US 6314406

I'll ground this in live sources before summarizing.

Let me pull the abstract/claims directly and check for 2026 litigation activity.

Let me try to retrieve the actual claim language and confirm litigation status.

US 6,314,406 B1 — Identification

Sources: Google Patents US6314406B1; uspto.report grant page; inventor/citation data at radaris inventor index and FreePatentsOnline US6595417.

Continuity (a CIP family). The specification states the application "is a continuation‑in‑part of" four earlier applications:

• 08/668,343 (filed 1996‑06‑26) → issued as US 5,821,512
• 08/744,109 (filed 1996‑11‑05) → issued as US 5,821,513
• 08/752,301 (filed 1996‑11‑19)
• 08/770,690 (filed 1996‑12‑19) → issued as US 6,119,935

Later continuations of the '406 include US 6,595,417 ("Electronic shopping system") and published applications US 2002/0165778, US 2002/0178091, US 2002/0194075, and US 2003/0040969.

Abstract (verbatim)

"A retail customer information system which includes: at least one data processing device including a data storage adapted for selectively storing marketing data in a plurality of data fields. The customer information system also includes a portable transaction computer having a graphical user interface adapted to selectively display icon data representing data stored in the data storage. The portable transaction computer further including a random access memory; and a processor adapted to process instructions disposed in the random access memory. The retail customer information system further including a first data channel adapted for selectively communicating marketing data between the portable transaction computer and the data processing device."

Independent claims — plain‑language overview

⚠️ Important caveat on sourcing. The authoritative full text supplied to me is truncated inside the "Description of the Specific Embodiments" (it ends mid‑sentence around FIG. 37, "Each icon is made up of an array of a numb…"). The verbatim claim set (the "What is claimed is" block) is not present in my authoritative copy, and my searches did not return the full claim text. The overview below is therefore built from (a) the specification's own "summary of the invention" recitations, which track the independent claims nearly word‑for‑word, and (b) fragments of dependent claims 27–30 retrieved from a third‑party CPC archive. Treat the substance as reliable and the exact wording/numbering as unverified.

The patent's summary section recites four distinct claimed aspects, which correspond to the independent claims:

1. Retail customer information system (claim 1 — matches the abstract).
A data processing device with data storage holding marketing data in multiple fields, plus a portable transaction computer ("PTC"/CIT — the shopper-carried cart terminal of FIG. 2a) with a GUI that displays icon data from the storage, RAM, and a processor executing instructions from RAM, all linked by a first data channel carrying marketing data between the terminal and the processing device.

2. Shopping system network (the "coupon" claim — recited in the summary and cross‑referenced as claim 20 in dependents).
A host computer and a customer computer both coupleable to a network, an optical scanner coupled to the customer computer, and a coupon bearing both graphical indicia and optically identifiable (2‑D bar code) indicia. The customer scans the coupon; the customer computer processes the decoded indicia into "first data" sent over the network to the host, which uses it to facilitate shopping. Dependent claims 27–28 add that the portable transaction computer alerts the user of a discount via the graphical user interface or via a speaker; claim 29 specifies the customer computer as a portable customer information terminal wirelessly coupleable to the network; claim 30 adds a wirelessly coupleable portable computing device.

3. Coupon article claim.
A physical coupon: paper (or other medium) with optically identifiable indicia printed on it, where the indicia include encoded bitmap data for generating a bitmap image for display on the GUI — i.e., the 2‑D bar code itself carries the product icon/artwork so the terminal displays the real product image immediately on scan.

4. Shopping‑list network claim.
A host computer storing a product list in host memory, plus a client computer coupleable to the host via the network, where the customer generates a customer shopping list from the store's product list.

Practical gist. The patent is essentially a pre‑smartphone architecture for a "self‑scanning" grocery store: coupons are scanned at home on a customer home terminal (CHT) and reconciled with a store‑host‑supplied product list and shopping list; in the store the shopper uses a cart‑mounted portable transaction computer with a tethered bar‑code reader (handheld or presentation mode), RF/IR wireless LAN access points, IR zone‑based location tracking for location‑aware ads and store maps, a browser/HTML UI served from the host, a printer for receipts/recipes, and dynamic (time‑ and cross‑purchase‑dependent) coupon valuation. Claim coverage is spread across the terminal system, the coupon/scanning network, the coupon article itself, and the shopping‑list generation flow.

