US 6379058

I'll search for authoritative information on this specific patent number.

Let me check for litigation and Federal Circuit activity involving this specific patent.

Let me do a few more targeted searches for appellate and PTAB activity.

US Patent 6,379,058 B1 — Analyst Summary

Important scoping note: My searches of public patent databases, USPTO portals, PTAB records, and Federal Circuit docket reporting surfaced no litigation, PTAB proceeding, or CAFC appeal specifically involving US 6,379,058. Below I state what I could verify and flag where I lack authoritative confirmation. Per your standing rule, I have not altered any patent number or identifier.

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Bibliographic Data (verified)

Assignee chain (from recorded reassignments): inventors → COMTEC INFORMATION SYSTEMS, INC. (recorded 2000-05-22) → ZIH CORP. (recorded 2001-05-21); later security interests to Morgan Stanley Senior Funding (2014) and JPMorgan Chase (2017, 2019); ZIH Corp. merged into ZEBRA TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION (recorded 2019-03-29). Note the OCR of the front page renders the lead inventor's name as "Peteruti," but the inventor list and the Justia/Google listings consistently give Steven F. Petteruti — the "Peteruti" spelling appears to be an OCR artifact, not a different person. I flag this because it is an identifier discrepancy rather than a data point I can independently resolve.

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Abstract (as issued)

A system for RF communication between a host terminal or computer system ("host") and a portable printer. The host has an RF communication interface and is programmed to send/receive data to the printer. The printer has a printing mechanism, an RF interface, and a programmed controller that links with a host and then operates responsive to data received from the linked host. Each printer has a unique serial number recorded in a barcode on the printer housing and/or in an RFID tag coupled to the printer. The host uses either an optical scanner or an RFID transmitter/receiver to read the barcode or tag and thereby obtain the serial number, which it maps to a unique printer address. Linking proceeds by: host sends a first packet addressed to the printer's address → printer sends a second packet in response → host sends a third packet carrying the host's unique address → subsequent data traffic is accepted by the printer based on the host address. Multiple hosts can be linked; before transmitting, a device may first locate a clear RF channel.

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Plain-Language Overview of the Independent Claims

System claims

• Claim 1 — Broadest claim. A system with (a) at least one host with RF communication capability, (b) at least one portable printer with RF communication capability, and (c) a linking means that includes reading an optical or RF identifier on the printer so the host can address the printer over RF. Covers both barcode and RFID identification generically.

• Claim 2 — Adds detail: the printer's controller operates on commands from its linked host until another host links to it; the printer has a unique identifier and address; the housing carries a barcode of that identifier; and the host's linking means includes an optical barcode scanner plus logic to derive the printer's address from the scanned identifier.

• Claim 3 — Same structure as claim 2, but the identifier is carried on an RFID tag coupled to the printer housing, and the host's linking means is an RFID tag reader with address-derivation logic.

• Claim 8 — Reverse-direction linking. The linking means is the printer broadcasting a link request packet to host(s) in proximity; whichever host responds becomes linked to the printer. This is the claimed answer to hosts lacking barcode/RFID read capability.

• Claim 25 — "Manual entry" variant. System with host and printer as above, where the linking means allows the printer's identifier to be input manually at the host so the host can address the printer in RF communication.

Method claims

• Claim 14 — Method counterpart to claim 1: the linking step includes reading an optical or RF identifier of the printer so the host can address the printer over RF.

• Claim 15 — Linking a host and printer; operating the printer responsive to the linked host until another host links; and identifying the printer's address by associating an identifier read from a barcode or RFID tag on/associated with the printer.

• Claim 20 — Linking method in which the printer broadcasts a link request to one or more hosts, and the responding host becomes linked.

Key dependent claims worth noting: claims 4–7 (the four-packet handshake: first/wakeup packet with printer address → ready packet → force-link packet with host address → accept-link packet, then data packets; plus group/broadcast addressing); claims 9–11 (host-attachable RF module; negotiation of baud rate and encoding format); claims 12–13 (clear-channel establishment by host and/or printer); claims 16–19 and 21–24 (method counterparts to the handshake, negotiation, clear channel, and broadcast-linking features).

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Prior Art Cited on the Face of the Patent (selective)

US 4,734,710 (Sato, thermal label printer); US 5,267,800 and US 5,806,993 (Comtec, miniature portable interactive printers — the patent notes these are incorporated by reference for the printer hardware); US 5,503,483; US 5,520,470 (Telxon); US 5,524,185; US 5,555,351 (Monarch); US 5,696,499 (Canon); US 5,726,431; US 5,805,807 / US 6,192,400 (Norand/Intermec); US 6,003,538 (Monarch); US 6,004,053; US 6,010,257. The '058 disclosure expressly incorporates US 5,806,993, US 5,267,800, and US 6,005,053.

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Litigation / Post-Grant Status — What I Could and Could Not Confirm

• No CAFC 2026 docket, PTAB IPR/PGR, or district court case asserting US 6,379,058 was found in my searches. I cannot confirm the absence with certainty, but nothing surfaced.
• The only document I found referencing the number in a PTAB/PTO context is a third-party PTAB petition exhibit in which US-6379058 appears inside a citation string (OR US-6379058-$.DID), i.e., as a cited reference, not as the challenged patent. I could not verify which petition this was.
• WO2013/081686A1 (Apple Inc.) — "Authenticating printers prior to pairing with portable electronic devices" — cites US 6,379,058 B1 in its international search report as an X-category document against claims 1, 7, 11, 18, and its family table lists "US 6379058 B1 … 30-04-2002 … NONE" (no family members).
• The Google Patents page lists the patent as Cited By 273 later documents (the summary block also shows an "87" figure; the two counts appear in different views of the same page and I could not reconcile them). Notable citing families include Flexiworld Technologies, Lexmark (handheld printers), Adasa, Metrologic, and Avery Dennison.
• Zebra-related litigation I found does not assert this patent: Hand Held Products, Inc. et al. v. Zebra Technologies Corp. (D. Del. 1:22-cv-00701; W.D. Tex./E.D.N.Y. 22-cv-3428) asserted U.S. 7,042,478; 7,699,550; 9,662,900; RE47,928 — not '058. Random Chat, LLC v. Zebra Technologies Corp. (W.D. Tex. 7:25-cv-00211, filed May 5, 2025; voluntarily dismissed Dec. 15, 2025; dismissed Dec. 16, 2025) involved a Random Chat patent with a Zebra counterclaim of invalidity/non-infringement — again not '058.

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Confidence and Uncertainty Statement

• High confidence in bibliographic data, abstract, and claim structure — these come directly from the full issued text and the front page.
• Moderate confidence in the assignee chain — the reassignment entries are Google Patents/AI-derived and the site itself disclaims legal accuracy; I did not independently verify each assignment instrument.
• Low confidence / unknown: any current litigation value, ownership disputes, or unrecorded assignments; whether a PTAB proceeding ever targeted the patent; and any 2026 activity. My searches found nothing, but absence of evidence in web search is not proof of absence — these would need to be checked in PACER, the CAFC docket, and USPTO Patent Center/PTAB APIs directly.
• The patent is expired (term ended on or about 2020-03-30 based on the March 30, 2000 filing date), so it cannot be asserted for prospective infringement; any activity on it today would be historical.

I'll search for litigation involving US patent 6,379,058.

Let me run more targeted searches.

Summary: No litigation found asserting U.S. Patent No. 6,379,058

After searching patent-litigation databases and dockets, I found no evidence of any lawsuit asserting U.S. Patent No. 6,379,058 ("System for RF communication between a host and a portable printer," Petteruti et al., filed 2000-03-30, issued 2002-04-30, expired 2020-03-30). I cannot provide plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome because I could not locate a single case.

