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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

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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.

I'll research the assignment chain, focusing on reel/frame data and correspondents of record.

Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction — US 6,314,406 B1 ("Customer information network")

Sourcing note, read first. I was able to retrieve the transaction-level assignment history (dates, conveyance types, assignor/assignee names) from the Google Patents legal-events record, which is derived from the USPTO assignment register. I was not able to retrieve reel/frame numbers or correspondent-of-record fields for any link in the chain — those fields live in the Assignment Center's full-text abstracts and in the assignment documents themselves, and the fetched record strips them. I exhausted my search budget attempting to recover them (querying assignmentcenter.uspto.gov, assignment.uspto.gov, and third-party mirrors). Every reel/frame slot below is marked <not retrieved> rather than populated. Per the operating rules, I am not substituting plausible-looking reel numbers.

Two Google Patents entries also disagree with themselves on conveyance type (see 1999-04-13 and 1999-09-09 below); I flag the conflict rather than silently resolving it.

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Inventors

Pattern assessment. All three inventors filed from greater-Akron addresses, consistent with employment at Telxon's Akron headquarters — nothing unusual there. The two points worth flagging:

1. Missing inventor-assignor. The 1997‑08‑29 USPTO record lists assignors "O'HAGAN, TIMOTHY P., TRAXLER, JAMES E." — Canda is absent. Either (a) Canda executed a separate assignment recorded under a different reel/frame not surfaced in the aggregated event table, or (b) the record is incomplete. This is a chain-of-title gap that would matter if this patent were ever enforced; for an expired patent it is academic, but a diligence file should carry the note.
2. No evidence of a pre-merger inventor exodus. I found no indication that any inventor left Telxon within 12 months of the 1997‑08‑29 filing. O'Hagan's Texas address appears on a family member years later, not in a 12-month window. The "portfolio fire-sale precursor" pattern is therefore not present on this record.

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Original assignee

Telxon Corporation (Akron, Ohio; Delaware corporation — the 1999‑04‑13 record expressly identifies the assignor as "TELXON CORPORATION, A DELAWARE CORPORATION").

• Primary line of business. Design and manufacture of portable/handheld barcode data-collection terminals and wireless data networks for retail, inventory, and industrial applications. At the relevant time Telxon and MSI Data were the two largest U.S. players in handheld data entry. Source: LA Times, 1988‑10‑18 (Telxon described as "the nation's leading manufacturer of hand-held devices for entering inventory data").
• Did Telxon ship a product embodying the claims? Unclear on the record I have. Telxon clearly shipped handheld data-collection hardware, but I found no evidence that Telxon itself commercialized the cart-mounted, in-store customer information terminal of FIG. 2a. The commercial embodiment that is documented is the "Symbol Technologies Portable Shopping System" (Integration Guide, 2000; Symbol PDT 2800/6800/8100 reference guides; a 2005 "Giant Foods self-service concept store"). Those are cited in a PTAB IDS in Target Corp. v. Proxicom Wireless LLC, IPR2020‑00932 — i.e., the embodiment is a successor's product, launched after the 2000 merger.
• Current status. Acquired and dissolved as an independent entity. Symbol Technologies, Inc. announced a stock-for-stock merger of Telxon on 2000‑07‑27 (equity value ≈ $465M on Symbol's prior close, plus $107M of Telxon convertible debt); Symbol shareholders were to hold >90% of the combined company. Source: Symbol Technologies press release, 2000‑07‑27. This was a merger, not a Chapter 7/11 liquidation — relevant to signal 6 below.
• Downstream corporate fate (context, not independently re-verified this session). Symbol Technologies was later absorbed into Motorola, and the Symbol enterprise business passed into the Zebra Technologies family by 2014 — the 2014‑10‑31 recorded security agreement names ZIH Corp. and Zebra Enterprise Solutions Corp. alongside Symbol Technologies, Inc., which corroborates the Zebra linkage on the face of the assignment register itself.

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Assignment timeline

Reel/frame and correspondent fields: <not retrieved> for all entries. Nothing below is inferred or reconstructed from naming patterns. Dates, conveyance types, and assignor/assignee names are taken verbatim from the Google Patents legal-events record for US6314406B1.

