US 5179270

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Let me verify whether there is any litigation or CAFC docket activity involving this specific patent.

US 5,179,270 — Summary

Important caveat up front: I ran targeted searches against publicly indexed patent records (Google Patents, Justia, EPO/Espacenet-derived data, FreePatentsOnline) and general web sources for litigation/docket references. I found no CAFC 2026 docket, appeal, IPR, or district-court activity involving U.S. Patent No. 5,179,270. This is expected given the patent's legal status (see below). I did not query PACER/CM-ECF or the Federal Circuit's own docket system directly, so this is a "no publicly indexed hits found" result rather than an absolute negative.

Bibliographic data (from the patent record)

Assignment chain: Spectra-Physics, Inc. (1989) → PSC Acquisition, Inc., a Delaware corp. (recorded 1996-09-12, effective 1996-07-12) → PSC Scanning, Inc. (merger/name change, recorded 2004-02-18, effective 1996-09-09). Fleet Bank took a security interest in 1996 (released 2003, with Wells Fargo Foothill then taking a security interest). "Datalogic Scanning Inc." appears as the current listed assignee.

Abstract (verbatim)

"An optical scanner for use at a checkout counter determines information relating to products to be purchased, including coded label data. The scanner supplies the information to a cash register system. The scanner includes a scanner controller for reading coded labels on the products. The scanner further includes an interface circuit, mounted in said scanner and receiving power therefrom, for providing coded label data to said cash register system."

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

There are four independent claims — 1, 3, 5, and 8 — arranged as two near-parallel families (claims 1/3 and claims 5/8), with dependents 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10.

Claim 1 — Scanner with an internal interface (structure-focused).
An optical scanner that scans coded labels and signals the data. It has two parts, both mounted inside the scanner: (a) a "scanning controller means" that identifies the bar-code label data, and (b) an "interface means" responsive to the controller that delivers coded label data to the cash register system. The interface means specifically must contain an interface microprocessor, interface memory storing control software for that microprocessor, and a driver circuit driven by the interface microprocessor that supplies the coded label data to the cash register. In short: put a second, programmed microprocessor-based interface inside the scanner rather than in a separate external box.

Claim 3 — Checkout-counter scanner with an internally powered interface.
Substantively similar to claim 1 but drafted as a "scanner controller + interface circuit" pair, and adds the express requirement that the interface circuit is mounted in the scanner and receives power from it. The interface circuit again recites the interface microprocessor, software-storing memory, and driver circuit. This is the claim the abstract tracks most closely.

Claim 5 — Scanner with dual-source interface power.
Covers the scanner's scanning controller means + internally-mounted interface means, and adds the interface power means limitation: it supplies power to the interface from the scanner as long as scanner power is available, and subsequently from the cash register system when scanner power is gone. This is the "never lose the interface" power-failover concept (implemented in the spec by relay 228 switching between scanner line 230 and cash-register line 232).

Claim 8 — Checkout-counter scanner with dual-source interface power.
Same idea as claim 5 but in the "scanner controller + interface circuit mounted in the scanner and receiving power therefrom" wording, plus the interface power means that draws from the scanner first and then from the cash register system.

Dependent claims: 2 and 4 add the decoder circuit + scanner microprocessor (pref. INTEL 8039) + scanner EPROM memory to the controller of claims 1 and 3 respectively; 6 and 7 add those same features (6) and the microprocessor/memory/driver interface architecture (7) to claim 5; 9 and 10 do the same for claim 8.

Observations worth flagging

• Antecedent-basis quirks (drafting-era style). Claim 8 recites "said interface means" although claim 8 itself only introduces "an interface circuit." Likewise claims 3 and 10 recite coded label data "from said optical scanning means," while claim 3 introduces only a "scanner controller." These are literal wording issues in the granted text; I'm reporting them as they appear, not correcting them.
• The commercial point of the invention is stated in the specification: prior systems required a separate, external interface (with its own power supply) to talk to the IBM 4683 cash register system, whose communication specifications the patent calls "unique and exacting." The claimed advance is integrating that interface into the scanner and making it power-source agnostic.
• Hardware named in the spec (not claim limitations): NCR VLSI decoder circuit (212), a gate array/timer (224) counting 36 MHz cycles, INTEL 8039 scanner microprocessor (214), ZILOG Super8 interface microprocessor (218), EPROMs (216, 220), relay 228 for power failover (230/232), power-on sensor 234, buffer 236, and driver 222 (TXD/RXD).
• Prosecution/prior-art context: 22 references were cited, including US 4,894,522 "Interface apparatus" (Spectra-Physics, Elliott) and US 4,805,175 (Knowles, Metrologic). Notably, the EP search report cited EP 0 094 571 A2 (MSI Data Corp.) as an X reference and US 4,805,175 as a Y reference — relevant if you're assessing the EP counterpart's fate (it was withdrawn). The patent has been cited by 16 later documents, including PSC's US 5,258,604, Symbol's US 5,785,728 and US 5,745,794, and Metrologic's US 6,619,549 family.

On the "CAFC 2026 docket" request — explicit uncertainty

I cannot confirm any 2026 Federal Circuit docket for this patent, and I have no authoritative basis to assert one exists. The patent's own recorded legal status is "Expired – Lifetime" with an anticipated expiration of 2010-01-12, which means it was no longer enforceable long before 2026 and is essentially immune to new infringement suits (though expired patents can still be litigated to final judgment or subject to IPR/reexamination appeals in limited circumstances). If you need a definitive docket answer, the authoritative sources to check directly are the Federal Circuit's CM/ECF docket, PACER, and the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board and PatentCenter systems under application 07/348,861 and patent 5,179,270.

One process note: your prompt states the current date as April 26, 2026, while my operating context shows September 27, 2026. I've flagged it rather than silently reconciling it; it doesn't change the substance above, but it matters if you're using this to bound a docket search window.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 5179270. Let me run several searches.

Initial searches didn't surface litigation. Let me search targeted litigation databases.

Let me check litigation-specific databases directly.

Summary Answer

I found no evidence of any litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 5,179,270.

After searching patent-litigation and litigation-adjacent sources (including the Unified Patents portal case-list pages, CourtListener/RECAP materials, Docket Alarm/PTAB records, general litigation dockets surfaced via web search, and the Google Patents / Justia patent pages for the '270 patent), I could not identify a single case — district court, ITC, PTAB, or Federal Circuit — in which US 5,179,270 was asserted or challenged. I am therefore reporting "no known litigation" rather than inventing case details.

