US 5267171

I'll run targeted searches for this exact patent number, including any 2026 CAFC activity.

Let me check for litigation/PTAB activity and confirm the bibliographic record.

US Patent 5,267,171 — Quick Verification Note

I searched for the exact identifier 5267171 / 5,267,171 (no similar numbers substituted). Here is what is confirmable, plus a flag on what could not be confirmed.

Important caveat on scope of search: My searches were web-indexed patent databases (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, Justia, Unified Patents portal, etc.), not a direct authenticated query of USPTO PatentCenter or the CAFC/PACER docket systems. I found no CAFC 2026 docket entry, petition, or appellate decision involving patent 5,267,171. The 2026 CAFC material surfaced only for unrelated patents (e.g., AudienceScience v. Google over 7,747,676 / 7,882,175 / 8,082,298; Regenxbio v. Sarepta over 10,526,617). I cannot state with certainty that zero litigation exists — only that nothing appeared.

Bibliographic Summary (per the authoritative full-text record)

Date discrepancy to flag: The Unified Patents portal lists priority date 1990-03-28, application date 1991-03-18, grant date 1993-11-29, expiration 2011-03-18 — i.e., one day earlier across the board than the Google Patents full text (1990-03-29 / 1991-03-19 / 1993-11-30 / 2011-03-19). This is most likely a time-zone or record-conversion artifact. Per the priority rule that the supplied full patent text controls, I treat the 1991-03-19 filing / 1990-03-29 priority / 1993-11-30 issue dates as authoritative. (Searches: Google Patents, Unified Patents portal, FreePatentsOnline, Justia.)

Abstract (as issued)

A computer software vending machine includes an information storage unit for storing user information relating to a particular user when the user utilizes the machine; an information reading unit that reads various information from the storage unit; a storing unit that stores a plurality of computer software and user information; a comparing unit that compares the stored user information with the input user information; and a selecting unit that selects software which has been supplied to the vending machine after the user last utilized the machine, on the basis of the comparison. A displaying unit displays the selected software.

Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

The patent has two independent claims — claim 1 and claim 8. Claims 2–7 depend from claim 1; claim 9 depends from claim 8.

Independent Claim 1 — "Only show me what's new since I was last here"

A vending machine that:

1. Receives utilization information about when this user last used the machine (claim 3 specifies this comes from a card read by a card reader);
2. Stores two things — an inventory of programs, and "supply information" recording the dates each program was added to the machine;
3. Compares the user's last-use date against those program-added dates;
4. Selects the programs that were added after the user's last visit; and
5. Displays that filtered subset.

In short: the machine narrows a large catalog down to "new arrivals since your last visit," so the user spends less time browsing. It is a date-difference filter claim.

Independent Claim 8 — "Show me what's new, filtered by the categories I buy"

A vending machine that:

1. Stores category information about the categories of programs the user has previously purchased from the machine (on a card per claim 9, which also stores the last-use date);
2. Updates that category information every time the user uses the machine — an explicit "updating means," so the profile is maintained dynamically;
3. Reads that stored information back;
4. Stores programs plus descriptive information about them;
5. Compares the machine's descriptive (category) information against the user's updated category information;
6. Selects programs based on that comparison; and
7. Displays the selected programs.

In short: claim 8 is a personalized-recommendation claim built on a self-updating profile of past purchase categories. Note that, unlike claim 1, claim 8 does not expressly recite the "added after last use" date comparison — its filter is category-based recommendation, with the profile refreshed on every use.

Dependent claims worth noting

• Claim 2 (dep. 1): narrows selection to programs commonly returned by both the last-use/supply-date comparison and a user-model vs. program-model comparison (hardware compatibility intersection).
• Claims 3–5 (dep. 1/3): the utilization information comes from a card with rewritable storage; claim 5 expressly recites the info is rewritten when the user uses the machine.
• Claim 6 (dep. 5): adds an explicit information rewriting means.
• Claim 7 (dep. 1): adds category matching on top of the claim-1 date comparison, requiring programs commonly obtained in both comparisons.
• Claim 9 (dep. 8): specifies the card, and further stores the date the user last utilized the machine.

Prosecution / Citation Context (grounded)

• The patent cites as prior art U.S. Pat. Nos. 4,787,050 (Brother's own "Apparatus for managing software vending machines") and 4,677,565 (Brother's "Automatic vending system"), the latter for printing a software manual; also cited are 4,654,799, 4,775,935, 4,884,212, 4,896,791, 4,949,257, 5,088,586, and 5,166,886.
• The '171 patent itself became cited prior art in later prosecution and reviews — e.g., Motorola's U.S. 5,891,532 / 6,026,366 line of "providing software to a remote computer" prosecution characterized it as "provid[ing] a list of software choices based on the list of software the user already has."

Uncertainties / Limitations

• No confirmed CAFC 2026 activity. I found no 2026 Federal Circuit docket, opinion, or brief naming 5,267,171. Absence in web-indexed results is not proof of absence; a definitive check requires PACER/CAFC docket and USPTO PatentCenter/PTAB APIs or manual review, which I could not execute here.
• No confirmed USPTO post-grant activity (IPR/PGR/CBM/reexam) for this patent was surfaced. Given the 2011 expiration, it is also outside the AIA post-grant window, so none would be expected now.
• Minor examiner/date metadata inconsistencies exist across third-party databases (see date-discrepancy note above); treat the full-text record as controlling.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 5267171.

Let me do additional targeted searches to confirm.

Let me try a couple more targeted searches on patent litigation databases.

Litigation Search Report — U.S. Patent No. 5,267,171

Bottom line

I found no evidence of any litigation (district court, ITC, or Federal Circuit/CAFC appeal) involving U.S. Patent No. 5,267,171. Based on the searches below, no known infringement suits, declaratory judgment actions, IPRs, or ITC investigations have been identified for this specific patent. If any such action exists, it is not indexed in the public sources I was able to reach, and I could not verify it.

Because the instruction is to report only the specific number and not similar ones, I flag that several "near-miss" hits appeared during searching and were excluded (see "Potential confusions" below).

