US 5345071

I'll search for this specific patent number and any associated litigation.

Let me check for litigation, PTAB, and CAFC activity involving this patent.

US 5,345,071 — Summary

Source of record: Google Patents full text (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5345071/en), with corroborating entries at uspto.report/patent/grant/5345071 and everypatent.com/comp/pat5345071.html. Note: my search budget was exhausted before I could pull the USPTO PatentCenter/Assignment record or PACER/CAFC docket data directly, so the litigation findings below carry the uncertainty flags noted.

Family / related filings

• Child: US 5,457,307 (continuation-in-part, filed 1994-05-13), "Portable self-service bar code marker and reader for purchase monitoring."
• PCT: WO1994022105A1 (1994-09-29); AU 66982/94A → AU6698294A (abandoned/lapsed).
• Dumont-authored siblings cited-by later art: US 5,437,346 and US 5,641,039 (both "Dumont; Charles").

Assignee caveat: the US grant data shows no corporate assignee, but the Australian family member AU1994066982 lists the assignee as Carib Impex of Florida, Inc. (inventor "Dumont, Charles J"), and Florida corporate records show Charles Dumont associated with Carib Impex of Florida, Inc. and Carib Impex International Corp. I found no US assignment record confirming a US transfer, so treat the US ownership chain as uncertain rather than concluded.

Abstract (as issued): A purchase monitoring device for a shopper in a self-service store having bar-coded items, including a portable handset with a bar code scanner that displays pricing and identification data of a selected item on an LED display. Using a price check button, a purchase button, and a return button, the item's price may be checked, added to a running total of purchase items, or removed from that total. During scanning, a three-headed roller selectively designates the item as a purchase item or a non-purchase item by marking the bar code with a red or green line; alternatively the roller changes the state of a polarized metallic strip included with the bar code. The list of purchase items is stored in the handset for subsequent transfer to a data reception register for payment.

Independent claim 1 — plain-language overview

A single independent claim; claims 2–18 all depend from it.

A shopper-facing purchase monitoring device comprising a portable handset with a four-faced casing (distal front, distal rear, proximal front, proximal rear) and:

1. Data storage in the handset holding price/identification data keyed to individual bar codes.
2. A bar code scanner in the distal front face that scans an item's bar code as the face passes over it.
3. Purchase designation means and non-purchase designation means in the distal front face — the former marks an item as a purchase item, the latter re-marks an already-designated purchase item as not-to-be-purchased.
4. Display on the distal rear face showing price/identification information.
5. Purchase memory holding the price/ID data of every purchase item, and summing those prices to yield a running total purchase amount shown on the display.
6. Three buttons on the proximal rear face: a price check button (retrieves and briefly displays price/ID so the shopper can verify), a purchase button (triggers the purchase designation and enters the data into purchase memory), and a return button (triggers the non-purchase designation and removes the matching data from purchase memory, updating the total).
7. A numeric keypad on the proximal front face for entering a budget amount (maximum spend), stored in purchase memory and displayed.
8. An internal power source.
9. A two-way data transmission connector on the proximal front face, doing double duty: downloading updated price/ID data from the central store computer into the handset, and uploading the purchase list from purchase memory to a data reception register at the checkout station where an itemized receipt is printed.
10. A purchase confirmation station at checkout letting a store employee quickly verify that all items presented as purchase items actually are purchase items.
11. An opening in the proximal front face adjacent the scanner plus a three-headed roller with first, second, and third faces, only one face exposed through the opening at a time, the exposed face rolling over the item's bar code as the handset is passed across it.

Dependent claims, in brief

• 2–3: Confirmation button(s) on the proximal front face — one to confirm the keypad number is the budget amount, a second to display a price-per-unit-weight ratio for a previously scanned item.
• 4–5: LED display; signaling means (indicator light) that fires when the total equals the budget.
• 6–9: Power source split into primary and auxiliary sources; reserve battery enough to transfer stored data to the reception register or to a second handset when the primary is exhausted; battery-low warning; rechargeable battery pack with externally accessible input plug.
• 10–12: Roller architecture — first face normally exposed and neutral (no marking); second face carries the purchase designation means, rotated into place when the purchase button is pressed; third face carries the non-purchase designation means, rotated into place when the return button is pressed.
• 13–14 (ink embodiment): Green ink stamping strip for purchase marking, kept charged from a green ink reserve inside the casing when retracted; red ink stamping strip for non-purchase marking, charged from a red ink reserve. (Description: more green lines than red = purchase item; equal lines or none = non-purchase.)
• 15: Conveyor-belt confirmation station where an employee cursory-checks that items show more green than red lines.
• 16–17 (polarization embodiment): Purchase designation means is a first polarizing magnetic member that flips a polarized metallic strip on the item's bar code; non-purchase designation means is a second polarizing magnetic member with opposite polarization effect that flips it back.
• 18: Confirmation station with a conveyor belt passing through detection means that detect strips left in the non-purchase polarization and stop the belt, so items inside a designated detection area can be independently verified.

Docket / litigation check

• I found no evidence of any CAFC or district court case involving US 5,345,071. Searches for the number paired with "CAFC," "Dumont," "infringement," and "litigation" returned only citation-list hits (e.g., other patents' "Referenced Cited" sections listing "5345071 | September 6, 1994 | Dumont") and the AU family record — nothing docket-shaped.
• No PTAB/IPR activity found, though my search on this specific point was cut short by the tool-step limit — treat "no IPR" as not fully verified.
• Practical context supporting the negative finding: the patent lapsed for nonpayment of maintenance fees effective 2002-09-06, so it was unenforceable for the 24 years preceding today's date. Any residual past-damages window (pre-2002 infringement within the then-six-year lookback) would have long since expired. That makes a live 2026 CAFC appeal on this patent highly improbable, but I cannot state it as an authoritative docket conclusion without PACER/CAFC docket access, which I was unable to retrieve.

Internal-consistency flags (interpreted literally, not corrected)

• Claim 1 locates the bar code scanner in the "distal front face" but then recites "an opening in said proximal front face of said casing adjacent said bar code scanner." The specification's own reference numeral 21 is called "distal front face" throughout, yet one passage calls it "the proximal front face 21." This appears to be drafting error in the patent, but per instructions I am reporting it literally rather than normalizing it.
• The US grant record credits Charles Dumont as sole inventor with no assignee, while the AU sibling credits Carib Impex of Florida, Inc. — an unresolved discrepancy.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 5345071.

Let me search more targeted litigation sources.

Let me search litigation-specific databases directly.

Litigation Search Report: US Patent 5,345,071

Bottom line

I found no evidence of any litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 5,345,071. Based on the sources searched, no district court case, ITC investigation, or Federal Circuit appeal asserting or challenging this patent has been identified.

What the record shows

US 5,345,071 ("Shopper's purchase monitoring device," inventor Charles Dumont) has a legal history that is entirely prosecution- and maintenance-related, not litigation-related:

Source: Google Patents legal-events table (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5345071/en).

Searches performed

I searched for the specific number and title across general web and patent/litigation-facing sources:

• "5345071" patent litigation case
• "5345071" patent infringement lawsuit
• "5,345,071" OR "5345071" Dumont v. ... docket
• Dumont patent infringement "purchase monitoring" shopper handset barcode lawsuit
• site:portal.unifiedpatents.com 5345071 (returned zero results)
• CourtListener-oriented query for "5345071" OR "5,345,071"

These returned only patent-document hits (Google Patents, EveryPatent, Justia, FPO, uspto.report) and unrelated documents where "5345071" appears as a coincidental number (e.g., a Florida entity FEI number, a Lithuanian registry notice). No docket, complaint, judgment, ITC filing, or PTAB proceeding referencing US 5,345,071 appeared.

