US 5590038

I'll start by pulling authoritative and docket-side information on US 5590038.

I found the FPO claim text. Let me get the remaining independent claims and check for litigation/PTAB activity.

I have claims 1 and part of 14. Let me pin down the remaining independent claims and check for PTAB/CBM activity on the '038 patent itself.

US 5,590,038 — Verified Record

Note on sources used: The authoritative full text of the patent was retrieved from Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5590038/en, fetched 2026‑09‑23). Claim text was independently retrieved from FreePatentsOnline (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/[5590038](/patent/5590038).html). Because your prompt's stated date (April 26, 2026) differs from the retrieval date (Sept 23, 2026), treat all "current" data as of the retrieval date. I searched specifically for the literal string 5,590,038 / 5590038 and discarded hits to other numbers.

1. Bibliographic record

Classification: G07F 7/08, G07F 7/10, G07F 7/1008; G06Q 20/02–20/40 (incl. 20/3415 "cards acting autonomously as pay-media," 20/3576 "multiple memory zones on card," 20/4093 "monitoring of device authentication"); G06Q 10/10; G16H 10/65.

2. Abstract (verbatim from the patent)

"A universal electronic transaction card ('UET card') is capable of serving as a number of different credit cards, bank cards, identification cards, employee cards, medical cards and the like. The UET card includes information storage elements, an input interface, a processor, a display, and a communications interface. In a preferred embodiment, the display is a touch-sensitive display which provides the user with a number of graphical images which enable the user to selectively choose the type of 'credit card' to use for a transaction, and to then choose a particular credit card to use with the transaction. After the choice is made, a graphic image appears on the display which looks like the face of a plastic credit card, including the account number, the user's name, the name of the credit card company and its logo. Thereafter, the user presents the UET card to the point of sales terminal for a sales transaction. After proper verification with the main computer of the service provider, the sales transaction information is transferred and stored in the UET card by the point of sales terminal to eliminate paper receipts and facilitate future storage, verification and analysis for billing, budgeting and financial management and using a home or office personal computer or other facilities. The invention also includes methods of issuing account authorization to a UET card, a method of transferring transactional and account information between a UET card and a personal computer or mainframe computer, a method of using the UET card as a remote terminal for a mainframe computer, and a method of conducting an electronic transaction."

3. Independent claims — plain-language overview

Claim 1 — the card itself (device claim). A pocket/purse-sized "universal electronic transaction card" for a plurality of service institutions, comprising seven elements:

• (a) a housing sized to fit in a pocket or purse that houses the other elements;
• (b) inputting means for entering personal information, account information for multiple service institutions, and transactional information, into memory;
• (c) memory means storing that same triad of information;
• (d) communications means for electronically communicating that information with service institutions (i.e., two-way, not merely a read-out port);
• (e) display means for (i) displaying a replica of a card corresponding to a selected service institution and (ii) displaying information for a plurality of service-institution accounts;
• (f) processing means; and
• (g) means for providing and storing electric power.

Practical reading: the core inventive hook is a single pocket-sized active display device whose screen renders a facsimile of a physical card face (selected from many issuers) and which stores and communicates the underlying account/transaction data.

Claim 14 — the electronic transaction system (system claim). Recites a plurality of UET cards for inputting, storing, processing and transmitting personal/account/transactional information for a plurality of service institutions, each card having inputting means, memory means, communications means for communicating to and from the memory with service institutions, and display means for displaying account information and for displaying a replica of a card corresponding to a selected financial [service institution]…. (The retrieved claim text truncates at that point; the remainder of claim 14, in light of the specification, adds the intermediate communication-interface unit, point-of-transaction system, and institutional (main-computer) system elements.)

Further independent claims — stated with explicit uncertainty. The specification's Summary section enumerates four additional claim families that are almost certainly embodied as independent claims in the issued patent, but the search hits available to me truncated the claim set after claim 14, so I cannot confirm their exact claim numbers or verbatim wording:

1. A method of conducting an electronic credit transaction using a service-institution account — the six-step sequence: select an account on the card → establish communication among card / point-of-transaction system / service-institution system → send account information from card to POS → send transactional information to the institution → institution screens the account for validity and credit limit → on approval, authorize the transaction to the POS, store the transaction at the institution, and transmit the transaction back into the UET card and store it there against that account (this last step is the "receipt storage" that gives the patent its title).
2. A method of issuing an account authorization to a UET card — institution obtains user information, issues an account number, then electronically transmits to the card the account data plus displayable institution information (name and/or graphic logo) so the card can render the institution's "card face."
3. A method of transferring account and accumulated transactional information from the card to a personal computer — select account(s), select transactions within a period, download them so the PC can render a monthly-statement-like report.
4. A method of using the UET card as a remote terminal for a service-institution mainframe — select an authorized account, dial the institution's system, transmit user/account identifying information, have it validated, then exchange account/transaction data on the card's commands, with statements displayable on the card.
5. A health-care management system (UET cards + a central health-care information processing system + a health-care provider processing system holding medical histories and insurance/account data).

Not verified: the total claim count and the precise claim numbers for the method/system claims above. Do not cite those numbers without pulling the printed claim set.

4. Docket / PTAB / CAFC findings

CAFC 2026 dockets: I found no Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket or opinion naming US 5,590,038. My searches surfaced unrelated 2026 CAFC decisions (e.g., VDDP, LLC v. Volkswagen; Applications in Internet Time v. Salesforce; Berkeley*IEOR v. W.W. Grainger), none involving '038. Treat the absence as inconclusive rather than as proof of no activity.

PTAB / USPTO PTActs (confirmed, and this is '038, not a lookalike number): US 5,590,038 "Pitroda" appears in PTAB petition papers as prior art, cited as Ex. 1004, against other patents — chiefly in petitions challenging U.S. Patent No. 7,828,207 (petition document IDs 1460603, 1462153, 1462249 on ptacts.uspto.gov). Representative passages:

• Petition 1460603: "'5,590,038 ('Pitroda') and 5,276,311 ('Hennige'), like the '875 patent, are directed to universal credit cards… Pitroda discloses [a] universal electronic transaction card [that] is capable of serving as a number of different credit cards [and] bank cards…' E.g., Ex.1008 at Abstract." (Petitioner's brief argued it would have been predictable to put the Pitroda/Hennige card components into a telephone.)
• Petition 1462249 maps '038 figure 3 and columns 9, 11, 13, 16–17 against claim limitations such as "a display device chosen from the group consisting of LCDs, LED LEDs, CRTs…" and the Fig. 13/Fig. 14 credit-card selection screens.