The patent at issue (for the record)

Per the authoritative full text provided (Google Patents):

• Patent No.: US 5,267,171
• Title: "Computer software vending machine"
• Inventors: Takamitsu Suzuki; Yasuyo Mori
• Original/Current Assignee: Brother Industries, Ltd. / Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha (Nagoya, Japan)
• Application No.: US 07/671,473
• Filing Date: 1991-03-19
• Priority Date: 1990-03-29 (JP 35177/1990 and JP 35178/1990 — see family below)
• Grant Date: 1993-11-30
• Status: Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2011-03-19)
• Foreign priority family:
  • JP3517890U → JP2526155Y2 ("Soft vending machine")
  • JP3517790U → JP2526154Y2 ("Computer software vending machines")

Note: The Unified Patents portal entry for this patent (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-5267171-A) lists slightly different dates (priority 1990-03-28; application 1991-03-18; grant 1993-11-29; expiration 2011-03-18). I am reporting these differences literally rather than reconciling them; the Google Patents text you supplied is treated as authoritative.

Sources searched

Potential confusions to avoid (excluded — NOT this patent)

These surfaced in results but do not involve US 5,267,171:

• U.S. Pat. No. 5,575,717 — the "'717 patent" in Merit Industries, Inc. v. JVL Corporation (E.D. Pa. Markman, Aug. 27, 2007). Different number and different patent.
• The "717 Patent" in Vilox / Mohawk (D. Del.) — a different patent referred to as '717.
• Chinese trademark registration No. 5267171 ("GQY", Ningbo GQY Visual) — a trademark, not this patent.
• US 07/671,473 is the application number for the '171 patent itself — not a litigation number.

Why no litigation is plausible

The '171 patent expired around March 2011 (17-year-from-grant term ending Nov. 30, 2010, or the 20-year-from-filing date of March 19, 2011, depending on the calculation; Google lists anticipated expiration as 2011-03-19). It was a Brother-owned patent directed to a software vending machine — a business model that saw little commercial enforcement activity in the U.S. There is no record of it being asserted, and it does not appear in any patent-assertion trackers I could reach.

Caveats / confidence

• Confidence: moderate-to-high that no litigation exists, but I could not directly query PACER or the full Docket Alarm/CourtListener litigation databases for this exact number; those paywalled/query-based services may hold records not surfaced here.
• The Unified Patents page for this patent shows no "Litigation" section, which is consistent with (but not proof of) no asserted cases.
• If you need a definitive negative, the recommended next step is a paid Docket Alarm or Lex Machina docket search on "5,267,171" and on the application number 07/671,473, and a CAFC docket query.

Recommendation: Report as "No known litigation." Any litigation reference you may have seen is most likely to a similar but different identifier (e.g., '717 patents in Merit Industries/JVL or Vilox/Mohawk, or the Chinese trademark No. 5267171), not to US 5,267,171.

I'll verify the structured data against public sources before reporting.

No PTAB hits so far — the results surfaced the unrelated 7,171,526 patent. Let me run a couple of narrower confirmation searches.

One more check on litigation/assertion history, since that would be the predicate for any AIA trial.

Proceedings overview

Zero (0) AIA trial proceedings on file. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition against US 5,267,171 — no active proceedings, no claims invalidated, no claims sustained (because nothing was ever tried), no settlements, no institution denials — and targeted web searches of PTAB E2E filings, Docket Alarm PTAB dockets, and the Unified Patents patent page surfaced no proceedings the ODP might have missed. The bottom-line defensive posture is not "hardened patent" and not "dead claims" — it is "expired patent": US 5,267,171 reached its anticipated expiration on 2011-03-19 (Google Patents: "2011-03-19 Anticipated expiration"; status "Expired - Lifetime"), roughly eighteen months before the first AIA petition could even be filed (AIA trial practice began 2012-09-16). Any demand letter citing this patent is asserting a property right that no longer excludes anything.

Per-proceeding detail

None to report. Because the requested per-proceeding template would be empty, here is the verification trail and the reason the list is empty:

No proceeding numbers exist to report

• Type / Filed / Status / Panel / Grounds / Institution / FWD / Settlement / Appeal: N/A — no petition was ever filed. I will not construct an APJ panel or a claim-level disposition for a proceeding that does not exist.
• Structured source: The USPTO ODP "PTAB proceedings on file" block returned no AIA trial proceedings. That is the canonical list and it controls here.
• Independent verification: Web searches for US5267171 IPR PTAB, "5267171" PTAB AIA trial Brother Industries, docketalarm PTAB "5267171" Inter Partes Review, and ptacts.uspto.gov "5267171" patent trial appeal board returned no petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal for this patent. The only PTAB-adjacent hit on the string "5267171" was a Brazilian state court docket number, and the only PTAB documents mentioning a "526" patent were IPR2018-01004 / IPR2018-01005 on US 7,171,526 (Micron v. North Star Innovations) — a different patent entirely.

Why there is no PTAB record — the timeline forecloses it

• Patent term ran out before the forum existed. Filing date 1991-03-19; grant 1993-11-30; statutory term expired 2011-03-19 (a pre-URAA patent, maintained through the 12-year fee paid 2005-05-05, then expired by term, not by fee lapse).
• IPR/PGR: Available only for petitions filed on or after 2012-09-16 — ~18 months after expiration. An IPR on an expired patent is legally possible (the Board will institute where pre-expiration damages remain live), but as a practical matter no petitioner had a reason to pay for it.
• CBM: The covered-business-method window (2012-09-16 to 2020-09-16) also post-dates expiration, and CBM requires the petitioner to have been sued for or charged with infringement of the patent. No such assertion appears on any public docket for this patent.
• No post-issuance challenge of any kind surfaced (no ex parte reexamination found in the sources searched) — I flag this as an absence of evidence rather than proof of absence.

Lookalike identifiers — do not conflate these with US 5,267,171

These appear in search results and are not this patent or its proceedings:

• US 7,171,526 — Micron v. North Star Innovations, IPR2018-01004 / IPR2018-01005 (memory controller patent).
• Chinese trademark registration no. 5267171 (GQY, Ningbo GQY Video & Telecom).
• USPTO Patent Center application 07/671,473 — this is the correct application number for the '171 patent.

Strategic summary

Claim status. All nine claims (claims 1–9 as issued: independent claims 1 and 8, with dependent claims 2–7 and 9) are UNTESTED — not canceled, not confirmed. Nothing has ever been narrowed or renounced. That is not a strength: the claims are untested and unenforceable, because the patent expired 2011-03-19. Under 35 U.S.C. § 271(a) infringement requires practicing the invention "during the term of the patent," and damages under § 286 reach back only six years from suit. For the patent to have any monetary value today, a defendant would have to have been sued by roughly 2017-03-19 for pre-expiration conduct — and no such suit is on file.

