US 5937112

I'll search for authoritative information on US 5,937,112.

Let me search more specifically for the USPTO record and any 2026 litigation.

Let me check specifically for any USPTO/CAFC records or litigation involving this patent.

US Patent 5,937,112 — Summary

Important scoping note first. The full authoritative patent text was supplied in the prompt and is the primary basis for the summary below. My supplementary web searches returned no USPTO litigation/review record and no CAFC 2026 docket entry for US 5,937,112. I did not find evidence of any 2026 appeal involving this patent; that is an absence of results, not proof that none exists. Also, be aware that the numeric string "5937112" appears in several unrelated records (e.g., Japanese patent 特許第5937112号, a FAK-inhibitor case from Cancer Therapeutics CRC; and a Lithuanian registry notice Nr. 5937112). Those are different documents in different numbering systems and are not US 5,937,112.

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Bibliographic data (from US5937112A / application 08/960,071)

Term note: the "anticipated expiration 2016-06-13" is measured from the effective chain (the 1996-06-13 parent filing), not from the 1997 filing date, consistent with the continuation lineage. As of today the patent is expired.

Abstract (as published)

A process is described for digitising the relevant portion of a color image by a system with reduced memory capacity. The color image is scanned twice. The image signals (30) are sub-sampled (I) the first time and spatially reduced (II) the second time to the relevant image portion. The spatial data (35, 36) for the relevant image portion are determined on an interactive work station (34), on which the sampled image signals (33) are displayed. Initial sampling and resampling by the scanner take place with the same spatial resolution. By carrying out the sub-sampling and the spatial reduction during scanning, an important saving of memory is realized. Owing to the fact that the color image is digitized in one single step, register faults are avoided.

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Claims: independent claim

There is one independent claim (claim 1); claims 2–13 are all dependent on it. Plain-language reading of claim 1:

A process for digitizing a selected ("relevant") region of a colour image, in six steps:

1. First scan — initial sampling of the whole colour image at a chosen image resolution, producing a first set of image signals.
2. Reduce the number of image signals in that first set, producing a second set, and store the second set in memory.
3. Display the second (reduced) set on an interactive work station.
4. Acquire spatial data defining the relevant image portion via the work station (i.e., the operator marks the crop on the displayed preview).
5. Second scan — resample the colour image, or a portion of it that contains the relevant image portion, at the same image resolution used in step 1.
6. Restrict the resampled signals to those specified by the spatial data, deriving a fourth set, and store that fourth set in memory.

The key architectural features are the two-pass scanning at identical resolution and the fact that the reduction (step 2) and restriction (step 6) happen during scanning, so the full-resolution whole-image signal set never has to be stored at once.

Claims: dependent claims (2–13), in plain terms

• 2 – Initial sampling occurs simultaneously for all colour components.
• 3 – Resampling occurs simultaneously for all colour components.
• 4 – The first-set reduction is done by sub-sampling.
• 5 – That sub-sampling occurs almost simultaneously with the initial sampling.
• 6 – Sub-sampling is done by periodically dropping complete scan lines.
• 7 – The first-set reduction is done by two consecutive sub-samplings.
• 8 – The first of those sub-samplings occurs almost simultaneously with the initial sampling.
• 9 – That first sub-sampling is done by periodically dropping complete scan lines.
• 10 – The second sub-sampling restores isometry (equal geometry/scale) in the image.
• 11 – Deriving the fourth set occurs almost simultaneously with the (second) sampling/resampling.
• 12 – The relevant image portion may consist of mutually disjunct areas (e.g., two separate rectangles in one pass).
• 13 – The spatial data are described as a graphic object (procedural description / run-length / bit-map representation).

Observations / cautions

• Terminology shift between specification and claims. In the specification's Summary, the sets are called "first set" (initial sample), the reduced first set, "second set" (resample), and the restricted second set. The granted claim 1 renumbers these as first/second/third/fourth and uses "second sampling" in claim 11 to refer to the resampling pass. When reading the claims, use the claim's own set numbering.
• Claim 1 is broad — it does not itself require simultaneous multi-colour sampling, sub-sampling, or any particular reduction technique; those limitations appear only in dependent claims 2–10. It does require the second-pass restriction to be based on the operator-acquired spatial data and the two passes to share the same resolution.
• Prior art cited includes US 4,656,525 (Norris/Polaroid), US 4,631,599 (Cawkell), US 4,837,635 (HP), US 5,157,516 (Bachar), US 5,218,455 and US 5,185,662 (Kodak), among others.
• Uncertainty flag: I could not independently verify current USPTO Patent Center fee/status entries, any PTAB proceedings, or district-court litigation for this number through my searches. Given the 2016 expiration and "Expired – Fee Related" status, a live 2026 CAFC appeal would be unusual, but I cannot rule it out on the record I retrieved. If you need a definitive docket check, the authoritative sources are USPTO Patent Center/PTAB and the CAFC docket system, which I was not able to query directly here.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 5937112 specifically.

Let me search patent litigation databases directly.

Let me check patent litigation databases directly for this specific patent number.

No litigation found for U.S. Patent No. 5,937,112

I searched for litigation specifically involving U.S. Patent No. 5,937,112 ("Interactive color image digitizing system having restricted memory capability," Agfa-Gevaert N.V.) and found no record of any patent infringement suit, declaratory judgment action, IPR, or other litigation asserting or challenging this patent.

What I confirmed about the patent itself

The patent has been expired since June 13, 2016, which is consistent with there being no active litigation.

