Invalidity dossier
US 5493490
Electronic proposal preparation system for selling vehicles
Current assignee: CLEAR WTH COMPUTERS LLC
Added 9/23/2026, 7:04:43 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview: US5493490A
Title: Electronic proposal preparation system for selling vehicles
Patent number: US5493490A
Application number: US07/878,602
Inventor: Jerome D. Johnson
Original assignee: Clear With Computers Inc
Current assignee (as listed): CLEAR WTH COMPUTERS LLC (Google notes listed assignees may be inaccurate and that it performed no legal analysis)
Priority/filing date: 1992-05-05
Publication/grant date: 1996-02-20
Legal status: Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2013-02-20)
Purpose and plain-language scope (from the supplied excerpt):
The patent is directed to an electronic system for preparing proposals used in selling vehicles. The excerpt's listed prior-art keywords are "proposal," "customer," "receive," "vehicle," and "page," indicating a customer-facing, document/page-based proposal workflow. Classifications place it in computing arrangements for commerce (G06Q30/02 — marketing; price estimation or determination) and in administration/management, inventory/stock management, and point-of-sale network areas (G06Q10/06, G06Q10/087, G06Q20/20, G06Q20/209). No claim text, abstract, or detailed description is included in the supplied excerpt, so the specific claimed scope cannot be stated from this source alone.
Family/related filings noted: CA2094966A1 and WO1993022739A1 and AU4233093A (1993); later US filings US08/268,166 (US5625776A), US08/596,575 (US5615342A), and US09/566,029 (US7606739B1), plus US12/577,194 (US8121904B2). These reflect priority relationships only as listed by the source.
What the excerpt does not establish: It provides no claims, abstract, specification, or drawings, so the actual claimed invention, embodiments, and limitations are not established here. It also does not establish the accuracy of the listed assignee, the legal status, or the priority-date assumptions (Google expressly labels these as assumptions/non-legal conclusions). No litigation, ownership-transfer, validity, or prior-art analysis is undertaken, per instruction.
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5493490](/patent/US5493490)/en (fetched 2026-09-23).
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:42:21 PM
Cases on file (0)
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Litigation summary
Past and pending lawsuits — plaintiffs, defendants, jurisdictions, outcomes, and notable rulings.
Proceedings on file (0)
All PTAB activity →AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) filed at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board against this patent. Sourced from the USPTO Open Data Portal and refreshed every six hours; each proceeding number deep-links to the PTAB E2E docket.
No PTAB proceedings on file. This patent has not been challenged via IPR, PGR, or CBM. The absence is itself a signal — well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs. The LLM analysis below may surface filings the ODP feed hasn’t indexed yet.
PTAB challenges
AIA trial proceedings at the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board — IPR, PGR, and CBM. Petitioners, judge panels, claim-level invalidation outcomes from Final Written Decisions, and Federal Circuit appeals. The single most important defensive datapoint after litigation history.
Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
Earlier patents, publications, and products that may anticipate or render the claims unpatentable.
Obviousness
Combinations of prior art that suggest the claimed invention would have been obvious under 35 U.S.C. § 103.
Extensions
Patent term adjustments, term extensions, continuations, divisionals, family members, and expiration dates.
Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.