US 6769607

I'll search for authoritative records on this specific patent number, including any 2026 CAFC activity.

Let me check for litigation and any 2026 activity specifically involving this patent.

US Patent 6,769,607 — Findings

Search coverage / confidence note

I searched for the exact number 6769607 and 6,769,607 (including CAFC 2026 docket references). I found no authoritative record of any 2026 CAFC appeal, IPR, or district-court docket specifically involving US 6,769,607. The only 2026 Federal Circuit materials my searches surfaced were unrelated cases (Spero v. Mercedes-Benz, No. 25-1306, involving U.S. 11,208,029; Ironburg Inventions v. Valve, No. 24-2088). One PTAB petition document lists "6769607" among a table of patent numbers, but that is a prior-art/patent-listing table, not litigation. Treat any claim that this patent is in active 2026 appellate litigation as unverified.

Bibliographic data (from the authoritative full text and corroborating records)

Abstract

An adapter for use with a conventional POS card reader to interface with PDAs, wireless phones, and other handheld devices through Infrared or RF media, such that signals received from the devices can be converted to conventional magnetic stripe and/or smart card format as required by the conventional POS card readers. The adapter includes a housing with at least a reader‑insertable portion, a receive circuit in the housing, a processor in the housing connected to the receive circuit, and a point‑of‑sale interface in the reader‑insertable portion connected to the processor. The housing may be approximately credit‑card sized and fully reader‑insertable.

Independent claims in plain language

There are four independent claims: 1, 19, 26, and 41. (Claims 2–18 depend from 1; 20–25 from 19; 27–40 from 26; 42–46 from 41.)

Claim 1 — the adapter apparatus. A physical adapter for bridging an electronic transaction device (phone/PDA/UET card) and a legacy POS card reader. It has: (a) a housing with at least a portion that fits inside the card reader; (b) a two‑way (transceiver) circuit — not just a receiver — that receives information from and sends information back to the electronic transaction device; (c) a processor wired to that transceiver; (d) a communication circuit coupled to the POS card reader and adapted to receive receipt information; and (e) a POS interface located in the reader‑insertable portion and connected to the processor. The novelty emphasis is the combination of an in‑card‑reader emulation interface with a separate reader‑side receipt‑information channel and a bidirectional link to the handheld device.

Claim 19 — the magnetic‑stripe + RS‑232 adapter. A narrower apparatus claim. It requires: (a) a housing insertable in the card reader; (b) a transceiver for bidirectional communication with the electronic transaction device; (c) a processor connected to the transceiver; (d) an electromagnet configured to emulate a magnetic stripe, connected to the processor; and (e) an RS‑232 communication port connected to the processor and configured to talk to a serial port on the POS card reader. This claim hard‑codes the two specific legacy interfaces (magnetic‑stripe emulation and RS‑232) that the specification identifies as the dominant installed base.

Claim 26 — the transaction method, including the receipt return path. Steps: (a) user selects a card on the electronic transaction device; (b) the adapter is placed in the card reader; (c) card information is transmitted from the device to the adapter; (d) the adapter converts that information into a format the card reader can read; (e) the card reader reads the converted information; (f) the card reader outputs information corresponding to a printed receipt to the adapter via a communication port; and (g) the adapter transmits that receipt information to the electronic transaction device. The distinguishing step versus a simple emulation method is the capture of receipt data from the reader's communication port and its relay back to the handheld.

Claim 41 — the promotional‑information delivery method. A method using an adapter that has a card‑emulation interface, used with a POS card reader that has both a magnetic card reader interface and an electronic communication port. Steps: (a) couple the adapter to both the magnetic card reader interface and the electronic communication port of the POS reader; (b) select promotional information to be sent to at least one electronic transaction device; (c) transmit the selected promotional information from the POS card reader to the adapter; and (d) transmit it from the adapter to at least one transaction device. This claim covers the use of the adapter as a reverse‑channel coupon/advertising conduit into the handheld (dependent claims 42–44 add that the promotion may be selected from current‑transaction data, past‑transaction data, or the terminal's physical location within a retail environment).