What I verified about the patent itself (for identification purposes)

• Patent: US 5,179,270 A, "Scanner System Interface"; application 07/348,861, filed May 8, 1989; granted January 12, 1993.
• Inventors: Andrew P. Taussig, Nicholas N. Tabet, Blake L. Isaacs.
• Original assignee: Spectra-Physics, Inc. (San Jose, CA). Current assignee listed by Google Patents: Datalogic Scanning Inc. (assignment chain: Spectra-Physics → PSC Acquisition, Inc. → PSC Scanning, Inc. → later transfers).
• Legal status: Expired – Lifetime; anticipated expiration January 12, 2010 (Prefer the authoritative patent text over my general expectations here.) Any infringement action would necessarily have had to be filed on or before that date.
• Family: EP 0397376 A2/A3 (EP application 90304746, filed 1990-05-01, priority US 34886189; EP proceeding recorded as "Withdrawn").
• Sources: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5179270/en ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/5179270

What I did find that is close but is NOT litigation of the '270 patent (flagged so it is not mistaken for a hit)

1. PSC Inc. v. Symbol Technologies, Inc. (W.D.N.Y.; complaint filed April 1, 1996 per the opinion's reference to "the day on which the Complaint in this action was filed"). The patents at issue were the '297 and '186 patents (patent misuse / double royalties / exhaustion dispute), not the '270 patent. Source: https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[2406969](/patent/2406969)/psc-inc-v-symbol-technologies-inc/ ; background: https://rbj.net/2000/02/11/psc-ordered-to-pay-millions/
2. Spectra-Physics, Inc. and Spectra-Physics Scanning Systems, Inc. v. Symbol Technologies, Inc. (Fed. Cir. 1994, 29 F.3d 645, unpublished) — I found the case name only; I have no evidence that the '270 patent was asserted in it. Do not assume a connection.
3. Product patent notice: The '270 patent appears in the "covered by one or more of the following patents" list in the PSC/Datalogic Magellan™ 2200VS and 2300HS scanner manual (e.g., http://borsodpenztargep.hu/VS2200-Manual_R44-2979A.pdf). This is a commercial product marking, not litigation.
4. Also cited-by/cited-in art references (e.g., Symbol's US 5,745,794 and Metrologic's US 7,383,997 listing "5179270 — January 12, 1993 — Taussig et al.") are prior-art citations, not suits.
5. Different patents with superficially similar numbers that appeared in results and should not be attributed to this patent: US 7,165,927 (Murata v. Daifuku, D. Utah 2:13-cv-00866), US 6,449,927 (AutoMed/Microfil), the golf-putter design patent '927 (Colucci v. Callaway), and JP 5179270 B2 (Japanese photolithography patent) plus a Brazilian commercial registry entry "5179270." None of these is US 5,179,270.

Important limitations on this answer (please read)

• Free/online coverage of pre-2000 patent litigation is very sparse. The '270 patent's enforcement window (1993–2010) predates complete electronic docket indexing and RECAP/CourtListener coverage. Free sources such as Unified Patents' portal, Docket Alarm, and CourtListener are heavily weighted toward post-2000 (and especially post-AIA) cases and toward patents held by NPEs. A negative result in these databases is not proof that no suit was ever filed.
• Patent-number-indexed searches of 1990s complaints are unreliable; that era's complaints were paper-filed, and case-index data often does not key on patent numbers.
• I was unable to complete additional planned searches (CourtListener and Docket Alarm queries for "5179270" and a search of the Spectra-Physics Scanning Systems v. Symbol docket) before reaching my tool-call limit. Those are the specific next steps I'd recommend.

Recommended next steps for a definitive answer

1. PACER docket searches in the districts where Spectra-Physics/PSC/Datalogic litigated (N.D. Cal., W.D.N.Y., D. Or., D. Del., E.D. Tex.) for 1993–2010, searching party names rather than patent number.
2. Lex Machina / Docket Navigator / Innography or other commercial litigation databases, which index patent numbers for older cases more completely.
3. USPTO Patent Assignment / litigation records and PSC/Datalogic (SEC 10-K) disclosures, which sometimes list asserted patents.
4. PTAB/EPO records: on the record here, EP 0397376 was withdrawn and there is no recorded post-grant challenge to the US patent.

Bottom line: On the evidence gathered, there is no known litigation involving US 5,179,270. I state this as a negative finding subject to the database-coverage caveats above, not as a certified "never sued."

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 5,179,270: 0. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block from the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and my supplemental web searching of PTAB petition/decision material and third-party docket aggregators surfaced nothing to the contrary — so the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denied. The bottom-line defensive posture is therefore not "hardened by surviving IPRs" and not "claims already canceled" — it is something stronger and simpler: the patent expired on 2010-01-12 and is in the public domain, and the AIA trial regime did not exist until 2012-09-16, so it was never eligible to be IPR'd while it mattered. Any demand letter citing US 5,179,270 as a live right is citing an expired patent.

Verification note (per operating rules): I found no proceeding, so I have no proceeding number, panel, FWD, or appeal to report. I am not supplying placeholder numbers. The near-misses I did find in search results are different patents and should not be conflated with this one:

No AIA trial proceedings — the reasons are structural, not luck

There is no proceeding to brief because three independent conditions each foreclose the usual IPR story:

1. Expiration date. Google Patents' structured legal-status record for US 5,179,270 lists status "Expired - Lifetime" with an anticipated expiration of 2010-01-12. That date equals 17 years from the 1993-01-12 grant date, consistent with a pre-URAA patent (filed 1989-05-08) taking the greater of 17-years-from-grant or 20-years-from-filing. The last recorded maintenance-fee event is a year-12 payment on 2004-06-10; no year-16 payment event appears in the record.
2. Statutory timing. AIA trials (IPR under § 311, PGR under § 321, CBM under § 321 note) became available for petitions filed on or after 2012-09-16. That is roughly 2 years and 8 months after this patent's expiration. The window in which an IPR would have had commercial value — while the patent could still support an infringement claim for ongoing conduct — never opened.
3. No reexamination certificate either. I found no ex parte or inter partes reexamination certificate for US 5,179,270 in the search material. (Its only "family" companion is EP 0397376 A2 / A3, EP application 90304746, filed 1990-05-01, which is recorded as withdrawn; the EPO search report cited EP 0094571 A2 (MSI Data), US 4,805,175 (Knowles) and WO 88/03685 (NCR).)

Caveat on completeness: an IPR may technically be filed against an already-expired patent (the Board has instituted such trials), so expiration alone is not a legal bar — it is an economic bar. My negative finding rests on the canonical ODP block plus targeted web searching, not on a claim-by-claim docket sweep of every PTAB case caption ever filed. If you need a belt-and-suspenders record, run the patent number directly through PTAB E2E / PTAB Center (https://ptab.uspto.gov) and the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board Decisions search, and get a litigation-search vendor to confirm no AIA petition was filed under a differently-captioned docket.

Strategic summary

Claim status: nothing is canceled, nothing is sustained, nothing is tested — because there is no AIA trial history at all. All ten claims (1–10 of US 5,179,270 as granted, per the patent text) stand exactly as they were on 1993-01-12, never having been the subject of an AIA validity challenge, a certificate canceling or confirming them under § 318(b), or an amended substitute claim. That is not a vindication of their validity; it reflects that by the time AIA trials began, the patent had already expired and there was no commercial payoff in challenging it. For a defendant, this is academic: the claims cannot be infringed now. Expired claims can support liability only for acts that occurred before expiration (and, even then, only within the § 286 six-year damages look-back and subject to laches/§ 1498-type considerations). A 1989-priority barcode-scanner interface patent that lapsed in 2010 is not a live licensing or litigation asset.

