US 6249773

I'll verify the patent record and check for any 2026 litigation activity before summarizing.

US 6,249,773 B1 — Verification & Summary

Sources checked: Google Patents (https://patents.google.com/patent/US6249773/en), EveryPatent (http://www.everypatent.com/comp/pat6249773.html), Unified Patents portal (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-[6249773](/patent/6249773)-B1), plus targeted searches of Federal Circuit 2026 dockets/summaries and PTAB institution lists. All results consistently describe the same patent — no confusion with neighboring numbers such as 6,249,772 or 6,249,774.

Bibliographic data

Abstract (verbatim)

A method for engaging in electronic commerce (e-commerce) over a network from an e-commerce site, comprises the steps of: storing data representing an inventory of items for sale at the e-commerce site; storing historic and active shopping lists of respective shoppers at the e-commerce site; providing logged on shoppers with a shopping list builder tool for constructing entirely new shopping lists and for constructing new shopping lists from said stored shopping lists; accepting completed active shopping lists from the logged on shoppers; consummating purchases of products on the accepted lists; and, delivering the purchased products to the shoppers. The method can further comprise the step of: storing authorization data enabling shoppers to purchase the items at the e-commerce site on credit. Shoppers can use the shopping list builder to create, modify, delete and merge named lists. A permanent cumulative shopping list can be compiled for each shopper.

Note on terminology mismatch: the abstract and specification speak in terms of "shopping lists," but the granted claims recite a two-level hierarchy of "pick lists" (search-result/selection objects) and "shopping lists" (the completed order). The claims, not the abstract, define scope.

Independent claims in plain language

Claim 1 — Method (network e-commerce).
The steps are: (1) store inventory data for the e-commerce site; (2) store shoppers' shopping lists; (3) store shoppers' pick lists; (4) give logged-on shoppers a "shopping list builder tool" that can do two things — build a brand-new pick list from an empty state ("beginning with no items"), and build a new pick list from a previously stored pick list by the shopper selectively marking (checking off) items in that stored list for inclusion — where each pick list both feeds into completing a shopping list and is itself retained ("stored for defining subsequent pick lists"); (5) accept completed shopping lists; (6) consummate purchases of the products on them; and (7) deliver the purchased products. The commercially salient limitation is step (4): the stored, re-usable, selectable pick list as a persistent building block.

Claim 21 — Apparatus (programmed web server, means-plus-function).
Mirrors claim 1 element-for-element, but claimed as a computer web server programmed with a routine set of instructions, using "means for…" language for each step: means for storing inventory data; means for storing shopping lists; means for storing pick lists; means for providing the shopping list builder tool (identical empty-new-list and mark-from-stored-list functionality); means for accepting completed shopping lists; means for consummating purchases; means for delivering products.

Claim 28 — Method (second, narrower/alternative formulation).
Stores inventory data, shopping lists, and pick lists; provides a "pick list builder tool" to populate brand-new pick lists with (a) items from the inventory and (b) items from stored pick lists by selectively marking them; then provides a "shopping list builder tool" to create shopping lists from the stored pick lists; consummates purchases on the created shopping lists; and delivers the products. Notably, claim 28 omits the "accepting completed shopping lists" step present in claim 1.

Dependent claims worth flagging

• 2 / 22 — storing credit authorization data and authorizing shoppers at log-on.
• 3–6 / 18–19 / 26 — communication over the Internet, a WAN, a LAN, or combinations thereof.
• 7–8 — delivery to a pickup location or to shopper-selected locations.
• 9–12 / 24 — create, merge (with de-duplication), modify, and delete pick lists.
• 13 / 16 / 25 — search inventory by brand name and product type.
• 14 / 17 / 23 — a cumulative ("master") pick list per shopper that the shopper may access but may not delete or modify (system-maintained, fed by completed purchases).
• 20 / 27 — displaying product specials (e.g., unadvertised sale items) with the option to add them to a pick list in progress, a virtual shopping cart, or both.

Prosecution context / cited prior art (from the face of the patent)

US 5,664,110 (Highpoint Systems); US 5,715,314 (Open Market); US 5,745,681 (Sun Microsystems); US 5,758,095 (Albaum); US 5,845,263 (High Technology Solutions); US 5,848,399 (Burke); US 5,897,622 (Microsoft); US 6,014,634 (Supermarkets Online); US 6,029,139 (NCR); JP H10-21304 (Hitachi). Non-patent literature: Kroger/Interactive Channel/Shoppers Express item, Business Wire, Apr. 12, 1995; Zimmerman, Supermarket News, Mar. 25, 1996; Java Electronic Commerce Framework, Computer Reseller News, Sep. 23, 1996. The patent has a large forward-citation footprint (Google Patents reports 207 in one table and 413 in another; Unified Patents shows 412) — treat these counts as source-dependent.

Litigation / 2026 Federal Circuit activity — nothing found

Searches of Federal Circuit 2026 scheduled-case lists, weekly Federal Circuit summaries, and PTAB institution/denial compilations returned no appeal, docket, or IPR/PGR involving US 6,249,773. That is consistent with the record: the patent's anticipated expiration date was 2018-03-26, roughly eight years before today's date, so any enforcement window has closed and any 2026 appellate activity would be improbable.

Uncertainty statement: I do not have direct PACER/CAFC docket access, and web search cannot exhaustively prove a negative. If a 2026 docket entry exists, it did not surface in these searches, and I cannot confirm one from authoritative docket data. Third-party valuation figures (e.g., patentleaderboard's ≈$38.2M estimate for this patent) are automated estimates, not authoritative, and should not be relied on.

Data-quality flags (to avoid propagating errors)

1. Claim 27 reads "The computer server of claim 1," though it is an apparatus claim that should depend from claim 21. This is an apparent typographical/dependency defect present in the granted text as reproduced by multiple sources — recorded here literally rather than corrected.
2. In the FIG. 2 description, the fetched text labels both the quantity box and the description column as "Column 74" (FIG. 5 elsewhere maps its quantity box to "column 72"), suggesting an internal inconsistency or transcription artifact in the source text.
3. Assignee is list-dependent: "Original Assignee" = IBM; "Current Assignee" = PayPal, Inc. Google Patents itself cautions that listed assignees "may be inaccurate."

I'll research litigation involving US patent 6249773. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me run more targeted searches on litigation-specific sources.

Answer: No litigation involving US Patent 6,249,773 could be confirmed

I was unable to identify any patent infringement action, declaratory judgment action, ITC Section 337 investigation, or PTAB proceeding asserting or otherwise involving US Patent 6,249,773 ("Electronic commerce with shopping list builder").

Because you asked me to say so plainly if nothing is known: on the evidence I could retrieve, no litigation is known involving this specific patent.

What I searched and what I did not find

Important caution — do not confuse similar numbers

My searches surfaced several unrelated matters that contain similar-looking but different patent identifiers. These are not US 6,249,773 and should not be attributed to it:

• The "'977 Patent" in the Philips ITC/PTAB matter — a Philips secure-authenticated-channel (SAC) patent, discussed at ptacts.uspto.gov petition 1546667. Different patent; the internal citation "6:64–65," "2:11–13," etc. does not match the '773 specification.
• The "773 Patent" in the desk-converter/Amazon-takedown dispute (S.D. Ga., 4:21-cv-00368) — an unrelated patent cited at storage.courtlistener.com. Again a different patent.
• IBM v. Amazon.com (E.D. Tex., 9:06-cv-00242, filed October 2006) — this is a real e-commerce patent suit by this patent's original assignee, IBM. But the patents actually asserted there were US 5,796,967; US 7,072,849; US 7,077,771; and others — US 6,249,773 was not among the asserted patents based on the complaint text I retrieved. The case settled in May 2007.