CAFC 2026 docket check — result: nothing found

I searched for Federal Circuit 2026 activity tied to this patent number and found no CAFC 2026 docket, appeal, or IPR appeal referencing US 6,314,406. This is consistent with its status: the patent expired 2016‑06‑26, so it cannot be asserted in a new infringement suit. The only court materials that surfaced citing the '406 are unrelated prior‑art/examination citations in other parties' documents (e.g., the EPO's citation list for EP 1 381 989 B1, at data.epo.org, and PTAB/courtlistener exhibit lists where it appears as a reference, not as the patent‑in‑suit).

Limitation: I could not query PACER or the CAFC's own docket system directly, so I cannot state with absolute certainty that no sealed or ancillary 2026 filing exists. Based on publicly indexed sources, there is none.

Identifier‑collision warnings (do not conflate)

Two near‑identical strings appeared in search results and are not this patent:

• JP 6314406 B2 (issued 2018‑04‑25) — a Japanese patent to Hitachi Metals / NEOMAX for a "hermetic sealing cap, package for housing electronic component, and method of manufacturing hermetic sealing cap." Same digit string, entirely different document, different jurisdiction, different subject matter. (JP6314406B2 PDF)
• US 2008/0303421 A1 — an electrophosphorescent OLED publication whose INPADOC family listing displays a stray "US6314406A" string (serial 12/063,144). That appears to be a data artifact of the publication's own number, not an association with the Telxon patent. (US20080303421A1)

I am also flagging one internal inconsistency rather than silently correcting it: the Google Patents front‑page "Current Assignee" field lists both Symbol Technologies LLC and Bank One Corp. The assignment history shows Bank One, N.A. only ever took a security interest (1999‑04‑13) that was released the same year, so Bank One is best understood as a secured party record, not an owner — but I am reporting the field exactly as the register renders it.

Residual uncertainties

• Verbatim independent‑claim wording and exact claim numbering (particularly whether the "shopping system network" host/customer/coupon claim is claim 5, 20, or both, given dependents reference "claim 20" and "claim 5" under the "shopping system network" and "shopping system" preambles respectively) — unverified. The claim set appears to run to at least 30 claims.
• I did not retrieve the full prosecution history, so I cannot state which art was overcome or whether any reexamination occurred. (No reexamination certificate surfaced.)
• The full text I was given omits everything after the FIG. 37 description, so the written‑description detail on bit‑map/icon handling (FIG. 38) and the store‑map output (FIG. 39) is only partially available to me.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 6314406 using multiple sources.

Let me dig deeper into specific litigation databases and the case reference that surfaced.

Litigation Search Results — U.S. Patent No. 6,314,406

Bottom line: I found no confirmable litigation — district court, Federal Circuit, or PTAB — in which U.S. Patent No. 6,314,406 ("Customer information network," O'Hagan et al., Telxon Corp.) was asserted or challenged. As of my search on April 26, 2026, the patent's litigation docket appears to be empty, which is consistent with the fact that the patent expired at the end of its term on June 26, 2016 (20 years from the earliest priority date of June 26, 1996, per the Google Patents record) and that the statutory damages-recovery window has since closed.

I want to flag one methodological caveat up front: I exhausted my available search budget before I could query every source you named (Unified Patents litigation portal, Docket Navigator, PACER directly, RPX). What follows is based on the searches I did complete, plus the patent's own prosecution-family and assignment records.

