US 5983200

I'll verify the patent's identity, ownership chain, and any litigation before summarizing. Let me run several targeted searches.

I have claim 1 from Espacenet. Let me pull the remaining independent claims and check for any litigation/CAFC activity.

US Patent 5,983,200 — Summary and Analysis

Scope note on searches: I searched for the exact number 5983200 / 5,983,200 and did not accept results for adjacent numbers (e.g., 5,983,201, 5,983,320). All bibliographic and claim data below is anchored to US5983200A specifically. Two attempts to search for 2026 CAFC docket activity returned no relevant hits before I exhausted my search budget (see "Litigation status" caveats).

1. Bibliographic data

Family members listed on the record: WO1998015909A1 (PCT/US1997/018307) and AU48147/97A; plus a related January 1998 set — US 09/006,681 → US 6,108,640, PCT/US1998/000628 → WO1998030963A1, and AU62403/98.

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5983200/en ; https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=US&NR=[5983200A](/patent/5983200A)&KC=A&FT=D

Ownership / assignment chain (as recorded)

Per the Google Patents reassignment table, the patent moved:
Individual → LOT 11 ACQUISITION FOUNDATION, LLC (2008-01-14) → CUFER ASSET LTD. L.L.C (2015-12-29) → INTELLECTUAL VENTURES ASSETS 161 LLC → HANGER SOLUTIONS, LLC → TUMBLEWEED HOLDINGS LLC (2022-04-06, from Hanger Solutions, LLC), which is listed as current assignee.

⚠️ Data anomaly: the table lists the Hanger Solutions entry as 2020-01-05 and the Intellectual Ventures Assets 161 entry as 2020-02-10, which is internally out of order relative to the stated assignor/assignee relationship (Hanger's assignor is listed as IV Assets 161). I am reporting the record literally as displayed; I have not independently verified the dates or the documents. Separately, I have no independent evidence about Tumbleweed Holdings LLC beyond this assignment record — the name should not be conflated with any similarly named operating company without verification.

2. Abstract (as issued)

"An intelligent agent executes tasks by using intelligent agent learning modules which store information necessary to execute the tasks. A computer receives a command to execute a task or receives data which causes a task request to be generated. The computer accesses appropriate information in the learning modules to execute the task, and outputs instructions for output devices to execute the tasks. The tasks may be executed at a future time and on a periodic basis. The learning modules build up a database of information from previously executed tasks, and the database is used to assist in executing future tasks. The tasks include physical commercial transactions. Portions of the intelligent agent may be remotely located and interconnected via remote communication devices."

3. Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The Espacenet claim record shows 18 claims, of which two are independent: claim 1 (apparatus) and claim 15 (method).
Source: https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/claims?DB=&ND=&locale=&FT=D&date=19991109&CC=US&NR=5983200A&KC=A&tree=false

Claim 1 — the apparatus ("intelligent agent")

A system for executing delegated tasks, where at least some tasks are date-sensitive and at least some are "physical commercial transactions" requiring payment. The system has five required elements:

• (a) Input device(s) for entering tasks. Each such task is split into a first subtask (carrying out the physical commercial transaction) and a second subtask (paying the funds for it) — and at least some of these subtasks are flagged to happen on a future date.
• (b) Learning module(s) storing what is needed to execute tasks, including information associated with previously executed tasks (i.e., a built-up memory of past behavior).
• (c) Calendar/date-calculation module(s) supplying the date information needed for date-sensitive tasks.
• (d) A computer wired to (a), (b) and (c) that receives the entered tasks, the date/calendar information and the learned information, processes them, and generates execution instructions — specifically reusing previously stored information to execute currently requested tasks. It must include a "future task instruction generator" so that transaction tasks and their related payment tasks can be executed at a future date.
• (e) Output device(s) connected to the computer to execute the tasks on the appropriate date, and here the claim is specific: a first output device performs the physical commercial transaction on the appropriate date, and a second output device executes the payment of funds on the appropriate date.

So claim 1's core is the combination of learning from past tasks + calendar/date computation + deferred (future-dated) execution + separately handled transaction and payment outputs.

Representative dependent claims: periodic execution (2); non-Gregorian calendars / non-Gregorian periodicities (3); non-conventional periodicities (4); Gregorian basis (5); subtasks executed simultaneously (6); remote input device with bidirectional communication medium (7); natural-language recognition input (8); merchandise-personalizing output equipment (9); direct user interface (10); automated entry device causing task execution based on received data (11); elements physically remote from one another (12); all elements at a single location (13); user-querying device driving task entry (14).

Claim 15 — the method of interconnecting devices

A method of interconnecting a plurality of devices to form the same kind of intelligent agent. It recites the same component set up front — (i) input device, (ii) learning module storing information from previously executed tasks, (iii) calendar/date-calculation module, (iv) computer including a future task instruction generator for future-dated transaction and payment tasks, and (v) output devices split into a first output device to perform the transaction and a second output device to execute payment — then claims the steps of:

• (b) the computer receiving the entered tasks, calendar/date information and relevant learning-module information;
• (c) the computer processing that information to generate execution instructions;
• (d) executing the tasks via the output device(s) on the appropriate date, using at least some previously stored information for currently requested tasks, with the executing step including generating future task instructions to execute the first and second subtasks.

Representative dependent claims: remote device interconnected via a remote communication medium (16); all of devices (i)–(v) remote from each other and interconnected by remote media (17); and execution of the physical transaction at a first predetermined future time with payment at a second predetermined future time (18).

⚠️ Claim-capture caveat: my source excerpt of claim 15 begins at step "(b)"; the text of step "(a)" (presumably the initial interconnecting/providing step) was not returned and I will not reconstruct it. Also, the provided full-text rendering of the patent is truncated mid-specification (it ends inside the "handwriting" passage of the DEFINITIONS section) and therefore does not itself contain the claims; the claim language above comes from Espacenet's claims record, which I treat as authoritative for the claim text.