• 1997-08-29 (executed) / recorded 1997-08-29 — Reel <not retrieved>

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: O'Hagan, Timothy P.; Traxler, James E.
  • Assignee: Telxon Corporation
  • Correspondent: <not retrieved>
  • Context: Initial filing-time assignment of invention rights to the employer. Note the record date equals the filing date (1997‑08‑29), and note the missing inventor Canda.

• 1999-03-30 (executed) / recorded 1999-03-30 — Reel <not retrieved>

  • Conveyance: Security interest
  • Assignor: Telxon Corporation
  • Assignee: The Bank of New York
  • Correspondent: <not retrieved>
  • Context: Securitization — collateral grant over the Telxon patent estate in favor of a credit agent.

• 1999-04-13 (executed) / recorded 1999-04-13 — Reel <not retrieved>

  • Conveyance: Recorded as "Assignment of assignors' interest" — but functionally a security interest. Google Patents labels this record "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST," naming Bank One, N.A. as assignee and Telxon Corporation, a Delaware corporation as assignor. The 1999‑09‑09 release naming Bank One as releasing party proves the instrument operated as collateral, not as a title transfer. I report the label as rendered and flag the discrepancy — this is exactly the kind of mislabeled conveyance that corrupts automated chain-of-title tooling.
  • Assignor: Telxon Corporation, a Delaware corporation
  • Assignee: Bank One, N.A.
  • Correspondent: <not retrieved>
  • Context: Securitization — credit facility to Bank One (the "Swing Line," "Bank One Letter of Credit," and "Bank One" collateral-agent language appears in the underlying Telxon/Bank One patent-and-trademark security agreement, Law Insider).

• 1999-09-09 (executed) / recorded 1999-09-09 — Reel <not retrieved>

  • Conveyance: Release of security interest
  • Assignor: Bank One, N.A.
  • Assignee: Telxon Corporation
  • Correspondent: <not retrieved>
  • Context: Securitization unwind — the Bank One collateral interest is extinguished five months after recording.

• 1999-09-09 (executed) / recorded 1999-09-09 — Reel <not retrieved>

  • Conveyance: Security interest
  • Assignor: Telxon Corporation
  • Assignee: Foothill Capital Corporation, as agent
  • Correspondent: <not retrieved>
  • Context: Securitization — replacement/refinancing collateral package (Bank One out, Foothill in on the same day).

• 1999-09-09 (executed) / recorded 1999-09-09 — Reel <not retrieved>

  • Conveyance: Release by secured party
  • Assignor: The Bank of New York, as agent
  • Assignee: Telxon Corporation
  • Correspondent: <not retrieved>
  • Context: Securitization unwind — the 1999‑03‑30 Bank of New York interest is released, completing a same-day refinancing of the collateral package.

• 2002-04-08 (executed) / recorded 2002-04-08 — Reel <not retrieved>

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Telxon Corporation
  • Assignee: Symbol Technologies, Inc.
  • Correspondent: <not retrieved>
  • Context: Acquisition/post-merger confirmation. Note the ~16-month lag between the 2000‑07‑27 merger announcement and this 2002‑04‑08 recording, and note that the recorded conveyance is a confirmatory assignment, not a "Merger" document. The underlying transaction was the Symbol–Telxon stock-for-stock merger, so the equitable transfer date and the recorded transfer date differ materially — a diligence flag if priority of title ever mattered.

• 2005-01-05 (executed) / recorded 2005-01-05 — Reel <not retrieved>

  • Conveyance: Security interest
  • Assignor: Symbol Technologies, Inc.
  • Assignee: JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.
  • Correspondent: <not retrieved>
  • Context: Securitization — a second-generation collateral grant over the Symbol patent estate.

• 2005-10-05 (executed) / recorded 2005-10-05 — Reel <not retrieved>

  • Conveyance: Release of security agreement
  • Assignor: Wells Fargo Foothill, Inc. (formerly Foothill Capital Corporation)
  • Assignee: Telxon Corporation
  • Correspondent: <not retrieved>
  • Context: Securitization unwind — releases the 1999 Foothill interest. Note the assignee on this 2005 release is still "Telxon Corporation," three years after Telxon assigned the '406 to Symbol. That is a mechanical artifact of the release being tied to the 1999 instrument's named grantor; it should not be read as Telxon re-acquiring title.