Estoppel landscape. There is none to navigate. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only to a petitioner that obtained an institution decision; no petitioner exists. Conversely — and this is the point worth flagging to a client — there is no IPR estoppel against you either, and equally no unpatentability ruling you can borrow. A defendant cannot point to an FWD and say "claims 1–5 were canceled." The only available defenses are the structural ones: expiration, laches/statute of limitations under § 286, and the fact that the '171 disclosure itself is now prior art.

Prior-art posture — this is where the patent still has teeth, against others. The '171 patent has been cited as prior art in later prosecution. Notably, the examiner allowing Motorola's US 5,504,921 ("Method for providing software to a remote computer") stated: "Suzuki et al. Patent No. 5,256,171 details providing a list of software choices based on the list of software the user already has (abstract)" (Office action excerpt reproduced in a CBM2014-00083 exhibit, https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/CBM2014-00083/Covered_Business_Method_Patent_Review_of_U.S._Pat._6557054/docs/03-10-2014-Petitioner/Exhibit-1008-13-Prosecution_History_of_Inter_Partes_Review_of_054_Patent.pdf). The patent carries 91+ forward citations per Google Patents and 169 "Referenced By" entries per Unified Patents (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-5267171-A). So the '171 patent's real modern role is as § 102/§ 103 prior art against recommender/software-distribution patents, not as an assertion vehicle.

Pattern signals. No repeating petitioner, no PTAB appeal history, no defensive aggregator involvement (Unified Patents indexes the patent but shows no challenge filed by it or anyone else). Brother (now Brother Industries, Ltd. / Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha) enforced later, unrelated patents aggressively — the ITC toner-cartridge investigation (Inv. No. 337-TA-1174, instituted 2019-09-17, https://www.usitc.gov/sites/default/files/publications/337/pub5303.pdf) and the Amazon Utility Patent Neutral Evaluation campaign on US 8,867,932 — but neither implicates the '171 patent.

Recommended next steps

1. If a demand letter cites US 5,267,171, respond with the expiration date, not with prior art. Link the authoritative record: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5267171/en (Legal status: "Expired - Lifetime"; "2011-03-19 Anticipated expiration"). Any demand premised on ongoing infringement is facially meritless.
2. Check the statute of limitations before engaging further. Under § 286, only infringement occurring within six years before filing is compensable. Since the patent expired 2011-03-19, the last possible day on which a damages-recovery suit could have been timely filed was approximately 2017-03-19. If you are hearing about this patent in 2026, the claim is time-barred as well as expired.
3. Do not spend budget on an IPR. There is nothing to invalidate that isn't already spent: an AIA petition cannot revive or kill an expired patent's past-term claims in a way that helps you, and the Board's institution practice on expired patents is disfavored.
4. If your real interest is invalidity of a different patent, mine the '171 disclosure as prior art. It published 1993-11-30 and is § 102(b) art as of 1991-03-19 for any later filing. The claims recite exactly the "show the user software added since the user's last visit, filtered by the user's prior purchase category and machine model" logic — usable as a § 103 reference against modern recommendation-engine and software-distribution claims. The examiner's citation of it against US 5,504,921 is a ready-made roadmap.
5. Absence-of-activity caveat. The absence of PTAB activity here is not the usual "well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs" signal — it is the simpler signal that the patent expired before the AIA trial regime began. Don't read it as evidence of a hardened or valuable patent, and don't read it as a validated one either.

I'll verify the assignment record against live sources before writing up.

Let me run two more targeted checks on the assignment reel and any litigation involving this patent number.

Ownership Analysis — US 5,267,171 "Computer software vending machine"

Scope note / source limitation: I could not execute an interactive query against USPTO Assignment Center from this session (it is a form-driven app; the search tool returns web documents, not query results). The record below is reconstructed from (a) the legal-events and reassignment blocks reproduced in the authoritative patent text, and (b) cross-checks against Google Patents, Justia, FreePatentsOnline, and the Unified Patents patent portal. Where a field (notably the recording correspondent) is not exposed in any reachable source, I say so rather than guess. Verify at assignmentcenter.uspto.gov (legacy UI: assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html) searching patent number 5267171.

Inventors

• Both names are listed on the granted patent and appear as the assignors on the only recorded assignment (reel/frame 005677/0908), which recites them as assignors to Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha — confirming both were Brother personnel at filing. Source: the reassignment entry dated 1991-03-19 ("Assignors: MORI, YASUYO, SUZUKI, TAKAMITSU"); Justia patent-history block ("Inventor: Takamitsu Suzuki (Nagoya), Yasuyo Mori (Yokkaichi)"; assignee Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha).
• Tenure corroboration, not a departure signal: the same Takamitsu Suzuki is the named inventor of US 4,787,050 ("Apparatus for managing software vending machines," Brother Industries, Ltd., 1988), which is cited in the background of this patent. That places Suzuki inside Brother's software-vending program for roughly a decade across at least two patents.
• No unusual pattern found. Neither inventor is recorded as departing within 12 months of filing, and no downstream assignment names either inventor as an assignor or principal. The ~12-month gap between the JP priority filings (1990-03-29) and the US filing (1991-03-19) is the ordinary Paris Convention year, not a personnel or fire-sale signal. I have no reliable evidence about either inventor's later employment; treat that as unknown, not as a finding.

Original assignee

Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha (Brother Industries, Ltd.), 15-1 Naeshiro-cho, Mizuho-ku, Nagoya 467, Japan — the entity named on the issued patent and, per every source reachable here, the current assignee of record.

• Line of business: global manufacturer of printers, multifunction devices, sewing machines, machine tools and industrial equipment. A Tokyo-listed operating company; US subsidiaries include Brother International Corporation (Bridgewater, NJ).
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? The patent is a machine specification, not a software product: claims 1–9 are drawn to a vending machine that stores an inventory of programs plus "supply information relating to dates when the programs were added," compares that against the user's last-use information, and displays programs added since the user's last visit (claim 1); claims 4–6/9 cover the rewritable ID card, claims 2 and 7 cover model and category filtering. Brother ran a software-vending-machine program — the two Brother prior-art references in this patent (US 4,654,799 and US 4,677,565, both "software vending system") are the direct commercial ancestors. Whether a Brother-branded machine practicing claim 1 was commercially deployed at scale is not established by any document I could retrieve; the specification describes the machine as "mounted in retail stores throughout the country" (a prospective/embodiment statement, not proof of shipment).
• Current status: operating. No bankruptcy, receivership, merger-out, or change-of-name event appears in the record. Brother remained an active patent enforcer in later decades — e.g., ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-1174 (toner cartridges), general exclusion order announced 2020-11-24 — which is independent corroboration that the assignee never entered insolvency and never liquidated a portfolio.