4. Litigation status (including CAFC 2026 dockets)

Finding: no CAFC 2026 docket activity for 5,983,200 was surfaced by my searches.

• My searches for a 2026 Court of Appeals for the Federal Circuit docket involving this patent number returned no relevant results.
• Importantly, the patent's own record states it expired on 2017-10-06 ("Anticipated expiration," legal status "Expired – Lifetime"), so as of 2026 it is no longer enforceable — which is consistent with the absence of live infringement litigation.
• ⚠️ Uncertainty: I do not have authoritative live access to PACER, the CAFC docket, or the USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board docket, and my tool budget ran out before I could complete a dedicated docket sweep. I therefore cannot state affirmatively that no administrative or appellate proceeding ever mentioned this patent. Treat "no CAFC 2026 activity" as "none found," not "none exists."

What I did find: the patent is cited as prior art in later patents' references, e.g., the "System and method for managing recurring orders in a computer network" (US 7,353,194), "System and method for archiving records" (US 8,234,251), and "System and method for emergency notification content delivery" (US 9,147,338), each listing "5983200 | November 9, 1999 | Slotznick" in their prior-art tables.
Source: https://patents.justia.com/patent/[7353194](/patent/7353194) ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/[8234251](/patent/8234251) ; https://patents.justia.com/patent/[9147338](/patent/9147338)

5. Concise technical characterization

The '200 patent claims a delegate-and-forget architecture: natural-language or other entry of a task → a learning database populated incrementally from previously executed tasks → a calendar/date module capable of non-Gregorian and non-conventional periodicities (the specification expressly discusses Easter, Election Day, Islamic/Hebrew/Chinese calendars, and lunar/tidal cycles) → a computer that both schedules and executes in the future, with transaction performance and payment handled as separate subtasks/outputs, possibly deferred to different future dates. The specification's canonical examples are "Send flowers to Jim Smith and his wife on their anniversary," "Ship piston-rings to Osaka Motors by next Tuesday," "Make airplane reservations to Cairo for Easter weekend," and "Plan dinner for six…" and it covers contingent/triggered orders driven by sensors (bar codes, weight/volume sensors) plus EDI-style automation.

Minor text-quality flag: the auto-generated "Definitions" block on the patent's page renders the calendars sentence as "Chinese, Jewish, Islamic or Malawi," while the body of the specification renders the same sentence as "Chinese, Jewish, Islamic or Hindu." I am reporting both renderings literally rather than choosing one, per the no-auto-correction rule; the discrepancy appears to be an OCR/derivation artifact rather than a substantive difference.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 5983200.

Let me search more specifically for litigation involving this patent.

Let me search for litigation directly tied to this patent and its owner.

Result: No litigation specific to US 5,983,200 was found

I ran multiple targeted searches (including queries aimed at the Unified Patents litigation portal, PACER-style case data, and the patent's current/former owners). I did not find any court case, docket, complaint, or PTAB proceeding in which U.S. Patent No. 5,983,200 ("Intelligent agent for executing delegated tasks," Benjamin Slotznick) is the asserted patent.

What the searches actually returned (and why it is not this patent)

Every "hit" for the string "5983200" was a false positive for a different patent or an unrelated reference:

• '598 patents that are not US 5,983,200. Several results referred to a vehicle-inventory " '598 Patent" litigated in Procon Analytics, LLC v. Spireon, Inc., No. 3:19-cv-00201 (E.D. Tenn.) (appeal to the Federal Circuit, S. Ct. No. 21-1370). That '598 patent is a GPS/vehicle-tracking patent — a different document from US 5,983,200, and I could not confirm its number from the snippets, so I do not assert one.
• A pharmaceutical '598 patent. AbbVie ANDA litigation concerning QULIPTA® referenced yet another different '598 patent.
• A " '598 patent" in Smiths Medical v. Monaghan (D. Del., 17-712) — an oscillatory positive expiratory pressure patent. Again a different patent.
• Tumbleweed Communications cases (PayPal/eBay, Yahoo!). These are the most likely to be mistakenly attributed here, because the patent's current listed assignee is Tumbleweed Holdings LLC. However, the Tumbleweed Communications suits asserted U.S. Patent Nos. 5,790,790; 6,192,407; and 6,487,599 — not US 5,983,200 (e.g., https://www.cnet.com/tech/tech-industry/ebay-tumbleweed-settle-patent-suit/). Those cases are unrelated to Slotznick's patent.
• Prosecution/search-history noise. The number appears in examiner search-string histories and prosecution-file exhibits, which are not litigation.

Important caveats

• Search tooling was inconclusive. My searches did not successfully query the Unified Patents litigation portal case list or PACER directly; the tools returned general web results. The absence of a hit is therefore not a guarantee that no case exists.
• NPE-era litigation is plausible but unconfirmed. US 5,983,200 expired on 2017-10-06 and was assigned through LOT 11 Acquisition Foundation → Cufer Asset Ltd. → Intellectual Ventures Assets 161 → Hanger Solutions → Tumbleweed Holdings. An entity like Hanger Solutions or Cufer could in principle have asserted it. I found no evidence of such an assertion, and I will not fabricate a docket to fill the gap.
• Verify independently. To be certain, check the patent's Google Patents "Litigation" tab (https://patents.google.com/patent/US5983200/en), the Unified Patents portal (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist), and PACER/RECAP searches on the patent number and on "Hanger Solutions," "Cufer Asset," and "Tumbleweed Holdings."

Bottom line: Based on the sources I could reach, I found no known litigation involving US 5,983,200. I cannot confirm this is exhaustive, and I recommend the independent source checks above before relying on the negative result.

I'll start by checking the canonical structured data and then searching for any PTAB proceedings on this patent.

Let me search for litigation and any IPR challenges involving this patent owner chain.

Let me run a few more targeted searches to be thorough — checking the litigation/assertion history and any IPR filings by Hanger Solutions targets.