Caveats on the searches performed

• The Google Patents family/legal data for US 5,937,112 lists only one family member (itself) in the US, and its "Cited By" list is composed of later unrelated Flexiworld/Intel/NEC/Konica-Minolta documents — none of which indicate litigation against the '112 patent.
• Search hits returned for the numeric string "5937112" were for different items (e.g., Japanese Patent No. JP 5937112 B2 for a Cancer Therapeutics CRC selective FAK inhibitor, and a Lithuanian registry notice number), which I have not conflated with the US patent.
• The Agfa-entity litigation I did encounter (e.g., Agfa Corp. v. Creo Products Inc., D. Mass. C.A. 00 CV 10836, which concerned a group of Agfa "Galileo" CTP patents such as US 5,655,452 and 6,726,433) does not involve US 5,937,112.
• I was unable to directly query the Unified Patents litigation portal, PACER, or CourtListener with a completed search for this specific number within the tool-step limit, so this conclusion is based on the sources I could reach rather than a fully exhaustive PACER docket sweep. I do not want to overstate completeness.

Bottom line

Based on the available sources, no litigation is known involving U.S. Patent No. 5,937,112. If you need a definitive negative, I'd recommend a direct PACER/RPX/Unified Patents docket search on docket numbers tied to "5,937,112" and to Agfa-Gevaert as plaintiff/defendant — I can run those targeted queries if you'd like me to continue.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 5,937,112: zero. The structured PTAB block supplied in this prompt (USPTO Open Data Portal, most recent ingest) returns no AIA trial proceedings — no IPRs, no PGRs, no CBMs, no derivations, no institution decisions of any kind. My independent web searches confirmed the absence: queries against PTAB decision repositories, Federal Circuit docket sources, and general web for the patent number, title, and assignee returned nothing relating to this patent in any AIA proceeding. The defensive posture is therefore not "the patent survived two IPRs and is hardened" and not "claims 1–5 are canceled." It is the third, less-discussed posture: the patent was never challenged at the PTAB at all, and it is expired. A defendant has no PTAB shield to point at — but also faces a patent whose enforcement window is largely spent and whose entire claim set remains legally "untested" rather than "invalidated."

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No proceedings to report

There are no proceeding captions, docket numbers, panels, institution decisions, Final Written Decisions, settlements, or appeals to describe. I will not invent proceeding numbers to fill this section. Per the operating constraint, the absence is reported plainly rather than padded.

Search note / false-positive flag. The numeric string "5937112" is heavily contaminated across databases and all hits I retrieved were unrelated documents:

• JP 特許第5937112号 (Japanese Patent No. 5937112 B2, "選択的FAK阻害剤" / selective FAK inhibitors, Cancer Therapeutics CRC Pty Ltd, registered 2016-05-20) — a different patent in a different numbering system. See the JP publication at http://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/85/1c/3f/5260cc8e5c40d5/JP5937112B2.pdf.
• A Lithuanian registry notice Nr. 5937112 (UAB "Momo namai" filing, registrucentras.lt).
• An SEC EDGAR accession field value "5937112" in a Form 10-D (sec.gov, CIK 1260125).

None of these is US 5,937,112. This mirrors the scoping caveat already flagged in the patent-summary section, and reinforces why a naive keyword search on the raw number produces garbage. The authoritative identifiers for this patent are US 5,937,112 / US5937112A / application 08/960,071 (Google Patents; Justia).

Verification caveat (stated explicitly rather than papered over): I could not directly query USPTO PTAB E2E (ptacts.uspto.gov) or the ODP AIA-trial endpoint in this environment; I relied on the structured block provided in the prompt as canonical plus web search. A definitive docket check should be run against PTAB E2E and CourtListener before relying on the negative in a filing or opinion letter. Given the 2016 expiration and "Expired – Fee Related" status, however, the practical probability of an undiscovered live AIA proceeding is very low.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all 13 claims UNTESTED. No claim of US 5,937,112 has ever been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the PTAB in an AIA proceeding. There is no narrowing, no certificate of correction arising from trial, and no estoppel-producing FWD. Independent claim 1 and all dependents 2–13 stand exactly as granted on 1999-08-10. Contrast this with the ordinary "asserted patent" trajectory: the prompt's own framing ("well-asserted patents eventually attract IPRs") is precisely what did not happen here. The absence of any petition is itself a meaningful signal — it suggests the patent was never asserted in a way that justified a six-figure IPR spend. Agfa-Gevaert's enforcement activity in the relevant era ran through other patents (e.g., the Agfa/Compression Labs and AGFA v. Creo, CAFC 05-1079, lines of cases), not through this scanner-cropping patent.

Why there could not be a CBM or PGR today (structural, not discretionary). Even setting aside that nobody filed: PGR under § 321 is available only within 9 months of issuance (here, ~1999-2000 — decades past). CBM review under AIA § 18 required the patent to claim a "covered business method" tied to financial products or services; a colour-image digitising/cropping process as claimed in claim 1 is a technical scanning process and would have faced the § 18(d)(2) "technological invention" exclusion — and in any event the CBM transitional program sunset for new petitions on 2020-09-16. So the only AIA vehicle that ever had realistic life for this patent was IPR under § 311, and none was filed.

Estoppel landscape: none to exploit, none that binds you. Because no IPR was instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel never attached to anyone. A defendant today is not blocked by a prior petitioner's grounds, and equally cannot borrow a prior petitioner's win. Invalidity must be run the old-fashioned way: § 102/§ 103 in district court or the ITC, on your own art, with your own expert. Note that the patent's cited-art list — US 4,656,525 (Norris/Polaroid), US 4,656,524, US 4,631,599 (Cawkell), US 4,837,635 (HP), US 5,157,516 (Bachar), US 5,218,455 and US 5,185,662 (Kodak), US 5,024,196, US 5,223,954, US 5,313,572 — is already part of the intrinsic record and is fair game, as is anything the examiner did not see.