So '038's post-expiration significance is as prior art in later mobile-payment/CBM/IPR fights, not (on this record) as an asserted patent in 2026.

Related prosecution history (not litigation): Ex parte Pitroda, Appeal Nos. 2004-000297 and 2011-005589 (Board of Patent Appeals and Interferences) are referenced in counsel materials for C-SAM's mobile-payment portfolio — relevant to the family, not to '038 itself.

5. Uncertainty flags

• Assignee: "Mastercard Mobile Transaction Solutions Inc." is Google's listed current assignee with an explicit accuracy disclaimer; the verified assignment record shows the chain Pitroda → C-SAM, Inc., with a 2001 security interest to Pitroda and a 2011 release. Any current-ownership statement should be re-verified against USPTO Assignment records.
• Expiration: the 2014-06-20 date follows the pre-URAA rule (20 years from filing exceeds 17 years from the 1996-12-31 grant), which is why the longer term controls. '038 is therefore long expired and cannot be asserted for prospective relief.
• Independent claim inventory: confirmed for claims 1 and 14; the four method/system claim families above are reconstructed from the Summary of the Invention and are not verbatim-confirmed by the truncated claim text available to me.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 5,590,038. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me search more specifically for litigation involving the patent's owners and related case databases.

Let me search litigation-specific databases for this patent number.

Bottom line

I could not identify any U.S. district court or Federal Circuit case in which US Patent 5,590,038 was the asserted patent-in-suit. Based on the searches I ran (which included judicial/PTAB and patent-record sources), the '038 patent appears in the record far more often as prior art cited against other parties' patents than as a patent being enforced.

I want to be candid about scope: I ran several web searches but was not able to directly query the specific databases you named (Unified Patents litigation portal, PACER, or the CAFC docket) within the tool budget available, so the absence of a hit should be read as "none found in the sources I could reach," not as an affirmative certification that no case ever existed.

What I did find

1. A "family has litigation" indicator on the patent's own record
The Google Patents page for US5590038A displays a "Family has litigation – First worldwide family litigation filed" flag, linking to the Darts-IP family ID 22996979 (https://patents.darts-ip.com/?family=22996979). This indicates some member of the '038 patent family (including its WO/EP/CA/JP counterparts and continuations) has been litigated somewhere, but the Google page does not surface the case caption, court, or number. I could not retrieve those details, so I am not attributing any specific case to the '038 patent on the strength of this flag alone.

2. The '038 patent used as prior art ("Pitroda") in PTAB proceedings — not as an asserted patent
The '038 patent was relied on as the primary anticipatory reference against U.S. Patent 6,764,005 in:

• IPR2014-00156 and IPR2014-00157 — Petitioner: Square, Inc.; '038 was submitted as Exhibit 1004 ("Pitroda"). The PTAB's Final Written Decision (IPR2014-00156) found certain claims of the '005 patent unpatentable as anticipated by Pitroda, relying on, e.g., the UET card's transaction memory area 410 "corresponding to each card" (Ex. 1004, 11:65–12:4; Figs. 3, 13, 14).
  • Source: Finnegan-hosted Final Written Decision, https://www.finnegan.com/a/web/115258/2G4qSe/ipr2014-00156-final-written-decision-35-usc-c2a7-318a-and-3.pdf
  • Source: PTAB petition materials, https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1462249/...

These are IPR validity challenges, not infringement litigation, and Square was not suing on the '038 patent — it was using it to invalidate someone else's patent.

3. Prosecution appeals involving the inventor (not litigation)
Ex parte Pitroda, Appeal Nos. 2004-000297 and 2011-005589 are BPAI/PTAB ex parte prosecution appeals cited in connection with the inventor's related applications (e.g., the '438/09/265,451 family), not court litigation. (See onecle.com reproduction: https://law.onecle.com/board-of-patent-appeals/2004/fd040297001.html.)

Provenance/ownership context (relevant to who could have sued)

• Inventor: Satyan G. Pitroda; original assignee listed as Individual (Google Patents).
• 2000-02-11: assigned to C-SAM, INC.
• 2001-02-16: security interest to Pitroda, S.G.; released 2011-07-18.
• Current assignee listed: Mastercard Mobile Transaction Solutions Inc.
• Status: Expired – Lifetime; anticipated expiration 2014-06-20 (from the 1994-06-20 priority date, i.e., the pre-URAA 17-years-from-issue term).

Note that an expired patent cannot be asserted for prospective injunctive relief, and damages would be limited to the pre-expiration window — a practical reason enforcement suits would have been brought many years ago, if at all.

What I recommend to close the gap

To definitively answer, I would query these (which I could not fully execute here):

1. Unified Patents litigation portal — https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist (search 5590038).
2. PACER / CourtListener RECAP — search docket text for "5,590,038" and "Pitroda."
3. Darts-IP family 22996979 — the source behind the Google "family has litigation" flag; this is the most likely place to find the actual case caption.
4. Justia / FreePatentsOnline "litigation" tabs for 5590038 (the Justia/FPO hits in my searches showed only citing references — e.g., US 7,853,529, US 9,898,581, US 12,248,922, US 7,708,198 — not litigation).
5. C-SAM, Inc. and Mastercard Mobile Transaction Solutions Inc. as party-name searches in district court dockets.

If you want, I can run those specific searches (Unified Patents caselist, CourtListener/PACER, and the Darts-IP family page) and report back with caption/court/case-number/filing-date/status for anything that surfaces — subject to the caveat that docket-level sources for very old or settled cases can be thin.

One caution on identifiers: I have kept the patent number 5,590,038 literal throughout and have not conflated it with similarly numbered records (e.g., CNIPA invalidation decision No. 56038, or unrelated patents) that appeared in search results.

I'll research AIA trial activity on US 5,590,038 (distinct from proceedings where the '038 patent appears only as prior art).

Let me verify with targeted searches for any AIA trial naming the '038 patent as the challenged patent, including CBM and older IPRs.

One more verification pass for any AIA trial naming the '038 patent itself as the challenged patent (including reexam-adjacent and older filings).

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file against US 5,590,038: 0. Active: 0. Claims invalidated: 0. Claims sustained: 0. Settled: 0. Institution denied: 0. (The canonical USPTO Open Data Portal "PTAB proceedings on file" block returns no AIA trials, and six targeted web searches surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal naming the '038 patent as the challenged patent.)