Important caveats

1. My litigation-database access is limited. The Unified Patents litigation portal returned no results for this number, but that portal (and free tools like CourtListener) have incomplete historical coverage of low-volume, pre-2005 district court dockets. Older cases — especially from the 1994–2002 window when this patent was in force — may not be indexed in the sources I could reach.
2. No PACER or Docket Navigator access. I could not run a direct PACER docket search or a Westlaw/Lexis KeyCite litigation-history report, which are the authoritative tools for confirming a negative. A KeyCite/LexCite "Litigation Search Report" (like the USPTO Central Reexamination Unit uses) would be the definitive check.
3. The patent is long expired (2002), so it cannot be asserted now. Any litigation would of necessity be historical (1994–2002, plus possibly appeal periods).
4. Related family members you may want to search separately, since litigation against one member could involve the same product line: US 5,457,307 (CIP of 08/036,970), US 5,437,346 (Dumont, "Station for price scanning verifying and selectively bagging purchase items"), US 5,641,039 (Dumont, "Purchase checkout station"), WO 1994/022105 A1, and AU 6698294 A. I found no litigation on these either in the course of these searches, but they were not individually docket-searched.

Recommendation

If you need a certified negative clearance, the appropriate next steps are: (1) a Westlaw KeyCite or Lexis CourtLink litigation-history pull on the patent number; (2) a PACER Case Locator search by patent number and by party name ("Dumont, Charles"); and (3) an ITC EDIS search for Section 337 complaints. I cannot represent the absence of litigation as confirmed without those queries.

I'll start by verifying the structured "no proceedings" signal against the public record, and checking for any related-family activity.

No proceedings surfaced. Let me probe the inventor/family and litigation trail for any AIA trial or appeal trail that might have been filed under a different patent number.

Let me do a final check against PTAB/litigation databases and the related continuation patent.

PTAB / AIA Trial Analysis — US 5,345,071 ("Shopper's purchase monitoring device")

Patent: US 5,345,071 A — Inventor: Charles Dumont — App. No. 08/036,970 — Filed 1993-03-25 — Priority 1992-04-27 — Granted 1994-09-06.
Source of proceedings list: structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal ingest), corroborated by web search.

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Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings are on file against US 5,345,071 — no IPR, no PGR, no CBM — meaning all 18 claims stand exactly as they issued in 1994, untested at the PTAB, with no Final Written Decision, no cancellation, no settlement, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel running against anybody. The defensive posture this gives a defendant is not "the patent is hardened"; it is "the patent is expired and was never worth attacking." Per the structured data the patent is "Expired - Fee Related", with legal events showing a 2002-03-26 maintenance-fee reminder, "Lapse for failure to pay maintenance fees" on 2002-09-06, "Expired due to failure to pay maintenance fee," effective 2002-09-06, and an anticipated expiration of 2012-04-27. The absence of PTAB activity is therefore consistent with the patent having dropped out of force more than two decades ago, not with it having survived a barrage of challenges.

There are no proceeding-numbered sections to write. I will not manufacture proceeding numbers, petitioners, or panels that do not exist. Instead, the analysis below covers what the zero-count finding does and does not tell you.

No PTAB proceedings — what was searched and what was not found

• Type: N/A — no Inter Partes Review, Post-Grant Review, or Covered Business Method review is on file.
• Filed: N/A
• Status: No AIA trial proceeding identified in the ODP-provided structured block; targeted web searches for "IPR," "PTAB," and "AIA trial" paired with the patent number, the "5345071" identifier, and inventor "Dumont" returned no petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal.
• Judge panel: N/A — no panel has ever touched this patent.
• Petition grounds: N/A
• Institution decision: N/A
• Final Written Decision: N/A — no claim of US 5,345,071 has ever been canceled at the PTAB. Claims 1–18 are all, in PTAB terms, "untested."
• Settlement / termination: N/A
• Appeal: No Federal Circuit appeal of any PTAB decision exists (there is no PTAB decision to appeal). My searches did not surface any CAFC opinion on this patent either.
• Defensive value: You cannot use a prior FWD to invalidate anything, because none exists — but you almost certainly do not need one. Any demand letter asserting current infringement of an expired patent is legally hollow. See the strategic summary for the term/revival analysis.

Evidence limits (stated plainly): my searches were bounded and returned mostly unrelated results (a CourtListener financial-disclosure record containing the digit string "5345071" as an unrelated investment ID; a Soverain/Newegg appeal transcript; general obviousness commentary). I did not obtain a direct hit from PTAB E2E or Docket Navigator that positively confirms a zero count; I am relying on the ODP-structured block as canonical, per the task instructions, and reporting that live search surfaced nothing contradicting it I also did not exhaustively verify the related-family patents (below), so treat the family-wide statement as a lead to check, not a verified null.

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Strategic summary

Claim status. Because no AIA trial ever reached an FWD, there is no claim-level cancellation table to report. Claims 1–18 are all UNTESTED: independent claim 1 (the handheld scanner/three-headed-roller/budget-keypad/checkout-receptacle combination) and its dependents 2–18, including the two alternative designation-means branches — green/red ink stamping strips with ink reserves (claims 13–15) and opposed polarizing magnetic members acting on a polarized metallic strip, with conveyor-belt polarimeter detection (claims 16–18). Nothing is "dead" at the PTAB and nothing is "sustained" either; there is simply no PTAB art history. The real status datum is not a claim outcome but the legal status field: expired for fee nonpayment in 2002.

Estoppel landscape. § 315(e)(2) estoppel is a non-issue — estoppel only attaches to a petitioner who obtained an FWD, and there is no petitioner. Equally, the patent owner cannot point to any PTAB victory to argue "your art was already considered." Practically, every ground is theoretically "still available," but it is available in the wrong forum: § 112 grounds (and the claim-1 internal inconsistencies described below) are not IPR grounds at all, so even a hypothetical challenger would have had to litigate them in district court. The natural § 102/§ 103 art for this patent — the twelve references of record (Gogulski US 4,071,740; Clyne US 4,373,133; Sharp US 4,528,638; NCR US 4,929,819; Checkrobot US 4,959,530; Bianco US 4,047,614 / US 5,047,614; NCR US 5,013,896; Checkpoint US 5,059,951; Counts US 5,192,854; plus JPH 3-15993, JPH 3-148798, JPH 3-232079) — is all still unadjudicated by any tribunal. Note also that the specification's own background cites Bianco US 5,047,614, Collins, Jr. US 4,929,819, Clyne US 4,373,133, and O'Connor US 4,959,530 as the state of the art, which is where an obviousness attack would have started.

Pattern signals. There is no pattern, because there are no filings: no repeat petitioner, no defensive aggregator (no Unified Patents or RPX filing), and no patent-owner appeal activity. The absence is explained by the timeline — the patent lapsed in 2002, roughly five years before CBM review even existed (CBM ran from 2012-09-16 to 2020-09-16 under § 18 of the AIA) and before the modern IPR practice matured. A patent that expired for fee nonpayment in 2002 is simply not an IPR target. Worth flagging for diligence: the same inventor obtained continuation-in-part family members US 5,457,307 ("Portable self-service bar code marker and reader for purchase monitoring," 1995-10-10), US 5,437,346 ("Station for price scanning verifying and selectively bagging purchase items," 1995-08-01), and US 5,641,039 ("Purchase checkout station," 1997-06-24). My searches did not surface PTAB activity on these either, but each has its own expiration/status that must be checked separately before concluding a family-wide clean bill — do not assume the '071 lapse speaks for the whole family.

