assignment, license, or change-of-name recording for this patent appears in any source I retrieved.

No later records found. In particular: no assignment to any identified NPE, no defensive-aggregator acquisition, no litigation-driven transfer. Per the brief's instruction, if the Assignment Center turns out to hold no records beyond these, the practical reading is that the last recorded owner (Accardis Systems, Inc.) or its successor-in-interest still holds whatever residual rights exist — which, since the patent expired 2003-07-18, is nothing enforceable.

Open item for manual verification: Google Patents flags "Family has litigation — First worldwide family litigation filed" with a Darts-ip family link (family=24049887). I could not identify the case, court, party names, or date from available sources. If that litigation post-dates 1989, it could bear on the pre-litigation-transfer signal below. Do not treat this flag as established until the Darts-ip/assignment pull is done.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 4563739
    1983 : Impulse files application
    1984 : Inventors assign rights to Impulse
         : ACCARDIS product first sold in commerce
    1987 : Accardis grants security interest to Impulse
    1989 : Assignment to Accardis Systems Inc
    2003 : Patent expires

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The only post-issuance assignment (1989-12-27) runs from one operating company (Impulse, a Montana POS-systems vendor) to another operating company (Accardis Systems, Inc.) that simultaneously took over the ACCARDIS trademark and kept renewing it through 2007. No "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" suffix, no registered-agent service address, no single-purpose entity. The 1987-10-19 security interest runs toward the original assignee, which is the inverse of the shell-entity pattern.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT. Neither Impulse Computer Systems, Inc. nor Accardis Systems, Inc. appears on any of the enumerated NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities), nor did my search surface either entity in Unified Patents / RPX high-frequency-plaintiff material. Caution on adjacency, not identity: George Gerpheide's later company Cirque Corporation is an active patent enforcer (e.g. the touchpad litigation culminating in the PTAB petition record at ptacts.uspto.gov), but no record links Cirque to US4563739, so this is context only and not a signal for this patent.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT ASSESSABLE. No correspondent of record was retrievable for any of the three recordings. I can neither confirm nor deny a recurring attorney or recording firm. This is the single most valuable thing to capture on a manual Assignment Center pull — for a pre-1990 chain the correspondent will likely be a Montana or Florida/DC-area filing attorney.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Three recordings span five and a half years (1984-07-09 → 1987-10-19 → 1989-12-27), not the sub-24-month LLC chain the signal describes. No shared-address or common-principal pattern is evidenced between Impulse and Accardis beyond the commercial relationship itself, which the security interest documents.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — UNCLEAR. The last transfer is dated 1989-12-27. I could not date the family's flagged litigation. If that litigation began before ~1990-06, this signal would flip to present (transfer arranged to establish a clean standing record for the assertion); if it began later, the signal is not present. Blocked on the Darts-ip / court-records check.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT (no evidence). No Chapter 7/11 proceeding, no patent sale in a bankruptcy estate, and no creditor-transfer to a third party appears for Impulse or Accardis. The 1987 security interest was a consensual lien between two going concerns, and it was never recorded as foreclosed.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT. No operating-company-to-NPE transfer, no SEC disclosure (both entities were private, so no 10-K/8-K trail exists either way), and no Patent Progress / EFF coverage surfaced.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. Note, however, that the practical effect is similar to neutralization for a different reason: the patent expired 2003-07-18, so it is unassertible regardless of ownership.

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Verdict

Insufficient data

Justification: The recorded chain is short, entirely pre-1990, and terminates at Accardis Systems, Inc. (a Corp. of FL) by the 1989-12-27 assignment from Impulse Computer Systems, Inc. — a transfer between two operating companies that both commercialized the ACCARDIS liquor-inventory product (trademark serial 73513577, first use in commerce 1984-10-16), with the intervening 1987-10-19 recording being a security interest granted to the original assignee, the inverse of the NPE direction of travel. Zero of the eight NPE signals are present; several are simply not assessable because no reel/frame and no correspondent of record were retrievable in this session, which is precisely why the call is insufficient data rather than a clean "original-assignee-owns-it" finding. The patent's status as Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2003-07-18) further means the chain cannot support a live assertion by anyone, so the NPE question is largely moot even under the Google Patents-flagged family litigation.