Bottom line for a defendant: the defensive posture is not "hardened patent" or "claims are dead" — it is "no PTAB test was ever run, and none is worth running now." The '038 patent issued 1996-12-31, expired 2014-06-20, and — because 35 U.S.C. § 286 bars recovery for infringement committed more than six years before a complaint is filed — as of today (2026-09-23) there is no window of actionable infringement left to sue on. The absence of PTAB activity is not a signal of a strong patent; it is a signal of a patent that ran out of enforceable life before the IPR era had a chance to be used against it. (IPR itself only became available 2012-09-16, leaving a ~21-month overlap with the patent's live term.)

⚠️ Critical distinction before you rely on any search result

This is the single most important point in this memo. A search for "5,590,038 PTAB" returns a large number of hits that are not proceedings on this patent. The '038 patent is Satyan G. Pitroda's UET card patent, and it is one of the most heavily cited references in payment-card prosecution and litigation — so it appears constantly as prior art ("Pitroda"), as Exhibit 1004/1008 in other parties' IPRs, and in IDS/search-history exhibits. None of that is an AIA trial on '038. Concretely, what my searches surfaced (all involving other patents):

Two traps this creates for a defendant:

1. Do not attribute Square v. Cooper to this patent. The '005 patent that Pitroda's '038 was used to invalidate is J. Carl Cooper's patent — not Pitroda's. The earlier litigation section of this analysis already characterized IPR2014-00156/-157 correctly as prior-art use; I confirm that and flag it here because the search environment makes conflation very easy.
2. "Pitroda" ≠ "the '038 patent." Where a brief says "Holloway and Pitroda do not teach…," confirm which Pitroda patent is meant before treating it as '038.

Strategic summary

Claim status of '038: UNTESTED — all claims. No claim of US 5,590,038 has ever been canceled, confirmed, or even construed by the PTAB, because no AIA trial was ever instituted. (I have deliberately not stated a claim count or listed specific claim numbers: the full text supplied in this prompt cuts off in the Detailed Description, and I will not invent claim numbers or attribute to '038 the claim numbering that appears in the '005-patent FWD excerpt, e.g. its "claims 1 and 5" / "claim 6" discussion.) The patent's status line in the record is "Expired – Lifetime," anticipated expiration 2014-06-20, and the assignee chain is Individual → C-SAM, INC. (2000-02-11) → current listed assignee Mastercard Mobile Transaction Solutions Inc.

Estoppel landscape: none, in either direction. Because no IPR reached a final written decision against '038, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel has never attached to anyone with respect to this patent. There is no petitioner or privy precluded from raising prior-art grounds against it, and equally there is no PTAB record a patent owner could point to as a validity win. Practically this is academic: the reason no § 315(b) one-year bar, § 325(d) same-art issue, or General Plastic / Fintiv discretionary-denial fight exists is that nobody ever had a business reason to file. On timing, note the mechanics if someone insisted on filing now: § 315(b) bars only a party served with a complaint more than one year earlier, so an unserved party is not statutorily barred — the real obstacle is economic, plus the fact that the Board applies the Phillips standard (not broadest reasonable interpretation) to the claims of an expired patent, and claim amendments are effectively unavailable in an expired patent because there is no enforceable claim scope to amend. I flag both propositions as my understanding of Board practice rather than as something I verified in a specific decision in this research pass.

Pattern signals: none of the usual ones. No petitioner filed multiple IPRs on this patent. The patent owner (C-SAM, then Mastercard Mobile Transaction Solutions) has no PTAB appeal history on '038. No Unified Patents proceeding naming '038 was found — Unified appears only tangentially, as the petitioner in an unrelated IPR (IPR2016-01109) whose prior-art search exhibit happens to list '038. No CBM was filed during the program's 2012-09-16 → 2020-09-16 life, despite '038 being a facial CBM candidate (a card-based financial transaction apparatus); the absence is explained by the patent's 2014-06-20 expiry and the absence of an underlying infringement charge to confer CBM standing. For completeness, the only Ex parte matters tied to this inventor that surfaced — Ex parte Pitroda, Appeal Nos. 2004-000297 and 2011-005589 — are prosecution appeals from related applications, not AIA trials and not this patent.

Recommended next steps

1. If you are a defendant facing a demand or complaint citing US 5,590,038 today: lead with expiry plus the § 286 damages bar, not with an IPR. The patent expired 2014-06-20; any complaint filed now reaches back only six years (to 2026-09-23 minus six years = 2020-09-23), a period during which the patent was already expired, so no recoverable damages period remains. Confirm the expiration date against the USPTO Patent Center record before relying on it, and confirm no terminal disclaimer, PTA, or § 154(b) adjustment extends it — the Google Patents page states anticipated expiration 2014-06-20, which matches 20 years from the 1994-06-20 filing date and is the later of that and 17 years from the 1996-12-31 grant.
2. If a demand letter quotes claim numbers of '038: treat those claims as untested, not canceled. You cannot say "claim 1 is dead"; you can say no PTAB tribunal has ever passed on any '038 claim, and validity is therefore an Article III question (with § 101/§ 112 challenges unavailable in an IPR in any event).
3. If a demand letter is actually about a different Pitroda patent or a C-SAM/Mastercard continuation: re-run this analysis on that patent number. The '038 family includes continuations (e.g., US 5,884,271 and US 6,925,439), and PTAB activity may exist on those — this memo covers only 5,590,038.
4. If you nonetheless want the primary sources: the canonical verification is the USPTO PTAB E2E / P-TACTS portal — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ — searched by patent number, plus the PTAB API at https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-api/. For any Federal Circuit activity, search docket text at CourtListener — https://www.courtlistener.com/. I could not execute queries against Unified Patents' caselist, PACER/RECAP, or the Darts-IP family page 22996979 within this research pass, so "zero proceedings" rests on the ODP block plus the searches described above; the Darts-IP "family has litigation" flag on the Google Patents page most plausibly reflects litigation on a family member rather than the '038 patent itself, but I have not verified the caption.

Contradiction check against prior sections: none found. The earlier litigation summary reached the same conclusion on IPR2014-00156/-157 (prior-art use against the '005 patent, not enforcement of '038) and the same expiry reasoning. This section is consistent with, and adds the claim-level and estoppel detail to, that finding.

I'll research the assignment chain for US 5,590,038, trying to pull reel/frame and correspondent data from the USPTO assignment record and cross-references.

Let me try to pull the actual assignment records and the C-SAM/Mastercard ownership context.

I have the sibling-patent change-of-name pattern. Let me try to pin down reel/frame records specific to 5,590,038 and the C-SAM corporate history.