The term point that actually decides the case. Under 35 U.S.C. § 286, damages reach back at most six years before suit. The structured legal events show the '071 patent ceased for failure to pay the maintenance fee due in 2002, with the event recorded 2002-09-06 / 2002-11-05, and Google Patents lists an anticipated expiration of 2012-04-27 (20 years from the 1992-04-27 priority date; the pre-URAA term was the greater of 17 years from grant — 2011-09-06 — or 20 years from earliest filing). Either way, even the nominal term ended more than a decade ago, and enforceability ended in 2002. Restoration would require a petition to accept late payment under 37 CFR 1.378; a revival petition filed many years after the fee was due faces a heightened showing (a delay this long is well outside the normal 24-month window, and the standard is no longer a simple "unintentional" statement). Until and unless such a petition is granted and recorded, there is no enforceable patent — a point worth confirming via USPTO PatentCenter's fee/status tab rather than relying solely on the aggregator data, since I was not able to open that record directly here.

On the drafting, for completeness (not a PTAB ground). If the patent were live, claims 1 and 10–12 contain a visible inconsistency that would carry real § 112(b) bite in district court: claim 1 recites an "opening in said proximal front face of said casing adjacent said bar code scanner" and later "passage of said proximal front face of said casing, and accordingly, said bar code scanner, over the bar code," whereas the specification consistently places the scanner (30), the opening (22), and the three-headed roller (50) in the distal front face (21). Claim 1 also requires the roller face to be "disposed at one time through said opening" while simultaneously placing the scanner in the "distal front face." A defendant could press indefiniteness and enablement on that mismatch — but only in court, because § 112 is unavailable in IPR (35 U.S.C. § 311(b) limits IPR to § 102/§ 103 on patents and printed publications), and the PGR window (9 months post-grant, plus § 112 eligibility) closed in June 1995. That § 112 ammunition is precisely the kind of threat no petitioner ever had to raise, because nobody ever had a live patent to attack.

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Recommended next steps

1. Treat "no PTAB activity" as a null result, not a clean bill of health on the merits. The patent has never been tested; you have no FWD to cite and no cancellation to rely on. Do not tell a client "the claims were invalidated" — nothing was.
2. Confirm the expiration and fee status through primary sources before responding to any assertion. Pull the PatentCenter fee/status record and the maintenance-fee history for 08/036,970. The ODP-derived events I have show the fee lapse at 2002-09-06 and expiration effective 2002-09-06, recorded 2002-11-05. If a § 1.378 revival petition has been filed and granted, that changes the analysis materially and you need to know it immediately.
3. If the patent is confirmed expired and unrevived, the defense is the expiring term, not prior art. Frame it as: no acts after the enforceable term (which ended in 2002, and at the absolute latest with the term on 2012-04-27) can infringe; § 286 caps any backward-looking theory at six years before the complaint, which necessarily reaches back into the 1990s/2000s; and § 315(b)'s one-year clock is irrelevant because no IPR can meaningfully be brought.
4. Check the family members separately. US 5,457,307, US 5,437,346, and US 5,641,039 issue from the same inventor's CIP chain and have their own maintenance-fee histories and expiration dates. Assertion letters in this space are as likely to cite those as the '071. I did not verify their status.
5. If contrary to the above the '071 turns out to be in force (e.g., revived), then and only then does the PTAB path matter — and it would be an IPR under § 102/§ 103 built on the twelve references of record (Gogulski, Clyne, Sharp, NCR, Checkrobot, Bianco), with the three-headed-roller/ink-stamp or polarizing-strip designation means as the likely point of novelty to attack as an obvious mechanical expedient. A CBM is unavailable (program sunset 2020-09-16, post-dating this patent's lapse) and a PGR is time-barred.

Primary sources used: the authoritative full text and bibliographic/legal-events data for US 5,345,071 at https://patents.google.com/patent/US5345071/en; the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO ODP) supplied in the prompt. No PTAB Final Written Decision, institution decision, or Federal Circuit opinion for this patent was identified, so none is linked — there is nothing to link.

I'll research the assignment record for US 5,345,071 (Charles Dumont), starting with the USPTO assignment databases and cross-referencing the inventor/assignee.

Let me probe the USPTO assignment databases directly and investigate the inventor's business entity.

Let me attempt to query the USPTO assignment API directly and check the inventor's corporate affiliations.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis: US 5,345,071

Critical caveat on tooling. The USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) and the legacy assignment.uspto.gov interface are JavaScript applications that my search tooling cannot render or query directly, and my attempted query of the USPTO assignment API (assignment-api.uspto.gov) was cut off before returning results. Everything below is therefore reconstructed from Google Patents' bibliographic and legal-events records for US 5,345,071, the companion family members, and press coverage of the inventor. I found no reel/frame data for this patent in any reachable source, and I will not invent any. A direct Assignment Center pull should still be run to formally confirm the negative.

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Inventors

Notable patterns:

• Single-inventor, individually owned application. All 18 claims name one inventor, and Google Patents records both Original Assignee and Current Assignee as "Individual." This is the cleanest possible case of inventor-retained ownership — there was no assignee to depart from, so the "inventors departing the original assignee" red flag is structurally inapplicable.
• Continuation-in-part chain, all abandoned parents. Per the specification: app. 08/036,970 (filed 1993-03-25) is a CIP of 07/903,716 (filed 1992-06-23, abandoned), itself a CIP of 07/873,770 (filed 1992-04-27, abandoned). The claimed priority date of 1992-04-27 derives from the grandparent. A CIP is a new application, not an assignment — it creates no chain-of-title record, and none of these relationships should be mistaken for a transfer.
• A parallel family was pursued personally. Dumont filed a further CIP (08/242,116, 1994-05-13) issuing as US 5,457,307, plus US 5,437,346 ("Station for price scanning verifying and selectively bagging purchase items"), US 5,525,786, and US 5,641,039 ("Purchase checkout station"). A sole inventor prosecuting four-plus related retail-automation patents over a five-year window is the profile of an independent inventor building a system, not a portfolio assembled for assertion.
• Probable continuing activity (unconfirmed identity match). A Charles Dumont, self-described self-checkout entrepreneur based in Cerbère, France, was publicly seeking partners in February 2024 for a checkout-free retail concept ("I Shop Then Free To Go"), per Kiosk Marketplace. The name, field, and decades-long persistence line up with this inventor, but I have not confirmed the identity match, and I flag it as suggestive rather than established.

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Original assignee

There is no original assignee. The patent issued to Charles Dumont, individually. No company is named on the face of the patent, in Google Patents' assignee field, or anywhere in the file record surfaced.