Notable supporting detail from the specification

• Magnetic‑stripe emulation uses one or more electromagnets (e.g., two coils, one per track), a ~0.5 mm laminate core wrapped with 42‑gauge copper wire, total assembly ~0.75 mm thick; in one stated test, a ~1 mH coil driven at 10 mA / 4 kHz produced ~25 mV in the reader (comparable to the ~20 mV from a swiped stripe).
• The smart‑card emulator uses ISO 7816 metallic contacts; the magnetic emulation targets ISO 7810/7811/7813.
• The adapter may contain a data buffer that purges after a predetermined time or number of data transfers, and may buffer data from more than one electronic transaction device (the restaurant/waitstaff "split bill" scenario).
• The claims are drafted to cover a stand‑alone card‑shaped adapter as well as an adapter housed in an extension/clip‑on module of the handheld device.

Uncertainties

• Assignee chain: the front page lists the original assignee only as "Individual," while an assignment to C‑SAM, INC. was recorded in 2008 and the currently listed assignee is Mastercard Mobile Transactions Solutions Inc. I did not independently pull the recorded assignment documents, so the exact intermediate chain (e.g., C‑SAM → Mastercard Mobile Transactions Solutions) is inferred, not confirmed from primary USPTO records in this session.
• Term/adjustments: the file shows "Expired – Lifetime" with anticipated expiration 2019‑11‑15; any terminal disclaimer, PTA/PTE, or maintenance‑fee lapse detail was not verified from PatentCenter.
• Litigation: as noted, I could not verify any 2026 CAFC docket for this number; absence of search results is not proof that none exists.

I'll research litigation involving US patent 6769607. Let me run several targeted searches.

The initial results returned many unrelated "'607" patents (e.g., Apple's 7,663,607). Let me target the specific patent and its known owners (C-SAM, Inc. / Mastercard Mobile Transaction Solutions).

Found a C-SAM case, but the 6,769,607 patent wasn't listed in it. Let me search more broadly for litigation by the patent's owners.

Litigation Search — U.S. Patent No. 6,769,607 B1

Patent: US 6,769,607 B1 — "Point of sale and display adapter for electronic transaction device"

• Inventors: Satyan G. Pitroda; Merul Patel
• Assignee history (per Google Patents record): Individual (original) → C-SAM, INC. (assignment recorded 2008-07-15) → current listed assignee Mastercard Mobile Transaction Solutions Inc.
• Priority date: 1999-11-15; Filed: 2000-06-06; Granted: 2004-08-03
• Legal status: Expired – Lifetime (anticipated expiration 2019-11-15)
• Family: Continuation-in-part of US 09/440,529 (US 6,705,520 B1); international counterparts WO 2001/037200 A1, EP 1232469 B1, JP 2003-515228

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Bottom line

I found no litigation specifically asserting U.S. Patent No. 6,769,607. Despite multiple targeted searches of patent-litigation sources (Unified Patents-style case lists, CourtListener, Docket Alarm, Justia, Stanford NPE Database, PTAB/PTActs documents, and CAFC opinion repositories), no case was located in which 6,769,607 was identified as an asserted patent.

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Cases reviewed and why they are NOT responsive

I deliberately did not auto-correct or merge these; per the strict rule, each alphanumeric identifier is read literally, and none of the above is U.S. 6,769,607.

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Important limitations and caveats

1. Search coverage was incomplete. I was unable to directly query the Unified Patents litigation portal, PACER, or Lex Machina in this session; my findings rest on the public search results returned. A definitive "no litigation" conclusion should be verified against PACER's full docket index and Lex Machina/Docket Navigator.
2. The result is an absence of evidence, not proof of absence. A patent can be asserted in litigation without the patent number surfacing prominently in general web results (e.g., cases where it is one of many asserted patents, or complaints that are not otherwise indexed).
3. The patent is expired (anticipated expiration 2019-11-15). It can no longer be asserted for prospective infringement, which materially reduces the likelihood of any active litigation; any past litigation would necessarily predate expiration plus the 6-year § 286 damages look-back.
4. Ownership trail suggests where to look. Because C-SAM, Inc. and later Mastercard Mobile Transaction Solutions Inc. held the patent, any past assertion would most plausibly have been brought by one of those entities (or a predecessor). The known C-SAM v. ViVOtech case is the closest match on owner and subject matter but does not list 6,769,607.

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Recommended next steps to confirm

To reach a defensible conclusion, the following should be checked directly:

• PACER / Docket Navigator full-text search for "6,769,607" and "6769607" across all district courts and the ITC (Section 337).
• Lex Machina patent case search filtered by patent number 6,769,607.
• Unified Patents Portal (portal.unifiedpatents.com/litigation/caselist) keyword search for 6769607.
• USPTO Patent Center / Assignment records and USPTO PTAB filings (IPR/PGR/CBM) naming 6,769,607.
• USITC EDIS search for investigations involving the patent.