Relevant context that explains the absence of litigation

The patent's own record (from the supplied authoritative text) is consistent with a low likelihood of enforcement litigation:

• Filing/priority date: March 26, 1998
• Grant date: June 19, 2001
• Anticipated expiration: March 26, 2018 — the patent is Expired – Lifetime
• Assignment chain: International Business Machines Corp. (original) → eBay Inc. (reassigned Dec. 27, 2012) → PayPal, Inc. (reassigned July 22, 2015)

Any enforcement action would therefore have had to occur before the March 2018 expiration, most plausibly during IBM's ownership or the brief eBay ownership window.

Confidence and limitations (stated explicitly)

• Confidence that no litigation exists: moderate, not high. I could not directly query the litigation databases you named. The Unified Patents caselist endpoint (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) was not successfully retrieved in my searches, and I did not obtain confirmatory hits from Docket Alarm, RPX Insight, PACER, or CourtListener for this patent number specifically.
• Forward-citation counts of 207 (examiner/third-party citations) reflect patent document citations only, not lawsuit assertions.
• Absence of evidence in my search results is not proof of absence of litigation. A negative, authoritative confirmation would require a targeted query of the Unified Patents litigation caselist, RPX Insight, or Docket Alarm's patent-case search filtered strictly to 6249773.

Bottom line: Based on available information, no litigation is known involving US 6,249,773. If a definitive negative is required (e.g., for a freedom-to-operate or IP-diligence opinion), I recommend a direct, filtered query of the Unified Patents litigation caselist, RPX Insight, and Docket Alarm for patent number 6249773, since those were the sources I was unable to conclusively return.

I'll start by verifying the structured "no proceedings" signal against public sources.

Let me probe for litigation history, reexaminations, and any proceeding on related dockets.

Let me do final checks on litigation assertions and any PTAB docket listing.

Proceedings overview

Zero AIA trial proceedings on file. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block — the canonical USPTO Open Data Portal list — returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM involving US 6,249,773. My independent web searches (Google Patents, Unified Patents' patent portal page for US‑6249773‑B1, PTAB/PTAB E2E extrusions, and litigation-document searches) surfaced no PTAB trial number, no institution decision, and no Final Written Decision naming this patent. So the breakdown is: 0 active / 0 instituted / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution-denied.

Bottom line for a defendant: there is nothing here to work with — but the reason is different from "the patent is hardened." This is not a patent that survived a PTAB gauntlet; it is a patent that never attracted a single AIA petition and that expired on 2018‑03‑26. That combination gives a defendant an unusually clean posture, discussed in the Strategic summary.

One caveat on confidence: I hit a tool-call limit before I could exhaustively page through CourtListener's PTAB docket and the PTAB E2E "Patent Trial" search UI. The ODP structured list is authoritative and says zero; my searches are corroborative rather than exhaustive on that last margin. If your matter is live, re-run the E2E party search on "6249773" and a CourtListener docket query before relying on the absence.

Proceedings (none to itemize)

There are no proceeding numbers to list. I will not invent them. The relevant identifiers and dates for the record:

Google Patents record: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6249773/en
Unified Patents portal (third-party proceeding tracker for this patent): https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-6249773-B1
USPTO PTAB E2E (for your own re-verification): https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/

What the searches did surface (and why it is not this patent)

For the record, so you don't mistake near-misses for hits:

• The PTAB documents returned in my searches belong to other patents entirely — e.g., an IPR on a channel-hopping patent (Gendel/Haartsen grounds), a CBM petition on US 7,610,244 and US 7,627,528 (auction-payment patents), and an IPR denying institution under Fintiv on a UNM patent. None cite US 6,249,773 as the challenged patent.
• No ex parte reexamination of US 6,249,773 surfaced either. That matters: for a 1998-filed business-method-adjacent patent, an ex parte reexam is the more common post-issuance scalp, and there's no evidence of one here.
• The non-patent literature of record (Kroger/Interactive Channel Business Wire 1995; Supermarket News "Tops Testing Comparison Shopping via the Internet," 1996-03-25; Computer Reseller News Java Electronic Commerce Framework, 1996-09-23) and the examiner-cited art (US 5,848,399 Burke; US 5,715,314 Open Market; US 5,664,110 Highpoint; US 5,898,762 Microsoft; JP H10‑21304 Hitachi; US 5,745,681 Sun "Stateless shopping cart") are the natural IPR ammunition — and no petitioner ever fired it. That is the most defensible prior-art set available to you and it is entirely un-estopped.

Strategic summary

Claim status: all 28 claims are UNTESTED at the PTAB, and all 28 are EXPIRED. No claim of US 6,249,773 has been canceled, confirmed, or even construed by the Board. Claim 1 (the "pick list" builder method) and claim 21 (the "means for" server counterpart) are the two independent anchors; claims 28 is a second independent method claim. Because no FWD issued, there is no claim-level disposition to quote and no narrowing amendment of record. The patent issued and died with its original 28-claim scope intact.

The real defensive story is the calendar, not the Board. The patent's 20-year term from the 1998-03-26 filing ran out on 2018-03-26. Every act of alleged infringement necessarily occurred on or before that date. Under 35 U.S.C. § 286, recovery is barred for infringement committed more than six years before the complaint is filed — a complaint filed today (2026-09) reaches back only to roughly 2020-09, which is after the last possible infringing act. In practical terms, an assertion of this patent in 2026 is a claim for which the recoverable-damages window has closed. (Note: SCA Hygiene v. First Quality, 137 S. Ct. 954 (2017), killed laches as a defense at the Board and in court, so do not build your defense on laches — build it on § 286 and on the expiration date itself.) Independently, § 101/§ 112 challenges are unaffected by the AIA-trial record and remain fully available in court; with the patent expired, a patent owner cannot amend its way out of them.

Estoppel landscape: nothing is barred, because nothing was litigated. Section 315(e)(2) estoppel attaches only to petitioners, real parties in interest, and privies in an instituted IPR — and there were none. So the entire prior-art space remains open: you may raise any § 102/§ 103 ground in district court or in a declaratory-judgment action with no PTAB shadow over it. Conversely, an IPR is no longer a meaningful option for a defendant here: even if you could persuade the Board to institute on an expired patent (the Board will construe expired claims under the Phillips district-court standard rather than BRI), there is no amendment remedy for the patent owner and no practical claim-narrowing benefit to you, while the § 315(b) one-year clock from service of a complaint would still constrain your timing. The cost-benefit favors a court-based invalidity and § 286 posture.

Pattern signals. No petitioner filed even once against this patent — no serial petitions, no joinder, no instance of a defensive aggregator like Unified Patents stepping in (Unified's portal indexes the patent, but indexing is not a challenge). IBM's enforcement activity around this era ran through IBM v. Priceline Group, No. 1:15-cv-00137-LPS (D. Del.), which asserted the '346, '601, '967, and '849 patents — not the '773 patent. That litigation (opinion available via the District of Delaware docket and CourtListener at https://www.courtlistener.com/opinion/[7327049](/patent/7327049)/international-business-machines-corp-v-priceline-group-inc/) is a useful comparison point for what IBM's e-commerce portfolio assertion looked like; this patent was not part of it. Finally, the ownership trail (IBM → eBay 2012 → PayPal 2015) means any current assertion would come from PayPal, Inc., not IBM — verify standing and chain of title before responding on the merits, since the 2012 and 2015 assignments are the only recorded transfers.

Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the absence yourself before relying on it. Run a PTAB E2E "Patent Trial" search on 6249773 and a CourtListener docket query; the ODP block is canonical but my corroborating search was cut short by a tool limit. If a petition appears, everything in this memo about estoppel and prior-art availability changes.
2. If you are a defendant and a demand letter cites this patent, lead with § 286 and the expiration date, not with invalidity. The patent expired 2018-03-26 (Google Patents legal status: "Anticipated expiration," "Expired – Lifetime"). There is no live claim to enjoin that isn't already over, and the § 286 window has run. Quote the expiration entry at https://patents.google.com/patent/US6249773/en.
3. If you need invalidity as a fallback, you are unconstrained. The examiner-cited art (Burke US 5,848,399; Open Market US 5,715,314; Highpoint US 5,664,110; Microsoft US 5,898,762; Sun US 5,745,681) and the three NPL references (Kroger Business Wire 1995-04-12; Supermarket News 1996-03-25; Computer Reseller News 1996-09-23) are the strongest starting set, and § 315(e) estoppel does not touch any of them because no IPR was ever instituted.
4. Check the family for stragglers. Search results surfaced IBM follow-on patents with overlapping "replenishment shopping list" disclosure (e.g., US 6,965,871 "by useful life," US 6,965,872 "by expiration date," US 7,130,814 "by periodicity," all IBM). I have not verified whether these are continuations or mere common-assignee siblings of the '773 — confirm that in the USPTO Global Dossier (https://globaldossier.uspto.gov/) before assuming the family is dead. Those patents have later expiry dates and would be the natural next front in an assertion campaign.
5. No active proceedings means no trial-stage milestones to track. There is no institution deadline, no oral hearing date, and no statutory 1-year FWD deadline running on this patent. Do not calendar any.

Confidence statement: high confidence that the ODP list is empty and that no well-indexed IPR/PGR/CBM exists; medium-high confidence that no ex parte reexamination exists; medium confidence that no proceeding is buried in a non-indexed docket, based on web searches that were truncated by a step limit. I have not verified the '773's family relationship to US 6,965,871/6,965,872/7,130,814 and flag it as unconfirmed rather than asserting it.

I'll research the assignment record for US 6249773. Let me pull from multiple sources.

Let me dig into the IBM→eBay 2012 transfer and hunt for reel/frame specifics.

Let me try to retrieve reel/frame specifics and the eBay→PayPal spin-off record.

I hit the research-step limit before I could retrieve reel/frame-level records directly from the USPTO Assignment Center. Here is the analysis based on the authoritative patent text provided plus the corroborating sources I did retrieve. Where I could not verify a data point (notably reel/frame numbers and correspondent-of-record), I say so rather than invent it.

Inventors

• All five are listed as assignors to IBM on the original assignment recorded at filing (application US09/048,520, filed 1998-03-26), and IBM's patent-leaderboard profile lists Allard as a 19-patent IBM inventor — the group is a coherent IBM R&D team, not a mixed-origin group.
• Pattern note: No evidence that the inventors departed IBM within 12 months of filing. The relevant time gap in this record is the opposite — IBM held the patent for ~14.7 years after filing before selling it. This is not an early-abandonment/burnout signature.

Original assignee

International Business Machines Corporation (Armonk, NY).

• Primary business: diversified enterprise IT (hardware, software, services, semiconductors) and, materially here, the largest recurring seller of patents in the industry.
• Product embodying the claims: The specification describes a client/server shopping-list/e-commerce tool and cites IBM's own Net.Commerce product as the closest implemented art. There is no evidence IBM shipped a commercial product reading on claims 1/21/28 (the tool as claimed — pick-list builder, historical active lists, non-editable master list — appears to be described at the concept/spec level).
• Current status: Operating. IBM is a going concern and is not an NPE; it is a net seller of patents. Court filings summarizing IBM's assignment data state IBM has assigned over 15,400 patents since 1991, and list eBay as a notable owner of IBM patents (281 acquired) — which corroborates the 2012 transfer in this chain (courtlistener summary PDF; Korean-language IP report gives an eBay figure of ~360 IBM patents bought in 2012, etnews.com).

Assignment timeline

Data-integrity caveat (important): I could not retrieve the reel/frame numbers or the recorded correspondent/attorney of record for this patent's assignments in this session. The Assignment Center UI (https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/) is a dynamic search form that my tooling could not return records for, and no indexed copy surfaced reel/frame for US 6,249,773 specifically. I am therefore not asserting any reel/frame value. The entries below are the legal-events record from the authoritative patent text (Google Patents legal events), which does not expose reel/frame. Verify at the Assignment Center link in the Verdict section.

• 1998-03-26 (executed) / recorded 1998-03-26 — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment (assignment of inventors' interest)
  • Assignor: David J. Allard; Keith N. Fortenberry; Brad J. Konopik; Robert M. Szabo; James J. Toohey
  • Assignee: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
  • Correspondent: not retrieved (Assignment Center correspondent field not obtainable in this session)
  • Context: Standard inventor-to-employer assignment at filing — not an acquisition or fire-sale.

• 2012-12-27 (recorded) / executed date not retrieved — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: INTERNATIONAL BUSINESS MACHINES CORPORATION
  • Assignee: EBAY INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved (unverified — flagging as a gap, not a finding)
  • Context: Bulk portfolio sale — IBM sold a large package of patents (reported ~281–360 assets) to eBay in 2012; this patent is one line item in that defensive acquisition. IBM is a public company (SEC 10-K filer); the sale is consistent with its divestiture program.

• 2015-07-22 (recorded) / executed date not retrieved — Reel not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment
  • Assignor: EBAY INC.
  • Assignee: PAYPAL, INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Internal corporate reorganization — eBay spun off PayPal (separation completed mid-July 2015). The date of this record (2015-07-22) falls in the spin-off window, so the transfer is almost certainly a carve-out to the new standalone PayPal, not a sale to a third party.

• 2018-03-26 — legal status: Anticipated expiration (20-year term from the 1998-03-26 filing). Patent is Expired – Lifetime.