Searches performed and what they returned

1. US patent 6379058 litigation — Returned only unrelated dockets and other patents (e.g., a Sony/Fujifilm '905 patent PTAB matter, a Carotek case about a different '905 patent). Nothing on the '058 patent.
2. "6379058" patent lawsuit case — The only nominally matching hit was a CourtListener docket page whose URL path is /docket/6379058/ (Mulligan v. Aceto Corporation, 2:18-cv-02425, E.D.N.Y.). That "6379058" is a CourtListener docket ID, not the patent number — the case concerns securities/derivative claims and has nothing to do with the '058 patent.
3. "6,379,058" patent infringement complaint — No relevant results.
4. "6379058" Zebra Technologies patent case district court — Returned unrelated Zebra litigation (e.g., Random Chat, LLC v. Zebra Technologies Corp., 7:25-cv-00211, W.D. Tex., and Honeywell Int'l v. Zebra Technologies, 6:21-cv-01008, W.D. Tex.), but neither of these identifies the '058 patent as an asserted patent.
5. portal.unifiedpatents.com litigation "6379058" and rpxcorp insight litigation patent 6379058 — No litigation records tied to this patent; the Unified Patents portal page for the '058 patent shows only bibliographic data, cited/citing references, and assignee (Zebra Technologies Corp.), with no litigation section surfaced.

Key context about the patent

• Current assignee: Zebra Technologies Corp. (originally ZIH Corp.; assigned from Comtec Information Systems, Inc.), per the patent record.
• Legal status: Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2020-03-30). It is no longer enforceable, which reduces the likelihood of any current assertion litigation.
• The patent's cited-by list (273 documents) reflects tech-field citation, not litigation.

Important caveats

• I could not retrieve the Unified Patents litigation case-list page directly (my research steps were exhausted before I could browse https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist for this specific patent). My conclusion rests on the search results above, not a confirmed zero-hit query in that portal.
• More importantly, an absence of search hits is not proof that no suit ever existed. Distressed/older NPE suits are sometimes poorly indexed. To be certain, the definitive checks would be:
  • PACER / CourtListener RECAP docket search for "6,379,058" across all districts;
  • Unified Patents and RPX (insight.rpxcorp.com) patent-level litigation pages;
  • Lex Machina / Docket Navigator patent-litigation searches by patent number;
  • USPTO Patent Trial and Appeal Board (to see if the patent was ever challenged in an IPR/PGR — none appeared in my results);
  • USPTO Assignment/Alteration records (which I did review via the patent page; they show security-interest liens from Morgan Stanley/JPMorgan, not litigation).

Bottom line: Based on the searches conducted, there is no known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 6,379,058. I recommend confirming via a direct PACER/RECAP and Unified Patents/RPX patent-number lookup before treating this as an exhaustive negative, since I was unable to run those definitive database queries in this session.

I'll verify the structured data against live sources before reporting.

PTAB / AIA Trial Landscape — U.S. Patent No. 6,379,058

Patent: System for RF communication between a host and a portable printer
Patent Owner: Zebra Technologies Corp. (originally ZIH Corp.; invented by Steven F. Petteruti, Majid Amani, Robert Hoen)
Application: 09/539,118 · Filed: 2000-03-30 · Issued: 2002-04-30 · Expired (anticipated term): 2020-03-30

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Proceedings overview

There are zero AIA trial proceedings on file against US 6,379,058. The USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM for this patent, and my independent web searches surfaced no petition, institution decision, FWD, or appeal involving this patent number as the subject patent — status breakdown is therefore 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution decisions of any kind.

The defensive posture this gives a defendant is not "the patent is hardened by surviving IPRs" — it is stronger and simpler than that: the patent is expired (term ran 2020-03-30) and has never been through an AIA trial, so every claim 1–25 is simultaneously (a) untested at the Board and (b) outside the practical damages window. No AIA estoppel attaches to anyone, and the entire prior-art universe remains available in district court. The real defense here is the calendar, not the PTAB.

Important procedural reality at today's date (2026-10-01): For this patent, the AIA trial options that once existed are now foreclosed — PGR was time-barred 9 months after issuance (2002); CBM review sunset on 2020-09-16 under AIA § 18(f); and IPR remains nominally available for expired patents but is nearly worthless where the patent cannot be amended back into force and no prospective infringement exists. Any "we'll file an IPR" strategy memo on this patent should be rejected.

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Proceedings

None to enumerate. The structured PTAB-proceedings block is empty and I found no contradicting proceeding in the public record. Per the operating rule, the default is "no PTAB activity on file," and nothing I found disturbs that default.

One search artifact worth flagging (low confidence, not a proceeding): A PTAB petition exhibit file indexed by the Board's PTACTS system contains the string OR US-6379058-$.DID. in what appears to be a claim-chart / prior-art mapping table — the US-XXXXXXX-$.DID. pattern is a document-ID citation format, not a case caption. On that basis, 6,379,058 appears to have been cited as prior art against someone else's patent in an unrelated IPR. That is the opposite of a validity challenge: it shows this patent's disclosure is being used offensively by third parties. I could not retrieve the host document's case number from the search result, so treat this as a lead to verify on PTAB E2E rather than a finding. It is not evidence of a proceeding against 6,379,058.

Also checked and confirmed as not-proceedings:

• The Unified Patents patent portal page for US-6379058-B1 (https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-6379058-B1) is a bibliographic/prior-art aggregation page. The presence of a Unified portal page does not indicate Unified Patents filed against this patent — unlike, e.g., Unified's actual filings (IPR2022-00055, IPR2020-00705), where a petition exists in the record. No defensive aggregator is in the chain for this patent.
• The "6,379,058" hits in my searches were claim charts, patent-family cross-references, or unrelated patents with similar numbering (e.g., 10,009,637, 6,379,058-vs-6,379,058 confusion is easy — the '637 patent in the Hulu IPR is U.S. 10,009,637, not 6,379,058). Do not conflate them.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: all 25 claims UNTESTED — none canceled, none sustained, none narrowed. Claims 1, 2, 3, 8, 14, 15, 20, and 25 are the independent claims (system claims 1/2/3/8/25; method claims 14/15/20), with dependents 4–7, 9–13, 16–19, 21–24. Because no AIA trial ever issued an FWD, there is no claim-level adjudication to point to and no cancellation certificate. Anyone telling you "claims 1–5 are dead" or "the patent survived two IPRs" is fabricating — neither happened. The validity story for this patent is purely a district-court/ex parte-reexam story that, as far as the public record shows, never got made.

Estoppel landscape: no IPR estoppel exists, and none can now arise. Because no AIA trial was ever instituted against 6,379,058, no petitioner — and no privy of any petitioner — is subject to 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2). Practically, that means a defendant is not restricted to art that could not have been raised at the Board; the full § 102/§ 103 art set stays live in district court. Conversely, there is no § 315(e)(2) shield to invoke against the patent owner either, so the usual "the petitioner already had its shot" argument is unavailable. If you need invalidity, you build it from scratch on the specification (which is disclosure-heavy: barcode/RFID printer-identifier linking, wakeup/ready/force-link/accept-link handshake, negotiation bits for baud/encoding, and the two-part clear-channel detection) and on the 13 references cited on the face of the patent — notably US 5,264,800 and US 5,806,993 (Comtec), US 5,520,470 (Telxon, Portable printer for handheld computer), US 5,524,185 (Hyundai, Wireless computer system with shared printer), US 5,696,499 (Canon), US 5,555,351 (Monarch), and US 6,163,538 (Monarch, Wireless serial port transceiver). Those are exactly the references an examiner already considered — which cuts against you from an obviousness-vs-these-refs standpoint, and is likely a reason nobody bothered to petition. Note also the heavy citation set: 87 "cited by" entries at issue and 273 third-party citations, showing this disclosure became foundational background art in wireless-printing and RFID-printer patents.

Pattern signals: none. No serial petitioner, no repeat-filer behavior, no patent-owner PTAB appeal activity, no aggregator involvement. The patent's prosecution-to-expiry arc is clean, and its assignment chain is corporate housekeeping only (Comtec → ZIH Corp. → Zebra Technologies Corporation, with collateral-agent security agreements in 2014/2017/2019 that reflect Zebra's credit facilities, not patent disputes). That absence is itself the signal: patents that get asserted commercially attract IPRs, and this one never attracted any, consistent with its expiry and its age in a fast-moving wireless standards space.

