US 4602280

I'll search for authoritative information on US 4602280 and any litigation/docket activity.

US 4,602,280 A — Search Summary

Important scope note: I searched for the literal number 4602280 and filtered out unrelated hits (the number 4602280 also appears as a municipal ID number in Spanish/Portuguese municipal records and as a German media-catalog index, which are not patent documents and were disregarded).

Bibliographic data

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4602280/en and https://uspto.report/patent/grant/4602280

Abstract (verbatim)

"A weight and/or measurement reduction preview wherein a first image of a person is recorded. The person's desired proportions are entered into the computer and the recorded image is reproportioned based on the desired proportions, and the original image and the recreated image are displayed side-by-side."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 (system/apparatus). A "before/after" body-reproportioning system made up of: (a) means to record the customer's body as a first image; (b) means to store that image as horizontal raster lines; (c) means to enter the customer's actual body proportions; (d) means to enter the desired body proportions; (e) means to reproportion the pixels along the horizontal axis of each raster line by applying a stretch-or-shrink factor, where the factor is derived from the difference between the actual and desired dimensions, producing a reproportioned raster line; (f) means to build a reproportioned figure from those raster lines; (g) means to produce a new image from the reproportioned original; and (h) means to display the reproportioned image.

Claim 6 (method). The same concept framed as a method of displaying the effect a weight/measurement reduction would have on a customer's body: recording a first image; storing it in horizontal raster lines; entering actual proportions; entering desired proportions; reproportioning the pixels along the horizontal axis by applying a stretch/shrink factor to each raster (the factor being a function of the difference between actual and desired dimensions) to form a reproportioned raster line; creating a reproportioned figure from those lines; producing a new image based on the reproportioned original; and displaying the reproportioned image.

Dependent claims (for context, not independent): claims 2–5 add raster repartitioning using fractional pixels, low-pass filtering/sampling for new pixel spacing, video-camera capture with raster-by-raster storage, and side-by-side display of the before/after images via a video screen and frame grabber. Claims 7–15 mirror these limitations in method form (digitizing, raster-by-raster memory storage, horizontal stretch/shrink, adjacent display, fractional-pixel repartitioning, filtering/sampling, video-camera recording, video-screen display).

Notable context from the specification

• The patent describes itself as an improvement on the same inventor's earlier work: Ser. Nos. 366,372 (now US 4,467,349) and 466,973 (now US 4,486,774), which in turn improved US 4,261,012 (issued Apr. 7, 1981). It names Dyson, US 4,232,134, as the most relevant prior art.
• Prior art cited against/of record: CA 1020276 (Ryan), US 4,232,334 (Revlon), US 4,261,012 (Maloomian), US 4,276,570 (Burson), US 4,297,724 (Dainippon Screen), US 4,467,349 and US 4,486,774 (both Maloomian).
• Hardware examples named in the specification: JVC KY1900CH camera, Datacube 150 frame grabber/image buffer, DSD 880 memory, DEC LSI 11/23 CPU, Conrac 5711 video screen. Claim language, however, is generic "means" language, not tied to these specific components.

Litigation / CAFC 2026 docket check — uncertain

I must be explicit here rather than fabricate:

• The Google Patents page for this family (Family ID 24226738) carries the banner "First worldwide family litigation filed" with a link to a Darts‑ip global litigation dataset. That banner is a generic templated link and, in the page as fetched, does not identify a specific case, court, party, or date. It is therefore weak evidence that at least one suit somewhere in this family was docketed historically, but I cannot confirm any particular case from it.
• My searches returned no CAFC 2026 docket entry, no Federal Circuit appeal number, and no 2026 district-court case involving US 4,602,280. Searches for "4602280" mixed with litigation terms surfaced only unrelated matches (including an unrelated CourtListener API record where 4602280 is a financial-disclosure investment row ID, not a patent docket).
• I could not directly query USPTO PatentCenter or the CAFC docket system through the available tools; I only have web-search results.
• Practical caveat: this patent expired 2003‑12‑05, over two decades ago. A newly filed 2026 CAFC appeal on this patent would be unusual (though not impossible for revived/old infringement matters). I found no evidence of one.

Bottom line on the litigation question: treat any 2026 CAFC activity for US 4,602,280 as unverified. The only litigation-adjacent signal is the boilerplate Darts‑ip "family has litigation" link, which is not authoritative as to specifics. Verification would require a direct USPTO PatentCenter / PACER / CAFC docket lookup by the exact number 4,602,280 (and the application number 06/557,750).

I'll search litigation-focused sources for this specific patent number.

Let me check litigation-specific databases and docket sources directly.

Litigation Search — US Patent 4,602,280

Bottom line

No litigation involving US Patent 4,602,280 (Maloomian, "Weight and/or measurement reduction preview system") is known or verifiable.

Because there are no cases, I cannot populate the six requested data fields (plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, status). Supplying any values would be fabrication.

What I actually searched and what came back

Sources queried (via web search): Unified Patents patent/litigation portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-4602280-A), Google Patents (family page + cited‑by/citing lists), FreePatentsOnline, USPTO.report, Justia, CourtListener, Darts‑ip references, and general litigation-term queries combining "4602280" / "4,602,280" with "litigation," "lawsuit," "CAFC," "case."

Result: every hit for the bare string "4602280" that was not this patent was a false positive — the same numerals appear as (a) a German media-catalogue film-index entry (e.g. 4602280(59) in the kmz-vaihingen and kreis-hz Medienkatalog PDFs, indexed to "Identitätsfindung"), (b) a Brazilian municipal/judicial registration ID (4602280 ALINE CASAROTTO, jucisrs.rs.gov.br), and (c) a CourtListener financial-disclosure investment row ID (investments/4602280, a Berkshire Hathaway corporate bond entry). None of these are patent dockets. Per the operating rule to interpret identifiers literally, I excluded them rather than treating them as litigation.

The one litigation-adjacent signal, and why it does not answer the question

1. Darts‑ip banner. The Google Patents family page (Family ID 24226738) displays the templated banner "First worldwide family litigation filed" linking to the Darts‑ip dataset. As fetched, this banner names no case, court, party, or date. It is a generic template link and is not authoritative as to any specific proceeding. It cannot be used to state that a case exists, let alone its parties or outcome.

2. Maloomian references cited as prior art in someone else's case. A Justia filing from E.D. Tex. Case No. 2:2013cv00235 (an apparel/image-composite patent dispute involving a "customer image" + "apparel style image" database claim, decided on claim-construction/disclaimer grounds) quotes prosecution and ex parte reexamination argument distinguishing "Maloomian." Separately, the front matter of US 5,986,718 lists 4,602,280 7/1986 Maloomian among its references, and the PCT/GB90/01058 international search report cites US-A-4602280 as an "A" category document.

   Important caveat: in those instances US 4,602,280 (or a Maloomian sibling) appears as prior art cited against other patents — the opposite of the patent being asserted. I could not confirm that the specific reference litigated in 2:2013cv00235 was 4,602,280 rather than one of the inventor's other patents (US 4,261,012 / 4,467,349 / 4,486,774, all also "Maloomian"). This is not litigation involving US 4,602,280 as a cause of action, and I am flagging it only so the record is complete.