• Products embodying the claims: No evidence of a commercial product. The claimed handset is an electromechanical oddity — a three-headed roller that physically stamps green/red ink lines across a bar code (claims 13–15) or magnetically re-polarizes a metallic strip in the bar code (claims 16–18) — plus an abortive store-side "purchase confirmation station." The related Dumont patents (5,437,346; 5,525,786; 5,641,039) describe the store-side hardware, consistent with an intended end-to-end system that appears never to have been commercialized. No assignee, licensee, or manufacturer of record exists for any of it.
• Primary line of business: None of record. Individual inventor.
• Current status: N/A (individual). The patent itself expired 2002-09-06 for failure to pay maintenance fees under 37 CFR 1.362 (lapse notice 2002-09-06; FP recorded 2002-11-05; anticipated statutory expiration 2012-04-27). It is in the public domain.
• Prosecution representation: The prosecuting attorney of record for 08/036,970 is not determinable from the sources I reached. (Two unrelated later design patents citing this patent — D371550 and D375085 — list Richard C. Litman and Paul W. Martin respectively; neither is evidence of Dumont's counsel, and I do not attribute them here.)

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Assignment timeline

No assignment records were found for US 5,345,071 — for any reel/frame, under any conveyance type. I am stating that plainly, as instructed: the Assignment Center appears to hold no records for this patent, and no assignment event surfaces in Google Patents' legal-events table either.

What the legal-events table does contain is maintenance-fee activity only:

Every one of these is a fee event. Zero are conveyances. Under the output rule, this is itself the finding: the original owner — Charles Dumont, individually — still owned the patent when it lapsed in 2002.

Because there is no assignment chain, there is no correspondent of record to analyze, no reel/frame to cite, and no recurrence pattern to detect.

(Sources: Google Patents bibliographic + legal events, https://patents.google.com/patent/US5345071/en; uspto.report grant page, https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[5345071](/patent/5345071).)

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5345071
    1992 : Parent apps filed by Charles Dumont
         : Both parents later abandoned
    1993 : CIP 08036970 filed by Dumont alone
    1994 : Patent granted to Dumont as individual
         : No assignee named
         : No assignment ever recorded
    1998 : Maintenance fee paid
    2002 : Patent expires for nonpayment
    2012 : Anticipated statutory expiration

I am including the remaining sections for completeness, even though the assignment record is empty, because the verdict requires an explicit NPE call.

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

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Verdict

Insufficient data (no assignment records beyond the original individual ownership).

Justification. The USPTO record for US 5,345,071 appears to contain no assignments whatsoever — only the 1998 fee payment and the 2002 lapse events. Google Patents lists both original and current assignee as "Individual," confirming that sole inventor Charles Dumont retained title personally from filing (1993-03-25) through grant (1994-09-06) and until the patent expired for nonpayment of maintenance fees (2002-09-06, 37 CFR 1.362). There is no shell LLC, no known asserter, no correspondent recurrence, and no transfer to analyze; the CIP relationships to 07/873,770 and 07/903,716 are new applications, not assignments. This is emphatically not an NPE chain — it is the inverse pattern: an independent inventor who self-funded prosecution of a multi-patent retail-automation family, never sold or licensed it to an aggregator, and let it lapse.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center (search by patent number): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Legacy assignment search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html
• Google Patents record (assignee = "Individual"): https://patents.google.com/patent/US5345071/en

Residual risk / recommended next step. Because I could not execute a live Assignment Center query, a certified negative should be obtained by (a) a direct Assignment Center pull on 5345071, and (b) a check of the related Dumont patents 5,437,346 / 5,457,307 / 5,525,786 / 5,641,039 — if any of those were assigned, it would indicate a later disposal of the family that did not include the '071 patent. If the Assignment Center confirms zero records (as the bibliographic evidence strongly suggests), the "Insufficient data" call collapses into a clean non-NPE, inventor-retained, expired-and-dedicated finding.

I'll research the prior-art references cited on the face of US 5,345,071. Let me pull details on the key references.

Let me pull the remaining cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis: US 5,345,071 — "Shopper's purchase monitoring device"

0. Target patent confirmation

I checked the record against the USPTO-sourced grant data (uspto.report/patent/grant/5345071) and the Google Patents full text (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5345071/en). No sibling number was substituted. The record is internally consistent with the previously generated "Patent summary," "Litigation summary," "PTAB challenges," and "Assignment history" sections; I flag one carry-over item below.

⚠️ Cross-section flag (not a prior-art issue): The "Patent summary" section states the background cites "Bianco, U.S. Pat. No. 5,047,614," and the front-page citation list shows US 5,047,614 A = US5047614A (Bianco, "Method and apparatus for computer-aided shopping"). Those are the same patent — 5,047,614 is the grant number, 5047614 is the same number without the comma. This is not a discrepancy; it is one reference. (Do not confuse it with the unrelated "US4047614" string that appears in one search-result snippet — that digit-string appears only in a scraped fragment and does not correspond to the cited reference.)

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1. Scope and method (and honest limits)

The prior art "of record" for US 5,345,071 is the 12 references listed in the "Patent Citations (12)" block of the issued patent — these are the examiner's citations, so they define the prosecution-art landscape, not the entire universe of § 102/§ 103 art.

What I verified with live full text: US 4,071,740 (Gogulski); US 4,373,133 (Clyne); US 4,528,638 (Sharp/Hatta); US 4,929,819 (NCR); US 5,047,614 (Bianco).
What I did not retrieve full text for before my search budget was exhausted: US 4,959,530; US 5,013,896; US 5,059,951; US 5,192,854; and the three Japanese publications JPH 3-15993, JPH 3-148798, JPH 3-232079. For those seven I give the citation data exactly as printed on the patent's front page (which is authoritative per the source-of-record) plus a title-level description, and I explicitly flag where I am inferring rather than reading. I will not fabricate claim-by-claim disclosures for references I did not open.

All twelve references predate the 1992-04-27 priority date. Because the application was filed 1993-03-25 (pre-AIA, since before 2013-03-16), pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 102 governs. References published before 1992-04-27 are available under § 102(a); references more than one year before the earliest U.S. filing can also be § 102(b) art.

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2. Reference-by-reference analysis

2.1 US 4,071,740 A — Gogulski, "Mobile automated shopping system"

• Citation: US 4,071,740 (Paul Gogulski). Priority 1976-05-26; published 1978-01-31.
• Disclosure (verified): A shopping-cart system with a hand-held scanner cabled to a control panel that has a visual display and a printer, plus a second stationary scanner for a dual-scan cross-check; the panel communicates two-way with an in-store central computer that holds prices; a running sub-total of items deposited in the cart is printed/displayed; weight-sensing + light-plane sensors provide security; a rechargeable battery powers the cart electronics; a "reject light" and "travel light" are provided for unauthorized entries.
• § 102 mapping: The most structurally similar reference to the shopping-monitoring half of claim 1. It discloses a portable scanner + display + central-computer price lookup + accumulating running total + rechargeable battery (→ the "power source" element, and arguably claim 9's rechargeable battery pack). However, it lacks the budget keypad, the purchase/non-purchase designation means, the three-headed roller, the price-check/purchase/return button triad, and the handset-side purchase memory. It therefore does not anticipate claim 1 (which requires all of these in one device) but is strong § 103 art against the scanner/display/running-total/battery sub-combination, and is relevant to claims 4 and 9.
• Potentially anticipates: none of the independent-claim elements alone; best § 102/§ 103 target = claims 4 (LED/display) and 9 (rechargeable battery pack) in combination with other art for § 103.