If those confirm no hits, the answer is: no known litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 6,769,607.

I'll start by checking the structured PTAB block against what web search can surface.

No IPR yet. Let me check the Unified Patents portal, CBM/post-grant route, and any litigation history that would have generated a challenge.

AIA Trial Proceedings — US 6,769,607

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file: 0. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block from the USPTO Open Data Portal returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceeding involving US 6,769,607 — no institutions, no denials, no FWDs, no settlements, no appeals. Consequently there is no breakdown to give: 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials. Web search corroborates this rather than contradicting it. Bottom-line defensive posture: the patent has never been through an AIA trial, so every one of the 46 claims is UNTESTED at the PTAB — but the patent expired on 2019-11-15, so a challenge today buys nothing except insulation from back damages. That combination is unusual and it cuts both ways; see the strategic summary.

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Per-proceeding detail

There are no proceedings to detail. I will not manufacture docket numbers to fill this section. For completeness, here are the near-misses I affirmatively cleared and one item that deserves a flag.

No proceeding — the "6769607" string in PTAB petition paper

• What I found: A single PTAB petition document (https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1557860/download-documents?artifactId=vy3R_OuBk1phh9h9fW2j7BTkSKpHS5r80d120RZWnquspknE7Dqf2CQ) contains the literal string "6769607" in a table of patent numbers — appearing as "6595929" | "6769607" | "6957107".
• What it is not: It is not a caption, not a challenged-patent identification, and not a proceeding number. The format (quoted numbers in a three-column table) is consistent with an exhibit listing references or an expert's patent-consideration table — a document within someone else's petition (Samsung appears in adjacent PTAB papers under petitions/1557860 and 1557278). No proceeding against US 6,769,607 is implicated.
• Defensive value: None directly. But it is a signal worth knowing: the patent is cropping up as a prior-art reference in other parties' PTAB filings, which is exactly what you would expect for a 1999 priority-date disclosure on magnetic-stripe emulation adapters. If you are defending an assertion of this patent, those same filings are a ready-made roadmap to the art others have already collected against the later generation of this technology.

No proceeding — CBM route (now closed)

• Filing window was open and unused. The patent's claims (financial transactions, POS card readers, promotional/coupon delivery) plausibly touched the CBM definition, and CBM review was available even for patents with pre-AIA priority dates. But no CBM was ever filed against it, and the CBM transitional program sunset on 2020-09-16 by statute (AIA § 18(a)(3)(A) — 8 years after the program's effective date). That door is permanently shut.
• Related case law you'd have had to survive: Unwired Planet, LLC v. Google Inc., 841 F.3d 1376 (Fed. Cir. 2016) and Secure Axcess, LLC v. PNC Bank Nat'l Ass'n (2017) narrowed CBM eligibility to patents having "a claim that contains, however phrased, a financial activity element." Claim 41 (promotional information selected from past/current transactions) and claim 19 (a POS card reader adapter) would have been the eligibility hooks. Moot now.
• Defensive value: Zero going forward — you cannot petition for CBM review of this patent in 2026 even if you wanted to.

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Strategic summary

Claim status: everything is UNTESTED. No claim of US 6,769,607 has been canceled, confirmed, or construed by the PTAB — ever. All four independent claims (1, 19, 26, 41) and all 42 dependent claims stand exactly as issued on 2004-08-03. There is no narrowing to report, no certificate under 35 U.S.C. § 318(b) to cite, and no FWD to quote. If you were hoping for an "claims 1–5 canceled, the troll has no case" posture, that is not this patent. Conversely, you do not face a "survived two IPRs and is hardened" posture either — that phrase would require a proceeding history that does not exist here.

The expiration dominates everything. The file is "Expired – Lifetime" with anticipated expiration 2019-11-15 (20 years from the 1999-11-15 priority date). The printed patent confirms a 0-day patent term adjustment ("extended or adjusted under 35 U.S.C. 154(b) by 0 days," US 6,769,607 B1 front page), so there is no PTA cushion. Two consequences: (1) damages exposure is limited to pre-expiration infringement, and a defendant's design-around-plus-laches argument gets considerably stronger; (2) the PTAB incentive is nearly gone — a successful IPR would cancel claims that have already lapsed, giving you no forward-looking freedom to operate. That is almost certainly why no one ever filed one, notwithstanding 158 documents citing it.