Independent corroborating indicators of no enforcement activity

• Assignment history is a solo inventor, never a litigating entity. The patent was filed by and remained with an individual; the "Cited By" list references it as a foundational academic-style citation (e.g., US 4,670,781 to L'Oréal; US 4,730,260 eyewear simulation; US 5,064,850 aesthetic-imaging systems; US 5,853,490; and later weight-loss visualization patents), consistent with a cited reference rather than an asserted patent.
• No continuation/divisional family. The family consists of the single application 06/557,750 with no non‑US members in the family application list — there is no family of continuation patents in the US or abroad to support a multi-patent enforcement campaign.
• Expired 2003‑12‑05, more than two decades before the current date, with the last fee payment recorded for year 12 (1998‑01‑12). A patent that has lapsed for lack of maintenance fees and expired by term generates essentially no prospective damages, which is why old patents of this vintage are rarely the subject of new filings.

Why this differs from a "there must be something" expectation

A patent with 146 forward citations and a mention in a global litigation dataset naturally raises suspicion of enforcement. But forward citations are a measure of technical relevance, not litigation. Here the technical citations cluster in image-morphing, virtual try‑on, and photo‑booth art — and those later patents (not this one) are the ones with enforcement histories (e.g., the Photostar/Imageware and Bet Funding LLC lineages visible in the "Cited By" list). This patent sits upstream of that enforcement wave as background art.

Recommended verification steps I could not complete with the available tools

To convert "no litigation found" into a definitive negative, a direct docket pull is required — web search alone cannot exhaust these systems:

• USPTO PatentCenter / Public PAIR for application 06/557,750 and patent 4,602,280 — check the "Litigation" and assignment tabs for any recorded infringement suits (these are thin but occasionally present).
• PACER full-text case search (all districts) for "4,602,280" and "4602280"; also the Federal Circuit (CAFC) docket, since any appeal of an infringement judgment would land there.
• Unified Patents litigation caselist (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) — searched, and no entry for US‑4602280‑A appeared; the portal entry for the patent is an analytics page, not a litigation record.
• Darts‑ip / Clarivate by family ID 24226738 (the source behind the Google Patents banner) to see the specific proceeding(s), if any, the banner is keyed to.

Two meta-notes for the file: (1) the current date given in this task (April 26, 2026) differs from the system's stated date (2026‑09‑27); either way it is ~21 years post‑expiration. (2) This analysis is consistent with — and does not contradict — the earlier-generated summary section, which likewise recorded the litigation question as unverified and identified the Darts‑ip banner as non‑specific boilerplate. No contradiction between sections exists.

If you can supply the Darts‑ip case list or a PACER/PatentCenter extract for family 24226738, I can turn the "unverified" finding into either a confirmed case table or a documented negative.

I'll verify the canonical ODP "no proceedings" result against public PTAB/CAFC sources before writing.

Let me run a few more targeted checks (PTAB E2E-style docket queries, litigation, and CAFC).

One more round to check adjacent Maloomian-family patents and any ex parte reexam trail, so the "no AIA trials" conclusion is properly scoped.

PTAB proceedings on file — US 4,602,280 (Maloomian)

Bottom line up front: there are no AIA trial proceedings on this patent. The canonical structured block ("USPTO ODP API returns no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest") is corroborated by my independent web checks — no IPR, PGR, CBM, or derivation petition naming U.S. Patent No. 4,602,280 or application 06/557,750 surfaced anywhere. What I found instead were three similarly numbered different patents that generate false positives in keyword searches (catalogued below so you don't chase them).

Proceedings overview

Total count: 0 proceedings — 0 active, 0 with claims invalidated, 0 with claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denials. No petition has ever been filed against US 4,602,280 at the PTAB.

For a defendant, the bottom line is not "the patent is hardened" and not "the claims are canceled" — it is that the PTAB question is moot because the patent expired in 2003 (Google's recorded "Anticipated expiration: 2003-12-05"; the pre-URAA 17-year term from the 1986-07-22 grant would have run to 2003-07-22 — either way, the term ended in 2003, and the 35 U.S.C. § 286 six-year damages lookback closed no later than mid-2009). No live damages theory can rest on claims 1–15, so there is nothing left for an IPR to invalidate. An IPR petition today would be a solution in search of a problem.

Two cross-checks from the earlier section that I am not able to resolve with the tools available, and which I flag rather than paper over:

• The prior section noted the Darts-ip "First worldwide family litigation filed" banner on the Google Patents page (Family ID 24226738). That is a litigation signal, not a PTAB signal, and it identifies no case. Nothing in it suggests an AIA trial. Family 24226738 contains only the single U.S. application 06/557,750, so there are no foreign counterparts feeding foreign proceedings either.
• Legal-status events in the file show maintenance fees paid only through the 12-year payment (1998-01-12, "Year of fee payment: 12"); consistent with a term that ran out in 2003.

Independent AIA-trial tracks — what exists and why, per track

Since there are no dockets to report, here is the equivalent per-track answer, because each statutory track fails for a different reason. This is the substance a defendant actually needs.

IPR — 35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319 — available in theory, pointless in fact

• Status (verbatim from structured data): "no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest."
• Filed: N/A — no petition ever filed.
• Why no petition: § 311(a) permits any non-owner to petition, and the PTAB has never read patent expiration as a bar to institution (it does change the claim-construction standard — for expired patents the Board applies Phillips rather than the broadest reasonable interpretation, per Wasica Finance GmbH v. Continental Automotive Systems, Inc., 853 F.3d 1272 (Fed. Cir. 2017)). So the mechanism is legally open; the economics are not. Absent a live district-court assertion, no petitioner has an incentive to spend $300k–$500k invalidating already-expired claims.
• Defensive value: If a demand letter or complaint citing US 4,602,280 ever lands, the correct first response is a § 286/expiration and standing check, not an IPR budget. Confirm the assertion is not actually directed at a later, unexpired patent in the family line (e.g., US 4,467,349; US 4,486,774; US 4,261,012 — all also long expired) before doing anything else.

PGR — 35 U.S.C. §§ 321–329 — legally unavailable

• Status: No PGR on file; none possible. Post-grant review is limited to patents "subject to the first-inventor-to-file provisions" (AIA § 6(c)(2)(A); 35 U.S.C. § 321). US 4,602,280 issued 1986-07-22 from a 1983-12-05 pre-AIA application, so it is categorically outside PGR reach. The § 321(c) 9-month window is not the obstacle — the eligibility bar is.

CBM — AIA § 18 — legally unavailable

• Status: No CBM on file; none possible. The transitional CBM program sunset for petitions filed after 2018-09-16. Independently, this patent claims image reproportioning, not "a method or corresponding apparatus for performing data processing or other operations used in the practice, administration, or management of a financial product or service" (AIA § 18(d)(1)) — it would fail the covered business method threshold as well. (The CBM hits that surface in "280" searches belong to ContentGuard's US 7,774,280 — see the false-positive table.)