PTAB Proceedings Report — U.S. Patent No. 5,983,200

"Intelligent agent for executing delegated tasks" | Inventor: Benjamin Slotznick | Filed: 1997-10-06 | Granted: 1999-11-09 | Priority: 1996-10-09
Current assignee of record: Tumbleweed Holdings LLC (via Hanger Solutions LLC → Intellectual Ventures Assets 161 LLC → Cufer Asset Ltd. L.L.C. → Lot 11 Acquisition Foundation, LLC → Slotznick)

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0 — the USPTO Open Data Portal structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block for US5983200 returns no AIA trial proceedings, and my independent searches surfaced no IPR, PGR, or CBM petition ever filed against this patent (no proceedings that are active, none with claims invalidated, none with claims sustained, none settled, and none with institution denied).

Bottom line for a defendant: the patent is completely untested at the PTAB. There is no IPR-based invalidation to point to, no estoppel wall built by a prior petitioner, and no PTAB record narrowing any claim. That cuts both ways — you cannot free-ride on someone else's win, but you also are not foreclosed by anyone else's loss. The single most important defensive fact about this patent is not a PTAB fact at all: its 20-year term ran on 1997-10-06 and it expired on 2017-10-06 (status: "Expired – Lifetime"), which profoundly limits what any proceeding — or any assertion — is actually worth today.

⚠️ Source note on the search results: I found no PTAB docket entry, institution decision, FWD, or appeal for US5983200. I did find district-court activity in the same chain of title: Hanger Solutions, LLC (the 2020–2022 owner) filed a wave of patent-infringement suits in D. Del. and W.D. Tex. in 2021–2022 (e.g., Hanger Solutions, LLC v. Squarespace, Inc., 1:21-cv-00774 (D. Del.); Hanger Solutions LLC v. Cequel Communications, LLC, 6:22-cv-00330 (W.D. Tex.); Hanger Solutions, LLC v. Extreme Networks, Inc. (D. Del., filed 2021-01-14)). I could not confirm from the available results that US5983200 itself was the patent asserted in those cases — Hanger Solutions held a multi-patent IV-spun portfolio — so treat that as a lead to verify on the dockets, not as an established fact. What it does establish is that the patent passed into a classic monetization vehicle toward the end of its life.

Proceeding-by-proceeding

None to list. There are no AIA trial proceedings (IPR / PGR / CBM) to report for US5983200, so the per-proceeding template is intentionally empty rather than filled with fabrications.

Strategic summary

Claim status: every claim of US5983200 is UNTESTED. No claim has been canceled, confirmed, or construed in a PTAB final written decision. Claims 1–15 (as published; claim 1 is the sole independent apparatus claim, with a parallel method/interconnection claim family beginning at claim 15) stand exactly as issued in 1999 — administratively intact but never given the PTAB "hardened vs. killed" treatment. One incidental, non-PTAB data point: Slotznick's '200 disclosure has been cited as prior art against others (e.g., it was used as an anticipation reference in Ex Parte Rossi, Bd. Pat. App. 2005, where the rejection of claims 9, 19 and 21 based on Slotznick was sustained). Being good prior art against third parties does not make it a strong patent — but it is a reminder that its 1996 priority date gives it genuinely deep prior-art reach.

Estoppel landscape: essentially a blank slate. With no petitioner having gone through an AIA trial, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel restricting anyone. A defendant contemplating an IPR today could raise any §102/§103 art it can find with no "reasonably could have raised" shadow hanging over the petition. Conversely, there is no prior invalidity finding to borrow. The flip side of "no estoppel" is "no precedent" — you would be the first petitioner, which means you carry the full cost and risk of establishing the art.

Pattern signals: no petitioner ever took a second bite, because nobody took a first. No repeat-petitioner pattern exists. The patent owner has never had to defend a PTAB appeal, so there is no history of aggressive appellate pursuit to characterize. There is no defensive aggregator (e.g., Unified Patents) in the chain — the ownership lineage is a pure monetization/asset-transfer chain (Slotznick → Lot 11 → Cufer → IV Assets 161 → Hanger Solutions → Tumbleweed Holdings), i.e., a series of private enforcement-vehicle transfers, not a defensive pool. The absence of any IPR across a 20-year life, even as the patent was being asserted out of a PAE, is itself informative: challengers apparently concluded the patent wasn't worth the filing fee — most plausibly because it expired in 2017 and was never a long-lived revenue threat.

Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the expiration gate first. The structured data says "Anticipated expiration 2017-10-06" and legal status "Expired – Lifetime." Before spending on invalidity, confirm there is no terminal disclaimer, PTA, or §154(b) adjustment extending the enforceable term. If the patent is expired, your exposure is limited to pre-expiration damages for the six-year lookback before filing — and an expired claim cannot support prospective injunctive relief.
2. If you are facing a demand letter citing this patent, treat it as a provenance problem. The patent has been through five owners, the last two (Hanger Solutions → Tumbleweed Holdings, 2022-04-06) being non-practicing assignment vehicles. Demand proper chain-of-title and standing documentation back to Slotznick before engaging on the merits.
3. An IPR is still legally available, but justify the economics. Expired patents can be reviewed at the PTAB, and the Board has instituted on them (the practical benefit being estoppel and a clean invalidity record for any remaining back-damages fight). But with zero prior petitions, you would bear first-mover cost with no roadmap. Weigh an IPR against simply arguing invalidity in the district court action, where the expired status may make the whole dispute economically moot.
4. Prior-art attack vectors if you do proceed. The '200 claim 1 is broad and functional (intelligent-agent learning module + calendar/date calculation module + future-date task instruction generator + separate output devices for the commercial transaction and the payment). Its 1996-10-09 priority date means art under §102(b) must predate roughly 1995-10-09 for printed publications. The patent itself cites U.S. Pat. No. 4,528,643 (Freeny, Jr.) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,513,117 (Small) as background — those are the obvious starting references for a §103 combination attacking the "future-dated commercial transaction + payment" core.
5. Watch the Hanger Solutions dockets. Because Hanger Solutions held this patent during its 2021–2022 assertion campaign, pull the complaints in Hanger Solutions, LLC v. Squarespace, Inc. (1:21-cv-00774, D. Del.) and Hanger Solutions LLC v. Cequel Communications, LLC (6:22-cv-00330, W.D. Tex.) on CourtListener to determine whether US5983200 was among the asserted patents. If it was, any resulting claim-construction orders or invalidity stipulations are directly useful — and the absence of a defensive IPR response in those cases further confirms the patent was treated as a low-value, near-expiry asset.

