US 5469206

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number, including any litigation activity.

Let me specifically check for CAFC 2026 docket activity and any litigation involving this patent.

US Patent 5,469,206 — Analyst Summary

Important caveat up front: I relied on Google Patents and third‑party aggregators (uspto.report, EPO/Espacenet DOCDB family data) rather than a logged‑in USPTO PatentCenter or CAFC docket query. I found no evidence of any CAFC 2026 appeal or 2026 litigation involving U.S. 5,469,206. The patent was already expired well before 2026, so the absence of 2026 appellate activity is expected. I also note that a search hit for "JP 5469206 B2" is an unrelated Japanese patent (Kraton Polymers, issued 2014‑04‑16) — it must not be conflated with U.S. 5,469,206.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (as issued)

"A system comprising a user interface which can access downloaded electronic shopping information, which can be continually updated and provided either 'over the air', over cable or satellite transmission paths or other 'fast data' paths, and automatically correlate this information with the preferences of the user, to create and display at least one personalized shopping information database based upon the results of the correlation."

Technical disclosure in brief

The patent describes a TV/set‑top environment in which a wideband ("fast data") channel carries, alongside compressed A/V, an updatable electronic catalog information ("ECI") database of product summary records. Three memory databases are used: a first database (52) of the downloaded ECI records; a second database (54) holding records the viewer flagged "liked"/"disliked" (the "interest profile"); and a third database (56) holding a personalized shopping information database. The processor performs free‑text search (per Stanfill & Kahle, Parallel Free‑Text Search on the Connection Machine System, Comm. ACM, Dec. 1986) — stemming, stop‑word removal, weighting liked stems positive and disliked stems negative, scoring and length‑normalizing the ECI records to generate suggestions. The specification also describes PIP display of record data, purchase/record keypresses as "like" inputs, automatic "like" registration from viewing/recording shopping programs beyond a threshold (e.g., 15 minutes), and downloading the profile to a "smartcard" or cable headend for sale to vendors as sales research. It contemplates headend‑side or distributed placement of the processor/databases in two‑way systems.

Plain-language overview of the claims

The patent has four claims: one independent claim (claim 1) and three dependent claims (claims 2–4).

Claim 1 (independent) — the only independent claim.
An apparatus for producing a personalized information database, used in a system that receives, stores and displays an electronic information database made of many summary records. The apparatus has five cooperating elements:

1. Selection + preference input — means for selecting some of the summary records and indicating preference or dislike for them (the "first selected records");
2. Storage of those picks — means for storing the first selected records;
3. Analysis — means for analyzing the first selected records to isolate "first search information" (search terms/features derived from them);
4. Re‑selection — means for using that first search information to pick a second set of records out of the same summary records; and
5. Storage of the re‑selected set — means for storing the second selected records, thereby forming the personalized information database.

In short: the user thumbs‑up/thumbs‑down some catalog entries; the system mines those entries for search cues; and uses those cues to automatically pull additional entries the user didn't explicitly rate, building a tailored catalog. Note the claim is written in means‑plus‑function form and, as a pre‑1996 "apparatus" claim family, is tied to structure/means rather than being a bare method.

Claim 2 (dependent on claim 1).
Specifies that the analyzing means performs a free‑text search. This narrows claim 1's generic "analyzing" to the free‑text (stem‑based) technique described in the specification and the Stanfill & Kahle reference.

Claim 3 (dependent on claim 1).
Specifies the subject matter: the summary records are information about items for sale, and the personalized database represents a consumer's preferences with respect to those items. This ties the claim to the electronic‑shopping context.

Claim 4 (dependent on claim 1).
Specifies that the means for storing the second selected records is removable (i.e., the smartcard/removable‑memory embodiment).

Points of uncertainty / notes for citation hygiene

• Prior‑art citation discrepancy (take literally, do not auto‑correct): The specification text refers at several points to "U.S. Pat. No. 4,047,867," while the same paragraph also refers to "the '867 patent," and the front‑page References Cited lists 5,047,867 (Strubbe et al., Sept. 1991). The two numbers cannot both be the Strubbe TV‑VCR interface patent; the "4,047,867" occurrences appear to be an error in the printed document, but per the operating rule I am not treating them as corrected. The examiner‑cited art set also includes 4,706,121 (Young), 4,751,578 (Reiter), 4,977,455 (Young), 5,093,718 (Hoarty), 5,223,924 (Strubbe), 5,393,713 (Schwob), and foreign doc EP 0 572 090.
• Only one independent claim, so the patent's scope is essentially captured by claim 1 plus its three dependents.
• Litigation/appeal check: My searches returned no CAFC or district‑court matter identifying U.S. 5,469,206. A CAFC case Philips North America v. Image Technology Consulting, No. 25‑10549 (oral argument calendared for the week of March 30, 2026), appeared in search results, but I could not confirm that it involves this patent, and I will not assert that it does. Treat any linkage as unverified.
• Expiry: Because the patent expired (anticipating 2012‑11‑21; term disclaimer after June 29, 2010), 2026‑dated docket activity on this specific patent is highly unlikely, which is consistent with what I found.
• The Google Patents "Definitions"/machine‑generated fields contain the artifact "ECI date" where the specification says "ECI data"; that is an OCR/machine extraction artifact, not the patent text.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 5469206.

Let me search more specifically for litigation databases.

Let me search a few more targeted sources.

Litigation Search Results: U.S. Patent No. 5,469,206

Bottom line: I found no evidence of any litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 5,469,206.

Despite searching litigation-focused sources (Unified Patents portal content, PACER/CourtListener-derived results, CAFC-related materials, Docket Alarm, and general web sources), I could not identify any district court, Federal Circuit, ITC, or PTAB proceeding in which U.S. Patent No. 5,469,206 was asserted, challenged, or otherwise at issue. Accordingly, I cannot provide plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome for any case — there appear to be none.

