US 5353388

I'll run searches against USPTO and CAFC-related sources for this specific patent number.

Now let me check for any CAFC or litigation activity involving this patent.

US Patent 5,353,388 — Summary

Important scoping note first: I was unable to search USPTO/CAFC dockets directly (no direct database access in this session). My searches of the open web for CAFC 2026 docket activity and litigation involving US 5,353,388 returned no results. I found no evidence of any Federal Circuit appeal or 2026 docket activity involving this patent. Given that the patent expired in 2011 (see below), 2026 appellate activity would be unusual, though not strictly impossible (appeals of pre-expiration infringement conduct can be litigated for years). Treat the "no CAFC activity" finding as a negative search result, not proof of non-existence.

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Bibliographic data

Data caveats / discrepancies I want to flag rather than paper over:

• Google Patents gives priority and filing date as 1991-10-17; Unified Patents' portal lists priority 1991-10-16 and grant date 1994-10-03 and expiration 2011-10-16 (one-day offsets). The authoritative full text provided to me says 1991-10-17 / 1994-10-04, so I use those, but the one-day variance exists in the record.
• The inventorship record is not clean. The face of the patent and Google Patents list only Tetsuro Motoyama. However, the 1991-11-29 assignment entry names three assignors — KIM, CHAN; LUU, NOLAN N.; and MOTOYAMA, TETSURO — which would suggest additional inventors. I cannot reconcile this from the material available; verify against the official USPTO assignment record before relying on sole inventorship.
• One search result returned JP 5353388 B2 (Toyota Boshoku, "樹脂圧入方法" / resin press-fitting method, 2013). That is a different, unrelated patent that merely collides on the seven-digit number. It is not US 5,353,388 and should not be conflated with it.

Abstract (as issued)

A document processing system controls printing of documents represented in page description language (PDL) form. The PDL is structured so that definition and declaratory commands appear only at the beginning of each distinct document segment. Each document has prologue sections (definition/declaratory commands) and content portions (tokens defining images). Prologue commands are arranged in a hierarchical tree, so each command's scope covers only the subtree it subtends. A Structure Processor handles resource declaration/definition, dictionary generation, context declarations, and external references; a Content Processor interprets tokens using the environment established by the Structure Processor; and an Imaging Driver Module translates the document into commands for several printer types or for telephone-line transmission to a remote device. The system can query a remote device to determine whether it has the resources required to process a high-level encoded document, and then transmits either rasterized bit-map form (if resources are lacking) or higher-level encoded form (if resources are available).

The problem it addressed

Per the background section, PostScript permits new resource or dictionary definitions anywhere in a document, so the whole document must be inspected to know whether a given printer has the required resources, and printing a specified page requires reading all preceding pages to reconstruct page-setup state. The invention instead relies on a fixed-format, hierarchically scoped prologue structure — pointedly contrasted with Interpress (free-form prologues) and with the ISO Standard Page Description Language (fixed-format prologues), the latter being the antecedent for this disclosure. The specification expressly cites ISO/IEC DIS 10180 (1991).

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Independent claims in plain language

All four claims are independent; there are no dependent claims in the patent.

Claim 1 — Method of printing a document to a remote printer. Receive a document as a stream of PDL elements defining a hierarchical tree, with hierarchically ordered prologue sections and content sections; prologue elements apply only to content sections subtended by that prologue in the tree. Convert image-defining tokens in the content sections into imaging instructions for a predefined remotely located printer. Decode the prologue elements and store representations in memory so that only the prologue elements applicable to each content section are used during that section's conversion. Then: build a required resource list for the remote printer to print the document in high-level PDL; query the remote printer to determine whether it has those resources; if it responds affirmatively, transmit the imaging instructions using high-level PDL commands; if not, convert to an image bit representation and transmit that instead. Two distinct inventive aspects are bundled here: hierarchical, scope-limited structural decoding, and resource-query-driven format selection.

Claim 2 — Document image printing controller (apparatus counterpart of claim 1). Structured as means-plus-function elements: receiving means for the hierarchically structured PDL document stream; a content processor generating imaging instructions for a remotely located printing device; a document structure processor that decodes prologues and stores representations so only the applicable prologues are available to the content processor; and an imaging driver processor that formats/transmits to a printer port for the remote device. The imaging driver includes a first printer driver (high-level PDL transmission to a first printer port) and a second printer driver plus rasterizer (image bit representation via a communication port). The controller also includes means for generating the required resource list. The second printer driver includes protocol means for querying the remote device, means for transmitting in high-level PDL on an affirmative response, and means for transmitting as an image bit representation otherwise.

Claim 3 — Method of transmitting a document (broader framing). Three steps: (a) first determining step — determine the resources needed to present a document encoded in a PDL; (b) second determining step — determine whether a remote presentation device contains those needed resources; (c) transmit the PDL-encoded document if the resources are present, or convert to an image bit representation and transmit that if they are not. Note this claim is deliberately not limited to a printer — it says "remote presentation device" — and omits the hierarchical-structure limitations of claim 1. Note also the claim language states the transmitting steps occur "after said second determining step" and the converting step likewise, rather than using the explicit "affirmatively/not affirmatively" conditional language of claim 1.

Claim 4 — Apparatus for transmitting a document (apparatus counterpart of claim 3). Means-plus-function mirror of claim 3: first determining means (resources needed to present the PDL document), second determining means (does the remote presentation device have them), plus transmitting means for the PDL-encoded document when resources are present, and means for converting into and transmitting an image bit representation when they are not.

Claim architecture observation: Claims 1–2 are "printing" claims tied to a remotely located printer and to the hierarchical PDL structure; claims 3–4 are "transmitting" claims tied to a broader remote presentation device and are not limited to the hierarchical prologue structure. Claims 3–4 are therefore the broader/more exposed claims and would be the likely focal point of any invalidity or infringement dispute, while claims 1–2 carry the hierarchical-tree and Structure-Processor/Content-Processor limitations that give them narrower scope and stronger support in the specification.

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Prosecution context and family

• Prior art cited of record (6 US patents): US 4,651,278 (IBM, interface process for all-points-addressable printer); US 4,672,459 (Ricoh, communication terminal with data format conversion); US 4,827,349 (Canon, communication terminal); US 5,040,000-series — specifically US 5,041,918 (Ricoh, facsimile adapter unit); US 5,075,874 (Eastman Kodak, communications interface for computer output printer); and US 5,220,674 (Digital Equipment, local area print server requesting/storing required resource data). The last two are the most on-point to the resource-query aspect.
• Non-patent literature cited: ISO/IEC DIS 10180 (Chs. 4–7); PC Week, Apr. 12, 1988, v5 N15; The Seybold Report on Desktop Publishing, Apr. 8, 1988, v5 N8.
• Family: JP 27213492A → JPH06131338A; EP 92309480A → EP0538059B1; continuation applications US 08/208,466 → US 5,506,985 and US 08/261,184 → US 5,504,891 (both titled "Method and apparatus for format conversion of a hierarchically structured page description language document"); and a continuation-in-part US 07/931,808 → US 5,416,896 ("Command definition dictionary handling and context declaration in a document publishing page description language"). The CIP relationship is notable: US 5,416,896 shares the 1991-10-17 priority date via the CIP.
• Forward citations: 93 "cited by" entries on the Google Patents page, 206 on the cited-by list, spanning Lexmark, Microsoft, Xerox, Adobe, Canon, Pitney Bowes, R.R. Donnelley, Tesseron, and Flexiworld — indicating this patent is treated as meaningful prior art in the print-driver, print-server, and remote-output space.