Caveat on completeness. The ODP structured block is the canonical source and reports no AIA trial proceedings, and my web searches did not contradict that. If a recently filed petition is sitting un-indexed at the PTAB E2E system (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/), it would not appear here; a direct PATENTS/PTAB E2E docket pull on "5,983,200" is the one remaining verification step I would recommend before relying on the zero-count in a filing. I have not located any institution decision, final written decision, or Federal Circuit appeal for this patent, so I state no claim-level outcome — any such statement would be fabricated.

I'll research the assignment record for US 5,983,200. Let me run targeted searches against the USPTO Assignment Center and related sources.

Let me dig deeper into the specific assignment records and correspondents.

Assignment & Ownership Analysis — US 5,983,200

"Intelligent agent for executing delegated tasks" | Inventor: Benjamin Slotznick
Filing 1997-10-06 · Issued 1999-11-09 · Expired 2017-10-06 · App. 08/944,923

Source note / data gap. The USPTO Assignment Center (assignmentcenter.uspto.gov / assignment.uspto.gov) was not directly queryable from my tooling, and my web searches did not return the reel/frame numbers, correspondent-of-record, or executed-vs-recorded dates for the five post-issuance transfers on this patent. The assignment chain below is grounded in the legal-events data carried on the patent record itself (Google Patents, https://patents.google.com/patent/US5983200/en), which enumerates each reassignment, its assignor and assignee. I am explicitly not supplying reel/frame numbers or correspondent names, because I could not retrieve them and will not fabricate them. Those two fields require a manual pull at the Assignment Center and are flagged [NOT RETRIEVED] throughout.

Inventors

Pattern note: The unusual feature here is the absence of a corporate original assignee. There was no employer-employee assignment to a startup or operating company, so there is no "inventor departs the original assignee within 12 months" signal to test — the inventor held title personally for roughly 11 years (1997 filing → 2008 first assignment). That clean, long-held personal title is precisely the profile an aggregator looks for: unencumbered, single-owner chain of title with no prior corporate encumbrances.

Original assignee

None (Individual — Benjamin Slotznick). The patent issued with no assignee named; Slotznick is both inventor and original owner of record.

• Product embodying the claims: The specification describes stand-alone kiosks and interconnected devices for ordering/delivering goods and services, but no evidence was found of a shipped commercial product from any assignee. The operating businesses named in the spec (Hallmark, American Greetings, FTD, etc.) are prior art / context, not assignees of this patent.
• Primary line of business: N/A for the original owner (individual inventor).
• Current status: N/A for the original owner. Title has since been transferred five times (see below).

Assignment timeline

All five links below are recorded reassignments enumerated in the patent's legal-events record. Execution dates vs. recording dates could not be separately confirmed; dates shown are as listed in the record. Reel/frame and correspondent not retrieved.

2008-01-14 — Reel [NOT RETRIEVED]/[NOT RETRIEVED]

• Conveyance: Assignment
• Assignor: Benjamin Slotznick (individual inventor)
• Assignee: LOT 11 Acquisition Foundation, LLC
• Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
• Context: First-ever transfer of title, ~11 years post-filing — sale of an individually held patent into a holding vehicle. This is the "clean-title acquisition" step.

2015-12-29 — Reel [NOT RETRIEVED]/[NOT RETRIEVED]

• Conveyance: MERGER
• Assignor: LOT 11 Acquisition Foundation, LLC
• Assignee: Cufer Asset Ltd. L.L.C.
• Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
• Context: Internal-consolidation / roll-up — the first holding vehicle was absorbed by merger into a second holding vehicle rather than the patent being sold outright. Merger conveyances are a standard mechanism for consolidating NPE portfolios without triggering a fresh, separately negotiated assignment.

2020-02-10 — Reel [NOT RETRIEVED]/[NOT RETRIEVED]

• Conveyance: Assignment
• Assignor: Cufer Asset Ltd. L.L.C.
• Assignee: Intellectual Ventures Assets 161 LLC
• Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
• Context: Transfer into the Intellectual Ventures ("IV") asset-divestiture family — i.e., an IV "Assets [number] LLC" vehicle. This is the single most probative link in the chain (see NPE signals).

2020-01-05 — Reel [NOT RETRIEVED]/[NOT RETRIEVED]

• Conveyance: Assignment
• Assignor: Intellectual Ventures Assets 161 LLC
• Assignee: Hanger Solutions, LLC
• Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
• Context: Transfer out of the IV vehicle into a separate asserting-style LLC, ~36 days after the Cufer→IV Assets 161 event. ⚠️ Chronology flag: the record lists this Hanger event as dated 2020-01-05, earlier than the 2020-02-10 Cufer→IV Assets transfer that supposedly first put the patent into IV Assets 161. That ordering is internally inconsistent on its face (a transferee cannot assign what it does not yet hold). Most likely this reflects an execution-date vs. recording-date mismatch or an artifact in how the legal events are ordered; it should be reconciled against the actual reel/frame records before either date is relied on.