Estoppel landscape: there is none to speak of, in either direction. Because no IPR or PGR ran to a final written decision, no petitioner is subject to § 315(e)(2) estoppel — no one is barred from raising any printed-publication or patent ground in district court. Symmetrically, a defendant gains no estoppel-based leverage from a canceled claim, and no petitioner-side admissions or Board claim constructions exist to mine. The practical consequence: the full prior-art field remains open to any defendant, unconstrained by IPR estoppel, including art that would have been barred from an IPR on § 112 grounds (a § 112 challenge was never available in IPR anyway) and system/device prior art and public-use evidence that IPR cannot reach under § 311(b). If a plaintiff nevertheless asserted this patent, the defense is not an IPR strategy — it is a § 282 invalidity case plus a threshold non-infringement/expiration case, with the full range of § 102/§ 103/§ 112 and on-sale/public-use defenses available.

Pattern signals. None applicable. There is no repeat petitioner on this patent (there are no petitioners), no patent-owner PTAB appeal activity to report (no FWD to appeal, and no ex parte appeal from the original 1989 prosecution surfaced), and no defensive aggregator such as Unified Patents appears anywhere in the chain. The ownership chain, from the structured assignment record, is: Spectra-Physics, Inc. (assignments 1989-08-21 and 1989-12-06) → PSC Acquisition, Inc. (1996-09-12, effective 1996-07-12, secured by Fleet Bank) → PSC Scanning, Inc. (merger and change of name, recorded 2004-02-18, effective 1996-09-09) → current record assignee Datalogic Scanning Inc. The "assertion" signal here is not litigation — it is stale patent marking: US 5,179,270 still appears in the "may be covered by one or more of the following patents" lists in Datalogic/PSC product manuals (e.g., Magellan 2200VS, Magellan 3300HSi, PowerScan 7000BT), alongside long-expired patents such as US 4,603,262 and US 4,639,606. Marking an expired patent is not itself a cause of action in most circumstances (false marking under § 292 was narrowed to competitive-injury standing by Forest Group / the AIA amendment), but it is a useful tell that a notice letter building on this number is recycling a legacy marking list rather than asserting a live right.

Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant: the patent is expired and the claims are unenforceable going forward. US 5,179,270 reached its anticipated expiration on 2010-01-12 and the record status is "Expired - Lifetime." There is no PTAB Final Written Decision to quote, so do not represent to a court or opposing counsel that any claim has been canceled — say precisely what the record shows: no AIA trial was ever instituted, and the patent term ended on 2010-01-12. Confirm the expiration and fee history against the USPTO Patent Center maintenance-fee record and the Google Patents legal-status entry at https://patents.google.com/patent/US5179270/en.
• Demand-letter triage. If a communication demands royalties for present or future use, the response writes itself: no enforceable right exists post-2010-01-12, so there can be no ongoing infringement and no injunctive relief. If the demand reaches back to pre-2010 sales, run the § 286 six-year bar and check whether the patent owner is time-barred or estopped by the interposition of the 1996 Fleet Bank security interest and the subsequent PSC/Datalogic chain — see the assignment record via USPTO Assignment Search (https://assignment.uspto.gov).
• If you are evaluating an invalidity position for a pre-expiration damages window, you are unconstrained by IPR estoppel. Unlike a defendant who lost or settled an IPR on this patent, you may raise any ground: § 102/§ 103 on patents and printed publications, § 112 written description/enablement/definiteness, on-sale and public-use art, and prior public use of the claimed "interface means ... mounted in said optical scanner" architecture. The examiner-of-record art on this family (EP 0094571 A2 to MSI Data; US 4,805,175 to Knowles; WO 88/03685 to NCR; and US 4,894,522 to Elliott, assigned to Spectra-Physics itself and cited on the face of the patent) is a natural starting set, along with the contemporaneous PSC Bar code scanner art (US 5,258,604, which cites US 5,179,270).
• Do not expect a PTAB option. There is no pending proceeding with an institution deadline, no oral hearing date, and no statutory one-year FWD clock running — nothing is on the Board's docket for this number. If a plaintiff nonetheless files an AIA petition now (legally possible against an expired patent, but commercially pointless), the correct response is to note that no infringement remedy is available and seek termination or adverse judgment on that basis.
• Confirm the negative once more, cheaply. Pull the patent's PTAB E2E record and the PTAB Decisions search at https://ptab.uspto.gov and https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-api (or the ODP endpoint used for the structured block), and run the number through CourtListener (https://www.courtlistener.com) and a litigation docket service. If any of those returns a petition or a prior district-court action involving this patent, the analysis changes and should be updated — but on the records now available to me, no PTAB activity exists, and the absence is fully explained by the patent's 2010 expiration.

I'll verify the assignment record and ownership chain against live sources before building the analysis.

Let me check for litigation history and any correspondent/assignment-center detail.

US 5179270 — Scanner System Interface

Ownership-chain reconstruction | Prepared 2026-09-27

Scope note up front: The chain below is reconstructed from the Google Patents legal-events record for US 5179270 (which mirrors the USPTO assignment index by reel/frame) plus corroborating public sources. I was unable to retrieve the Assignment Center correspondent fields (attorney/agent of record) — those pages did not resolve in my searches. That is a genuine data gap, flagged in Signal 3 below rather than guessed at.

Inventors

All three executed the original assignment to Spectra-Physics, Inc. (recorded 1989-08-21, effective 1989-08-07, reel 005123/0143; re-recorded 1989-12-06, effective 1989-06-16, reel 005196/0862).

Pattern check — no unusual inventor behaviour. There is no evidence any inventor departed the assignee within 12 months of filing, and no inventor-originated assignment (i.e., no later assignment naming an inventor as assignor to a third party). The patent was filed 1989-05-08 and issued 1993-01-12; both 1989 assignments are to the original employer, not away from it. The dual 1989 recording reflects a corporate redomestication (below), not inventor flight. Not a finding.

Original assignee

Spectra-Physics, Inc., specifically its scanning-systems business (Spectra-Physics Scanning Systems, Inc., Eugene, Oregon). The record shows two entities:

• Spectra-Physics, Inc. (a California corporation) — reel 005123/0143
• Spectra-Physics, Inc., a corp. of DE — reel 005196/0862 (reincorporation of the same operating business)

Line of business: laser and optical systems; the relevant unit built fixed-position retail point-of-sale checkout scanners. Per Datalogic's own corporate history, Spectra-Physics designed the original Model A scanner that performed the first supermarket barcode read in 1974 — a genuine, long-standing hardware manufacturer. The patent is embodied in shipping products: Datalogic's Magellan 3300HSi and 3200VSi product manuals list "US5179270" in their "This product may be covered by one or more of the following patents" notices (see manualslib / manualzilla Magellan 3300HSi page 2). This is direct evidence of product practice, not paper ownership.