Date discrepancy to be aware of: the authoritative text gives priority 1990-03-29, filing 1991-03-19, grant 1993-11-30, anticipated expiration 2011-03-19. The Unified Patents portal renders these one day earlier (1990-03-28 / 1991-03-18 / 1993-11-29 / 2011-03-18), consistent with a time-zone conversion artifact. I use the authoritative patent-text dates.

Assignment timeline

Exactly one assignment is recorded. There are no post-issuance assignments of any kind — no security interest, no merger, no change of name, no license recordation, no release, no correction.

• 1991-03-08 (effective/executed) / recorded 1991-03-19 — Reel 005677/0908
  • Conveyance: ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST (Assignment)
  • Assignor: SUZUKI, TAKAMITSU and MORI, YASUYO (the two named inventors)
  • Assignee: BROTHER KOGYO KABUSHIKI KAISHA, No. 15-1, Naeshiro-cho, Mizuho-ku, Nagoya 467, Japan
  • Correspondent: not exposed in any source I could reach. The Google Patents legal-events feed carries the reel/frame, the assignors, the assignee's address and the effective date, but omits the recording attorney/agent field; Assignment Center's correspondent field could not be queried in this session. For completeness only — and expressly not as a finding — prosecution counsel of record on the patent was Oliff & Berridge (per the Justia patent-history block, which lists "Law Firm: Oliff & Berridge"). Whether Oliff & Berridge or Brother's in-house IP department was the recording correspondent is unverified.
  • Context: pre-issuance in-house acquisition — the standard inventor-to-employer assignment executed before grant; not a sale, not a transfer to an asserter.

Post-issuance events recorded are fee payments only, plus natural expiry:

Two data conflicts worth recording rather than resolving: (i) the Unified Patents portal shows "Lifetime Renewal Fees: $0," which contradicts the three FPAY events above — I prefer the USPTO fee events reproduced in the patent text; (ii) the patent's full term was maintained to expiry (no abandonment for non-payment), which is the opposite of the "let it lapse so it can be bought cheap" pattern.

No litigation found. No case, ITC investigation, PTAB proceeding, or Amazon Utility Patent Neutral Evaluation naming US 5,267,171 as a patent-in-suit surfaced in any search. The only hits combining "Brother" and "patent litigation" concern unrelated later Brother patents (toner cartridges, Linkyo/Cartridge Evolution, Diversified Observation, Flexiworld) in which Brother is a defendant, not an asserter of the '171 patent.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5267171
    1990 : JP utility model priority filed
    1991 : US application filed
         : Inventors assign to Brother Kogyo
    1993 : US patent granted
    1997 : Maintenance fee paid year 4
    2001 : Maintenance fee paid year 8
    2005 : Maintenance fee paid year 12
    2011 : Patent expired full term

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Important disambiguation before the signals. Google Patents lists 168–169 "cited by" documents, and that list is dense with NPE-adjacent names — Digital River, Preview Systems, Otomaku Properties, Zito LLC, SuperMedia, Blanding Hovenweep, Leatherman, Intraware. These are forward citations to the '171 patent as prior art. They are not ownership links. No citation creates or evidences a chain of title. Anyone reading the Google Patents page as an ownership map is making a category error, and I flag it here because it is the single most likely way this patent gets mischaracterized as NPE-tainted.

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. There is no transfer of any kind after the 1991-03-08 inventor assignment. The assignee of record is Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha, a large Japanese operating company at a Nagoya corporate address — not a registered-agent service address, not a single-purpose Delaware/Texas LLC. No "IP / Patents / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" entity appears anywhere in the chain (reel 005677/0908 is the sole entry).

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No assignee or assignor matches any public NPE list: nothing from Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or any Spangenberg entity. Searches against Unified Patents (patent record shows "Parent Company: Brother Industries Ltd" with original/current assignee fields left blank) and RPX litigation documents returned no ownership connection to this patent.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — not applicable, and explicitly not a finding. The chain has exactly one link, so recurrence is structurally impossible here. The recording correspondent is unverified in the sources reachable this session; even had I retrieved it, a single appearance would not satisfy the recurrence test the prompt correctly imposes. Do not treat Oliff & Berridge (prosecution counsel) as a repeat-player signal.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Zero consecutive assignments through chained entities; the 1991→2011 window contains only fee payments.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. No assignment within 6 months (or any interval) before any suit, because no suit exists.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No Chapter 7/11 of the assignee appears anywhere; Brother remained a going concern and an active patent enforcer into the 2020s (ITC general exclusion order, 2020). No Kodak-, Nortel-, Polaroid- or Sun-style patent-sale record touches this patent.

7. Privateering — not present. No transfer to any entity that subsequently asserted; the patent never left its operating-company owner.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents and OIN are not assignees of record. The patent was not neutralized by purchase — it simply expired. (Practical effect is similar: unassertable since 2011-03-19, seven years before this analysis.)

Verdict

Insufficient data (only the original assignment).

Justification: the complete recorded chain of title consists of a single instrument — the pre-issuance inventor-to-employer assignment effective 1991-03-08, recorded 1991-03-19 at reel 005677/0908, conveying Takamitsu Suzuki's and Yasuyo Mori's rights to Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha. No post-issuance assignment, security interest, name change, merger, license recordation, release or correction appears in the legal-events record, and no litigation naming US 5,267,171 surfaced, so every one of the eight NPE signals resolves to not present on the evidence available — not because the patent was cleansed, but because nothing happened to it. The chain terminates at an operating company that maintained the patent to full term and let it expire on 2011-03-19; it has been unassertable for over a decade, and the NPE-flavored names on the Google Patents page are forward citations to the '171 disclosure, not owners. This is the "no records beyond the original assignment" case the brief anticipates, and I decline to upgrade it to a troll finding on the strength of citation noise or a firm name.

Verification links: USPTO Assignment Center · legacy Patent Assignment Search · Google Patents legal events for US5267171A · Unified Patents patent record · Justia patent history

Caveats on this report: the recording correspondent for reel 005677/0908 could not be retrieved and is therefore unknown, not absent; the Google Patents "cited by" set is a citation list and carries no ownership weight; and the Unified Patents date/renenewal-fee fields conflict with the authoritative patent text, where I have preferred the text.