Sources

• Google Patents, US5353388A: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5353388/en (primary; full text used above)
• Unified Patents portal, US-5353388-A: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-5353388-A (source of the one-day date discrepancies and the examiner listing)
• Justia Patents: https://patents.justia.com/patent/5353388
• uspto.report grant page: https://uspto.report/patent/grant/5353388
• SumoBrain: https://SumoBrain.com/patents/us/System-method-document-processing/5353388.html
• Related family member (for CIP/family context): US 5,531,318 — https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[5535318](/patent/5535318).html

Explicit uncertainties

1. No CAFC or district-court activity confirmed. My searches found nothing; this is a negative result from open-web search only, not a verified clearance of USPTO or CAFC dockets. If a definitive docket check is needed, it must be run against PACER and the Federal Circuit's CM/ECF directly.
2. Inventorship discrepancy (Motoyama alone on the face vs. three assignors in the assignment record) is unresolved from available sources.
3. One-day date discrepancies between Google Patents and the Unified Patents portal on priority, grant, and expiration dates.
4. The full text provided shows an OCR-level inconsistency — the error-handling mode appears as both "spitgle" and "struggle" in different passages. I did not auto-correct it; the correct term is almost certainly "struggle" as used in the detailed description, but the document as extracted reads both ways.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 5,353,388. Let me run several targeted searches.

The initial searches returned many false positives from unrelated patents (SanDisk's '338, Solas OLED's '338, JP5353388B2). Let me drill down specifically on the Ricoh patent.

Litigation Search Report — U.S. Patent No. 5,353,388

Patent under investigation: US 5,353,388 A ("System and method for document processing"), inventor Tetsuro Motoyama, assignee Ricoh Company, Ltd. / Ricoh Americas Corp.; filed 1991‑10‑17; granted 1994‑10‑04; expired 2011‑10‑17.

Bottom line

I found no litigation specifically involving U.S. Patent No. 5,353,388.

I was unable to identify any district court case, ITC investigation, CAFC appeal, IPR/PGR, or other proceeding in which US 5,353,388 was asserted, challenged, or adjudicated. I cannot state with high confidence that no such case exists — see the caveats and verification steps below — but nothing in the sources I was able to reach identifies one.

What I searched

• Google Patents full text for US5353388 (the authoritative source provided; its "Cited By," "Families Citing," and family tables reflect patent citations only, not litigation)
• Unified Patents patent page: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-5353388-A — the retrieved content shows bibliographic data, family, and "Referenced By (207)," but no litigation/case list
• General web searches on US patent 5353388 litigation, "5353388" patent lawsuit case number, "5,353,388" Ricoh patent infringement, Ricoh patent 5,353,388 infringement lawsuit
• Ricoh‑as‑plaintiff litigation arising in the same technology space (Ricoh v. Oki Data, Ricoh v. Quanta, Ricoh v. Zoom, Ricoh v. MASA, Kodak v. Ricoh)

Note: my tooling returned a maximum‑steps cutoff before I could run the remaining planned queries (RPX Insight, Docket Navigator, CourtListener/RECAP docket name search, PACER). Those are the places most likely to surface a dormant, 1990s‑era assertion.

Important: false positives I ruled out

These come back for the string "338"/"5353388" and are not this patent. Do not conflate them:

Related family members (for context, not litigation of the '388 patent itself)

• EP 0 538 059 B1 — European counterpart, same priority (1991‑10‑17); expired. It appears as a cited reference in later EPO search reports (e.g., EP 1 033 645 A3), but that is prior‑art citation, not litigation.
• JP H06‑131338 A — Japanese counterpart (filed 1992‑10‑12, from JP 27213492 A).
• Continuation‑in‑part: US 07/931,808 → US 5,416,896 ("Command definition dictionary handling and context declaration in a document publishing PDL").
• Continuations: US 5,506,985 and US 5,504,891 ("Method and apparatus for format conversion of a hierarchically structured page description language document").

Caveats and recommended next steps

1. This is an absence of evidence, not proof of absence. My searches were web/aggregator‑based; a comprehensive litigation history requires paid docket tools. I could not complete the RPX/Docket Navigator/PACER queries due to a tool step limit.
2. Timing matters. The patent expired 2011‑10‑17, so any assertion would necessarily predate that date. A pre‑1994‑grant assertion is impossible, and pre‑1994 continuations (US 5,506,985, US 5,504,891 — filed 1994) are more likely candidates for any Ricoh PDL licensing campaign.
3. To verify definitively, check:
   • Unified Patents litigation caselist: https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist (search the patent number, not the string "338")
   • RPX Insight (insight.rpxcorp.com) — search by patent number 5353388
   • Docket Navigator / Lex Machina — patent‑number search
   • CourtListener/RECAP and PACER — full‑text complaint search for "5,353,388"
   • Ricoh's own SEC/10‑K disclosures and its known 1990s–2000s licensing programs, since Ricoh historically resolved printer/PDL disputes via license rather than suit

If you want, I can run the remaining targeted queries (RPX, Docket Navigator, PACER/CourtListener by patent number) as a follow‑up to close out the gap noted above.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" default against open-web sources before reporting.

The structured default says "no proceedings." Let me probe a few more angles before concluding, including reexamination and assertion history, since AIA trials only became available 2012-09-16 and this patent expired 2011-10-17.

PTAB / AIA Trial Analysis — US Patent 5,353,388

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The USPTO Open Data Portal (ODP) proceeding feed returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding naming US 5,353,388 — a breakdown of active: 0; claims invalidated: 0; claims sustained: 0; settled: 0; institution denied: 0 — and independent open-web verification returned no petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, termination, or Federal Circuit appeal touching this patent. The bottom-line defensive posture for a defendant is therefore unusual and should be stated precisely: this is not a "hardened" patent — it is an untouched one. All four claims are live-but-never-litigated at the PTAB, so there is no IPR-based invalidation record to lean on, and no § 315(e)(2) estoppel against anyone. At the same time, the reason no one has challenged it is that the patent expired on 2011-10-17, more than ten months before the first IPR petition could even be filed (AIA trials opened 2012-09-16) — so the absence of PTAB activity tells you nothing about the strength of the claims and everything about the timing of the patent's life versus the AIA's.

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Proceedings on file

There are no proceedings to enumerate. I am not going to manufacture proceeding numbers, petitioner names, or panels to fill the template — the correct output for this patent is that the template is empty. What follows is the verification trail and the adjacent-record checks that were run in place of the missing entries.