Current status: Spectra-Physics Scanning Systems was sold to PSC Inc. in 1996 for ~$140M (NYT, "PSC to Acquire Spectra-Physics Scanning Systems," 1996-05-22; the seller of record was Spectra-Physics A.B. of Sweden, indicating the parent had passed into Swedish ownership). PSC → Chapter 11 reorganization in 2002, controlled by Littlejohn & Co. → acquired by Datalogic S.p.A. on 2005-12-01 for $195M → PSC brand retired 2007-04-02, business renamed Datalogic Scanning, Inc. (current assignee of record per Google Patents). The original assignee entity no longer exists; its business survives as a Datalogic division.

Assignment timeline

Note on dates: the index shows both an executed/effective date and a recorded date for each instrument. Both are given.

• 1989-08-07 (executed) / recorded 1989-08-21 — Reel 005123/0143

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Taussig, Andrew P.; Tabet, Nicholas N.; Isaacs, Blake L.
  • Assignee: Spectra-Physics, Inc. (California)
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable from available sources; would be found on the Assignment Center abstract page for reel 005123/0143.
  • Context: Original employment assignment of inventors' rights to the operating company at filing.

• 1989-06-16 (executed) / recorded 1989-12-06 — Reel 005196/0862

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest (confirmatory)
  • Assignor: Taussig, Andrew P.; Tabet, Nicholas N.; Isaacs, Blake L.
  • Assignee: Spectra-Physics, Inc., a corporation of Delaware
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable.
  • Context: Internal corporate reorg — re-recordation of the same grant in the name of the Delaware-domiciled Spectra-Physics entity.

• 1996-07-12 (executed) / recorded 1996-09-12 — Reel 008133/0577

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignor's interest
  • Assignor: Spectra-Physics, Inc., a corp. of Delaware
  • Assignee: PSC Acquisition, Inc., a corp. of Delaware (New York)
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable.
  • Context: Acquisition — part of PSC Inc.'s ~$140M purchase of the Spectra-Physics scanning business (announced 1996-05-22).

• 1996-07-12 (executed) / recorded 1996-09-12 — Reel 008133/0346

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement
  • Assignor: PSC, Inc.; PSC Acquisition, Inc.; Spectra-Physics Scanning Systems, Inc.; and others
  • Assignee: Fleet Bank, New York
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable.
  • Context: Securitization — blanket lien granted over the acquired assets to finance the PSC transaction. Not a transfer of title.

• 2003-12-23 (executed) / recorded 2003-12-29 — Reel 014926/0809

  • Conveyance: Release of Security Interest
  • Assignor: LJ Scanner Holdings, Inc., as successor in interest to Fleet National Bank (a/k/a Fleet Bank), as administrative agent
  • Assignee: PSC Inc. (Oregon)
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable.
  • Context: Release of the 1996 Fleet lien as part of PSC's post-Chapter-11 recapitalization and 2003 refinancing.

• 2003-12-23 (executed) / recorded 2003-12-29 — Reel 014815/0764

  • Conveyance: Security Interest
  • Assignor: PSC Scanning, Inc.
  • Assignee: Wells Fargo Foothill, Inc. (Georgia)
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable.
  • Context: Securitization — replacement credit facility lien taken contemporaneously with the Fleet release. Financing, not a sale.

• 1996-09-09 (executed) / recorded 2004-02-18 — Reel 014990/0673

  • Conveyance: Merger and Change of Name
  • Assignor: PSC Acquisition, Inc.
  • Assignee: PSC Scanning, Inc. (Oregon)
  • Correspondent: Not retrievable.
  • Context: Change of name / merger only — the acquiring shell of 1996 is recorded as having merged into, and taken the name of, PSC Scanning, Inc. The 7.5-year lag between execution (1996) and recording (2004) is a late chain-of-title clean-up, recorded alongside the 2003 refinancing.

Post-2004 status: The visible record ends at reel 014990/0673 (2004). There is no recorded assignment documenting the 2005–2006 Datalogic acquisition, even though Google Patents lists Datalogic Scanning Inc as current assignee. That attribution is almost certainly derived from the corporate transaction (Datalogic/PSC closing 2005-12-01; PSC renamed Datalogic Scanning 2007-04-02), not from an instrument in this index. Treat the PSC → Datalogic link as corporate-succession fact, not a recorded assignment. The patent expired 2010-01-12 (17-year pre-URAA term from the 1993-01-12 grant), so no further transfer was economically motivated.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5179270
    1989 : Filed by Spectra Physics Inc
         : Inventors assign rights
         : Reincorporated in Delaware
    1996 : PSC buys Spectra Physics Scanning
         : Recorded to PSC Acquisition Inc
         : Fleet Bank security agreement
    2002 : PSC Chapter 11 reorganization
         : Littlejohn takes control
    2003 : Fleet security interest released
         : Wells Fargo Foothill lien recorded
    2004 : Merger recorded to PSC Scanning Inc
    2005 : Datalogic acquires PSC Inc
    2007 : Business renamed Datalogic Scanning
    2010 : Patent expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT.
Every assignee in the chain is an operating entity with products or a secured lender: Spectra-Physics, Inc. (scanner manufacturer), PSC Acquisition, Inc. / PSC Scanning, Inc. / PSC Inc. (scanner manufacturer; PSC shipped the U-Scan self-checkout and Magellan-class scanners), Fleet Bank and Wells Fargo Foothill (secured lenders, no title transfer). No assignee carries an "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" suffix. Reels 008133/0577 and 014990/0673 both move the patent between manufacturer entities, not into a licensing shell.

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT.
No assignee at any point matches the supplied NPE list (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, Spangenberg entities) or any high-frequency-plaintiff entity surfaced by RPX/Unified. The chain resolves to Datalogic Scanning, Inc., a manufacturer. Separately, in InnoMemory, LLC v. Datalogic S.p.A. (E.D. Tex. 2:24-cv-00671), Datalogic is the accused defendant, not the asserter — the inverse of an NPE posture.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNRESOLVED (data gap, not a finding).
I could not obtain the correspondent-of-record names for reels 005123/0143, 005196/0862, 008133/0577, 008133/0346, 014926/0809, 014815/0764, or 014990/0673. Per the operating rules I will not infer a repeat-player attorney from naming patterns alone. Two structural features warrant pulling the correspondents: (a) reels 014926/0809 and 014815/0764 were both recorded on 2003-12-29 with the same executed date 2003-12-23 (release + new lien), which is the classic signature of one firm running a simultaneous financing recordation; and (b) reel 014990/0673 was recorded 2004-02-18 as a back-dated 1996 merger — a chain clean-up that would typically be filed by the same counsel handling the 2003 refinancing. Recommendation: pull the correspondent for those three reels specifically. If one firm appears on all three, that is a housekeeping finding only — lender's counsel — not an NPE signal.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT.
Transfers are spaced roughly 7 years apart (1989 → 1996 → 2003/2004), each tethered to a documented corporate event (redomestication, $140M acquisition, Chapter 11 recapitalization). There is no <24-month chain of LLC-to-LLC hops and no shared address/common-principal pattern.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT.
No infringement action asserting US 5179270 was located in any source searched. Datalogic's known enforcement activity involves different patents (German patent 44 47 992 ≈ US 6,974,084 / 6,991,169 against Metrologic, 2007; EP 851 376 B1 against Sick AG, 2007). The 2003/2004 recordings predate no lawsuit concerning this patent.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT (but Chapter 11 context is real).
PSC did undergo Chapter 11 reorganization in 2002, with Littlejohn & Co. taking control — the classic precursor to a patent fire-sale. However, the record shows the opposite outcome here: PSC retained the patent through the reorganization (the 2003-12-23 instruments are a release of the Fleet lien and a replacement Wells Fargo Foothill lien, i.e., refinancing), and the patent stayed with the operating business through the 2005 Datalogic acquisition. It was not sold to a monetization vehicle. No Kodak/Nortel-style sale proceeding appears in the record.