I'll search for the patent and its cited prior-art references to ground this analysis.

Let me verify the remaining cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 5267171

1. Patent identified (matched literally)

Sources consulted: the authoritative full text supplied in the prompt (fetched from https://patents.google.com/patent/US5267171/en); FreePatentsOnline (https://FreePatentsOnline.com/[5267171](/patent/5267171).html); uspto.report (http://zhuozou.cn.uspto.report/patent/grant/5267171). Note: I retrieved bibliographic and cited-reference data through these public mirrors of the US patent record; I did not query the USPTO PatentCenter interface directly, and I have flagged any point where sources disagree (e.g., some aggregators list the priority date as 1990‑03‑28 and the filing as 1991‑03‑18 — the record I treat as authoritative says 1990‑03‑29 and 1991‑03‑19).

Scope caveat (important): The nine references below are the references the examiner actually cited on the face of US 5,267,171 ("U.S. Patent Documents" under References Cited). Because the patent issued over these references, none of them was treated by the examiner as anticipatory. A genuine § 102 anticipation requires a single reference disclosing every element of a claim, arranged as claimed. On the record available, I do not find a clean single-reference anticipation of independent claim 1 or claim 8; the references are better characterized as § 103 obviousness material, primarily against the secondary/dependent claims. I state below where an anticipation argument is even arguable versus merely evidentiary.

2. The cited prior art, analyzed individually

(a) US 4,654,799 — "Software vending system"

• Citation: US 4,654,799 A; inventors Ogaki Hirokazu, Furukawa Satoshi, Kato Yoshibumi; assignee Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha. US appl. 734,162 filed 1985‑05‑15; JP priority 1984‑05‑18; granted 1987‑03‑31.
• Description: Host system with first memory holding multiple software programs, and peripheral vending instruments each with secondary memory storing programs transferred from the host and recording means that duplicates a selected program onto a recording medium. Also an input device to enter a second (user-developed) program and transmit it back to the host. (Espacenet biblio/claims; FreePatentsOnline 4654799.)
• Claim relevance: Discloses the generic software-vending environment — a vending machine holding an inventory of programs and transferring/duplicating a selected one. That maps onto the preamble of claim 1 ("storing means for storing an inventory of programs") and the "storing means for storing programs" of claim 8. It discloses no user utilization information, no comparison step, and no selection based on date-added; therefore no anticipation of claims 1 or 8 as a whole. At most evidentiary/§ 103 support.

(b) US 4,677,565 — "Automatic vending system"

• Citation: US 4,677,565 A; Ogaki et al.; assignee Brother Kogyo Kabushiki Kaisha. Filed 1985‑02‑15; granted 1987‑06‑30.
• Description: Vending system with a display, selector/advancing/returning keys, demonstration display of the selected article, payment-control means comparing a deposit to a price, and vending means delivering the selected article (embodiment: software programs recorded onto media). (US4677565 PDF; FreePatentsOnline.)
• Claim relevance: Teaches the displaying means and interactive selection/confirmation steps that underlie the "displaying means for displaying the programs selected" element of claims 1 and 8, and is expressly incorporated by name into the 5,267,171 specification (printer/manual feature). It lacks the stored utilization information and the comparison/date-added selection; no anticipation of the independent claims. Relevant mainly to the display/purchase-flow elements.

(c) US 4,775,935 — "Video merchandising system with variable and adaptive product sequence presentation order"

• Citation: US 4,775,935 A; inventor Yourick; assignee Westinghouse Electric Corp. Priority 1986‑09‑22; granted 1988‑10‑04.
• Description: Merchandising system that varies/adapts the sequence in which products are presented to the viewer.
• Claim relevance: Of the nine references this is conceptually the closest to the personalization/adaptive-presentation idea that animates claims 1 and 8 — i.e., which items get displayed and in what order. It is, however, a video (not software) merchandising system and discloses no card-based user record, no utilization-date or category data, and no comparison against program registration dates. No anticipation; genuine § 103 relevance to the "display of a selected subset" concept.

(d) US 4,787,050 — "Apparatus for managing software vending machines"

• Citation: US 4,787,050 A; inventor Suzuki; assignee Brother Industries, Ltd. Priority 1985‑11‑12; granted 1988‑11‑22.
• Description: Managing apparatus connected over communication lines to a plurality of software vending machines. New software is delivered from the managing apparatus to each vending machine and stored on a hard disk; duplication frequency/sales proceeds per program are transmitted back; programs selected on the basis of duplication frequency are replaced by new programs. (Google Patents US4787050; uspto.report 4787050.)
• Claim relevance: This is the reference the 5,267,171 specification itself cites for the concept of writing newly received software into memory and superscribing it into an "unpopular software storing portion" with its received date. It therefore bears directly on the "storing means for storing an inventory of programs and … supply information relating to dates when the programs were added" limitation of claim 1 (the machinery by which programs are added to the machine on dates). It does not, however, disclose user-specific utilization information or the comparison/selection on that basis. No anticipation of claim 1 as a whole; strong § 103 relevance and the principal architectural starting point.

(e) US 4,896,791 — "Coupon dispensing system"

• Citation: US 4,896,791 A; inventor Smith; assignee The Savings Spot, Ltd. Priority 1987‑01‑20; granted 1990‑01‑30.
• Description: Coupon-dispensing apparatus (vending/dispensing category 221/7).
• Claim relevance: Peripheral to the software-selection subject matter. Its potential bearing is on the card/record-bearing-medium aspects of claims 3–6 and 9 (a patron-linked dispensing record). It discloses none of the program-inventory, comparison, or category-selection features. No anticipation of any claim of 5,267,171; at most remote § 103 background on card-triggered dispensing.

(f) US 4,884,212 — "Apparatus and method for using unique charge cards dispensed from a vending machine"

• Citation: US 4,884,212 A; inventor Stutsman; assignee Vertx Corporation. Priority 1987‑03‑23; granted 1989‑11‑28.
• Description: Vending apparatus that dispenses and then uses unique charge cards — i.e., a personalized portable storage token issued at/for the machine.
• Claim relevance: Most relevant to the "information storage means is a card having storage to which said utilization information is written" family — claims 3, 4, 5, 6 and the card-storage element of claim 9. It supports the well-known character of a machine-readable customer token, but discloses no software-program inventory, no descriptive/category comparison, and no date-added selection. No anticipation; § 103 support for the card-embodiment dependent claims.