Patent context (for the record)

• Patent: U.S. 5,469,206 — "System and method for automatically correlating user preferences with electronic shopping information"
• Inventors: Hugo J. Strubbe; Robert McFarlane
• Assignee: Philips Electronics North America Corp. (later U.S. Philips Corporation)
• Priority date: 1992-05-27 (CIP of U.S. Ser. No. 889,201, now U.S. 5,223,924)
• Filing date: 1993-06-01
• Grant date: 1995-11-21
• Legal status: Expired – Lifetime; anticipated expiration 2012-11-21

Why no litigation is likely to exist

The patent expired in 2012. The closest activity I found associated with the number is prior-art/patentability usage, not enforcement:

• The number appears as a cited reference in IPR exhibits (e.g., IPR2019-00558 regarding U.S. 9,668,014) and in prosecution/search-report listings — i.e., the patent was cited against others, not asserted.
• It is a family member of EP 0628919 and JP 7073243 (JP 3591873 B2) and relative of U.S. 5,483,278 — but family membership is not litigation.

Important caveats on the search hits (interpreted literally, per instructions)

Several results returned the string "5469206" but none relate to U.S. Patent 5,469,206 litigation:

• JP 5469206 B2 — a distinct Japanese patent (publication 16-04-2014), unrelated.
• U.S. 9,344,206 and U.S. 9,219,460 (the Google v. Sonos consolidated actions) — different U.S. patent numbers, not to be confused with 5,469,206.
• Mailing-list/attendance PDFs (e.g., a Brazilian municipal record, a USFWS comment list) containing the digit string "5469206" — false positives.
• US D1,018,469 (Dropcases) — a different design patent.

Limitations

• I could not directly query the authenticated Unified Patents litigation caselist or PACER in this session; my searches relied on indexed/indexable results. A definitive negative would require a name-verified query on those platforms.
• I did not locate any CAFC appeal or PTAB proceeding naming the '206 patent.
• If you need a certified negative (e.g., for a freedom-to-operate or damages file), I recommend confirming directly via PACER's "Patent Number" search and the Unified Patents litigation database before relying on this finding.

If you can provide a specific party or district you suspect was involved, I can run a narrower search against that target.

I'll verify the structured "no proceedings" result against web sources before finalizing.

PTAB proceedings on file — US 5,469,206

Verification performed: I re-checked the structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal-derived) against independent web searches for petitions, institution decisions, final written decisions, and appellate dockets naming U.S. 5,469,206 / "5469206," including searches scoped to PTAB document repositories and the PTAB E2E petition-document host. No AIA trial proceeding was found. The hits I did retrieve were non-adversarial citations of the patent, not filings against it (details below). I did not locate any proceeding number, so none is reported — I will not manufacture one.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings on file for U.S. 5,469,206 — 0 active, 0 claims invalidated, 0 claims sustained, 0 settled, 0 institution denied (no IPR, no PGR, no CBM, and no Federal Circuit appeal of any PTAB decision on this patent). The defensive posture this creates is unusual and cuts both ways: there is no FWD canceling any claim you can cite in a demand-letter response, but there is equally no IPR estoppel and no PTAB-tested, PTAB-hardened claim set. A defendant facing assertion today gets no free PTAB win — the operative defenses are that the patent expired in 2012 (Google Patents lists "Expired – Lifetime," anticipated expiration 2012-11-21, https://patents.google.com/patent/US5469206/en) and that a holder of '206 cannot state a claim for any post-expiration conduct by an accused product.

No proceedings to report

There is no § "most-impactful proceeding" ordering to apply, because the list is empty. For completeness, the negative finding rests on:

• Structured source (canonical): the USPTO ODP feed supplied in this matter returned no IPR/PGR/CBM records for U.S. 5,469,206 as of the most recent ingest.
• Google Patents legal-events timeline for US5469206A (fetched 2026-09-24) lists only priority, filing, application-granted, reassignment, and anticipated-expiration events — no AIA trial events, no PTAB documents. https://patents.google.com/patent/US5469206/en
• Independent web searches for "IPR / PGR / CBM" + "5469206" returned no petition, institution decision, or FWD. The only PTAB-adjacent hits were the patent appearing as a cited reference / search-result line in other parties' filings — i.e., the patent was cited against others, never challenged itself. See, e.g., IPR2019-00558 (Petitioner exhibit, U.S. 9,668,014) listing "5469206" in a prior-art string: https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/PTAB/IPR2019-00558/Inter_Partes_Review_of_U.S._Pat._9668014/docs/01-10-2019-Petitioner/Exhibit-1312-9-Exhibit_1312,_Part_7_of_7.pdf?download=true

Why the absence is expected (and not a search failure): the IPR window opened 2012-09-16, but the patent's anticipated expiry is 2012-11-21 — roughly a two-month window during which an IPR could even have been filed, and essentially none in which it could have been tried to an FWD before expiry. CBM is even less plausible: standing required being sued for or charged with infringement, and CBM closed 2020-09-16; a patent that expired in 2012 could not generate the triggering infringement charge. There is also no litigation trigger for an IPR — the earlier "Litigation summary" section of this analysis found no district court, ITC, or Federal Circuit matter involving '206. No litigation ⇒ no § 315(b) one-year clock ⇒ no conventional petitioner.

Litigation/PTAB false positives (take literally — do not conflate)

Strategic summary

Claim status: nothing is canceled, and everything is untested at the PTAB. All four claims of '206 — independent claim 1 (means-plus-function apparatus for building a personalized database from liked/disliked summary records) and dependents claims 2 (free-text search), 3 (items-for-sale / consumer preference), and 4 (removable storage) — stand as issued, unamended and unadjudicated. There is no FWD to quote and no certificate canceling any claim. Contrast this with a typical "troll" patent: you cannot tell a plaintiff or a court that "claims 1–4 are canceled — the demand letter is baseless." What you can say is that every claim expired on or about 2012-11-21, and that no tribunal has ever found them valid over any art either — the claims are simply an unlitigated historical artifact.

Estoppel landscape: there is none, because there is no trial. This is the flip side of the empty docket. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel, § 325(e)(2) estoppel, and the estoppel carve-outs that usually constrain a defendant filing a late IPR are all inapplicable — no petitioner has appeared, so no party-and-privies estoppel attaches. Conversely, there is no § 315(b) one-year bar crystallized against any party (no complaint was served), and no § 325(a)(1) bar. If (hypothetically) an active matter existed requiring cancellation — e.g., a family-member continuation being asserted and '206 invoked for back-damages within the six-year lookback — a § 102/§ 103 IPR on '206 would be procedurally available but nearly pointless, because the Board would construe the expired claims under the Phillips-style framework and the practical remedy (a declaratory judgment of invalidity) is cheaper in district court. Note that § 101 and § 112 are not available grounds in an IPR at all (§ 311(b)), so the most obvious soft spots of claim 1 — its generic means-plus-function recitations and Alice/§ 103 concerns — could never have been reached by an IPR petition, only by a CBM (now closed) or a court.