Ownership chain reconstruction — US Patent 5,590,038

Tool-budget note (disclosed): I exhausted my search step allotment mid-research. I was able to retrieve the Google Patents legal‑events record (provided in the authoritative patent text) plus INPADOC legal‑status data for a sibling C‑SAM patent (US 9,317,849). I was not able to open the Assignment Center record for 5,590,038 itself, so reel/frame numbers and correspondents of record for the 5,590,038‑specific entries remain unverified. I flag every place this matters rather than filling gaps. I did not fabricate any reel/frame or correspondent.

Inventors

• Satyan G. Pitroda — sole named inventor (Downers Grove / Oakbrook, IL). No co‑inventors on the '038 patent.
  • Employer at time of filing (1994): No corporate co‑assignee appears on the issued patent — Google Patents lists the original assignee as "Individual." Pitroda filed as an independent inventor/entrepreneur. The commercializer of this technology, C‑SAM, Inc. (Oakbrook Terrace, IL), appears as assignee only on the later continuation US 6,925,439 (filed 1999) and in the 2000 assignment of the '038 patent — i.e., the company post‑dates this filing and was formed to exploit it. (I could not independently confirm C‑SAM's exact incorporation date within budget; treat "C‑SAM formed after the 1994 filing" as supported, the precise year as unconfirmed.)
• Unusual-pattern check: The "all inventors leaving within 12 months" fire‑sale precursor does not apply — there is only one inventor, and he is also the party who received the security interest in 2001 (see timeline). This is a founder‑holds‑IP‑then‑moves‑it‑into‑his‑own-startup pattern, the opposite of an abandonment signal.

Original assignee

• On the face of the issued patent: Satyan G. Pitroda, individually (Google Patents: original assignee = "Individual"). The '038 patent did not issue to a company.
• The de facto operating entity that acquired it: C‑SAM, Inc., Oakbrook Terrace, Illinois — a mobile‑wallet / on‑device software company that shipped an actual product line. A contemporaneous industry account describes C‑SAM as having "began offering a mobile wallet in 2005" and supplying the platform behind Isis (the AT&T/T‑Mobile/Verizon NFC wallet) as well as deployments in India, Japan, Mexico, Singapore, the U.S. and Vietnam. Source: Digital Transactions, "By Snapping up C‑Sam, MasterCard Bolsters Mobile Capability, Matches Rivals" (https://www.digitaltransactions.net/By-Snapping-up-C-Sam-MasterCard-Bolsters-Mobile-Capability--Matches-Rivals/).
• Current status: C‑SAM was acquired by MasterCard Inc. (announced Feb 24, 2014 at Mobile World Congress; undisclosed sum), then renamed — "Mastercard Mobile Transaction Solutions, Inc." — as reflected in the INPADOC record for sibling US 9,317,849 (change of name, effective 2015‑03‑16). So the current assignee is a renamed, absorbed subsidiary of a large operating company, not a spun‑out assertion vehicle.
  • MasterCard CEO Ajay Banga's own framing of the deal: "that's why we bought C-SAM. Because C-SAM has [a] ton of very good engineers and technologists…" (J.P. Morgan TMT Conference transcript, May 19, 2014) — a technology/team tuck‑in, not a patent‑enforcement play.

Assignment timeline

Reconstructed from the Google Patents legal‑events record for US 5,590,038 (authoritative text provided) and, where noted, INPADOC legal status for the sibling C‑SAM patent US 9,317,849.

Reel/frame caveat: The Google Patents legal‑events feed for 5,590,038 does not expose reel/frame numbers for the 2000, 2001 and 2011 entries. I could not reach the Assignment Center record for 5,590,038 to retrieve them. The reel/frame values below are shown only where I actually observed them, and are marked as belonging to a sibling patent, not to '038.

• 2000‑02‑11 (recorded) — Reel unverified/not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Pitroda, Satyan G.
  • Assignee: C‑SAM, INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved (see Signal 3)
  • Context: Founder transfers personally‑held patent into his own operating startup — a commercialization/roll‑in, not a fire‑sale.

• 2001‑02‑16 (recorded) — Reel unverified/not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Security Interest (secured‑party financing)
  • Assignor: C‑SAM, INC.
  • Assignee: PITRODA, S.G.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Internal financing/securitization — the founder‑creditor takes a security interest in the startup's IP. This runs from the operating company to its own founder, the reverse of an NPE transfer.

• 2011‑07‑18 (recorded) — Reel unverified/not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
  • Assignor: PITRODA, S. G.
  • Assignee: C‑SAM, INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Clearing of the 2001 lien — debt satisfied; IP once again unencumbered.

• 2015‑03‑16 (effective) / 2015‑04‑28 (recorded) — Reel 035521/0138 ⚠️ verified on sibling US 9,317,849, not directly observed on the '038 record

  • Conveyance: Change of Name (not an arm's‑length assignment)
  • Assignor: C‑SAM, INC.
  • Assignee: Mastercard Mobile Transactions Solutions, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Change of name only following MasterCard's 2014 acquisition — the same legal entity continues; no new consideration, no new owner. This is why Google Patents lists "Mastercard Mobile Transaction Solutions Inc" as current assignee with no separate assignment event.
  • Flag / possible contradiction: Google Patents' legal‑events list for 5,590,038 does not itself show the change‑of‑name entry. Either (a) the name‑change record covers the whole C‑SAM portfolio on reel 035521/0138 including '038 (most likely — a single change‑of‑name instrument typically lists all properties), or (b) '038 was handled separately. I could not resolve this on the '038 record; I am not asserting the reel number for '038 with certainty.

• 2014‑06‑20 — Anticipated expiration (no assignment; recorded as a legal event). Term ran 17 years from the 1996‑12‑31 issue date under pre‑URAA rules. The patent is Expired – Lifetime.

If Assignment Center in fact holds additional records I could not see, this section understates the chain. Per the constraints, I have not invented any entry to fill the gap.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5590038
    1994 : Filed by Satyan G Pitroda
    1996 : Patent issues to Pitroda as individual
    2000 : Pitroda assigns patent to C-SAM Inc
    2001 : Security interest granted to Pitroda
    2011 : Security interest released
    2014 : Mastercard acquires C-SAM Inc
         : Patent reaches expiry
    2015 : C-SAM renamed to Mastercard Mobile

NPE / troll-pattern signals

Verdict

Defensive / non‑asserting — (closest of the five options; one caveat below).

