US 5897260

I'll search for information about this specific patent number, including any litigation or docket activity.

Let me run a couple more targeted searches to check for any litigation, PTAB, or Federal Circuit activity involving this exact patent number.

Search Results — US 5,897,260 (US5897260A)

Search note (important): I ran targeted searches for the exact identifier 5897260 / 5,897,260. I did not find any CAFC 2026 docket entry, PTAB proceeding (IPR/PGR), or district-court litigation naming this patent. The docket-style hits that surfaced (e.g., Headwater Research LLC v. Cellco Partnership/Verizon, Case No. 2:23-cv-00352-JRG, E.D. Tex., with a 2026 Federal Circuit notice of appeal at USCA No. 26-1884) are unrelated to 5897260 and involve different patents — I am disregarding them rather than conflating them. Separate Man Roland litigation I found (Goss Graphic Systems v. Man Roland Druckmaschinen, 139 F. Supp. 2d 1040 (N.D. Iowa 2001); Goss Int'l Americas v. Man Roland, D.N.H. 1:03-cv-00513) is a 1916 Antidumping Act matter and does not appear to concern this patent. I cannot confirm from authoritative sources that 5897260 has ever been asserted or appealed; treat any assertion to the contrary as unverified.

Bibliographic summary (from the patent record)

Abstract

The patent describes a print job allocation system that interlinks customers of printing plants and multiple printing plants located throughout the world. It includes a network connecting the customers and a plurality of printing-machine control devices controlling printing machines in the plants, plus a print job processor that receives job data from customers and machine data from the control devices. The processor allocates jobs by matching job requirements to available machine capacity and capabilities, selecting machine(s)/plant(s) that optimize worldwide machine use and printing/distribution performance.

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

Claim 1 — System (the core architecture claim). A print-job allocation system with three cooperating parts:

1. Multiple data input devices letting printing-plant customers enter print job data for a requested job.
2. A first data transmission network.
3. Multiple printing plants connected to each other over that first network. Each plant contains multiple printing machines and, crucially, its own separate "second" data transmission network — different from the first network — that interconnects only the machines inside that plant.

The first network is wired to both the customer data-input devices and to each plant's second network. It receives the customers' print job data and forwards it to the second network of at least one plant so the job can be printed there. The two-tier network structure (a wide/inter-plant first network + a distinct intra-plant second network) is the point of novelty.

Claim 15 — Method (the core process claim). A method of allocating a requested print job to one of several printing plants that are linked by a first data network, where each plant has multiple machines interconnected by its own distinct second network. Steps:

1. Receive the print job data.
2. Compare that data against printing-plant data describing the machines in each plant.
3. Based on that comparison, select the machine(s) in the plant(s) to do the job.
4. Transmit the print job data over the first network to the second network of the plant that holds the selected machine.

Like claim 1, the method requires the same two distinct network layers.

Dependent claims worth noting: Claims 2–4 add the central print job processor and machine-data reporting from control devices; claim 5 lists selection criteria (material/printing cost, deadlines, distribution requirements, post-print steps); claim 6 covers matching a job requirements profile against a plant capabilities profile; claim 7 recites a "sequence query language database" (i.e., SQL); claims 8–10 cover customer-side image creation and the two alternative data-routing schemes (processor-mediated vs. direct customer-to-machine); claims 11–14 cover input-device types, network types, and direct electronic delivery to a receiver without printing. Claims 16–20 add inputting/transmitting, processor-performed steps, retrieval of stored image/text objects, and customer approval/override of the selected machine.

Uncertainty / caveats

• No CAFC 2026 (or other) docket activity for 5897260 was located. I cannot confirm that this patent is or ever was in litigation or at the Federal Circuit. My search tools surface general web/USPTO-adjacent content, not a live PACER/PTAB feed, so the absence of a hit is not proof of absence of a proceeding.
• Bibliographic data above is taken from the authoritative patent text/record you supplied and corroborated by the Justia/patent-profile listing (inventor Oded Zingher; assignee Man Roland Druckmaschinen, Offenbach am Main, DE; Date of Patent Apr. 27, 1999).
• The patent text contains a couple of apparent OCR/typo artifacts in the original record (e.g., "sprinting plant customers"; a stray "32" for a printing-plant reference in the description; a duplicated phrase in claim 9). I have not silently corrected these; claim scopes are summarized as written.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 5897260.

The exact-number searches returned irrelevant results. Let me try more targeted queries on litigation databases.

Summary: No litigation identified

I searched for litigation involving US Patent 5,897,260 ("Print job allocation system," inventor Oded Zingher, originally assigned to MAN Roland Druckmaschinen AG, now manroland Sheetfed GmbH). I found no evidence of any litigation — district court, ITC, PTAB, or CAFC — involving this patent.

What the searches actually returned

The searches were run against general web/patent sources (Google Patents, EPO publication data, PTAB/public-filing documents surfaced via search). Notably:

• Queries for "5897260" as a patent number returned no litigation records. The literal string "5897260" produced (a) a WIPO search-report citation listing US 5897260 A 27-04-1999 as family member of EP 0748689 / DE 19522053, (b) an EPO search report citing US 5897260 A 19990427 - ZINGHER ODDED [DE] as prior art against EP 1205839, and (c) a Lithuanian company-registry filing number ("Pranešimo Nr. 5897260") — an unrelated, non-patent use of that number, which I flag rather than treat as relevant.
• Queries targeting "5897260" or "5,897,260" + "lawsuit/infringement" surfaced unrelated cases, including a large Taction Technology v. Apple haptics verdict involving U.S. Pat. Nos. 10,659,885 and 10,820,117 (S.D. Cal., verdict Sept. 25, 2026). Those patent numbers are not 5,897,260 and the case is not connected to it.
• No docket entries, complaints, IPR/PGR petitions, or CAFC appeals naming U.S. Pat. No. 5,897,260 appeared.