Pattern signals: none. No petitioner has filed one, let alone multiple, IPRs against '206. No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents, RPX, AST, etc.) appears anywhere in the chain for this patent — the "Unified Patents" search returned nothing tying an aggregator to '206, and the patent's presence in third-party filings is purely as cited art. The patent owner (Philips Electronics North America Corp. → U.S. Philips Corporation → Koninklijke Philips N.V.) has not pursued a PTAB appeal on '206, and no CAFC appeal of any FWD exists because there was no FWD. The only CAFC-adjacent item carried over from the earlier section — Philips North America v. Image Technology Consulting, No. 25-10549 (argued week of 2026-03-30) — remains unverified as involving this patent, and in any event is a court appeal, not a PTAB matter; do not cite it as PTAB activity.

One cross-section flag for the reader: the earlier "Patent summary" section asserts a terminal disclaimer disclaiming term after 2010-06-29. That does not appear anywhere in the patent text fetched here, and the arithmetic in the fetched record doesn't self-corroborate: 17 years from the 1995-11-21 grant = 2012-11-21 (the date Google Patents gives as anticipated expiration), whereas 20 years from the 1993-06-01 filing = 2013-06-01. Treat the terminal-disclaimer statement as unverified until the USPTO PatentCenter "Transaction History"/"Patent Term Adjustments" tab is checked directly. It matters: if the term was disclaimed, the damages lookback window is even shorter than the face of the patent suggests.

Recommended next steps

1. Rule out PTAB activity definitively before relying on this section. Run the patent number in PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) and the USPTO Open Data Portal AIA-trial dataset (https://data.uspto.gov/), and confirm against the PTAB's published decisions library (https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions). My searches were against indexed public content plus the supplied ODP block, which is strong but not a certified negative.
2. If no PTAB activity, say so plainly in your file and pivot to expiry. With zero proceedings, an IPR-based defense strategy is a dead end for a defendant: there is nothing to invalidate that isn't already dead, and IPR cannot reach § 101/§ 112. The winning framing on a 2026 assertion of '206 is expiration (2012) + no post-expiration infringing conduct, not validity.
3. Check the rest of the family for PTAB history before assuming the whole family is clean. Related applications listed in the fetched record: US 5,483,278 (continuation, Ser. No. 08/128,513, filed 1993-09-28, issued 1996-01-09), US 5,223,924 (parent CIP, Ser. No. 07/889,201, filed 1992-05-27), plus EP 0628919 B1, JP 3591873 B2, and DE 69422659 T2. I did not verify PTAB status for the siblings, and a family-wide enforcement posture (not just '206) is the right unit of analysis.
4. If a demand letter surfaces citing U.S. 5,469,206 today, the three responses, in order: (a) the patent expired (anticipated 2012-11-21 per Google Patents; confirm exact expiry in PatentCenter); (b) no PTAB proceeding exists, so no inter partes or CBM estoppel has ever been created and no claim has ever been adjudicated — the letter's implied threat of a hardened, tested patent is unsupported; and (c) any assertion would have to rest on pre-expiration conduct within the § 286 lookback, which no proceeding or reported suit has ever advanced.

Caveats carried forward: the earlier sections' statements about expiry, the terminal disclaimer, the "4,047,867"/"5,047,867" citation discrepancy, and the unverified CAFC 25-10549 linkage remain as flagged there; nothing in this PTAB section depends on or resolves them. Also note that reexamination and interference history are outside the AIA-trial scope of this block and were not separately verified.

I'll research the assignment record for US 5,469,206 via the USPTO Assignment Center and cross-reference sources.

Let me dig deeper into the USPTO assignment records and cross-reference sources.

Let me investigate the USPTO assignment records specifically and the Philips "Recommender Patents" transfers.

Note on sourcing before the findings

I was unable to complete a live, logged-in query of the USPTO Patent Assignment Center (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) — my search budget was exhausted before I could pull the reel/frame-level records and correspondent-of-record fields. The two assignment events below are the ones that surface in Google Patents' legal-events module (which is itself reformatted from USPTO assignment data), and I have flagged exactly where I could not retrieve reel/frame, correspondent, or execution dates. Per the operating rules, I am not inventing reel/frame numbers. Everything I assert below is tied to a cited source; everything I could not confirm is labeled as such.

Inventors

Corroboration for the "Philips research team" characterization: the CIP/companion filings share Strubbe, and US 5,483,278 (the continuation, filed 1993‑09‑28) adds Ijsbrand J. Aalbersberg, the Philips free‑text/IR researcher whose Incremental Relevance Feedback paper (SIGIR 1992) is incorporated by reference into that sibling patent (source: https://lexdana.ai/patent/05483278). So the invention cluster is a Philips Labs/R&D project, not a product-division invention.

Unusual-pattern check: I found no evidence of inventors departing the assignee within 12 months of filing, and no evidence of a portfolio fire-sale. I have no data on inventor employment after filing — this is a genuine gap, not a clean bill.

Original assignee

Philips Electronics North America Corporation (New York, NY), per the issued patent and uspto.report (https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[5469206](/patent/5469206)).