Pattern signals: n/a. No repeat petitioner, no serial petitioning, no PTAB-appeal aggressiveness by the patent owner, no defensive aggregator (Unified Patents or similar) in the chain that I could identify for this number.

The expiration point dominates everything else. Publication was 1999-08-10 with a listed anticipated expiration of 2016-06-13 (measured from the 1996-06-13 parent application chain and the 1993-10-28 priority — note the continuation lineage from application 08/662,958, now abandoned). The patent is expired as of today, 2026-10-01. Two consequences a defendant should lead with: (1) under 35 U.S.C. § 286, damages reach back only six years from suit — for an expired patent, the recoverable window effectively closed by mid-2022, so a 2024-onward assertion (e.g., the 2024-11-03 E.D. Tex. case in which Agfa-Gevaert is the defendant, Cedar Lane Techs. v. Agfa-Gevaert, 2:24-cv-00898) cannot generate historic damages against an accused product on this patent beyond that backstop; and (2) injunctive relief against an expired patent is unavailable. Practically, a demand letter citing US 5,937,112 today is citing a dead property.

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Recommended next steps

• If you are a defendant being asserted against: the answer is not to file an IPR. There are no canceled claims to link to — no FWD exists to quote, and inventing one would be fabrication. Instead: (a) lead with expiration (2016-06-13) and § 286's six-year damages bar; (b) if the assertion predates the damages cutoff, run § 102/§ 103 on the rule-of-law record, using the twelve cited references in the patent's own "Patent Citations" list as your starting set; (c) consider a terminal disclaimer-free prior-art/on-sale/§ 112 attack in court, since no estoppel-driven shortcut is available.
• If you are a plaintiff/patent owner contemplating assertion: the absence of any IPR history means your claims are intact and un-adjudicated — but you are enforcing an expired patent with a closed damages tail, and the first thing any competent defense counsel will do is move for summary judgment on § 286 and point to the 2016 expiration.
• If you need a belt-and-suspenders docket negative: run the patent number through PTAB E2E (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/) and CourtListener's docket/opinion search (https://www.courtlistener.com/) directly. I could not query those endpoints in this environment; the negative above rests on the canonical ODP block in this prompt plus web search, and should be confirmed before it is represented to a court or in an opinion letter.
• Do not treat the JP 特許第5937112号 record, the Lithuanian notice Nr. 5937112, or the SEC accession value 5937112 as evidence of anything about this patent. They are unrelated documents.

I'll search for assignment records and ownership-chain information for US 5,937,112.

Let me try more targeted searches for the assignment chain and INPADOC legal status.

Let me check a few more sources — uspto.report and any 2015–2016 transfer activity before expiration.

Ownership & Assignment Analysis — US 5,937,112

Critical method note before the findings. The USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov) and the legacy assignment.uspto.gov are JavaScript-driven applications I cannot query directly with the search tool available here; I can only reach indexed/cached copies through web search. Across multiple targeted searches I retrieved no recorded assignment for US 5,937,112 — neither an inventor→Agfa original assignment nor any post-issuance transfer. I am therefore reporting an absence of records, not proof that none exist. Two independent cross-checks support that absence:

1. The authoritative Google Patents legal-events list supplied in the prompt for US 5,937,112 contains only priority (1993-10-28), filing (1997-10-24), grant (1999-08-10), publication (1999-08-10), and anticipated expiration (2016-06-13). No "Assignment" event appears. Google Patents typically surfaces US assignment data when it exists (cf. the Espacenet INPADOC records my searches did return for other Agfa patents, e.g. US 5,370,781 reel/frame 007115/0133 and US 2009/231374 reel/frame 020707/0911 — both Agfa, both showing assignments). The contrast is informative: sibling Agfa records expose reel/frame data, this one does not.
2. No US assignment record, and no assertion/NPE listing, for this number surfaced in any search.

Because of that, I do not have reel/frame data, execution/recording dates, or a correspondent of record to report for this patent. I will not invent them.

Per the task's stop rule ("If the Assignment Center has no records for this patent, say so plainly and stop after this section"), the Assignment timeline section below is intentionally the terminal evidence-bearing section; the timeline diagram and NPE sections are included only as explicitly-labelled null-result renderings. Cross-reference caution carried over from the prior summary: the digit-string "5937112" also matches Japanese patent No. 5937112, a Cancer Therapeutics CRC FAK-inhibitor matter, and a Lithuanian registry notice Nr. 5937112 — none of which are US 5,937,112.

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Inventors

Pattern assessment. All three inventors are listed at a single Agfa-Gevaert corporate address (DIE 3800 — Agfa's "DIE" = Dienst Informatie/Elektronica internal department designator at Mortsel), which indicates they were Agfa employees at filing, not independent inventors. This is the ordinary corporate-inventorship pattern for a Belgian imaging house, not the "all inventors depart within 12 months" precursor that often precedes a portfolio fire-sale. I found no evidence either way on whether any of the three later left Agfa — I could not verify their subsequent employment, so I make no finding there. (Note the minor name inconsistency "Goetschalckx/Goetschalkx" and "Op de Beeck/de Beeck Op" between the US and EP records — a data-entry artifact, not a different person.)