• 2010-12-03 (executed) / recorded 2010-12-03 — Reel <not retrieved>

  • Conveyance: Release by secured party
  • Assignor: JPMorgan Chase Bank, N.A.
  • Assignee: Symbol Technologies, Inc.
  • Correspondent: <not retrieved>
  • Context: Securitization unwind — releases the 2005 JPMorgan Chase interest.

• 2014-10-31 (executed) / recorded 2014-10-31 — Reel <not retrieved>

  • Conveyance: Security agreement
  • Assignor: Laser Band, LLC; Symbol Technologies, Inc.; Zebra Enterprise Solutions Corp.; ZIH Corp. (joint and several grantors)
  • Assignee: Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc., as the collateral agent
  • Correspondent: <not retrieved>
  • Context: Securitization at the Zebra-family level. This is the entry that puts the patent inside the Zebra Technologies corporate/financing perimeter — the co-grantors ZIH Corp. and Zebra Enterprise Solutions Corp. are Zebra entities.

• 2015-07-08 (executed) / recorded 2015-07-08 — Reel <not retrieved>

  • Conveyance: Change of name
  • Assignor: Symbol Technologies, Inc.
  • Assignee: Symbol Technologies, LLC
  • Correspondent: <not retrieved>
  • Context: Change of name only — no change in equitable ownership. Note the date: the '406 patent had already expired on 2016‑06‑26? No — expiry was still ~11.5 months away. But note that this is the last recorded ownership event on the patent, and it is a re-incorporation/name change, not a transfer. This is the entry that explains why Google Patents' "Current Assignee" field reads "Symbol Technologies LLC."

• 2015-08-17 (executed) / recorded 2015-08-17 — Reel <not retrieved>

  • Conveyance: Release by secured party
  • Assignor: Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc.
  • Assignee: Symbol Technologies, Inc.
  • Correspondent: <not retrieved>
  • Context: Securitization unwind — releases the 2014 collateral interest, one month after the name change to Symbol Technologies, LLC.

No further records after 2015‑08‑17. The patent expired 2016‑06‑26 with Symbol Technologies, LLC as assignee of record.

Correspondent recurrence: cannot be assessed — zero correspondent fields retrieved. I will not characterize this signal without the data.

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6314406
    1996 : Priority date Jun 26
    1997 : Filed by Telxon Corp Aug 29
         : Inventor assignment recorded to Telxon
    1999 : Bank of New York security interest
         : Bank One security interest
         : Both released as Foothill steps in
    2000 : Symbol agrees to acquire Telxon
    2001 : Patent issues Nov 6
    2002 : Assignment recorded to Symbol Technologies
    2005 : JPMorgan Chase security interest
         : Wells Fargo Foothill release
    2010 : JPMorgan Chase release
    2014 : Morgan Stanley collateral agent filing
    2015 : Name change to Symbol Technologies LLC
         : Morgan Stanley release
    2016 : Patent expires Jun 26

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

Signals not on the checklist but present on this record:

• Repeated refinancing of the same collateral pool. Telxon grants/refinances/releases patent collateral three times in five months in 1999 (Bank of New York in, Bank One in, then Foothill in with the other two released the same day). This is a distressed-credit footprint, and it is the most distinctive feature of this chain — but it is a lender footprint, not an NPE footprint.
• One mislabeled conveyance. The 1999‑04‑13 Bank One record is docketed as an "assignment of assignors' interest" while operating as a security interest, as the 1999‑09‑09 release proves. Automated chain-of-title systems that key on the recorded conveyance label will wrongly report a 1999 title transfer to Bank One, which in turn is why the Google Patents front page shows "Bank One Corp" as a current assignee alongside Symbol Technologies LLC. That is a register-rendering artifact, not a second owner. (This corroborates, and builds on, the inconsistency flagged in the Patent Summary section above.)

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Verdict

Defensive / non-asserting.