Verify before relying on this: pull US4563739 in the USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/, search by patent number) to capture the reel/frame and correspondent for each of the three recordings, then reconcile against the Google Patents legal-events feed (https://patents.google.com/patent/US4563739A/en#legalEvents) and the Darts-ip family litigation flag (https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=24049887) to fix the dates for the pre-litigation-transfer analysis.

I'll research the prior art cited on US 4,563,739. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me dig into the specific citation record on the patent itself.

Important preliminary note on data availability

I ran searches against Google Patents and general web sources for the literal number 4,563,739 (application US06/515,079; "Inventory and business management system which accounts for the contents of full and partially filled product containers"; Impulse Computer Systems, Inc.; filed 1983‑07‑18; granted 1986‑01‑07; inventors Gerpheide, Anderson, Hill). The bibliographic record is confirmed, consistent with the litigation summary already generated (which used the same family — CA 1230681, EP 0151173B1, DE 3478520D1).

However, I must flag a material gap before answering: the authoritative text supplied for this patent is truncated before the face‑of‑patent "References Cited" table. The Google Patents page structure shows the citation tables (Patent Citations / Cited By / Similar Documents / family) as separate sections, and none of my searches returned the actual examiner-cited U.S. patent list for US 4,563,739. Consequently:

• I cannot reproduce "each patent citation" on the face of US 4,563,739 with verified numbers, dates, and descriptions.
• Under my operating rules I must not invent citation numbers or § 102 mappings. Reporting a fabricated reference list here would be worse than reporting the gap.

Below I give (A) what the patent's own specification admits as prior art, (B) the verified citation relationships I could confirm, and (C) a § 102 framework tied to the actual claim language, so the analysis can be completed once the "References Cited" list is supplied.

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A. Prior art admitted on the face of the specification (Background of the Invention)

Although the patent does not number these references in the text I have, the specification expressly concedes four categories of prior art. These are the examiner‑relevant conceptual fields and the sentences to which any cited reference would map:

1. Weighing partially filled beverage containers to determine dispensed quantity. The specification states: "it is known to weigh partially filled beverage containers for the purpose of determining the quantity which has been dispensed over a particular time period," but adds that "[s]uch measurement arrangements do not address the larger inventory control problem of accounting for all of the bottles or containers, whether they are unused or whether they are partially filled." → This is the closest admitted art to independent claims 1, 18, and 19 (the weight → empty‑container‑weight → specific‑gravity calculation).

2. Automated beverage dispensing/control systems that require every drink to be dispensed through a machine, measuring the number of dispensed quantities, hours of dispensation, and the fact of dispensation. The patent distinguishes these as "more in the nature of control systems, rather than systems capable of providing the inventory, management and financial information" of claims 3–6, 11–13, 16.

3. Optical‑code / point‑of‑sale product identification systems — applying codes to products and electronically sensing them to access product information, "primarily contemplated for use in retail vending operations wherein complete containers of products are sold, not where partial contents of products are dispensed from containers." → Relevant to the code‑sensing limitation of claims 1, 8, 18 (bar‑code wand).

4. Warehouse inventory‑label systems where each item bears a detectable inventory label. The patent notes these are "not directly concerned with retail or point of purchase sales or dispensing partial contents from containers." → Relevant to the item‑record‑per‑station limitations of claims 5, 6, 12, 16.

These four admissions define where the anticipatory art most likely sits; without the numbered list I cannot name the specific patents the examiner placed in each bucket.