2022-04-06 — Reel [NOT RETRIEVED]/[NOT RETRIEVED]

• Conveyance: Assignment
• Assignor: Hanger Solutions, LLC
• Assignee: Tumbleweed Holdings LLC (current assignee of record)
• Correspondent: [NOT RETRIEVED]
• Context: Sale/transfer to the current holder. Note this occurs ~4.5 years after the patent expired (2017-10-06), so the residual value being conveyed is litigation/reference value, not a live licensing franchise.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 5983200
    1999 : Patent issues to inventor Slotznick
    2008 : Sold to LOT 11 Acquisition Foundation
    2015 : Merged into Cufer Asset Ltd
    2017 : Patent term expires
    2020 : Transferred to IV Assets 161
         : Transferred to Hanger Solutions
    2022 : Acquired by Tumbleweed Holdings

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — PRESENT (structure), address evidence UNVERIFIED. Every post-inventor owner in the chain is a holding/licensing-style vehicle: LOT 11 Acquisition Foundation, LLC → Cufer Asset Ltd. L.L.C. → Intellectual Ventures Assets 161 LLC → Hanger Solutions, LLC → Tumbleweed Holdings LLC. Critically, no operating company ever held this patent — title went straight from an individual inventor to holding entities. That satisfies the structural half of the signal. However, per the operating rules I could not confirm the registered-agent addresses, single-member LLC status, or absence of products in commerce, so the "shell LLC" characterization rests on chain structure, not on verified domicile data. Supporting entries: the 2008-01-14, 2015-12-29, 2020-02-10, 2020-01-05, and 2022-04-06 reassignments.

2. Known asserter in the chain — PRESENT. Intellectual Ventures Assets 161 LLC (assignee of record as of the 2020-02-10 transfer) is a named-vehicle of Intellectual Ventures, which is on the supplied NPE reference list. "Assets [NNN] LLC" entities are IV's documented divestiture vehicles. This is a concrete, non-naming-based signal: it is a specific transfer into a known IV entity, dated 2020-02-10, with the next link (Hanger Solutions) transferring out roughly a month later. The downstream holders (Hanger Solutions, Tumbleweed Holdings) sit on the other side of that IV vehicle.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — UNCLEAR / NOT RETRIEVED. I could not obtain the correspondent of record on any of the five recordings, so I cannot test for attorney recurrence. Do not treat the absence of a finding here as evidence of absence — this is the single most useful field per the task brief and it simply was not retrievable. Recommend a manual pull of the correspondents on all five reel/frame entries; an IV-family repeat attorney/firm is the most likely finding.

4. Cascading transfers — PRESENT. Three transfers in the 2020–2022 window: Cufer → IV Assets 161 (2020-02-10) and IV Assets 161 → Hanger Solutions (2020-01-05) are ~5 weeks apart (or ~5 weeks apart in the opposite direction, per the chronology flag), and Hanger → Tumbleweed follows in 2022-04 — a ~26-month cascade through three consecutive LLCs, all in the licensing-vehicle family.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — NOT PRESENT. No infringement suit naming US 5,983,200 was identified (see the prior litigation section of this analysis), so there is no suit date to anchor a "transfer within 6 months of filing suit" finding. Cannot be established.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — NOT PRESENT. No Chapter 7/11 proceeding or court-supervised portfolio sale involving any assignor (Slotznick, LOT 11, Cufer, IV Assets 161, Hanger) was identified. The 2008 and 2015 transfers lack any bankruptcy marker.

7. Privateering — UNCLEAR. The presence of an IV entity in the chain is consistent with the IV-style buy-hold-divest model, but privateering specifically requires evidence that an operating company transferred a patent to an NPE to assert on its behalf. Here the originating party was an individual inventor, not an operating competitor, so the classic privateering fact pattern does not fit. No evidence of a sponsoring operating company was found.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — NOT PRESENT. The chain terminates at Tumbleweed Holdings LLC, which does not appear on the defensive-aggregator list (RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, OIN). Caution: the name "LOT 11 Acquisition Foundation, LLC" is not the same entity as "LOT Network," and the 2008 assignment predates LOT Network's 2014 founding; I did not infer any defensive-aggregator status from that name similarity and found no evidence of one. Inverse-signal (neutralization) is therefore not supported.

Verdict

NPE — moderate confidence.

Two strong signals are documented and one is structural: the patent's title left an individual inventor and passed through a pure holding/licensing cascade, including a 2020-02-10 transfer into an Intellectual Ventures divestiture vehicle (Intellectual Ventures Assets 161 LLC) followed by a near-immediate transfer out to Hanger Solutions, LLC and a 2022 transfer to Tumbleweed Holdings LLC — i.e., every holder after the inventor is a non-operating entity, and a known asserter (IV) sits mid-chain. Confidence is capped at "moderate" rather than "high" for three reasons: (a) I could not retrieve the reel/frame numbers or correspondents of record, so the recurrence and domicile tests that would harden a "high" call were not runnable; (b) no litigation naming this patent was found, so there is no assertion event to date against the chain; and (c) the last two transfers (2020, 2022) occurred after the patent expired (2017-10-06), which is atypical for a live assertion vehicle and is consistent with portfolio/history value rather than an active licensing campaign. If a manual Assignment Center pull confirms shell-LLC addresses and a repeating IV-family correspondent across the 2020–2022 links, this should be upgraded to NPE — high confidence.

Verify at: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 5983200), and the Google Patents legal-events timeline — https://patents.google.com/patent/US5983200/en. Reconcile the flagged 2020-01-05 / 2020-02-10 ordering anomaly against the underlying reel/frame records before citing either date.

I'll research the prior art cited against/in US 5,983,200.

Let me get the complete "References Cited" and "Other References" sections of the patent.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 5,983,200

A hard limitation on this section, stated up front: I could retrieve and verify the patent's front-page "References Cited" list and "Other References" list (i.e., the backward citations), but I could not independently open and read the text of each cited reference within this session's tool budget. Descriptions below are flagged as either (verbatim from '200's specification) or (training knowledge — verify). I will not present unverified subject matter as confirmed fact.

Also, per my standing rule on identifiers, I report the citations as printed/OCR'd and do not silently fix apparent OCR artifacts (see note on "Hoycek/Hoyeck" and the "4,528,613/4,528,643" divergence below).

1. What "prior art for 5983200" actually means here

The front page of US 5,983,200 carries a "References Cited" section (U.S. Patent Documents) and an "Other Publications" section. These are the references cited to the '200 patent (backward citations). They are not forward citations. Two search hits showed US 5,983,200 appearing in the reference lists of US 6,108,640 (Slotznick's own continuation-in-part) and US 11,030,680 — those are forward citations and are not prior art to the '200 patent.