No AIA trial proceeding — verified negative

• Type: N/A (no IPR, PGR, or CBM on record)
• Filed: N/A — and note the structural reason: 35 U.S.C. §§ 311–319 IPR practice opened 2012-09-16; the patent's anticipated expiration was 2011-10-17. CBM review (which extended to some pre-AIA patents) sunset for new petitions on 2020-09-15 under 37 C.F.R. § 42.300(d), a decade after expiration. PGR is unavailable outright — it requires a patent with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16, and this application was filed 1991-10-17.
• Status: No proceeding exists. (Structured ODP data: "no AIA trial proceedings for this patent as of the most recent ingest.")
• Judge panel: None — no panel was ever assigned.
• Petition grounds: None asserted. No § 102, § 103, or § 112 challenge to claims 1, 2, 3, or 4 is on file.
• Institution decision: None issued.
• Final Written Decision: None issued. No claim of US 5,353,388 has ever been canceled, confirmed, or adjudicated at the PTAB. Claim-level status is: claim 1 — untested; claim 2 — untested; claim 3 — untested; claim 4 — untested.
• Settlement / termination: N/A.
• Appeal: No PTAB Final Written Decision exists to appeal, and no Federal Circuit appeal from a PTAB decision on this patent is on record. (This is consistent with — and better explained by — the earlier "no confirmed CAFC activity" finding in the summary section, which searched for 2026 appellate activity.)
• Defensive value: The practical consequence is that nothing is canceled and nothing is estopped. A defendant cannot describe any of claims 1–4 as "already invalidated," and no petitioner's § 315(e)(2) estoppel runs in the defendant's favor. Conversely, the patent's expired status means the entire IPR question is likely academic: the Board can and does institute on expired patents (claims on an expired patent cannot be amended, and Phillips construction applies rather than the broadest reasonable interpretation), but with no prospect of injunctive relief and a limited damages window ending in 2011, the economic case for a petition is close to nil — and under the Office's 2025 discretionary-denial posture, including the "settled expectations" factor applied to aged patents, a petition filed today would face a steep institutional hurdle.

Supplemental record checks (all negative):

• Ex parte reexamination: No reexamination certificate for 5,353,388 was located. Absence of an FWD or a reexam certificate means there is no administrative validity adjudication of any kind on this patent.
• Real-party assertion history: No U.S. district court or ITC complaint asserting 5,353,388 surfaced. Ricoh's public litigation campaigns in this era involved different patents (e.g., the '048/'343/'690/'580/'911 fuser patents against Oki Data, and optical-disc patents against Quanta). This matters for the § 315(b) posture only hypothetically — with no complaint ever served, no one-year clock has ever started.
• Defensive aggregators: No Unified Patents, RPX, or similar entity proceeding was found. Unified's patent page for US-5353388-A appears as a prior-art analytics record only, with no challenge proceeding attached.

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Strategic summary

Claim status. Every claim of US 5,353,388 is UNTESTED at the PTAB: claims 1, 2, 3, and 4 are neither canceled nor confirmed through any AIA trial. There are zero CANCELED claims, zero SUSTAINED claims, and zero claims narrowed by certificate. Any statement from an adverse party that a claim of this patent has been "invalidated at the PTAB" is false. As the claim-architecture analysis in the prior section flags, claims 3–4 are the broad, non-printer-specific "remote presentation device" claims (no hierarchical-prologue limitation) and claims 1–2 are the narrower, printer-specific claims carrying the hierarchical-tree and Structure Processor/Content Processor limitations — but that relative exposure has never been litigated anywhere.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR or PGR was ever instituted, no § 315(e)(2) estoppel has attached to any party — not to a petitioner, not to a real party in interest, not to a privy. There is therefore no "IPR-cleared" prior-art ground available to a defendant and no barred ground either. Practically, this cuts both ways: a defendant retains the full universe of § 102/§ 103 art (including the six references of record — US 4,651,278, US 4,672,459, US 4,827,349, US 5,041,918, US 5,075,874, and US 5,220,674 — plus the ISO/IEC DIS 10180 and Seybold/PC Week NPL) with no estoppel encumbrance, but also has no pre-packaged PTAB record to borrow and would have to build an invalidity case from scratch in a district court forum.

Pattern signals. There is no pattern to read at the PTAB: no serial petitioner, no joinder, no Patent Owner appeal practice, no aggregator involvement. The relevant pattern signal is upstream and commercial, not adversarial — this is a 1991-priority corporate Ricoh patent that expired on 2011-10-17, in a family that Ricoh also extended through US 5,506,985, US 5,504,891, and the CIP US 5,416,896. The forward-citation volume (93 "cited by" entries on the Google Patents page; 206 on the broader cited-by list, spanning Lexmark, Microsoft, Xerox, Adobe, Canon, Pitney Bowes, R.R. Donnelley, Tesseron, and Flexiworld) shows the disclosure is treated as significant prior art in the print-driver and remote-output space — but that is a citation footprint, not a PTAB challenge footprint, and the two should not be conflated.

Do not over-read the silence. The received wisdom that "well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs" does not apply cleanly here, because the patent's enforcement window (1994–2011) preceded the IPR window (2012–present) for all but zero months. The absence of PTAB activity on this patent is a timing artifact, not a validation of claim strength and not a signal that the patent was ever too strong to challenge.

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Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant and the other side cites claims 1–4 as PTAB-tested or "validated," that is wrong. There is no Final Written Decision to link to and no disposition to quote — I am deliberately not citing a nonexistent paper or FWD. Your response is that the patent has never been before the Board, and you should demand the adverse party identify the proceeding number it is relying on.
2. Check the operative end date before spending on this patent at all. Anticipated expiration was 2011-10-17 (Google Patents) with a one-day variant of 2011-10-16 reported by the Unified Patents portal; the summary section already flags this one-day discrepancy. Either way, the patent is long expired, which forecloses injunctive relief and confines any damages theory to pre-2011 conduct and the six-year lookback. Confirm maintenance-fee payment history through USPTO Patent Center before relying on enforceability for any pre-2011 act.
3. If a challenge is nonetheless contemplated, the realistic vehicle is not an IPR — it is a district-court invalidity defense or an ex parte reexamination request. Note that a 2025-10-17 USPTO rule proposal and the Director's institution memorandum (effective 2025-10-20) have centralized institution decisions with the Director and introduced an age-of-patent "settled expectations" denial factor, which materially disfavors petitions against a patent of this vintage; I am reporting that as current practice, not as a prediction about any specific petition.
4. Verify the record at source rather than relying on this memo. The ODP feed can lag recent filings. Definitive checks: PTAB E2E at https://ptab.uspto.gov (search by patent number), the USPTO PTAB Decisions page at https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab, and CourtListener's docket search at https://www.courtlistener.com for any CAFC appeal. For assignment/inventorship reconciliation — flagged as unresolved in the summary (sole inventor Motoyama on the face versus three assignors in the 1991-11-29 assignment record) — pull the official USPTO assignment record directly.
5. If the assertion involves the related family, note that US 5,506,985, US 5,504,891, and US 5,416,896 are separate patents with their own expiration dates and their own (unverified here) challenge histories. I did not search those three for PTAB activity and am not implying they are clean; treat any statement about them — including from me — as unverified until each is run through PTAB E2E.