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Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant receiving a demand letter citing US 6,379,058:

1. Lead with the calendar, not the art. The patent expired 2020-03-30. Under 35 U.S.C. § 286 the recovery window closes six years back from the filing of a complaint, and under § 271 infringement requires an act during the term. With the term ending 2020-03-30, as of today (2026-10-01) there is no accrual period left inside the damages window — a complaint filed now can point to no compensable post-lookback infringement. Confirm with counsel whether any earlier-filed action is already pending, because that is the only fact that changes this analysis.
2. Demand the proceeding numbers. There are none. If the demand letter implies PTAB history, or cites claim-level outcomes, ask for the IPR/FWD numbers — the correct answer is silence.
3. Do not spend on an IPR. A petition on an expired patent buys you a board decision you cannot use to stop past damages and cannot use to force a reissue. Redirect the budget to a § 286 / expiration-based dispositive motion.
4. If invalidity is genuinely needed (e.g., a live co-pending case with pre-2020 accrual), root the analysis in the cited references above and in the patent's own admissions — the Background frames the invention as an improvement in linking known portable printers (expressly citing US 5,806,993 and US 5,267,800 as the printer platform), which is fertile § 103 territory for claims 1, 14, and 21's "reading an optical or RF identifier … to enable said host to address said printer."
5. Optional, low-cost insurance: an ex parte reexamination request under 35 U.S.C. § 302 remains filable by anyone at any time, including on an expired patent, and would produce an examiner-side validity record. It is not an infringement defense by itself, but the resulting reexam certificate is admissible record evidence. Given the patent is expired, weigh this strictly against cost — it is rarely worth it absent a live case.

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Verification sources

• Structured PTAB-proceedings block supplied with this task (USPTO Open Data Portal ingest) — no AIA trials listed (canonical).
• USPTO PTAB E2E / PTACTS public dockets: https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations (no petition captioned against 6,379,058 found).
• USPTO PTAB Decisions portal (FWD search): https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions — no FWD naming 6,379,058 as the challenged patent located.
• Google Patents bibliographic and legal-status record (expiry 2020-03-30; assignment chain): https://patents.google.com/patent/US6379058/en
• Unified Patents patent page (bibliographic only, not a proceeding): https://portal.unifiedpatents.com/patents/patent/US-6379058-B1

Confidence note: I am highly confident there is no AIA trial proceeding against this patent. I have not exhaustively searched district-court dockets or ITC investigations for assertions of this patent, and I could not retrieve the host case number for the claim-chart citation noted above — if either matters to your matter, run a docket-level check (CourtListener / PACER / Docket Alarm) before relying on the "never asserted" implication in the strategic summary.

I'll research the assignment record for this patent before reconstructing the chain.

Let me try to surface the recorded assignment details more directly.

Let me try to pin down reel/frame numbers and the correspondent of record.

Data-completeness caveat up front. In this session I could not retrieve the USPTO Assignment Center entries (reel/frame, execution dates, correspondent of record) for US 6,379,058. The assignment-search pages did not surface in web results, and USPTO's Assignment Center is not directly queryable through the tools available to me. Everything below is reconstructed from Google Patents legal-events records (which expose recordation date, conveyance type, and assignor/assignee but not reel/frame or correspondent) and from SEC/EP/TTAB corroboration. Reel/frame numbers and correspondents are marked "not retrieved" rather than guessed. I flag one reel/frame I did find, but it belongs to a different application — see the warning in the timeline section.

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Inventors

Findings / patterns:

• All three inventors reside in the same Rhode Island corridor (East Greenwich / Warwick) as Comtec Information Systems, Inc., the Warwick, RI mobile-printer maker, and all three are named as assignors on the 2000-05-22 recordation of rights to Comtec. This is the classic in-house engineering trio, not a hired-gun inventor group.
• No fire-sale tell. The pattern flagged in the task — "all inventors departing within 12 months of filing" — is not evidenced here. There is no recorded inventor-to-third-party assignment; the inventors' only recorded conveyance is to their employer, Comtec.
• Unusual timing worth noting: the application was filed 2000-03-30, three days before Zebra closed its all-cash acquisition of Comtec on 2000-04-03. The inventors assigned to Comtec on 2000-05-22 — i.e., after the acquisition had already closed. So the patent-in-suit was born as a Comtec asset during the acquisition window and was papered into Comtec after the deal, then confirmed upward to Zebra's subsidiary ZIH Corp. the following year.

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Original assignee

On the issued patent (front page): ZIH Corp., Wilmington, DE — this is the assignee printed on the face of US 6,379,058 B1. ZIH Corp. was the wholly owned Zebra Technologies subsidiary that held Zebra's intellectual property (Zebra's own 10-Q refers to "Zebra's wholly-owned subsidiary, ZIH Corp.").

First recorded assignee (chronologically): Comtec Information Systems, Inc. — a designer, manufacturer, and marketer of portable wireless thermal printers based in Warwick, RI. Comtec shipped products embodying the claims: the '058 specification expressly incorporates Comtec's own prior printers (US 5,806,993; US 5,267,800; US 6,005,053) as the hardware platform for the claimed portable printer. This is an operating manufacturer, not a holding vehicle.

Current status of the chain:

• Comtec Information Systems, Inc. — acquired by Zebra Technologies on 2000-04-03, for approximately $88.5–90 million in cash (SEC 10-Q/10-K and Zebra's own 50th-anniversary history confirm this). Zebra recorded a $5.953M in-process-technology write-off tied to the acquisition. Comtec no longer exists as an independent entity; its mobile-printer line was folded into Zebra.
• ZIH Corp. — dissolved into Zebra by merger (see timeline).
• Zebra Technologies Corporation — current owner; operating; publicly traded (NASDAQ: ZBRA). Zebra still sells the product family at issue (mobile/portable label and receipt printers). It is a ~$5B+ revenue manufacturer, not an NPE.

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Assignment timeline

Execution dates are not exposed by Google Patents and are not stated except where a separate public record gives them (the 2018 merger). I have labeled dates as recorded unless noted. Reel/frame could not be retrieved for any of these entries.

1. Executed date not retrieved / recorded 2000-05-22 — Reel not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (Assignment)
   • Assignor: Steven F. Petteruti; Majid Amani; Robert Hoen (joint inventors)
   • Assignee: COMTEC INFORMATION SYSTEMS, INC.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: In-house employment assignment — the three inventors paper their invention into their employer, Comtec, roughly seven weeks after the Comtec/Zebra deal closed.

2. Executed date not retrieved / recorded 2001-05-21 — Reel not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest (Assignment)
   • Assignor: COMTEC INFORMATION SYSTEMS, INC.
   • Assignee: ZIH CORP.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Upward/confirmatory transfer to Zebra's IP-holding subsidiary ZIH Corp. after Zebra's April 2000 stock acquisition of Comtec; the only true ownership transfer in the pre-issuance chain.

3. Recorded 2003-11-25 — Reel not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Recordation of Assignee's Principal Place of Business (administrative — no ownership change)
   • Assignor: ZIH CORP. (self)
   • Assignee: ZIH CORP.
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Internal reorg/administrative address recordation; does not move title.

4. Executed date not retrieved / recorded 2014-10-31 — Reel not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Security Agreement (securitization, not an ownership transfer)
   • Assignor: LASER BAND, LLC; SYMBOL TECHNOLOGIES, INC.; ZEBRA ENTERPRISE SOLUTIONS CORP.; ZIH CORP.
   • Assignee: MORGAN STANLEY SENIOR FUNDING, INC., as the Collateral Agent
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Collateral grant securing the credit facility Zebra raised in connection with the Motorola Solutions Enterprise business acquisition (2014). Patent title stays with ZIH/Zebra; only a lien is recorded.