Corroborating context from the patent record (why absence of litigation is consistent)

• Legal status: Expired – Lifetime. The record states "2016-06-17 Anticipated expiration," i.e., the patent term ended on June 17, 2016 (20 years from the June 17, 1995 priority date). A patent that expired in 2016 cannot be asserted for infringement of acts after expiration.
• Prosecution/ownership history: continuation of Application No. 08/664,424 (issued as US 5,813,348); reassigned to MANROLAND AG (change of name, effective Jan. 15, 2008), then to manroland sheetfed GmbH (assignment effective Dec. 20, 2012). No reissue or reexamination appears in the record.
• Post-grant activity in the record is citation-only, not adversarial. The patent shows up in the "Cited By" / "Citations" tables (e.g., cited during prosecution of Hewlett-Packard's EP 1205839 and EP 1197837 print-services applications, and in WO 2002/100644), and in family-member listings — none of which is litigation.

Important caveats

• I do not have direct PACER access, and I could not run a targeted query on Docket Navigator, RPX Insight, or the Unified Patents litigation portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) in a way that returned case-level data for this number. My conclusion rests on the absence of any hit across the searches performed, plus the expiry status.
• I therefore cannot state with absolute certainty that no litigation ever existed (a suit filed and resolved long ago, or an unindexed state-court action, could be missed). What I can state is: no litigation involving US 5,897,260 was found in any available source, and none is known.

Conclusion

Known litigation involving US Patent 5,897,260: none found. If you need a definitive negative, the next step would be a direct Docket Navigator / Lex Machina / Unified Patents Portal search on the exact number "5,897,260" (and, separately, on its parent "5,813,348" and the German family member DE 19522053 / EP 0748689), since I was unable to execute such a database-specific query here.

I'll verify the structured block's "no proceedings" default against public sources before writing.

Let me run a few more targeted checks against PTAB dockets and aggregator activity.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 5,897,260: ZERO. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block (USPTO Open Data Portal, most recent ingest) returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and my independent web searches surfaced no petition, institution decision, Final Written Decision, or appeal involving 5,897,260 or its sole sibling US 5,813,348. There is therefore no breakdown by status to report — nothing is active, nothing has been invalidated, nothing has been sustained, nothing has settled, and no institution has been denied. Bottom-line defensive posture: the patent is not "hardened" by PTAB wins, and it is not "dead" by PTAB losses — it is simply untested at the Board, and, more decisively, it is expired. All 20 claims are live on paper but unenforceable going forward as of 2016-06-17; any demand letter today is a damages threat with no compensable window left to recover under 35 U.S.C. § 286.

No proceedings to describe

The output template calls for one ### {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} — {Petitioner} v. {Patent Owner} block per proceeding. There are none. I will not generate placeholder numbers, mock panels, or invented FWD outcomes — doing so would fabricate the exact thing the client would rely on.

What I checked (all negative):

Caveat on confidence: the ODP ingest is my canonical source and it is authoritative on indexed filings. Remote edge cases exist — a petition filed and terminated at the pre-institution stage before ODP backfill, an unindexed IPR20xx-xxxxx that never reached a public paper, or a very recent filing. Nothing in the searches indicates any such case here, but I flag it rather than assert the negative as absolute. Practically, given the date math below, the absence is unsurprising and not a data gap worth chasing.

Strategic summary

Claim status. None of claims 1–20 has ever been canceled, narrowed, disclaimed, or confirmed by the Board. Independent claims 1 (system) and 15 (method) are UNTESTED; all dependent claims 2–14 and 16–20 are likewise UNTESTED. There is no IPR-narrowed claim set to point to and no certificate of cancellation to cite. The only "narrowing" on the record is prosecution-side: the file shows a family relationship with DE 19522053 A1 (withdrawn in Germany), EP 0748689 B1, and JP 2930192 B2, and the inventor is Oded Zingher, with the specification expressly built on U.S. Pat. No. 5,091,859 (M.A.N. Roland) and DE 4 329 886 A1 (Heidelberger Druckmaschinen). Those are the references any future challenger would start from — I identify them as candidates, not as instituted grounds, because no ground was ever instituted.

The real defense: expiry, not estoppel. US 5,897,260 issued 1999-04-27 from continuation application 09/009,604 filed 1998-01-20, which is a continuation of 08/664,424 filed 1996-06-17 (now US 5,813,348). The twenty-year term runs from 1996-06-17, and the anticipated expiration is 2016-06-17, confirmed by the maintenance-fee history (FPAY years 4, 8, and 12 paid, most recently 2010-10-20) and the status Expired – Lifetime. This drives the whole analysis:

• § 315(e)(2) estoppel does not exist here. Estoppel attaches only after a petitioner obtains institution and reaches FWD. With zero instituted trials, no petitioner and no privy is estopped from any ground. The absence of estoppel cuts the other way, though: it means no one has whittled the claims down for you.
• No injunction exposure, and effectively no damages exposure. Infringement of these claims can only have occurred on or before 2016-06-17. Section 286 bars recovery for infringement more than six years before suit. A complaint filed on or after 2022-06-17 — which is every complaint filed today — has a damages window (currently 2020-10-01 forward) that does not intersect the patent's enforceable life at all. If a demand letter arrives citing claims 1, 15, or any dependent claim, the correct response is a term/expiry § 286 analysis, not an IPR budget.
• Practical reason no PTAB activity exists: the AIA trial regime opened 2012-09-16, leaving under four years of overlap with this patent's term; the assignee (Manroland Sheetfed GmbH, via MANROLAND AG, effective 2012-12-20) is an operating press manufacturer, not a serial litigant; and the patent does not appear to have been asserted in litigation that would have spawned a defensive IPR or CBM. There is no defensive aggregator, no repeat petitioner, and no PTAB appeal history to report.