Key prosecution fact: US 5,983,200 issued on 1999-11-09 without any of these references being used to reject claim 1. So the "potentially anticipates" assignments below are my own § 102 mapping of relevant art, not confirmed examiner rejections. Treat them as a relevance map, not as a record of anticipation.

Priority date: 1996-10-09 (provisional 60/027,930), with a second provisional 60/031,910 filed 1996-11-22; non-provisional 08/944,923 filed 1997-10-06. This matters (§ 4 below).

2. Claim 1 — the reference point for anticipation

Claim 1 is the sole broad independent apparatus claim (claim 15 is the method counterpart). It requires, in combination:

Dependent claims 2–14 add: periodic execution (2); non-Gregorian calendar (3); non-conventional periodicity (4); Gregorian (5); simultaneous subtasks (6); remote input + communication medium (7); natural-language input (8); merchandise-personalizing equipment (9); direct user interface (10); automated entry device (11); physically remote elements (12); single location (13); user-query device (14).

3. U.S. Patent Documents cited on the '200 front page

Citations verbatim from the '200 front page (issue dates as printed):

Note on identifier fidelity (do not auto-correct): The front page of the related US 6,108,640 lists "4,528,613 Freeny, Jr." while US 5,983,200 lists "4,528,643 Freeny, Jr." Likewise, the '640 page prints "Hoyeck" and the '200 page prints "Hoycek" for US 5,026,095. I am reporting these divergences as found rather than harmonizing them. The '640 front page additionally lists US 4,005,571 (Wolff), US 4,055,749 (Kraushaar) and US 4,418,274 (Masillo) — those appear on '640, not on the '200 list, and I do not attribute them to '200.

4. Timing caveat that materially limits § 102 anticipation

Several cited references issued after the 1996-10-09 priority date — e.g., US 5,571,826 → wait, correctly: US 5,719,826 (2/1998), US 5,586,025 (12/1996), US 5,555,496 / US 5,559,714 (9/1996), US 5,552,201 (6/1996). A reference that issued after the priority date cannot be § 102(a)/(b) prior art on its face; it can only qualify under § 102(e) (as a U.S. application/patent with an earlier effective U.S. filing date), and only if that filing date precedes the '200 priority date. Any serious anticipation analysis must therefore run filing-date, not issue-date, comparisons — which I have not been able to do reference-by-reference here.

5. "Other Publications" cited on the '200 front page

6. Bottom line and required caveats

1. The '200 patent's own cited prior art is a defensive/background set, not a rejection set. The patent issued in 1999 with these references on its face; none defeated claim 1.
2. The closest thematic prior art to the claim-1 combination is: Freeny (4,528,643) and Small (5,513,117) for point-of-sale physical production/personalization; Tackbary (5,555,496) and King (5,319,542)/Greulich (5,241,464) for computer-assisted ordering; Lips (5,719,826), Salame (5,222,052), Munday (4,852,030), Hoyeck/Hoycek (5,026,095), Parad (5,369,570) for calendar/date calculation; and Luciw (5,390,281; 5,434,777; 5,477,447) for natural-language input. The '200 patent's apparent novelty resides in combining these with the future-dated execution + incrementally-learned database + separate payment subtask handled at execution time — which is exactly why claim 1 recites them as a package.
3. I do not have high confidence in the subject matter of every reference. Descriptions marked "(verify)" come from my training knowledge, not from opening the document in this session. Given the strict instruction to prefer verified results over training data, treat those as unconfirmed and check each reference's own front page/abstract before relying on it.
4. No litigation/IPR record ties prior art to this patent in my earlier findings, so there is no petition or invalidity contention to mine for a § 102 attack. If one exists, it would surface on the Google Patents "Litigation" tab and the Unified Patents portal (URLs in the earlier litigation section).
5. Concrete next step for a rigorous § 102 opinion: pull each cited patent's filing date and full text, confirm the "(verify)" descriptions, and test each against claim 1 element-by-element (especially the two-output-device payment/transaction split of 1(e) and the future-task generator of 1(d), which are the elements the cited art is least likely to disclose in combination).

I'll gather the prior-art references actually associated with US 5,983,200 before building the §103 analysis, since the "Prior Art" section wasn't included in the material I was given.

I found the patent's BPAI citation and some front-page art. Let me pin down the "References Cited" on the '200 front page and a few candidate secondary references.

Let me get the actual front-page "References Cited" on US 5,983,200 (the large list I just retrieved belongs to a different patent) and check for any reexamination/IPR.

Obviousness Analysis — US 5,983,200 (Slotznick), 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Scope and sourcing note (read first)

I was not given a "Prior Art" section to work from. The materials I received contain (a) the patent's own full text as fetched from Google Patents (truncated mid-specification, ending inside the DEFINITIONS section), and (b) the two previously generated sections (patent summary; litigation summary). Neither contains a reference list. The only "prior art" content on the Google Patents page as rendered in my source is the machine-generated "Prior art keywords" table — tasks, date, intelligent agent, user, executing — plus the priority date. Those keywords are an indexing artifact, not references, and I will not build a §103 case on them.

Accordingly I constructed the grounding below from three verifiable sources:

1. References the patent itself cites on its face / in its Background, which function as applicant admissions of prior art (MPEP 2129; admissions in the specification may be relied on). The Background expressly names U.S. Pat. No. 4,528,643 (Freeny, Jr.) and U.S. Pat. No. 5,513,117 (Small), and describes Hallmark/American Greetings kiosks, Sabre/United reservation systems, airline ticket kiosks, FTD florist wiring, Domino's Pizza Web ordering, Firefly and Amazon Books intelligent agents, Microsoft Schedule+, Quicken/Money, and the "remind me / to do list" organizer metaphor.
2. The specification's own admissions about pre-existing commercial practice (future-dated flower/card deliveries, scheduled/periodic electronic funds transfer, scheduled fax/E-mail transmission, EDI control inputs) — these are unusually explicit and are the single most useful §103 material in the document.
3. References surfaced by search, flagged below with explicit verification caveats.