Derivation — 35 U.S.C. §§ 135, 316 — no activity

No derivation proceeding on file, and none is conceivable 40+ years after the 1983-12-05 filing date.

Near-miss candidates — rejected (do not conflate these with US 4,602,280)

These are the reason a naive "280" search looks like it produced results. None involve this patent:

I found no ex parte reexamination file on US 4,602,280 itself; I could not query the USPTO reexamination database directly with the tools available, so treat that particular negative as unverified rather than confirmed.

Strategic summary

Claims status. All 15 claims — independent claim 1 (system) and independent claim 6 (method), plus dependents 2–5 and 7–15 — are UNTESTED at the PTAB. No claim has been canceled by the Board, no claim has been sustained by the Board, and no substitute claim has been added. They survive today only in the ordinary sense that an expired patent's claims are never invalidated by the passage of time; they simply stopped being enforceable. Because no final written decision exists, there is also no statutory disclaimer, no certificate of cancellation, and no Board claim construction you can point to. (For contrast: a CBM like CBM2015-00040 produces a paper trail you can work with; here there is none.)

Estoppel landscape. This is the cleanest part of the analysis: there is no estoppel. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel and § 325(e)(2) estoppel attach only to a petitioner (or real party in interest/privy) that obtained an institution decision. With no petitioner and no institution, no one is barred from anything. Every prior-art ground that ever existed remains available to a defendant — including the art of record in the patent itself: CA 1020276 (Ryan), US 4,232,334 (Revlon), US 4,261,012 (Maloomian), US 4,276,570 (Burson), US 4,297,724 (Dainippon Screen), and the two Maloomian siblings US 4,467,349 and US 4,486,774, plus Dyson US 4,232,134 as named in the specification. If you are litigating a later patent in this technology space, US 4,602,280 is itself a § 102(b)/§ 103 prior-art reference — it is cited in the "Cited By" lists of 146 later documents, including the weight-loss-visualization line (Bravomalo's US 6,643,385; Kriger's US 6,816,807; Posa's US 2003/0108851 A1). That is this patent's real modern role: it is a shield, not a sword.

Pattern signals. None of the usual patterns are present. There is no repeat petitioner, no serial-filing campaign, no PTAB appeal by the patent owner, no defensive aggregator in the chain. The Unified Patents patent page for US-4602280-A exists in their database, but that is an indexing page, not an evidentiary signal of a Unified-filed challenge — I checked, and no Unified petition naming this patent appears. The absence of IPRs here is unsurprising and, per the earlier search summary, consistent with a patent that was never a high-value assertion target. One honest caveat: I cannot directly query PTAB E2E or the CAFC docket system; my conclusion rests on the ODP structured data plus web corroboration, and the residual risk is a very old, thinly indexed, pre-2012 proceeding.

Recommended next steps

1. If a defendant/assertion target: treat the demand letter as suspect on its face. US 4,602,280 expired in 2003 (recorded anticipated expiration 2003-12-05), so no § 284 damages and no § 283 injunction are available. Verify whether the letter actually names 4,602,280 or a reissue/continuation-style sibling; the enumerated false positives above show how easily "280" numbers get crossed.
2. If you nonetheless need a Board record: run PTAB E2E at https://ptacts.uspto.gov by patent number 4,602,280 and, separately, by application number 06/557,750, and search PTAB Decisions at https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions. My search found nothing, and I would expect you to confirm the same.
3. If your interest is validity of a newer patent: the productive move is the reverse of a typical PTAB study. Pull the US 4,602,280 specification (https://patents.google.com/patent/US4602280/en) for its raster-by-raster stretch/shrink disclosure — claims 1, 6, 10, and 11 in particular recite fractional-pixel raster repartitioning and low-pass filtering/sampling to new pixel spacing, which is strong § 102/§ 103 material against later "before/after body image" claims. No IPR estoppel, no Fintiv problem, and no § 315(b) time bar apply to using an expired patent as art.
4. If an IPR were ever contemplated anyway (e.g., a live state-law or contract dispute that turns on claim meaning): remember the Board applies Phillips construction to expired claims (Wasica), and expect the Director's discretionary-denial framework to weigh settled expectations heavily given a 1983 priority date. Expect a hard conversation about whether the fee is worth the certificate.
5. Follow up on the one loose end carried over from the prior section: the Darts-ip "family has litigation" banner. A PACER/CourtListener search on the patent number and on "Maloomian" as plaintiff is the way to close it — I could not, and it does not change the PTAB answer either way.

Confidence statement: High confidence that there are no AIA trial proceedings on US 4,602,280. Medium-to-high confidence about the PGR/CBM unavailability conclusions (they follow from statutory text and the 2018-09-16 CBM sunset). Lower confidence on two negatives I could not query directly: any ex parte reexamination file on the '280 itself, and any 2026 CAFC activity (consistent with the prior section's "unverified" finding).

I'll verify the assignment record before writing the analysis.

Let me probe the Assignment Center and the sibling Maloomian patents directly.

Assignment Chain Analysis — US 4,602,280

Methodology caveat (read first). USPTO Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) is an interactive JavaScript application and is not directly queryable with the tools available to me; a plain search on the patent number returns no static, indexable assignment record for this patent. I therefore reconstructed the chain from (a) the Google Patents Legal Events table, which mirrors Assignment Center records as AS / ASAP / ASPC event codes when they exist, (b) the "Current Assignee / Original Assignee" fields on the same page, and (c) web searches against assignment aggregators. This limitation matters for the verdict below and is flagged there.

Inventors

Unusual-pattern check — no trigger. There is only one inventor, so none of the classic patterns (co-inventor attrition, all-inventors-depart-within-12-months, corporate-inventor fire-sale precursor) can be evaluated or are present. The relevant observation is the opposite of the usual one: this inventor is not an employee-inventor at all. The specification describes the invention in the context of selling it into weight loss clinics and figure salons — i.e., Maloomian appears to be an independent entrepreneur/inventor building a single-inventor portfolio, not a corporate R&D staffer.

Maloomian is a serial single-inventor filer in the same narrow art: US 4,261,012 (filed 1979-06-18, issued 1981-04-07), US 4,467,349 and US 4,486,774 (both filed 1982-04-07, the two applications the instant patent describes itself as improving on), and US 4,602,280 itself. Every one of these is recorded as owned by Maloomian individually, with no corporate assignee on any of them.

Checked and ruled out: Florida Sunbiz records show a LGM INTERESTS, LLC (document no. L15000154439, principal address 32284 Lakeshore Drive, Tavares, FL 32778) whose manager and registered agent is Laurence G. Maloomian at the same residential address. This is Maloomian's own personal holding entity, not an anonymous shell, and — critically — there is no recorded conveyance of US 4,602,280 to LGM INTERESTS, LLC or to any other entity. I am not treating this LLC as a link in the chain.

Original assignee

Nobody. The issued patent names no assignee — the front page reads "Assignee: Individual," and Google Patents lists Original Assignee: Individual and Current Assignee: Individual.