7. Privateering — NOT PRESENT.
The only operating-company-to-third-party transfers are outright M&A sales of an entire business (Spectra-Physics Scanning → PSC; PSC → Datalogic). Datalogic did not fund an NPE to assert these patents against competitors; it asserts its own patents in its own name (Sick AG, Metrologic). No SEC/Patent Progress/EFF coverage of a privateering arrangement for this patent was found.

8. Defensive aggregator — NOT PRESENT.
The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at Datalogic Scanning, Inc., a manufacturer that marks the patent on its own Magellan product line. The patent was not neutralized by defensive aggregation.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The ownership chain runs cleanly from the inventors to Spectra-Physics, Inc. (reel 005123/0143, 1989), through PSC's acquisition of the scanning business (reel 008133/0577, executed 1996-07-12), through the Wells Fargo Foothill refinancing (reel 014815/0764, executed 2003-12-23), to the surviving operating entity now known as Datalogic Scanning, Inc. — with no shell entity, no known NPE, and no monetization vehicle anywhere in the chain, and with the patent positively marked on a shipping product (Datalogic Magellan 3300HSi / 3200VSi manuals list "US5179270"). The two headline "troll-adjacent" touchpoints both resolve benignly: the 2002 PSC Chapter 11 produced a lien release and refinancing, not a patent sale; and Datalogic's litigation posture is that of a manufacturer suing competitors (Sick AG, Metrologic) and being sued by an NPE (InnoMemory), not licensing through a proxy.

Two honest caveats: (i) no litigation asserting this specific patent was found, so "assertion" here describes the owner's character, not a proven suit — the patent expired 2010-01-12; and (ii) the correspondent-of-record fields were not retrievable, so Signal 3 is unresolved rather than cleared. Retrieve reels 014926/0809, 014815/0764 and 014990/0673 at the USPTO Assignment Center to close that gap.

Verify: USPTO Assignment Center — search "5179270" · Google Patents US5179270 · RPX litigation record, InnoMemory v. Datalogic

Source reliability note: The reel/frame numbers, dates, conveyance types and entity names above are taken from the Google Patents legal-events record supplied in the authoritative patent text. The corporate-history facts (1996 PSC/Spectra-Physics deal, 2002 Chapter 11, 2005 Datalogic acquisition, 2007 rebrand) are corroborated by contemporaneous sources — NYT 1996-05-22, Datalogic press releases 2005-10-24 and 2005-12-01, Datalogic 2007-04-23 integration announcement, and Datalogic's own "The Acquisition of PSC" history page. The correspondent names are absent because I could not reach the Assignment Center abstract pages; I have deliberately not substituted attorneys' names from elsewhere.

I'll verify the patent and its cited references against live sources before analyzing them.

Let me verify several of the key cited references.

Let me pull the European search report for the EP counterpart (EP0397376), which typically categorizes prior art relevance.

Prior‑Art Analysis — US 5179270 A ("Scanner system interface")

0. What I searched and how I verified it

Identifiers are read literally. I have not corrected US 4,735,858 B1, WO 88/03685 (WO1988003685A1), EP 0 094 571 A2 or any other identifier.

Patent at a glance

• Patent: US 5,179,270 A — Scanner system interface
• Appl. No.: US 07/348,861 · Filed: 1989‑05‑08 · Priority: 1989‑05‑08 · Granted: 1993‑01‑12
• Inventors: Andrew P. Taussig; Nicholas N. Tabet; Blake L. Isaacs
• Original assignee: Spectra‑Physics, Inc. (assignments recorded 1989‑08‑21 and 1989‑12‑06) → PSC Acquisition → PSC Scanning → current assignee Datalogic Scanning, Inc.
• Status: Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2010‑01‑12); EP counterpart Withdrawn
• Claims: 10 (independent: 1, 3, 5, 8; dependent: 2, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10)
• Commercial footprint: the patent is still listed as covering Datalogic Magellan scanners (e.g., Magellan 3300HSi manual, "This product may be covered by one or more of the following patents: US5179270 …")

Legal framework I applied

1. Filing predates the AIA → pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102/103 governs.
2. § 102 anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every limitation of the claim, arranged as claimed. A reference cited by the examiner is not thereby anticipatory; the "References Cited" list is a statutory disclosure (§ 102(b)/§ 102(e) duty), not a finding of anticipation.
3. Claim 1/3 core: scanner + scanning controller mounted in the scanner + interface mounted in the scanner comprising (i) an interface microprocessor, (ii) interface memory storing control software for that microprocessor, and (iii) a driver circuit feeding the cash register system.
4. Claims 5/8 add an interface power means: power from the scanner while available, then from the cash register system.
5. Because all ten claims issued over this art in 1993 with no reexamination, the examiner necessarily treated these references as § 103 / background rather than § 102 art. That is a strong presumption‑of‑validity signal I factor into the conclusions below.

1. The cited references (21 documents; 22 listings including the B1 certificate)

Bold rows are the four I retrieved and read substantively; the remainder are characterized from the bibliographic record and title (flagged where I could not open full text).

(Numbers 1–21 total the 21 distinct documents; the "Patent Citations (22)" list on the record counts US 4,734,858 B1 separately as row 9.)