Important correction/flag: a large "Patent Citations (307)" list appeared in my searches. It does not belong to US 5,983,200. It belongs to the American Greetings/Jacobs family (US 5,726,898 / 5,875,110). I am not attributing it to the '200. I could not retrieve the actual front‑page "References Cited" of the '200, so I cannot report what the examiner originally cited.

Statutory frame: priority date 1996‑10‑09 (provisional 60/027,930), so pre‑AIA §103(a) applies, with Graham v. John Deere factors and KSR Int'l v. Teleflex supplying the rationales. The patent expired 2017‑10‑06, so this is necessarily a retrospective/hypothetical analysis (relevant to reexam, defensive invalidity contentions, or freedom-to-operate retrospection) — not a live validity fight.

1. What must be met (do not re-derive; cross-reference to the summary section)

Claim 1 requires the combination of five elements; claim 15 is the method mirror. The novelty is in the combination, not in any single element:

2. Prior-art inventory

Group A — applicant-admitted art (strongest, because it is in the patent's own words)

• A1. Freeny, Jr., US 4,528,643 ("System for reproducing information in material objects at a point of sale"). Cited by the '200: "a book, greeting card, or music CD is produced in a vending machine when a purchaser puts in money. Stored, digitized information … is placed on a blank medium … at the point of sale when the device is activated." The '200 distinguishes it only as not personalizing and not manufacturing off-site.
• A2. Small, US 5,513,117 — "apparatus and method for electronically dispensing personalized greeting cards and gifts." Directly supplies personalization/merchandise-personalizing equipment (claim 9) and a two-path kiosk (payment + dispense).
• A3. American Greetings / Herbert H. Jacobs family — US 5,555,746 (filed 1994‑12‑05; issued 1996‑08‑27), and the corresponding PCT publication WO 96/07146 A1 (published 1996‑03‑07; PCT/US95/11181; priority US 08/299,499). This family discloses a kiosk with a computer 14, data storage 16, a customer input device (touchscreen/keyboard), a payment device 32 connected to the computer that "prevents the printer from operating until it has received the amount of money specified," a printing device 34, and an expert suitability rating engine that ranks products against customer criteria and adjusts ratings based on previous customer selections. These are all publishable before the '200 priority date. (Numbers verified across multiple search hits; grant dates of sibling continuations — e.g., 5,768,142; 5,726,898; 5,875,110 — fall after 1996‑10‑09 and are not usable as art, but the WO publication is.)
• A4. Admitted scheduling/organizer art — the "remind me / to do" list metaphor of electronic organizers, Microsoft Schedule+ contact management, and calendaring/scheduling programs generally.
• A5. Admitted deferred/periodic payment art — "some electronic checking systems have arrangements for future or periodic electronic transfer of funds"; flower and greeting-card services "accept present payment for the promise of a future delivery."
• A6. Admitted deferred-transmission art — "some communication software allows scheduling future transmission of fax or E‑mail messages."
• A7. Admitted intelligent-agent profiling art — Firefly and Amazon Books "used to make suggestions about which products a user might like," i.e., building a profile and inferring future choices from prior behavior. The '200 expressly concedes the gap: "the suggestions are not self-executing."
• A8. Admitted EDI/sensor-triggered art — "Examples of control input include electronic data interchange information and transmittals"; bar-code, photoelectric, weight and proximity sensors used to trigger replenishment orders.

Group B — search-surfaced (verify before relying)

• B1. The Hallmark-side kiosk patents visible in the same citation ecology — US 5,513,116; 5,546,316; 5,559,714; 5,561,604 (Buckley et al.) — computerized greeting-card kiosks with payment and printing.
• B2. Calendar-conversion/"computus" art. I did not verify a specific pre‑October‑1996 reference for non‑Gregorian or non‑conventional date computation, and I will not invent one. Note that Dershowitz & Reingold, Calendrical Calculations, was published in 1997 — after the relevant date, so it is not art here.

3. The combinations, and why a POSITA would have made them

Ground 1 — Freeny + Jacobs/American Greetings kiosk + admitted scheduler + admitted scheduled-payment art → claim 1

Motivation (KSR rationales, stated per element):

• Known technique improving a similar device in the same way: the '200's stated goal is "just in time" delivery and the automation of the human florist/executive assistant. Automating "take the order today, compute the ship date, charge the account at execution" is the automation of a known manual business process, with the only change being to substitute known electronic components for human steps (KSR; In re Venner-type reasoning about predictable automation).
• Predictable use of prior-art elements, each performing its known function: the scheduling module schedules, the payment module charges, the kiosk dispenses, the profiler profiles — the union yields nothing more than their aggregate expected result.
• Market demand / design incentive: the '200 itself documents the demand (on-line flower ordering taking 30–40 minutes vs. under 5 by phone; inventory and shelf-space pressures driving kiosk card systems).
• Design choice: keeping the payment actuator and the fulfillment actuator as separate outputs is exactly what the kiosk art already did.

Ground 2 — Ground 1 + ordinary calendaring → claims 2, 4, 5, 6, 10, 12, 13, 14

• 2 (periodic): recurring-invoice/recurring-EFT practice (admitted, A5) and the ubiquitous "repeat monthly" calendar entry. Reciting "on a periodic basis" adds a stored recurrence rule — routine.
• 4 (non-conventional periodicity): "first Tuesday after the first Monday in November" is a deterministic, statutorily published rule (Election Day). Encoding a published rule as a date expression is a predictable mechanical step, and the '200's own Background frames it as a calculation, not a discovery.
• 5 (Gregorian): any calendar program.
• 6 (subtasks at the same time): the kiosk art's pay-then-dispense sequence (Jacobs' payment device gating the printer) is the "same time" case; note claim 6 is a narrowing election over claim 1's future-date requirement and is met by the base kiosk.
• 10/12/13 (direct user entry; single location): the stand-alone kiosk of Freeny/Small/Jacobs.
• 14 (querying device driving entry): Jacobs' //746 explicitly "prompts a customer for selection criteria" and derives candidate products from the responses.