Source limitations, stated plainly: the proceeding count rests on (a) the structured ODP block supplied to me and (b) open-web search. I could not query PTAB E2E or PACER directly. This is a verified negative from the available sources, not a certified clearance of every Office and court docket.

I'll search for the assignment record for this patent.

Let me dig into the assignment record and any litigation history.

Search limitation up front

I could not reach the USPTO Patent Assignment Center or its API directly in this session, and my open-web searches did not return the Assignment Center record for patent number 5,353,388. What follows is reconstructed from the Google Patents "Legal Events / reassignment" panel (which mirrors the USPTO assignment record but frequently omits reel/frame numbers), the Unified Patents portal, and one PlainSite assignment abstract for a sibling Ricoh case. Where a data element (reel/frame, correspondent, execution date) was not surfaced, I say so rather than supply a placeholder. Verify at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ by patent number 5353388.

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Inventors

Pattern flags — none of the classic red flags are present:

• No inventor-departure pattern. Motoyama did not leave Ricoh after filing — he filed the continuation-in-part US 07/931,808 (issued as US 5,416,896) on 1992-08-11, roughly ten months after the '388 filing, and remained a prolific Ricoh inventor for decades. That is the opposite of the "all inventors depart within 12 months" precursor to a portfolio fire-sale.
• Inventorship discrepancy (carried forward, not resolved). The patent face and Google Patents list only Motoyama, but the 1991-11-29 assignment names three assignors. I previously flagged this as possibly indicating omitted inventors. My refinement after this pass: the more likely reading is that a single batched assignment document covered several related Ricoh applications from the same inventor group. The supporting evidence is a sibling Ricoh filing — US 07/780,822 (issued as US 5,206,932, "Flexible Frame Buffer Architecture…") — recorded at reel 6027/148 on 1992-02-28, where the assignors listed were Chang, Hershow; Kim, Seong L.; and Motoyama, Tetsuro and the assignees were Ricoh Company, Ltd. and Ricoh Corporation. That record groups inventors from more than one application into one conveyance, which is exactly the batching pattern I'd expect here. This is a hypothesis, not a verified fact — the face-of-patent inventorship question for the '388 patent is still open and should be checked against the official assignment document image.

Note the name near-collision: the sibling record has "Kim, Seong L.", the '388 record has "Kim, Chan". I cannot confirm these are the same person or two different Ricoh inventors. Do not assume identity.

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Original assignee

Ricoh Company, Ltd. (3-6, Nakamagome 1-chome, Ohta-ku, Tokyo, Japan), per the patent face and the 1991-11-29 assignment. Google Patents also lists Ricoh Americas Corp among both "original assignee" and "current assignee"; Unified Patents shows "Original Assignee: Ricoh Americas Corp / Parent Company: Ricoh Co Ltd."

Important data-quality caution: the presence of "Ricoh Americas Corp" is almost certainly a downstream change of name of the US subsidiary (Ricoh Corporation → Ricoh Americas Corporation, c. 2006–2007), not evidence of a transfer to an unrelated entity. I could not retrieve a change-of-name recording from the Assignment Center to confirm whether such a record exists. Treat the "two assignees" listing as an artifact of aggregator name-mapping until verified.

• Shipped a product embodying the claims? Not confirmed. The specification contemplates the "Image Processor 150" as (a) a standalone print server/peripheral, or (b) the engine/controller of a "PDL compatible" laser or ink jet printer. Ricoh certainly sold PDL printers and print controllers in this era, but I have no source mapping a specific Ricoh product to these four claims. State it as unproven.
• Primary line of business: office imaging and document equipment — copiers, printers, MFPs, facsimile, plus digital cameras/electronics. Large publicly traded Japanese multinational (TSE: 6501).
• Current status: Operating. No bankruptcy, receivership, dissolution, or liquidation found for Ricoh Company, Ltd. or Ricoh Americas Corp. Ricoh renewals on this patent were paid through expiry (Unified Patents reports lifetime renewal fees of $0 outstanding, consistent with a patent that simply aged out).

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Assignment timeline

Exactly one assignment is documented for this patent.

• Executed: not surfaced (per-inventor dating unknown) / Recorded 1991-11-29 — Reel not surfaced / Frame not surfaced
  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors Interest (Google Patents legal-events text: "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS INTEREST")
  • Assignor: KIM, CHAN; LUU, NOLAN N.; MOTOYAMA, TETSURO
  • Assignee: RICOH COMPANY, LTD.
  • Correspondent: not surfaced for this record. Related but different filing: the sibling case US 5,206,932 charged the correspondent William S. Galliani, Flehr Hohbach Test Albritton & Herbert LLP, Suite 3400, Four Embarcadero Center, San Francisco, CA 94111 (reel 6027/148). Because that is a different patent, it is context only — it does not establish recurrence across this chain.
  • Context: routine inventor-to-employer assignment, recorded ~6 weeks after the 1991-10-17 filing. Standard pre-AIA housekeeping. Not a fire-sale, not a securitization, not a transfer to an asserter.

Post-issuance events (from Google Patents, none of them ownership transfers):

No assignment, security agreement, merger, licence, or release appears in the record after 1991-11-29. Under the taxonomy you gave me, that is itself the finding: the original assignee still owns the patent, and the patent expired in Ricoh's hands.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5353388
    1991 : Application filed 17 Oct
         : Inventors assign to Ricoh 29 Nov
    1992 : Continuation in part filed
    1994 : Patent issued 4 Oct
    2011 : Patent expired 17 Oct

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. No assignment to any "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" entity. The sole recorded conveyance runs to an operating manufacturer (Ricoh Company, Ltd.), recorded 1991-11-29. Current assignee of record remains Ricoh per Google Patents.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, or any other listed NPE appears as assignee or assignor at any point. Neither the Unified Patents portal nor any search hit surfaced an NPE assignee for this number.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not assessable. The chain has only one link, so recurrence within the chain is impossible by construction, and the correspondent on the 1991-11-29 record was not surfaced by any source I could reach. The only correspondent name I obtained (William S. Galliani, Flehr Hohbach Test Albritton & Herbert LLP) belongs to a different patent's recording (reel 6027/148). Do not convert that into a recurrence finding for this patent.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Zero transfers after 1991-11-29, let alone several within 24 months.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. There is no post-issuance transfer at all, so none can be pre-litigation. Separately, I found no litigation involving US 5,353,388.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. Ricoh never entered bankruptcy proceedings relevant to this patent, and no transfer out of an estate appears in the record.

7. Privateering — not present. No operating-company-to-NPE transfer; no EFF / Patent Progress / SEC-disclosure coverage linking Ricoh to assertion of this patent.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at the original operating manufacturer, by expiry.

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Verdict

Insufficient data — the record consists of only the original inventor-to-employer assignment.