2. § 102 assessment of the four most relevant references

A. US 4,894,522 A (Spectra‑Physics) — highest relevance, but not anticipatory

• Disclosure: in‑scanner interface circuit 14 + scanner microprocessor 18 + EEPROM 24 feeding a host over a serial line; a separate plug‑in interface apparatus using address decoders, latches/NAND gates, opto‑coupler and low‑pass filter.
• Against claim 1: discloses "scanning controller means … for identifying the data on said bar code labels" and "interface means, mounted in said optical scanner … for providing coded label data" — but the receiving device is a host computer, not a cash register system, and the interface is not microprocessor‑based. Limitation missing → no anticipation of claim 1 (likewise claims 2–4, 6, 7, 9, 10).
• Against claims 5/8: no dual‑source (scanner‑then‑cash‑register) power means disclosed → no anticipation. Note the uspto.report/EPO record does not attribute any power‑transfer teaching to it.
• Important legal nuance: because US 4,894,522 A was granted after the '270 filing date, it qualifies as prior art only under § 102(e). Both documents were owned by Spectra‑Physics, Inc. at the time the '270 invention was made (assignments of record 1989‑08‑21 / 1989‑12‑06). Pre‑AIA § 103(c) therefore disqualifies it as obviousness art, while leaving it available for § 102(e) anticipation — and it fails on the merits for § 102(e) as shown. This is likely exactly why the '270 claims survived the citation.

B. US 4,656,344 A (NCR, Integrated scale and optical scanner)

• Discloses the in‑counter scanner + decode logic 82 + storage 88 + output buffer 90 + line 92 to terminal 94, and a weight‑signal path. Maps onto claims 1–4 elements except the interface microprocessor and interface control‑software memory. No anticipation; strong § 103 combination candidate (e.g., with EP 0 094 571 A2 for a self‑contained microprocessor/memory unit).

C. WO 88/03685 A1 (NCR, Optical scanner checkout station)

• Discloses scanner head, remote power supply, remote logic IC board, and terminal. It is the inverse of the '270 claim 5/8 architecture (power and logic moved out of the scanner). No anticipation of any of claims 1–10; useful as evidence of the external‑interface practice the '270 patent criticizes and as an objective‑evidence (long‑felt need) exhibit.

D. EP 0 094 571 A2 (MSI Data, Self‑contained portable data entry terminal)

• A self‑contained terminal with processor, memory and I/O in a single housing — the generic "microprocessor + program memory + driver inside one box" idea. No anticipation (no optical scanner, no cash register interface, no dual power source); it is the best secondary reference against claims 1, 3, 7, 10.

3. References that cannot support § 102 but matter for § 103

• EP 0 094 571 A2 (self‑contained terminal with processor/memory) — to supply the interface‑microprocessor/interface‑memory elements.
• US 4,656,344 A and US 4,879,650 A (scanner + scale → POS register) — to supply the scanner‑side decode/buffer and weight‑data path.
• US 4,631,327 A (opto‑coupler transmission) — to supply isolated driver/coupling, as also seen in US 4,894,522's opto‑coupling circuit.
• US 3,986,169 A (Hitachi device protection) — the only cited document whose title plausibly maps to the claims 5/8 power‑means element (power source protection/switching). I could not open its full text, so I flag this as provisional.
• US 4,855,581 A — decoder‑side refinement for claims 2, 4, 9.
• US 4,525,788 A (scanner interface circuit for document inserters) — the examiner's likely "interface circuitry" catch‑all; vulnerable to a non‑analogous‑art argument.

4. References that are background only (no claim impact)

US 4,068,213 A; US 4,415,065 A; US 4,569,421 A; US 4,434,472 A; US 4,734,858 A (+ B1); US 4,621,325 A; US 4,766,581 A; US 4,654,793 A; US 4,841,442 A; US 4,855,908 A; US 4,716,281 A; US 4,805,175 A. These establish the 1974–1989 POS/retail‑data‑capture milieu but disclose no element of the in‑scanner, microprocessor‑based interface or the scanner‑then‑register power means.

5. Bottom line

1. No cited reference anticipates any of claims 1–10 on the record as published. Every claim requires an interface microprocessor with interface memory storing its control software, plus a driver circuit, mounted in the scanner (claims 1, 3, 7, 10) and/or the dual‑source interface power means (claims 5, 8). No single citation shows both the in‑scanner software‑programmed interface and the cash‑register destination.
2. The single most relevant citation is US 4,894,522 A (Spectra‑Physics, filed 1987‑11‑19, granted 1990‑01‑16) — the assignee's own earlier interface work, the only document cited in the EP search report, and the only cited reference that places interface circuitry inside the scanner. It is nevertheless § 102(e)‑only art, is hardware‑logic rather than microprocessor‑based, and addresses a personal computer host; consequently it is disqualified for § 103 purposes by pre‑AIA § 103(c) (common ownership) and fails for § 102(e).
3. The closest systemic art for the "separate external interface" problem the patent describes is WO 88/03685 A1 (NCR), which in fact externalizes power and processing logic — the opposite of the claimed arrangement and therefore affirmative evidence of the problem the '270 patent solved.
4. Caveats I will not paper over: (i) I did not obtain the USPTO Image File Wrapper, so I cannot report the examiner's stated § 102 vs. § 103 grounds, only the published citation lists; (ii) for referent #1 (US 3,986,169 A), #3/#4 (Sandstedt), #10 (US 4,621,325 A) and several others I relied on the bibliographic record and title rather than full text — those characterizations are provisional; (iii) an "Expired – Lifetime" status and pre‑AIA framing are stated as the record shows, not as a legal conclusion.

Forward citations (post‑dating; not prior art, but evidence of the patent's reach): US 5,258,604 A (PSC, Inc.); US 5,490,283 A (Ultima Electronics); US 5,604,486 A (Motorola); US 5,789,728 A and US 5,920,059 A (Symbol Technologies); US 5,745,794 A (Symbol); US 5,978,772 A (Mold); US 6,619,549 B2 / US 7,044,383 B2 / US 7,383,997 B2 / US 7,686,226 B2 and publications US 2005/0189421 A1, US 2007/0057063 A1, US 2009/0014523 A1, US 2008/0302873 A1 (Metrologic/Datalogic line); US 2011/0014596 A1 (University of Florida Research Foundation).

I'll ground this analysis in the actual cited references rather than relying on memory, since the § 103 case rises or falls on what each reference discloses.

Let me pull the key interface-related references, since those are the ones that matter for the two independent-claim families.

US 5,179,270 — Obviousness analysis under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Framing note first (builds on the prior section): this patent has a filing/priority date of 1989-05-08, so it is governed by pre-AIA § 103, and the prior art is confined to what the pre-AIA § 102 categories make available. That matters because several of the most useful references here are § 102(e) art — filed before 1989-05-08 but issuing after it (notably US 4,894,522, filed 1987-11-19, issued 1990-01-16). Under pre-AIA § 103(c)/§ 102(e), a § 102(e) reference is available against these claims. Also note the patent is expired (2010-01-12), so this is a retrospective validity exercise, not a live challenge.

Analytical caveat carried forward and expanded: my tool access was cut off mid-verification, so I was able to pull full or partial text only for a subset of the cited references (US 4,805,175; US 4,894,522 and its Spectra-Physics sibling disclosure; US 4,656,344; US 4,525,788 and the Pitney Bowes family). For the remainder I am working from the titles/assignees/dates as they appear on the patent page, and I say so explicitly wherever a mapping depends on that. I am not going to dress up unverified guesses as holdings.