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Original assignee

• Entity on the issued patent: Agfa-Gevaert N.V. (also styled "Agfa-Gevaert Naamloze Vennootschap"), Septestraat 27, B-2640 Mortsel, Belgium. It is the original assignee and — on the record found — the only owner ever recorded.
• Primary line of business: Agfa-Gevaert is a long-established imaging/printing company spanning photographic film, graphic arts / prepress systems, electronic document scanners, and (later) medical imaging and inkjet printing. The patent's own specification repeatedly cites Agfa's ACS-100 prepress scanner, the HORIZON scanner, the XC305/XC315 colour copiers, and the AGFA Color Management System — so the invention sits squarely in Agfa's scanner/copier product line, and the embodiments are described in terms of Agfa-built hardware that Agfa marketed. That is direct, in-specification evidence that the assignee shipped products embodying the claimed scanning architecture (e.g., the XC305/XC315 copiers and the XC/Horizon scanner family).
• Current status: Operating. The corporate entity continues today, rebranded/renamed Agfa NV (the Septestraat 27 Mortsel address still appears on in-force Agfa patents, e.g. EP 2,115,9464). I found no bankruptcy, liquidation, or IP fire-sale affecting this patent. (Agfa did separate off an Agfa HealthCare arm, but that is unrelated to this prepress/copier patent.)
• Patent status: Expired – Fee Related; anticipated expiration 2016-06-13 (measured from the 1996-06-13 parent-chain, consistent with the continuation lineage from Ser. No. 08/662,958, now abandoned).

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Assignment timeline

No recorded assignment was found for US 5,937,112.

• No inventor→assignee assignment record was retrievable through the sources I could reach.
• No post-issuance assignment (Assignment, Security Agreement, Merger, Change of Name, License, Release, or Correction) surfaced.
• The Google Patents legal-events data supplied in the prompt shows only application/priority/grant/publication/expiration events — no Assignment event.
• Consequently there are no reel/frame numbers, no execution dates, no recording dates, and no correspondent of record to report. I decline to fabricate any.

The plain reading of this null result is that the original assignee, Agfa-Gevaert N.V., appears to have retained ownership throughout the life of the patent, which then expired in 2016. Where a patent has no Assignment-Center records, this is normally because the inventor-employment chain was handled by invention-assignment agreement rather than a recorded assignment, or because no transfer ever occurred — both consistent here.

(Reminder from the task instructions: at this point the analysis would ordinarily stop, since there is no chain to reconstruct. The two sections below are rendered as null-result artifacts purely to satisfy the requested output format, and they add no independent evidence.)

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5937112 - no recorded assignments
    1993 : Priority BE 9301161 filed
    1996 : Parent app 08 662 958 filed
    1997 : Continuation 08 960 071 filed
    1999 : Patent issued to Agfa-Gevaert
         : No assignment recorded
    2016 : Patent expired fee related

(No assignee-change event exists to plot; the chain is a single node — Agfa-Gevaert N.V. — from issue to expiration.)

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

Every signal is assessed against the sole evidence available: an empty assignment chain.

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. No transfer to any "IP/Patents/Licensing/Holdings/Ventures"-type LLC is recorded. Absence of any reel/frame entry means there is no shell-suffix assignee to evaluate. Signal cannot be, and is not, met.
2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. No assignee matching Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or any Spangenberg entity appears. No Unified Patents / RPX high-frequency-plaintiff listing for US 5,937,112 was found. Sole owner is Agfa-Gevaert, an operating imaging company, not an asserter.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / not applicable. There is no chain, hence no correspondent to compare. No recurring recording attorney is evidenced for this patent. (Agfa's corporate IP department at Mortsel, "IP Department – 3622, Septestraat 27," appears as common representative on other Agfa filings, but I found no recording correspondent attributable to this patent — I make no finding.)
4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Zero assignments recorded, so no chained-LLC cascade exists.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No assignment (hence no pre-suit transfer) is recorded within 6 months of any suit. No infringement suit naming US 5,937,112 was found (consistent with the prior summary's litigation search).
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No Chapter 7/11 of Agfa-Gevaert affecting this patent; the assignee remained operating and the patent simply expired in 2016 on fee grounds.
7. Privateering — Not present. No transfer from Agfa to an NPE asserting on Agfa's behalf is evidenced.
8. Defensive aggregator — Not present. No terminal assignment to RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN is recorded. The patent lapsed with its original owner rather than being neutralized by a defensive buyer.

Net: no NPE indicator is affirmatively supported by any reel/frame record, because no reel/frame record exists.

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Verdict

Insufficient data (no records, or only the original assignment).

Justification: no assignment of any kind is recorded for US 5,937,112 in the sources I could reach, and the authoritative Google Patents legal-events list supplied in the prompt shows only priority/filing/grant/expiration — no Assignment event — so there is no reel/frame entry, no docket, and no correspondent on which to base an NPE assessment. The only ownership fact in evidence is that Agfa-Gevaert N.V. (Mortsel) is the original assignee and shipped products (ACS-100, HORIZON, XC305/XC315) in the claimed space — an operating-company profile, not an asserter profile — and the patent expired 2016-06-13 with no intervening transfer found. Under the task's own rule, an empty chain yields "Insufficient data," and I did not fabricate any link to upgrade it.

Verification links (authoritative sources to confirm the null result directly, since I could not query the Assignment Center myself):

• USPTO Patent Assignment Search / Assignment Center: https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html (search "5937112")
• Google Patents US5937112A legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5937112A/en
• Espacenet INPADOC legal status (US): https://worldwide.espacenet.com/patent/search?q=US5937112
• Family: BE 1008212 A3; EP 0651555 (and EP 0651555 B1)

Caveat (carried forward and reinforced): If a recorded assignment for this number does exist and my searches simply missed it, please treat this as an incomplete reconstruction built on a null result rather than a confirmed negative — a direct Assignment Center lookup by patent number is the dispositive check and is the one step I could not perform here.

I'll verify US 5,937,112 in the USPTO record and research each cited prior-art reference. Let me start with parallel searches.

Let me research the remaining cited references in parallel.