The sole documented conveyance is the 1991-11-29 "Assignment of Assignors Interest" from Kim, Chan; Luu, Nolan N.; and Motoyama, Tetsuro to Ricoh Company, Ltd., recorded weeks after the 1991-10-17 filing. No reel/frame, correspondent, or execution date was surfaced for that record, and no post-issuance assignment of any kind appears — the patent expired 2011-10-17 still held by Ricoh, which is an ongoing, publicly traded operating manufacturer, not an NPE. Every one of the eight NPE signals is "not present," which is the inverse of the shell-entity/asserter profile; the only reason the verdict is not a clean "operating-company ownership" call is that this engagement asked specifically about NPE patterns and litigation, and I could not confirm either the reel/frame detail or the absence of any unrecorded transfer from primary sources.

Verify independently at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 5353388), and cross-check the JP/EP family members (JPH06131338A, EP0538059B1) at their respective registers for any transfer activity not mirrored in the US record.

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Two collision warnings (repeat, because they will burn you)

• US 9,565,388 — the "'388 patent" in Maxell, Ltd. v. Coretronic Corp. / Optoma Corp. (E.D. Tex. 5:24-cv-00088) is a different patent that merely shares the trailing digits. Not this patent.
• JP 5353388 B2 — Toyota Boshoku's 樹脂圧入方法 ("resin press-fitting method"), granted 2013-11-27, is unrelated to US 5,353,388 and merely collides on the seven-digit number.

One contradiction to reconcile with the earlier section

The previously generated summary stated the assignment record "names three assignors — KIM, CHAN; LUU, NOLAN N.; and MOTOYAMA, TETSURO — which would suggest additional inventors," and left it there. I am not overriding that, but I am adding a competing explanation: the record may be a batched multi-application assignment rather than evidence of omitted inventors, supported by the analogous batching visible at reel 6027/148 for sibling Ricoh case US 5,206,932. Both readings remain live until the assignment document image is pulled.

I'll search for the patent and each cited reference. Starting with the patent itself and its citation record.

Now let me look up each of the six cited prior-art references individually.

Now the remaining cited references.

Prior Art Analysis — US 5,353,388 (Motoyama / Ricoh)

Scoping and search-completeness disclosure

I ran targeted searches for US 5,353,388 itself and for the cited references. I was able to retrieve full or near-full text/abstracts for US 4,651,278 (via its IBM EP counterpart EP 0 191 177) and US 4,672,459 (Ricoh). For US 4,827,349, US 5,041,918, US 5,075,874, and US 5,220,674 I was cut off by a tool-step limit before retrieving full specifications. For those four, the descriptions below are grounded in the titles of record on the US 5,353,388 face, the bibliographic data in the authoritative full text, and my background knowledge — and I flag them as not independently verified in this session. Where I am inferring technical content from a title alone, I say so explicitly rather than presenting it as confirmed.

No search result in this session contradicted the face-of-patent citation list already established in the previously generated section. The citation record stands as follows.

Critical threshold date: The authoritative full text gives US 5,353,388 a filing/priority date of 1991-10-17. Every anticipation assessment below is anchored to that date, not to the 1991-10-16 alternative found on the Unified Patents portal.

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The six references cited of record on the US 5,353,388 face

Two of the six (US 5,075,874 and US 5,220,674) issued after 1991-10-17 and therefore cannot be §102(a) or §102(b) art against this patent. They remain available as §102(e) art as of their respective filing dates (1989-04-10 and 1987-07-17), both of which precede the 1991-10-17 date. This distinction matters: a §102(e) reference can anticipate on its filing date for subject matter actually disclosed in the specification as filed, but is not "prior art" in the §102(b) sense.

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Reference-by-reference analysis

1. US 4,651,278 — IBM, "Interface process for an all points addressable printer"

Full citation: U.S. Patent 4,651,278, Interface process for an all points addressable printer, filed 11 Feb 1985 (US priority appl. 700,427), issued 17 Mar 1987, assignee International Business Machines Corp. Inventors include Marlin, James Warden; Platte, Brian Gerald; Yeskel, Filip Jay. (Bibliographic details confirmed via IBM's European counterpart EP 0 191 177 A3/B1, published 1986-08-20, which shares the 1985-02-11 US priority.)

Brief description (verified): A process for interconnecting an all-points-addressable page printer with a host application program, independent of the communication medium (channel, LAN, or telecommunication line) and transmission protocol. It uses structured field data streams to manage and control printer processes — text, raster image, graphics and bar-code blocks positioned at arbitrary points on a logical page; overlays and page segments downloaded once and stored under local names in printer memory; media control (duplex, drawer selection, jogging). Two features are directly relevant here:

• The process manages downloading of fonts, symbol sets, and stored objects that are "required at presentation time to construct the printed page."
• It involves "the establishment of a first independent state in which the host application and the printer communicate with one another to establish device control parameters," during which "the printer communicates to the application host its identity… and the data type or types… for which the printer supports the reception of presentation control commands and data. It may also identify… any limitations."

§102 assessment: This is the strongest of the six for the resource-negotiation aspect of claims 3 and 4, because it discloses a host–printer handshake in which the printer reports its capabilities and any limitations before the host sends presentation data — i.e., determining device capability before committing to a data format. However, the EP counterpart as retrieved describes capability reporting, not the claimed sequence of (a) building a required-resource list, (b) querying whether the remote device has those specific resources, and (c) conditionally transmitting PDL vs. rasterized image bits. I therefore assess it as potentially anticipating claims 3–4 only if the unretrieved US specification discloses the conditional raster-vs-PDL transmission branch — which the EP abstract I retrieved does not show. No §102 anticipation of claims 1–2, which additionally require the hierarchical prologue/tree structure that US 4,651,278 does not describe. Realistically this is §103 combination art, paired with a rasterizing reference.

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2. US 4,672,459 — Ricoh, "Communication terminal apparatus with data format conversion capability"

Full citation: U.S. Patent 4,672,459, Communication terminal apparatus with data format conversion capability, filed 18 Nov 1983, issued 9 Jun 1987, assignee Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Brief description (verified from the patent text): A terminal built around a scanner (1), keyboard (2), a screen editor (3), screen display (4), image memory (5), communication control unit (6), network control unit (7) and printer (8). The screen editor contains a data compressor (302, 320) and data expander (316) for encoding/decoding graphic information, a character generator (319), and synthesizers (304, 305, 317) that merge compressed graphic data (DG) with character code data (DC) to compose a page. Switches (311–313) route the composed or memory-resident data either to the local printer (8) or to the communication control unit (6) for network transmission, under a "predetermined transmission control procedure."

§102 assessment: This is a format-conversion and text/graphic-merging terminal, and it is the reference most plausibly relevant to the conversion generality of claims 3–4 ("converting the document encoded in the page description language into an image bit representation"). But it operates on facsimile-style compressed image data and character codes, not on a page description language, and it discloses no resource list, no query of a remote device, and no conditional selection between a high-level-encoded transmission and a bit-map transmission. I see no §102 anticipation of any of claims 1–4. It is background/disclosure-of-conversion art and, at most, a §103 secondary reference. The title's "data format conversion capability" is doing more work in the citation than the disclosure supports against these particular claims.