1. What actually has to be supplied (the real differences)

Stripping the two independent-claim families to their point of novelty:

So the § 103 case is easy for claims 1–4, 6, 7, 9, 10, and materially harder for claims 5 and 8. I treat them separately, because pretending they rise or fall together would be wrong.

Claim-construction point that matters for § 103: "scanning controller means" and "interface means" are means-plus-function limitations (pre-AIA § 112 ¶ 6). The corresponding structure is disclosed at column-level granularity in the spec — NCR VLSI decoder 212 + gate array/timer 224 + INTEL 8039 (214) + EPROM (216) for the controller; ZILOG Super8 (218) + EPROM (220) + driver 222 for the interface. A § 103 rejection must therefore show the prior art discloses the corresponding structure or an equivalent, not merely any programming. That is a real (if modest) hurdle for a challenger, and it is also the reason the "two microprocessor" framing of claims 1/3 and 7/10 is the crux.

2. Ground 1 — US 4,805,175 (Knowles / Metrologic) in view of US 4,525,788 (Gottlieb et al. / Pitney Bowes)

This is the strongest single ground against claims 1–4.

• US 4,805,175 (filed 1987-12-03, issued 1989-02-14 — 102(a)/(b) art) discloses a self-contained hand-held laser scanner in which the laser, its power supply, and the signal-processing board are all inside the housing (claim 1(b), claim 9: "signal processing means located on a second printed circuit board… mounted within said body portion of said housing"). Its microprocessor and signal-processing circuitry decode the scanned signals and "provide conventional RS232C signals… via the output connector and cable to any desired peripheral equipment, such as a host computer, an electronic cash register, etc."
  • That maps to claim 3's "scanner controller for reading coded labels" + "interface circuit mounted in said scanner and receiving power therefrom, for providing coded label data to said cash register system" — the unit is self-contained and self-powered, and its line-driver electronics live in the housing.
• US 4,525,788 (Pitney Bowes, filed 1982-07-01, issued 1985-06-25 — 102(b) art) supplies the missing second processor: a dedicated "scanner interface circuit" that has its own address, a distributed processor, and a stored scanner program ("a distributed processor which stores a scanner program containing instructions for scanning coded documents"), which "in response to address signals received from the central processor… scans the coded document." It also includes a programmable counter to provide timing signals for reading codes. This is, functionally, an interface microprocessor with interface memory storing control software, sitting between a scanner and a central processor — the exact architecture of claim 1's "interface means."

Motivation to combine (KSR-satisfying, and rooted in the art itself):

1. Distributed-intelligence rationale, expressly stated in Pitney Bowes: "there is intelligence present at each feeder module so that the commands from the supervisory program are essentially a feed command… This facilitates a standard supervisory program format… without requiring any re-programming or rewiring." That is a stated design rationale for pushing the protocol/formatting burden into a dedicated processor resident at the peripheral — precisely the reason one of skill would give the scanner its own interface processor rather than burdening the cash register.
2. The commercial driver in the '270 spec itself: the IBM 4683's "unique and exacting" communication specifications had forced a separate, external interface with its own power supply; the stated object is to eliminate that box. Reducing parts count, cable count, and counter footprint, and eliminating a second power supply, are classic "improvement in cost/compactness" motivations that KSR treats as sufficient.
3. Predictable result: the combination is a re-packaging of known boards inside a known housing; nothing in the combination changes the principle of operation of either reference. No unexpected result is asserted in the '270 spec beyond "superior communication," which is a conclusion, not evidence.

Result: claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 6, 7, 9, 10 would be prima facie obvious on this ground. Claim 3's "receiving power therefrom" is met by 4,805,175's in-handle power supply.

3. Ground 2 — US 4,894,522 (Elliott / Spectra-Physics) in view of US 4,656,344 (NCR, "Integrated scale and optical scanner")

Strongest ground specifically for the internal-mounting limitation, and the one with the most direct "same-field, same-problem" pedigree.

• US 4,894,522 — same assignee as the '270 patent, filed 1987-11-19, issued 1990-01-16 (§ 102(e) art) — discloses an interface apparatus coupling a bar-code scanner to a host computer, comprising coupling means with an opto-coupling circuit for electrical isolation, latch/output circuitry, a low-pass filter, and address decode/select circuitry, and it is expressly designed to be mounted on a single circuit board and "inserted directly into the expansion slot of a personal computer." Its companion disclosure (the Spectra-Physics family, e.g. the scanner of US 4,866,257/US 4,861,972) shows the scanner side as microprocessor 18 responsive to scanning circuitry 20 and decoding circuitry 22, with EEPROM 24 control memory, transmitting via interface circuitry 14 over a serial line.
  • Map: interface µP-equivalent control circuitry + stored data + isolating driver between scanner and host. The § 103 gap is location: the '522 interface is a board in the host, not in the scanner.
• US 4,656,344 (NCR, issued 1987-04-07 — 102(b) art) closes that gap by teaching packaging the scanner's decode/output electronics inside the checkout unit: "the bar code scanning unit 74, shown within the dotted line and located in the checkout counter," containing detecting logic 76, encoded data processing logic 82 (decode/check), an output buffer unit 90, and good-read/bad-read and tone indicators, transmitting the data over line 92 to a data terminal device 94 and thence to the CPU. US 4,879,650 (Tokyo Electric, "POS register system with combined optical scanner and weighing machine," issued 1989-11-07) reinforces this — a combined scanner/scale whose electronics deliver both weight and label data to the POS register (and corresponds directly to the '270 spec's own mention that driver 222 supplies "weight data and coded label data").

Motivation:

1. Same problem, same field: the '522 apparatus exists to solve exactly the problem the '270 patent identifies — getting scanner data onto an idiosyncratic host. Re-housing the already-single-board interface from the host expansion slot into the scanner is a location change with predictable effect, and the '270 spec admits the advance is essentially that relocation plus internal powering.
2. Host-slots are a scarce resource / counter space is scarce: moving the board out of the host and into the peripheral is the obvious design response to an expansion-slot constraint or a counter-footprint constraint.
3. US 4,656,344 supplies the "why it works" teaching — a checkout-housed scanner can itself contain decode logic and an output buffer that transmits to a terminal, so one of skill has an express reason to believe the interface can live inside the scanner without loss of function.

Result: claims 1, 2, 3, 4, 7, 10 obvious on this ground; 6 and 9 likewise once 4,855,581 (Microscan, decoding by preprocessing scan data) is added for the decoder-circuit element.

4. Ground 3 — the POS-integration line: US 4,879,650 + US 4,656,344 + US 4,894,522 (+ EP 0 094 571 A2)

For the "checkout counter" framing of claims 3/4 and 8/9, the NCR and Tokyo Electric patents show that integrating a scanner's entire electronics package into the counter-mounted unit — including decode, storage, buffering, and the line to the register — was routine by 1985–87. The EP search report on the counterpart EP 0 397 376 is reported to have relied on EP 0 094 571 A2 (MSI Data Corp., "Self-contained portable data entry terminal," published 1983-11-23 — 102(b)) as an X reference and US 4,805,175 as a Y reference. (Attribution: the EP search-report characterizations come from the earlier section of this analysis; I was unable to re-pull the EP search report to re-verify the X/Y labels before my search budget ran out. Treat those labels as carried forward, not independently confirmed.) The MSI reference is thematically apt because it teaches the self-contained, single-housing data terminal concept — i.e., internalizing what had previously been external.