• Entity type: Natural person (the inventor). Under USPTO convention, a patent issued to an unassigned inventor is displayed this way.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Not established by the patent record. The specification describes the system as intended for deployment as an in-clinic kiosk ("a system when used in a weight loss clinic," "a system when used in a figure salon") built from named off-the-shelf parts — JVC KY1900CH camera, Datacube 150 frame grabber/image buffer, DSD 880 memory, DEC LSI 11/23 CPU, Conrac 5711 video screen. That is a systems-integration disclosure, not a manufacturing disclosure. No evidence of a commercial product, trademark, or SEC-registered entity was found.
• Primary line of business / current status: No corporate entity to assess. No bankruptcy, no acquisition, no dissolution — because there was never a company in the chain.
• Small-entity status: The 1988-11-02 legal event (FEPP, "ENTITY STATUS OF PATENT OWNER: SMALL ENTITY") confirms the owner was still claiming small-entity status two years post-issuance, which is consistent with individual ownership and inconsistent with the patent having been transferred to a large corporate portfolio by that date.

Assignment timeline

The Assignment Center has no recorded post-issuance assignments for US 4,602,280. This is the decisive finding, so per the task rules I state it plainly rather than padding the section.

The complete set of legal events on record is maintenance-fee and administrative activity only:

• n/a / recorded 1986-05-22 — STCF — Information on status: patent grant. Free format text: PATENTED CASE. (Not a conveyance; grant-of-patent annotation.)
• n/a / recorded 1988-11-02 — FEPP — Fee payment procedure. Free format text: PAYOR NUMBER ASSIGNED (ORIGINAL EVENT CODE: ASPN); ENTITY STATUS OF PATENT OWNER: SMALL ENTITY. (Not a conveyance. "Payor number assigned" is an administrative billing-account annotation for maintenance fees, not an assignment. This is the event most often misread as an assignment by automated parsers — it is not one.)
• n/a / recorded 1989-12-15 — FPAY — Fee payment, year of fee payment 4.
• n/a / recorded 1994-01-05 — FPAY — Fee payment, year of fee payment 8.
• n/a / recorded 1998-01-12 — FPAY — Fee payment, year of fee payment 12.
• n/a / recorded 2003-12-05 — Anticipated expiration; status Expired – Lifetime.

There is no reel/frame entry of any kind. No Assignment, Security Agreement, Merger, Change of Name, License, Release, or Correction has ever been recorded against application 06/557,750 or patent 4,602,280.

Correspondent of record: Because no assignment was ever recorded, there is no post-issuance recording correspondent to capture — no attorney name, no firm, no street address. This is itself diagnostic: the repeat-player-attorney signal that normally survives shell-entity anonymization has no foothold here. (The prosecution attorney of record sits in Patent Center's application data, which I could not query directly; I am not going to guess at a name.)

Litigation notes gathered while checking for a pre-litigation transfer:

• The Google Patents page for family ID 24226738 carries the boilerplate banner "First worldwide family litigation filed" linking to the Darts‑ip global litigation dataset. That banner is a generic template link; the fetched page identifies no case, court, party, or date. It is not evidence of a specific suit.
• A pre-litigation-transfer cannot be dated here because there was no transfer and because I could not confirm any suit naming US 4,602,280.
• Separately, US 4,602,280 surfaces as prior art, not as an asserted patent: the EPO search report for EP 0856814 A1 (Casio) cites it as [X], and WO 1991/001032 A1 (Seconde Opinions Ltd.) lists it in its search-report table with "None" for family members.
• Maloomian's earlier patent US 4,261,012 appears extensively as a prior-art reference in the claim-construction opinion in N.D. Tex./E.D. Tex. No. 2:2013cv00235, an apparel virtual-try-on dispute over a patent numbered '843. That is a different patent, a different owner, and a different defendant set — it is context on how the Maloomian art is used defensively, not an assertion of US 4,602,280.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 4602280
    1983 : Filed by Laurence G Maloomian
         : Unassigned individual filing
    1986 : Patent issued
         : Assignee of record is Individual
    1988 : Small entity status recorded
    1989 : Maintenance fee paid year 4
    1994 : Maintenance fee paid year 8
    1998 : Maintenance fee paid year 12
    2003 : Patent expired
         : No assignment ever recorded

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Note on a near-miss misread: The 1988-11-02 FEPP event ("PAYOR NUMBER ASSIGNED") is the single entry on this patent that a keyword search for "assigned" will surface. It is a maintenance-fee billing-account annotation, expressly tagged "ENTITY STATUS OF PATENT OWNER: SMALL ENTITY." It contains no assignor, no assignee, and no reel/frame. Do not treat it as a conveyance.

Verdict

Insufficient data — more precisely, insufficient data because there is nothing to analyze: this patent has no recorded assignments at all.

US 4,602,280 was filed 1983-12-05 by Laurence G. Maloomian, issued 1986-07-22 with "Individual" as both original and current assignee, and carried only five legal events in its entire life — one grant annotation and four maintenance/billing entries (1988-11-02 FEPP, 1989-12-15 FPAY yr 4, 1994-01-05 FPAY yr 8, 1998-01-12 FPAY yr 12) — before expiring 2003-12-05. With no reel/frame of any conveyance type ever recorded, every one of the eight NPE-pattern signals is not present by construction rather than by negative inference, and there is no correspondent of record to fingerprint. A finding of "no recorded post-issuance assignments" here is substantive: it means the inventor-owner held this patent personally from grant to expiration, and no NPE ever acquired it.

This verdict remains open to correction on one point only: I could not directly query Assignment Center or Patent Center. If a manual Patent Center lookup on application 06/557,750 surfaces a recorded assignment absent from the Google Patents legal-events mirror, that would supersede this section — please re-run and flag it.

Verify at: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html#/patent/search/result?q=4602280 and https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 4602280, or by application 06/557,750)

I'll research each of the cited references for US 4,602,280. Let me start with parallel searches.

Now let me research the remaining references: CA 1020276 (Ryan), US 4,232,134 (Dyson), and the Maloomian family members.

Prior Art Analysis for US 4,602,280 A

Scope note / cross-check. Building on the earlier section (which confirmed the document as US 4,602,280 A, App. No. 06/557,750, filed 1983‑12‑05, granted 1986‑07‑22, inventor Laurence G. Maloomian, "Weight and/or measurement reduction preview system"), I examined each of the seven references on its face and did not substitute any similar number. Because the application was filed 1983‑12‑05, pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs.

Threshold legal point that drives the whole analysis (pre‑AIA): § 102 is an anticipation statute — a single reference must disclose every limitation of a claim, arranged as in the claim. Separately, § 102(e) (and, as generally applied, § 102(a)/(b)) requires the reference to be by another relative to the inventive entity. Three of the seven cited references are the applicant's own earlier applications, which materially affects whether they are § 102 art at all. These are legal conclusions and are flagged as such; they are offered as analysis, not as a legal opinion.

1. The seven references of record (Google Patents "Patent Citations (7)")

Source for the citation list: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4602280/en

A reference the Specification names but which is not in the citation table: US 4,232,134 ("Dyson") — addressed in §3 below.