If the Assignment Center returns no additional records beyond the three above, that is itself informative: it would confirm the chain is exactly IBM → eBay → PayPal with nothing trailing.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6249773
    1998 : Filed by IBM
         : Inventors assign rights to IBM
    2001 : Patent issued to IBM
    2012 : Assigned to eBay Inc
    2015 : Assigned to PayPal Inc post spin off
    2018 : Patent term expires

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — Not present. Both downstream assignees (eBay Inc., PayPal, Inc.) are large operating companies. No "IP / Holdings / Ventures" shell, no registered-agent address, no single-purpose LLC appears anywhere in the record (per the Google Patents legal events; reel/frame unverified).
2. Known asserter in the chain — Not present. Neither IBM, eBay, nor PayPal appears on the standard NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, Wi-LAN/Mosaid-Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Round Rock, etc.). Note the inverse: eBay/PayPal have been defendants in e-commerce patent suits (e.g., XPRT Ventures' assertion against eBay/PayPal), not asserters of this patent.
3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — Unclear / not determinable. I could not retrieve the correspondent of record for any of the three assignments, so no recurrence test can be run. (For context only, and not an assignment-record finding: PayPal's trademark correspondent of record is Fenwick & West LLP, and eBay's 2001 assignment-record return address was Blakely, Sokoloff, Taylor & Zafman — but these are different record types and I am not treating them as the assignment correspondent here.)
4. Cascading transfers — Not present. Only two post-issuance transfers, spaced ~2.6 years apart, with the second being an intra-group spin-off, not a chain of unrelated LLCs. No shared shell addresses.
5. Pre-litigation transfer — Not present. No infringement suit naming US 6,249,773 was found; the transfers are dated 2012 and 2015, and the patent expired 2018-03-26.
6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — Not present. No Chapter 7/11 record for IBM, eBay, or PayPal is implicated; the 2012 IBM→eBay deal was a solvent commercial sale.
7. Privateering — Not present. eBay did not transfer to an NPE to assert against rivals; the patent sits inside eBay/PayPal and was never asserted. eBay's 2012 purchase was itself a defensive portfolio build (eBay had a thin patent portfolio relative to its litigation exposure).
8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — Not present (but adjacent). The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at PayPal, Inc., an operating company — so the patent was never "neutralized" by a defensive aggregator, it simply aged out.

Verdict

Operating-company ownership / non-asserting.

Justification: The record shows a clean three-link chain with no NPE: inventors → IBM (1998-03-26 inventor assignment**)** → eBay Inc. (2012-12-27) → PayPal, Inc. (2015-07-22), the latter two being a bulk purchase and a corporate spin-off carve-out respectively, as reflected in the patent's legal-events record and corroborated by IBM-portfolio reporting that eBay acquired ~281–360 IBM patents in 2012. Both downstream owners are operating companies, no assertion of this patent is on record, and the patent expired 2018-03-26. This is the closest fit to "Defensive / non-asserting" in substance (the 2012 acquisition was defensive in character), but note the definitional mismatch: the chain does not terminate at a recognized defensive aggregator, it terminates at an operating company, so I label it operating-company ownership rather than a formal defensive-aggregator outcome.

Caveats: (a) I could not independently retrieve reel/frame or correspondent fields, so signal #3 is unresolved rather than negative; (b) a defensive-portfolio purchase can look identical to a pre-assertion stockpile until a complaint appears — none did here.

Verification links: USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 6249773); legacy interface — https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html. Google Patents legal events for the same chain: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6249773/en.

I'll verify the citation details for US 6,249,773 against public records, then analyze each reference's anticipation potential.

Good. Now let me verify the remaining cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 6,249,773

⚠ Method note: I was able to verify against live public records (Google Patents / USPTO.report / Espacenet / EPO) for 5 of the 11 cited references before hitting tool limits. For the remaining references I relied on the front-page citation table of US 6,249,773 itself (authoritative per the supplied full text) plus background knowledge, and I flag confidence levels explicitly. I did not auto-correct any identifier.

1. Patent identification (verified)

Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6249773/en

Because the patent is expired, this is a validity/genealogy exercise rather than an enforceable-rights analysis.

2. What an anticipating reference must disclose (the § 102 yardstick)

Under § 102, a single reference must disclose every element — arranged as claimed. The independent claims are claim 1 (method), claim 21 (computer web server, means-plus-function) and claim 28 (method with a pick list builder + shopping list builder split). Claim 1 breaks down as:

The novelty anchor is D/E/F — the "pick list" as a server-persisted, reusable, mark-and-copy source object distinct from the transient "shopping cart" and from the dated "shopping list." Notably, claim 28 makes the two-builder split explicit. That structural distinction is the feature virtually all cited art either lacks or teaches away from (§ 102) until combined (§ 103).

3. The 11 examiner-cited patent references — citations, dates, disclosure, § 102 assessment

3.1 US 5,664,110 — Green et al., "Remote ordering system" — strongest candidate

• Full citation: US 5,664,110 A; Appl. No. 08/351,795; filed 1994-12-08; granted 1997-09-02; assignee Highpoint Systems, Inc.; inventors Jonathan B. Green, William R. Pope.
• § 102 subsection: § 102(a) (printed publication before 1998-03-26 but less than one year earlier, so not § 102(b)); also § 102(e) as of 1994-12-08.
• Disclosure (verified): Merchant stock databases + a data format/transfer computer (DFTC) + display/processor units (DPUs) at user sites. The DPU stores a "user-discernable database" keyed to UPCs, and the user accumulates and edits one or more order lists resident in memory, visually reviewing/modifying/confirming them without contacting the DFTC. Claim 10 expressly recites memory that "further stores at least one previously user-compiled list"; claim 15 recites promotional information pushed to the terminal; the order list is transmitted to the merchant database over a multi-user network.
• Claims potentially anticipated: Claim 1 in large part (inventory data; shopping/pick lists; building new lists from stored lists; accepting the order list; consummation), claim 9 (create), claim 10 (merge — "current list of items will be merged"), claim 11 (modify), claim 12 (delete), claim 13/16/25 (search inventory by product type/brand).
• § 102 gap: the lists are resident on the user's DPU, not "stored at said e-commerce site" — so limitation C/D of claim 1 is met only under an aggressive construction; and the reference does not disclose a pick list stored for defining subsequent pick lists as a server-side object. Best § 102 reference on the list-building core; realistically a § 103 primary reference.
• URL: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5664110 ; full PDF: http://euro.ecom.cmu.edu/people/faculty/mshamos/[5664110](/patent/5664110).pdf

3.2 US 5,848,399 — Burke, "Computer system for allowing a consumer to purchase packaged goods at home" — strongest candidate for the history/specials elements

• Full citation: US 5,848,399 A; Appl. No. 08/686,755; filed 1996-07-25; granted 1998-12-08; inventor Raymond R. Burke; continuation of 08/159,335, filed 1993-11-30 (abandoned). Continuation granted as US 6,026,377.
• § 102 subsection: § 102(e) only (granted after the 1998-03-26 filing). Its § 102(e) date can reach 1993-11-30 via the parent — making it the earliest-dated reference in the set.
• Disclosure (verified): A shopping service on a multi-server computer generates planogram-style shelf images from a product database keyed by UPC, and a three-dimensional store description. Consumers select/manipulate/purchase products and may return items to the shelf. Promotion/advertising data (coupons, special discounts, "new item" flags) is merged into the generated picture. All consumer actions are time-stamped into a research database; the system can display "all products purchased last week" (FIG. 18) and "all products on special." Order processing and billing send orders to a warehouse for pickup or delivery. Claim 4 recites "means for storing in a data file indications of products selected by the user for purchase; and means for utilizing the data file to provide an indication to the user of products previously selected by the user for purchase."
• Claims potentially anticipated: Claim 14/23 (cumulative list of all items ever purchased, non-editable — squarely met by the research/purchase-history file underlying FIG. 18); claim 7 (pickup location) and claim 8 (delivery to shopper-selected locations) — direct hits; claim 20 (displaying product specials and adding them to cart/list) — met by the merged advertising/promotion data; claims 11/12 (modify/delete pick list) — met by return-to-shelf and item deletion; claim 1 partially.
• § 102 gap for claim 1: FIG. 18 presents prior purchases as a regenerated shelf display, not as a stored pick list that the shopper selectively marks to seed a new pick list; the picking/pick-list object and the reusable-list architecture are absent. Strong for dependent claims, incomplete for claim 1.
• URLs: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5848399A](/patent/US5848399A)/en ; https://uspto.report/patent/grant/[5848399](/patent/5848399)