Justification. Every recorded link in this chain is either a security interest by a commercial lender that was subsequently released (Bank of New York 1999‑03‑30; Bank One 1999‑04‑13, released 1999‑09‑09; Foothill Capital 1999‑09‑09, released 2005‑10‑05; JPMorgan Chase 2005‑01‑05, released 2010‑12‑03; Morgan Stanley Senior Funding 2014‑10‑31, released 2015‑08‑17) or a transfer between operating companies (Telxon → Symbol Technologies, Inc., recorded 2002‑04‑08, following the 2000‑07‑27 stock-for-stock merger) — and the chain's final event is a pure change of name to Symbol Technologies, LLC on 2015‑07‑08 with no change in equitable ownership. Not one of the eight NPE signals is present, and the two signals that are genuinely unevaluable (correspondent recurrence, #3) are unevaluable because of a retrieval gap, not because of ambiguity in the record. Explicit schema caveat: this patent is the closest thing to an operating-company assertion — Symbol Technologies is a manufacturer whose "Portable Shopping System" appears to embody the claims — but the "assertion" prong fails outright: no litigation or PTAB proceeding naming US 6,314,406 was found in any prior research pass, and the patent expired 2016‑06‑26, so no assertion is now possible. I select Defensive / non-asserting as the nearest of the eight enumerated categories, while noting that the category's stated definition ("chain terminates at a defensive aggregator") does not fit: the chain terminates at an operating-company subsidiary of the Zebra Technologies family. The functional conclusion for NPE-tracking purposes is the same and is unambiguous: this is a manufacturer-owned, never-asserted, expired patent — not a troll asset.

Verify at source: USPTO Assignment Center — search patent 6314406 · alternate Assignment Search interface, pre-filled query. A five-minute pull there will fill the two fields I could not: reel/frame for each of the 13 records and the correspondent of record on each — the last of which is the only way to close signal #3.

I'll pull the USPTO record and the cited references for US 6,314,406, then map each reference against the claims.

Let me pull the actual "References Cited" table from the patent record.

Prior Art Analysis — US 6,314,406 B1 ("Customer information network")

0. Headline finding, stated before anything else

I could not retrieve the (56) "References Cited" list that appears on the face of US 6,314,406, and I will not reconstruct it from memory. That list is the exact thing your request asks me to walk through, and three independent limitations blocked me:

1. The authoritative full text I was given is truncated inside the description — it stops mid‑sentence at FIG. 37 ("Each icon is made up of an array of a numb…"). The claim set and the front‑page bibliographic block, including the (56) citations, are simply not in my copy.
2. My searches did not surface the granted‑PDF front page or the Google Patents "Patent Citations" table for this patent. Every "6314406" hit I got was either (a) a forward citation (a later document citing the '406), (b) a family/priority link, or (c) a false positive on a different patent number.
3. I exhausted my search budget before I could pull the one page that has the list (see the retrieval recipe in §7).

Consequence for your specific question: I can give you a defensible § 102 framework and I can tell you exactly which retrieved documents are § 102‑eligible by date — but "which claim(s) does reference X anticipate" cannot be answered responsibly until the (56) list is in hand. Anything I wrote there would be invention, not analysis.

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1. Three different things are called "citations" — only one of them is prior art

Buckets B and C are the only ones my sources surfaced. Here is everything I could verify in them, plus the date math that shows why neither can anticipate.

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2. Bucket B — the continuity citations that are on the face of the '406 (verified)

The only "citations" I could confirm as printed on the '406 record are its priority/benefit claims:

Sources: Google Patents US6314406B1; family annex in the ISR reproduced at WO2008044946A1; MX2007013386 citation list.

§ 102 analysis of Bucket B — none of these can anticipate any claim

Related international members, same conclusion: WO 97/50055 (published 1997‑12‑31) and WO 98/20440 (published 1998‑05‑14) both post‑date the 1997‑08‑29 filing → no § 102(b). As international applications designating the US they are § 102(e)‑eligible only from their US filing/§ 371(c) date and only if the inventive entity differs — common inventors here, so no. (Both appear in the family annex cited above.)

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3. Bucket C — forward citations: verified, but categorically not prior art

Google Patents reports Cited By (43) for the '406. Representative entries I retrieved, with the date math:

The one item worth a follow‑up flag: US 5,804,803 (IBM), filed 1996‑04‑02. It is the single date‑eligible candidate I recovered. If it does appear in the '406's (56) block, it is a genuine pre‑AIX § 102(e) reference and needs a real element‑by‑element reading. I cannot confirm its role from what I retrieved.

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4. The literature that examiners actually used against this family's subject matter (context, not '406 art)

One search result is genuinely informative about how examiners treated the family's claims — even though it is not the (56) block of the '406. The Australian ISR for WO 2008/044946 A1 cited, as X (single‑reference novelty destroys), against claims 1–10 of that application:

• US 6,484,939 B1 (Blaeuer), 2002‑11‑26 — X against claims 1–4 and 8–10
• US 5,821,512 A (O'Hagan et al.), 1998‑10‑13 — X against claims 1, 2, 4 and 8

Source: WO2008044946A1 ISR.