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3. US 4,827,349 — Canon, "Communication terminal device"

Full citation: U.S. Patent 4,827,349, Communication terminal device, filed 30 Apr 1985, issued 2 May 1989, assignee Canon Kabushiki Kaisha.

Brief description (limited verification): Confirmed as a Canon communication terminal patent with the cited title, priority 1985-04-30, grant 1989-05-02 (the reference appears in the "Family Cites Families" of JP 2003-125134 as "US4827349A … 1985-04-30 … 1989-05-02 … Canon Kabushiki Kaisha … Communication terminal device"). I did not retrieve the specification. On its face and title it is a facsimile/data communication terminal reference, consistent with the Canon 1980s communication-terminal family (cf. US 4,843,479 to Canon, a data communication apparatus).

§102 assessment: Based on the title and field alone, I cannot identify any disclosure of hierarchical PDL prologue structure, resource lists, or conditional PDL-vs-raster transmission. I assess no §102 anticipation of any claim, and I flag that this conclusion rests on incomplete verification — if a full-text pull shows a remote-device capability negotiation, claims 3–4 could be implicated. This is a verification gap, not a confirmed negative.

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4. US 5,041,918 — Ricoh, "Facsimile adapter unit"

Full citation: U.S. Patent 5,041,918, Facsimile adapter unit, filed 30 Jun 1989, issued 20 Aug 1991, assignee Ricoh Company, Ltd.

Brief description (limited verification): The title and assignee of record describe an adapter unit that lets a host or terminal interoperate with a facsimile device — i.e., an interface/conversion box between a computer-side data source and a fax output path. I did not retrieve the specification in this session.

§102 assessment: A "facsimile adapter unit" is plausibly relevant to the bit-map/facsimile fallback branch of claims 1–4, since it addresses interfacing a data source to a fax machine — one of the two transmission modes claimed. But an adapter unit per se does not disclose the claimed (a) required-resource list, (b) query of the remote device's resources, and (c) conditional selection between PDL and raster based on the answer. I assess no §102 anticipation of any claim on the available record, with the same verification caveat as item 3. Note this is a same-assignee (Ricoh) reference, which is common in this prosecution and suggests it was cited to cover the fax-interfacing environment rather than the novel query logic.

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5. US 5,075,874 — Eastman Kodak, "Communications interface for computer output printer"

Full citation: U.S. Patent 5,075,874, Communications interface for computer output printer, filed 10 Apr 1989, issued 24 Dec 1991, assignee Eastman Kodak Company.

Brief description (limited verification): A computer-to-printer communications interface — on its title and field, an interface providing the protocol/handshake by which a computer drives an output printer. Specification not retrieved in this session.

§102 assessment: Because this reference issued 1991-12-24, after the 1991-10-17 filing date, it is available only under §102(e) as of its 1989-04-10 filing date. It is a plausible §103 secondary reference on the host/printer communications-interface aspects, but the title discloses nothing about a hierarchical PDL, a required-resource list, remote-device querying, or conditional raster-vs-PDL transmission. I assess no §102 anticipation of any claim, and specifically flag the §102(e)-only status — a point on which a careless invalidity theory could go wrong.

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6. US 5,220,674 — Digital Equipment Corp., "Local area print server for requesting and storing required resource data and forwarding printer status message to selected destination"

Full citation: U.S. Patent 5,220,674, Local area print server for requesting and storing required resource data and forwarding printer status message to selected destination, filed 17 Jul 1987, issued 15 Jun 1993, assignee Digital Equipment Corporation.

Brief description (from the title of record; specification not retrieved): This is the most on-point of the six to the resource-determination inventions, and the Examiner's citation of it is transparently aimed at that feature. Its title recites two of the operative concepts almost verbatim in the claim language of US 5,353,388: "requesting … required resource data" and "forwarding printer status message." A print server that requests and stores required resource data is, at minimum, a system that determines and obtains resource information from/for a printer.

§102 assessment: This reference issued 1993-06-15, after the 1991-10-17 filing date, so it too is §102(e)-only, as of its 1987-07-17 filing date. On the title of record it is a serious §103 combination candidate against claims 3 and 4 (the broad "transmitting" claims, which require only: determine the resources needed; determine whether the remote device has them; transmit PDL if yes, bit-map if no). If the US 5,220,674 specification, as filed in 1987, discloses both (a) the server requesting/obtaining resource data from the printer and (b) a fallback to an image/bit-map representation when the printer cannot handle the job, then a §102(e) anticipation of claims 3 and 4 becomes arguable. I could not verify (b) in this session, and (b) is the branch that distinguishes mere resource management from the claimed conditional-format transmission. Against claims 1–2 this reference cannot anticipate, because it discloses nothing of the hierarchical prologue-tree PDL structure. This is the single reference I would prioritize for a full-text pull.

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Non-patent literature cited of record

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Family-cited references (not on the US face)

The Google Patents record lists two Japanese references under "Family Cites Families" — i.e., cited in the JP/EP family member rather than on the US 5,353,388 face. They must not be attributed to this US prosecution.

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Consolidated anticipation matrix

Bottom line. No reference cited of record appears on the verified record to anticipate any of claims 1–4 in its entirety. The two limitations the Examiner had to piece together from separate references are: (i) the hierarchical, scope-limited prologue/tree structure — covered by the ISO/IEC DIS 10180 SPDL reference and by the applicant's own family (US 5,506,985 / US 5,504,891 / US 5,416,896), not by any single US reference; and (ii) the required-resource-list → remote query → conditional PDL-vs-bit-map transmission — covered most closely by US 5,220,674 (DEC print server requesting required resource data) and, on the inquiry sub-step, by the family-cited JP S60-157353 (Citizen Watch), with US 4,651,278 (IBM) supplying the printer-capability handshake. That structure — two independent references, one on each side — is a §103 combination, not a §102 anticipation, and it explains why the claims issued.

Verification gaps I am not papering over:

1. Full texts of US 4,827,349, US 5,041,918, US 5,075,874, US 5,220,674 were not retrieved here; the four assessments above rest on titles/fields and are marked as such.
2. The US 5,220,674 specification as filed in 1987 is the single highest-value pull for testing claims 3–4.
3. The §102(b) status of ISO/IEC DIS 10180 (a draft standard) and of the JP references is a factual date/accessibility question I could not resolve.
4. Two of the six references are §102(e)-only; any invalidity theory resting on them must be framed accordingly.
5. The previously generated section's "no CAFC/litigation activity found" finding remains a negative search result; nothing in this session's searches changes it.

I'll ground this analysis by verifying the key prior-art references' disclosures before mapping them to the claims.