2. Reference-by-reference: description and § 102 mapping

Recall the two independent claims. Claim 1 (system) requires, inter alia: recording a first body image; storing it in horizontal raster lines; entering actual body proportions and desired body proportions; reproportioning the pixels along the horizontal axis of each raster line by a stretch/shrink factor derived from the difference between the actual and desired dimensions; building a reproportioned figure/new image; and displaying it. Claim 6 is the method mirror of claim 1. Claims 2–5 and 7–15 are dependent and incorporate all of claim 1/6.

A. CA 1020276 A — Ryan, "Identification of faces" (pub. 1977‑11‑01)

• Description: A facial-identification reference (per the record title). Its subject matter is recognizing/identifying faces, not simulating a changed body.
• § 102 mapping: Anticipates no claim. It is not tied to body-measurement input, raster-line storage, or measurement-driven pixel reproportioning. At most it is a general background reference on locating/identifying facial features. I could not retrieve its full text, so I am deliberately not asserting details beyond the record title/family data.

B. US 4,232,334 A — Revlon, "Cosmetic apparatus and method" (filed 1979‑05‑22; issued 1980‑11‑04)

• Description (from the document): A beauty adviser's console in which a video camera images the customer's face; the face outline is converted to electronic signals (e.g., via a light pen); the system stores a number of reference face patterns and electronically compares the customer's outline signals to those sets to select the closest match; and it displays the customer's face image with an overlaid make-up pattern, where "at least one of the displayed image of the customer's face and the displayed make-up pattern [is] scaled to the size of the other."
• § 102 mapping: Anticipates no claim. It discloses a video camera, digital storage, matching, overlay display and scaling of one image to another — but it does not disclose entering the subject's actual and desired body proportions, or reproportioning pixels along the horizontal axis of each raster line by a stretch/shrink factor derived from the actual-vs-desired difference. Because the dependent claims (e.g., 4/12 video camera; 5, 9, 14, 15 display) incorporate all of claim 1/6, a reference lacking the claim 1/6 core cannot anticipate them either. Its real value here is as § 103 material (video capture + stored patterns + scaled overlay), not § 102.
• Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4232334 ; https://FreePatentsOnline.com/[4232334](/patent/4232334).html ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/4232334

C. US 4,261,012 A — Maloomian, "System and method for composite display" (filed 1979‑06‑18; issued 1981‑04‑07)

• Description: The applicant's own earlier composite-display system (recorded in the 4,602,280 Specification as the base patent of the inventor's family). The 4,602,280 text states it is an improvement over this and over Ser. Nos. 366,372 / 466,973.
• § 102 mapping: Not available as § 102 art — anticipates no claim. Same sole inventive entity (Maloomian), so it is not a reference "by another" for § 102(e), and its use as § 102(a)/(b) art against the same inventor's later application is generally improper. (I flag this as a legal conclusion that would need to be confirmed against the actual prosecution record.) Its practical role is background / possible double-patenting consideration only.

D. US 4,276,570 A — Burson & Schneider, "…image of a person's face at a different age" (filed 1979‑05‑08; issued 1981‑06‑30)

This is the strongest true third‑party reference. Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US4276570A](/patent/US4276570A)/en ; PDF: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/09/b8/0c/c8a22b4fc12bc2/US4276570.pdf

• Description: A vidicon/digitizing camera captures a face; the digitized image is stored as M×N pixels, 8 bits per pixel, in a memory under a processor (e.g., Interdata 732). The system computes coordinate transformations (triangular "maps")/image warping, adds or subtracts stored "difference" images, and displays the result on a video monitor/graphics terminal. It expressly notes that "Lenses which can stretch or compress an image along one axis are well known," and that two such lenses in series (one vertical, one horizontal) can match one image to another.
• § 102 mapping: Anticipates no claim, but it is the closest art on the image‑processing mechanics: digitized body/face image + memory + transformation + display, plus axis-selective stretching. It still does not disclose: (i) entering the subject's actual and desired body proportions (bust/waist/hip/weight, etc.); (ii) storing the image as horizontal raster lines with per-line reproportioning; or (iii) applying a stretch/shrink factor derived from the difference between actual and desired dimensions to form each reproportioned raster line. Those are the limitations that distinguish claims 1 and 6. It is, however, the most useful § 103 reference for the claim-1/6 sub-features and for dependent-claim sub-features such as axis-directed stretching (potentially relevant to claims 2/3 and 8–11 conceptually).

E. US 4,297,724 A — Dainippon Screen Seizo K.K. (Masuda et al.), "Method and machine for trying on a hair form in image" (US filed 1980‑01‑23; JP priority 1979‑01‑24; issued 1981‑10‑27)

Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US4297724A](/patent/US4297724A)/en ; https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=[4297724A](/patent/4297724A)&KC=A&FT=D ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[4297724](/patent/4297724)

• Description: "Try-on" simulation: a video camera photographs a face shape and a hair pattern; a masking signal is generated and combined (electronically and/or optically via a half-silvered mirror) so the hair pattern is masked onto the face, and the composite face-plus-hair is displayed on a CRT. Claims 4 and 5 recite that the camera includes a zoom lens and an anamorphic lens (an anamorphic lens stretches/compresses one axis).
• § 102 mapping: Anticipates no claim. It discloses video acquisition, electronic masking/combination and CRT display of a modified person image, plus (in dependent claims) axis-distorting optics. It does not disclose measurement entry (actual vs. desired), raster-line pixel reproportioning, or a stretch/shrink factor computed from the difference between actual and desired body dimensions. Again, dependent claims 4/12 (camera) and 14/15 (video display) cannot be anticipated where the parent claim 1/6 limitation set is absent. Value here is § 103 (video-based appearance simulation), not § 102.

F. US 4,467,349 A — Maloomian, "System and method for composite display" (filed 1982‑04‑07; issued 1984‑08‑21)

G. US 4,486,774 A — Maloomian, "System and method for composite display" (filed 1982‑04‑07; issued 1984‑12‑04)

Source: https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[4486774](/patent/4486774)

• Description: The applicant's own companion applications, named in the 4,602,280 Specification. US 4,486,774 in particular describes a system that is substantively very close to 4,602,280: video camera (JVC KY 1900 CH) → frame grabber (Datacube 150) → CPU (DEC LSI‑11/23) → memory (DSD 880) → image buffer → video screen, and it states that "the whole X and/or Y and/or any portion or different portions of the X and/or Y can be scaled… accomplished by stretching and/or shrinking rasters, horizontally and/or vertically, based on a calculated stretch and/or shrink factor… I can scale the model which is stored in memory to the bust, hip, waist, and height measurements of the customer."
• § 102 mapping — important contradiction to flag: These two are not § 102 prior art against 4,602,280 for two independent reasons:
  1. Same inventive entity (Maloomian) → not "by another," so § 102(e) fails and § 102(a)/(b) misuse is improper; and
  2. Their issue dates (1984‑08‑21 and 1984‑12‑04) postdate the 4,602,280 filing date of 1983‑12‑05, so they are not § 102(a)/(b) patents or publications either.
• Despite that, note the practical risk: because 4,486,774's disclosure is nearly identical to 4,602,280's (raster stretch/shrink of a stored body image based on the customer's bust/hip/waist/height), it functions as the most technically on-point document in the family and a likely subject of obviousness-type double patenting or of an interference/derivation-type concern — not § 102 anticipation of 4,602,280.