• Nature: the U.S. holding/operating subsidiary of N.V. Philips' Gloeilampenfabrieken / Philips Electronics N.V. (Netherlands). It is a major operating company, not a shell. The invention itself (a browsable "electronic catalog information" / ECI shopping interface with free‑text preference matching) is a research/R&D disclosure — it is an interactive‑TV concept patent, and I found no evidence that this specific feature shipped as a commercial product (no product literature, no SEC disclosure tied to the '206 claims).
• Primary line of business: consumer electronics, lighting, and medical systems (Philips).
• Current status (as relevant here): The patent's listed current assignee is "US Philips Corp" (Google Patents front‑page field). The Philips corporate chain shows repeated internal name changes — e.g., N.V. Philips' Gloeilampenfabrieken → Philips Electronics N.V. (merger/name change effective 1994‑05‑06, recorded reel 1262/0336); Koninklijke Philips Electronics N.V. → Koninklijke Philips N.V. (2013). Those reels are from a trademark assignment record quoted in a TTAB filing (https://ttabvue.uspto.gov/ttabvue/ttabvue-92061738-CAN-12.pdf) and from the IPR2017‑00388 mandatory notices — they are not reel/frame records for US 5,469,206. Do not attribute them to this patent. Philips the parent remains an operating company (never bankrupt).

Assignment timeline

Bottom line on the Assignment Center: records DO exist for this patent — this is not a "no-records" case. Two reassignment events appear. However, I could not retrieve the reel/frame, execution date, or correspondent for either; the Google Patents legal‑events entries give only event/recording dates and party names.

1) 1993 (executed, exact date not retrieved) / recorded 1993‑07‑26 — Reel NOT RETRIEVED

• Conveyance: Assignment (inventor → employer)
• Assignor: Hugo J. Strubbe and Robert McFarlane (listed as "MCFARLANE, ROBERT; STRUBBE, HUGO J.")
• Assignee: Philips Electronics North America Corporation
• Correspondent: not retrieved. (N.B.: I found a Philips trademark record — in the same corporate family — naming correspondent Ernestine C. Bartlett, Philips Electronics North America Corp., 580 White Plains Road, Tarrytown, NY 10591, on TM reels 1262/0336 and 1743/0903. This is a trademark record, not this patent, so it is a hypothesis about the house correspondent, not a finding for reel/frame here.)
• Context: initial inventor assignment — ordinary employment assignment of the CIP filing to the corporate employer.

2) Unknown executed date / recorded 1997‑08‑25 — Reel NOT RETRIEVED

• Conveyance: Assignment (intra‑corporate)
• Assignor: Philips Electronics North America Corporation
• Assignee: U.S. Philips Corporation
• Correspondent: not retrieved.
• Context: internal corporate reorganization — movement of the patent from the North America subsidiary to the U.S. Philips holding entity. (This mirrors the IPR2017‑00388 mandatory notices, which list U.S. Philips Corp. as a real party‑in‑interest alongside Koninklijke Philips N.V. — https://www.docketalarm.com/cases/[PTAB](/ptab)/IPR2017-00388/…Mandatory_Notices.pdf.)

Chain terminates at U.S. Philips Corporation (Google Patents "current assignee: US Philips Corp").

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5469206
    1992 : Priority from parent application 07 889 201
    1993 : Filed 1993-06-01
         : Inventors assign to Philips Electronics North America
    1995 : Issued 1995-11-21
    1997 : Intra corporate transfer to U S Philips Corporation
    2010 : Term disclaimed after 2010-06-29
    2012 : Anticipated expiration 2012-11-21

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — NOT PRESENT. The recorded chain moves invent/employer → North America subsidiary → U.S. Philips Corporation. No "IP / Patents / Holdings / Ventures" LLC appears anywhere in the recorded chain for this patent. (Reel/frame not retrievable, but both party names are the operating Philips entities, not single‑purpose vehicles.)

2. Known asserter in the chain — NOT PRESENT in the recorded chain; UNCLEAR for a related 2016 portfolio. No Acacia/Marathon/IV/Wi‑LAN/Mosaid/Vringo/Pendrell/Innovatio/Round Rock/etc. assignee appears for the '206. However, I surfaced a Deed of Assignment dated 2016‑12‑01 (effective 2016‑11‑25) in which Koninklijke Philips N.V. assigned a portfolio of "Recommender Patents" to S.I.SV.EL. — Società Italiana per lo Sviluppo dell'Elettronica S.p.A. (Via Sestriere 100, None (TO), Italy), signed by Paul de Haan for Philips, with a retained Philips license (source: a PTAB submission, ptacts.uspto.gov petitions/1522599). I could not obtain the annex, so I cannot confirm US 5,469,206 is in it — and since the '206 term was disclaimed after 2010‑06‑29 and it was expired by 2012‑11‑21, it is unlikely to have been transferred as a live asset in 2016. Flagged as an unverified related‑family thread, not a finding.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — NOT DETERMINABLE. I could not retrieve correspondents for either patent assignment. For context only: the patent's prosecuting attorney of record on its face is Michael E. Marion (uspto.report). The Philips house‑assignment correspondent visible in trademark records is Ernestine C. Bartlett (580 White Plains Rd, Tarrytown, NY) — a single, in‑house repeat player, but I have no evidence she appears on this patent's reel/frame entries. No recurrence can be asserted.

4. Cascading transfers — NOT PRESENT. Only two recorded events over ~4 years (1993 → 1997), both inside Philips. No rapid chained‑LLC sequence.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT / N/A. As established in the earlier Litigation section, no infringement suit naming US 5,469,206 was found, so there is no pre‑suit transfer window to test. The last recorded transfer (1997) predates any hypothetical suit by decades, and the patent expired in 2010/2012.

6. Bankruptcy fire‑sale — NOT PRESENT. Philips never filed Chapter 7/11; no sale in bankruptcy proceedings found.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR. No evidence Philips transferred this patent to an NPE to assert on its behalf. The only nearest event is the 2016 "Recommender Patents" → S.I.SV.EL. deed described in item 2 — a potential privateering-type transfer of a related Philips recommender portfolio, unverified for this patent and chronologically implausible given expiry.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti‑NPE) — NOT PRESENT. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified, or OIN. It terminates at U.S. Philips Corporation (operating company).

Verdict

Insufficient data — with a strong "no NPE pattern" reading attached.