Estoppel landscape is a blank slate. Because no IPR was ever instituted, 35 U.S.C. § 315(e)(2) estoppel has never attached to anyone — no petitioner, real party in interest, or privy is barred from raising any § 102/§ 103 ground in district court. Practically, this matters less than it sounds: an IPR-filed-today defense would face the same discretionary denial machinery (General Plastic follow-on factors; the § 325(d) "same or substantially the same art" analysis) and, more importantly, the mootness problem above. The productive path is invalidity contentions in litigation, not a petition — you can use every reference, in every combination, with no estoppel shadow.

Pattern signals are absent. No repeat petitioner (no petitioner at all). No patent-owner appeal activity to the Federal Circuit — the previously generated summary found no 2026 CAFC docket for this number, which is now explained rather than merely unverified: there was no PTAB outcome to appeal, so there is no § 319 appeal to be had. No defensive aggregator (Unified Patents et al.) appears in the chain as a challenger. The only third-party interest visible is reference-level: the patent sits in Unified Patents' portal and in other parties' PTAB exhibits as prior art, and its family members (WO 2001037200 A1, EP 1232469 B1, JP 2003515228 A) are cited in later POS/contactless-protocol filings.

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Recommended next steps

1. Do not commission an IPR petition on this patent. Expired 2019-11-15, no forward-looking relief, and PTAB has no live claim to cancel that would help you. Spend the budget on district-court invalidity and damages cut-off instead.
2. If you are facing a demand letter citing claims 1, 19, 26, or 41, say so explicitly: no PTAB claim-level outcome exists to cite in either direction. Do not let opposing counsel imply the patent has been "upheld" — nothing has tested it. The correct characterization is untested and expired.
3. Mine the third-party PTAB exhibits. The 6769607 string in the Samsung-adjacent petition papers at https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/1557860 shows that art-collection against magnetic-stripe-emulation adapters already exists in public filings. Pull that exhibit list, plus the "Cited By (158)" set on the Google Patents page (notably Vivotech's US 20040094624 A1 / US 20040094625 A1 "Adaptor for magnetic stripe card reader" filings and US 20060163353 A1 "External adaptor for magnetic stripe card reader").
4. Track the statutory dates rather than PTAB dates. The relevant clock now is the 2019-11-15 expiration and the 6-year damages lookback (§ 286) — i.e., no § 284 damages for infringement before roughly 2020 absent tolling/exception arguments. Confirm whether any pre-expiration suit was filed, since a prior adjudication would change the picture; I could not verify suit history from the records available in this session.
5. If a 2026 filing surfaces that the ODP hasn't indexed: IPR petitions appear on PTAB E2E within days of filing. Re-run the number against https://ptacts.uspto.gov before relying on the "zero" count in litigation. As of the ingest underlying this analysis, the count is 0.

Confidence and limitations

• High confidence: zero AIA trial proceedings on file per the USPTO ODP-derived structured block; expiration date 2019-11-15; 0-day PTA as printed on the patent.
• Medium confidence: the CBM sunset date (2020-09-16) and the exact § 315(e)(2) estoppel statement — legal authority is well settled but I did not re-pull the statutory text in this session.
• Explicitly unresolved: whether C-SAM or Mastercard Mobile Transaction Solutions ever enforced this patent in district court (the previously generated section flagged the assignee chain as inferred, not primary-source-confirmed), and whether any ex parte reexamination was filed. Ex parte reexam is not an AIA trial proceeding and would not appear in the PTAB count — if you need that answer, it must be pulled from PatentCenter's file history.

I'll research the ownership chain for US 6,769,607. Let me start with the assignment records and corporate history.

Let me dig into the corporate history and any litigation involving this patent.

Found a key litigation reference. Let me investigate C-SAM's assertion activity and the assignment record details.

I've hit my tool-call budget. Here's what I can substantiate from the sources retrieved, with explicit flags on the gaps I could not close.

Assignment-chain reconstruction — US 6,769,607

Inventors

Unusual-pattern note: the two inventors retained personal ownership of the patent from the 1999 priority filing until a single assignment to C-SAM recorded in 2008 (see below). This is the opposite of the "inventors depart and the portfolio is sold" pattern — here the founders held the asset personally for roughly nine years before conveying it to their own company. This is a founder-held, not an employee-assigned, patent.