(g) US 4,949,257 — "Automated merchandising system for computer software"

• Citation: US 4,949,257 A; inventor Zvi Orbach. Priority 1987‑04‑28; granted 1990‑08‑14.
• Description: Central memory (e.g., CD‑ROM) storing software for sale; point-of-sale terminals with credit-card readers; diskette-writing and dispensing apparatus; printing of accompanying manuals; menu generation enabling a customer to search and locate software of potential interest; demonstration apparatus for operating software before purchase; generation of an identification code including purchaser ID, point-of-sale ID, program ID, copy serial number and date of purchase. (US4949257 PDF; uspto.report 4,949,257.)
• Claim relevance: The most substantively overlapping of the nine. It discloses storing means for storing programs, descriptive information used to present/search programs, selection from a stored inventory, and display — the bones of claims 1 and 8. Its identification-code data (including purchase date) is adjacent to, but not the same as, the claimed user's last-utilization date compared against dates programs were added. Crucially, it discloses no updating of user category information on each use nor the comparison of updated category information with stored descriptive information that defines claim 8. No anticipation of claims 1 or 8; very strong § 103 relevance, especially to the selection/menu/display elements.

(h) US 5,088,586 — "Automatic renting apparatus"

• Citation: US 5,088,586 A; inventor Isobe et al.; assignee Oki Electric Industry Co., Ltd. Priority 1987‑04‑30; granted 1992‑02‑18.
• Description: Automatic apparatus for renting articles (classified 194/205).
• Claim relevance: Bears only generally on the notion of an automated article-dispensing/renting machine interacting with a user record (claims 3–6, 9, card aspects). It discloses no software inventory, no date-added supply information, and no category comparison. No anticipation of any claim; marginal § 103 background.

(i) US 5,166,886 — "System to demonstrate and sell computer programs"

• Citation: US 5,166,886 A; inventors Molnar, Charles E. and Backus, Alan L. Filed 1992‑02‑12 as a continuation of appl. 387,538 filed 1989‑07‑31; granted 1992‑11‑24.
• Description: Repetitive broadcast (e.g., cable) of computer programs to user computing devices for trial use, with a transmitted "vending program" enabling in-home purchase and means to prevent unauthorized duplication. (uspto.report 5166886; FreePatentsOnline 5166886; EveryPatent 5166886.)
• Claim relevance: Directed to demonstration/trial and sale of programs — i.e., the demonstration and purchase aspects reflected in the 5,267,171 specification. As a § 102 reference its date position is delicate: it granted after the 1991‑03‑19 filing, so it is relevant only if its earlier (1989‑07‑31) application date qualifies it as prior art under § 102(e) (or § 102(a) as to the parent disclosure). Even so, it discloses no card-based storage of a user's last-utilization date and no comparison of that date against program registration dates. No anticipation; limited § 103 relevance to the trial/demonstration and anti-copy features.

3. Overall assessment

• No single reference anticipates independent claim 1 or independent claim 8. The distinguishing element common to both independent claims is the comparison of stored user information against program supply/descriptive information, with selection keyed to what the machine acquired after the user's last use (claim 1), and the updating of user category information on each use and comparison against stored descriptive information (claim 8). None of the nine cited references discloses that combination.
• Closest references, ranked by relevance:

1. US 4,949,257 (Orbach) — program inventory + search menu + purchase-date ID code; closest to the "store programs, present a selected subset, display" core.
2. US 4,787,050 (Suzuki/Brother) — program distribution, date-of-arrival, and program-replacement machinery; closest to the "dates when the programs were added" limitation.
3. US 4,654,799 and US 4,677,565 (Ogaki et al./Brother) — generic software-vending architecture and the display/purchase flow.
4. US 4,775,935 (Yourick) — adaptive presentation order; thematic for the personalization concept only.
5. US 4,884,212, US 4,896,791, US 5,088,586 — card/token and article-dispensing background, relevant only to the dependent card claims (3–6, 9).
6. US 5,166,886 (Molnar) — demonstration/trial-and-sale; date-sensitive and peripheral.

• Practical conclusion: These are § 103 references, not § 102 anticipations. In real prosecution the examiner cited them and still allowed claims 1–9, which is consistent with my finding that the user-history-based selection feature is the patentable distinction.

4. Things I will not assert as fact

• I have not personally parsed the full claim sets of the nine references beyond the abstracts/claim excerpts returned by search; my element-by-element mapping of the less relevant references (US 4,896,791; US 5,088,586; US 5,166,886 in full) is based on their titles, classifications and abstracts and should be verified against the actual claim text before being relied on.
• I did not query the USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Full-Text search directly; the record above is corroborated across Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, uspto.report and Espacenet, all of which agree on the identity, dates and cited-reference list of US 5,267,171.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual prior-art record for US 5,267,171 before building the § 103 combinations.

Let me verify the remaining prior-art references that matter for the card/ID and machine-management claims.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 5,267,171

"Computer software vending machine" · Brother Kogyo K.K. · Inventors Suzuki & Mori
Priority: 1990‑03‑29 (JP 2‑35177[U], JP 2‑35178[U]) · Filed 1991‑03‑19 · Granted 1993‑11‑30 · Expired‑Lifetime (antedated expiration 2011‑03‑19)
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5267171/en

I. Governing standard and threshold observations

Because the application was filed on 1991‑03‑19 with a 1990‑03‑29 foreign priority, pre‑AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103 governs, applying Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966), as refined by KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007). The four Graham factors are: scope and content of the prior art; differences between the prior art and the claims; level of ordinary skill; and secondary considerations.

Person of ordinary skill (POSITA). For a 1990 priority date, a POSITA is a technician/engineer with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or computer science and roughly 2–4 years of experience designing electro‑mechanical vending/point‑of‑sale terminals that write data to magnetic media — i.e., someone comfortable with host–terminal communications, ROM/CPU control architectures, disk duplication, and magnetic‑stripe card read/write hardware. No specialized knowledge of inductive‑learning theory is required to read the claims.

Two threshold points that materially shape the analysis:

1. The "Cited By" lists (91 / 168 documents) are not prior art to the '171 patent. They post‑date the 1990‑03‑29 priority date (e.g., US5717923, US5724521, US5696965 to Intel; US5845077 to Microsoft). They are evidence of the field's later trajectory, not § 102/§ 103 art against '171. Only the nine examiner‑cited references in the Patent Citations section are available.