Justification: The only recorded transfers are 2000‑02‑11 (Pitroda → C‑SAM, Inc.), 2001‑02‑16 (C‑SAM → Pitroda, security interest), 2011‑07‑18 (release), and a 2015 change‑of‑name to Mastercard Mobile Transaction Solutions (reel 035521/0138, verified on sibling US 9,317,849; see caveat). Every counterparty is an operating entity or the inventor himself — no shell LLC, no listed NPE, no bankruptcy, no cascade. The patent expired 2014‑06‑20 and, per the litigation record, was never asserted as a patent‑in‑suit. The asset is therefore commercially held and now neutralized by expiry, which is the substance of a "non‑asserting" finding.

Caveat on category fit: Mastercard is a large operating company, not a classic defensive aggregator (RPX/AST/LOT), so the parenthetical definition for "Defensive / non‑asserting" is not literally met. I chose it over "Operating‑company assertion" because I found no assertion of the '038 patent, and over "NPE" because no NPE signal is present. If the brief requires the literal aggregator definition, the honest call would be "Insufficient data" pending the Assignment Center correspondent/reel pull — that is the one item that could change the picture (Signal 3).

Verify at: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 5590038) and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html — pull the correspondent of record for the 2000, 2001, 2011 and 2015 entries to close Signal 3.

Cross-references used

• Google Patents legal events for US 5,590,038 (authoritative text in prompt): 2000‑02‑11 assignment to C‑SAM; 2001‑02‑16 security interest; 2011‑07‑18 release; 2014‑06‑20 expiration; current assignee Mastercard Mobile Transaction Solutions Inc.
• Espacenet INPADOC legal status for US 9,317,849 (sibling C‑SAM patent): assignment REEL/FRAME 028968/0413 (Pitroda & Desai → C‑SAM, 2012‑09‑17) and change of name REEL/FRAME 035521/0138 (C‑SAM → Mastercard Mobile Transactions Solutions, effective 2015‑03‑16) — https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/inpadoc?CC=US&NR=9317849B2
• Digital Transactions, MasterCard/C‑Sam acquisition — https://www.digitaltransactions.net/By-Snapping-up-C-Sam-MasterCard-Bolsters-Mobile-Capability--Matches-Rivals/
• MasterCard J.P. Morgan TMT transcript, May 19, 2014 (Banga on buying C‑SAM for engineers/tech).

One caution: I have kept the patent number 5,590,038 literal throughout and have not attributed the sibling‑patent reel numbers (028968/0413, 035521/0138) to the '038 record as fact — they are shown only as corroborating context for the C‑SAM corporate chain.

I'll research the prior-art citations for US 5,590,038 specifically. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me pull the specific "References Cited" front-page list for US 5,590,038.

Prior Art for US 5,590,038 — Examiner-Cited References and §102 Mapping

Retrieval date: 2026‑09‑23. Task-stated date: April 26, 2026. ⚠️ Flag: the two dates conflict; I have kept the task's framing (April 26, 2026) for "current" statements but all retrievals are stamped 2026‑09‑23. Same discrepancy flagged in the earlier Patent‑summary section.

0. Scope, sources, and a material limitation you should know about

What I searched. Google Patents is the mirror of the USPTO full‑text record used in this analysis (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5590038/en), plus FreePatentsOnline (https://www.freepatentsonline.com/5590038.html) and Justia Patents. I could not run a direct USPTO PatentCenter / Patent Examination Data System (PEDS) query with the tools available, so this is a mirror‑based, not USPTO‑native, answer. Patent number 5,590,038 was kept literal throughout; hits to lookalike numbers (e.g., CNIPA decision No. 56038, EP 0766852 family members) were discarded.

The material limitation. I was not able to retrieve the verbatim "References Cited" front page of US 5,590,038 (the examiner‑cited list printed on the patent face) within the tool budget. What I did retrieve is:

Why the proxy is defensible but not authoritative. US 5,884,271 is a first‑generation CIP that shares the '038 specification verbatim in all material parts. Its examiner‑cited list therefore heavily overlaps '038's, and it is the standard way practitioners reconstruct a truncated pre‑1995 front page. But it is not identical: the '871 was filed 1996‑09‑06, so references published between 1994‑06‑20 and 1996‑09‑06 (e.g., the Mondex Summer 1996 item, US 5,649,115 Intuit filed 1994‑06‑02) can appear on the '871 and not on '038; conversely a reference can appear on '038's face and have been dropped from the '871's re‑filed IDS.

⚠️ Contradiction flag vs. the earlier-generated sections. The prior Patent‑summary section correctly warned that only claims 1 and 14 of '038 are verbatim‑confirmed. This task asks me to map references to "which claim(s)" they anticipate. I therefore map to claim 1, claim 14, and the five claim families reconstructed from the Summary of the Invention — and I label the method‑claim mappings [inferential]. Do not cite a claim number for those without pulling the printed claim set.

⚠️ Practical framing. '038 expired 2014‑06‑20 (confirmed in the earlier sections). A §102 analysis of '038 today is therefore defensive/historical: it matters because '038 is currently used as Ex. 1004 "Pitroda" in PTAB challenges to other patents (e.g., against U.S. 7,828,207 and in IPR2014‑00156/‑00157 against U.S. 6,764,005), not because '038 can be asserted.

1. Statutory categories — why the three "universal card" references are not §102(b) art

'038's critical date is 1994‑06‑20. Under pre‑AIA §102:

• Published before 1993‑06‑20 → §102(b) bar (unavoidable printed publication).
• Published on/after 1993‑06‑20 but before 1994‑06‑20 → §102(a); and if it is a U.S. patent with an earlier effective filing date → also §102(e) (swearable‑behind in principle under pre‑AIA practice).
• Foreign patents/printed publications → §102(a)/(b) only (no §102(e)).

This matters. The two most on‑point references — Hennige US 5,276,311 (pub. 1994‑01‑04) and Gutman US 5,221,838 (pub. 1993‑06‑22, two days past the §102(b) cutoff) — are §102(a)/(e) art, not §102(b) art. Parienti US 5,189,287 (1993‑02‑23) and Cummings US 5,301,105 (1994‑04‑05) are likewise inside the one‑year window. Everything else in the list below is §102(b).

2. The reference table

Legend — [G] Google‑table‑derived (dates are "priority date as listed"/"publication date as listed") · [S] from a search snippet (FPO/Justia/JPO/EPO) · [I] inferential. Patentee/title strings come from OCR'd tables and may contain typographic noise.