If the patent is nonetheless in play (e.g., past-damages theory on pre-2016 conduct, or a license/indemnity dispute), the untested status matters: the claims have never been construed by the Board, so there is no institution-stage claim-construction record to borrow, and the § 101 posture of a "match a job request to a networked printing machine" claim under Alice was never litigated at the Board. A CBM route is no longer available — CBM review sunset on 2020-09-16, and this is a printing-press control patent, not a financial-services covered business method.

Recommended next steps

1. Lead with expiry, not with PTAB. Pull the maintenance-fee record and the ODP "Expired – Lifetime" / "Anticipated expiration 2016-06-17" entries for US 5,897,260 and its parent US 5,813,348, and run the § 286 six-year lookback against the date of any demand. On today's date (2026-10-01), the recoverable window is empty. That is your dispositive argument; no IPR is needed or economical.
2. Do not budget an IPR unless the posture is unusual. An IPR on an expired patent is legally possible for past-coverage purposes, but it is discretionary-discretion territory, costs a full trial budget, and — critically — there is no institution history to build on and no estoppel you need to avoid. If litigation is actually filed, the cheaper motions are § 286 time-bar and non-infringement/claim construction, not a petition.
3. Document the negative PTAB finding in the file. Capture the ODP "no proceedings" result and the search log above with today's date so that the absence of PTAB activity is a recorded, reproducible finding rather than an assumption. If a petition does surface later, revisit immediately.
4. Verify the negative once with a direct PTAB database query before relying on it in a brief: search the Patent Trial and Appeal Board End-to-End system and the PTAB Decisions database (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ and https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions) by patent number 5,897,260 and by the parent 5,813,348, and confirm no proceeding is returned.
5. Watch the sibling and family members, not just this patent: EP 0748689 B1 (opposition/EPO route, now expired), JP 2930192 B2, and DE 19522053 A1 (withdrawn) occasionally surface in licensing packages alongside US 5,897,260. Confirm which of these, if any, a counterparty is actually asserting before spending analysis cycles.

Sources consulted: Google Patents, US5897260A — https://patents.google.com/patent/US5897260/en (full text, family, cited-by, legal events); Google Patents, US5813348A — https://patents.google.com/patent/US5813348 (parent/sibling, same specification); USPTO PTAB E2E — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/ (no proceedings returned for this patent); USPTO PTAB Decisions — https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions (nothing for 5,897,260).

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 5897260 ("Print job allocation system")

Data-access note (read first): I could not open the USPTO Assignment Center UI directly in this session. The reel/frame, conveyance type, execution dates and recording dates below are taken from the USPTO-derived legal-events block republished on the patent record (Google Patents), which for this patent carries the full REEL/FRAME strings. The "correspondent of record" field was not returned by any source I could reach, and I am not going to invent it. I flag that gap explicitly where it matters. Verify at:

• https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search by patent number 5897260)
• https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (legacy interface, same records)

Inventors

• Sole named inventor. Confirmed on the US face of the family (parent US 5,813,348 and this continuation) and on the European counterpart EP 0 748 689 A3, which lists "Erfinder: Zingher, Oded, 63755 Alzenau (DE)" alone (https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/cf/9c/58/42b73f31d0394d/EP0748689A3.pdf).
• Unusual-pattern check: not present. There is no inventor-departure signal to report — with a single inventor who was a regular employee-inventor of the assignee and no inventor-side assignment of record, the "all inventors left within 12 months" fire-sale precursor does not apply and is not observable here.
• Related but distinct: a sibling family member, EP 0 824 070 / ES 2 164 969 ("Procedimiento y dispositivo para confeccionar productos de imprenta"), names Zingher and Peter Biernot — that is a different invention in the same corporate portfolio. Do not conflate it with US 5897260.

Original assignee

MAN Roland Druckmaschinen AG, Mühlheimer Strasse 341, 63075 Offenbach am Main, Germany.

• Line of business: One of the two global suppliers of large-format sheetfed offset printing presses (the "Roland" line, e.g. Roland 700 / Roland 900), plus a web-offset division. Founded 1871 in Offenbach as Faber & Schleicher. This is a heavy industrial capital-equipment manufacturer, not a holding or licensing vehicle.
• Did they ship a product embodying the claims? Unclear / not determinable from the sources available. MAN Roland unambiguously shipped the presses and the in-plant press control/network systems (the specification itself cites MAN Roland's own US 5,091,859 client/server plant control architecture). What the claims here recite is a world-wide, multi-plant print-job allocation system — I found no evidence that MAN Roland ever commercialized that specific claimed system. I state this as a limitation, not a finding of non-use.
• Current status: The original entity no longer exists in its original form.
  • Renamed MANROLAND AG by change of name effective 2008-01-15 (reel 022024/0567).
  • manroland AG entered insolvency in November 2011. The web division was sold to the Possehl group; the sheetfed division was acquired by Tony Langley / Langley Holdings plc out of the German insolvency proceedings, closing February 2012 — see the WAN-IFRA press release, "British investor acquires manroland sheetfed division," 2012-02-09 (http://archive.wan-ifra.org/sites/default/files/field_article_file/PR_001_09022012_e.pdf) and "Management team at manroland sheetfed GmbH confirmed" (http://archive.wan-ifra.org/articles/2012/02/27/management-team-at-manroland-sheetfed-gmbh-confirmed). manroland sheetfed GmbH began trading 2012-02-10.
  • manroland sheetfed GmbH itself entered Schutzschirmverfahren (protective shield) insolvency proceedings in 2026 (announced 3 March 2026, https://www.manrolandsheetfed.com/bn-in/blog/manroland-sheetfed-to-undergo-major-restructuring/), and in June 2026 Langley agreed to transfer the service, spare-parts and related IP business to Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (https://www.manrolandsheetfed.com/nl-be/blog/langley-holdings-announces-agreement-with-heidelberg-for-manroland-sheetfed-service-and-spare-parts-business/). No USPTO assignment recording reflecting a transfer to Heidelberg for US 5897260 was found — do not assume it exists.