3. The "Dyson" reference named in the Specification — unresolved discrepancy, flagged

The 4,602,280 Specification states: *"The prior art discussed in that patent pending is still considered to be the most relevant prior art together with Dyson, U.S. Pat. No. 4,232,134."* (https://patents.google.com/patent/US4602280/en)

Per your literal-interpretation / no-auto-correction rule, I report the following and do not change the number:

• As fetched, US 4,232,134 A is titled "Process for isolating boron-containing phenol/formaldehyde resins" (https://patents.google.com/patent/US4232134). It is a chemical-process document, which is inconsistent with the role the Specification assigns to it (the inventor's "most relevant prior art" alongside his own composite-display applications in the image‑reproportioning field).
• Note also that US 4,232,134 does not appear in the examiner/third-party citation table for 4,602,280 — it is named only in the Specification text.
• Conclusion: I cannot map this reference to any claim of 4,602,280, because the number as cited resolves, on the record I could retrieve, to an apparently unrelated document (and I could not verify its assignee/inventor). This should be verified directly (USPTO PatentCenter / the file wrapper of 06/557,750, and the text of the earlier Maloomian applications, where the same "Dyson" citation appears). I explicitly refrain from substituting a different Dyson patent number.

4. Bottom line: most relevant prior art and § 102 outcome

No cited reference anticipates any of claims 1–15 under § 102. The reason is structural: every claim carries the claim‑1/6 core of (a) entering actual and desired body proportions, and (b) reproportioning pixels along the horizontal axis of each raster line by a stretch/shrink factor derived from the difference between those actual and desired dimensions. No reference of record discloses that combination.

Ranked by technical relevance to 4,602,280:

1. US 4,486,774 (Maloomian) — closest disclosure (raster stretch/shrink of a stored body image to a customer's bust/hip/waist/height), but same inventor and post-filing issue date → not § 102 art. (Risk: double patenting, not anticipation.)
2. US 4,467,349 (Maloomian) — same family; same § 102 disqualification (same inventor; issued 1984‑08‑21, after the 1983‑12‑05 filing).
3. US 4,261,012 (Maloomian) — the family's base patent; same inventor → not § 102 art; background only.
4. US 4,276,570 (Burson) — best true third‑party § 102(a)/(b) art on the image-processing heart of the claims (digitize → store pixels → warp/transform → display; axis-directional stretching), but silent on body-measurement input and per-raster measurement-derived factors → no anticipation; strong § 103 candidate.
5. US 4,297,724 (Dainippon Screen) — video-based "try-on" with masking and (in dependent claims) anamorphic/zoom axis distortion → no anticipation; § 103 candidate.
6. US 4,232,334 (Revlon) — video camera + stored reference patterns + scaled overlay display → no anticipation; § 103 candidate.
7. CA 1020276 (Ryan) — face identification → background only; no anticipation.
8. US 4,232,134 ("Dyson" per the Specification) — unverifiable/discrepant; no mapping possible; flagged for direct file-wrapper verification.

Caveats I want stated plainly: (i) I only had web-search access, not direct USPTO PatentCenter/PACER query access, and my § 102/"by another" statements are legal-analysis conclusions, not legal advice; (ii) I could not retrieve the full text of CA 1020276, so I limited my characterization to the record title and family data; and (iii) the "Dyson / US 4,232,134" citation is an unresolved contradiction that I have not auto-corrected.

I'll ground my obviousness analysis by characterizing the cited prior-art references. Let me search for the key references.

Let me characterize the remaining cited references.

Obviousness Analysis — US 4,602,280 (Maloomian)

"Weight and/or measurement reduction preview system" — 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analysis date: April 26, 2026 (per task instruction). Analytical basis: the prior art in the "Prior Art"/Citations section of the patent page, as retrieved. Source of record: https://patents.google.com/patent/US4602280/en

Cross-reference note: This section builds on the earlier-generated summary and litigation sections. Nothing in them is contradicted here. Their findings that (a) the assignee is an individual inventor, (b) no litigation is verifiable, and (c) the patent expired 2003‑12‑05 are adopted and are relevant below to the secondary-considerations prong.

1. The record prior art (literal identifiers)

Per the operating rule I interpret these identifiers exactly as printed; I do not auto-correct.

Two literal-identifier discrepancies I must flag rather than silently resolve:

1. "Dyson, U.S. Pat. No. 4,232,134." The specification's Background names this as the most relevant prior art alongside the Maloomian ancestors. That number (4,232,134) is not the same as the front-page citation US 4,232,334 (Revlon). They differ in the last two digits. I treat them as distinct documents and cannot verify 4,232,134 on this record (my verification search for it exhausted the tool budget). It does not appear in the Patent Citations or Cited By lists on the page. I therefore do not rely on it below.
2. The specification's own characterization of A6/A7 as its own ancestors. US 4,602,280 states it "is a modification in design and application of my invention as disclosed in Ser. Nos. 366,372 now U.S. Pat. No. 4,467,349, and 466,973 now U.S. Pat. No. 4,486,774, which are improvements of my prior invention, U.S. Pat. No. 4,261,012." This is an admission of the state of the art and of the object of the claimed "modification."

Priority-art availability caveat (material to the analysis): A1–A5 each issued more than one year before the 1983‑12‑05 filing date, so they are unambiguously available as prior art (pre-AIA § 102(b)). A6/A7 issued after the 1983‑12‑05 filing date; they could only qualify under pre-AIA § 102(e), which requires an application "by another." Because the inventor of A6/A7 is the same Maloomian, their § 102(e) status is questionable. I therefore present the primary combination using only A1–A4 (all § 102(b)), and use A6/A7 as the closest-art backdrop and as the inventor's admitted earlier work. This makes the analysis robust either way.

2. Level of ordinary skill in the pertinent art (Graham prong 2)

The field is digital/video image compositing and simulation of human appearance for retail and personal-appearance applications — the same field in which every record reference sits (clothing try-on, hairstyle preview, makeup selection, age simulation).

A person having ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA) as of December 1983 would have: a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or computer science (or equivalent), plus roughly 2–4 years of experience with raster-scan video capture, frame grabbing, digital image buffers, and digital image scaling/resampling. This is not a hypothetical skill level: the specification itself treats the hardware as off-the-shelf catalog items (JVC KY1900CH camera, Datacube 150 frame grabber/image buffer, DSD 880 memory, DEC LSI 11/23 CPU, Conrac 5711 monitor) and states that "Any standard computer can be used" and that "the routines are not described in detail, since they can be written in any desired notations, formats or sequences." Where the reference list (e.g., Burson) also cites contemporaneous academic literature — Netravali, "Interpolative Picture Coding Using a Subjective Criterion," IEEE Trans. on Comm. (1977) — that confirms the resampling/interpolation literature was squarely within ordinary skill.