2A. The closest prior art — "plurality of cards / selectable card" references

2B. Portable transaction terminals / card‑form electronics (claim 1 hardware elements)

2C. Security, identity and signature — mapped to '038's security and signature limitations

2D. Health‑care prior art — the strongest §102 candidate on this record

2E. Remaining references on the retrieved list (cumulative art)

These are cited but are cumulative rather than anticipatory for the claims of interest [G]:

• US 4,839,595 — Iijima (Toshiba), "Portable electronic apparatus with data remaining counter," 1986‑06‑20 / 1989‑05‑23 — power/memory accounting.
• US 4,899,? / US 4,891,506 — Yoshimatsu (Toshiba), "Multi‑use portable electronic device," 1987‑02‑20 / 1990‑01‑02 — multi‑application card.
• US 4,973,828 — Naruse et al. (Toshiba), "Portable electronic medium," 1988‑04‑15 / 1990‑11‑27.
• US 4,983,816 — Iijima (Toshiba), "Portable electronic device," 1988‑02‑24 / 1991‑01‑08.
• US 5,015,830 — Masuzawa et al. (Sharp), "Electronic card reading device," 1988‑07‑04 / 1991‑05‑14 — terminal side.
• US 4,709,? / US 4,705,211 — Honda et al. (Sharp), "Card‑type data terminal operatively connectable to electronic apparatus," 1984‑03‑07 / 1987‑11‑10 — card‑form data terminal.
• US 4,844,? / US 4,844,614 — Watanabe et al., "Composite IC card," 1985‑12‑27 / 1989‑07‑18.
• US 4,732,? / US 4,739,295 — Hayashi et al. (Omron), "Data storage unit system," 1985‑09‑10 / 1988‑04‑19.
• US 5,157,247 — Takahira (Mitsubishi), "IC card," 1990‑07‑17 / 1992‑10‑20.
• US 5,153,842 — Dlugos Sr. et al. (Pitney Bowes), "Integrated circuit package label and/or manifest system," 1990‑02‑05 / 1992‑10‑06.
• US 5,185,? — not retrieved verbatim; omitted rather than guessed.

2F. Non‑patent literature [G, from the sibling '871's NPL table — dated after '038's filing]

• Business Life Magazine, Dec./Jan. 1994/95 — "The Era of the Smart Card" (4 pp.).
• Mondex Magazine — The World of Mondex Global Electronic Cash, Summer 1996 — "What's up doc — The Smart Way to pay for Infotainment" (3 pp.).
• Also associated with the family's CIP: PC Magazine, Mar. 29, 1994, "The PC in Your Wallet"; Sprint "Voice FONCARD" newsletter, Mar. 11, 1994 (these appeared on the related Pitroda patent US 6,769,607) [S].

§102 posture: the Dec. 1994/95 and Summer 1996 items post‑date '038's 1994‑06‑20 filing and therefore are not prior art to '038 at all. The Mar. 11/Mar. 29, 1994 items are within §102(a) as to '038, but only as printed publications. This is the clearest signal that list C (and by extension a portion of list A) reflects the '871 CIP rather than '038's own face.

3. Bottom line on anticipation

On this record, no single retrieved reference appears to anticipate claim 1 as a whole. Claim 1's conjunctive requirement set — a pocket/purse‑sized housing plus multi‑issuer account storage plus a display that renders a replica of a card corresponding to a selected service institution plus two‑way communication with service institutions plus on‑card processing and power — is not met by any one of the 30+ references mapped above. The references cluster as follows:

1. Multi‑card selection (Hennige US 5,276,311; Gutman US 5,221,838; Dethloff US 4,837,422; Masada US 4,928,001) — teaches the "plurality of service institutions," not the card‑face rendering.
2. Card‑form electronics + on‑card display (US 5,055,662 Toshiba; GB 2,255,934 A; US 4,918,631 Casio; US 4,650,981 Foletta; US 4,692,601 Casio) — teaches the hardware, not the multi‑issuer transaction architecture.
3. System architecture (Benton optical/EFT family; NCR US 4,634,845/4,689,478; Visa US 5,136,633; US RE 28,081) — teaches claim 14's POS↔host legs, not the intermediate CIU + card‑replica element.
4. Health care (US 5,301,105 Cummings) — the one area where a single reference plausibly reads on an entire claim family (the health‑care management system), with US 4,858,121 and US 4,491,725 as cumulative.
5. Signature/security (US 5,150,420 Haraguchi; US 5,023,908 Weiss; US 5,168,151 Nara; US 4,910,774 Barakat) — the closest art against the signature‑verification and access‑control limitations.

Were I rebuilding a §102 attack on '038 today (e.g., to support or attack its use as Ex. 1004 in the pending IPRs), I would lead with Hennige US 5,276,311 + Gutman US 5,221,838 against claim 1, Cummings US 5,301,105 against the health‑care claim family, and Barber US 4,858,121 + Pritchard US 4,491,725 as the §102(b) backup on health care — while expecting the "replica of a card" and "transaction written back into the card" limitations to force the theory into §103.

Forward vs. backward citation — do not confuse them. '038 has ~130‑plus forward citations (e.g., the Xatra/American Express RF‑transaction family; MIT micropayment; JPMorgan transponder accounts). Those are not prior art to '038; they are later patents that cite it. Equally, the appearances of '038 in EPO search reports (EP 2,287,783 A1 as a "Y" document; EP 2,211,309; WO 2006/048638; WO 2006/038948) and in PTAB exhibits (Ex. 1004 in the U.S. 7,828,207 petitions; the IPR2014‑00156/00157 challenges to U.S. 6,764,005) are forward uses of '038 as against other patents.

4. Flags and contradictions

1. ⚠️ Date contradiction (recurring). Task says April 26, 2026; all sources were fetched 2026‑09‑23. Consistent with the earlier sections' flag.
2. ⚠️ Retrieval gap. I did not obtain the verbatim front‑page "References Cited" list of US 5,590,038 from USPTO or Google Patents directly. Lists A/B/C above are reconstructions from the CIP sibling (US 5,884,271) and its family table. Treat lists A and B as a proxy, not as '038's certified citation record. A direct PatentCenter/PEDS pull of the '038 file wrapper (or the printed patent PDF front page) is required to certify the list.
3. ⚠️ Claim‑number mapping is partly inferential. Only claims 1 and 14 are verbatim‑confirmed (per the earlier Patent‑summary section). The four method claims and the health‑care system claim are reconstructed from the Summary of the Invention. Any citation of a claim number for those in this analysis is flagged [inferential].
4. ⚠️ OCR noise. Patentee names, dates and titles in the retrieved tables are OCR'd from patent‑image PDFs (e.g., "Hennige" appears correctly, but "Dethloff" appears as "Detloff" in one table; "Pritchard" as "Prichard"; "Takahira" as "Takahira"/"Takahira"). I did not auto‑correct these; where a name looked corrupted I quoted it as retrieved.
5. No contradiction found between the search results and the earlier‑generated sections regarding: the 1994‑06‑20 priority date, the 1996‑12‑31 issue date, the expired status, or the C‑SAM/Mastercard assignment chain. The search results supplement (do not contradict) the earlier finding that '038 functions as prior art rather than as an asserted patent.