Read this carefully and do not invert it. It shows the '406's sibling (US 5,821,512) is strong novelty‑destroying art against third parties — useful for your defensive posture generally. It tells you nothing about what anticipates the '406, because a common‑inventor sibling cannot be § 102 art against it (same reasoning as § 2).

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5. § 102 element checklist — what a genuine anticipatory reference would have to show

Since I cannot name the references, here is the map you (or I, once the (56) list is supplied) would run them against. Claim 1 and the coupon/shopping‑list claims are characterized from the specification's own summary recitations, which track the independent claims nearly verbatim (see the prior summary section — the disclaimer there about verbatim claim wording still stands).

Statutory gate for all of the above (pre‑AIA patent, priority 1996‑06‑26): a reference can only anticipate under § 102(a)/(b) if published or in public use before 1996‑06‑26 (or before 1996‑06‑26 minus one year for § 102(b) printed publications tied to the '406's own filing), or under § 102(e) if its US filing date precedes the '406's invention date (swearable back under pre‑AIA 37 CFR 1.131). § 102(f)/(g) apply to derivation/prior invention. Post‑1996 documents in the "Cited By" list are structurally incapable of anticipation.

Also relevant: the front‑page field of search for the '406 is CPC G07F7/02; G06K17/0022; G06K7/0004; G06K7/0008; G06K7/083–084; G06K7/10712; G06K7/10722; G06Q20/20; G06Q20/202; G06Q20/34; G06Q20/343; G06Q30/02 and its sub‑groups; G07G1/0036; G07G1/0045; H01M10/42–44; H02J7/00, 7/731, 7/751, with prior‑art keywords customer, computer, data, network, product. That tells you the shape of the cited art (bar‑code reading + POS + coupon/rebate + cart‑terminal power/charging) — not its identity.

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6. Literal‑ID discipline — near misses I explicitly excluded

Per the strict rule, I treated every string literally and did not auto‑correct. These surfaced under a "6314406"‑family search and are not US 6,314,406:

• JP 6314406 B2 — Japanese Patent No. 6314406, Hitachi Metals/NEOMAX, application 特願2013‑208397 filed 2013‑10‑03, registered 2018‑04‑06, published 2018‑04‑25, 8 claims, "気密封止用キャップ" (hermetic sealing cap / package for housing electronic component). Different jurisdiction, subject matter, and era. JP6314406B2 PDF
• US 2008/0303421 A1 — electrophosphorescent OLED publication; its INPADOC string displays a stray "US6314406A" derived from its own serial 12/063,144. A numbering artifact, not an association with the Telxon patent.
• Adjacent‑number US patents that appeared in the same search lists and must not be merged with 6,314,406: US 6,312,175 B1; US 6,313,853 B1; US 6,314,457 B1; US 6,314,940 B1; US 6,315,447 B1; US 6,316,710 B1; US 6,318,087 B1; US 6,319,015 B1. Each is a distinct, unrelated document (e.g., US 6,314,940 = a German‑origin engine‑control filing, EP 1 039 112 A2 family).

One internal discrepancy to flag rather than silently repair: the earlier‑generated summary lists 08/752,301 (filed 1996‑11‑19) as a fourth parent, but the Google Patents front page I was given shows only three external‑priority entries (08/668,343; 08/744,109; 08/770,690). This does not change any conclusion in § 2, but the parent count/identity should be reconciled against the IFW continuity data.

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7. How to get the actual (56) list in one step each

Run these and the § 102 mapping becomes mechanical:

1. Granted‑PDF front page — USPTO/Google hosted US6314406B1, column 1, block "(56) References Cited → U.S. PATENT DOCUMENTS / FOREIGN PATENT DOCUMENTS / OTHER PUBLICATIONS." This is the authoritative list and includes the examiner's initials and any PTO‑892/1449 entries.
2. Google Patents → "Patent Citations" section on patents.google.com/patent/US6314406B1/en (distinct from the "Cited By" tab I did retrieve).
3. USPTO Patent Center / IFW for application 08/921,235 → "References Cited" and the PTO‑892/PTO‑1449 documents, which also show which reference the examiner applied and against which claim.
4. ODP / OPS equivalent of (3) if you want it machine‑readable.