5. Executed date not retrieved / recorded 2017-10-25 — Reel not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Patent Security Interest Assignment Agreement (successor-agent substitution)
   • Assignor: MORGAN STANLEY SENIOR FUNDING, INC., as the Existing Agent
   • Assignee: JPMORGAN CHASE BANK, N.A., as the Successor Agent
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Same lien, new administrative agent — routine facility-agent swap, not a change of beneficial owner.

6. Executed (effective) 2018-12-20 / recorded 2019-03-29 (per Google Patents) — Reel not retrieved for this patent

   • Conveyance: Merger
   • Assignor: ZIH CORP.
   • Assignee: ZEBRA TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Internal reorganization — Zebra's IP-holding subsidiary ZIH Corp. was merged up into the parent, Zebra Technologies Corporation. This is the last ownership transfer; no third party enters the chain.
   • ⚠️ Reel/frame discrepancy to flag, not resolve: In an unrelated TTAB proceeding, a party stated that "the subject application was assigned from ZIH Corp. to Zebra Technologies Corporation by merger effective December 20, 2018 … recorded on July 16, 2019 at Reel/Frame 6694/0803" (ttabvue PDF). That reel/frame is stated for a different subject application, not US 6,379,058, and I could not confirm it applies here. Do not cite 6694/0803 as the reel/frame for '058 without pulling the Assignment Center record directly. Note also the recordation-date discrepancy: the 2018 merger is recorded as 2019-03-29 on this patent's page vs. 2019-07-16 in the TTAB statement — the merger was papered across many assets in multiple batches, which commonly produces different recordation dates per asset.

7. Executed date not retrieved / recorded 2019-07-03 — Reel not retrieved

   • Conveyance: Notice of Transfer of Security Interest in Patents (lien notice, not an ownership transfer)
   • Assignor: ZEBRA TECHNOLOGIES CORPORATION
   • Assignee: JPMORGAN CHASE BANK, N.A., as Collateral Agent
   • Correspondent: not retrieved
   • Context: Re-papering/notice of the existing secured lien after the ZIH→Zebra merger so the collateral record names the correct debtor.

Bottom line on the record: every recorded event is either (a) an internal transfer within the Comtec→ZIH→Zebra corporate family, (b) an administrative/address or agent-substitution recordation, or (c) a security-interest lien, never a sale to an outside party. There is no recorded assignment to any entity outside the Zebra corporate family at any point in the patent's life. The patent expired 2020-03-30 (maintenance-fee/term expiration recorded as "Anticipated expiration").

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Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6379058
    2000 : Application filed on Mar 30
         : Rights assigned to Comtec
         : Zebra acquires Comtec on Apr 3
    2001 : Comtec assigns to ZIH Corp
    2002 : Patent US 6379058 B1 issues
    2003 : ZIH records principal place of business
    2014 : Security agreement to Morgan Stanley
    2017 : Security interest moved to JPMorgan
    2018 : ZIH merges into Zebra Technologies
    2019 : Merger recorded to Zebra
         : Security interest notice to JPMorgan
    2020 : Patent expires on Mar 30

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NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The chain runs Comtec (operating printer maker) → ZIH Corp. (Zebra's IP-holding subsidiary, but an affiliate of a product company, not a shell) → Zebra Technologies Corporation (operating, ~2,600+ employees, publicly traded). No "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" LLC, no registered-agent-service address, no single-purpose Delaware/Texas vehicle appears anywhere on the record for this patent.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No assignee at any point matches the checked NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon/IPNav, Intellectual Ventures, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Erich Spangenberg entities, etc.). The terminal owner, Zebra Technologies, is a manufacturer.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / not retrieved. The USPTO Assignment Center correspondent (attorney/firm of record) for the 2000, 2001, 2003, 2014, 2017, and 2019 recordations could not be retrieved in this session, so I cannot test for a recurring NPE-side filer. On the face of the record there is no reason to expect one, but I am explicitly not calling this "not present" — it is unverified. Action: pull the correspondent field from Assignment Center for each reel/frame to close this out.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. There is exactly one ownership transfer before issuance (Comtec→ZIH, 2001) and one thereafter (ZIH→Zebra merger, effective 2018 — ~17 years later). No chain of LLCs, no back-to-back assignments inside 24 months, no shared-principal hopscotch.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. No infringement suit naming US 6,379,058 was found in my earlier searches, so there is no litigation date to trigger the "assignment within 6 months before suit" test. The last ownership event (2018 merger) predates expiration (2020) and no suit intervened.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. Comtec was acquired by Zebra in a $88.5–90M all-cash stock purchase (April 3, 2000), not a Chapter 7/11 sale. No bankruptcy assignment instrument appears in the chain.

7. Privateering — not present. Zebra kept the patent inside the corporate family for its whole life; it never transferred '058 to an outside asserting entity that would litigate on Zebra's behalf. (Contrast: Zebra's own litigation in the 2000s — e.g., ZIH Corp. v. Paxar on US 5,813,343 and 5,860,753 — was direct operating-company enforcement, not privateering.)

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at an operating manufacturer, and then at natural expiration. So the inverse signal (patent neutralized by a defensive aggregator) does not apply either.

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Verdict

Operating-company assertion — with one explicit caveat.

Justification. Every recorded event in the chain is an intra-family or lien recordation, so the terminal owner is a product company: Comtec (portable wireless thermal printers, the very hardware the '058 claims run on) was acquired by Zebra on 2000-04-03, rights were confirmed upward to ZIH Corp. on recordation 2001-05-21, and ZIH was merged into Zebra Technologies Corporation (merger effective 2018-12-20). There is not a single NPE signal in the chain — no shell transfer, no known asserter, no cascading LLCs, no pre-litigation flip, no bankruptcy sale, no defensive aggregation — so this is definitively not an NPE patent.

The caveat, stated honestly: the enumerated option "Operating-company assertion" requires the owner to be suing actual competitors on this patent. For '058 specifically, I found no litigation naming the patent, and it expired 2020-03-30, so it can no longer be asserted at all. The "assertion" prong is therefore satisfied only at the corporate level (ZIH Corp. did litigate related printer patents against Paxar Americas/Paxar Corp. in 2003 — but on US 5,813,343 and 5,860,753, not '058). The most precise characterization is operating-company ownership, never asserted, now expired. If a strict reading of the taxonomy is required, this is a clean operating-company chain with no NPE activity; among the five permitted labels, "Operating-company assertion" is the closest fit and "NPE" of any confidence level would be flatly contradicted by the record.

Verification link (reel/frame and correspondent still to be pulled directly): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent number 6379058) and https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html

Open items for the next pass: (1) pull the reel/frame and execution dates for all seven entries above; (2) pull the correspondent of record for each to complete signal #3; (3) confirm whether Reel/Frame 6694/0803 covers '058 or only the different application referenced in the TTAB filing.

I'll search for the specific patent and verify its cited prior-art references.

Let me verify the remaining key cited references.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 6,379,058 B1

Scoping / search note

I searched for the specific number 6379058 and did not substitute similar numbers. The authoritative full text you supplied (filed 2000‑03‑30, issued 2002‑04‑30, app. 09/539,118, "System for RF communication between a host and a portable printer," ZIH Corp.) is confirmed by Google Patents (US6379058B1) and by the "Patent Citations" record reproduced on that page. My tool results came from Google Patents, Justia, FreePatentsOnline, EPO/Espacenet, and Unified Patents rather than a direct USPTO PatentCenter/PatFT query — I could not run a raw USPTO full‑text search, so treat the citation list below as the face‑of‑patent list (15 patent citations) rather than an expanded examiner search.

Legal framework (pre‑AIA, since '058 was filed 2000‑03‑30): a §102 anticipation requires a single reference to disclose every element of a claim. References published before 1999‑03‑30 qualify under §102(b) as a statutory bar; references issued on US applications filed before 2000‑03‑30 qualify under §102(e) even if published later. I flag the basis for each.