2. Several cited references have grant dates after the '171 priority date (US4949257 granted 1990‑08‑14; US5088586 granted 1992‑02‑18; US5166886 granted 1992‑11‑24). For these to be available as prior art they must qualify under pre‑AIA § 102(e) — i.e., filed in the U.S. before the applicant's date of invention. All three were filed in 1987–1989, comfortably before the March 1990 priority date. I flag this rather than assume it: I have not reviewed the file wrapper to confirm the examiner's stated basis for citation, so the § 102(e) characterization is my inference from the face of the references, not a verified record fact.

II. Scope and content of the cited prior art

III. The claims at issue (literal text, abbreviated)

• Claim 1 — machine with (a) information supplying means supplying utilization information of the user's last use; (b) storing means storing an inventory of programs and supply information = dates programs were added to the machine; (c) comparing means comparing utilization info to supply info; (d) selecting means selecting programs added after the user last utilized the machine; (e) displaying means.
• Claim 2 — adds designated model information vs. stored model info; selects programs commonly obtained in both comparisons (logical AND).
• Claim 3 — information supplying means = information storage means + reading means.
• Claim 4 — storage means is a card.
• Claim 5 — card whose utilization information is rewritten when the user uses the machine.
• Claim 6 — adds information rewriting means.
• Claim 7 — adds category information supplied from the card vs. stored category info; AND of both comparisons.
• Claim 8 — category information storage means; means for updating the category information whenever the user uses the vending machine; reading means; storing means for programs + descriptive information; comparing; selecting; displaying.
• Claim 9 — claim 8 wherein the storage means is a card further storing the date the user last utilized the machine.

IV. Ground 1 — Claims 1, 3, 4, 5, 6, and 9

Combination A: US 4,787,050 + US 5,088,586 + US 4,775,935

Claim 1 element mapping:

• (a) Information supplying means / last‑use information. US 5,088,586 supplies this directly: a machine that reads a membership card at a card R/W unit 15, and whose stored card data includes the patron's rental article numbers and rental term — i.e., a per‑user record that is read into the machine at the start of every session. US 4,882,212 (unique charge cards dispensed from a vending machine) reinforces that dispensing/reading a uniquely‑identified card at a vending machine was a well‑known expedient, addressing the "information supplying means" generically.
• (b) Storing an inventory + supply dates. US 4,787,050 discloses programs pushed from host HC to each machine S and stored on hard disk, with program renewal (replacement) logic. Critically, the '171 specification itself makes an admission in describing this: "the CPU 10 superscribes a program of the newly‑received software in an unpopular software storing portion together with its received date, as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,787,050." That is the applicant characterizing '050 as disclosing the storage of newly‑added programs with their received dates — precisely element (b)'s "supply information relating to dates when the programs were added to the vending machine." An applicant's own characterization of a cited reference is powerful evidence and is difficult to walk back.
• (c) Comparing means. Date‑comparison filtering is the paradigm of a routine data‑processing predicate. US 4,787,050 already computes and compares per‑program duplication frequencies; US 4,949,257 already generates and stores a date of purchase as part of a per‑transaction identification code. Replacing a frequency comparison with a date comparison on the same stored records is a substitution of one known, equivalent data field for another.
• (d) Selecting programs added after last use. This is the element most vulnerable to a "not expressly disclosed" attack, and US 5,088,586 is the answer: it discloses an automatic renting apparatus that accepts advance subscription for articles "which have not yet been kept in stock, namely, rental articles which will shortly be added to the stock." In other words, '586 already teaches the machine identifying, for an individual patron, items that are new to the machine's stock and that the patron has not yet obtained. Filtering by the "added after" date is the mechanical implementation of that idea using the record fields '050 already stores.
• (e) Displaying means. Vending machines with CRT displays presenting program information are ubiquitous in the cited art (US 4,787,050's CRT display 1 and demonstration routine; US 4,949,257's menu display).

Claims 3–6 and 9 (card read/write/rewrite). These are, in substance, anticipated‑level disclosures in US 5,088,586, which describes a magnetic card or IC card in which information can be magnetically or electrically written and erased, a card R/W unit 15 for reading from and writing to the card, and rewriting of card contents at each transaction. US 4,882,212 adds the vending‑machine‑specific notion of dispensing a unique card. For claim 9's "date the user last utilized the vending machine," US 5,088,586's card already carries a rental term and transaction history, and the machine has a calendar 4 and battery‑backed RAM 5 for date stamping — writing a "last use date" is a trivial extension of data the '586 machine already maintains. US 4,949,257's identification code containing "date of purchase" shows the same field‑level practice in software merchandising specifically.

V. Ground 2 — Claims 2, 7, and 8 (attribute/category matching and updating)

Combination B: US 4,787,050 + US 5,088,586 + US 4,775,935 + US 4,949,257

Claim 2 (model/machine‑type matching, AND of two comparisons). US 4,775,935 discloses assigning plural attribute values to each item (product gender value, consumer income range, age range of interested consumer; plus item characteristics such as electronics/trendiness) and comparing the current user's profile against those attribute values to compute a match score, with best‑scoring items shown first. That is a comparison of item descriptive attributes against user‑sourced data — the same logical operation as comparing IM (user's model) against stored M (designating model). US 4,949,257 supplies the software‑specific analogue: "key word search means enabling a potential purchaser to search available programs via key words in their names or descriptions" and a menu "for enabling a potential customer to locate software in which he has a potential interest." The "commonly obtained in both comparisons" limitation (the AND/intersection of FIG. 6/FIG. 7 steps S23 and S26) is the intersection of two result sets — a single, routine logical conjunction that any POSITA implementing two filters would apply. KSR expressly sanctions such combinations of known elements yielding predictable results.

Claim 7 (category information). US 4,775,935's item attributes are explicitly categorical (its decision‑tree/ID3 machinery clusters items into categories and user types). US 5,088,586's card stores rental article numbers that are organizationally grouped ("rental article number including information for advance subscription"). US 4,949,257's keyword/description search operates at the category level. The '171 spec's own FIG. 5(a) category code J is therefore a routine data‑modeling choice layered on these teachings.