Obviousness Analysis — US 5,353,388 under 35 U.S.C. § 103(a) (pre-AIA)

Scope note first. This analysis builds on the claim breakdown and prior-art inventory already established. Two caveats up front:

1. Methodology / evidence limits. I have the titles and dates of the six U.S. references of record and the three NPL items from the patent's own front page, and I have verified the substantive disclosure of only three of them via full text (DEC '674, ISO/IEC DIS 10180, and JPS60157353A). Where I map a reference to a claim element based on title alone, I flag it as requiring full-text confirmation. I have not fabricated disclosure.
2. The patent's own specification is prior-art evidence against it. Under § 103 the applicant's admissions about the state of the art are usable. The '388 background expressly concedes that ISO/IEC DIS 10180 "organizes documents in a hierarchical manner" and "uses prologues having a predetermined fixed format," and that prior PDLs (PostScript, Interpress) already provided "Resource Declarations, Context Declarations, Dictionaries, [and] the use of memory stacks." That concession does more work than any single reference below.

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I. Governing framework

The application was filed 1991-10-17, so pre-AIA § 103(a) applies: whether "the subject matter as a whole would have been obvious at the time the invention was made to a person having ordinary skill in the art." Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1, 17 (1966). The four Graham factors control: (1) scope and content of the prior art; (2) differences between the prior art and the claims; (3) the level of ordinary skill; and (4) objective indicia.

KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), governs the combination question. A combination is obvious where the elements "work as expected," where the improvement is "a predictable variation," or where the technique was "used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way." Id. at 417, 421. The Federal Circuit's pre-KSR "teaching, suggestion, or motivation" test survives only as one permissible rationale, not the exclusive one — MPEP § 2143 lists rationales (A)–(G), including design incentives/market forces and "obvious to try."

All four claims are independent. There are no dependent claims. Each must be assessed separately, and the analysis splits cleanly into two families:

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II. Level of ordinary skill (Graham factor 3)

The presumptive POSITA as of October 1991 is a person with a B.S. in electrical engineering or computer science (or equivalent) and approximately two to four years of experience in printer controllers, page-description-language interpreters, or print-server/network peripheral software. This person would be familiar with PostScript, Interpress, the emerging ISO SPDL work, laser-printer controller design, and facsimile (G3/G4) transmission. This is the level at which all references below must be evaluated — and it is a level at which the '388 specification itself says the components were individually known.

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III. Ground 1 — Claims 3 and 4 are obvious over DEC '674 + Ricoh '459/'918 + IBM '278 (+ Citizen '353)

III.A. The references and their § 102 status

The § 102(e) status of DEC '674 and Ricoh '918 matters and should be stated explicitly: both issued after the '388 filing date, so they are not § 102(a)/(b) art on their face; but each was filed before 1991-10-17, so each is § 102(e) prior art (no earlier invention date appears of record for the '388), and § 103(c) common ownership does not apply (Digital Equipment and Eastman Kodak/Ricoh are unrelated). The same analysis applies to US 5,075,874 (Eastman Kodak, "Communications interface for computer output printer," filed 1989-04-10 → issued 1991-12-24), which is the other § 102(e) reference available here.

III.B. Element-by-element mapping (claims 3 & 4)

Assessment. Claims 3 and 4 read directly onto a combination of (i) a print server that determines required resources, asks a remote node whether it has them, and forwards high-level print instructions if so (DEC '674), and (ii) the well-known fallback of converting to a raster/facsimile bit map when the destination cannot accept the high-level form (Ricoh '459/'918, IBM '278). Every element of claims 3 and 4 is accounted for. The only genuine question is motivation, addressed in § V.

Note also that claim 3's preamble is deliberately not limited to a printer — "remote presentation device" — which strips away any argument that the claim is confined to the print-server context of DEC '674. If anything, the broader "presentation device" language makes the combination easier, because fax/display/raster-output destinations are exactly the devices for which bit-map fallback is conventional.

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IV. Ground 2 — Claims 1 and 2 are obvious over ISO/IEC DIS 10180 in view of DEC '674 + Ricoh '918/'459 + IBM '278 (+ Citizen '353)

IV.A. The hierarchical-structure limitations are taught by the standard, and admitted by the patent

Claim 1 adds three limitations over claim 3: (a) the received document is "a stream of page description language elements which define said document as a hierarchical tree structure"; (b) hierarchically ordered prologue sections whose prologue elements are "applicable only to those of said content sections subtended by said prologue section in the document's hierarchical tree structure"; and (c) "decoding said prologue elements and storing representations thereof in a computer memory so that stored representations of only those prologue elements applicable to each content section… are utilized."

These are precisely the features of ISO/IEC DIS 10180, which is cited on the face of the patent as a non-patent reference and described in the patent's own background. The standard's confirmed disclosure (via the ANSI preview showing "5.1 Hierarchical structure" and "7.5 PROLOGUE," and via the ISO/IEC 10180//SPDL document-instance syntax reproduced in dependent Ricoh filings) is:

• a document is a pageset or a picture;
• pageset and picture each consist of an optional prologue (definitions/declarations) and an optional body;
• a pageset body contains pagesets or pictures; a picture body contains pictures or tokensequences;
• "The effects of prologue within a picture or a pageset is until the end of the picture or the pageset" — i.e., scope is co-extensive with the subtended subtree.

The '388 specification concedes exactly this: it states that SPDL "organizes documents in a hierarchical manner" and uses "prologues having a predetermined fixed format," and reproduces a document instance in full SPDL syntax (<!DOCTYPE SPDL PUBLIC …>). A POSITA reading the admitted prior art would find every structural limitation of claim 1(a)–(c) already present in DIS 10180. The structural limitations of claim 1 are therefore the weakest part of the claim, not the strongest.

IV.B. Complete mapping for claims 1 and 2

For claim 2, the apparatus limitations map as follows: the "content processor" and "document structure processor" are the conventional interpreter split that DIS 10180's structure/content distinction requires; the "imaging driver processor" with a "first printer driver" for high-level PDL and a "second printer driver and a rasterizer" is exactly the multi-driver architecture the '388 specification describes as its own design (drivers for PostScript, HP LaserJet/emulation, bit-map printers, and remote devices), each of which was individually conventional; and the "protocol means for querying" is met by Citizen '353 and DEC '674.

Assessment. Claims 1 and 2 are obvious on the same combination as Ground 1, with ISO/IEC DIS 10180 supplying the hierarchical-structure limitations that the patent admits the standard already had. The added "structure processor / content processor" architecture of claim 2 is, at bottom, the ordinary way to build an interpreter for a standard whose own grammar separates "structure" from "content."

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V. Motivation to combine (the heart of the § 103 case)

KSR permits any of several rationales; here, at least four independently apply.

(1) Same field, same problem, complementary solutions (rationale: predictable result). DEC '674 and the '388 share a single objective: make sure the destination device can actually process the job before/while sending it. DEC '674 solves it by supplying missing resources to the printer from a local or remote source; the '388 solves it by avoiding the need for those resources — send high-level commands if the device has them, raster bits if it doesn't. These are two well-known, mutually complementary answers to the identical problem. KSR: "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious."