1. The one apparent "hit" — and why it is a false positive

A keyword search for "6314406" surfaced Neonode Smartphone LLC v. [[Samsung Electronics Co.](/litigations/by-defendant/Samsung%20Electronics%20Co.) Ltd.](/litigations/by-plaintiff/Samsung%20Electronics%20Co.%20Ltd.) But this is not litigation over U.S. 6,314,406:

The string "6314406" appears in this case only inside an exhibit — ECF No. 83-2 in 6:20-cv-00507-ADA (filed May 29, 2023) — which reproduces a USPTO search/reexamination history for Neonode's application 10/315,250 (the application that issued as the ’879 patent). U.S. 6,314,406 is listed among hundreds of patent numbers in that examiner's "EASTSearchHistory" string. It is cited as prior art of record, not as an asserted patent. No party in that case asserted, licensed, or challenged U.S. 6,314,406.

2. Entity-level and family-level litigation that is not this patent

To preempt confusion, here are related matters that turn up and should be excluded:

• Symbol Technologies, Inc., et al. v. Lemelson Medical, Education & Research Foundation, LP, Fed. Cir. No. 04-1451, 422 F.3d 1378 (Nov. 16, 2005, amended; original opinion Sept. 9, 2005), on appeal from D. Nev. (Chief Judge Philip M. Pro). Telxon Corporation was a plaintiff-appellee alongside Symbol, Accu-Sort, Intermec, Metrologic, PSC, Teklogix, Zebra, and Cognex. The patents-in-suit were 14 Lemelson machine-vision/barcode patents, held unenforceable for prosecution laches. No O'Hagan/Telxon patent was at issue.
• MSI Data Corp. v. Telxon Corp., filed Sept. 24, 1985, U.S. District Court for the Central District of California (Los Angeles); settled Oct. 17, 1988 as part of the Symbol/MSI transaction (Telxon paid $5M). Concerned a battery-preservation method in portable barcode readers. Filed 11 years before this patent's 1996 priority date — legally and technically unrelated.
• Telxon Corp. v. MSI Data Corp., filed March 1985 (trade-secret/unfair-competition claims, $100M); same 1988 settlement.

3. Prosecution-family context (relevant to future litigation risk, not litigation)

U.S. 6,314,406 was filed as application No. 08/921,235 on Aug. 29, 1997 and claims priority from three earlier Telxon applications that issued as:

• U.S. 5,821,512 (from 08/668,343, priority June 26, 1996)
• U.S. 5,821,513 (from 08/744,109, priority Nov. 5, 1996)
• U.S. 6,119,935 (from 08/770,690, priority Dec. 19, 1996)

The assignment record shows Telxon → Symbol Technologies, Inc. (Apr. 8, 2002) → Symbol Technologies, LLC (July 8, 2015), with a series of security interests (Bank of New York, Bank One, Foothill Capital, JPMorgan Chase, Morgan Stanley Senior Funding) and releases. These are corporate-chain-of-title and collateral filings, not infringement suits. If any of these family patents were asserted while the ’406 patent was in force, that would be the most likely place to find a companion claim to the ’406 patent — but I have no verified record of such a case.

4. Confidence and recommended verification steps

I want to be explicit about the limits of this answer rather than overstate it:

• High confidence: U.S. 6,314,406 was not a patent-in-suit in Neonode v. Samsung, and the "6314406" hits I retrieved are prior-art citations or examiner search-history strings.
• Moderate-to-high confidence: There is no reported Federal Circuit or district court decision naming U.S. 6,314,406 as an asserted patent. Nothing surfaced in CourtListener, Justia, or general web searches.
• Lower confidence (not fully verified): Sealed or settled complaints that never produced a published opinion, and any PTAB proceeding, could escape these searches. Prosecution-history documents and docket-level data are the only reliable places to catch those.

To close the gap definitively, I'd run the following before treating this as final:

1. Unified Patents litigation portal — direct query on patent number 6314406.
2. Docket Navigator / Lex Machina — patent-level docket search, filters for 1997–2022.
3. PACER — the period of enforceability ends June 26, 2022 for the six-year § 286 damages tail on an expired patent; search any district docket naming Symbol Technologies, Inc./LLC or Telxon as plaintiff with a 2001–2022 filing date.
4. PTAB (PTAB E2E / Patent Center) — confirm no IPR/PGR/CBM against the ’406 patent (unlikely: it issued in 2001, and the PGR/CBM window plus IPR practice make a post-issuance challenge improbable, but worth confirming).
5. Google Patents "Litigation" tab and the patent's global dossier — the instance I fetched showed no litigation section, which is weak corroboration only.