Assignment timeline

Two post-issuance recordings exist. Both are ordinary corporate events of an operating manufacturer. No patent-monetization entity appears anywhere in the chain.

• 2008-01-15 (executed) / recorded 2008-12-16 — Reel 022024/0567

  • Conveyance: Change of Name
  • Assignor: MAN ROLAND DRUCKMASCHINEN AG
  • Assignee: MANROLAND AG (same address, Mühlheimer Strasse 341, 63075 Offenbach, DE)
  • Correspondent: Not available from the sources I could reach. I could not retrieve the correspondent-of-record for this reel/frame, so I make no recurrence claim. (Caution for anyone auditing this: aggregator pages such as the PlainSite docket for application 09/009,604 list a long, heterogeneous set of attorney names — Spears, Greenberg Traurig, Keating, etc. — but that page conflates prosecution representation with assignment correspondence and is not reliable for this field.)
  • Context: Internal reorg / change of name only — the German corporate rename MAN Roland Druckmaschinen AG → MANROLAND AG, executed in January 2008 and papered at USPTO in December 2008. No change in beneficial ownership.

• 2012-12-20 (executed) / recorded 2013-02-05 — Reel 029757/0165

  • Conveyance: Assignment (Assignment of Assignors' Interest)
  • Assignor: MANROLAND AG
  • Assignee: manroland sheetfed GmbH (Offenbach am Main, DE)
  • Correspondent: Not available from the sources I could reach. Same caveat as above; no recurrence determination possible.
  • Context: Distressed asset transfer out of the manroland AG insolvency — the sheetfed business (including its IP) was carved out to the Langley Holdings–backed newco. This is a business-line purchase by an industrial buyer, not a sale of patents to a monetization vehicle. The ~10-month gap between the February 2012 business closing and the December 2012 execution date is consistent with the IP being papered after the operating-asset deal, a normal post-insolvency cleanup sequence.

• (Not an assignment, for completeness of chain): 2016-06-17 — anticipated expiration; patent status is Expired – Lifetime. 2026-06 / 2026-03 — manroland sheetfed protective-shield proceedings and the Heidelberg service/spare-parts + related-IP agreement (see above; no USPTO recording located for this patent).

Family context: US 5897260 is a continuation of US 08/664,424 (filed 1996-06-17), which issued as US 5,813,348 — same inventor, same assignee, same title. Priority is DE 19522053, 1995-06-17. Both US family members share the identical ownership history; the EP 0 748 689 B1 counterpart shows the same MAN Roland → MANROLAND AG name-change event recorded at the EPO. Consolidated family: US5813348A, US5897260A, EP0748689B1, JP2930192B2, DE19522053A1, DK0748689T3, ES2163549T3, ATE208270T1.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5897260
    1995 : German priority filing DE19522053
    1996 : US parent application filed
         : Parent issues as US5813348
    1998 : Continuation filed
    1999 : US5897260 granted to MAN Roland
    2008 : Change of name to MANROLAND AG
    2011 : manroland AG enters insolvency
    2012 : Sheetfed unit sold to Langley Holdings
    2013 : Assignment to manroland sheetfed GmbH
    2016 : Patent term expires
    2026 : manroland sheetfed protective shield
         : Heidelberg deal covers service IP

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. Every assignee in the chain is an operating German capital-equipment manufacturer at the same Offenbach address (Mühlheimer Strasse 341 per the EPO/ES records). No "IP / Licensing / Holdings / Ventures" entity; no Delaware or Texas single-purpose LLC; no registered-agent service address. The 2013 assignee, manroland sheetfed GmbH (reel 029757/0165), is a manufacturing GmbH that took over ~860–900 Offenbach employees and 40+ country sales organizations — the opposite of a shell.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Neither MANROLAND AG (reel 022024/0567) nor manroland sheetfed GmbH (reel 029757/0165), nor original assignee MAN Roland Druckmaschinen AG, appears on the Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN/Mosaid-Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or Spangenberg lists, nor did my searches surface these entities via Unified Patents or RPX high-frequency-plaintiff directories. The forward-citation "Cited By" population on this patent (55 entries) is dominated by operating printer vendors — Xerox, Sharp, Canon, HP, Fuji, Dainippon Screen, Heidelberg — i.e., the patent sits in a mainstream vendor citation neighborhood, not an assertion cluster.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear (data gap, not a finding). The correspondent of record is not exposed in the sources I could reach for either reel 022024/0567 or reel 029757/0165. I therefore cannot confirm or deny recurrence, and I decline to substitute an aggregator's mixed attorney list for the field. Anyone completing this check should pull both reel/frame entries directly in Assignment Center and compare the correspondent blocks.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Two recordings, ~4.9 years apart (recorded 2008-12-16 and 2013-02-05). No chain of LLCs, no sub-24-month cascade, no shared-principal pattern.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. I found no infringement litigation naming US 5897260 at any point. The 2013 assignment (executed 2012-12-20) has no associated complaint, so it cannot be a venue/standing arrangement.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — present, but as industrial distress transfer, not monetization. MANROLAND AG (the entity that received the patent via the 2008 name change, reel 022024/0567) entered German insolvency proceedings in November 2011; the sheetfed division was sold out of insolvency to Langley Holdings in February 2012; the US patent was then assigned to the newco, executed 2012-12-20, recorded 2013-02-05 at reel 029757/0165. This is a distress-driven transfer, but the buyer was a strategic industrial acquirer taking the entire division, staff and facilities — not a patent aggregator picking up orphaned IP. Note the continuing distress: the same line is back in protective-shield proceedings in 2026. Cite the WAN-IFRA 2012-02-09 release and the March 2026 manroland sheetfed announcement.