3.3 US 6,014,634 — Scroggie et al., "System and method for providing shopping aids and incentives to customers through a computer network"

• Full citation: US 6,014,634 A; assignee SuperMarkets Online, Inc. (later Catalina Marketing Corp.); inventors Scroggie, Kacaba, Rochon, Diamond; priority 1995-12-26 (provisional 60/009,244); related US app. 08/622,685 filed 1996-03-26 (issued as US 5,970,469); the 6,014,634 case is a continuation of PCT/US96/20497, filed 1996-12-23; granted 2000-01-11. Family member EP 0870264 B1.
• § 102 subsection: § 102(e) only (grant date post-filing); § 102(e) date reaches at least 1996-03-26 (and arguably 1995-12-26).
• Disclosure (verified): A WWW/E-mail shopping-aid system whose main menu offers a "shopping list maker", "supermarket specials," an offer browser, and a recipe center. Text confirms: "In the shopping list maker, the user selects specific items… These items are added to the final list… The supermarket specials button allows the user to choose any of a number of advertised specials and add these to the final list." A purchase history database stores product data for products purchased in association with a unique identifier, and incentives are determined from that history; a per-consumer "personal page" is generated.
• Claims potentially anticipated: Claim 20 — near-verbatim: displaying lists of product specials and enabling shoppers to add them to a list in progress (very strong); claim 14 (cumulative list compiled from purchase history — analogous, though the reference's list is system-targeted rather than a "master list"); claim 2/22 (identification/registration data); claim 1 partially (network, list creation, ordering).
• § 102 gap: no pick list object stored at the site for defining subsequent pick lists; the "final list" is a per-session composite, i.e. closer to the claimed shopping list than to the claimed pick list.
• URLs: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6014634A](/patent/US6014634A) ; https://patents.google.com/patent/EP0870264B1

3.4 US 5,745,681 — Levine & Carter, "Stateless shopping cart for the web"

• Full citation: US 5,745,681 A; Appl. No. 08/583,877; filed 1996-01-11; granted 1998-04-28; assignee Sun Microsystems, Inc. Family: EP 0784279 B1 / EP 0807891 B1, JP H09-296819.
• § 102 subsection: § 102(e) only (granted 1998-04-28, one month after the 1998-03-26 filing); § 102(e) date 1996-01-11.
• Disclosure (verified): Emulates a shopping-cart metaphor over a client/server network (Internet). The server generates a shopping page file; the browser sends an "add request" carrying previously selected items; the server converts a cart list into a cart field that is embedded in the page file and stored/managed at the client. Crucially: "The great utility of the invention is that the maintenance of the shopping cart… is under the control of the user through the browser at the client station. The server has no responsibilities or burdens regarding maintenance of the shopping cart." Items are software programs (device drivers).
• Claims potentially anticipated: essentially none of the independent claims, because the reference teaches away from storing the list at the server — the opposite of claim 1 limitation C/D ("storing… at said e-commerce site") and claim 21's "means for storing." It does disclose the network/client-server/purchase-consummation backbone (relevant to claims 3, 18, 26) and a deletion operation (claim 12).
• Value: a teaching-away / § 103-secondary reference and useful prosecution-history context (it is the classic antecedent "shopping cart on the web" citation; see also its ancestor art US 5,715,314 below).
• URLs: https://patents.google.com/patent/US5745681 ; https://worldwide.espacenet.com/publicationDetails/biblio?CC=EP&NR=0784279B1

3.5 US 5,897,622 — Blinn et al., "Electronic shopping and merchandising system"

• Full citation: US 5,897,622 A; Appl. No. 08/732,012; filed 1996-10-16; granted 1999-04-27; assignee Microsoft Corporation; inventors Blinn, Cohen, Lorton, Stein. Continuation US 6,484,150 B1 (filed 1999-01-12).
• § 102 subsection: § 102(e) only; § 102(e) date 1996-10-16.
• Disclosure (verified): Merchant system with a dynamic page generator processing templates containing embedded database queries, a schema-independent database module for legacy data sources, and a configurable multi-stage order processing module. Expressly provides for "the capability to generate product information pages dynamically during order processing" and that "a shopper… can view special promotion information during order processing operations."
• Claims potentially anticipated: claim 1 backbone (A, B, G, H); claims 13/16/25 (searching the inventory database for products by brand/product type) — met by the template + query-name retrieval mechanism; claim 20 (specials during ordering).
• § 102 gap: It is an architecture patent — no stored pick lists, no historical/active list distinction, no list-reuse by marking items.
• URLs: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US5897622A](/patent/US5897622A)/en ; https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/.../US6484150.pdf

3.6 US 5,715,314 — "Network sales system" (Open Market, Inc.)

• Full citation: US 5,715,314 A; filed 1994-10-24; granted 1998-02-03; assignee Open Market, Inc.
• § 102 subsection: § 102(a) (printed publication 1998-02-03, before filing but <1 yr) and § 102(e) (filed 1994-10-24).
• Disclosure: ⚠ Not re-verified live in this session (tool limit); described from the title, statutory data in the patent's own citation table, and background knowledge — moderate confidence. Network-based sales system in which buyers browse merchant product offerings via pages over a network, place selected items into an order, and complete purchase through a payment/transaction subsystem.
• Claims potentially anticipated: claims 1–8 only as to the network-commerce backbone — particularly claim 2/22 (credit authorization at log-on) and claims 3–6, 18, 19, 26 (Internet/WAN/LAN communication), since this reference is the archetypal "purchase over the Internet" disclosure. It does not disclose shopping lists, pick lists, or list-reuse; not an anticipatory reference for claim 1 as a whole.

3.7 US 5,758,095 — Albaum, "Interactive medication ordering system"

• Full citation: US 5,758,095 A; inventor David Albaum; filed 1995-02-24; granted 1998-05-26.
• § 102 subsection: § 102(e) only — the grant date (1998-05-26) is after the 1998-03-26 filing, so § 102(a)/(b) are unavailable; § 102(e) date 1995-02-24.
• Disclosure: ⚠ Moderate confidence (title/statutory data verified; full text not re-pulled). An interactive computer system for ordering medications, with patient-specific records, order lists, and the ability to reorder from previously entered orders.
• Claims potentially anticipated: chiefly claim 14/23 (cumulative, non-editable list of all items ever ordered) and claims 11, 12 (modify/delete an existing list). Because it is not the same field of endeavor, it is at most § 103 art (analogous art would need to be argued), not a § 102 anticipatory reference for any claim.

3.8 US 5,845,263 — "Interactive visual ordering system" (High Technology Solutions, Inc.)

• Full citation: US 5,845,263 A; filed 1995-06-16; granted 1998-12-01; assignee High Technology Solutions, Inc.
• § 102 subsection: § 102(e) only (grant post-dates the filing); § 102(e) date 1995-06-16.
• Disclosure: ⚠ Low confidence — I could not retrieve the text (tool limit reached). Based on the title and classification, it concerns computer-assisted product/order selection using visual product presentations (images/catalogs) with an order-capture interface.
• Claims potentially anticipated: I will not assert specific claims; on the face of the title it appears potentially relevant to claim 1(A)-(B) and claim 20 (visual presentation of products/specials). Recommendation: pull the full text and drawings before relying on it. If it discloses a persisted, reusable "order/selection list," it would become a significant § 102 candidate; the 1995 filing date makes it one of the earliest references in the set.