2.2 US 4,373,133 A — Clyne et al., "Method for producing a bill, apparatus for collecting items, and a self-service shop"

• Citation: US 4,373,133 (Nicholas Clyne et al.). Priority 1980-01-03; published 1983-02-08.
• Disclosure (verified): A portable scanner (wand) attached to the shopping cart; the customer scans the bar code of each selected item as it is deposited; the device reads price and weight and maintains an aggregate price display; at the sales terminal the customer's unit is combined with a central data source holding store prices, and a bill/print-out listing each item against its price is produced; the collection is weighed and compared to the displayed/recorded weight as an anti-fraud check. The spec of Dumont's patent itself names Clyne as prior art.
• § 102 mapping: Discloses the portable-scanning + aggregate running total + central price data source + bill generation at checkout concept. Missing: budget entry/keypad, purchase vs. non-purchase designation (mark/flagging of the item itself), the three-button control set, and the handset-side data transfer connector to a register in the claimed form (Clyne uses a store-side unit combined with a kiosk/terminal). Does not anticipate claim 1. Relevant to the "running total" and "central store computer data" limitations (§ 103).
• Potentially anticipates: none of the claim-1 limitations standing alone; § 103 art against the running-total/central-data-source core of claim 1.

2.3 US 4,528,638 A — Sharp Kabushiki Kaisha (Hatta et al.), "Shopping calculator with comparison feature"

• Citation: US 4,528,638 (Sharp K.K.; inventors Hatta et al.). Priority 1981-09-17; published 1985-07-09.
• Disclosure (verified): A hand-held shopping calculator into which a budget value is entered via a BUDGET key; each expenditure is entered and automatically subtracted from the budget; a warning (flashing light/audible) fires when the remainder falls below a preset amount or the budget is exceeded; the display simultaneously shows the budget and the current balance; a "BEST" function computes and displays a cost-per-unit-weight comparison of two commodities to indicate the better value.
• § 102 mapping — this is the single strongest § 102 reference in the set for the budget/display/signaling dependent claims:
  • Claim 1 (budget sub-element): discloses the budget-amount entry + budget display functionality, but not within a bar-code-scanning handset, and not with the purchase memory / scanner / designation means. So it does not anticipate claim 1, but it squarely anticipates the idea.
  • Claim 5 ("signaling means … indicate when said budget amount has been equaled by said total purchase amount"): the calculator's warning-when-balance-reaches-preset is highly material; a strong § 102 candidate for the signaling concept (mapped to a total vs. budget comparator).
  • Claim 3 ("price per unit weight ratio … displayed"): the "BEST" cost-per-unit-weight comparison is a strong § 102 candidate for the price-per-unit-weight display limitation.
  • Claim 4 (display): display means disclosed.
• Potentially anticipates: claims 3, 4, and 5 (each in substance, subject to the claim-1 environment); § 103 against claim 1's budget-keypad limitation.

2.4 US 4,929,819 A — NCR Corp., "Method and apparatus for customer performed article scanning in self-service shopping"

• Citation: US 4,929,819 (NCR Corporation). Priority 1988-12-12; published 1990-05-29.
• Disclosure (verified): A detachable electronic module with a bar-code scanner mounted on a customer-operated shopping cart; the customer scans articles one by one, video camera means record the scanning and the placement of articles into the cart; at checkout the cashier couples the module to a point-of-sale terminal and a transaction record of the scanned articles is printed; the cashier plays back the video to verify the customer's scanning/placement was proper before payment. The spec of Dumont's patent names Collins, Jr. (this patent) as prior art.
• § 102 mapping: Discloses a portable scanner module, customer-performed scanning, data transfer of the scanned list to a checkout terminal, and a verification step at checkout ("that all items … are in fact purchase items" ≈ the "purchase confirmation station"). Missing: the purchase/non-purchase physical designation of the item (no marking), the three-headed roller, the budget keypad, and the handset-side running total/price-check button set. NCR uses video verification rather than item-marking. Does not anticipate claim 1; it is material § 103 art against the "scanner + data transfer to a register + checkout verification" limitations, and maps to the claim-1 "purchase confirmation station" element.
• Potentially anticipates: none wholesale; § 103 over the data-transfer/checkout-verification sub-combination of claim 1.

2.5 US 4,959,530 A — Checkrobot Inc., "Article price indicator"

• Citation: US 4,959,530 (Checkrobot Inc.). Priority 1989-03-07; published 1990-09-25.
• Disclosure (title-level only — full text not retrieved): A price-indication device/station for a self-service checkout environment (Checkrobot's line of customer-operated scanning lanes). Dumont's own background cites O'Connor, U.S. Pat. No. 4,959,530 as state-of-the-art in customer bar-code scanning.
• § 102 mapping (tentative, flagged): Consistent with the "display pricing/identification information" and store-side price-indication limitations of claim 1. Without the full text I will not assert element-by-element anticipation. Best characterized as § 103 art against the display/price-indication limitation, and background art anticipating nothing wholesale.
• Potentially anticipates: not asserted (text not reviewed); relevant to the display/pricing-indication limitation of claim 1 under § 103.

2.6 US 5,013,896 A — NCR Corp., "Cashierless checkout system using customer passcard"

• Citation: US 5,013,896 (NCR Corporation). Priority 1987-12-28; published 1991-05-07.
• Disclosure (title-level only — full text not retrieved): A cashierless checkout in which a customer passcard carries/identifies the customer and links the transaction to store data at checkout.
• § 102 mapping (tentative, flagged): Relevant to the handset-to-register data transfer + customer-linked checkout/verification concepts of claim 1 (and conceptually to the "data reception register"). Because I did not open the text, I do not assert any limitation is met.
• Potentially anticipates: not asserted; background/§ 103 relevance to the register/checkout-identification limitations.

2.7 US 5,047,614 A — Bianco, "Method and apparatus for computer-aided shopping"

• Citation: US 5,047,614 A (James S. Bianco). App. 391,733 filed 1989-08-08; CIP of Ser. 300,352 filed 1989-01-23 (abandoned); priority shown 1989-01-23; published 1991-09-10. (This is the reference the Dumont background calls "Bianco, U.S. Pat. No. 5,047,614.")
• Disclosure (verified): A portable hand-held bar-code reading terminal with an optical sensor, microprocessor, non-volatile memory, LED/beeper, and a battery rechargeable via an external adapter; the consumer scans bar codes (containers, coupons, ads, pamphlets) to build a list; an interface connection allows the memory to be read by an external processor; at the store a kiosk/terminal reads the terminal's memory to compile a printed list; a smart-card variant carries the memory to the terminal.
• § 102 mapping: Discloses the portable bar-code-reading handset + internal memory + rechargeable battery + interface connector to a store terminal cluster. Missing: price lookup from a store database on the handset, running purchase total, budget keypad, any purchase/non-purchase designation, and the three-headed roller. Does not anticipate claim 1. It is § 103 art against the "portable handset + data storage + transmission connector + battery" limitations (and relevant to claim 9, rechargeable battery with external plug).
• Potentially anticipates: none wholesale; § 103 against the handset/memory/connector/battery sub-combination (cf. claim 9).

2.8 US 5,059,951 A — Checkpoint Systems, Inc., "Method and apparatus for integrated data capture and electronic article surveillance"

• Citation: US 5,059,951 (Checkpoint Systems, Inc.). Priority 1988-11-14; published 1991-10-22.
• Disclosure (title-level only — full text not retrieved): Integration of bar-code data capture with electronic article surveillance (EAS) — i.e., reading a code while also sensing/detecting a magnetic-type marker/tag on the item (Checkpoint's EAS technology uses magnetically-responsive markers).
• § 102 mapping (tentative, flagged): Of the twelve, this is the reference most relevant to the first (polarization/magnetic) embodiment, i.e., claims 16–18, which claim a "polarizing magnetic member" acting on a "polarized metallic strip" on the item's bar code plus detection means that detect a strip state at a station. EAS magnetic-marker detection is analogous art for the detection of a magnetic state on an item at a gate/station. Because I did not open the text, I do not assert that it discloses re-polarizing a strip between two states (the actual point of novelty of claims 16–17); I characterize it as § 103 art against the detection-means limitation of claim 18 and analogous art generally.
• Potentially anticipates: not asserted; flagged as the key candidate reference for the claims 16–18 (magnetic/polarization) embodiment under § 103.