Original assignee

• Of record: the Google Patents front page lists the original assignee as "Individual"; FreePatentsOnline lists Pitroda, Satyan G. and Patel, Merul. Read literally, the patent issued to the inventors personally, not to a company.
• Product shipped? The operating entity behind the technology, C-SAM, Inc., did ship product: C-SAM "creates enterprise-grade mobile wallets for payment and non-payment transactions" and "began offering a mobile wallet in 2005," supplying the platform behind wallet programs including Isis. Its primary line of business was mobile-wallet / mobile-transaction software (Mobile Transaction Platform).
• Current status: Operating, via acquisition. Mastercard announced acquisition of C-SAM at Mobile World Congress in February 2014 (Digital Transactions; BNamericas, 2014-02-26). Mastercard had taken a minority stake in December 2012. The Illinois entity registration shows C-SAM, INC. changed its name to MASTERCARD MOBILE TRANSACTIONS SOLUTIONS, INC. on 2015-03-16, status ACTIVE, with its president (Jorn Lambert) and secretary (Keun Dong Kim) listed at 2000 Purchase St, Purchase, NY — Mastercard's headquarters address. (city-data entity record; Digital Transactions)

Assignment timeline

⚠️ Disclosure on sourcing: Google Patents' legal-events feed confirms an assignment to C-SAM, INC. recorded 2008-07-15 with assignors PATEL, MERUL and PITRODA, SATYAN G. I was unable to retrieve the reel/frame numbers or the correspondent of record from the USPTO Assignment Center within this session. I am therefore not supplying reel/frame or attorney names — fabricating either would violate the no-speculation constraint. The two links below are the ones the record supports.

• executed date not shown / recorded 2008-07-15 (Google Patents legal events) — Reel/frame not retrieved

  • Conveyance: Assignment of assignors' interest
  • Assignor: Pitroda, Satyan G. and Patel, Merul
  • Assignee: C-SAM, INC.
  • Correspondent: not retrieved
  • Context: Founders conveying personally-held patents into their own operating company — a founder-to-operating-company transfer, not a fire-sale or shell transfer.

• 2015-03-16 (effective; state registration, not a USPTO assignment) — no reel/frame

  • Conveyance: Change of name / merger into acquirer (C-SAM, Inc. → Mastercard Mobile Transactions Solutions, Inc.)
  • Assignor: C-SAM, Inc. (as acquired subsidiary)
  • Assignee: Mastercard Mobile Transactions Solutions, Inc.
  • Correspondent: not applicable (corporate registration, not a recorded patent assignment)
  • Context: Mastercard's 2014 acquisition of C-SAM consummated as an internal reorg / name change. A separate USPTO assignment record reflecting the Mastercard chain is likely (given the "Current Assignee: Mastercard Mobile Transaction Solutions Inc" listing), but I could not pull it this session.

If the Assignment Center shows additional post-2015 records (e.g., a C-SAM → Mastercard assignment or an internal Mastercard transfer), I did not surface them and they should be verified directly at the Assignment Center before relying on this timeline.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 6769607
    1999 : Inventors file priority application
    2004 : Patent issued on Aug 3
    2008 : Assigned to C-SAM Inc
    2011 : C-SAM sues ViVOtech in D Del
    2012 : Mastercard takes minority stake
    2014 : Mastercard acquires C-SAM
    2015 : Renamed Mastercard Mobile Transactions
    2019 : Patent expires Nov 15

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. The only recorded conveyance moves the patent from individuals to an operating company (C-SAM, Inc.), the reverse of the shell pattern. C-SAM shipped a mobile-wallet platform (product in commerce) and has a 501–1000-employee corporate registration dating to 1998. No "IP/Holdings/Ventures" suffix entity appears in the chain.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. Neither C-SAM, Inc. nor Mastercard Mobile Transactions Solutions appears on the standard NPE lists (Acacia, Marathon, IV, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, etc.) in the sources I retrieved. C-SAM is characterized as a product company, and the acquirer is a top-tier payments network.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear. I could not retrieve the correspondent of record for any link, so this signal cannot be scored either way. Flag for follow-up: pull the 2008 C-SAM recording and any subsequent Mastercard recording and compare correspondents.

4. Cascading transfers (<24 months through chained LLCs) — not present. The record shows one assignment plus one name change, ~7 years apart. No rapid chain.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. The C-SAM assignment was recorded 2008-07-15; the earliest related suit I found, C-SAM Inc. v. ViVOtech Inc., 1:11-cv-00881 (D. Del.), was filed in 2011 — roughly three years later, well outside the 6-month window. (The suit appears in the Stanford NPE Litigation Database at npe.law.stanford.edu.) Note the database row is ambiguous as to asserter categorization, and I could not confirm which patents were asserted in that case — do not assume US 6,769,607 was among them without the complaint.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No bankruptcy of the assignor appears in the record; the transfer was a solvent founder-to-company conveyance followed by a strategic acquisition.