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The cited references, with §102 assessment

1. US 6,163,538 A — closest art

• Full citation: US 6,163,538 A, Brown, Tincher & Morrison, "Wireless serial port transceiver," Monarch Marketing Systems, Inc. (also EP 0 918 416 A2). App. 08/948,271 filed 1997‑10‑09; issued 2000‑12‑19.
• Description: A pair of compact radio transceivers that replace the serial cable between a portable bar‑code scanner/host and a portable bar‑code printer. On reset the XMT unit broadcasts link information packets identifying itself by address; the RCV unit (at the printer) listens, error‑checks the packet, and returns a link response packet containing its own address. Once addresses are exchanged the units are "linked" and thereafter communicate only with each other using addressed, error‑detected packets with ACK/NACK re‑transmission. A multi‑position switch lets one XMT unit maintain independent links with multiple printers.
• §102 assessment: The most on‑point reference for the RF‑linking subject matter. Potentially anticipates those claims whose inventive core is address‑based wireless linking plus multi‑packet data exchange — i.e., aspects of claims 8/20 (printer‑to‑host/proximity broadcast linking), 4/6/16/23 (the packet handshake followed by addressed data packets), and 5/7 (one host linked to several printers). Limits: it does not read an optical (barcode) or RFID identifier from the printer, so the characterising element of claims 1/2/3/14/15 is absent; and its broadcast runs host→printer, the reverse of the "printer broadcasts" element of claims 8/20. Because it issued after the '058 filing date, it is available only as §102(e) art (US app. filed 1997‑10‑09) or via its 1999‑05‑26 EP publication.

2. US 5,805,807 A and US 6,192,400 B1 — Norand / Intermec

• Full citation: US 5,805,807 A (issued 1998‑09‑08) and US 6,192,400 B1 (issued 2001‑02‑20), "Multilevel data communication system including local and host systems," Norand Corp. / Intermec IP Corp.; priority 1990‑05‑25.
• Description: Hierarchical "multilevel" wireless data‑communication architecture linking portable data‑collection terminals/printers with local and host systems.
• §102 assessment: Background art for multi‑host/multi‑device RF networks; potentially relevant to the generic "host … RF signals" and multi‑host aspects of claims 1/14 and the claim‑15 "until another host links" concept. US 5,805,807 is §102(b) art; US 6,192,400 is §102(e)‑only (same priority chain). Neither discloses reading a printer‑mounted identifier, so they do not anticipate the independent claims.

3. US 5,696,499 A — Canon

• Full citation: US 5,696,499 A, "Information processing system connected by radio communication," Canon K.K.; priority 1990‑11‑14; issued 1997‑12‑09.
• Description: An information‑processing system in which devices are interconnected by radio communication.
• §102 assessment: §102(b) art. Relevant to the "RF communication interface" element of claims 1/2/3/14/15, but silent on optical/RF identifier reading and on the four‑packet link — not anticipatory of any independent claim as a whole.

4. US 5,555,351 A — Monarch

• Full citation: US 5,555,351 A, "Host communication message manager for a label printing system with data collection capabilities," Monarch Marking Systems, Inc.; filed 1992‑05‑08; issued 1996‑09‑10.
• Description: Lets one or more host systems (a mainframe and/or a hand‑held labeler with data‑collection) communicate with a local bar‑code processing/printing system to control data maintenance and printing; the labeler may link via RS‑232 or an RF communication link; a look‑up table associates bar‑code data with other data.
• §102 assessment: §102(b) art. Relevant to the "host + printer + data communication for printing" architecture and to the lookup‑table/association idea that underlies the address‑derivation step of claims 2/3/15, but it associates bar code data to alphanumeric data for printing, not a printer serial number to an RF address — not anticipatory.

5. US 5,267,800 A — Comtec ("Miniature, portable, interactive printer")

• Full citation: US 5,267,800 A, Petteruti et al., Comtec Informations, Inc.; filed 1992‑08‑06; issued 1993‑12‑07. Expressly incorporated by reference in '058 ("housing 11, electronics, and printing enabling components … may be such as described in … U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,806,993, 5,267,800, or 6,005,053").
• Description: Intelligent, portable, interactive label printer (microprocessor controller, printing mechanism, web feed), communicating interactively with a terminal; the specification notes "serial number recording so that the printer can be identified to the terminal."
• §102 assessment: §102(b) art. Anticipates claims to the printer hardware ("printing means," housing) recited in the preambles of claims 1/2/3/14/15, and its "printer can be identified to the terminal" language touches the identifier concept of claim 21. Since '058 does not claim the printer per se, its anticipatory force is limited to the "printing means" element, not the linking method.

6. US 5,520,470 A — Telxon

• Full citation: US 5,520,470 A, "Portable printer for handheld computer," Telxon Corp.; filed 1993‑10‑21; issued 1996‑05‑28.
• Description: Portable printer configured to be driven by a hand‑held computer.
• §102 assessment: §102(b) art. Relevant only to the "host device provided by a computer system or terminal + portable printer" combination in the claim preambles; no RF‑identifier reading or wakeup/link protocol.

7. US 5,524,185 A — Hyundai

• Full citation: US 5,524,185 A, "Wireless computer system with shared printer," Hyundai Electronics Industries Co.; filed 1993‑12‑23; issued 1996‑06‑04.
• Description: Computer system in which a printer is shared wirelessly.
• §102 assessment: §102(b) art. Potentially relevant to the bare "RF communication with a printer" element of claim 1; not anticipatory of the linking/identifier limitations.

8. US 5,503,483 A — Comtec ("Portable sign printer")

• Full citation: US 5,503,483 A, Petteruti et al., Comtec Information Systems, Inc.; filed 1994‑10‑19; issued 1996‑04‑02.
• Description: Portable thermal sign/label printer with an interactive terminal interface (including a wireless‑link embodiment).
• §102 assessment: §102(b) art; printer‑hardware/terminal‑interface background only.

9. US 5,726,431 A — Bass, Inc.

• Full citation: US 5,726,431 A, "Apparatus for printing a shelf tag," Bass, Inc.; filed 1996‑06‑20; issued 1998‑03‑10.
• Description: Apparatus for printing retail shelf tags.
• §102 assessment: §102(b) art; peripheral to the claims (retail tag‑printing context).

10. US 5,806,993 A — Comtec ("Portable interactive miniature printer")

• Full citation: US 5,806,993 A, Beck, Amani & Petteruti, Comtec Information Systems, Inc.; filed 1997‑03‑18; issued 1998‑09‑15. Expressly incorporated by reference in '058.
• Description: Portable interactive mini‑printer whose controller communicates with a terminal via cable, radio, or optical interface; includes an RF transceiver attachable to the printer housing (claim 25) and describes operation of the printer "in a network of portable printers and terminals."
• §102 assessment: §102(b) art. Relevant to claims 9 (host‑attachable RF module — here the printer‑side analogue) and to the RF‑communication element of claims 1/10/25; relevant background for a networked multi‑printer/multi‑terminal system (claim 1/5/7). Does not disclose the host reading a barcode/RFID identifier to derive the printer's address.

11. US 5,997,193 A — Comtec ("Miniature, portable, interactive printer")

• Full citation: US 5,997,193 A, Petteruti, Amani & Beck, Comtec Information Systems, Inc.; priority 1997‑03‑18; filed 1998‑06‑10 (continuation); issued 1999‑12‑07.
• Description: Claims a network of portable label printers that communicate wirelessly (RF or optical) with a terminal; data is provided "to at least one address associated with one or more of said label printers," each printer distinguishes data addressed to it from data for other printers, and acknowledges printing back to the terminal; the address may be associated with multiple printers.
• §102 assessment: Available under §102(e) (app. filed 1998‑06‑10 < 2000‑03‑30). The most relevant Comtec reference for the addressing claims: its single‑vs‑multiple‑printer address teaching bears directly on claims 5/7 ("a single printer address and at least one group address associated with a group of different ones of said printer") and on the addressed wireless print‑data flow of claims 1/14. It does not disclose host‑side reading of a printer barcode/RFID identifier.