5. Ground 4 — claims 5 and 8 (the dual-source interface power means)

This is the weak spot in any § 103 case, and I want to be blunt about it rather than hand-wave it.

Claims 5 and 8 require a specific ordered behavior: power to the interface from the scanner as long as such power is available, and subsequently from the cash register system. The spec implements this with relay 228 switching between scanner line 230 and cash-register line 232, and the stated purpose is that "the interface 210 will receive power, even in the event that either the scanner 200 or the cash register system 202 should lose power."

Among the references actually cited of record, I do not see one that expressly discloses automatic, prioritized failover of a peripheral interface between two external supplies. That is a genuine gap:

• US 3,986,169 (Hitachi, "Device protection method and apparatus," issued 1976-10-12 — 102(b)) is the most plausible candidate, because "device protection" work in that era routinely dealt with power-down/power-loss protection and supply switching. I could not retrieve its text, so I am flagging it as a candidate whose disclosure I have not verified, not as an established teaching. A real rejection would need its specification pulled and its power-handling passages cited by column and line.
• US 4,525,788 / US 4,547,846 (Pitney Bowes family) do show relay-driven switching inside an interface module ("output leads… to operate a relay for motor control"), which supports using relays in interface circuitry generally — but that is relay-for-load-control, not supply failover. It is supporting, not dispositive.
• The balance of the cited art (US 4,894,522, US 4,805,175, US 4,656,344, US 4,879,650, US 4,434,472, US 4,639,727, US 4,855,581, US 4,851,442, US 4,859,908, US 4,716,281, WO 88/03685) is directed to data paths, decoding, isolation, and POS host communication — none of it to redundant power sourcing.

How a challenger would build the case anyway: treat claims 5/8 as the claims 1/3 architecture plus an "alternative source of supply" feature, and argue under KSR that arranging a standby supply so a device does not lose state when its primary supply drops is "a familiar element… a predictable variation," supported by the general body of power-failover/backup-supply art that is ubiquitous in electronics. The § 103 counterweight is that claims 5 and 8 recite a specific ordering (scanner-first, register-second) tied to a specific benefit (surviving loss of either device), and if the challenger cannot put in a reference teaching prioritized two-source switching for this kind of endpoint, the obviousness case on claims 5/8 rests on common sense alone — which KSR permits but which is far more vulnerable to a "no articulated reasoning with rational underpinning" attack than the claims 1/3 grounds above.

Verdict on 5/8: not established on the art of record; would require an additional reference (best candidate: US 3,986,169, unverified) or an express common-sense rationale tied to a concrete engineering problem.

6. Motivation to combine — the consolidated argument

For each ground above, the motivation is supplyable from the references themselves or from the field, satisfying KSR:

1. The problem is named in the patent and the prior art. The '270 background states the 4683 interface had to be "a separate, external system component" with "its own, separate power supply," increasing "cost and complexity." A design incentive to reduce cost and complexity is the paradigm KSR motivation.
2. The solution technique was known and its benefit was articulated. Pitney Bowes expressly justifies a dedicated distributed processor with its own stored program at the interface, to avoid re-programming and rewiring. That is the claim-1 "interface memory storing control software for use by said interface microprocessor" architecture.
3. The packaging move was known in the same art. NCR's US 4,656,344 and Tokyo Electric's US 4,879,650 both show scanner decode/output electronics housed in the checkout unit and transmitting to a register or terminal.
4. The interface module itself already existed on a single board. US 4,894,522 — the applicant's own assignee's work — is a single-board interface apparatus with an isolating driver; relocating it from a host expansion slot into the scanner is a predictable re-packaging, the classic "arrangement of parts" case.
5. All of the principal references are analogous art. Bar-code scanning, POS terminals, and scanner-to-host interfaces are the same field of endeavor and reasonably pertinent to the problem. The exceptions — US 4,639,727 (Heidelberger Druckmaschinen, opto-coupler data transmission) and US 3,986,169 (Hitachi, device protection) — are from unrelated fields but are reasonably pertinent to the particular sub-problems (isolated data transmission; protection on power failure), so they remain combinable under the familiar two-part analogous-art test.

7. Counterarguments a patent owner would raise, and how they fare

• "The reference interface is in the host, not the scanner" (US 4,894,522). This is the owner's best structural argument, and it is a location/placement argument. It fails KSR unless the owner can show the relocation produced an unexpected result. The '270 specification claims only "superior communication" and reduced cost/complexity — expected results of eliminating a box and a power supply.
• "Two-microprocessor architecture with a partition between decode and interface." Genuinely the strongest technical point, because claims 1/3/7/10 do require two processing means. It is answered by pairing the single-µP scanner of US 4,805,175 with the dedicated distributed interface processor of US 4,525,788 — the combination supplies the second processor with its own stored program, and Pitney Bowes supplies the reason to have it.
• No secondary considerations of record. I found nothing in the record — no unexpected results, no licensing program tied to these claims, no copying, no long-felt-need evidence, and no failure of others — that would rebut a prima facie case. Note that the '270 patent was allowed over this very art, and its EP counterpart was withdrawn, which cuts both ways: allowance suggests the examiner saw something, but the EP withdrawal under an X/Y-heavy search report cuts against strong validity. (The EP outcome and search-report characterizations are carried over from the earlier section; I did not re-verify them.)
• Means-plus-function structure. A challenger must map to corresponding structure or equivalents; sloppy rejection practice (treating "interface means" as a black box) would be reversible. This is a practice defect, not a substantive defense.

8. Bottom line

Two things I cannot responsibly assert: (1) I have not verified the full text of US 4,434,472, US 4,639,727, US 3,986,169, US 4,879,650, US 4,855,581, US 4,859,908, US 4,841,442, US 4,716,281, WO 88/03685, or EP 0 094 571 A2 — my search budget was exhausted mid-verification, so those mappings rest on titles/assignees/dates as listed on the patent page. (2) The EP search report's X/Y designations are carried forward from the earlier section, not re-confirmed here.

Data-quality note (not auto-corrected, per your strict rule): the patent page lists the citation set inconsistently as "Citations (21)" in one place and "Patent Citations (22)" in another (the extra entry appears to be the US 4,734,858 B1 reexamination certificate alongside US 4,734,858 A), and "Cited By" appears as both (9) and (16). I have treated the longer lists as the operative ones.

Date discrepancy (flagged once, then proceeding): the earlier section noted the prompt's date versus its own operating context; this task states April 26, 2026, and I have used that throughout. It does not affect any date-bound analysis here, since the patent expired 2010-01-12 and all art predates 1989-05-08.