I'll start by verifying the canonical proceedings list via web search, since the ODP block reports no AIA trials.

The initial results are noisy (lots of false positives from unrelated patents). Let me target the specific patent number and its litigation/PTAB footprint.

PTAB proceedings on file — US 6,314,406 B1 ("Customer information network")

Bottom line up front: the structured ODP block is canonical and reports zero AIA trial proceedings. I ran targeted web searches to look for proceedings the ODP may not have indexed (older CBM/IPR filings, recently-filed petitions) and found no IPR, PGR, or CBM naming US 6,314,406. Everything that surfaced under a "631/"6314406" string was a false positive on a different patent. Details, including the leads I could not fully run down, are below.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on US 6,314,406: 0 (active: 0 / claims invalidated: 0 / claims sustained: 0 / settled: 0 / institution denied: 0). Every claim of the patent is UNTESTED at the PTAB — nothing has been canceled and nothing has been affirmed. For a defendant, that normally reads as an unlitigated, unhardened patent; here it is close to academic, because the patent expired on 2016-06-26 and, as explained in the strategic summary, a complaint filed today (2026-09-24) is time-barred in its entirety under 35 U.S.C. § 286 — there is no six-year damages window left that contains any potentially infringing act.

No proceedings to report

There is no {PROCEEDING_NUMBER} to populate. The canonical structured list is empty, and my independent search returned no AIA trial. Stating that explicitly, per the operating rules, rather than manufacturing a proceeding:

(none) — no Petitioner v. Telxon Corp. / Symbol Technologies, Inc. / Symbol Technologies LLC proceeding found

• Type: N/A — no Inter Partes Review, Post-Grant Review, or Covered Business Method review located.
• Filed: N/A
• Status: N/A (ODP: no AIA trial proceedings on file)
• Judge panel: N/A
• Petition grounds: N/A — no § 102 / § 103 / § 112 ground has ever been pleaded at the Board against this patent.
• Institution decision: N/A — no § 314(a)/§ 324(a) institution or denial decision exists.
• Final Written Decision: N/A — no claim has been canceled or sustained at the PTAB. I therefore cannot quote claim numbers from an FWD, and I will not invent any.
• Settlement / termination: N/A
• Appeal: No CAFC appeal from a PTAB proceeding exists (there was no proceeding to appeal).
• Defensive value: You get the best of both worlds — no PTAB estoppel and no adverse Board claim construction — but you also have no free "claims canceled" kill shot. Your defense rests on expiry, not on an FWD.

Leads I checked and false positives I ruled out

Two caveats on method, stated plainly: (1) my search tooling was step-limited, so I could not exhaustively enumerate PTAB E2E / Docket Alarm case captions for this patent; (2) the patent's own PTAB history is short enough that a docket-level confirmation is cheap and worth doing directly.

Why the absence is unsurprising rather than suspicious: this is a pre-AIA patent (priority 1996-06-26, filed 1997-08-29, granted 2001-11-06). PGR is categorically unavailable (it applies only to patents with an effective filing date on or after 2013-03-16), and the CBM transitional window — 2012-09-16 to 2020-09-16 — overlapped barely four years with the patent's pre-expiry life, during which the patent appears to have attracted no significant assertion campaign. CBM standing would also have been contested: this patent claims a retail/coupon shopping workflow, and the Board routinely held that retail-shopping claims lacking a "financial product or service" nexus are outside covered-business-method eligibility.

Strategic summary

Claim status. No claim of US 6,314,406 has been canceled, narrowed by amendment, or sustained in an AIA trial: all claims as issued are "untested" at the Board, not "surviving." That is materially different from the "hardened by surviving IPRs" posture — there is no Board-issued claim construction to leverage and no petitioner-side expert record to inherit. The practical value of that gap is limited, because the patent's legal status is Expired – Lifetime, with an anticipated expiration date of 2016-06-26 (20 years from the 1996-06-26 priority date). Rights that never get asserted during their enforceable life rarely generate IPR art.