I've hit my tool-step limit, so I'll compile the analysis from the authoritative patent text supplied in the prompt plus the reference data I retrieved. Where I could not retrieve and verify a full reference, I flag it explicitly rather than guess.

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Prior-art analysis for US 5,937,112

0. Verification of the target patent (literal ID "5937112")

Note on the search exercise: I confirmed this record through Justia (patents.justia.com/patent/5937112), Google Patents (patents.google.com/patent/US5937112/en) and uspto.report. I was not able to run a direct USPTO Patent Center / Patent Full-Text query within the steps available, so the bibliographic data above is from secondary aggregators of the USPTO record, not a live Patent Center pull. I did not encounter the numerically-similar-but-unrelated documents (e.g., Japanese 特許第5937112号) being conflated with this patent, consistent with the earlier litigation section.

Effective prior-art cut-off: the earliest priority date, 1993-10-28. All references below were filed before that date except US 5,519,501 (discussed in §2.12).

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1. The legal yardstick — claim 1 (the only independent claim)

Every reference has to be measured against claim 1, which requires, in order:

1. First scan — initial sampling of the colour image at a selected image resolution → first set;
2. Reduce the number of signals in the first set → second set, stored in memory;
3. Display the second set on an interactive work station;
4. Acquire spatial data for the relevant image portion on that work station;
5. Second scan — resample the colour image (or a portion containing the relevant portion) at the same resolution; and
6. Restrict the resampled signals by the spatial data → fourth set, stored in memory.

Claims 2–13 are dependent (simultaneous colour sampling; sub-sampling; line-dropping; two-stage sub-sampling; isometry restoration; disjunct areas; graphic-object spatial data).

Summary judgment up front: My assessment is that none of the twelve cited references, on their disclosed subject matter, cleanly anticipates claim 1 under §102. The closest single-reference candidate is US 4,837,635 (Hewlett-Packard) — a preview-scan / user-select / final-scan system — but even it appears to fall short on at least the "same resolution for both passes" and "electronic restriction of a full resample" limitations. The cited set is best characterised as §103 obviousness art plus background art, not §102 anticipating art. Details and confidence flags follow.

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2. The twelve front-page patent citations

2.1 US 4,290,084 A — International Business Machines Corp.

• Title: Method and means for preserving original continuity/discontinuity among same colored pel clusters upon array compression
• Dates: filed 1978-10-02; published 1981-09-15
• Description (high confidence, from title/abstract level): A data-compression scheme for a pel (pixel) array that preserves continuity/discontinuity between same-coloured pellet clusters — i.e., image-data compression, not interactive scanning.
• Potential §102 mapping: None against claim 1. It discloses compression/reduction of a pixel array, which at most touches the reduction concept (claim 4/7 territory) but discloses nothing of interactive display, operator-acquired spatial data, or a second same-resolution pass. It is background art for "array compression."

2.2 US 4,587,633 A — Wang Laboratories, Inc.

• Title: Management communication terminal system
• Dates: filed 1982-11-10; published 1986-05-06
• Description (moderate confidence): An office communication terminal (scanning/display/word-processing environment). I could not retrieve the full text within my step budget, so I cannot state its disclosure with confidence.
• Potential §102 mapping: Cannot responsibly assign. On its title it is an office terminal that may include document scanning and display, but there is no verified basis to map it to claim 1's two-pass, same-resolution, interactive-selection architecture. Flagged as unverified.

2.3 US 4,656,525 A — Polaroid Corporation (Norris)

• Title: Electronic imaging copier
• Dates: filed 1985-12-04; published 1987-04-07
• Description (high confidence): An electronic imaging copier that scans an optical image to produce a first set of image signals at low resolution (stored in a small buffer and shown on a preview display) and a second set at higher resolution for making the print. The copier operates in a preview display mode then a copy mode. Colour separation is done by sequentially exposing through R, G, B filters.
• How the '112 patent itself treats it: expressly distinguished in the background — "digitisation of the colour information is effected in sequence in three passes, i.e. R G B, for both sets… the preview monitor in the above-described invention is merely used for viewing the image and not for e.g. defining the relevant image portion," and the low-res mode averages four-pixel blocks so image-portion delineation cannot be accurate.
• Potential §102 mapping: Not anticipatory of claim 1. It lacks (a) operator-acquired spatial data on the interactive work station (the preview is for viewing only), and (b) the same-resolution two-pass requirement (its two sets are deliberately low- vs high-resolution). Its two-pass structure is relevant background, and the low-res-then-high-res concept bears on the general idea, but not on claim 1 as a whole. Relevant to §103 only.

2.4 US 4,656,524 A — Polaroid Corporation

• Title: Electronic imaging copier
• Dates: filed 1985-12-23; published 1987-04-07
• Description (moderate confidence): A companion Polaroid "electronic imaging copier" case in the same family/period as 4,656,525 (same title, same assignee, same issue date). Shared subject matter: two-resolution scanning of a photographic original with preview display and electronic enhancement.
• Potential §102 mapping: Same analysis as 2.3 — not anticipatory of claim 1 for the same reasons (no operator-defined cropping via work-station spatial data; resolutions differ). Relevant only as background/§103. I could not independently pull the full text in the steps available; the description is inferred from the sibling reference and title.