2.9 US 5,192,854 A — Counts, "System for electronically recording and redeeming coupons"

• Citation: US 5,192,854 (Reginald D. Counts). Priority 1990-07-26; published 1993-03-09.
• Disclosure (title-level only — full text not retrieved): Electronic recording and redemption of coupons.
• § 102 mapping (tentative, flagged): Marginal to the claims as written. Coupon recording/redemption is not an element of claim 1 or its dependents; its only conceivable bearing is as background on handset-to-store data transfer / central price-data updates. Note also a timing issue: its publication (1993-03-09) is after the 1992-04-27 priority date, so whether it qualifies as § 102(a) art depends on its filing date (1990-07-26) and pre-AIA § 102(a)/(e) mechanics; its inclusion as a printed publication may be thin. I flag this as a weak reference in the set.
• Potentially anticipates: none; weak background/§ 103 relevance only.

2.10 JP H3-15993 A — Fujikura Ltd., "Bar code reader"

• Citation: JP H03-15993 A (Fujikura Ltd.). Priority 1989-03-01; published 1991-01-24.
• Disclosure (title-level only — full text not retrieved; Japanese-language): A bar-code reader.
• § 102 mapping: Cannot be assessed element-by-element without the text. Title places it as general bar-code-reader art relevant to the "bar code scanner disposed in the distal front face" limitation of claim 1 (§ 103). No § 102 assertion.
• Potentially anticipates: not asserted.

2.11 JP H3-148798 A — Shigehiko Ono, "Illegal food identification method for package of illegal food"

• Citation: JP H03-148798 A (Shigehiko Ono). Priority 1989-11-02; published 1991-06-25.
• Disclosure (title-level only — full text not retrieved; Japanese-language): Relates to identifying/labeling package status (title as printed reads "Illegal food identification method for package of illegal food").
• § 102 mapping: Appears to concern marking/labeling of packages and their identification — analogous art at most to the physical marking aspects of the ink-stamp embodiment (claims 13–15). Because the title is opaque and I did not retrieve the text, I make no submission and note this reference's relevance is unclear.
• Potentially anticipates: not asserted.

2.12 JP H3-232079 A — NEC Corp., "Bar code recognizing device"

• Citation: JP H03-232079 A (NEC Corp.). Priority 1990-02-07; published 1991-10-16.
• Disclosure (title-level only — full text not retrieved; Japanese-language): A bar-code recognizing device.
• § 102 mapping: General bar-code recognition art for the scanner limitation of claim 1 (§ 103). No § 102 assertion.
• Potentially anticipates: not asserted.

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3. Consolidated § 102 map

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4. Overall § 102 conclusion

No single one of the twelve references of record anticipates independent claim 1. Claim 1 is a dense combination — portable handset + bar-code scanner + purchase designation means + non-purchase designation means + display + purchase memory with running-total summation + the price-check/purchase/return button triad + budget keypad + power source + two-way data transmission connector + purchase confirmation station + the three-headed roller with three selectively-exposed faces. To anticipate, one reference would have to disclose every one of those elements arranged as claimed, and none does:

• Gogulski, Clyne, and NCR ('819) collectively supply the portable-scanner + display + running-total + central-price-data + checkout-transfer environment — but none discloses physically designating an item as a purchase vs. non-purchase item via a roller or otherwise, and none discloses the budget keypad or the three-button (price-check/purchase/return) control set.
• Sharp ('638) supplies the budget/warning/price-per-unit-weight functionality but is a calculator, not a scanning handset.
• Bianco ('614) supplies the portable reader + memory + battery + store-terminal interface but no pricing/running total, no designation means, no budget.
• Checkpoint ('951) is the nearest thing to the magnetic/polarization embodiment (claims 16–18), but on the title-level record it addresses detecting an EAS marker, not selectively re-polarizing a strip between a purchase state and a non-purchase state — the actual novelty of claims 16–17 — so even there § 103, not § 102, is the realistic attack.

The realistic challenge is § 103, not § 102: combine Gogulski or Clyne (cart/handset scanner + running total + store computer) with NCR '819 (transfer-to-checkout + verification) and Sharp '638 (budget + over-budget warning + price-per-unit-weight), and the only remaining point of novelty is the three-headed marking/designating roller and the ink-stamp or polarizing-strip designation means — which a challenger would argue are obvious mechanical expedients. But per the previously generated "PTAB challenges" and "Litigation summary" sections, no tribunal ever adjudicated any of this, because the patent lapsed for nonpayment in 2002 and no IPR/PGR/CBM or district-court action exists.

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5. Caveats and recommended verification

1. Seven of the twelve references were not opened in full text (US 4,959,530; US 5,013,896; US 5,059,951; US 5,192,854; JP H3-15993; JP H3-148798; JP H3-232079). For those I gave the authoritative front-page citation data and title-level descriptions and made no § 102 anticipation assertions. Do not treat the "not asserted" rows as affirmative findings of no anticipation — they are open items.
2. The list is the examiner's citation set, not the full prior-art universe. Formulating a complete § 102/§ 103 position would require a knockout search beyond these twelve (e.g., other customer-self-scanning and item-marking art).
3. Pre-AIA § 102 applies (effective filing before 2013-03-16); the Counts reference (published 1993-03-09, after the 1992-04-27 priority date) carries a genuine § 102(a) timing question that should be resolved from its filing date if it is ever relied on.
4. Governed by the source of record: the issued patent's own citation block and the Google Patents full text (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5345071/en), checked against uspto.report/patent/grant/5345071. USPTO PatentCenter should be consulted for the certified citation list and the fee/status tab.

Primary sources used: US 5,345,071 full text (Google Patents); uspto.report grant pages for 5345071, 4071740, 4373133, 4929819, 5047614, and full texts for 4071740, 4373133, 4528638, 4929819, and 5047614; the patent's own "Patent Citations (12)" block for the seven references I could not open.

I'll verify the disclosure content of the key prior-art references of record before building the § 103 combinations.

Now let me pull the details of the security/EAS and anti-fraud references, which are the closest art on the item-marking and conveyor-detection limitations.

Obviousness Analysis — US 5,345,071 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Source of record for the patent: Google Patents full text, https://patents.google.com/patent/US5345071/en (authoritative version supplied in the prompt and used throughout).

Framing note. This is a retrospective validity exercise. As established in the earlier sections of this analysis, US 5,345,071 lapsed for nonpayment of maintenance fees effective 2002-09-06 (37 CFR 1.362), so no live § 103 challenge is possible. The analysis below evaluates the claims as of the effective filing date, on the assumption that they were tested in the 1994–2002 enforcement window.

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A. Legal framework and the person of ordinary skill

Effective filing / priority date: 1993-03-25 (app. 08/036,970), with a claimed priority date of 1992-04-27 through the CIP chain to Ser. 07/873,770 (abandoned) and Ser. 07/903,716 (abandoned). All Graham/KSR analysis is keyed to 1992–1993.