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B. Verified citation relationships I could confirm

These came back in searches and involve US 4,563,739 literally (not the "ends‑in‑739" false positives the litigation summary correctly warned about):

Key caveat: every verified relationship above is a forward citation (a later document citing 4,563,739). Forward citations are useful for claim‑scope and validity‑litigation analysis but are not § 102 anticipatory references against US 4,563,739, because they post‑date its 1983‑07‑18 filing date.

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C. § 102 framework keyed to the actual claims (pending the reference list)

The independent claims are 1, 18, and 19; the remainder are dependent. To anticipate under § 102, a single reference must disclose every limitation. The limitations a cited reference would need to meet, claim by claim:

• Claim 1 (independent, broadest): (i) code‑sensing identifier for each container; (ii) separate weighing means for each container; (iii) number‑entry means for full containers; (iv) computer correlating ID + weight + number signals; (v) data‑store memory holding specific gravity, empty‑container weight, and quantity per full container; (vi) program memory generating reports; (vii) same processor performing both the full‑container multiplication and the partial‑container (weight − empty weight) → specific‑gravity operation, then summing; (viii) coupling to copy‑producing means (printer / serial port).

  • Most likely anticipation target: a single reference that weighs partially filled bottles and applies specific gravity to derive volume. The specification admits this is "known," which is a § 102 risk for the calculation sub‑elements, but the combination with bar‑code ID + full‑container counting + report generation is the novelty hook.

• Claim 18 (independent): the narrow "compute only" version — code sensing + weighing + subtracting empty‑container weight and dividing by specific gravity + output means describing amount in each container. A weighing‑plus‑specific‑gravity reference alone would be the strongest § 102 candidate here.

• Claim 19 (independent): adds full‑container counting and the multiplication step to claim 18.

• Dependent cluster 2–13, 16: cost/sales data, product‑type categorization, per‑station item records, nonvolatile memory, bar‑code wand + weigh cell, carrying case. For § 102 these fall only if the base claim's reference also discloses the added limitation.

If you can supply the "References Cited" table from the USPTO PatentCenter / Google Patents page for US 4,563,739 (the examiner‑cited U.S. and foreign patents with their grant dates and examiner X/Y designations), I will produce the requested per‑reference output — full citation, publication/filing date, brief description, and the specific claim(s) each reference potentially anticipates under § 102, with the element‑by‑element mapping above.

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Bottom line

• Confirmed: US 4,563,739 exists as described; the family and bibliographic data cross‑check with the earlier litigation summary (no contradiction found).
• Could not verify: the specific examiner‑cited prior‑art references on the face of US 4,563,739. The searches returned the patent's own text, forward citations, and unrelated "…739" patents, but not the "References Cited" list. I have deliberately not fabricated reference numbers or mappings.
• What I could confirm are forward citations (US 5,196,686; US 5,986,219; US 6,616,037; US 8,226,414), which are relevant to claim construction/validity but are not § 102 art against this patent.
• Confidence: high that the citation list was not retrievable via the tools available; high on the claim structure and the admitted‑prior‑art categories; low/none on specific anticipatory reference identities until the face‑of‑patent list is provided.

I'll research the prior art cited on this patent, since the fetched page text includes only prior-art keywords but not the reference list itself.

Let me find the actual cited prior-art references — both the US "References Cited" list and the EPO search report for the family.

Let me pull the actual "References Cited" (prior-art) lists from secondary patent databases.

Important scope note before the analysis

I was asked to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page," but the authoritative text you supplied does not actually contain a prior-art reference list. The only "prior art" content in the fetched Google Patents record is the keyword block:

Prior art keywords: product, inventory, information, container, products

The front-page "References Cited" / "Cited By" tables are absent from the fetched text, and within my search-step budget I could not retrieve the patent's own front-page citation list from Justia, FreePatentsOnline, or the patentimages PDF. So the analysis below is built from (a) the prior art I did retrieve in searches, (b) the prior art that the patent's own specification admits, and (c) the state of the art as of the July 18, 1983 filing date. Do not treat this as a substitute for the actual § 102(b)/§ 103 art cited on the face of the patent. That gap is flagged again in the confidence statement.

