US 6189786

Summary: US Patent 6,189,786 (US6189786B1)

Search notes / verification: Searches of the USPTO-oriented databases (Google Patents, FreePatentsOnline, Justia, patent leaderboards) all confirm the bibliographic data below for the exact number 6189786 — no similar-number substitutions were made. I also searched for CAFC/2026 docket activity; no Federal Circuit appeal, litigation, or 2026 docket entry involving this patent was found in the search results, so I cannot confirm any current CAFC proceeding (and found none). I have flagged uncertainty where applicable.

Bibliographic data (authoritative, from the patent record)

• Title: Portable terminal device with stackable IC card slot opening
• Patent No.: US 6,189,786 B1 (application US09/475,027)
• Inventors: Shinju Itou (藤? — as romanized in the record), Yuhei Abe
• Assignee (original): Hitachi Ltd (note: Google's record carries a caveat that listed assignees may be inaccurate)
• Filing date: December 30, 1999 (this application is a continuation of parent application Ser. No. 08/921,612, filed September 2, 1997, now U.S. Pat. No. 6,010,066)
• Earliest priority date: September 24, 1996 (Japanese application JP 8-251183, published as JPH1097599A)
• Issue date: February 20, 2001
• Legal status: Expired — Fee Related; lapsed February 20, 2013 for failure to pay maintenance fees (per USPTO legal-event record); anticipated expiration listed as 2017-09-02.
• International Classifications of note: G07F7/08, G06K7/0013, G06K7/0034 (connector capable of simultaneously receiving a plurality of cards in the same insertion slot), G06Q20/34.

Abstract (verbatim from record)

A portable terminal device for electronic money IC cards containing monetary data therein, comprises in a main body (10), a card slot opening (12, 13) into which a plurality of electronic money IC cards (100, 110, 120) are inserted, electric contact terminals (16, 17, 18) for reading and writing the monetary data from and into the electronic money IC cards which are inserted into card slot opening, a display (80) for displaying money amount for the monetary data which is read out from the inserted electronic money IC cards or which is to be written into the inserted electronic money IC cards; and a button (82) for manipulating the reading and writing operations the monetary data from and into the electronic money IC cards which are inserted into the card slot opening. The card slot opening (12, 13) is so configured that the plurality of the electronic [money IC cards are] inserted into and positioned with being closely piled up with each other and shifted to each other in a direction parallel to main surface thereof.

(The abstract in the record contains a minor truncation/garbling in the last sentence — "the plurality of the electronic into and positioned…" — which I have reproduced as published rather than "corrected.")

Plain-language overview of the independent claims

The patent has 10 claims; the independent claims are 1, 7, 9, and 10 (claims 2–6 and 8 depend from claim 1).

Claim 1 (base device). A handheld terminal for electronic-money IC cards having: (a) a card slot opening sized to receive multiple IC cards; (b) multiple contact terminals for reading/writing monetary data to/from the inserted cards; (c) a display showing the monetary amount read from, or to be written into, the cards; and (d) a manipulation key to trigger those read/write operations. The key feature: the slot is configured so the cards sit stacked on top of each other and offset (shifted) lengthwise along their flat surfaces, and the multiple contact terminals are laid out on one shared circuit substrate that sits parallel to the cards' surfaces. This stacking-plus-offset arrangement is what lets the device stay thin and compact.

Claim 7 (staggered terminal heights). Everything in claim 1, plus the specific detail that the several contact terminals are mounted at different heights above the surface of the same substrate — i.e., each terminal is raised to match the different vertical level of whichever stacked card it must touch.

Claim 9 (heights tailored to stacked cards). Everything in claim 1, with the contact terminals again provided at differing heights from the substrate so each one can properly contact a different one of the piled-up, offset IC cards. This is functionally similar to claim 7 but phrased in terms of the terminals being height-set to reach the individual stacked cards.

Claim 10 (biasing/stacking mechanism). Everything in claim 1, plus an IC-card biasing arrangement that pushes an inserted card away from the bottom wall of the slot, so that each subsequently inserted card slips in between the previously inserted card and the bottom wall — causing the cards to pile up one-by-one from the bottom of the slot opening (the "stackable" loading behavior shown in FIGS. 3–4 with the U-shaped spring guide member 20).

Uncertainty flags

• CAFC 2026: I found no CAFC docket, appeal, or litigation referencing 6,189,786 in the available search results. This is likely because the patent expired in 2013, but I cannot affirmatively rule out unindexed docket activity. Treat the "no CAFC proceeding" statement as based on absence of search results, not a definitive court-docket confirmation.
• Assignee: "Hitachi Ltd" is the recorded original assignee; Google Patents adds a standard disclaimer that assignee data may be inaccurate.
• Inventor name romanization: The record romanizes the first inventor as "Shinju Itou" (per Google Patents and co-inventor leaderboard data); I did not independently verify the Japanese kanji or USPTO PAIR spelling.