Governing standard: The claims are presumed valid; the challenger bears clear-and-convincing error. Obviousness is a question of law on underlying findings of (1) scope/content of the prior art, (2) differences between the art and the claims, (3) level of ordinary skill, and (4) secondary considerations. Graham v. John Deere, 383 U.S. 1 (1966). Under KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), a combination of known elements is obvious where each element performs its known function and there existed a design need or market pressure to solve the problem — an explicit teaching, suggestion, or motivation in the references is no longer required. The "predictable variation of a known device" and "obvious to try" rationales apply.

PHOSITA in April 1992: an engineer or technician with 2–4 years of experience in retail point-of-sale design, familiar with (a) hand-held bar code scanners and UPC decoding, (b) portable battery-powered data terminals with non-volatile memory and download cradles, (c) electronic article surveillance (EAS) markers and magnetic deactivators, and (d) mechanical marking/stamping dispensers. Critically, this is a low-skill, highly integrated "combination" art — the '071 patent's own specification concedes it "incorporates the use of existing bar code scanning technology which a majority of stores already employ," which is an admission that the technical building blocks were ordinary.

The claims at issue: one independent claim (1) and seventeen dependents. Claim 1 is a Markush-style aggregation of ~11 elements. There is no single reference that discloses everything, so the analysis proceeds by combination. Notably, the patent's own "Description of the Prior Art" concedes that Bianco US 5,047,614, Collins US 4,929,819, Clyne US 4,373,133, and O'Connor US 4,959,530 — four of the twelve references of record — already "utilize scanning of bar codes by individuals." That concession frames the invention as an improvement built on top of those systems, which is the posture most favorable to a § 103 attack.

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B. Reference inventory — verification status

I verified the disclosure content of a subset of the references directly from their patent texts this session. I could not retrieve the full texts of several others within my search budget and flag them explicitly rather than characterize them loosely.

Where I rely on an unverified reference below, I say so and mark the corresponding conclusion as provisional.

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C. Element-by-element mapping of claim 1

Because claim 1 is the only independent claim, it drives the analysis. Every dependent claim stands or falls with it plus its added limitation.

Result of the mapping: if the roller is read as a mechanical means for performing the designation function, every other element of claim 1 is disclosed or rendered obvious by Gogulski + Clyne + Bianco + Sharp + NCR '819. The only genuinely arguable point of novelty is the physical designation means and its roller architecture. (And note the previously flagged drafting defect: claim 1 recites the opening in the "proximal front face" adjacent the scanner while placing the scanner in the "distal front face" — a literal reading makes the claim internally inconsistent, which cuts against the patent owner on both § 112(b) and the scope-of-prior-art comparison.)

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D. Proposed § 103 combinations

Combination 1 (primary — attacks claim 1)

Gogulski US 4,071,740 + Clyne US 4,373,133 + Bianco US 5,047,614 + Sharp US 4,528,638, optionally with NCR US 4,929,819 for the semi-attended confirmation station.

• Gogulski supplies the hand-held scanner on a shopper-controlled unit, the dual-scan price-check-then-commit workflow, the running cumulative total, the per-item credit-reduces-the-total operation, the printer producing an itemized tape, the rechargeable battery, the checkout station, and the two-way link to an in-store central computer.
• Clyne supplies the portable recording unit with item-identity memory, the price-summing to an aggregate, the checkout terminal that reads the unit and prints an itemized bill, the central data source holding current prices, and the verification gate (weight comparison + red/green light) that lets a store employee confirm a customer's self-recorded collection without rescanning every item.
• Bianco supplies the hand-held bar code terminal (as opposed to a cart-mounted unit) with non-volatile memory, a store-computer interface for reading the memory, and, importantly, a battery tied to memory to keep the memory alive.
• Sharp supplies the numeric keypad/budget-key architecture with a stored budget amount, accumulated-total and difference computation, simultaneous display of budget and total, and a warning indicator — which is claim 1's budget element plus claims 2, 3, and 5.

Motivation to combine (each rationale is independently sufficient under KSR):

1. Common field and common problem. All four references are in self-service retail checkout automation and address the same three problems the '071 specification recites: checkout congestion, inability to know a running total, and price/identity verification. Combining references that solve the same problem for the same actors (shoppers and supermarket operators) is the paradigm of an obvious combination.
2. Each element performs its known function. The handset scans and computes; the keypad/keypad-memory budgets and warns; the terminal reads the handset memory and prints a bill. No reference's function is altered by the combination — the classic "predictable result" case.
3. Explicit art-recognized inadequacy driving the combination. Clyne expressly frames its object as reducing customer time at the sales terminal and "reduc[ing] its running costs," and expressly discusses fraud deterrence. Gogulski expressly sets out to eliminate per-item checkout. Sharp expressly seeks "shopping … without exceeding the budget." Combining a shopper-carried scanning/totalling device (Clyne/Gogulski) with a budget-comparison calculator (Sharp) is the direct, predictable response to those stated needs.
4. The patent's own admission. The '071 background identifies Bianco, Collins, Clyne and O'Connor as the state of the art solving the same difficulties, and then says the invention "incorporates the use of existing bar code scanning technology which a majority of stores already employ, thereby requiring no adaptation of the store's computer pricing techniques." The inventor conceded the combination was built from known store infrastructure.
5. Design choice / obvious-to-try on the button architecture. Splitting a two-step workflow into a "check price" button and a "purchase" button, and adding a "return" that reverses the entry (already taught by Gogulski's credit operation), is the routine exercise of a designer's judgment in arranging a user interface for a hand-held terminal.

Combination 2 (alternative primary, stronger on the verification element)

Bianco + NCR US 4,929,819 + Clyne + Sharp.

NCR '819 is a more precise fit than Gogulski for claim 1's "purchase confirmation station at the checkout station of the store" and the two-way connector, because it discloses a detachable module carried by the shopper, coupled at the checkout counter to the store's data processing means, with a transaction record printed at the counter and a cashier who verifies from records that the shopper's scanning was properly performed. Substituting NCR's counter-coupled module for Gogulski's cart-bound control panel is a predictable substitution of a portable terminal for a cart-mounted one — the same exchange Bianco already made in the opposite direction (Bianco's terminal is a home-carried hand-held unit inserted into a store kiosk port 58). That two-way traffic in the art is itself strong evidence that portability of the terminal was a matter of obvious design choice.

Combination 3 (the physical designation means — claims 13–18)

This is where the § 103 case is weakest and where the drafting matters most.

Ink embodiment (claims 13–15). The claims require (a) a green ink stamping strip that marks a green line across the bar code, (b) a red ink stamping strip that marks a red line, (c) each strip in recharging contact with a same-color ink reserve when retracted, and (d) the checkout examination being a count/ratio comparison of green vs. red lines.

• [Unverified] Checkrobot art (e.g., US 4,792,018, listed in the '071 family citations). This is the natural place to look for conveyor-based security processing where items are physically altered and then screened. I could not retrieve its text; the mapping is my inference from the title and should not be relied upon until verified.
• General mechanical art (self-inking stampers, price-marking guns, multi-color rotary hand stampers). A turret/roller carrying two different ink pads, indexed so one pad faces the workpiece at a time, with each pad recharging from a same-color reservoir, is a thoroughly conventional mechanical arrangement. The '071 roller is functionally a two-color self-inking stamp (plus a neutral face) mounted coaxially with a scanner. Under KSR's "predictable variation of a known device" and "obvious to try" rationales, adapting a known rotary marking device to co-act with a bar code scanner is obvious. I have not verified specific mechanical references for the roller, so I present this as the expected line of attack rather than as a demonstrated one.
• Motivation to combine with Combination 1/2: the marking is not an end in itself — it is the mechanism that makes the "cursory, rapid verification" of claim 1's purchase confirmation station possible. Clyne expressly identifies fraud deterrence as an object ("a further aid with which to combat dishonesty"), and Gogulski devotes its specification to "security features to prevent customers from taking advantage of and/or attempting to cheat the system." Both provide the articulated motivation for adding a human-verifiable physical marker to a self-scanned item.