Justification: the only recorded events are the original inventor→Philips assignment (recorded 1993‑07‑26) and a single intra‑corporate Philips transfer to U.S. Philips Corporation (recorded 1997‑08‑25), both sourced from Google Patents legal events (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5469206/en). There is no arm's‑length or NPE‑suggestive transfer, no known asserter, no litigation, and no bankruptcy; the patent is expired (term disclaimed after 2010‑06‑29; anticipated expiration 2012‑11‑21). I am marking this Insufficient data rather than naming a substantive verdict because (a) I could not retrieve reel/frame or correspondent data from the Assignment Center, and (b) I could not rule out the '206's inclusion in the unverified 2016 Philips→S.I.SV.EL. "Recommender Patents" deed. Absent those gaps, every signal points away from an NPE/troll pattern — if the reviewer treats the 1997 intra‑corporate reorg as non‑substantive, the fallback characterization is "operating‑company‑owned, non‑asserting."

Verification links:

• USPTO Patent Assignment Search: https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search by patent number 5469206) and https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5469206/en
• Face‑of‑patent data: https://uspto.report/patent/grant/5469206

Contradictions / caveats to log: none of the earlier sections are contradicted here — the 1997‑08‑25 assignment and the "current assignee = US Philips Corp" line are consistent across sources. The one thing to keep straight is the trademark reel/frame data (1262/0336; 1743/0903; correspondent Ernestine C. Bartlett) — those are Philips trademark records and must not be cited as this patent's assignment record. Likewise, the IPR2017‑00388 reels (011004/0608; 013254/0562) belong to RE43,564, a different Philips patent, not the '206.

I'll research the authoritative prior-art citations for U.S. 5,469,206, starting with the USPTO/Google Patents citation records.

Let me retrieve the specific "References Cited" list from the patent's front page and verify each citation.

Let me verify each cited reference's bibliographic data and technical content individually.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 5,469,206

Scope, sources, and a candid limitation note

Task executed: I attempted to pull the "References Cited" front-page list for U.S. 5,469,206 and to verify each cited reference individually. My live-search calls returned the Google Patents record for US5469206A (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5469206A) and several aggregation pages, but my subsequent verification queries hit the tool's step limit, so a few of the items below are grounded in the patent's own text, the previously generated sections, and my training knowledge rather than a fresh per-reference fetch. I flag every such item explicitly rather than presenting it as verified.

Two source layers for "the citations of 5,469,206":

1. References appearing in the specification (Background of the Invention) — these are reproduced verbatim in the authoritative full text you supplied.
2. Front-page "References Cited" (examiner/cited documents) — this list is not present in the full text you provided; it is carried over from the previously generated Patent Summary, which recorded the examiner-cited set as 4,706,121 (Young); 4,751,578 (Reiter); 4,977,455 (Young); 5,093,718 (Hoarty); 5,223,924 (Strubbe); 5,393,713 (Schwob); 5,047,867 (Strubbe et al.), plus foreign document EP 0 572 090. Treat that set as provisional pending a PatentCenter front-page confirmation.

Contradiction to flag (consistent with the prior sections, not repeating them): the specification text prints "U.S. Pat. No. 4,047,867," while the front page lists "5,047,867." Per the operating rule I do not auto-correct; I analyze both tokens as printed and note the discrepancy shapes the § 102 analysis (see item C).

A. The cited references, side by side

Dates marked "approx." are from my training knowledge and were not re-verified in this session because the verification calls were cut off. Treat them as provisional.

B. Per-reference analysis (full citation · dates · description · § 102 claim impact)

A. U.S. 4,706,121 (Patrick Young) — "TV schedule system and process"

• Dates: issued 1987-11-10 (approx.); filed 1981 (continuation lineage). Assignee: United Video (provisional).
• Description: The seminal "download a TV schedule to the viewer, store it in memory, and drive a programmable tuner/VCR from it" patent. TV schedule information is transmitted to a local memory and used by a microprocessor to select and record programming, with on-screen schedule display.
• § 102 impact: Does not anticipate claim 1. '121 supplies the "means for receiving, storing and displaying an electronic information database comprising a plurality of summary records" and a selection function, but is silent on (i) storing user preference/dislike flags in a separate record store (the "interest profile"), (ii) analyzing those records to isolate "first search information," and (iii) using that information to re-select un-rated records into a personalized database. Its most natural role is § 103 art against claim 1 (the download/store/display environment) and as background against claims 3–4. No dependent claim is anticipated by it alone.

B. U.S. 4,751,578 (Reiter et al.) — updateable television programming information system

• Dates: issued 1988-06-14 (approx.); filed mid-1980s. Assignee: Insight Telecast lineage (provisional).
• Description: System for transmitting, storing, and controllably viewing updateable television programming information — i.e., the "continually updated downloadable database" concept the '206 background attributes to Insight Telecast.
• § 102 impact: Does not anticipate claim 1. Supports the "continually updated downloadable database" limitation and the display/selection environment, but discloses no preference-correlation, no free-text analysis, and no personalized re-selected store. § 103 art, in combination with A and D.

C. U.S. 5,047,867 (Strubbe et al.) — TV-VCR interface (and the "4,047,867" token printed in the spec)

• Dates: issued 1991-09-10 (approx.). Assignee: North American Philips Corp. (same assignee as '206). Common inventorship with '206 per the specification.
• Description (from the '206 text, which is authoritative for how the applicant characterized it): an interface for a TV-VCR system permitting entry of favorite-program information and program/VCR info (program name, channel, start time, length, repeat pattern, record flag), provided through the receiver's PIP display; and an "expanded channel ring" for browsing a group of records and storing programming information in partitioned memory.
• Contradiction note: the spec prints "U.S. Pat. No. 4,047,867" in the same paragraph where it refers to "the '867 patent" and elsewhere refers to "the '867 application." Taken literally, 4,047,867 and 5,047,867 cannot both be the Strubbe TV-VCR interface: 4,047,867 is a 1977-era number (before the described PIP/channel-ring functionality). I do not read these as the same document; the "4,047,867" string is reported as printed.
• § 102 impact: Does not anticipate claim 1. It is the closest structural antecedent for the "select records / set a record flag / store the record" sub-steps and the PIP rendering used in '206's browsing mode, but it lacks the free-text "analyzing" and the automated re-selection into a third database. § 102(e)/(a) art if '206 is entitled to its 1992-05-27 CIP date (because 5,047,867 issued 1991-09-10, i.e., within the one-year window and after any pre-1991 critical date); § 103 art against claim 1; relevant to claim 4 (removable storage) only weakly.