Estoppel landscape. Because no IPR or PGR was ever instituted, § 315(e)(2) estoppel never attached to anyone. No petitioner, real party in interest, or privy is barred from raising any § 102/§ 103 ground, and no § 315(b) one-year clock has been started against any party by service of a complaint. You are free to raise any prior art — including art a hypothetical earlier petitioner "reasonably could have raised" — in district court or in a new petition. Conversely, you also do not inherit any helpful institution-denial record or FWD.

The decisive point for a defendant today — the patent is time-barred, not merely weak. The last day on which infringement of this patent was legally possible is 2016-06-26. Under 35 U.S.C. § 286, a patent owner may recover only for infringement committed within six years before the complaint is filed. Six years before today (2026-09-24) is 2020-09-24 — a date after the patent expired. There is therefore no recoverable infringement period at all for any complaint filed now. The same analysis makes the question of who the current owner is (Original assignee Telxon Corp.; current assignees of record Symbol Technologies LLC and Bank One Corp; the 2002-04-08 assignment to Symbol Technologies, Inc. and the 2015-07-08 change of name to Symbol Technologies, LLC) largely academic. If a demand letter or complaint cites this patent now, the correct first-line answer is expiry + § 286, before you ever reach invalidity.

Pattern signals. None. No serial petitioner, no repeat-filer pattern, no CAFC appeals by the patent owner from a PTAB outcome, and no defensive aggregator in the chain. The only structural signal worth noting is corporate: Telxon was acquired by Symbol Technologies in a stock-for-stock merger announced 2000-07-27, so the portfolio (including this patent's family — US 5,821,512, US 5,821,513, and US 6,119,935, each of which the '406 patent claims priority from) passed to Symbol and later to Symbol Technologies, LLC / Zebra-adjacent entities via the 2014-10-31 Morgan Stanley collateral-agent security agreement in the ZIH/Zebra family.

Recommended next steps

1. Confirm the negative at the source, once, on the record. Pull the patent's PTAB E2E / USPTO "Patent Trial" tab and the ODP trial endpoint for US 6,314,406, and capture the null result as an exhibit. A docket-level "no proceedings" printout is more useful to a court than a search-summary assertion.
2. Lead with expiry, not invalidity. For any current assertion: (a) patent expired 2016-06-26; (b) § 286 six-year bar reached back only to 2020-09-24 from today's date, an empty window; (c) no prospective injunctive relief is available for an expired patent. Note also that this § 286 math is rolling — it gets stronger every day, and it was already complete as of 2022-06-26.
3. Run down the W.D. Tex. RECAP hit at storage.courtlistener.com/recap/gov.uscourts.txwd.1098654/ to determine whether 6,314,406 was ever actually pleaded or listed in invalidity contentions. If it was asserted, that history is worth having (license/prior-judgment/§ 315(b) implications); if it was merely swept up in a bulk patent-number search query, note it and move on.
4. IPR is technically available but almost certainly not worth filing. An expired patent remains susceptible to an IPR petition (no statutory bar on that basis), but the estoppel upside is nil and the damages rationale is gone; the Board would also apply Phillips claim construction. Ex parte reexamination (§ 302) may likewise be foreclosed: MPEP 2202 treats the "period of enforceability" as extending six years past expiration, which here ran to roughly 2022-06-26. Verify with the CRU before relying on it either way.
5. If you do face a live demand, request the damages model. Any theory that seeks recovery will have to identify infringing acts before 2016-06-26 and within six years of filing — an impossible intersection. Ask for the date of first infringement and the date the complaint was or will be filed; the two dates dispose of the case.

Verification note: I could not open PTAB E2E or a full Docket Alarm docket for this patent due to search-step limits, and the patent text supplied to me ends before the claims section, so I cannot enumerate or quote the claim set. Every date and number above is drawn from the provided Google Patents record (priority 1996-06-26; filed 1997-08-29; granted 2001-11-06; anticipated expiration 2016-06-26) or from the cited public pages. If you need the FWD-style claim-level treatment, you will have to supply a proceeding that exists — this patent has none.