Polarization embodiment (claims 16–18). The claims require a first polarizing magnetic member that flips a polarized metallic strip on the bar code, a second polarizing member with the opposite effect that flips it back, and a conveyor passing through detection means that detect the non-purchase state and stop the belt so items in a detection area can be independently verified.

• [Unverified] Checkpoint Systems US 5,059,951, "Method and apparatus for integrated data capture and electronic article surveillance," is the reference of record most on point: the combined scan-and-marker-state-change concept is the core of integrated EAS/data-capture systems, in which a magnetically alterable marker is switched between armed/deactivated states, and a deactivation/reactivation coil changes the marker's magnetic state at the point of scanning. I could not verify its full text this session, so I flag the following as a proposition to be confirmed against the reference rather than as an established mapping: if US 5,059,951 discloses scanning an item while changing the magnetic state of a marker associated with it, then claim 16's "first polarizing magnetic member" that re-polarizes a strip on the bar code is the substitution of one known marker-alteration mechanism (ink line) for another known marker-alteration mechanism (magnetic state), which is a predictable substitution of equivalents with a known advantage (no ink, machine-readable, re-settable). Claims 17 and 18's "opposite polarization to reverse the designation" is simply the re-arming/reversing direction of the same known state-changing technology.
• Motivation: the ink embodiment has an inherent drawback — the mark is irreversible in practice (the description's "one more green line than red" rule is a workaround for the fact that you cannot erase a line). A PHOSITA seeking a re-settable designation that can be reversed on a "return" (claim 1's return button) would be led directly to a reversible two-state marker, and magnetically reversible markers were the known solution in the EAS art. That is an explicit design need supplying motivation under KSR.
• Claim 18's belt-stopping detection maps readily onto Gogulski's reject-light/braking mechanism, which stops the shopping cart when an unauthorized entry is detected, and onto the broader checkout-security art in which a detection event halts product transport for inspection. Stopping a conveyor on a detection signal is a mechanical expedient, not an inventive contribution.
• I could not retrieve US 4,792,018, US 5,059,951 or US 5,013,896 during this session. The polarization-embodiment analysis in this subsection is therefore provisional and should be re-run against the actual texts.

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E. Dependent claims — disposition

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F. The KSR motivation rationales, consolidated

For a single paragraph a challenger can put in a petition or a summary-judgment brief, the combination rests on these independently sufficient rationales:

1. Same field of endeavor, same problem. Self-service supermarket checkout congestion, price verification, and budget control — the exact difficulties the '071 specification recites as its motivation.
2. Known elements performing known functions with predictable results. No element is changed in function by the combination; the result is the expected aggregation.
3. Design need / market pressure, expressly articulated in the prior art. Clyne: reduce time and cost at the sales terminal and combat dishonesty. Gogulski: eliminate per-item checkout and deter cheating. Sharp: shop without exceeding a budget. Bianco: aid the shopper and the store. These are explicit problem statements that motivate the combination — the challenger does not even need KSR's "design choice" rationale.
4. Obvious to try. A finite, small, and entirely predictable set of options existed for the one element the art does not supply (the physical designation means): mark with ink, or change a magnetic/marker state. KSR holds that where a finite number of identified, predictable solutions exist and the art provides a reasonable expectation of success, the variation is obvious.
5. Predictable substitution of mechanical equivalents. Rolling stamp for pen; magnetic re-polarization for ink; conveyor for shopping cart; hand-held terminal for cart-mounted terminal.

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G. Where the patent owner's nonobviousness case would actually run

I should state this plainly rather than write a one-sided brief. The strongest surviving arguments are:

1. The physical designation of the item itself, and only the item, is the asserted invention. Every verified reference (Bianco, Clyne, Gogulski, NCR, Sharp) creates an electronic record; none teaches altering the merchandise so that a human can verify the record with a glance. The patent owner can argue this is a difference in kind, not degree, and that the motivation to mark (rather than track) merchandise was not in the art. The counter — and it is a strong one — is that the EAS art is precisely about altering markers on merchandise and detecting that alteration at a gate, which is why the § 103 case turns almost entirely on US 5,059,951 and US 4,792,018, neither of which I was able to verify this session.
2. No evidence of secondary considerations either way. I found no commercial success, licensing, copying, or industry-praise evidence for the '071 family anywhere in my searches, and the system appears never to have been commercialized. That means no nexus evidence supports the patent owner, so this factor is neutral-to-favorable for the challenger, not a defense.
3. The single-pass design. Claim 1's requirement that designation occur "simultaneously" with scanning in one pass, via a roller, is a real ergonomic constraint. Gogulski requires two scans to check and then purchase. A patent owner would argue the art teaches away from consolidating the check-designate-record sequence into one physical pass. The counter is twofold: (a) the two-step sequence in Gogulski is a deliberate "cross check" for shopper confidence, not a technical necessity, and (b) the '071 roller adds nothing but mechanical co-location, which KSR treats as an obvious packaging choice. I would expect the challenger to win this point, though not without argument.
4. Claim 7 (reserve battery for data transfer to a second handset) is the dependent claim I would least like to have to invalidate, as explained above.

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H. Bottom line

• Claim 1 is, in my assessment, likely obvious over Gogulski US 4,071,740 in view of Clyne US 4,373,133, Bianco US 5,047,614, and Sharp US 4,528,638, with NCR US 4,929,819 supplying the semi-attended verification element. Every limitation except the identity of the physical designation means and the roller structure is disclosed or is a predictable design choice, and the motivation to combine is express in the references themselves.
• Claims 2–6 and 8–15 are likely obvious for the reasons tabulated in Section E. Claims 2, 3, 5, 8 and 9 are the most vulnerable — Sharp '638 and Bianco disclose their substance almost directly.
• Claims 16–18 are provisionally obvious on a predictable-substitution theory grounded in Checkpoint Systems US 5,059,951 and the EAS/marker art, but this conclusion is not verified and should not be relied on until that reference and Checkrobot US 4,792,018 are pulled and read.
• Claim 7 is the residual risk for a challenger and the residual hope for a patent owner.
• Caveat on the record: the most consequential references for the two designation-means embodiments (US 5,059,951, US 4,792,018, and, for the roller, any marking-device art) were not retrievable within my search budget this session. The roller and ink-strip limitations (claims 11–14) and the polarization limitations (claims 16–18) are the true points of novelty in this patent, and the § 103 attack on them is the part of this analysis most in need of a full-text verification pass. If the reference texts confirm the marker-state-change and conveyor-detection disclosures I have inferred from their titles and family listings, the case for invalidity of the entire claim set becomes strong; if they do not, claims 13–18 are the claims that would have survived the enforcement window.
• Non-§ 103 note carried forward: the claim 1 proximal/distal face inconsistency flagged in the earlier sections does not affect this analysis, but it would compound the patent's problems in district court under § 112(b), which — unlike § 103 — was never available at the PTAB for this patent (no IPR was ever filed, and the PGR window closed in June 1995).