12. US 6,010,257 A — Comtec ("Miniature portable interactive printer")

• Full citation: US 6,010,257 A, Petteruti et al., Comtec Information Systems, Inc.; filed 1998‑06‑10 (CIP of the app. that issued as 5,806,993); issued 2000‑01‑04.
• Description: Adds that the controller operates responsive to a wake‑up signal from the terminal (automatically turning the printer on from a low‑power state), and operates on received data "preceded by a command addressing the product‑type predefined for the printer"; radio/optical interface; network operation.
• §102 assessment: §102(e) art. Directly relevant to the wakeup‑packet / ready‑response sequence of claims 4/16/23 and to claim 1/14's RF communication — this is the nearest cited art to '058's "wakeup packet insures that the radio … of the printer are fully powered up." Its addressing is by product‑type, not by a scanned serial‑number‑derived address, so claims 2/3/15 remain distinguishable.

13. US 6,004,053 A — Comtec ("Printer apparatus")

• Full citation: US 6,004,053 A, Petteruti et al., Comtec Informationsystems, Inc.; filed 1998‑09‑11; issued 1999‑12‑21. Expressly incorporated by reference in '058.
• Description: Printer apparatus (housing/mechanism).
• §102 assessment: §102(e) art; supplies only the "printing means"/housing element of the claim preambles.

14. US 4,734,710 A — Sato

• Full citation: US 4,734,710 A, "Thermal label printer," Kabushiki Kaisha Sato; filed 1985‑04‑26; issued 1988‑03‑29.
• Description: Thermal label printer.
• §102(b) art; printing‑means background only — no RF linking.

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Ranking — most relevant prior art for US 6,379,058

1. US 6,163,538 A (Monarch, "Wireless serial port transceiver") — the single most relevant cited reference; squarely teaches RF linking between a host and a portable bar‑code printer by broadcast/address exchange, subsequent address‑filtered packet exchange, ACK/NACK, and one‑host‑to‑multiple‑printers linking. Best candidate for attacking the link‑protocol and multi‑printer claims (4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 16, 20, 23) — subject to the reverse‑broadcast and no‑identifier caveats.
2. US 5,997,193 A (Comtec) — most relevant for claimed printer/group addressing in a wireless printer network (claims 5, 7, 1, 14).
3. US 6,010,257 A (Comtec) — most relevant for the wake‑up‑signal / ready‑response concept (claims 4, 16, 23).
4. US 5,806,993 A (Comtec, incorporated by reference) — RF/optical interface and attachable RF transceiver (claims 1, 9, 10, 25).
5. US 5,805,807 A / US 6,192,400 B1 (Norand/Intermec) and US 5,555,351 A (Monarch) — multi‑level/multi‑host label‑printing data networks (claims 1, 14, 15 preamble).
6. US 5,696,499 A (Canon), US 5,524,185 A (Hyundai), US 5,520,470 A (Telxon) — generic radio/wireless host‑peripheral or host‑printer communication (claim 1 RF element).
7. US 5,267,800 A, US 5,503,483 A, US 6,004,053 A, US 4,734,710 A, US 5,726,431 A — printer‑hardware/retail‑tag background (preambles only).

Key caveat on anticipation

On the face of the cited art, no single cited reference discloses the combination that distinguishes the independent claims — namely a host that reads an optical (barcode) or RF (RFID) identifier physically associated with the printer and uses it to derive/address the printer's RF address (claims 1, 2, 3, 14, 15, 21, 25). The cited references split into (a) wireless‑linking/address‑exchange art without identifier reading ('538), (b) printer‑network/addressing/wake‑up art without barcode/RFID reading ('993, '257, '993‑family), and (c) printer‑hardware art. That is why the examiner allowed claims 1–3 and 14–15 over this art.

Caveats/uncertainties: (i) I confirmed the citation list from the patent's own front‑page record, not from an independent USPTO examiner‑search; (ii) issuance/filing dates for the Comtec family are drawn from the patent text and from Justia/Espacenet/FreePatentsOnline records and may differ by a day or two from the official certificates; (iii) "potentially anticipates" is my provisional §102 mapping — '058 is expired (anticipated expiry 2020‑03‑30), so this is a historical/validity exercise, not an infringement analysis; and (iv) the "Cited By" documents (e.g., Flexiworld, Lexmark, Avery Dennison, WO 2013/081686) post‑date '058 and are not prior art.

I'll ground this analysis by verifying what the cited prior-art references actually disclose, then build the § 103 combinations.

Let me ground the remaining cited references relevant to the identifier-reading and label-printing aspects.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,379,058 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

Analysis date: April 26, 2026 (note: the session header states 2026‑10‑01; the two dates conflict. Neither affects the analysis, since the patent expired on or about 2020‑03‑30 and the § 103 inquiry is retrospective.)

Scope note: Per instruction, this analysis is built on the prior‑art section of the patent page — i.e., the "Citations (13)," the "Patent Citations (15)," and (where a reference independently qualifies as pre‑2000 art) selected "Cited By" entries. I do not repeat the bibliographic, abstract, or claim‑summary material already generated; I cross‑reference it. Where I assert what a reference discloses, I state whether it is verified from the document or inferred from the title/abstract, and I flag disagreements with the earlier section.

Threshold flag on prior-art status (important): Most face citations issued well over one year before the 2000‑03‑30 filing date and are therefore § 102(b) art (US 5,267,800 (1993); US 4,734,710 (1988); US 5,503,483 (1996); US 5,520,470 (1996); US 5,524,185 (1996); US 5,555,351 (1996); US 5,696,499 (1997); US 5,726,431 (1998); US 5,805,807 (1998‑09‑08); US 5,806,993 (1998); US 6,004,053 (1999); US 6,010,257 (2000‑01‑04)). Two exceptions require care:

• US 6,163,538 B1 issued 2000‑12‑19 — after the '058 filing date. It is nonetheless available under pre‑AIA § 102(e) (application 08/948,271 filed 1997‑10‑09), and its EP 0 918 416 A2 counterpart published 1999‑05‑26, making the same disclosure § 102(b)/102(a) art directly. I cite both.
• US 6,192,400 B1 issued 2001‑02‑20 — also after the filing date. Its disclosure is the same family as US 5,805,807 (Norand), which is validly on the face and is § 102(b) art. Its appearance on the face of the '058 patent is therefore anomalous; I treat US 5,805,807 as the operative reference and US 6,192,400 as corroborating, not as an independent ground.

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I. Legal framework and level of ordinary skill

Pre‑AIA § 103(a) governs: the application was filed 2000‑03‑30, before the AIA § 103 effective date of 2013‑03‑16. The inquiry is the Graham v. John Deere four‑factor test (scope/content of the prior art; differences; PHOSITA level; objective indicia), as elaborated by KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007). Under KSR, a motivation to combine need not be found in the references themselves; it may come from "the interrelationship of teachings," "the background knowledge possessed by a person having ordinary skill in the art," a "design need or market pressure," or the "predictable" nature of the variation. A combination of "familiar elements according to known methods" yielding no more than predictable results is obvious. I also apply the In re NTP / Grain Processing caution against hindsight reconstruction.

Proposed PHOSITA: a person with a bachelor's degree in electrical engineering, computer engineering, or computer science (or equivalent), plus 2–4 years of experience designing or integrating portable data‑collection terminals, RF peripheral links, and/or bar‑code/label printing systems; or, alternatively, equivalent industry experience. This is a lower skill level than the master's‑degree/5‑year definition advanced in the unrelated '580 IPR record surfaced in my searches (see https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1461147](/patent/1461147)/), and the difference matters: at the '058 level of skill, routine data‑handling and cabling‑replacement solutions are more likely to be deemed within ordinary creativity.

Objective indicia: none identified. No evidence of commercial success tied to the '058 claims, no licensing shown, no industry praise, and no evidence the art "taught away" from any claim element. Absent a nexus‑bearing showing, secondary considerations do not rebut a prima facie case.

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II. Element inventory of the prior-art record

Verified disclosures (from the reference documents themselves) are marked [V]; title/abstract‑only inferences are marked [I]. The '058 patent's own express incorporation by reference of US 5,806,993, US 5,267,800, and US 6,005,053 ("the housing 11, electronics, and printing enabling components of printer 10 may be such as described in the portable printers of U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,806,993, 5,267,800, or 6,005,053") is itself an admission that the claimed printer hardware is old in the art — a point that need not be proved by citation.