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1. What the patent itself concedes as prior art

These admissions from the specification are the most defensible starting points, because an applicant's own characterization of the prior art is binding:

That last row is the crux. The patent does not claim discovering specific gravity, tare weight, or density = mass ÷ volume. It claims storing those constants per product in a record keyed to a scanned code and using them in a subtraction-and-division.

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2. Pre-1983 references actually retrieved

Two genuine pre-filing references surfaced, both in the same liquor-control field:

(a) U.S. Pat. No. 2,936,163 (Foster, 1960) — bar accessory with a weighing shelf.
Retrieved via the Dalia disclosure, which states Foster "discloses a bar accessory which is said to indicate the amount of beverages that have been dispensed or sold to customers by a bartender… comprises a shelf for bottles of alcoholic beverages, which shelf includes a conventional weight scale for determining the total amount of alcoholic beverage dispensed from all of the bottles supported on said shelf." (freepatentsonline.com/3863724.html)

(b) U.S. Pat. No. 3,863,724 (Dalia, Jr.) — "Inventory Control System." Same source. Dalia's stated object is determining "the amount of material dispensed from a container, such as the amount of alcoholic beverage dispensed from a bottle," via "container support means… weight sensing means responsive to the weight of said" container. His background section is essentially a roadmap of the § 103 motivation, expressly identifying the industry problem (bartender theft, undetectable shortages across shifts and multiple bartenders) and evaluating alternatives — shelf scales, per-bottle flow meters over bottle mouths, CCTV — on cost and practicality grounds.

Critically important negative note: several references I surfaced are post-1983 and therefore NOT prior art against this patent, notwithstanding their superficial similarity. Do not let them into a § 103 combination:

• US 4,961,533 (Teller et al.), "Inventory control system" — a plurality of weight transducers plus sensors reading a "unique element" on each article, "especially useful as an inventory control system for a bar." Filed 1989-10-30. This is later art, not prior art for a July 1983 filing.
• US 5,055,660 (Avicom), "Method of inventorying liquor" (1988 priority) — later art.
• US 5,986,219, US 6,616,037, US 2001/0007982 (scanner + scale, EBW/PBW/LD formulas) — all later art. The 2001/0007982 disclosure is essentially the claim-1 algorithm re-expressed (NWW = PBW − EBW; PBV = NWW ÷ LD), and it is useful as evidence of how routine the calculation had become, but it cannot be cited against US 4,563,739.
• WO 1999036751, JP 2780689 B2, and the unrelated JP 4563739 B2 (extruded foamed moldings) — not prior art / not family.

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3. Obviousness of claim 1

Claim 1 is a system claim with four cooperating means plus a programmed computer. Mapping to the art:

The strongest combination

Primary: Dalia '724 (or Foster '163) for the container-weighing step and for the motivation — Dalia expressly frames the problem as one of shortage/theft control across multiple bartenders and bar stations, i.e., exactly the problem US 4,563,739 announces it solves.

Secondary: the admitted bar-code/inventory-data-processing art for the code-sensing means, the product record, and the report generation.

Tertiary: a specific-gravity/density table plus the known relationship ρ = m/V to convert a gross bottle weight into fluid volume.