7. Privateering — not present (and, if anything, the inverse). Mastercard bought the company and kept the technology in-house rather than spinning patents out to an assertion vehicle. The chain ends with the patents inside an operating payments network, not with an NPE asserting against the acquirer's competitors.

8. Defensive aggregator — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT, Unified Patents, or OIN.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The chain runs inventors (founder-held) → C-SAM, Inc. (mobile-wallet product company) → Mastercard Mobile Transactions Solutions, Inc. (Mastercard subsidiary). The only recorded conveyance (2008-07-15) is a founder-to-operating-company assignment, and C-SAM's 2011 suit against ViVOtech, Inc., 1:11-cv-00881 (D. Del.), reads as a product company asserting against a market competitor rather than a shell-entity campaign. No shell transfer, cascading LLC chain, NPE-list assignee, or defensive-aggregator terminal appears. Two caveats: (i) I could not retrieve reel/frame or correspondent data, so signal 3 is unresolved; and (ii) the patent expired 2019-11-15, so it is not assertable today regardless of ownership.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center (search by patent number): https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/
• Google Patents legal events: https://patents.google.com/patent/US6769607/en
• Stanford NPE Litigation Database (C-SAM v. ViVOtech, 1:11-cv-00881, D. Del.): https://npe.law.stanford.edu/cases

Highest-value follow-ups: (1) pull the 2008 reel/frame and its correspondent PDF from Assignment Center; (2) confirm whether a separate C-SAM → Mastercard assignment was recorded post-2014; (3) obtain the C-SAM v. ViVOtech complaint to confirm which patents were asserted.

I'll search for authoritative records on US 6,769,607, focusing specifically on the prior-art references cited against/within it.

Let me pull the front-page citation list for this patent from other authoritative sources.

I found the FreePatentsOnline citation list. Let me pull the complete front-page references and the Google Patents "Patent Citations" table.

Prior-Art Analysis — US 6,769,607 B1

0. Data-source, scope, and honesty note (read first)

I could not open the official USPTO PatentCenter / IFW record or the Google Patents "Patent Citations" table for 6,769,607 in this session (those pages were not returned by the searches; the fetches I could make surfaced the specification but not the front-page reference table). What follows is built from:

• the authoritative full text already supplied in this thread (specification, claims, "Cited By" list), and
• the FreePatentsOnline page for 6769607 (URL freepatentsonline.com/6769607.html), which returned the front-page "US Patent References" list — but only a truncated portion of it.

Consequence: the reference list below is incomplete and unverified entry-by-entry against the primary front page. Filing/priority dates (which govern §102(a)/(b)/(e) status) were generally not retrievable for the listed references, so the §102 mappings are provisional and should be re-run against the certified front page and the examiner's Notices of References Cited.

Literal-ID discipline (per your rule): searching 6769607 also returns JP6769607B2 ("High temperature region extractor," a 2020 Japanese patent) and JP2017104003A. Those are different patents and are excluded here. Only US 6,769,607 B1 (Pitroda/Patel, app. 09/587,998) is the subject.

Consistency with prior section: as the earlier section found, I again find no verifiable 2026 CAFC / IPR / district-court activity specific to US 6,769,607. Nothing here contradicts the previously generated summary.

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1. Which citations are actually "prior art"

Two distinct citation sets attach to this patent — don't conflate them:

The core of your question is the backward set. I recovered part of it (§2); the forward set (§5) is useful only as evidence of the patent's commercial/technical significance.

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2. U.S. patent references cited (recovered portion)

Dates are issue dates as returned by FreePatentsOnline; filing dates were not recovered (bracketed "n/r" = not retrieved). Descriptions are per the title/reference as listed — I could not open each reference's disclosure, so treat the "disclosure relevance" column as inferred.

(Class codes returned for several entries — e.g., 5,595,961→340/825.33; 5,884,271→705/1; 5,834,756→235/493; 5,590,038→395/241 — confirm the art units are the card/transaction space, consistent with this patent.)

Likely-missing material: the front page almost certainly also carries a "Foreign Patent Documents" section (this family has WO/EP/JP/DE/AT counterparts) and Non-Patent Literature, neither of which the truncated FPO result exposed.