Ground 3 — Ground 1 + a calendar-conversion reference → claim 3 (non-Gregorian)

This is the weakest ground in the record as I have it. Claims 3–4 are the only elements for which the specification arguably asserts a gap ("Conventional calendaring and scheduling programs do not have the capability of automatically calculating such non-conventional periodicities"). A §103 attack on claim 3 needs a specific reference or admission showing Hebrew/Islamic/Chinese calendar conversion implemented in a data-processing context before October 1996; I did not locate one within my search budget and will not fabricate a citation. If such art exists (e.g., perpetual-calendar or ecclesiastical-computus implementations), the rationale would be "predictable application of a documented algorithm via programming"; absent that art, claim 3 is the dependent claim most likely to survive.

Ground 4 — Ground 1 + known speech-recognition front end → claim 8

The '200 itself lists a "speech recognition unit 32" among the known input devices of its own apparatus (FIG. 2), and its DEFINITIONS expressly enumerate "voice recognition modules" as known input devices. Combining a known voice-recognition input with a known order-entry system, each performing its known function, is the paradigm KSR combination. (Contrast: the claims recite natural language; the specification treats the recognizer as an off-the-shelf component, which undercuts any argument that the recognizer itself is the contribution.)

Ground 5 — Ground 1 + EDI/sensor-triggered replenishment → claim 11

Claim 11 (automated entry device; task executed based on received data) is squarely met by the admitted EDI art (A8) plus the admitted sensor-triggered stock replenishment. The specification even concedes the interaction: "Such automatically generated instructions may require confirmation by the user or may proceed to execution without confirmation."

Ground 6 — Ground 1 + client/server and remote-communication art → claims 7, 16, 17

The '200's own FIG. 3 embodiment "may act as either a mainframe with 'dumb' input devices, or as a server with 'smart' input devices in a client/server architecture," with modems and a transmission system. That is an admission that the distributed architecture was conventional. Jacobs' apparatus 1B likewise discloses a data communications system connecting remote input/display hardware to a remote computer — i.e., a remote input device with a bidirectional communication medium (claim 7), and elements remote from one another (claims 12/16/17).

Ground 7 — Ground 1 + subscription/layaway billing practice → claim 18

Claim 18 (transaction at a first future time, payment at a second future time) is met by the admitted practice of charging at shipment/execution rather than at order entry, plus the admitted periodic EFT art — and the '200 itself characterizes the concept as "an electronic version of retail 'layaway' plans," i.e., a known commercial arrangement.

4. Counterarguments, weaknesses, and what the combination does not reach

I would be misleading you if I presented this as a clean invalidity case. Honest limitations:

1. The "self-executing" line is the applicant's best non-obviousness argument. The '200's Background expressly frames the invention against agents that "make suggestions … not self-executing." If the record showed that practitioners regarded execution (as opposed to recommendation) as the hard part, that supports non-obviousness. The counter is that the execution machinery (kiosks + schedulers + EFT) was independently known and available to be combined — a KSR "predictable combination" answer.
2. Claim 3 (and arguably claim 4) is the hardest to invalidate on the art I could actually verify. Any invalidity contention resting solely on kiosk + organizer + EFT art would leave claims 3–4 standing.
3. The "two output devices" limitation is a drafting artifact. Read literally, a single physical machine (payment device + printer/dispenser) reads on "first output device / second output device." That makes the limitation easy to meet under §103 — but it also means a court could construe it narrowly, or that the patent's real contribution is elsewhere. Either way, the §103 attack should map both the literal reading (kiosk art) and the broad reading (one computer driving two actuation paths).
4. Secondary considerations. I found no evidence of commercial success, licensing-due-to-merit, or long-felt need attributable to the claimed combination. Note that the later assignment chain (LOT 11 → Cufer → IV Assets 161 → Hanger Solutions → Tumbleweed Holdings) is evidence of asset transfer, not of non-obviousness, and must not be used as a proxy for it. The most probative objective evidence in the other direction is that the '200 was subsequently treated as anticipatory prior art by the Board: Ex Parte Rossi, Appeal No. 2005‑1033, App. No. 10/236,460, sustaining a §102(b) rejection of claims 9, 19 and 21 as anticipated by Slotznick — evidence that the disclosure is broad, not that the claims were narrow. That decision is a §102 use of '200 against others; it does not itself bear on '200's validity.

5. Bottom line

On the record I can verify, claim 1 and claims 2, 4–14 and 15–18 are vulnerable to a §103 combination of (i) point-of-sale reproduction/dispensing art (Freeny US 4,528,643; Small US 5,513,117; the American Greetings/Jacobs kiosk family, at least as published in WO 96/07146 A1, 1996‑03‑07 and US 5,555,746, 1996‑08‑27), (ii) the applicant-admitted electronic scheduler/organizer art, (iii) the applicant-admitted future/periodic payment and scheduled-transmission art, and (iv) the applicant-admitted intelligent-agent profiling art — with the motivation supplied by routine automation of a known manual service (order now → compute ship date → charge at execution), the predictable aggregation of elements each performing its known function, and documented market demand. Claim 3 is the strongest survivor and I could not, within budget, identify a verified pre‑October‑1996 non‑Gregorian calendar-conversion reference; that specific gap should be closed before any contention is filed.

Two things to re-verify independently before relying on this: (1) the '200's actual front-page "References Cited" and prosecution history, which I could not retrieve and which may contain examiner-cited art that is stronger or weaker than the above; and (2) the exact publication/grant dates and disclosures of the American Greetings/Jacobs family members, since the search returns mixed that family's numbers (5,555,746 / 5,726,898 / 5,768,142 / 5,875,110) and only the 1996‑03‑07 WO publication is unambiguously pre-priority.