Motivation to combine — the KSR factors

1. Same field, same problem. Dalia and Foster are liquor-inventory appliances; the claimed system is a liquor-inventory appliance. Combining a code reader with a bottle scale is not a leap across disciplines.
2. Known technique, obvious improvement. The patent's own background says weighing partial containers was already used "for the purpose of determining the quantity which has been dispensed over a particular time period." Once you accept that premise, expressing the result in fluid ounces rather than grams is a matter of dividing by a tabulated specific gravity — arithmetic on a known constant.
3. Automation of a known manual method. The trade literature confirms that "the weight method uses a scale to weigh open bottles of liquor" was a recognized manual practice in beverage cost control. Implementing a documented manual procedure on a programmable computer is the paradigm of obvious subject matter.
4. Finite, predictable, enumerable solution set. Converting mass to volume requires either (i) a per-product density table, (ii) a hydrometer measurement, or (iii) an assumption of uniform density. The applicant picked (i), the cheapest and most obvious option, and the spec admits (i) and (ii) are interchangeable alternatives.
5. Reasonable expectation of success. Every element (wand decoder, load cell → V/F → counter, keypad, EEPROM, serial printer) was off-the-shelf and called "conventional" by the applicant; the only new behavior is arithmetic.

Where claim 1 might survive

Claim 1's careful phrasing — "at least one mathematical operation on the result of such subtraction using a number related to the specific gravity" — is deliberately broader than claim 18's explicit division. Broader claims are easier to invalidate, not harder. The realistic non-obviousness arguments are:

• No single reference integrates weighing + code-sensing + multi-period inventory reporting, so a § 102 rejection is unlikely; the case must be made under § 103.
• The two-period (previous/current) comparison with cost, sales-differential, and cost-percentage reporting is a genuinely integrated business-model element that Foster/Dalia do not suggest. But that reporting content is largely captured by dependent claims 2–5 and 10–13, all of which add conventional accounting relationships ("known accounting and inventory functions," per the spec).
• Teaching away / different principle of operation: the patent argues machine-dispensing systems are "control systems rather than systems capable of providing inventory, management and financial information." This distinguishes the purpose, but it does not distinguish the structure claim 1 recites, and it cuts against the applicant: the industry's own literature recognized a manual weighing method existed outside the machine-dispensing paradigm.

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4. Obviousness of claims 18 and 19

Claim 18 is the cleanest invalidity target because its distinguishing limitation is stated explicitly: subtract the empty-container weight from the measured weight and divide the result by the specific gravity of the identified product.

That is precisely PBV = (PBW − EBW) / LD — the formula later art states as a "known physical law" for converting mass to volume. Combined with Foster/Dalia (weighing a liquor bottle and subtracting tare) and the admitted availability of specific-gravity charts, claim 18 is, on these grounds, prima facie obvious: the only added step is a one-line arithmetic conversion using a constant the applicant concedes is published.

Its closing element — "means… for producing perceptible information describing the amount of product contained in each particular container identified and weighed" — is a per-bottle readout, i.e., a display or printer, both conventional.

Claim 19 merely folds claim 1's full-container multiplication and total-on-hand reporting back into claim 18. It adds nothing structural; obviousness follows from the claim-1 analysis.

A useful secondary line for claim 18: Dalia's flow-meter-over-bottle-mouth alternatives and the metered-dispensing art show that expressing liquor usage in fluid-volume units was the industry's established convention — which supplies the reason the artisan would convert weight to volume rather than reporting grams.

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5. Obviousness of the dependent claims

Caveat on claim 7 (the strongest dependent claim for the patent owner). Nonvolatile storage is not merely incidental here — the patent's commercial premise is physical transport between stations, and the point of EEPROM is that the data survives being unplugged. That gives claim 7 a plausible (though I would judge ultimately thin) motivation-to-combine rebuttal: an artisan combining a stationary weighing shelf with a fixed POS terminal would have no reason to require nonvolatility. Expect the patent owner to argue claim 7 is where the combination becomes non-obvious. The counter is that portable data-collection terminals with battery-backed/nonvolatile storage were routine in 1983, making the limitation a predictable substitution.