7. Privateering — not present. No operating company transferred to an NPE asserting on its behalf; no SEC 10-K/8-K disclosure of such a program is implicated (MAN Roland / MANROLAND AG shares were held within the MAN group structure; manroland sheetfed GmbH is privately held by Langley Holdings plc, and Langley's public statements describe continued support of the installed base, not licensing enforcement). Searches surfaced no Patent Progress / EFF coverage of this patent.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents or OIN. It terminates at an operating press manufacturer (manroland sheetfed GmbH), with the related service IP now heading to Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG in 2026 as an industrial consolidation, not as neutralization by an aggregator.

Verdict

Defensive / non-asserting — with one explicit caveat on the label.

Justification: The only two recorded transfers are (i) a pure change of name, MAN ROLAND DRUCKMASCHINEN AG → MANROLAND AG, executed 2008-01-15, recorded 2008-12-16 at reel 022024/0567, and (ii) an assignment out of the manroland AG insolvency, MANROLAND AG → manroland sheetfed GmbH, executed 2012-12-20, recorded 2013-02-05 at reel 029757/0165 — both between operating German press manufacturers at the same Offenbach address, with the patent now expired as of 2016-06-17 and never litigated. No shell entity, no known asserter, no cascade, no pre-suit transfer, and no defensive-aggregator endpoint appears. Choose this bucket because the assertion posture is definitively non-asserting; note however that the chain terminates at an operating manufacturer, not at a defensive aggregator, so the "aggregator-neutralized" rationale behind that verdict category does not literally apply — an equally accurate one-line summary is "ordinary operating-company ownership chain, no NPE signals." The one genuine defect in this analysis is the missing correspondent-of-record for both reel/frame entries, which I could not obtain and did not guess; that gap does not affect the verdict, but it should be closed directly in Assignment Center at https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (patent number 5897260).

I'll research the prior art references cited on the face of US 5,897,260. Let me run targeted searches for the key references.

I have good data on several references. Let me research the remaining cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 5,897,260 (Application 09/009,604)

A. Source verification

I searched for the exact string 5897260 / 5,897,260 against patent databases. The number resolves to US 5,897,260 A, "Print job allocation system," inventor Oded Zingher, originally assigned to MAN Roland Druckmaschinen AG — matching the record already in this file. Contradictory "hits" on the same literal string that I am deliberately not conflating, per the strict-identifier rule:

• PubChem CID 5897260 — a chemical compound, (E)-1-[2-(4-chlorophenyl)-4-methyl-1,3-thiazol-5-yl]-3-(4-toluidino)-2-propen-1-one (CAS 478041-05-3). Unrelated to the patent; the integer merely collides.
• WO2002100644A1 / EP1205839A3 family listings cite "US 5897260 A 27-04-1999" as a family member/prior-art reference — legitimate corroboration of the citation record, not litigation.
• A Lithuanian filing "Pranešimo Nr. 5897260" (seen in the earlier litigation pass) is similarly unrelated.

The 11 front-page "Patent Citations" and 2 family citations below are taken from the authoritative patent text you supplied (Google Patents rendering of the USPTO record). Note: my search budget ("max steps") was reached before I could independently pull full text for US 5,580,177, US 5,602,970, US 5,802,260, DE 4 329 886 A1, and JP H01-145718; for those I rely on the record's own titles/dates and flag them as lower-confidence descriptions.

B. The complete cited-reference set (patent face)

Non-patent literature cited: German publication "Deutscher Drucker," No. 21‑22/8.6.95, p. w26 ff (discussed in the patent's own Background).

C. Reference-by-reference § 102 analysis

Critical-date framing (important). The '260 claims take: priority 1995‑06‑17 (DE 19522053); constructive US filing 1996‑06‑17 (parent Ser. No. 08/664,424); actual filing of this continuation 1998‑01‑20. Therefore (pre‑AIA § 102):

• References published before ~June 1995 are § 102(a)/(b) art directly.
• References published after 1995 but with earlier US filing dates (201–260, 436, 434, 177, 886) are § 102(e) art — available only as of their own effective US filing dates, not their foreign priority.

1. US 4,839,829 — Freedman, "Automated printing control system." Filed 1986‑11‑05; pub. 1989‑06‑13. Verified. Describes connecting printing requestors with print production, with the system selecting "the particular printing equipment, binding and finishing equipment" based on "timing, cost, quality, etc." (patents.searchlight.law/doc/US4839829). It is widely reported (PIWorld, Dec. 2002) as the pioneering "workflow" patent that Xerox, Heidelberg, MAN Roland, Moore, Kinko's and others cite as prior art.

• § 102 potential: Strongest candidate against claim 15 (method of receiving job data → comparing → selecting equipment → dispatching). It addresses the same customer-to-production allocation problem. Weak on claim 1/15's core limitation — there is no teaching of a first inter-plant network distinct from a second intra-plant network interconnecting multiple machines of one plant. Anticipation of the independent claims therefore fails on the two-network element; it is far better used in § 103 combination.

2. JP H01-145718 — Mitsubishi, "Printer." 1987‑12‑01 / pub. 1989‑06‑07. Description unverified (budget). Japanese-language printer reference, cited by the examiner.

• § 102 potential: On its title/context it is a printer-hardware reference; no apparent anticipation of any claim. Likely § 102(b) "background" art only.

3. US 5,091,859 (and C1) — Man Roland Druckmaschinen AG, "Control system for a printing plant." 1988‑08‑30 / pub. 1992‑02‑25. Verified, with a material legal-history twist (below). This is the applicant's own earlier patent and is the system expressly described in the '260 Background: a central computer unifying independent departments of a single printing plant, exchanging data with substantially identical peripheral computers (everypatent.com/comp/pat5091859). The '260 specification also states the intra-plant machine controllers are "preferably similar to that described in U.S. Pat. No. 5,091,859."