5. What I would pull next to close the gap

1. USPTO PatentCenter / PEDS for application 08/262,307 → the actual "References Cited" and "Notice of References Cited" (PTO‑892) forms — this is the only way to certify list A.
2. The printed patent front page (patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/.../US5590038.pdf, page 1) — resolves the list in one fetch.
3. The '038 file wrapper's IDS/signature — distinguishes examiner‑cited art (probative) from applicant‑cited art (less probative for §102 framing).
4. A verbatim claim set for claims 2–13 and the method claims — required before any dependent‑claim or method‑claim §102 assertion.

I'll start by pulling the prior-art record for '038 — its front-page references and the references actually used against it in PTAB — since the "Prior Art section" content wasn't reproduced in my working context.

Let me pull the front-page "References Cited" for '038 and the key secondary references applied against the closely-related Cooper patents (Hennige, Wallerstein, Gutman).

Obviousness Analysis — US 5,590,038 (Pitroda), 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Two threshold flags before the analysis

(a) My tool budget is exhausted and the "Prior Art section" was not present in my working context. The user message supplied only the Patent summary and Litigation summary sections. I therefore had to reconstruct the prior-art universe from (i) the patent's own text/claims, (ii) the references actually pleaded and applied in the PTAB proceedings in which '038 was the primary reference, and (iii) my own knowledge of the 1989–1994 smart-card/POS art. Where I could not verify a reference's number, date, or disclosure, I say so inline rather than supplying one. If you paste the actual Prior Art section, I will re-key the charts below to that exact list.

(b) The effective date controls everything. '038's filing and priority date are both 1994-06-20, so this is a pre-AIA § 103(a) analysis. Only art with a § 102 date before 1994-06-20 (or § 102(e) art by an earlier U.S. filing) can be combined. Several references that cite '038 as a later-filed family member (e.g., Kikinis US 5,835,732, Wallerstein US 5,585,787) are post-1994 issuances whose filing dates I could not verify here; their availability is genuinely in question and is flagged below. Also note the date discrepancy already flagged upstream: the retrieval the record is built on is dated 2026-09-23 while this task states 2026-04-26.

(c) Procedural posture. '038 expired 2014-06-20. This § 103 analysis is therefore retrospective — its practical function is to support the use of '038 as § 102/§ 103 art against later mobile-payment patents (which is exactly how Ex. 1004 "Pitroda" was used in the Cooper IPRs), or to answer a hypothetical validity challenge. Expiration is not itself an IPR bar — in IPR2014-00156 the challenged '005 patent expired during the trial and the Board issued a Final Written Decision anyway — but there is no live enforceability value left in '038's own claims.

1. The legal standard and the PHOSITA

• Graham factors: scope/content of claims → differences over prior art → level of ordinary skill → secondary considerations.
• KSR Int'l v. Teleflex (2007): the TSM test is not the sole test; a combination is obvious where the elements were known, the field was crowded, and there was a design incentive, market pressure, or a finite number of predictable solutions ("obvious to try"). Rationales include: combination of prior-art elements by known methods to yield predictable results; mere duplication of parts; a known technique ready for improvement; and "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."
• Claim format matters for the charting. Claim 1's elements — "inputting means," "memory means," "communications means," "display means," "processing means," and the power means — are means-plus-function limitations (§ 112 ¶ 6). For § 103, the reference need only disclose the function; the corresponding structure (a microcontroller, LCD with touch overlay, serial/IR/RF transceiver, battery) need only be known and available to the artisan. This materially weakens a "reference doesn't show my circuit" argument.
• PHOSITA (1994): a B.S. in EE/CS plus ~2 years (or M.S. plus ~1 year) in consumer transaction terminals, with working familiarity with ISO/ANSI card physical standards, magnetic-stripe and IC-card (chip) interfaces, POS/EFT authorization networks, character/graphic LCD displays, and battery-backed non-volatile memory.

2. Candidate prior art (with verification status)

What I could not obtain: the actual front-page "References Cited" list of '038. Google Patents reports "Patent Citations (41)" for US 5,590,038 A (seen in the US 5,884,271 / US 7,571,116 citation tables), but the 41 entries were not reproduced in my retrievable hits. Do not treat any omission above as proof the reference is absent from that list.

3. Claim 1 (device) — element chart against the strongest single reference

Residual gap: Hennige does not expressly describe rendering a graphical facsimile of a plastic card face as a single unit (it describes display areas for name/logo/photo/card data), and its card↔terminal data flow was found to be one-way as to the "host system." Those are the two limitations a validity challenge must close with secondary references.

4. Grounds of rejection

Ground I — Hennige '311 in view of Gutman '838 (§ 103(a)).
Gutman supplies the bidirectional card↔institution communication that the Board found missing from Hennige. Motivation: Hennige itself locates the card at "the respective point of use, i.e. in the department store, restaurant, or the like," and contemplates a document printer, a computer adapter (claim 17), and a checking terminal — i.e., Hennige expressly points toward integration with existing merchant/financial terminal infrastructure. Gutman is in the same field (IC-card EFT), addresses the same problem (authorizing a card transaction against a remote account file), and its addition yields the predictable result of an on-line authorization. KSR: known technique (networked card authorization) applied to a known device (multi-account card) to improve it in the same way.

Ground II — Hennige '311 in view of Wallerstein '787 (and, if available, Taylor).
Wallerstein is expressly directed to a programmable credit card enabling access to a selected one of a plurality of different credit card accounts, with a display. This closes any argument that Hennige's "selection" is limited to non-credit-card data sets, and directly supplies the selection-of-issuer step. Taylor (if its date qualifies) supplies downloading account data from the host to the card memory for display. Motivation: two references from the same art, each solving the same "too many cards" problem identified in both Hennige's background and '038's own background; combination is a mere aggregation of known functions with no unexpected result. Caveat: Wallerstein's and Taylor's effective dates must be verified; if either postdates 1994-06-20 as a filing, the ground collapses as to that reference.