(2) Explicit teaching in the prior art to query the printer before printing (rationale: express TSM). JPS60157353A (1985) is squarely on point: its stated purpose is to let the host CPU "automatically investigate the functions… and the type of the printer," obtain that information from the printer "prior to printing," and "select automatically a suitable printer," thereby "improv[ing] the printing efficiency." That is a direct, express teaching to do precisely the "querying… to determine whether said remotely located printer device has resources" step of claim 1 and the "second determining step" of claim 3. Combined with DEC '674's resource directory, a POSITA had both the idea of pre-flight capability interrogation and a concrete mechanism for it.

(3) Market forces / design incentive (rationale: F). Networked printing in 1991 was heterogeneous: PostScript devices, HP LaserJet and emulation devices, non-PDL raster engines, and fax machines all co-existed on the same networks, and a print server that could not adapt its output to the destination would fail jobs. The '388 specification itself lists this zoo of destinations. A POSITA had strong market-driven reason to build a formatter that picks the most economical representation the destination can handle — exactly what KSR calls "an apparent design incentive" or "market pressure."

(4) Adoption of a published standard (rationale: D — known technique applied to a known device ready for improvement). Where the goal is interoperability across many devices, implementing a published ISO draft standard as the document representation is an obvious engineering choice; this is why the draft standard was cited by the applicant in the first place. And the standard's hierarchical prologues were designed to make resource requirements determinable before printing — which is the enabling premise of the whole resource-query scheme. That makes the DIS 10180 + DEC '674 + Citizen '353 combination not merely permissible but positively indicated.

Rationale summary table (MPEP § 2143):

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VI. The strongest counterarguments, and why they likely fail

A. "The references solve the problem differently." DEC '674 supplies resources; the '388 bypasses them by rasterizing. But § 103 does not require the prior art to solve the problem the same way — only that the claimed subject matter as a whole be obvious. In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413, 425 (CCPA 1981) ("the test for obviousness is not whether the features of a secondary reference may be bodily incorporated into the primary reference… [but] what the combined teachings… would have suggested"). Note also that claim 1's affirmative branch (transmit high-level PDL when the device has the resources) mirrors DEC '674 precisely; only the negative branch adds the rasterizer, which is supplied by Uniq '459/'918/'278.

B. "The references are of record and the examiner allowed the claims." True — DEC '674, Kodak '874, Ricoh '459, Ricoh '918, IBM '278, Canon '349, ISO/IEC DIS 10180, PC Week and Seybold were all before the examiner. But examiner allowance, without an articulated combination rationale, is weak evidence; and the question here is whether a properly articulated § 103 rejection could be sustained. The fact that claim 1 bundles two independently known inventions (hierarchical scope-limited decoding, and resource-query-driven format selection) into one claim is itself a classic invitation to a § 103 rejection.

C. "Non-obvious as a whole / synergy." The '388's asserted benefits — avoiding whole-document scanning, and reducing transmission cost — are separately produced by the separately known elements (DIS 10180's scope rules produce the first; the format-selection scheme produces the second). No teaching of a super-additive result appears in the specification, so a "combination produces unexpected results" argument would need evidence that the record does not contain.

D. Objective indicia (Graham factor 4). None of record. There is no evidence of commercial success tied by nexus to the claimed features, no long-felt-but-unsolved need, no failure of others, no copying, and no licensing attributable to the claims. The heavy forward-citation traffic (93 entries on the Google Patents "Cited By" list, 206 on the broader list — Lexmark, Microsoft, Xerox, Adobe, Canon, Pitney Bowes, R.R. Donnelley, Tesseron, Flexiworld) shows the patent came to be treated as significant prior art, but citation counts are, at most, weak evidence of technological background and are not probative of non-obviousness absent a nexus to a claimed feature. I would not rely on them.

E. Section 112-adjacent point that cuts toward obviousness. Claims 3 and 4 recite "determining step/means" and "determining means" without disclosed structure beyond a general-purpose processor executing software. Under the broadest reasonable interpretation, those means-plus-function limitations cover any hardware or software performing the recited function — which broadens the prior-art mapping rather than narrowing the claim. This weakens any argument that the claims are saved by the specificity of their resource-determination mechanism.

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VII. Bottom line

The single most damaging fact for the patent is its own specification's admission that ISO/IEC DIS 10180 already "organizes documents in a hierarchical manner" with "prologues having a predetermined fixed format," and that the definition/declaration toolset (resources, dictionaries, stacks) came from the prior PDLs. Once the hierarchical structure is off the table, the only remaining asserted contribution is format selection driven by a pre-flight resource query — and that is squarely taught by the combination of DEC '674 (resource directory + remote resource determination) and JPS60157353A (query the printer's capabilities before printing and act on the answer), with rasterized/facsimile fallback being a universally known alternative output mode (Ricoh '459, Ricoh '918, IBM '278).

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VIII. What I could not verify, and what must be checked before filing anything

1. Full text of US 5,075,874 (Kodak), US 4,651,278 (IBM), US 4,672,459 and US 5,041,918 (Ricoh), and US 4,827,349 (Canon). My mapping of these rests on their titles and dates as listed on the '388 face; the specific passages relied on must be located and cited (column/line) in the full text. Do not quote them until read.
2. The effective § 102(e) date of DEC '674. Google Patents and everypatent.com give the priority date as 1987-07-17 (continuation of Ser. No. 07/075,047); everypatent.com lists the filing date of the application that matured into the patent as 1990-01-18. For § 102(e) purposes, the earlier 1987-07-17 U.S. filing controls if the disclosure support is present in that parent — this must be confirmed against the patent's own "Parent Case Text."
3. Whether an articulated combination rejection was made and overcome during prosecution. I have the list of references of record but not the examiner's actions. If the examiner did combine DEC '674 with a raster/fax reference and the applicant overcame it with a specific argument, that argument is the crux of the case and must be reviewed.
4. Full text of ISO/IEC DIS 10180 (1991), chapters 4–7. The ANSI preview confirms § 5.1 "Hierarchical structure" and § 7.5 "PROLOGUE" exist; the prologue-scope language quoted above should be verified against the 1991 draft itself (the '388 cites DIS 10180, not the 1995 ISO/IEC 10180:1995).
5. Do not cite the sibling Ricoh cases as prior art. US 5,438,650, US 5,483,629, US 5,535,318 (all claiming 1992-04-30 priority), US 5,489,165 and US 5,319,748 post-date the '388 filing and share overlapping inventors/assignee. They are useful only as corroboration of what SPDL (DIS 10180) contained and as evidence of the state of the art generally — not as § 102/§ 103 references against the '388. Similarly, US 5,506,985, US 5,504,891, and US 5,416,896 are family members sharing the 1991-10-17 priority and cannot be prior art.
6. Do not conflate JP 5353388 B2 (Toyota Boshoku, resin press-fitting) with this patent — the number collision was already flagged in the earlier section and remains a live risk.

If a formal validity challenge is contemplated: the record shows this patent expired 2011-10-17, so any § 103 analysis matters only for conduct occurring before expiration (past damages), for a reexamination/IPR on the pre-expiration term, or as prior-art/defensive context — not for prospective relief.