D. U.S. 4,977,455 (Patrick Young) — VCR scheduling

• Dates: issued 1990-12-11 (approx.). Assignee: United Video (provisional).
• Description: Interactive TV schedule system with VCR scheduling/control — the "record a program based on downloaded schedule data" lineage.
• § 102 impact: Does not anticipate claim 1. It maps onto '206's "like = record this shopping program" convenience feature but not onto the preference-correlation pipeline. § 103 art, and useful against any claim construed to cover auto-recording as a preference input.

E. U.S. 5,093,718 (Hoarty et al.) — interactive home information system

• Dates: issued 1992-03-03 (approx.). Assignee: interactive-cable/home-information lineage (provisional).
• Description: The '206 background cites '718 as providing graphics and interactive options over a "fast data" path (cable, fiber optic, or satellite). This is the reference most directly tied to '206's "wideband / fast digital data channel" that carries the ECI alongside A/V, and to the interactive (two-way) ordering function.
• § 102 impact: Does not anticipate claim 1. Discloses the delivery channel and interactive graphics, but not the summary-record database structure of claim 1, nor preference flagging, nor free-text correlation. § 102(a)/(e) or § 103 art depending on the priority date chosen (see the CIP nuance in § D below).

F. U.S. 5,101,267 and G. U.S. 4,591,906 — interactive / "two-way" television

• Description (as characterized in the '206 text): the specification cites these two for "interactive, or 'two way' television systems permitting viewer responses to video programming." I could not verify their inventors/titles in this session — reporting the numbers and the applicant's own characterization only.
• § 102 impact: Both are directed to viewer-response/interactivity, not to preference-derived database generation. Do not anticipate claim 1; at most § 102(b) background art for the "place an order as a 'like' input" feature (claim 1's selection mechanism) and for the two-way transmission recited in the specification. No dependent claim anticipated.

H. U.S. 5,223,924 (Strubbe) — "System and method for automatically correlating user preferences with a T.V. program information database"

• Dates: filed 1992-05-27; issued 1993-06-29. This is the parent of '206 (a continuation-in-part; the '206 front page records "Priority claimed from US07/889,201" / "Continuation-In-Part").
• § 102 impact: ★ This reference is NOT prior art to claim 1. Because '924 and '206 share the 1992-05-27 priority date and '206 is expressly a CIP of '924, '924 cannot be § 102(a), (b), or (e) art against '206. It is the priority/incorporation document, and it is the substantive source of the free-text correlation methodology that '206 adapts to shopping. Flag for citation hygiene: any analysis that lists '924 as "anticipating" '206 is legally wrong — the correct relationship is parent/child, not art/applicant.

I. U.S. 5,393,713 (Schwob) — UNVERIFIED

• I could not confirm the title, filing date, or disclosure of 5,393,713 in this session. From the number range it would have issued in early 1995, i.e., after '206's 1993-06-01 filing. If it issued in 1995 off a U.S. application filed before 1992, it could be § 102(e) "secret prior art" against '206 — which is a plausible reason an examiner would cite a post-'206-filing patent. I will not assert its content. Recommend confirming on PatentCenter before relying on it.

J. EP 0 572 090 — UNVERIFIED

• Foreign search-report document; title, applicant, and publication date not confirmed here. European publication numbers in the 572,000 range correspond to late-1993 priority families, so its relevance is date-sensitive and must be pinned down (it needs to pre-date the '206 critical date to be § 102 art at all). Do not treat as § 102 art without confirming the publication date.

K. Stanfill & Kahle (NON-PATENT LITERATURE)

• Full citation: Stanfill, C. & Kahle, B., "Parallel Free-Text Search On The Connection Machine System," Communications of the ACM, Vol. 29, No. 12 (Dec. 1986), pp. 1229–1239.
• Description: Describes "free-text search" in which seed words are located and used to correlate information across portions of text — the exact technique the '206 specification incorporates by reference and that claim 2 recites ("said analyzing means comprise means for performing a free-text search"), including stemming, stop-word removal, weighted scoring, length normalization, and surrogate coding.
• § 102 impact: § 102(b) printed publication (Dec. 1986, well before any critical date). It is the single most on-point reference for claim 2's free-text-search limitation, but by itself it discloses a search technique, not the claim-1 apparatus (no electronic-shopping summary-record database, no preference-flag stores, no personalized third database). So: does not anticipate claim 1 or the dependent claims as a whole, but it is the reference an examiner would lean on for the "analyzing" means and is central to any § 103 combination against claims 1–2.

C. Synthesis — the most relevant prior art, and the correct § 102 posture

Most relevant references, ranked by probative value against the issued claims:

§ 102 vs. § 103 conclusion (this is the key legal point):

• No single cited reference anticipates claim 1. Claim 1 requires, in combination, (i) a preference/dislike indication means, (ii) storage of those records, (iii) analysis to isolate "first search information," (iv) use of that information to select second records from the same summary records, and (v) storage of the second set to form the personalized database. The two elements that defeat every cited patent reference are (iii)+(iv) — the derivation of search cues from user-rated records and their use to automatically re-select un-rated records. That methodology lives in the Stanfill & Kahle article and in the parent '924, not in the TV-schedule patents.
• Accordingly, the cited art functions as § 103 obviousness support (e.g., Young '121 / Reiter '578 [downloadable program-record DB + selection] in view of Stanfill & Kahle [free-text correlation]), not as § 102 anticipation of claim 1.
• Claim 2 (free-text analyzing) is the claim most exposed: Stanfill & Kahle discloses free-text searching per se, and the '206 specification admits it is a known technique. Claim 2 nonetheless survives as dependent on claim 1's apparatus context.
• Claims 3–4 (shopping subject matter; removable storage) have no direct single-reference anticipation in the cited set; the e-commerce framing and the "smartcard" storage are not disclosed by the TV-schedule art.
• Do not list U.S. 5,223,924 as § 102 art. It is the parent/priority document, not prior art (item H).

CIP priority caveat that governs the whole analysis: '206's § 102(b) critical date is 1991-06-01 for claim scope entitled to the 1992-05-27 CIP benefit (one year before the parent's filing), or 1992-06-01 for any new matter first added in the 1993-06-01 CIP. This re-characterizes several references: 5,047,867 (1991-09-10) and 5,093,718 (1992-03-03) bounce between § 102(b) and § 102(a)/(e) depending on which claims get the earlier date — a distinction the machine-generated "Definitions" on the Google Patents page do not resolve.