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3. The most relevant references and their §102 exposure

Because claim 1 is a combination claim (reader-insertable housing + transceiver + processor + a communication circuit carrying receipt information + POS interface in the insertable portion), a clean single-reference §102 anticipation is unlikely from any one of the above. The references split into three buckets:

A. Magnetic-emulation art → dependent claims 4, 5, 6, 19 (and method 27–29).

• US 5,955,961 (Wallerstein), "Programmable transaction card" and US 5,834,756 (Gutman), "Magnetically communicative card" are the references most likely to potentially anticipate under §102 the magnetic-stripe-emulator limitations (claim 4 "magnetic stripe emulator"; claim 5 "at least one electromagnet"; claim 6 "a plurality of electromagnets"). Caveat: I could not confirm from the disclosures that either uses an electromagnet that is dynamically written rather than a re-recordable magnetic medium, so a §102 (as opposed to §103) position is not established on the record I could retrieve.

B. The electronic-wallet / paperless-receipt art → claims 26, 38, 39.

• US 5,590,038 and US 5,884,271 (both Pitroda) are incorporated by reference and disclose a multi-account transaction card with receipt storage / paperless transactions. They speak to the receipt-return steps of method claim 26(f)–(g) and claims 38–39, but they describe the handheld card itself, not a separate reader-insertable adapter that emulates a stripe and relays receipt data back. So they are §103 fodder, not §102 anticipation.

C. Hand-held / RF-terminal art → background to claim 1 / claim 10.

• US 5,218,188 (Hanson) and US 5,189,287 (Parienti) establish the hand-held RF-transaction backdrop (relevant to claim 10's "radio-frequency circuit") but do not disclose the POS interface or receipt channel.

Claim 41 (promotional-information delivery) and claim 26's receipt-relay: I found no backward reference directed to pushing coupons/promotional data from a POS into a handheld via an adapter. That two-way "reverse-channel" method appears to be the genuinely novel contribution and is not anticipated by the recovered list.

Bottom line on §102: on the evidence I could retrieve, the recovered references are best characterized as §103 combination art (magnetic emulation + hand-held RF terminal + receipt-storing e-wallet), with only the magnetic-emulator dependent claims (4–6/19) as plausible, but unconfirmed, §102 candidates. I cannot responsibly assert a clean §102 anticipation of any independent claim (1, 19, 26, 41) from the material recovered.

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4. Related applications and matter incorporated by reference (equally probative, though not "cited")

• Parent (CIP) application: Ser. No. 09/440,529, filed 1999-11-15 → US 6,705,520 B1 ("Point of sale adapter for electronic transaction device"). Same inventors/priority. It is family art, not third-party prior art (same inventive entity precludes §102(e) treatment as to the CIP).
• Incorporated by reference in the specification: US 5,590,038; US 5,884,271; and Ser. No. 09/372,365, "System(s) And Methods For Servicing Electronic Transactions." These are material to the promotional/analytics features (claim 41–44) and the receipt features.
• Industry standards cited in the spec (not patents): ISO 7810/7811/7813 (magnetic stripe), ISO 7816 (contact smart cards), ISO 14443 (contactless), IrDA, and the "Bluetooth" proximity-RF standard — relevant to the emulation/enablement limitations even though not "prior-art patents."

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5. Forward citations (context only — not prior art to 6,769,607)

The "Cited By (158)" list shows 6,769,607 became prior art against later filings, e.g.:

• EP 1 703 433 A1 (O2 Micro, "Method and apparatus for contactless ICC connectivity") cites US 6,769,607 B1 as an [X] reference in its search report — i.e., a later examiner used this patent as novelty-destroying art against another application.
• Vivotech US 2003/0218066 and US 2004/0094624 ("Adaptor for magnetic stripe card reader"), Tyfone, Gonow, Coin, and Cedar Ridge US 8,141,780 ("data card emulation") are downstream adapters/emulators that build on this disclosure.

These tell us 6,769,607 was foundational, but they do not bear on its own validity.

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6. Provisional claim-by-claim §102/§103 map

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7. What I could not verify (flagged, not fabricated)

1. The complete, certified front-page "References Cited" list (I have a truncated FreePatentsOnline extract only) and the Foreign Patent Documents / NPL sections.
2. Filing/priority dates for the cited references — essential to pin down §102(a)/(b)/(e) status.
3. Actual disclosure content of each reference — so the §102 mappings above are title-based inferences, not claim charts.
4. Any actual examiner rejection (the prosecution history was not retrieved); "which claim it anticipates" is my analysis, not a recorded USPTO finding.
5. 2026 litigation/appellate activity — none verifiable; absence of evidence is not evidence of absence.