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6. Reference combinations summarized

1. Dalia '724 alone — anticipates the weighing-and-determining-the-amount-dispensed concept; primary reference for motivation and for the container-support/weight-sensing structure.
2. Foster '163 + Dalia '724 — a two-reference scale/measurement combination; strengthens the "weighing bottles to derive liquor usage was known" showing.
3. Dalia '724 (or Foster '163) + the admitted bar-code/POS inventory art — renders claim 1 obvious; the primary § 103 combination.
4. The above + specific-gravity/density tables (admitted prior art) + the ρ = m/V relationship — renders claim 18 clearly obvious and completes claim 1's partial-container calculation.
5. The above + conventional cost-accounting and category-reporting practice — renders claims 2–6, 10–17, 19 obvious.
6. The above + conventional portable data-collection terminal design — renders claims 7–9 obvious.
7. Do not use US 4,961,533, US 5,055,660, US 5,986,219, US 6,616,037, US 2001/0007982, or WO 1999036751 — all post-date July 18, 1983 and are ineligible as § 103 art against this patent.

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7. What would likely defeat the obviousness case (for balance)

• No single reference teaches barcode-driven, per-bottle weighing with per-product specific gravity and tare in a product record. A § 102 rejection on the retrieved art is unavailable; the whole case is § 103 and turns on the sufficiency of the motivation to combine.
• Nexus / secondary considerations. The Google Patents record carries a "Family has litigation" flag (Darts-ip family 24049887), and the patent was asserted/traded against a commercial product (Accardis). If there is evidence of commercial success, industry praise, or copying with a nexus to the specific gravity/tare-calculation limitation, that is the patent owner's best rebuttal — recall the litigation summary already generated could not confirm any case name, court, or docket, so this remains unproven on the current record.
• Claim differentiation favors the patent owner on claim 1. The drafter deliberately kept claim 1 generic ("using a number related to the specific gravity") while claim 18 recites division. A challenger attacking claim 1 may be met with the argument that the generic operation encompasses conversions the art does not suggest (e.g., using a product-specific volume-vs-weight curve rather than a single density divisor). That argument is available to the owner but undercuts claim 18, which is why claim 18 is the more vulnerable independent claim.

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8. Contradictions and limitations to flag explicitly

1. The "Prior Art section of this page" does not contain a prior-art reference list. The fetched text supplies only five prior-art keywords. Any statement that a particular reference was cited on the face of US 4,563,739 would be an invention. I have not made one. The references I rely on (Foster '163, Dalia '724) were retrieved from a third-party database page, not from the patent's own citation list.
2. I did not retrieve the EP 0151173 search report's cited-document list (the EPO Global Patent Index hit I found only showed US 4563739 and US 5186281 cited against a later application, EP 0777190 — i.e., forward citations, not art cited against this patent).
3. Post-1983 look-alikes must be excluded. The closest structural match I found anywhere (multiple weight transducers + unique-element sensors + computer, "especially useful as an inventory control system for a bar") is US 4,961,533, filed 1989 — six years after this patent's filing. Its resemblance shows the claim was narrow relative to later entrants, not that it was anticipated.
4. No § 103 conclusion here is a legal conclusion. This is a technical-analyst assessment, not an invalidity opinion, and it is not an anticipation (§ 102) finding.

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Confidence statement

• High confidence in the claim-element mapping, the § 103 combinations proposed for claims 1 and 18, and the motivation-to-combine rationales — these rest on the authoritative claim text and the patent's own prior-art admissions.
• Medium confidence in the characterization of Foster '163 and Dalia '724 — I have their titles, subject matter, and Dalia's own description of Foster from a retrieved full-text page, but I did not read either reference's claims directly.
• Low confidence / unverified on the complete prior-art record: the patent's front-page "References Cited" and "Cited By" lists, and the EPO search report for EP 0151173B1. To do this properly, pull the patentimages front page for US4563739 (the PDF at patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/65/ac/99/e14376edd312c6/US4563739.pdf, page 1) and the EP 0151173B1 "Citations" tab. Until those are in hand, this analysis should be treated as a framework populated with the art I could actually verify, not an exhaustive § 103 opinion.