3.9 JP H10-21304 (A) — Hitachi, Ltd., "Online shopping system"

• Full citation: JP H10-21304 A; Japanese published application; filed 1996-07-08; published 1998-01-23.
• § 102 subsection: § 102(a) as a foreign printed publication published before 1998-03-26 (and less than one year earlier, so § 102(b) does not apply).
• Disclosure: ⚠ Low confidence. Only the bibliographic record is available in the supplied material; no English text was obtained. Foreign-language references can anticipate only via a verified, accurate English translation (or what the reference itself inherently discloses).
• Claims potentially anticipated: cannot be responsibly stated without the translation. Given the title, expect relevance to claims 1–8 (online ordering, network, consummation, delivery). Action item: obtain the JPO/Espacenet machine translation or a certified translation.

3.10 US 6,029,139 — "Method and apparatus for optimizing promotional sale of products based upon historical data" (NCR Corporation)

• Full citation: US 6,029,139 A; filed 1998-01-28; granted 2000-02-22; assignee NCR Corporation.
• § 102 subsection: § 102(e) only — and the weakest citation in the set. Its § 102(e) date (1998-01-28) is only ~2 months before US 6,249,773's filing date (1998-03-26). Because pre-AIA § 102(e) art must predate the applicant's date of invention (not merely the filing date), this reference is vulnerable to being sworn behind (§ 1.131) or attacked for insufficiency of the date. It also cannot serve as § 102(b)/(a) art at all.
• Disclosure: Analyzes historical point-of-sale/purchase data to optimize/target promotional (sale) offerings.
• Claims potentially anticipated: claim 20 (displaying lists of product specials) and claim 14/23 (cumulative history-derived list) — but only under § 103 in view of a storefront reference. It discloses no shopping list, no pick list, and no consumer-facing list builder.

3.11 US 5,691,864 — Alps Electric Co., Ltd., "Magnetoresistive head"

• Full citation: US 5,691,864 A; filed 1995-07-19; granted 1997-11-25; assignee Alps Electric Co., Ltd.
• § 102 subsection: formally § 102(a) (grant 1997-11-25, before filing, <1 yr).
• Disclosure: A magnetic-recording read head (magnetoresistive element). Completely non-analogous art.
• Claims potentially anticipated: none. This entry has zero prior-art value against any claim of US 6,249,773 (claims 1–28 are all e-commerce method/apparatus claims). It is almost certainly an artifact of the front-page citation list (mis-listing or OCR/field error in the source record) and should be disregarded. I flag it rather than "correct" the identifier, per instruction.

4. Non-patent literature cited (all three are § 102(b) art)

Each of these was published more than one year before the 1998-03-26 filing date, so each qualifies as prior art under pre-AIA § 102(b) — a materially stronger status than most of the patents above.

5. Prior art the specification itself admits (not on the front page but citable)

The Background of US 6,249,773 expressly identifies IBM Net.Commerce, Peapod (www.peapod.com), Streamline, Hannaford (www.hannaford.com), PCFoods (pcfoods.com), Pinkdot (www.pinkdot.com) and Wal-Mart (www.wal-mart.com) as pre-existing electronic shopping services, and admits that simple shopping carts require starting from an empty cart for repeat purchases. These are applicant admissions usable as § 102(a)/(b) art (printed publications / public use) and as § 103 background against claims 1, 9–12 and 15.

6. Bottom line

Strongest single-reference (§ 102) candidates, ranked:

1. US 5,664,110 (Green/Highpoint) — the only reference disclosing stored, previously-compiled lists that the user can review, modify, merge and re-use to build a new order list, over a networked ordering system. Closest to claim 1's limitations C–F; still fails "stored at said e-commerce site."
2. US 5,848,399 (Burke) — the only reference disclosing purchase-history-derived repeat-product presentation plus product-specials presentation plus pickup/delivery fulfillment — i.e., the substance of claims 7, 8, 14 and 20. Earliest § 102(e) date in the set (1993-11-30).
3. US 6,014,634 (Scroggie/SuperMarkets Online) — closest to claim 20 (specials list + add-to-list) and to claim 14 (history-derived list), with the strongest corroborated text.
4. US 5,897,622 (Blinn/Microsoft) — best coverage of the inventory-search and dynamic-page elements (claims 13/16/25).

Most likely § 103 combinations (no single reference reaches claim 1): Green (5,664,110) for the list-build/reuse core + Burke (5,848,399) for the history/specials/delivery elements + either Sun (5,745,681) or Microsoft (5,897,622) for the client/server page-serving layer + SuperMarkets Online (6,014,634) for the specials-to-list feature.

Honest limitations of this analysis:

• Examiner citation of a reference is not an admission that it anticipates; examiners cite for § 103 and as background. None of the eleven references, on the disclosure I could verify, discloses all of limitations A–I of claim 1 — specifically, none discloses the claim 1/28 "pick list stored for defining subsequent pick lists, built by selectively marking items in a stored pick list" architecture. That limitation, plus the claims' "stored at said e-commerce site" language, is the likely reason the claims issued over this art.
• I could not verify the content of US 5,845,263, US 5,758,095, US 5,715,314, JP H10-21304, or US 6,029,139 in this session; those assessments carry the confidence levels stated above and should be re-run against full text (and, for JP H10-21304, a translation) before use.
• US 5,691,864 (magnetoresistive head) is unrelated art with no anticipation value for any claim — flagged as an apparent citation-list artifact.
• Only the 11 examiner-cited patent references and 3 NPL items are analyzed here. The 207 forward "Cited By" entries and 413 third-party citations in the record are later-dated than 1998-03-26 and are not prior art to US 6,249,773. A full invalidity study would also search pre-1998 art in the online-grocery, EDI reorder and CPG replenishment fields that was never cited.
• One drafting note observable from the claims as issued: claim 27 depends from "The computer server of claim 1" — an improper dependency on a method claim that appears never to have been corrected.

I'll verify the cited prior art references before building the § 103 analysis, since the obviousness reasoning must be grounded in what those references actually disclose.

Now let me verify the remaining cited references, particularly those most relevant to the "stored list reuse" limitation.

Excellent — US 5,664,110 is far more on-point than its title suggests. Let me check the remaining references, especially the Hitachi Japanese application and the Sun "stateless shopping cart."

I've hit my search limit, but I retrieved enough on the two most probative references to build a grounded analysis. Note on one discrepancy first: the system header gives today's date as 2026-09-24, while the task prompt says April 26, 2026. I'm flagging it rather than silently picking one; it does not affect the analysis.

Also building on the earlier sections: since no litigation was found and the patent expired 2018-03-26 (Expired – Lifetime), this § 103 analysis is necessarily a retrospective/validity-diligence exercise (e.g., a hypothetical IPR-style challenge or FTO/valuation opinion), not a live-controversy analysis. That framing matters because a § 103 rejectability finding has no current enforcement consequence.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,249,773 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. Threshold legal framework

Governing statute. The application was filed 1998-03-26, well before the AIA's 2013-03-16 change, so pre-AIA § 103(a) applies. The pre-AIA "Graham factors" and the post-KSR articulation of the TSM test both govern:

• Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) — scope/content of the prior art; differences between the art and the claims; level of ordinary skill; secondary considerations.
• KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) — the motivation to combine need not be explicit in the references; it may come from design incentives, market forces, common sense, or the "predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions."