• § 102 potential: Anticipates the single-plant subject matter only. Relevant to claim 3 (machine control devices reporting machine data over a plant network) and to claim 1's second network in isolation — but it cannot anticipate claim 1 or 15, because both require the additional first (inter-plant/customer) network that the '859 plant-local system lacks.
• ⚠ Material flag: the record's legal events for US 5,091,859 C1 show a request for reexamination (effective 1999‑11‑12) and a reexamination decision cancelling all claims 1–12, with later lapse for non-payment of maintenance fees (2004‑02‑25). The reexam certificate (the "C1" designation) is itself cited against the '260 patent, so the examiner cited the post-reexam certificate. I flag this because it affects the weight/surviving scope of that reference — treat "claims cancelled" as reported, not as a legal conclusion.

4. US 5,467,436 — Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG (Rodi et al.), "Control system for printing presses." 1989‑04‑29 / pub. 1995‑11‑14. Verified. A central control apparatus (PC 22) connected to a plurality of printing presses 1–3, 3′ over a conventional LAN (Token Ring/Ethernet), with per-press control devices 4–6. Critically, its FIG. 3 flow chart recites: "a printing press is selected in a step 106 based upon press availability and capability to perform the job," followed by data transmission to the selected press (patents.searchlight.law/doc/US5467436).

• § 102 potential: This is the most structurally dangerous reference to the '260 patent because it is the closest match to the "a printing press is selected based on availability and capability" concept. It maps well onto claim 15 steps and claim 5 (selection criteria) and part of claim 3 (control devices transmitting data). But it is a same-plant/single-facility LAN ("as many as 16 printing presses… connected"), with no distinct second network tier and no world-wide customer allocation. It therefore does not anticipate claim 1 or 15; the potential is § 103 against claims 2–6, 15, 17. Because it published 1995‑11‑14 (post‑priority), it is only § 102(e) art as of its 1989 US filing.

5. US 5,602,970 — Maschinenfabrik Wifag, "Process for setting the halftone dot sizes…". 1991‑03‑21 / pub. 1997‑02‑11. Description unverified. Per its title this concerns halftone-dot setting on a rotary offset press — a press-control/imaging reference, not a job-allocation/network reference.

• § 102 potential: None apparent against allocation claims 1–20. § 102(e)/background only; possibly relevant to the disclosure's pre-press image data passages (claims 8, 18) but not to any independent claim.

6. US 5,467,434 — Xerox, "Apparatus and method for determining printer option availability and representing conflict resolution in a combination of print job selections." 1992‑08‑28 / pub. 1995‑11‑14. Verified as a XEROX reference (also cited in US 5,978,559 for "generating job tickets... employing multiple queues"). Concerns printer option availability and job-ticket selection conflicts at job-programming time.

• § 102 potential: Touches claim 5 (printer capability/option availability) and the "requirements profile" flavor of claim 6, but not the network architecture. Not an anticipatory reference for any independent claim; § 102(e)/§ 103 support.

7. US 5,287,194 — Xerox (Lobiondo), "Distributed printing." 1992‑11‑25 / pub. 1994‑02‑15. Verified in detail. A scheduler 50 allocates jobs across a plurality of printers 10 interconnected by a communication link 20 (Xerox Ethernet, modems/telephone). It inputs job criteria including completion time and locations, analyzes printer capability (color, paper, graphics) and availability, may split a job among printers at remote locations, and confirms to the user where/when the job will print (patents.google.com/patent/US5287194A; patents.searchlight.law/doc/US5287194).

• § 102 potential: The closest match to claims 2, 5, 6, 15, 19 (job data → compare to printer data → select → distribute; cost/quality/deadline/distribution criteria). Fails to anticipate claim 1/15 on the same ground: it teaches a single network linking printers and workstations — there is no separate, distinct intra-plant "second" network recited in the '260 claims. Also, its printers are office/reprographic machines, not printing-plant presses. Best used as the primary § 103 reference combined with the '859/'436 plant controllers.

8. DE 4 329 886 A1 — Heidelberger Druckmaschinen AG, "Sequence control system for printworks." 1993‑09‑06 / pub. 1995‑03‑16. Description not independently pulled; context verified. The '260 specification itself summarizes DE 4 329 886 as a control system "in which production processes currently being executed and production processes to be executed in the future can be monitored and planned."

• § 102 potential: This is § 102(a)/(b) art (published ~3 months pre-priority). It addresses monitoring/planning in-plant production schedules — relevant to the scheduling/capacity elements of claims 3–6, 15, but it is a single-plant, inward-looking system and cannot anticipate the world-wide, multi-network allocation of claim 1/15.

9. US 5,580,177 — Hewlett-Packard, "Printer/client network with centrally updated printer drivers and printer status monitoring." 1994‑03‑29 / pub. 1996‑12‑03. Description not independently pulled. Title indicates a printer/client network with status monitoring and centrally maintained driver data.

• § 102 potential: Relevant at most to claim 3 (machine-data reporters/status) and the "printer profile" concept of claim 6. Not anticipatory of any claim on its face; § 102(e) art.

10. US 5,802,260 — Hitachi, Ltd., "Printing system." 1994‑11‑28 / pub. 1998‑09‑01. Description not independently pulled.

• § 102 potential: § 102(e) art (US filing 1994‑11‑28, before the '260 effective filing). I cannot, on verified data, state what it discloses; I therefore do not assert anticipation and flag it as needing full-text review. Its post‑1995 publication excludes it from § 102(a)/(b) treatment.

11. FR 2 662 831 B1 — Cit Alcatel, "Method for managing a database network" (family cite). 1990‑05‑29 / pub. 1992‑08‑07.

• § 102 potential: A database-network management reference; no apparent teaching of print-job allocation. Background/“analogous-art” value only.

12. JP H04-069139 — Fujitsu, "Dispersed production center utilizing production system" (family cite). 1990‑07‑10 / pub. 1992‑03‑04.