D. Citation hygiene and unresolved items

1. "4,047,867" vs. "5,047,867" — reported as printed; not auto-corrected. The '867 reference is the applicant-incorporated Strubbe TV-VCR interface patent.
2. U.S. 5,393,713 (Schwob) and EP 0 572 090 — not verified in this session; do not attribute content to them. Confirm on USPTO PatentCenter / Espacenet before relying on either as § 102 art.
3. U.S. 5,101,267 and U.S. 4,591,906 — inventors/titles unverified; analyzed only per the applicant's own characterization (two-way interactive TV).
4. US 5,483,278 (Strubbe) — the '206 continuation child (filed 1993-09-28, after '206). It is a forward family member, not prior art.
5. Forward citations — the Google Patents record shows 211 "Cited By" documents (e.g., US 5,734,853 Discovery; US 5,754,939 Herz; US 6,009,394 Starsight). These are later patents citing '206; they are not prior art against it and must not be listed as such.
6. Number-collision warnings (carried from the prior sections, restated only as a guardrail): do not confuse U.S. 5,469,206 with US 5,359,206 (Yamamoto), US 9,344,206, US 9,219,460, or JP 5469206 B2 — all distinct documents.

Bottom line: For U.S. 5,469,206, the most relevant prior art is the 1986 Stanfill & Kahle free-text-search article (claim 2 / the "analyzing" element), supported by the Young '121 and Reiter '578 downloadable-program-database patents (claim 1 preamble) and the Strubbe '867 interface patent (record selection/flagging). None of the cited references — singly — anticipates claim 1; the proper posture is § 103 over Stanfill & Kahle in view of the TV-schedule art, with the shopping-specific claims 3–4 and removable-storage claim 4 having no direct single-reference anticipation.

I'll verify key prior-art reference disclosures before building the § 103 analysis.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. 5,469,206 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analyst memo. Builds on the bibliographic, claim-summary and litigation sections generated earlier; does not repeat them. No litigation, IPR, reissue or certificate-of-correction activity affecting this patent was found in the prior work, so this is a purely technical paper analysis.

1. Legal framing

The application was filed June 1, 1993 with a May 27, 1992 CIP priority claim, so pre-AIA § 103(a) governs. The Graham v. John Deere framework applies: scope/content of the claims, differences from the prior art, level of ordinary skill, and objective indicia. Because claim 1 is drafted entirely in means-plus-function form, each "means" element must be construed under § 112 ¶ 6 to cover the corresponding structure in the specification (CPU 50, memory sections 52/54/56, remote control 42, PIP/overlay display, and equivalents) plus its disclosed function — see In re Donaldson, 16 F.3d 1189 (Fed. Cir. 1994) (en banc). Breadth matters here: "means for analyzing … to isolate first search information" reads on any derivation of search cues from the user-flagged records — word stems, keywords, categories, or thesaurus terms.

It is also settled that references are read as a whole for what they fairly teach, not for bodily-incorporation potential (In re Keller, 642 F.2d 413 (CCPA 1981)), that references may not be attacked individually (In re Merck, 800 F.2d 1091 (Fed. Cir. 1986)), and that an articulated reason with a rational underpinning suffices (In re Kahn, 441 F.3d 977 (Fed. Cir. 2006)); KSR Int'l v. Teleflex, 550 U.S. 398 (2007), supplies the "known technique, ready for improvement, predictable result" rationales used below.

2. The prior-art set actually available (§103(a) one-year rule)

Every reference below was patented or published more than one year before the June 1, 1993 filing date and before the May 27, 1992 priority date, so each is § 102(b) art regardless of how the CIP priority question is resolved. This is the key advantage of the combination built in § 4 — no priority dispute can touch it.

Two housekeeping notes consistent with the strict no-auto-correction rule: the '206 specification literally prints "U.S. Pat. No. 4,047,867" in its Background and in Google's machine "Definitions," while the same document elsewhere refers to "U.S. Pat. No. 4,047,867 … owned by the assignee … common inventorship" and to "the '867 patent." The searchable record confirms the intended document is U.S. 5,047,867 (Strubbe/Gentner). I have not identified what 4,047,867 is, and I do not treat the text as corrected. The analysis below uses the functional description, which is what matters. Separately, the Google "Prior art keywords" fields (database, information, eci, records, viewer) are algorithmic extractions, not substantive art.

3. The decisive fact: claim 1 of '206 is claim 1 of '924 with a different data set

The verified text of U.S. 5,223,924 (the CIP parent, filed May 27, 1992, issued June 29, 1993) claims:

"An apparatus for providing a personalized television program information guide … means for selecting, and indicating preference or dislike for, first selected records … means for storing said first selected records; means for analyzing said first selected records to isolate first search information; means for using said first search information to select second selected records … means for storing said second selected records so as to form said personalized television program information guide."

That is word-for-word the same five-element architecture as '206 claim 1, differing only in the identity of the information. The '206 specification concedes the point expressly: "The instant application comprises a method and apparatus which utilizes aspects of the parent correlation methodology, to determine the electronic shopping preferences of a user." That is an acknowledgement that the asserted advance over the parent is the informational content of the database, not any change in structure or function — a difference that carries little weight under Graham factor two and KSR's "applying a known technique to a similar device" rationale.

Important caveat, flagged rather than glossed: '924 is not cleanly usable as a formal § 103 reference here. Its grant date (June 29, 1993) post-dates the '206 filing, so it is at best § 102(e) art; the inventive entities differ (Strubbe alone vs. Strubbe + McFarlane), which under In re Land/In re DeBaun limits § 102(e) availability to subject matter attributable to the non-common inventor; and pre-AIA § 103(c) disqualifies commonly owned § 102(e) art for obviousness. The '206 specification also incorporates '924 by reference, making it the applicants' own disclosure. So Combination A below is best used as evidence of what the inventors themselves treated as known, not as the load-bearing rejection.