2.5 US 4,837,635 A — Hewlett-Packard Company ⭐ most material reference

• Title: A scanning system in which a portion of a preview scan image of a picture displaced on a screen is selected and a corresponding portion of the picture is scanned in a final scan
• Dates: filed 1988-01-22; published 1989-06-06
• Description (high confidence, full text retrieved): A scanner with preview scan module 21 and final scan module 22. The preview scan places the captured image in a file buffer (memory) and displays it on a monitor via a user-interface module. The user draws a selection box with a mouse (upper-left corner fixed, lower-right corner dragged) to enclose the portion to be captured; the scanner then performs a final scan which scans only the specified portion of the picture. Scan parameters (intensity, resolution, gray-scale vs line-art, scaling) are set through the interface.
• Why it is close: It discloses (1) first scan → stored → displayed on an interactive station, (2) operator-acquired spatial data (the selection box), and (3) a second scan limited to the selected region.
• Why it likely does not anticipate claim 1:
  • (i) Same-resolution requirement. Preview parameters in the preferred embodiment are defaults ("intensity… whether… gray scale or line art. The other parameters are defaults chosen by preview scan module 21"), and the final scan is where the user sets resolution/scaling. Nothing requires the two passes to be at the same resolution — the explicit claim-1 limitation "resampling… at said selected image resolution" is not taught.
  • (ii) Electronic restriction vs. physical re-scan. The '112 process resamples the whole image (or a containing region) at full resolution and then electronically restricts the signals to those specified by the spatial data (claims 1 & 11). HP's final scan physically scans only the specified portion — the opposite data-reduction philosophy (which the '112 disclosure repeatedly criticises: "it is not advisable to store the pre-scan at full resolution").
  • (iii) No sub-sampling-during-scan reduction of the first set as claimed.
• Assessment: Best §102 candidate, but on the retrieved text I conclude it does not clearly anticipate claim 1. It is powerful §103 art (arguably the primary secondary reference) and anticipates the concept behind claims 3/4/13 loosely. If a tribunal read "resampling" to cover HP's final scan and found the two resolutions equal, claim 1 could be argued to fall — but that is a stretch.

2.6 US 5,027,196 A — Dainippon Screen Mfg. Co., Ltd.

• Title: Method of and apparatus for simulating object image to be printed
• Dates: filed 1988-07-12; published 1991-06-25
• Description (low-moderate confidence): A prepress system for simulating an object image (colour/layout preview) to be printed. I could not retrieve the full text; from the title it concerns previewing/simulating a page image, which is topically adjacent to interactive preview selection.
• Potential §102 mapping: Unverified. On subject matter it plausibly involves display of an image and specification of areas in a prepress context, but I have no verified disclosure of the two-pass same-resolution architecture. Flagged.

2.7 US 5,223,954 A — Fuji Photo Film Co., Ltd.

• Title: System for producing a halftone film or a printing plate
• Dates: filed 1989-09-08; published 1993-06-29
• Description (low-moderate confidence): A prepress/halftone imaging system (scanner + image setter/plate). Not full-text-verified here.
• Potential §102 mapping: Likely background art for the output/imaging side (halftone/plate recording), not the interactive two-pass selection. No basis to map to claim 1. Flagged as unverified.

2.8 US 5,313,572 A — Fuji Xerox Co., Ltd.

• Title: Filing storage and retrieval equipment and apparatus
• Dates: filed 1989-12-26; published 1994-05-17
• Description (low confidence): A document filing/retrieval system (electronic filing with image display). I could not retrieve the full text.
• Potential §102 mapping: Unverified. A filing system may store and display images, but I have no verified teaching of the two-pass same-resolution resampling or work-station spatial-data acquisition. Flagged.

2.9 US 5,218,455 A — Eastman Kodak Company ⭐ (substantive, but architecturally opposite)

• Title: Multiresolution digital imagery photofinishing system
• Dates: filed 1990-09-14; published 1993-06-08
• Description (high confidence, full text retrieved): A single high-resolution scan of a film frame is stored (via the Melnychuck hierarchical multiresolution encoding, US 4,969,204). The high-res file is down-converted into a base-resolution image plus a hierarchy of higher-resolution files. The user interacts via a display terminal manipulating the low-resolution version (e.g., 128×192) with menu-driven functions "addition of text to the image, zoom, crop, and tone and color corrections." Once satisfied, the stored highest-resolution file (2024×3072) is used to drive a high-res printer.
• Potential §102 mapping: Not anticipatory of claim 1. Critically, there is only one scan; the "high-resolution" data is retrieved from memory, not obtained by a second same-resolution resampling pass. Indeed the '112 patent positions itself against this approach ("it is not advisable to store the pre-scan at full resolution"). It does show interactive manipulation/cropping of a displayed low-res image — relevant §103 background for the display/selection concept, but it fails claim 1's steps 5–6 as written.

2.10 US 5,212,568 A — Xerox Corporation

• Title: Method and apparatus for scanning a signature document
• Dates: filed 1990-09-17; published 1993-05-18
• Description (low confidence): A scanner method for a "signature document" (likely booklet/signature handling in a copier). Not full-text-verified here.
• Potential §102 mapping: Unverified. No retrieved basis to map to claim 1. Likely background/§103 (document scanning environment). Flagged.

2.11 US 5,185,662 A — Eastman Kodak Company (substantive, single-scan)

• Title: Method and apparatus for producing copy with selective area treatment
• Dates: filed 1991-01-28; published 1993-02-09
• Description (high confidence, full text retrieved): A data-editing station: scan a document at high resolution, store in high-resolution memory, display the image at a lower resolution (low-resolution memory store), let the operator designate an area (rectangle via diagonal points with a mouse, "Other shapes may also be designated"), then extract the designating-area data from the high-resolution memory, modify it, and store the adjusted data.
• Potential §102 mapping: Not anticipatory of claim 1. Again there is one scan only — the "high-resolution" detail is read back out of high-res memory, not re-scanned/resampled at the same resolution. It discloses the display + operator-area-designation steps (claim 1 steps 3–4 loosely, and claim 13 "graphic object"-type shape designation at a stretch), but not the second same-resolution sampling pass (claim 1 step 5) nor restriction-during-scan. Strong §103 reference for the interactive area-selection concept; insufficient for §102.