• § 102 potential: A distributed/dispersed production concept reference. Possibly relevant as general motivation for distributing production among geographic sites, but not anticipatory of the print-specific claims. Likely § 102(b) background.

Non-patent literature — "Deutscher Drucker," No. 21‑22/8.6.95, p. w26 ff. Verified as recited in the '260 Background. A trade-press article disclosing a network connecting a single printing plant and customers of the printing plant, used to transmit image/printing data. The applicant distinguishes it precisely because it links customers to only one plant — the same deficiency that distinguishes the claims here.

• § 102 potential: Anticipates nothing claimed, by the applicant's own framing: it lacks both the multi-plant world-wide scope and the two-distinct-network architecture. It is the § 102(b) reference the invention is measured against and overcomes.

D. Overall § 102 conclusion

• No single cited reference appears to anticipate independent claim 1 or independent claim 15. Every reference that addresses job allocation ('829, '436, '194, '886, and the Deutscher Drucker article) discloses at most one network tier; the '260 claims require a first (inter-plant/customer) network distinct from a second intra-plant network that interconnects a plant's machines — the recited point of novelty. The single-plant references ('859, '436, '886) supply the second-network/machine-control teaching but not the first-network allocation layer; the distributed-scheduling references ('194, '829) supply the allocation layer but not the distinct second-network tier.
• Real § 102 exposure sits in the dependent claims, where: US 5,467,436 (press selection by availability/capability) maps to claims 2–5 and 15/17; US 5,287,194 (criteria-based multi-printer scheduling) maps to claims 5, 6, 15, 19; US 5,091,859 maps to claim 3; US 5,580,177 maps to claims 3/6. For these, publication dates post-dating the 1995 priority push them into § 102(e) (effective only as of their US filing dates) rather than § 102(a)/(b).
• The examiner/references are better characterized as § 103 art (two-tier network + world-wide allocation as an improvement over known single-plant and single-network schedulers), not clean § 102 anticipations.

E. Caveats and flags

1. Unverified full texts — US 5,580,177; US 5,602,970; US 5,802,260; DE 4 329 886 A1; JP H01-145718. Descriptions above rest on titles, dates, and the patent record; I could not complete full-text pulls before my tool-step limit. Any § 102 assertion about these is withheld as not high-confidence.
2. Number-collision warning (literal-ID rule) — "5897260" also denotes PubChem CID 5897260 (a chalcone/thiazole chemical compound) and a Lithuanian filing number. These are not US 5,897,260 and must not be merged with it.
3. US 5,091,859 reexamination — record shows all claims 1–12 cancelled in reexamination and later lapse for non-payment; treat as reported legal events, not a legal conclusion.
4. § 102(e) nuance — for the five post-1995-published US references, citation dates in the table are publication dates; their prior-art effect runs from their own US filing dates, and my § 102(e) characterizations are provisional pending confirmation of each reference's US filing/continuation chain.
5. I did not locate any litigation, IPR/PGR, or CAFC activity naming 5,897,260 (consistent with the prior sections in this file); the patent is recorded Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2016‑06‑17).

I'll ground this obviousness analysis in the actual prior-art references listed on the patent record. Let me pull details on the most material ones.

Let me get details on the remaining cited references, especially the two "Family Cites Families" references and the Xerox option-availability patent.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Pat. No. 5,897,260 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Builds on: the Patent summary and Litigation summary already generated above (bibliographic data, claim architecture, "no litigation found"). Not repeated here.

Governing law note: Priority is 1995-06-17 (DE 19522053). The application was filed 1998-01-20 as a continuation of 08/664,424 (filed 1996-06-17, issued as US 5,813,348). This is a pre-AIA patent, and all references in the "Citations" table must therefore pre-date the 1995-06-17 priority date to qualify. The two references dated after that date in the record are addressed explicitly below.

1. The prior art actually on the record (from the "Prior Art" section)

I use only the references listed on the patent's own Citations / Family-Cites tables, plus the two references the specification cites in its Background.

Two honesty flags up front:

1. I could not retrieve the full text of FR 2 662 831 B1 (search limit reached) and the raw text of DE 4 329 886 A1; statements about them rest on the titles and on the '260 specification's own characterizations. I flag that rather than assert passage-level content I did not read.
2. US 5,091,859 — the record shows a reexamination: "RR Request for reexamination filed … 19991112"; "FPB1 … CLAIMS 1-12 ARE CANCELLED"; followed by lapse for non-payment. This does not remove the '859 disclosure as prior art (what a reference teaches is unaffected by later cancellation of its claims), but any combination built on '859 must rely on its disclosure, not its cancelled claims. I flag this rather than silently ignore it.

2. What is actually novel in claim 1, stripped of the prior art

Claim 1's elements map almost one-for-one onto the cited art:

The only arguable point of novelty is the two-tier topology — an inter-plant "first" network that is (a) distinct from and (b) feeds into each plant's intra-plant "second" network. Everything else (customer input devices, multi-machine plants, capability matching, SQL matching, cost/deadline/distribution criteria, status reporting, alternate-machine selection) is squarely in the cited art.

Critically, claim 1 requires only that the two networks be "different" — not that they use different protocols, media, or topologies. A wide-area/inter-site network that interconnects plants is inherently a different network from the LAN that interconnects machines inside one plant. That difference is a necessary consequence of any hierarchical multi-site network, and is therefore a weak hook for patentability.

3. Primary combination rendering claim 1 obvious

Combination A: US 5,091,859 + Fujitsu (JPH0469139A / EP 0 466 089 A3 / US 5,268,838) + US 4,839,829, optionally + US 5,287,194.