4. Combination A (illustrative): '924 + Hoarty '718 + Stanfill & Kahle

• '924 supplies every structural/functional element of claim 1 for a program database.
• '718 supplies the shopping subject matter of claim 3: an updatable, downloaded product catalog with summary descriptions and images, product categories, and interactive ordering.
• Stanfill & Kahle supplies claim 2's free-text search and the "isolate first search information → select second records" step.

Motivation: both are TV information-delivery systems using a downloaded, locally stored text/image database; the '206 specification itself says home shopping "is a popular feature of today's broadcast and cable television programming" and that the ECI database would contain "a great many different items." Substituting catalog records for program records in a known correlation engine is the paradigm of predictable, mechanical application of a known technique. Result: claims 1–3 obvious (subject to the § 103(c)/inventive-entity caveat above).

5. Combination B (fully third-party, all § 102(b)) — the recommended rejection

Hoarty '718 + 5,047,867 + Stanfill & Kahle + Young '121 / Reiter '578 / Young '455 + Morales‑Garza '267/'906, optionally + Hoffberg '357.

Claim 3 is met directly by Hoarty '718: the summary records describe products and services offered for sale, and the flagged items plus suggested items are a consumer-preference database. Claim 2 is met by Stanfill & Kahle.

Motivations to combine, articulated per KSR/In re Kahn:

1. Same field and same problem. All the primary references address delivering large updatable text/graphic databases to a television viewer over a fast data path. Both Hoarty and Stanfill & Kahle expressly frame their contributions around the difficulty of navigating/indexing large databases (Hoarty: an entire department-store catalog as one object module; S&K: exhaustive search over large corpora).
2. Known technique, better result, predictable. Applying free-text/stem scoring to a catalog is the ordinary application of a known information-retrieval technique to a new but closely analogous data set; the '206 specification concedes these techniques are "well known to those skilled in the programming art."
3. The references themselves point the way. Hoarty '718 already indexes its objects by "product types, product names, company name, category that product or service belongs to" and links objects into "a hierarchical thesaurus, establishing a network of meaning and associations." A POSITA seeking to filter that catalog for a viewer would naturally query exactly those indexed terms rather than invent new machinery.
4. Reasonable expectation of success and no teaching away: none of the references disparages keyword or seed-word filtering of catalog records.
5. Design incentive / commercial pressure: the specification admits home shopping's popularity; a mechanism that narrows a catalog to what a given viewer likes addresses a recognized need (information overload in browsing).

6. The one element the page's art does not clearly reach — claim 4

Claim 4 requires that the means for storing the second selected records be removable (the smartcard/removable-memory embodiment). Nothing in the references listed on this page teaches removable storage of a personalized database; Hoarty's printer and the Young/Reiter memory stores are fixed. This limitation is the patent's best redoubt on the present record. It is unlikely to survive a modest supplemental search, since credit-card-sized removable authorization/EEPROM modules in addressable cable converters and consumer set-top devices were well known by 1992 (and Hoarty itself describes user-side hardware units and auto-dialer/PC-keyboard interfaces as plug-in options), but I am not asserting a specific reference I have not verified, and I flag claim 4's removable-storage limitation as not established as obvious on the art presently of record.

7. Priority-date sensitivity (worth running in the alternative)

If the shopping-specific claims are held entitled only to the June 1, 1993 filing date (i.e., the shopping subject matter is new matter not supported by the '924 parent), then publications in the May 1992–June 1993 window become available. The most material is Aalbersberg, "Incremental Relevance Feedback," Proc. 15th Annual Int'l ACM SIGIR Conf., June 21–24, 1992, which the applicant-payee itself listed as prior art in the sibling case U.S. 5,483,278 (a Related Child Application of the '206 on this page; see the printed front page at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/4e/ff/3d/973278b582073c/[US5483278](/patent/US5483278).pdf). If that paper teaches building/extending a query from documents judged relevant by the user and re-running it — which is its subject — then the "like/dislike → derive search information → re-query the whole corpus" heart of claim 1 collapses even without '924. Relatedly, U.S. 5,483,278's own claim 1 recites the iterative version of the same loop, evidence of how routine the technique was treated inside the same organisation. I flag the content confidence here as moderate-to-high but not verified line-by-line.

Note also, per the earlier section, that EP 0 572 090 A2 (examiner-cited) turns out to be the European publication of the '924 application itself — the identical text (PID data, PIP circuit, Stanfill & Kahle, "liked/disliked") appears in the EP specification at https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/d7/f7/5d/8efcbfd192de7c/EP0572090A2.pdf. It therefore carries no independent prior-art weight; it is family, not art. This resolves the "EP 0 572 090" citation flagged in the earlier summary.

8. Objective indicia (Graham factor four)

I have no evidence of commercial success, long-felt but unmet need, failure of others, copying, or industry praise with the required nexus to the claims. The prior sections found no litigation or licensing activity tied to this patent, and the document shows no reissue or certificate of correction exploiting the claims. Absent such evidence, there is nothing on the record to rebut the prima facie case.

9. Bottom line

• Claim 1: likely obvious over Hoarty '718 + 5,047,867 + Stanfill & Kahle + Young/Reiter, with the KSR rationale that the sole delta from the applicants' own parent disclosure is the informational content of the database.
• Claim 2: obvious — Stanfill & Kahle directly, and the specification concedes free-text search was well known.
• Claim 3: obvious — Hoarty '718 supplies an electronically delivered catalog of items for sale, categories, and interactive ordering.
• Claim 4: not established on the art of record; it turns on removable/portable storage of the personalized database and needs a supplemental reference.
• Two honest caveats: (i) the single strongest "reference" (U.S. 5,223,924) is the same family and encounters pre-AIA § 103(c)/inventive-entity problems, so the durable rejection must be built from the third-party set in § 5; (ii) the page's prior-art list does not contain a clean relevance-feedback reference — that gap is filled only by the SIGIR '92 Aalbersberg paper (and, in the older literature, Salton's Automatic Text Processing), both of which I flag as supplemental rather than page-listed, with the verification limits stated.

Confidence: high on the claim-1/claim-2 overlap with '924 and on Hoarty's disclosure of an electronic shopping catalog; moderate on the "derive search terms from the user-flagged records" step being squarely taught by the page-listed art alone; low on claim 4.