Once you paste that list, I can complete the deliverable exactly as specified — full citation, publication and filing date, brief description, and the specific claim(s) each reference potentially anticipates under § 102(a), (b), (e), (f), or (g).

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Confidence statement

• High confidence: the parents (US 5,821,512 / 5,821,513 / 6,119,935) and the family's WO publications are not § 102 art against the '406, and no returned forward citation except US 5,804,803 A is even date‑eligible as § 102(e) art. The '406's claims run to at least 30 and I do not have their verbatim text.
• Zero confidence (deliberately): the identity of the references in the '406's (56) block, and therefore any claim‑specific anticipation mapping. I am reporting a null, not guessing.

I'll ground the obviousness analysis in the actual prior-art of record. Let me pull the patent's cited references and related art.

Let me pull the actual list of references cited on the face of the '406 patent.

§ 103 Obviousness Analysis — US 6,314,406 B1 ("Customer information network")

Threshold note on the evidentiary record (please read first)

The task directs me to "use the results from the Prior Art section of this page." No Prior Art section was transmitted to me in this conversation. The materials I received are: (a) the truncated Google Patents full text (ending mid‑sentence at FIG. 37), and (b) the previously generated Summary, Litigation, PTAB, and Strategic sections. None of those contains a prior‑art listing for the '406 patent.

Compounding this, my search budget was exhausted before I could retrieve the patent's own (56) References Cited block, and the supplied authoritative text omits the claims. I therefore do not have the patent's cited‑art list, and — per the operating rules — I will not invent one.

What I can do, and what follows, is a § 103 analysis built on prior art I could actually verify in live sources as being in the same field and in this patent's own family record. Every reference identifier below is tagged as either [V] (verified in a live search result this session, with URL) or [U] (from my training knowledge — unverified here; verify before relying on it in a filing). I flag the CIP priority problem, which is the single most consequential issue for this analysis.

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1. Governing framework

Under Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966), and KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007), the analysis turns on: scope/content of the prior art; differences between the art and the claims; the level of ordinary skill; and objective indicia. Under KSR, a combination is obvious where the elements were known, the combination is "nothing more than the predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions," or where a "design incentive, market force, or other motivation" supplied the reason to combine.

PHOSITA (1996 priority date). A person with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering or computer science and 2–4 years of experience in retail POS terminals, portable data‑capture/bar‑code systems, or wireless LAN deployment — or equivalent practical experience. This was a well‑populated, commercially active art from the mid‑1980s onward, which matters: the more predictable the field, the stronger the case for obviousness.

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2. The CIP priority problem — this is where the analysis starts

Per the Google Patents record (US6314406B1), the '406 claims priority from four Telxon applications filed 1996‑06‑26, 1996‑11‑05, 1996‑11‑19 and 1996‑12‑19, and was itself filed 1997‑08‑29. The specification states it is a continuation‑in‑part.

Consequence: claim subject matter that is not supported by the four parents gets only the 1997‑08‑29 effective filing date. That is not a technicality — it materially expands the § 102/§ 103 art available against the home‑terminal / coupon‑scanning aspects (States that are the heart of independent aspects 2–4 in the Summary section), because references published or filed in the June 1996 – August 1997 window become prior art as to that new matter.

Note also a disqualification: the sibling patents US 5,821,512, US 5,821,513 and US 6,119,935 share the same inventive entity and Telxon ownership. They therefore cannot supply § 102(e)/§ 103 art against the '406 — pre‑AIA § 103(c) common‑ownership disqualification applies. Any obviousness theory that leans on Telxon's own '512/'513 terminals is defective on its face. The in‑store terminal features must instead be met by third‑party art.

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3. Verified prior art in the field (the building blocks)

The reference to freepatentsonline.com/7762458.html is notable because it lists US 6,314,406 itself next to US 5,287,266 (Malec) in a single citation table — i.e., later examiners treated the Telxon cart‑network disclosure and the Malec intelligent‑cart disclosure as occupying the same art space.

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4. Grounds of rejection

Ground A — Independent aspect 1 ("retail customer information system"): host data processing device + portable transaction computer with GUI/icon display + first data channel

Combination: Bianco '614 or Malec '266, in view of the cart‑terminal architecture taught by EP 0 170 194 / WO 89/03555, further in view of conventional RF‑LAN access‑point networking (IEEE 802.11‑era spread‑spectrum, which the spec itself names at the "Aironet 640 / Aironet 025" passage).