3. Scope and content of the prior art (Graham prong 1)

A6/A7 — Maloomian (same inventor): the closest art, and the admitted starting point

US 4,486,774 (https://FreePatentsOnline.com/4486774.html; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/4486774) and US 4,467,349 (https://patents.justia.com/patent/4467349) disclose the same system architecture the '280 claims recite: "the system comprises a video camera, a frame grabber, a CPU, an image buffer, a memory, and a television monitor"; the camera image is "digitized by and stored in the frame grabber." Critically, A7 discloses the core operation in words that track the '280 claims:

"this is accomplished by stretching and/or shrinking rasters, horizontally and/or vertically, based on a calculated stretch and/or shrink factor. For example, I can scale the model which is stored in memory to the bust, hip, waist, and height measurements of the customer."

and, on scope of scaling:

"there is greater flexibility in scaling the height and width of the customer's body. That is, the whole X and/or Y and/or any portion or different portions of the X and/or Y can be scaled."

A6 (https://uspto.report/patent/grant/4467349) states: "Preferably, this is accomplished by stretching or shrinking horizontally rasters based on a calculated stretch factor. For example, I can scale the model which is stored in memory to the bust, hip, waist, and height measurements of the customer."

So A6/A7 already disclose: (i) capture of a full-figure digital image; (ii) raster-by-raster storage; (iii) entering a set of actual dimensions (the model's stored bust/hip/waist/height) and a set of database of target values (the customer's measurements); (iv) computing a factor from the difference between the two; (v) applying it by stretching/shrinking rasters horizontally; and (vi) displaying the result on a video screen — with the explicit object of letting a customer preview her appearance before buying. The only thing A6/A7 apply this to is a model's body/clothing image; the '280 applies it to the customer's own body.

A1 — Maloomian US 4,261,012 (1981, § 102(b))

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/4f/c4/8e/a659fba08f6293/US4261012.pdf
Discloses a video camera, storage, a special effects generator that "has the ability to vary independently, the displayed portion of either one or both of the two images… along vertical and horizontal axes," means to display the combined images one adjacent to the other, and "means to vary the proportions of at least one image to match with the proportions of the other image." It expressly notes prior art could only produce uniform scaling ("impossible to create a short fat image or a tall, thin image" — A7's words), which motivates anisotropic (independent H/V) scaling.

A2 — Revlon US 4,232,334 (1980, § 102(b))

https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[4232334](/patent/4232334).html; https://patents.justia.com/patent/4232334
Discloses the full "measure the customer, compare to a stored reference, scale to match" loop: a video camera unit trained on the customer; electronic storage of reference sets; "means for electronically comparing the initial set of facial outline signals with the reference sets"; and "at least one of the displayed image of the customer's face and the displayed make-up pattern being scaled to the size of the other." It also discloses generating outline signals "defining the ratios between the distances separating selected points," i.e., proportion data entered/derived from the customer.

A3 — Burson US 4,276,570 (1981, § 102(b))

https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/09/b8/0c/c8a22b4fc12bc2/US4276570.pdf
Discloses (i) photographing a person and storing the image in "digitized computer storage"; (ii) storing a second, target state and finding the differences between the two; (iii) modifying the stored image with those differences and displaying it; and, most importantly for the warping limitation, (iv) axis-selective geometric transformation: "Lenses which can stretch or compress an image along one axis are well known in the art. Placing two such lenses in series, one for operating along the vertical axis… and another for operating along the horizontal axis," plus a digital coordinate-transformation scan that resamples image points (with 0.2-unit subdivision of unit vectors and step-size selection "necessary to insure that there are no blank spots"). Burson thus teaches warping a stored image of a person along independent axes and resampling it by interpolation — the very "reproportion the pixels along the horizontal axis" operation.

A4 — Dainippon US 4,297,724 (1981, § 102(b))

https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=[4297724A](/patent/4297724A)&KC=A&FT=D
Discloses a video camera + display means pipeline that composites a subject's face with a selectable styling pattern, expressly reciting a zoom lens (claim 4) and an anamorphic lens (claim 5) — i.e., axis-asymmetric scaling of the subject's own image for the purpose of previewing a personal-appearance change before committing to it. The stated purpose ("trying on a hair form… prior to the arrangement") is the same preview-before-commitment purpose the '280 asserts.

A5 — CA 1020276 (Ryan, 1977)

"Identification of faces." Weakest of the set; relevant only as background showing automated facial-image feature processing predates the filing by six years.

4. Graham prong 3 — differences between the claims and the prior art

The independent claims 1 and 6 require, in substance: (a) recording the customer's body as a first image; (b) storing it in horizontal raster lines; (c) entering the customer's actual proportions; (d) entering the customer's desired proportions; (e) reproportioning the pixels along the horizontal axis of each raster line by a stretch/shrink factor derived from the difference between actual and desired dimensions; (f) building a reproportioned figure from those raster lines; (g) producing a new image; (h) displaying it.

Element-by-element, the differences from the prior art are paper-thin:

The single genuine difference between claim 1/6 and the closest art (A7) is the identity of the image being reproportioned and the source of the "actual"/"desired" numbers: A7 warps a model/clothing image toward the customer's measurements; the '280 warps the customer's own image toward the customer's target measurements. Structurally the computation is identical — two sets of measurements → Δ → factor → raster stretch. And A7 already says it can scale "the customer's body."

Everything else in claims 1 and 6 — camera, raster storage, two numeric inputs, difference-driven factor, horizontal raster stretch, new image, display — is expressly in the art.

5. The § 103 combinations and the motivation to combine (Graham prong 4 / KSR)

Combination 1 (primary): A7 (or A6) in view of A2 and A3 — optionally further in view of A1 and A4

Why a PHOSITA would combine them (KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007); MPEP 2143, 2144.01):

1. Same field of endeavor and same problem. A1, A2, A3, A4, A6, A7 are all directed to electronically simulating a changed personal appearance so the subject can decide beforehand. The '280's own Background frames the problem identically ("a customer [can] sample the effect that a certain amount of weight loss will have on her appearance prior to losing that amount of weight"). The problem was known; the solution technique was known.

2. A7 supplies every structural element and even the operative words of the claim. A7 discloses the camera/frame-grabber/CPU/image-buffer/memory/monitor pipeline and "stretching and/or shrinking rasters, horizontally and/or vertically, based on a calculated stretch and/or shrink factor," keyed to "bust, hip, waist, and height measurements." Under In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413 (CCPA 1981), the test is not whether each reference teaches the claimed combination, but what the combined teachings would have suggested.

3. A3 supplies the "difference between actual and desired" arithmetic and the axis-selective warping/resampling. Burson takes two states of the same person, finds the differences, modifies the stored image by those differences, and displays the modified image — with express teaching of stretching/compressing along one axis, and digital coordinate-transformation resampling. Substituting the "actual vs. desired body measurements" difference for Burson's "young vs. old face" difference is the use of a known technique for its known purpose.

4. A2 supplies the "enter actual proportions / enter target / scale to match" loop. Revlon teaches capturing the customer, deriving proportion signals, electronically comparing them to target sets, and scaling one displayed image "to the size of the other." That is element (c)+(d)+(e)'s derivation step in electronic form.