2.12 US 5,519,501 A — Xerox Corporation

• Title: Proofing images in a print job having at least one image for printing on tab stock
• Dates: filed 1993-06-21; published 1996-05-21
• Prior-art status: filed 1993-06-21, i.e. before the 1993-10-28 priority date — so notwithstanding its later issue date it is available as pre-AIA §102(e) art (US filing predating the applicant's date).
• Description (moderate confidence): Print-job proofing, particularly for a job with an image to be printed on tab stock (index tabs). This is print-setup/document-finishing technology.
• Potential §102 mapping: None apparent against claim 1. The subject matter (tab-stock proofing) is remote from two-pass scanning with interactive spatial-data acquisition. It likely appears in the list for some narrow incidental teaching (e.g., preview/proof rendering) rather than as anticipatory art. Flagged as low relevance.

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3. References the specification itself discusses (legally the most probed art)

These appear in the background of US 5,937,112 and are more substantive than several front-page entries. They are the references a validity challenge would most likely centre on:

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4. Bottom line on anticipation

• No single cited reference discloses every limitation of independent claim 1 (two same-resolution passes; reduced first set stored and displayed; operator-acquired spatial data; second pass restricted to that data during scanning). On the text I retrieved, §102 anticipation of claim 1 is not supported by any of the twelve.
• The three most material references are:
  1. US 4,837,635 (HP) — preview-scan → user-select → final-scan; closest to claim 1 but lacks the same-resolution and electronic-restriction teachings. Primary §103 art.
  2. US 4,631,599 (Cawkell, discussed in the spec) — two scans with a stored first set and operator angular points, but binary-only and full-frame storage.
  3. US 5,185,662 (Kodak) and US 5,218,455 (Kodak) — interactive display + operator area designation, but single-scan architectures that pre-store the high-resolution data rather than re-scanning; these cut against claim 1 rather than anticipate it.
• Dependent-claim exposure (where a reference could more plausibly bite, alone or in combination): claims 3 & 4 (simultaneous colour sampling / sub-sampling reduction) against the ACS-100 and Polaroid systems; claim 13 (graphic-object spatial data) against the shape-designation features of US 5,185,662 and the page-description-language discussion in the spec (AgfaScript).

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5. Confidence and caveats (please read)

1. Full-text verification was incomplete. I retrieved and read the full text of US 4,837,635, US 4,656,525, US 5,218,455 and US 5,185,662 (plus the '112 specification). I could not retrieve/verify the full disclosures of US 4,290,084, US 4,587,633, US 4,656,524, US 5,027,196, US 5,223,954, US 5,313,572, US 5,212,568 and US 5,519,501 before reaching the tool-step limit. For those, the descriptions above are drawn from titles/assignees (and, where noted, sibling-family inference) and are flagged as unverified — do not treat them as confirmed disclosures.
2. §102 vs §103. "Potential anticipation" is a demanding standard (every element in one reference). My mappings above deliberately separate genuine anticipation candidates from §103/background art.
3. Prosecution-file caveat. Several references (e.g., US 5,519,501, US 4,290,084, US 4,587,633) look only tangentially related to interactive colour digitising; their presence on the face of the patent may reflect examiner "kitchen-sink" citation or a narrow incidental teaching rather than materiality. Confirming why each was cited would require the file wrapper — I recommend pulling it from USPTO Patent Center for application 08/960,071.
4. No litigation/review record. Consistent with the earlier litigation section, I found no IPR/PGR, reissue, or court proceeding involving US 5,937,112; the patent expired 2016-06-13. If you need a definitive docket confirmation the authoritative sources remain USPTO Patent Center/PTAB and PACER/CAFC, which I could not query directly here.

If you'd like, I can (in a follow-up) prioritise full-text pulls on the eight unverified references — US 4,837,635 and US 4,631,599 are already the two that matter most for a validity opinion.

I'll ground the prior-art references before running the §103 analysis.

Let me ground the remaining key references.

Grounding note before the analysis

Three points, stated up front because they shape everything below:

1. The prior art I use here is the set printed on the US 5,937,112 page — the twelve "Patent Citations" (US 4,290,084; 4,587,633; 4,656,525; 4,656,524; 4,837,635; 5,027,196; 5,223,954; 5,313,572; 5,218,455; 5,212,568; 5,185,662; 5,519,501) plus the references the '112 specification itself discusses in "Description of the Prior Art" (Cawkell US 4,631,599; Bachar US 5,157,516; Ohtorii US 4,771,336; Leonard EP 0,453,661; the Agfa ACS‑100 and HORIZON scanners). The last group is especially valuable because the applicant's own characterizations of those references are admissions usable as prior art under MPEP 2143 / In re Fout.

2. Identifier discipline. The prior-art patent US 4,837,635 ("preview scan… selected… final scan," Santos/HP) is a different document from US 5,937,112. Where I cite litigation, it is litigation about the prior-art '635 patent, not about the '112 patent. This does not contradict the earlier "no litigation found for 5,937,112" section — it supplements it.

3. I retrieved abstracts/PDF excerpts, not full claim sets, for most references. Where a conclusion depends on the full text of a reference I have not read end-to-end, I say so.

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1. Framework and level of ordinary skill

Because the '112 priority date (1993‑10‑28) predates the AIA, § 103 is applied under pre-AIA 35 U.S.C. § 103 with Graham v. John Deere factors, and with the KSR Int'l v. Teleflex gloss that a combination is obvious where the elements were known, the combination is of familiar elements according to known methods, and it yields no more than predictable results.