• Elements: cart‑mounted portable terminal with interactive display — Bianco/Malec/EP '194. Host storing product/marketing data and serving it to the terminal over a wireless channel — EP '194/WO '355 as characterised in Telxon's own EP 1 278 146. Iconic/graphical display of fetched data — routine GUI practice in POS terminals by 1994–96.
• Motivation (KSR): Wholly predictable combination of known elements; the same field; the spec itself recites that the problems solved (long checkout lines, floor‑space cost, price‑labeling cost) were pre‑existing and known — see the '406 background's own list of "a number of problems." Self‑identified market forces are among the strongest motivations available.
• Expectation of success: High. Each element existed off‑the‑shelf.

Assessment: Aspect 1 is highly vulnerable. The only arguable differentiator is the "marketing data in a plurality of data fields" limitation, which is a data‑structure recitation with no recited technical effect.

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Ground B — Independent aspect 2 ("shopping system network" host + customer computer + optical scanner + coupon): the strongest rejection

Combination: Bianco '614 (or Malec '266) in view of US 6,279,112 (Open Market) or US 5,804,803 (IBM) in view of coupon‑validation art of the Pruchnicki/Deaton type [U].

• Elements: host + client over a network — IBM '803 / Open Market '112. Optical scanner at the customer side decoding a code to retrieve remote data — IBM '803. Coupon with stored customer‑coupon data and value/expiration fields reconciled against a purchase — Pruchnicki/Deaton‑type art [U].
• Motivation (KSR "market forces" + "predictable variation"): The '406 specification itself supplies the motivation, expressly reciting that coupon misredemption "is estimated to be as high as 20%–30%," that customers clip and sort coupons by hand, and that retailers expend "considerable man hours" on coupon handling. A PHOSITA reading that art in 1996 would plainly have been motivated to move coupon indicia capture from the checkout lane to an optical scanner connected to a home computer — the specification frames it as the obvious answer to a stated economic problem.
• Substitution rationale: Replacing a printed coupon's human‑readable value with a machine‑readable dataform is a simple substitution of one known element (bar code) for another (printed text) to obtain its predictable result (automated capture) — KSR rationale (B). Coupons already bore UPC and value codes; the change is one of degree, not kind.

Assessment: The breadth of the coupon/host/customer‑network claim makes this Ground the most efficient § 103 attack. Dependents 27–30 (per the Summary section, unverified wording) add only (i) alerting the user of a discount via GUI or speaker, (ii) specifying the customer computer as a wirelessly‑coupleable portable terminal, and (iii) adding a wirelessly coupleable portable computing device. Each of (i)–(iii) is met by the Malec '266 cart terminal with its display and position awareness plus the routine use of audio/visual indicators in bar‑code terminals (the '406 spec itself uses an audible "beep" as the read indicator and a speaker for audials).

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Ground C — Independent aspect 3 (the coupon article itself: paper bearing optically identifiable indicia encoding bitmap data for display on a GUI)

Combination: Coupon‑format art (printed coupon bearing machine‑readable code) in view of high‑capacity two‑dimensional symbology art (the PDF417‑class "portable data file" symbologies, and art on encoding images/compressed bitmaps into such symbologies) [U — ID unverified].

• Elements: Paper carrier with printed indicia — the definition of a coupon, admitted prior art throughout the specification. Dense 2D symbology capable of carrying kilobytes — 1996 state of the art.
• Motivation: KSR rationale (C)/(D) — applying a known technique (2D symbology, already used to encode data files embedded in documents) to a known device (a printed coupon) that was ready for improvement, to obtain the predictable result (self‑contained markup/coupon data). The specification's own narrative — that a 2D bar code "permits a greater amount of encoded data to be stored in a given bar code area" and that the manufacturer "can incorporate the actual bitmap for Tide®… into the bar code of the coupon" — reads as an express design choice rather than an inventive insight.
• Weakness in the art: I could not verify a specific reference teaching bitmap/icon image data encoded in a coupon's 2D code. If the prior art only teaches coupon data (value, expiry, UPC) and not bitmap artwork carried in the symbology, this narrow article claim may be the one claim with a colorable non‑obviousness argument — though it would still be exposed under § 103 as a predictable variation on data encoding, and would likely fall to art showing photographs/logos encoded in 2D symbols for catalogue or identity applications [U].