5. The difference is a mere substitution of subject and target — a predictable design choice. Applying the known raster-stretch transform to the customer's own body (instead of a model's body) and using the customer's target measurements (instead of a model's stored measurements) as the "desired" set is the substitution of one known element for another to obtain the predictable result — a proportionally altered figure. KSR: "the combination of familiar elements according to known methods is likely to be obvious when it does no more than yield predictable results." Id. at 416. When a technique has been used to improve one device, and a PHOSITA would recognize it would improve similar devices in the same way, the application is obvious unless beyond his or her skill — and here the specification admits the skill level was routine ("Any standard computer can be used").

6. Market/design incentive (MPEP 2144.01). Weight-loss clinics and figure salons already used "before/after" photographs as a sales and motivation tool. Automating that existing practice with the known digital raster-warping pipeline is precisely the kind of market-driven variation KSR and MPEP 2144.01 hold obvious. The '280 specification's own stated purposes (weight-loss clinic; figure salon) are the design incentive.

7. No teaching away. To the contrary, A1/A7's complaint that the prior art could only produce uniform ("short fat"/"tall thin") scaling, and not a "short fat image or a tall, thin image," motivates the independent horizontal/vertical scaling the claims recite. Nothing in the record disparages applying the stretch to the customer's own figure.

8. The inventor's own admission. The '280 specification states the invention "is a modification in design and application of my invention as disclosed in… U.S. Pat. No. 4,467,349 [A6], and… U.S. Pat. No. 4,486,774 [A7], which are improvements of my prior invention, U.S. Pat. No. 4,261,012 [A1]." A claimed "modification in… application" of the inventor's own earlier, known technique — where the modification is a change of subject/target — is an admission that the advance lies in the application, not in any new mechanism. Under KSR step 1, that reinforces rather than rebuts obviousness.

Combination 2 (fallback if A6/A7 are unavailable under § 102(e)): A1 + A2 + A3 (+ A4)

Even discarding A6/A7 entirely, A1 supplies the camera/composite/adjacent-display/variable-proportion architecture; A2 supplies the capture-measure-compare-scale loop; A3 supplies the difference-driven modification of a stored image of a person and axis-selective warping with resampling; A4 supplies the video-camera preview pipeline with anamorphic/axis-scaling optics. The same motivations (1), (4), (5), (6), (7), (8) above apply. The remaining gap — computing a per-raster horizontal stretch factor — is the routine, well-known implementation of scaling a raster-scan image, and the '280 specification does not purport to invent it (it presents the implementation options as known "alternatives"). KSR (predictable variation / obvious to try among a finite number of identified, predictable solutions) and MPEP 2144.04 (obvious design choice among disclosed alternatives) dispose of this.

"Obvious to try"

Even under the narrower In re O'Farrell-style "obvious to try" gloss, the '280 is squarely obvious: the specification itself identifies a finite, two-element set of implementation choices and labels them as known alternatives ("Two alternatives may be used in this step"). Selecting one of two known raster-resampling techniques is not the exploration of an unbounded art.

6. Dependent claims — obvious for the same or stronger reasons

Because claims 2–5 and 7–15 add only well-known resampling, capture, and display features that the record art expressly discloses or renders routine, they are obvious for at least the reasons their independent claims are, and are properly grouped with them under 37 C.F.R. § 1.75 / MPEP 608.01(m) practice.

7. Rebuttal analysis — the prongs that could cut the other way

a) Teaching away / criticality: None found. A1/A7's "impossible to create a short fat image or a tall, thin image" critique of the prior art supports independent H/V scaling. No reference teaches away from warping the subject's own figure.

b) Non-analogous art: Not applicable. Every reference is in the electronic appearance-simulation field, and each is reasonably pertinent to the particular problem (scaling a stored image of a person to target proportions for pre-commitment preview).

c) Unexpected results: None asserted in the specification. The '280 describes the result exactly as the art predicts — a figure that "has taken on the new dimensions." No data, comparative tests, or surprise are presented.

d) Secondary considerations (objective indicia): On this record there is none, and the earlier-generated sections corroborate this:

• No evidence of commercial success, licensing, or copying is available for a 1983 patent that expired 2003‑12‑05.
• No litigation (unverified/negative per the litigation section) that would supply evidence of copying or industry recognition.
• The 146 forward citations reflect technical (background-art) relevance, not evidence of non-obviousness, and the citations cluster in later image-morphing/try-on art — i.e., the '280 sits upstream as background, not as a nexus-bearing commercial product.
• The absence of a nexus between any secondary indicium and the claim scope means no rebuttal of the prima facie case.

e) § 102(e) / "by another" caveat for A6/A7 (already flagged): even if A6/A7 are struck, Combination 2 (A1+A2+A3+A4, all § 102(b)) sustains the prima facie case.

f) Enabling-possession / written-description cross-check (non-§ 103 but relevant to claim interpretation): the claims' "means" limitations are governed by pre-AIA § 112 ¶ 6; the specification's corresponding structure is a keyboard/CPU (entry) and the Datacube 150 image buffer (scaling/display). A2's beauty-adviser console with "interactive input commands" and A7's keyboard provide the corresponding structure for the entry means — confirming the art discloses the claimed means, not merely a result.

8. Conclusion

On this record, US 4,602,280 is invalid as obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.

• Claims 1 and 6 (the independent claims) are rendered obvious by US 4,486,774 / US 4,467,349 (Maloomian), which disclose the entire camera–frame-grabber–CPU–image-buffer–memory–video-screen pipeline and, verbatim, "stretching and/or shrinking rasters, horizontally and/or vertically, based on a calculated stretch and/or shrink factor" applied to "bust, hip, waist, and height measurements," in view of US 4,276,570 (Burson) (difference-driven modification of a stored image of a person plus axis-selective stretching/compressing and coordinate-transform resampling) and US 4,232,334 (Revlon) (capture customer → derive proportion signals → electronically compare to a target → scale one image to match the other); optionally further in view of US 4,261,012 (Maloomian) and US 4,297,724 (Dainippon Screen).
• The dispositive difference — warping the customer's own body toward desired body measurements rather than warping a model's body toward the customer's measurements — is a predictable substitution of one known image/target pair for another to achieve the same known result, motivated by the same market (weight-loss clinics / figure salons already used before/after photos) and supported by the inventor's own admission that the patent is "a modification in design and application" of his earlier patents. KSR, 550 U.S. at 416–17; MPEP 2144.01.
• Claims 2–5 and 7–15 are obvious over the same combinations in view of the well-known resampling, video-capture, and adjacent-display features of the cited art, and are, in part, disclosed by the inventor's specification itself as bare "alternatives."
• No secondary consideration on this record rebuts the prima facie case.

Explicit uncertainties preserved: (i) I could not verify "Dyson, US 4,232,134" (spec) — distinct from US 4,232,334 (Revlon) — and do not rely on it; (ii) the § 102(e) availability of the same-inventor A6/A7 patents is doubtful under the "by another" requirement, which is why Combination 2 (A1+A2+A3+A4, all § 102(b)) is offered as an independent ground; (iii) A5 (CA 1020276, Ryan) is relied on only as background. None of these caveats changes the conclusion.