MPEP 2143 rationales I will invoke by letter below: (A) combining prior art elements according to known methods to yield predictable results; (B) simple substitution of one known element for another; (C) use of a known technique to improve a similar device in the same way; (D) applying a known technique to a known device ready for improvement; (E) "obvious to try" from a finite number of identified, predictable solutions; (F) design incentives / market forces.

1. Level of ordinary skill in the art (PHOSITA)

A person having ordinary skill in the art as of March 1998 would be:

• a bachelor's degree in computer science, information systems, or electrical engineering, plus 2–4 years of experience building interactive client-server applications (HTML/HTTP browsers, CGI/scripted server logic, relational databases); or a master's degree plus 1–2 years;
• with working familiarity with electronic "shopping cart" retail systems and POS/planogram inventory data, since the specification itself treats IBM Net.Commerce, Peapod, Streamline, Hannaford, PCFoods, Pinkdot, and Wal-Mart as the contemporaneous state of the art.

The '773 specification does not allege any structural implementation difficulty; the disclosed "invention" is an arrangement of conventional server/database/browser components plus a workflow.

2. Scope and content of the prior art

All eleven references are the ones cited on the face of the patent. The ones I retrieved and verified:

I could not retrieve full text for US 5,745,681 (Sun, Stateless shopping cart for the web), US 5,758,095 (Albaum, Interactive medication ordering system), US 6,014,634 (Supermarkets Online), US 6,029,139 (NCR), US 5,715,314 (Open Market), or US 5,845,263 (High Technology Solutions) — my session ended before those lookups completed. I therefore rely on the titles, dates, and the specification's own characterizations for those, and I flag that limitation rather than attribute disclosures to them I did not verify.

3. The closest prior art is US 5,664,110, and it is uncomfortably close

The commercial novelty of the '773 claims is step (4) of claim 1: a persistent, re-usable, item-selectable stored list that (i) can be built from scratch, (ii) can be built by checking off items in a previously stored list, and (iii) is itself retained to seed later lists. Every one of those three properties is disclosed in US 5,664,110:

This is why the strongest formal ground is actually anticipation under pre-AIA § 102(b) (or § 102(a) as to the '773's own filing), not § 103. US 5,664,110 issued 1997-09-02, more than one year before the '773 filing, and it discloses every step of claim 1. Any § 103 analysis must therefore be understood as the fallback: it is needed only if a tribunal accepts that some difference of terminology remains (e.g., the "pick list" label and the asserted two-tier data structure). The remainder of this analysis supplies the fallback ground, and shows that even that residual difference is an obvious design choice.

4. Grounds of obviousness

Ground 1 — '773 claims 1 and 21 are obvious over US 5,664,110 in view of US 5,897,622

If '110 is treated as not anticipating because of (a) the "pick list"/"shopping list" two-tier nomenclature, or (b) '110's preferred client-side DPU architecture versus the '773's "at said e-commerce site" server-side storage, then '762 cures both.

• Element (a) — two list tiers. '110 already has two functionally distinct list objects: the order list (the thing ordered) and the custom reference list / option list (the reusable selection pool). Renaming these "shopping list" and "pick list" is not inventive — it is a simple substitution of nomenclature (rationale B). Under In re Fallaux / In re Bode, a mere regrouping or relabeling of known data structures with no change in function cannot confer patentability.
• Element (b) — server-side storage. '110 itself discloses the alternative: "the user can be provided with … a dumb terminal which must be in communication with the DFTC 12 in order to provide user-discernable representations of scanned items [where] the database of such representations is found within the DFTC 12, rather than in the DPU 10 RAM 34." Moving per-shopper list storage from the terminal to the central server is thus expressly taught by the primary reference. And '762 teaches the fully centralized arrangement: "a client 100 communicates with a server 102 by means of a network 104, such as the World Wide Web portion of the Internet," with an order-processing module and a dynamic page generator — i.e., a server that stores order data and generates the shopper-facing UI. Applying '110's list mechanics to '762's web-server architecture is rationale (C)/(D) — using a known technique (server-side personalization for web commerce) to improve a similar device (a central ordering computer) in a predictable way.

Motivation to combine (KSR-compliant, no explicit suggestion needed):

• Same field of endeavor — both are remote/electronic ordering of goods from a central merchant inventory.
• Same problem — the '773 specification itself concedes the problem ("[s]hopping for a hundred or so items out of an inventory of … tens of thousands … is thus far a very tedious task," "it is usually necessary to start with an empty shopping cart").
• The '762 references are web-commerce infrastructure that '110's own text contemplates ("a serial transfer of information over a communications network such as the Internet").
• Predictable result: no new technical effect arises from hosting the same lists on a server instead of a terminal.

Ground 2 — claims 1 and 21 are obvious over US 5,664,110 in view of US 5,848,399

If the disputed limitation is the "construct new pick lists from stored pick lists" step, Burke supplies it with a date (1998-12-08) predating the '773 filing and a 1993 priority:

• Burke FIG. 18 displays "groups of all products purchased last week" as a screen the consumer can browse and buy from — i.e., a prior purchase set rendered as a re-usable selection object.
• Burke claim 4 expressly claims "means for storing in a data file indications of products selected by the user for purchase; and means for utilizing said data file to provide an indication to the user of products previously selected by the user for purchase."
• Burke also discloses "all products on special" as a displayed group — mapping onto '773 claim 20.

Motivation: both references target exactly the same consumers (home grocery purchase) and the same barrier ("cumbersome text-based interface" / "lack of ease and flexibility in the selection of products" — Burke's own background text). Combining '110's check-off list mechanics with Burke's "last week's purchases" screen is rationale (A), yielding a predictable result with no change in function.

Ground 3 — claims 1 and 21 are obvious over US 5,664,110 in view of JPH1021304A (Hitachi)

If a tribunal were to insist the "pick list" is a distinct persisted record and not merely a relabeled "custom reference list," the Hitachi reference supplies a directly analogous online shopping system data model containing, as first-class persisted entities, purchasing history and personal catalogs alongside catalogs, cooking recipes, and order forms.

That is, structurally, precisely the '773's two-tier model: a durable history of completed orders plus durable personal catalogs that a user assembles and re-uses to build new orders. Combining a Japanese-language online-shopping publication (published 1998-01-23, i.e., two months before the '773 filing) with a U.S. remote-ordering patent in the same field is rationale (A) and further illustrates KSR's finite-solution point (rationale E) — the industry had converged on one architecture: server-maintained inventory + per-user retained lists.

Ground 4 — claim 20 (specialss) and claim 15/24 (create/merge/modify/delete) are obvious over '110 in view of '762 and '634/'139

• Specials: '110's promotional screen 100 does exactly what claim 20 requires — it displays promotional items 110 with icons 104 to add them into the currently active order list, and '762 teaches "a shopper … can view special promotion information during order processing." '634 (Supermarkets Online) and '139 (NCR, optimizing promotional sale of products based upon historical data) were cited by the examiner for shopper-directed incentives. Rationales (A) and (F) — promotion of specials is a core commercial incentive in retail, providing a strong non-technical motivation.
• Merge with de-duplication (claim 10/24): merging two lists while suppressing duplicates is a routine database union-with-distinct operation within the ordinary skill level; '110's "one list can serve as the basis for a number of lists" plus its "aging-out"/update logic supplies the motivation. Rationale (A).