Gap in the face record: No cited reference expressly discloses (a) an RFID tag/reader identifying a printer, nor (b) negotiation of baud rate/encoding in a link packet. I flag both below as the weak points of any § 103 ground, rather than papering over them.

Additional qualifying art surfaced by search (flagged as not on the face): Norand's Radio frequency communication network having adaptive parameters, US 5,425,051 (issued 1995‑06‑13) — same assignee as US 5,805,807, § 102(b) art — is a plausible reference for the adaptive‑parameter/negotiation claims (http://everypatent... / Google Patents family listing). I do not rely on it as the primary basis because it is not on the '058 face, and I note the content inference is unverified. Separately, US 6,802,659 B2 (Cremon, priority 1996‑08‑07), which appears in the "Cited By" table, is titled Arrangement for automatic setting of programmable devices and materials therefor and would qualify as § 102(e) art if its 1996 priority is accurate; its title suggests reading an identifier off a device/label to automatically configure a programmable device — potentially the closest face‑adjacent art for the "read the printer's identifier" element. [I — low confidence; title‑only inference. Flagged, not asserted.]

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III. Claim-by-claim obviousness analysis

I analyze by claim family. For each I give the primary combination, the motivation, and the counter-argument the patent owner would raise.

Family A — Independent claims 1, 14 (identifier‑based linking); dependent 2, 21; method 15

Claim 1 requires only: host with RF means + portable printer with RF means + linking means "comprising means for reading an optical or RF identifier representative of said printer to enable said host to address said printer in RF communication."

Primary combination: US 5,805,807 (Norand) — host + portable printer RF‑linked with addressed messages — in view of US 5,696,499 (Canon) — transmitting terminal‑ID information to select which printer acts — in view of the ordinary bar‑code scanner already resident in the host terminal, plus (optionally) US 5,726,431 (Bass) and Cremon US 6,802,659 for "read an identifier off the article."

• Norand supplies elements (a) and (b): a host, a portable printer, and a low‑power RF link between them, with messages that carry "an address indicative of the particular" device. Canon supplies element (c)'s purpose — addressing a specific printer of several by ID information.
• The single arguably novel twist is that the ID is read off the printer itself rather than typed in or pre‑programmed. That is a change in the source of a known data item, not a change in principle. The host terminal is, in the very words of the '058 specification, a device whose scanner "represents a typical laser/CCD/CMOS‑based scanner"; and the printer, in Norand's system, is a device carried and used alongside the scanner. Reading a machine‑readable tag on a nearby device with a scanner the user is already holding is the paradigm KSR case of "use of a known technique to a known device ready for improvement to yield predictable results."
• Motivation (explicit, not hindsight): the references state the problem themselves. Canon: "When a plurality of printing systems are arranged near the host computer, these systems simultaneously start to print … it is necessary to provide a means for specifying the printing systems." Norand: an object is that "once the user has the printer nearby, the user does not need to carry the printer with him." A retail/warehouse setting with several printers and several hosts (the '058 environment) creates direct market pressure to tell the host which printer to address, and the least‑error‑prone way to do that is to scan the machine‑readable ID already on the device.

Claim 21 (identifier "associated in said host with said address") adds only a lookup‑table / conversion step — routine data handling, and the '058 spec itself offers either a lookup table or direct extraction of the address from the serial number.

Counter‑argument (owner): none of the cited references shows reading the printer's own housing barcode/RFID to derive its network address; Norand/Canon use pre‑stored or pre‑programmed IDs. This is the patent's best non‑obviousness argument, and it is a real gap in the face record — but it is a gap in motivation sources, not in technical capability, and KSR permits the motivation to come from the design need. The strongest available rebuttal evidence for a prima facie case is the patent's own admission that the host is a bar‑code terminal and that the printer already bears a serial‑number barcode.

Family B — Claims 2, 3 (barcode vs. RFID identifier) and claim 15

Claim 2 (barcode on the housing + optical scanner + identifier→address derivation): This is the strongest of the identifier claims. Norand's terminals include scanners; the '058 patent itself depicts "a barcode 49 … on the back of the housing 11 with the unique serial number." Combination as in Family A, with the scanning step rendered trivial by the host's existing scanner.

Claim 3 (RFID tag coupled to the housing + RFID tag reader in the host): This is the weakest of the identifier claims. No cited reference discloses RFID tag reading. A § 103 ground here rests on: (i) the '058 specification's own admission that "the host may have a RFID transmitter/receiver … such as a read/write RF tag encoder of the TIRIS RF system sold by Texas Instruments" — i.e., the inventor admits the RFID hardware was a commercial off‑the‑shelf article; and (ii) the KSR principle that substituting a known technology for a known purpose is obvious when it confers an expected benefit (here, no line‑of‑sight requirement, tolerance of a dirty/occluded label). Texas Instruments' TIRIS read/write tag systems were commercially available years before 2000. But the examiner would need a reference (not merely the specification) to establish the RFID reader's place in the art, and the face record does not supply one. I assess claim 3 as materially less vulnerable than claims 1–2, and I do not claim a strong § 103 case for it on the present record.

Claim 15 is drafted disjunctively ("an identifier one of a read barcode and RFID tag"), so the barcode branch alone satisfies it; the claim falls with the Family A/B analysis for barcodes.

Family C — Claims 4, 5, 6, 7, 16, 23 (four‑packet link handshake; group addressing)

Elements: (1) host→printer first packet w/ printer address; (2) printer→host ready packet; (3) host→printer packet w/ host address ("force link"); (4) printer→host accept link packet; then data packets carrying printing information; claims 5/7 add a single printer address plus a group/broadcast address.

Primary combination: US 6,163,538 (Monarch) in view of US 5,805,807 (Norand) in view of US 5,696,499 (Canon).

• Monarch discloses the substance of the handshake almost element‑for‑element: a link information packet identifying the sending unit by address → a link response packet containing the responding unit's address → the units are linked and thereafter communicate only with each other. Mapping: Monarch's "link information packet" and "link response packet" are the first and second (or the force‑link and accept‑link) packets; the sender's/responder's addresses are the source addresses the '058 claims place in the packets.
• Norand supplies the data‑packet phase — "message data and/or control commands, error control, and an end of message indication" — i.e., the post‑link data packets "with information to be printed."
• Canon supplies the addressed‑to‑a‑specific‑printer aspect.
• Motivation: Monarch's stated object is "a simple method for linking a data source to any one of several printers … without redesign of the equipment," and its units are described as "electrically identical," differentiated only by a mode switch. Norand's stated object of excluding interference among many like systems (its "low‑power links … permit a great number of similar or identical systems to function simultaneously") is a direct motivation to make the link exclusive once established — exactly what claims 4–7 recite.
• Claims 5/7 (group/broadcast address): Norand's "multilevel" hierarchical addressing and Canon's ID discrimination make single‑address‑plus‑group‑address addressing a conventional design choice; broadcast/group addressing is elementary in digital communication.

Counter‑argument (owner): the specific four‑packet ordering and naming (wakeup/ready/force‑link/accept‑link) is not verbatim in any one reference. But § 103 does not require verbatim disclosure; the ordering is the natural consequence of the Monarch handshake plus Norand's data phase, and the result (exclusive pairing) is the predictable one.

Family D — Claims 8, 20, 22, 24 (printer‑initiated broadcast linking)

Primary combination: US 6,163,538 (Monarch) alone, in view of Norand/Canon for the host/printer context.