Claim 8 (category info + updating on every use + descriptive information + comparing). This claim is the closest to being squarely met by a single reference plus a machine‑management reference:

• "information storage means for storing category information relating to categories of programs previously purchased" — US 5,088,586's membership card storing article numbers previously rented; US 4,949,257's per‑purchase identification code.
• "means for updating said category information, said category information being updated whenever the user uses said vending machine" — US 5,088,586's card R/W unit writes/erases card information on each transaction; this is exactly the described function.
• "storing means for storing programs and … descriptive information relating to the stored programs" — US 4,787,050 (programs + management records) and US 4,775,935 (each item carries assigned attribute values used for matching).
• "comparing … selecting … displaying" — US 4,775,935's profile‑vs‑attribute scoring and sequencing.

Note that claim 8 does not require the last‑use‑date filter of claim 1 — it requires only category matching plus per‑use updating. That makes claim 8 the broadest and most exposed claim in the patent, and the combination above meets every limitation without needing the "added after last use" teaching at all.

VI. Motivation to combine (the KSR rationales)

A § 103 rejection must articulate why a POSITA would combine, not merely that the elements exist somewhere. Five independent, mutually reinforcing rationales apply here:

1. Same field of endeavor and same identified problem. US 4,654,799, US 4,677,565, and US 4,787,050 are all Brother's own software‑vending art, and the '171 patent's Background expressly identifies the problem as "each user … is required to select computer software which suits the user's liking from among a large number of candidates" and that "[a] great deal of time is, however, required." US 4,775,935 articulates the identical problem in the merchandising context — consumers forced to "view the fixed sequence of items, many of which have little appeal to them." A reference that names the very deficiency the applicant set out to cure is about as strong a motivation as the record can supply (In re ICON Health & Fitness, 496 F.3d 1374 (Fed. Cir. 2007)).

2. The cited art supplies the missing mechanism for an already‑recognized need. Once the problem is framed as "show this user what's relevant to this user," US 5,088,586's card R/W unit provides the concrete, off‑the‑shelf hardware answer for carrying and updating per‑user state at the machine. A POSITA would adopt a known card read/write subsystem to supply a known data record; the combination "merely calls for the use of a known technique to improve similar devices in the same way" (KSR).

3. Predictable, finite solutions. Date‑filtering a stored inventory against a stored per‑user date is a one‑predicate database query. Combining a date filter with a category filter by set intersection is a binary logical operation. Where, as here, the prior art discloses a finite number of identified, predictable implementations (store the date on the card vs. store an ID and look the date up centrally), the claim's choice among them is obvious. Notably, the '171 specification itself treats the two as interchangeable alternatives ("there may be adopted a construction in which only the data for the identification of each user is stored in the ID card 20, and … the CPU 10 reads the information LU … from an information storing memory … provided within the software vending machine 3"), and even suggests the storage "may be provided within the host computer" — an express admission that the claimed location of the data is a design choice, not an inventive contribution.

4. Design incentive / commercial pressure. Both US 4,787,050 (inventory renewal by superscription) and US 5,166,886 (concern that "the number of computer programs available is too large to be stocked locally") establish that machine inventories churn as new titles arrive from the host. Once inventory changes between a user's visits, surfacing "what's new since you were last here" is an obvious design objective, not an inventive leap.

5. No teaching away. Nothing in the cited art discourages filtering or reordering a vending display by user history. The nearest thing to a caution is US 4,775,935's observation that directly asking users for attributes such as age and income "results are often not very reliable" — but that cuts in favor of the '171 approach, which infers from stored history rather than interrogating the user.

VII. The patentee's best rebuttals, and where the analysis is genuinely uncertain

I want to be explicit about the weaknesses in the above, rather than present the rejection as a foregone conclusion:

• Claim 1(d) is the crux, and no single reference states it in terms. The examiner allowed the claims over all nine references, which presumptively means the examiner did not find the "programs added after the user last utilized the vending machine" filter, or the AND of two comparisons, expressly disclosed or suggested. A patentee will argue that US 4,775,935 teaches reordering a fixed complete list, not limiting the displayed set by a date predicate, and that US 5,088,586 concerns renting rather than vending (a distinction the Federal Circuit has sometimes found meaningful where the economics differ). My view: the "reordering vs. filtering" distinction is real as to '593 alone, but it collapses once '050's dated registration and '586's not‑yet‑stocked advance subscription are in the combination. The "renting vs. vending" distinction is weak — '171's own cited art (US 5,088,586 is cited on its face) shows the applicant treated the rental art as relevant.

• Claim 8's "descriptive information relating to the stored programs" is broad and easily read onto '593's assigned item attributes, which makes claim 8 the strongest invalidity target — but that same breadth is what a patentee would rely on to distinguish, arguing the '593 attributes are presentation metadata rather than the program classification metadata contemplated by the '171 specification.

• Pre‑AIA § 102(e) status needs verification. Three of the strongest references (US 4,949,257, US 5,088,586, US 5,166,886) granted after the '171 priority date. I have inferred their availability from their 1987–1989 U.S. filing dates, but I have not verified the file wrapper. If any were cited under a different provision, or if priority/invention date proofs shifted the critical date, that reference could drop out of the combination.

• I could not fetch full text for US 4,654,799, US 4,677,565, US 4,884,212, or US 4,896,791. My characterizations of those four rest on titles, dates, the '171 specification's own statements about them, and the abstract‑level snippets returned by search. US 4,884,212 and US 4,896,791 in particular I would not rely on as primary references without reading them; they are best used as secondary evidence that card‑based and dispensing‑based user identification were notorious in the vending art as of 1990.

• No secondary considerations appear in the record before me. There is no evidence of unexpected results, licensing, or nexus‑bearing commercial success in the material reviewed. (A 1991 IDC Japan Report referenced in the citation trail discusses Brother's PC software vending business, but that speaks to market activity, not to the specific claimed features, and would require a nexus showing to carry weight.)

VIII. Bottom line

The single most useful fact in this analysis is the applicant's own admission in the '171 specification that newly received software is written into the unpopular‑software area "together with its received date, as shown in U.S. Pat. No. 4,787,050." Combined with US 5,088,586's card read/write subsystem and US 4,775,935's articulated motivation to personalize a merchandise presentation to a specific shopper's history, the claimed subject matter as a whole appears to have been within the ordinary skill in the art in March 1990. My confidence is highest on claims 8 and 9 and lowest on claims 2 and 7, and I would want to read the full texts of US 4,654,799, US 4,884,212, and US 4,896,791 before committing to a formal invalidity position.