Ground III — Hennige '311 in view of a graphical card-face/logo display reference, in further view of a touch-screen reference.
For the "visibly perceptible replica of a credit card" limitation, Hennige's claim 30 (display of the issuer's name and logo, the user's photo, card number, expiry, and a separate signature area) is already close; adding a graphic-card-face rendering is the kind of predictable, design-driven visual presentation that KSR treats as obvious, particularly where '038 itself characterizes the goal as merely "look[ing] like the face of a plastic credit card." Substituting a touch-sensitive overlay for Hennige's keys is likewise obvious in view of the well-known 1990–1994 touch-LCD art in point-of-sale and PDA devices.

Grounds IV–VII — the system and method claims (claim 14 and the reconstructed method families).
The reconstructed method claims (electronic credit transaction; issuing an account authorization; transferring transactions to a PC; using the card as a remote terminal) map as follows: Hennige's master unit/computer adapter + Gutman's EFT authorization + a POS terminal covers steps (1)–(5); the final "store the transaction back into the card and eliminate the paper receipt" step is the one genuinely distinctive feature. The obviousness case there rests on: (i) the express paper-elimination motivation recited in the art itself (Hennige contemplates a document printer and paper invoices; the problem statement of eliminating duplicate paper receipts and monthly statements was a recognized, long-felt industry cost driver), (ii) Gutman-type systems that already returned authorization/response data to the card, and (iii) KSR's "finite number of predictable solutions" — writing the response record to card memory instead of only to the merchant's printer is a trivial, predictable data-routing choice. For the health-care claims, the ordinary combination of a portable record carrier + network database (see '038's own "network similar to INTERNET" phrasing, indicating the network was a known environment) is likewise vulnerable.

5. Motivation to combine — the affirmative case, consolidated

1. Same field, same problem, same solution space. Both Hennige and '038 open by quantifying the burden of carrying many cards and the fraud/loss risk. Hennige's specification goes further and is self-executing on combination: it states "[t]here are numerous other possibilities of entering data into the electronic multi-function card which are both imaginable and possible."
2. Predictable results. Displaying a selected issuer's data; storing a transaction record against the selected account; transmitting it over an existing merchant/EFT network — each is a known function producing a known outcome. Evidence of record: in IPR2014-00156 the Board accepted that '038's "transaction memory area 410 … corresponding to each card" (Ex. 1004, 11:65–12:6; Fig. 4) discloses per-account transaction storage, i.e., the feature was already present in the 1994 art.
3. Design incentive / market pressure. Both the multi-card burden and the cost of paper receipts/statements were acknowledged industry problems (see '038's own background discussing "at least two written documents," "tens of millions" of transactions, and the 15%-of-health-care-cost insurance figure). Financial and environmental cost pressure is a classic KSR motivation.
4. Known hardware, ready for improvement. The card-sized LCD/µC/NV-RAM package was known (Hennige even cites "check-card calculators" with LCDs); a skilled artisan would recognize that placing the same miniaturization techniques into a transaction card improves it in the same way.
5. Teaching away? The only credible teaching-away candidate is the durability of mag-stripe/paper receipting. That is inertia/industry custom, not a teaching away — KSR expressly discounts reliance on conventional practice as a bar to obviousness.

6. Anticipated rebuttals and how strong they are

• "The Board already rejected Hennige." True but narrow and, importantly, helps the § 103 case: in IPR2014-00156 the Board held Hennige (i) is one-way only toward the host and (ii) that the master unit and checking terminal are separate devices, not a "host system." Both defects are cured by adding a Gutman-type networked terminal — which is precisely why Hennige was pleaded in § 103 combination with Taylor and Wallerstein rather than as sole anticipation.
• E-Pass v. 3Com / E-Pass v. Microsoft (Fed. Cir. 2003) construed Hennige's "card" not to be limited to ANSI/ISO credit-card dimensions, and held the multi-function card's purpose is not to operate as a specific single-purpose card interchangeably. This cuts against importing "credit-card face replica" as a narrow limitation for '038's claim 1, which recites a pocket/purse-sized housing rather than a standard-dimension card.
• Secondary considerations. Commercial success (Mastercard Mobile Transaction Solutions / C-SAM lineage, Google Wallet-adjacent products) would be the owner's best argument, but the nexus is weak: the asserted success traces to later mobile-phone payment implementations, not to the claimed 1994 card, and '038's own family (5,884,271; 6,925,439) plus the Cooper patents already occupied the space.
• Weakest link in my analysis: the unverified dates of Wallerstein and Taylor. If either is not § 102-qualified, Grounds II and the Taylor prong of the method claims fail, and Ground I (Hennige + Gutman) carries the entire § 103 case.

7. Uncertainty flags

1. No Prior Art section was available to me; the "Patent Citations (41)" list of US 5,590,038 A was not retrievable. The candidate set above is reconstructed and is not represented as the patent's front page.
2. Wallerstein US 5,585,787 and Taylor (number unknown) — dates unverified; availability as pre-1994-06-20 art is not established.
3. Gutman US 5,221,838 — number and role verified from the Cooper IPR materials; I did not re-read its disclosure for this analysis.
4. Gillig US 5,127,042 / Kikinis US 5,835,732 — numbers appear in the Cooper-family record; disclosures and dates not verified.
5. Claim 1 and 14 text is confirmed; the method/system claim numbers remain reconstructed from the Summary of the Invention and were not verbatim-confirmed (as flagged in the prior section). Do not cite specific method-claim numbers without pulling the printed claim set.
6. I did not query a full-text § 102 database for 1988–1994 Japanese/German smart-card-with-display art, which is the most likely place additional on-point art resides.

8. Bottom line

On the record I can verify, '038's claim 1 is a strong § 103 candidate: Hennige '311 discloses a credit-card-sized, multi-account electronic card with a display, secret-code security, data-set selection, and even a display of the issuing institution's name and logo, the user's photo and signature — leaving only the graphical "card-face replica" presentation and truly bidirectional host communication. The first is an obvious design choice; the second is supplied by Gutman-type EFT art, with the KSR motivation being Hennige's own express placement of the card at the merchant point of use and its contemplation of printers, computers, and checking terminals. The same combination, extended to a networked POS terminal that writes the authorization/transaction record back to card memory, renders the receipt-storage method claims obvious as well — the field already treated per-account transaction storage (Pitroda's own Fig. 4 / area 410) as conventional.

Conversely, the single most defensible feature in '038 for a patent owner is not the card itself but the closed-loop "institution → POS → back-into-card receipt, followed by card→PC monthly-statement-style rendering" — and even that is vulnerable on the paper-elimination motivation that the specification itself concedes was a long-recognized industry objective.