• Monarch literally discloses a unit that "begins broadcasting link information packets identifying itself (by address) and seeking a nearby receiver," a listener that "listens for just such a link information packet" and responds, whereupon the two are linked. This is claim 20 almost verbatim, and claim 22/24 (link request packet "comprises at least an address associated with said printer") is met because Monarch's link packet identifies the broadcasting unit by address.
• The role‑reversal point is the key motivation and it is strong: in Monarch the XMT unit (host side) broadcasts and the RCV unit (printer side) responds; '058 claim 8 has the printer broadcast and the host respond. But Monarch expressly states the two units are "electrically identical," with the XMT/RCV role set by a switch. Swapping which side initiates is therefore a switch‑setting / configuration choice on identical hardware — the clearest possible case of a predictable variation with a reasonable expectation of success.
• Motivation (from the claims' own stated purpose): the '058 spec says the broadcast embodiment "enables a host, which may not have an optical barcode scanning and/or RFID tag reading capability, to be linked to a printer." That is precisely Monarch's "without advanced knowledge of printer numeric addresses" objective. The two references are directed at the same problem from the same field.

Counter‑argument (owner): Monarch's express aim to link "without advanced knowledge of printer numeric addresses" could be spun as teaching away from the '058's address‑based scheme. This fails: Monarch's statement is a statement of convenience, not a disparagement of address‑based linking, and the rest of Monarch's disclosure relies on exchanging addresses during the handshake. No teaching away.

Family E — Claim 9 (host‑attachable RF module)

US 6,163,538 is literally this element. Its units "directly connect to industry‑standard serial (or parallel) ports as a direct replacement for cabled interconnections" and the patent coordinates "a source of information, such as a personal computer … or a portable bar code scanner … and … one or several portable printers." A self‑contained RF front end with its own microprocessor, plugged into a host's serial port to confer RF capability, is the essence of '058 claim 9. Combine with Norand for the linked‑printer context. This is a very strong § 103 ground; the claim adds essentially nothing over Monarch's disclosure.

Family F — Claims 10, 11, 17 (negotiation of baud rate / encoding)

Weakest family after claim 3. The face record does not clearly disclose negotiating baud rate and encoding format during link setup. The '058 mechanism (1 bit Manchester on/off; 5 bits of baud rate; the printer answering with the highest mutually supported rate) is a capability field inside the link packet — and the link packets themselves (preamble, type, sequence, addresses) are fully disclosed by Norand/Monarch. A § 103 ground would argue: adding a capability/parameter field to a packet that already carries a "message identifier and system information" (Norand) is routine; and the Norand family includes a "radio frequency communication network having adaptive parameters" (US 5,425,051, Norand, § 102(b) art — though not on the face of '058, so it must be independently established). I assess this as moderate at best, and explicitly not strong on the face record alone.

Family G — Claims 12, 13, 18, 19 (clear channel)

Moderate. Norand's radio system is a contention‑managed, multiplexed one (time‑division multiplexing on a single channel with adaptive polling), i.e., the art was already addressing the collision problem the '058 claims. Monarch selects alternate transmission frequencies when transmissions fail and reports/retries on errors. Carrier‑sense‑before‑transmit (CSMA/CSMA‑CA) was a foundational, well‑known technique in RF data communication by 2000 (the unrelated '580 IPR record I surfaced shows wireless‑LAN CSMA/CA in Boer, US 5,706,428, priority 1996 — https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/[1532882](/patent/1532882)/). Under KSR, "the combination of elements already known … by known methods to yield predictable results" covers sense‑then‑send. The specific two‑interval (long‑interval/high‑threshold then short‑interval/low‑threshold) algorithm is arguably a detail not disclosed on the face; a careful examiner would need a carrier‑sense reference, so I rate these claims moderate, not strong.

Claim 25 (manual entry of the printer identifier)

Very strong. Manual entry via the host keypad is the most elementary possible means; the '058 spec itself calls it "less preferred," i.e., admits it as a trivial alternative. Every host terminal in the record (Norand; Canon) has a keypad. Motivation is self‑evident.

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IV. Motivation‑to‑combine synthesis (grounded in the references' own words)

Rather than a conclusory "these are all in the same field," the record provides articulated, non‑hindsight motivations:

1. Shared, stated problem of multi‑device selection. Canon: plural printers all print unless a printer can be specified; Norand: many identical systems must "function simultaneously … so as not to interfere with each other"; Monarch: link to "any one of several printers"; Hyundai: arbitrate competing hosts to one shared printer. The '058 patent's stated environment ("multiple portable printers and host devices") is the same problem, and these references are therefore combinable by their own express teachings.
2. Shared solution type — addressed RF packets. Norand (address field in every message), Canon (terminal‑ID in data + carrier), Hyundai (per‑host PN code as "intrinsic identifier"), Monarch (address exchange in link packets) all converge on address‑based discrimination. Combining them requires no change in the operating principle of any one.
3. Predictable substitution of identifier carriers. Barcode → RFID for conveying an ID (claims 2/3), and manual → scanned entry (claim 25), are substitutions of equivalent information‑transfer mechanisms, each conferring an expected benefit (line‑of‑sight independence; reduced typing error). KSR holds such substitutions obvious where the benefit is predictable.
4. Cable‑replacement framing. Monarch frames its transceivers as drop‑in replacements for a serial cable; Norand does the same for its low‑power link. Claim 9's "attachable RF communication system" is the references' own stated object.
5. Reasonable expectation of success. Every element operates in the same radio band regime (the '058 spec claims ~100‑ft "short‑range" links; Norand's are "low‑level, low‑power"; Monarch's are "compact, energy‑efficient, intelligent radio transceiver units"). No reference identifies an incompatibility or an unpredictable interaction that would defeat combination — so the "reasonable expectation of success" prong is met.

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V. Anticipated non‑obviousness arguments and my assessment

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VI. Bottom line by claim

Overall: The '058 patent reads as a combination of known elements producing an expected result — RF‑linked portable printers and hosts (Norand, Telxon, Canon), address‑based printer selection (Canon, Hyundai, Monarch), a link handshake with address exchange (Monarch), attachable serial‑port RF transceivers (Monarch), and portable label‑printer hardware (Comtec, admitted by incorporation). On the cited record, the great majority of the claims (notably 1, 2, 4–9, 14–16, 20–25) appear vulnerable to a § 103(a) challenge, with the identifier→address step of claims 1/14 being the pivotal and most contestable element, and claims 3 (RFID) and 10/11/17 (negotiation) being the areas where the face record does not support a robust prima facie case without additional references.

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VII. Explicit uncertainties and confidence

• High confidence that the elements of the family‑C/D/E claims (handshake, broadcast link, attachable module) are disclosed, near‑verbatim in places, by US 6,163,538 — verified from the reference text and its EP counterpart.
• High confidence in the Norand (US 5,805,807), Canon (US 5,696,499), Hyundai (US 5,524,185), and Telxon (US 5,520,470) characterizations — verified from the documents.
• Moderate confidence in US 5,555,351 (Monarch message manager) and US 5,726,431 (Bass shelf tag) — inferred from titles only; I did not retrieve their texts.
• Low confidence / flagged inference on US 6,802,659 B2 (Cremon) — I infer a "read an identifier to configure a device" disclosure from its title and 1996 priority; it appears in the Cited By table, not the citations table, so its use as art requires confirming both its § 102(e) date and its disclosure.
• Not verified: the actual prosecution history (file wrapper) of the '058 application. The examiner allowed the claims over these (largely applicant‑cited and examiner‑cited) references, so any real‑world rejection ground must be reconciled with whatever the examiner relied upon and whatever the applicant argued — which I have not obtained. Several face citations are marked as examiner‑cited (US 4,734,710; US 6,192,400; US 5,805,807; US 5,555,351; US 5,726,431; US 6,163,538 per the asterisk column of the "Patent Citations (15)" table), which suggests these were considered and overcome — a fact that cuts against a simplistic reading that any single one of them anticipates.
• Discrepancy flagged (not reconciled): the "Cited By" count appears as both 87 and 273 in different views of the page (already noted in the earlier summary); and the current task date (2026‑04‑26) differs from the session date (2026‑10‑01). Neither affects the analysis. I did not carry forward the earlier "Peteruti" spelling issue — the full text I was given renders the name PETTERUTI, STEVEN F., so there is no discrepancy to resolve on that point.