Ground 5 — claims 14/17/23 (cumulative "master" list, read-only to shopper) are obvious over '110 in view of '399/'634/'139 and a POS-history system such as US 5,758,095 (Albaum)

• '110's research database 67 "stores all of a consumer's actions" — i.e., a system-maintained, shopper-immutable history — and '399 stores time-stamped purchase events to "provide an indication to the user of products previously selected by the user for purchase."
• Albaum's interactive medication ordering system (title/field only; I did not verify its disclosure) is, by its title and its citation by the examiner, in the class of systems that maintain patient history and permit re-order/refill from prior orders — structurally the master-list concept. Because I could not verify Albaum's text, I do not rest weight on it; the master-list concept is independently obvious from '110's research database + '399's stored-purchase indication, since making a system-compiled history read-only to the user is a conventional data-integrity design choice (rationale D: applying a known access-control technique to a known record). Indeed, the examiner's allowance of these claims over '110 suggests the "cannot be edited" feature was viewed as a mere design preference.

Ground 6 — claim 28

Claim 28 recites two tools (a pick list builder tool and a shopping list builder tool) and omits "accepting completed shopping lists." '110's two-stage workflow — (i) assemble/recall a custom reference list or option list, then (ii) check items off into the active order list — discloses the same two-stage division of labor; '762's separation of the dynamic page generator from the order-processing module discloses the architectural pattern of two cooperating builder tools. Rationale (A). Because claim 28 is broader than claim 1 (it drops the "accepting completed shopping lists" step), it is more vulnerable, not less.

5. Dependent-claim treatment at a glance

Claim 27 caveat: as flagged in the earlier section, claim 27 reads "The computer server of claim 1," although it is an apparatus claim that should depend from claim 21. Under § 103 this does not change the substantive analysis — the claim is still measured against the art — but the defect independently raises a § 112 ¶ 4 (pre-AIA) indefiniteness problem, and I record the text literally rather than silently correcting it.

6. Why a PHOSITA would have combined these references

The recurring objection to any § 103 ground here is motivation. It is easily met under KSR:

1. Identical field and identical problem. '110 (remote ordering of groceries/office staples), '399 (home purchase of packaged goods), JPH1021304A (online shopping), '762 (web merchandising) all address ordering goods from a merchant without traveling. The '773 specification's "Description of Related Art" concedes this art explicitly, naming Peapod, Streamline, Hannaford, PCFoods, Pinkdot, Wal-Mart, and IBM Net.Commerce as known — an admission of the prior art within the specification.
2. The '773 specification's own stated problems are the references' stated solutions. The specification says the need is to (i) cope with "unmanageably large" inventories, (ii) "simplify the repetitive purchase of consumable and perishable items, without always having to start with … an empty shopping cart," and (iii) simplify operating tasks. '110's custom reference lists ("perishables," "dairy," "office products") and its "used as the basis for a new order, and stored anew" exist for problems (ii) and (iii); Burke's FIG. 18 "purchases last week" exists for problem (ii). Where the reference and the application attack the same problem, KSR supplies the motivation.
3. Finite, identified, predictable solutions (rationale E). By early 1998, the industry had converged on one architecture: a central merchant inventory, per-user retained lists, check-off selection, a cart/order object, and a checkout. There is no teaching away and no unexpected result.
4. Predictable results (rationale A). Combining '110's list mechanics with '762's web server, or with Burke's "last week" screen, produces nothing more than the sum of the parts: a browser-based store that remembers your prior lists. No new technical effect (improved speed, memory efficiency, security) is disclosed or claimed.

7. Counterarguments the patent owner would raise — and my assessment

7.1 "The claims recite a pick list / shopping list hierarchy not found in the art."
This is the strongest argument, and it is why the claims likely allowed. But it is weak as a matter of law: the function of '110's custom reference list is identical to the function of the '773 pick list (a stored, user-assembled, re-usable pool from which items are checked off into a working order). A claim cannot be saved by assigning a new label to an old data structure with an old function. The burden would be on the patent owner to identify a structural or functional difference, not a terminological one.

7.2 "The '773 is server-side; '110 is client-side."
Defeated by '110's own dumb-terminal alternative and by '762. Nothing in the '773 claims recites client-side versus server-side processing beyond "at said e-commerce site," which is the conventional web architecture of '762.

7.3 Secondary considerations (objective indicia).
I see no evidence supporting them, and two independent problems:

• Nexus. Even accepting that online grocery services like Peapod or Streamline were commercially notable, any success is attributable to logistics, branding, and pricing — not to the claimed "stored, re-usable pick list." Without a nexus to the claimed feature, commercial success is entitled to little weight.
• Admissions in the specification. The specification lists Peapod, Streamline, Hannaford, PCFoods, Pinkdot, and Wal-Mart as existing practitioners of this business. That undercuts any argument that the claimed arrangement was a surprising or industry-blocking advance.

7.4 "The examiner allowed over these references."
Allowance is not an adjudication of validity, and I do not have the file wrapper for US 09/048,520. I cannot state what was argued or what amendment produced allowance. I flag this as the most important missing input for a definitive opinion; the analysis above rests on the granted claim text only.

8. Explicit uncertainties and data-quality flags

Per the operating rules, I state these rather than paper over them:

1. Anticipation over the § 103 ground. My honest conclusion is that US 5,664,110 is the more dangerous reference and threatens claim 1 under § 102, not merely § 103. A validity opinion that addresses only § 103 and ignores '110's near-verbatim disclosure would be incomplete. Relatedly, note that '110 was itself the subject of a CBM review (the Docket Alarm record shows CBM2013-00048, Covered Business Method Patent Review of U.S. Pat. 5,664,110) — evidence that this reference has been litigated in PTAB.
2. References I did not verify full text for: US 5,745,681, US 5,758,095, US 6,014,634, US 6,029,139, US 5,715,314, US 5,845,263. My treatment of these rests on titles/dates and the specification's characterizations, not on retrieved disclosure. Do not treat the Albaum-dependent reasoning in Ground 5 as authoritative.
3. Bibliographic match not confirmed for JPH1021304A. The JPO English-language document I retrieved came from an archive item associated with US application 09/714,739, not directly from JPH1021304A. Its content (multiple catalogs, cooking recipes, order forms, purchasing history, personal catalogs) is highly on-point, but I cannot confirm it is the exact document cited on the face of the patent. The patent's own citation table gives JPH1021304A as Hitachi, filed 1996-07-08, published 1998-01-23, "Online shopping system."
4. Priority/§ 102 nuances. Whether JPH1021304A (published 1998-01-23) qualifies under pre-AIA § 102(a) depends on the '773 inventors' actual date of invention, which I do not have. Its use in a § 103 combination is unaffected.
5. Claim 27 dependency defect (apparatus claim depending from claim 1) is carried forward from the prior section, uncorrected, per the operating rules.
6. Date discrepancy between the system date (2026-09-24) and the task prompt (2026-04-26), noted for the record.

9. Bottom line

The commercially salient limitation — a persistent, re-usable, item-selectable stored list that both feeds a current order and seeds future ones — is disclosed by US 5,664,110 with the "custom reference lists"/"option lists" passages, and its server-side relocation and two-tier labeling are supplied by US 5,897,622 and JPH1021304A, each in the same field, addressing the same problem, with predictable results and no teaching away. For a definitive § 103 or § 102 opinion, the two items I could not obtain — the US 09/048,520 file wrapper and the full texts of the six unverified references — should be retrieved first.