• '859 supplies the second (intra-plant) network and the machine control devices connected to the presses — element 5 of claim 1 in full, and the express "client/server architecture" the '260 spec itself incorporates by reference.
• Fujitsu '6089 / US 5,268,838 supplies the first (inter-site) network and the core allocation idea on that network: a center producing point with a database, "second producing points respectively having a data base," "one or a plurality of communication networks coupling the data bases," and means for "determining an optimum producing point … based on new order information." It even contemplates the sites being "globally dispersed" (home country vs. foreign country) and computes "no., time etc of transportation." That is the '260 system's world-wide allocation concept, in a different manufacturing context.
• Freedman '829 supplies the customer-facing side: remote requesters connecting to the production computer to submit jobs, with automated cost/quality evaluation.

Motivation to combine. (i) '859 and DE 4 329 886 A1 both frame the problem as optimizing utilization of presses; the '260 specification itself recites that framing as the object of the invention. (ii) Fujitsu '6089 expressly motivates exactly what '859 does not do — balancing load across dispersed production points to "cope with the requests of customers to deliver the products on short notice and … the dispersion of the producing points on a global basis." (iii) Combining a known intra-facility control network with a known inter-facility production-allocation network is the predictable, ordinary use of known networking elements according to their established functions — the classic KSR rationale (a person of skill who connects site-level networks into a corporate network does not invent the hierarchy). (iv) The result is nothing more than the aggregation of each reference's known function: '859's intra-plant optimization + '6089's inter-site optimization.

Why the "second network different from the first" limitation does not save claim 1. It is met by the natural architecture any multi-site network must have. Given '6089's "communication network coupling the data bases of the … producing points," and '859's intra-plant machine network, the "two different networks" limitation reads on the combination without any inventive step. No reference needed to be modified in an unpredictable way.

Additional support — US 5,287,194 (Xerox): independently, '194 teaches a scheduler that "analyzes the printers 10 on the network and determines which printers 10 … are capable of producing the job," then checks availability and can "select a remote location for printing," allocating the job between "a plurality of printers 10 at different remote locations," and "allows printshop managers to organize and optimize printing schedules fully utilizing all available printing capabilities." This is the matching/dispatch heart of the claims and reinforces the motivation (maximize utilization, meet deadlines, honor user/quality constraints).

4. Dependent-claim mapping

5. Motivation to combine (consolidated)

1. Same field / analogous art. '859, DE 4 329 886 A1, '829, and the trade publication are all printing-industry; '194 and '434 are network print-job distribution; '6089 is distributed production control — reasonably pertinent to a print-allocation problem and analogous to the "world-wide plants" concept the '260 claims.
2. The problem is stated in the references themselves. '6089: "dispersion of the producing points on a global basis." '194: "printshop managers … optimize printing schedules fully utilizing all available printing capabilities." '829: matching "specific printing needs to a printing facility."
3. KSR — predictable combination of known elements. Each reference contributes its known function unchanged. No reference is modified in a way that changes its principle of operation. The two-network hierarchy is a predictable design consequence, not an unexpected result.
4. Economic motivation. Minimizing cost, transport, and delivery time, and maximizing plant utilization (the stated object of '260) is the express goal of '6089 and '194; a skilled artisan would combine the two-tier architecture to realize it.
5. Nature of the difference is functional, not structural. Claim 1's "first network … different from … second data transmission network" is met by any inter-site-plus-intra-site topology. There is no recitation of incompatible protocols/media that could supply a non-obvious distinction.

6. Caveats and limits of this analysis

• Claim 13 (and 14) is the weakest obviousness target in the record. Claim 13 recites a receiving device that gets the requested print job "directly from the first data transmission network without the requested print job data being transmitted to and printed by any of the plurality of printing plants." I did not find a reference in the cited prior art describing electronic delivery of the print job to an end receiver in lieu of printing. Electronic distribution generally was known, but I cannot ground claim 13's specific negative limitation in the cited art. I flag this rather than assert a reference teaches it.
• Claim 18's object-retrieval is only partially supported — Freedman '829 discloses template/design-spec reuse, which is suggestive but not a clean read on "previously created image and text objects … retrieved and incorporated." Flagged as a weaker mapping.
• Claim 7 (SQL) has no specific reference; the case rests on routine-engineering-choice reasoning.
• Evidence quality. I have full/partial text for US 5,287,194, US 4,839,829, US 5,268,838 / EP 0 466 089 (the Fujitsu family), US 5,091,859, US 5,580,177 and US 5,802,260, but only titles + the '260 specification's characterizations for DE 4 329 886 A1 and FR 2 662 831 B1. The FR reference details could not be retrieved before the search limit; treat it as unverified.
• The '260 record contains OCR artifacts I have not corrected (per the strict no-correction rule): "sprinting plant customers"; the stray reference numeral "32" standing in for a printing-plant reference in the detailed description; and the duplicated phrase in claim 9 ("…printing machines of the printing plants for printing machines of the printing plants"). Claim scopes above are read literally as written; if these are OCR errors rather than the issued text, the claim-9 mapping should be re-checked against the printed patent.
• No secondary-considerations evidence was found, and the patent expired 2016-06-17 (consistent with the Litigation summary above: no litigation found). An expired, never-asserted patent typically leaves no record of unexpected results, commercial success, or nexus evidence that could rebut prima facie obviousness.

Bottom line: Claims 1–12 and 15–20 are, on the cited art, open to a strong § 103 challenge built on US 5,091,859 (intra-plant second network) in view of the Fujitsu dispersed-production family (JPH0469139A / EP 0 466 089 A3 / US 5,268,838) (inter-site first network + optimum-site selection), further in view of US 4,839,829 (customer-side job submission/cost evaluation) and US 5,287,194 (capability/availability matching, remote-location and multi-machine allocation, user notification/override); US 5,467,434 and US 5,580,177 reinforce the matching and machine-data-reporting limitations. Claims 13–14 (and to a lesser extent 18) are the weakest targets and rest on thinner evidentiary footing than the rest of the set.