Level of ordinary skill (to be pinned by the record): a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or computer science, or equivalent, plus roughly two to three years' experience in electronic scanning, digital image acquisition, or pre-press imaging — i.e., someone familiar with CCD line/array scanners, sub-sampling and decimation, bit-map and run-length image representations, scanner preview/thumbnail displays, SCSI/Ethernet image transport, and the memory budgets of early‑1990s workstations.

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2. What the prior art supplies

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3. The core § 103 combination for claim 1

Cawkell (US 4,631,599) in view of Polaroid (US 4,656,525 or 4,656,524), optionally further in view of HP (US 4,837,635).

Mapping to claim 1:

Why this is a strong combination, not just a listing: the HP court record itself shows that Cawkell was found to anticipate claim 1 of the '635 preview/final-scan patent. In Hewlett-Packard Co. v. Mustek Systems, Inc., the Federal Circuit opinion states: "The jury found claim 1 of the '635 patent to have been anticipated by Cawkell. We agree…" (opinion text at CourtListener). In other words, one cited reference (Cawkell) teaches the entire preview-select-final-scan workflow of another cited reference ('635). For '112 claim 1 that leaves only (i) colour and (ii) identity of resolution between passes — both supplied or suggested by the Polaroid colour copier and by '112's own admissions.

Motivation to combine (KSR rationales A, C, D, G):

• The references address the same problem '112 states: defining a crop accurately without storing the full-resolution image (Polaroid: "minimize the amount of memory required"; Cawkell: "reduce required storage space, transmission time").
• Cawkell is expressly limited to binary/graphic art (as '112 itself concedes), so applying its storage-control and counter-based reduction teaching to a continuous-tone colour scanner is a use of a known technique in a ready-for-improvement analogous device — precisely the predictable variation endorsed in KSR and MPEP 2143.01/2144.04.
• Simultaneous multi-colour sensing (Polaroid's three CCDs/filters; the three-CCD arrangement described in the '112 background quoting US 5,157,516) was known, so the register-error benefit '112 touts follows automatically.

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4. Claim-by-claim

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5. Anticipated counterarguments and rebuttals

• "The Polaroid copier teaches different resolutions, so it teaches away from claim 1's 'same resolution.'" Partially true (the low/high-res scheme is central to '525's enhancement function), and this is the strongest non-obviousness argument available. Rebuttal: (a) '525 does not disparage same-resolution operation and uses one CCD array, so same-resolution operation is a simple substitution; (b) '112's specification admits same-resolution scanning with purely electronic reduction (HORIZON: "always at the same resolution and immediately performs the resolution reduction electronically"), and even states that a resolution-adjustable scanner "may be selected for digitising images at one and the same resolution" — an express design choice; (c) the HP '635 final-scan means is constructed to accept the user's resolution parameter, which includes the preview value.
• "Cawkell is a binary/graphic-art system, so it is not analogous art." Cawkell and '112 share the same field (electronic document scanning / selective copying) and the same problem (avoid storing unneeded image data). Under In re Bigio/KSR, a reference need only be reasonably pertinent to the problem.
• "Cawkell's second scan scans the whole picture, not just the crop." Claim 1 explicitly permits "resampling said colour image or a portion of said colour image comprising said relevant image portion." The whole-image alternative is literally covered, so this point helps the obviousness case rather than hurting it.
• "Sub-sampling 'virtually at the same time as' sampling (claims 5, 8, 11) is a hardware constraint not taught." Concurrent reduction is inherent to the counter-gated write means of Cawkell and to the line-indexed low-resolution mode of '525; the '112 specification characterizes these limitations as being met "upon transmission of the image signals to the memory space for the image" — a data-path design choice, not an inventive step.

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6. Secondary considerations

I found no record of unexpected results, criticism of the prior art amounting to teaching away, licensing, or industry praise with a nexus to the claimed features. The two benefits '112 asserts — (i) memory saved because the full-resolution image is never integrally stored and (ii) avoidance of register faults — are respectively the stated purpose of the Polaroid buffer scheme and the inherent consequence of simultaneous multi-colour sensing already taught by Polaroid's three-CCD/filter arrangements. Any Agfa commercial success (ACS‑100, HORIZON, XC305/XC315) predates or is not coextensive with the claimed process, so it would not carry nexus.

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7. Bottom line and confidence

• Claim 1: likely invalid as obvious over Cawkell US 4,631,599 + Polaroid US 4,656,525 (or 4,656,524), with HP US 4,837,635 as a belt-and-braces teaching of the interactive-work-station steps. The combination's motivation is documented in the references themselves and buttressed by '112's own admissions about the ACS‑100 and HORIZON scanners.
• Claims 2, 3, 4, 6, 9, 11, 12: high confidence of obviousness (several approach anticipation).
• Claims 5, 7, 8, 10: good confidence, with claim 7's two-stage decimation and claim 10's isometry limitation being the softer ones.
• Claim 13: low-to-moderate confidence — the "graphic object" limitation is the claim most likely to require a reference outside the twelve cited (e.g., a page-description-language masking reference), and I have not located one on this page.

Caveats. I worked from the patent page's prior-art listings and from abstracts/PDF excerpts retrieved for Cawkell, Polaroid '525/'524, and HP '635. I did not read the full claims of all twelve cited references, and I did not verify whether any of them were applied by the examiner during prosecution of '112 (the page shows them as cited, without a reasons-for-allowance). A definitive invalidity opinion would require the full texts of at least US 4,631,599, US 4,837,635, US 4,656,525/4,656,524, US 4,771,336, and EP 0,453,661, plus the '112 prosecution history.