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Ground D — Independent aspect 4 ("shopping system network" — host stores product list; customer generates a shopping list from it)

Combination: Online/tele‑shopping art (IBM '803; Open Market '112) in view of the intelligent‑cart list‑download art (Malec '266; Bianco '614).

• Claim 4's substance is downloading a host‑maintained catalog to a client and selecting items into a client‑side list — a paradigm that was in commercial use by the mid‑1990s (online services, electronic order entry, EDI catalogs).
• Motivation: The stated efficiency rationale (fresh prices; no manual transcription) is a market‑force rationale on its face, and the specification gives away that only "about 4MB" of product data is involved — a size that made download trivially obvious.
• Assessment: The weakest independent claim; likely rejected on a single reference plus routine‑skill evidence.

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5. Motivation‑to‑combine synthesis

Across all four grounds the KSR record is unusually favorable to a challenger:

1. Same field of endeavor. Every reference is retail data capture, POS, electronic shopping, coupon redemption, or networked information retrieval. No analogous‑art or reasonable‑expectation‑of‑success fight.
2. The specification concedes the problems. Long checkout lines, coupon sorting, 20–30% misredemption, wasted floor space, price‑labeling costs, and customers wandering aisles are all recited as known problems. Admissions in the specification are prior‑art admissions.
3. Off‑the‑shelf components. The spec names commodity parts: Aironet 640/025 RF hardware, a 16550/16450 UART, a Pentium‑class CPU, thermal printer, PDF417‑class 2D imaging, and an HTML browser. A combination of commodity parts performing their known functions is per se KSR‑suspect.
4. Predictable combination. "Host serves data to a portable terminal over a wireless channel, and a customer scans goods/coupons to build a list" produces no surprising or synergistic result; the claims recite no technical effect beyond the ordinary.
5. No teaching away identified. Neither EP 0 170 194, WO 89/03555, Bianco '614 nor Malec '266 appears to disparage home‑side scanning, networked coupon reconciliation, or image data on coupons.

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6. Objective indicia (Graham factor 4)

I found no evidence of secondary considerations, and the record suggests none exists: no litigation asserting the '406 (per the Litigation section), no PTAB proceeding (per the PTAB section), no licensing program surfaced, and no published finding of nexus between any commercial product and these claims. The patent's family passed through Telxon → Symbol Technologies, Inc. (2002‑04‑08) → Symbol Technologies, LLC (2015) as portfolio assets. That is a silent record, which favors the challenger on the fourth Graham factor — but it is an absence of evidence, not affirmative evidence of obviousness.

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7. Ranked conclusions

Overall: On the art I was able to verify, the '406's independent claims would very likely be held obvious under § 103, with the coupon‑article claim (bitmap‑in‑barcode) as the only plausible survivor, and only if the specific image‑encoding‑in‑symbology reference cannot be produced. That conclusion is doubly academic here: as the Strategic section establishes, the patent expired 2016‑06‑26 and the § 286 damages window closed 2020‑09‑24, so any § 103 analysis is defensive/anachronistic rather than operative.

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8. Limits of this analysis (stated plainly)

• The Prior Art section referenced in the task was not supplied to me, and I could not retrieve the patent's (56) References Cited block before exhausting my search budget. I did not obtain the patent's official art list.
• The claim set is unavailable — my authoritative text ends mid‑sentence in the FIG. 37 description, before "What is claimed is." Claim numbering, exact preambles, and whether the coupon/host/customer claim is claim 5 or claim 20 remain unverified, as flagged in the Summary section. My analysis treats the four independent aspects the Summary section identified from the specification's own summary recitations.
• Identifiers marked [U] (US 5,185,695; US 5,201,010; the 2D bitmap‑encoding art) come from training knowledge, not from a verified source in this session. They must be confirmed before being cited in any filing.
• I did not review the prosecution history, so I cannot say which art the examiner actually applied or whether any rejection was overcome — which is precisely the gap a real § 103 opinion would need to close.

Recommended verification before relying on any of the above: pull the '406 face‑page (56) list from USPTO Patent Center / PAIR; obtain the full claim set; confirm the CIP date allocation claim‑by‑claim; and confirm the Pruchnicki/Deaton and 2D‑bitmap identifiers.