Recommended next step: pull the certified front page and the "References Cited" / IFW documents for US 6,769,607 from USPTO PatentCenter, and run §102 claim charts against US 5,955,961 and US 5,834,756 first (the two magnetic-card references), then against the incorporated US 5,590,038 / 5,884,271 for the receipt-method claims.

I'll build on the prior-art section already generated, but first verify the disclosures of the two magnetic-card references that carry the most weight for §103, since the earlier section flagged their content as unverified.

The searches materially advanced two open questions from the prior-art section. Let me verify the remaining pieces: the read/write card-reader art relied on in the sibling IPR petitions, and the POS-coupon art relevant to claim 41.

Obviousness Analysis — US 6,769,607 B1 under 35 U.S.C. § 103

0. What this section changes relative to the Prior Art section

Two findings in the earlier section were flagged as unresolved. Both are now resolved from primary reference text, and I flag them here because they materially strengthen the §103 case rather than contradict the earlier work:

1. The critical factual gap is closed. The Prior Art section asked whether Wallerstein US 5,955,961 and Gutman US 5,834,756 disclose an electromagnet that is dynamically written rather than a re-recordable magnetic medium, and could not confirm it. Both do. Wallerstein discloses "a magnetic strip emulation controller and an inductive coil" and a "magnetic strip control circuit 54 [that] outputs a signal to drive an inductor 55 that generates a magnetic field pattern… Signals representing the data to be communicated are output serially, thus emulating data encoded on a magnetic strip." Gutman discloses "at least one conductor… electrically coupled to at least one driver to emit at least one changing magnetic field… to magnetically communicate information… to a magnetic card reader," with a controller that "controls a varying magnetic field emanating from the conductor to mimic a varying magnetic field produced by a conventional magnetic stripe card." The earlier "possible §102 — unconfirmed" determination for claims 4–6/19 can be upgraded to §103-certain, §102-plausible.
2. The earlier section's claim-41 conclusion ("No §102/§103 on recovered record") is now partially superseded. I recovered POS coupon/loyalty art. A §103 attack on claim 41 now exists; see Combination Set K.

No contradiction with the earlier Litigation, PTAB, or Assignment sections. Nothing here disturbs the "untested at the PTAB / expired 2019-11-15" posture.

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1. Framework and evidentiary caveats

Legal standard. Graham v. John Deere Co., 383 U.S. 1 (1966) (scope/content of prior art; differences; PHOSITA level; secondary considerations). KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007) (predictable variations; "if a technique has been used to improve one device, and a person of ordinary skill in the art would recognize that it would improve similar devices in the same way, using the technique is obvious"). MPEP §§ 2141–2145 (enumerated rationales for combining: (A) known techniques to improve similar devices; (B) simple substitution; (C) use of known technique to improve similar devices in the same way; (D) applying a known technique to a known device ready for improvement; (E) "obvious to try"; (F) design incentives/market forces; (G) art-recognized TSM).

Two evidentiary points that do a lot of work here:

• Applicant's own admissions are prior art. MPEP § 2129. The '607 specification states as known: POS terminals "include terminals having plastic card magnetic stripe readers and terminals having smart card readers"; POS terminals "that print coupons and other promotional information based on purchases… are known"; POS terminals "may include a serial port, such as an RS-232 port, for outputting information to a printer"; and PDAs/phones already contain "infrared transceivers." Each of these is an express admission usable against the claims.
• The patent incorporates its own predecessors. US 5,590,038 and US 5,884,271 (Pitroda) are expressly incorporated by reference and disclose "receipt storage, eliminating paper receipts." That admission undercuts any argument that the receipt-return feature of claims 1(d)/26/38–39 was a novel contribution.

Caveat (carried forward, unresolved): I hold the '607 full text and retrieved excerpts of the primary references, not complete certified copies of every reference, and I do not have the '607 prosecution history. Every mapping below is a provisional claim chart, not an examiner's rejection. The §102(b)/§102(e) table in §2 shows the analysis is robust to the open CIP-priority question.

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2. Prior-art status (satisfies the §103 "prior art" threshold regardless of CIP outcome)

The '607 patent is a CIP of Ser. No. 09/440,529 (filed 1999-11-15). Claims supported by the parent get the 1999-11-15 date (§102(b) critical date 1998-11-15); new-matter claims (e.g., claim 41's promotional delivery, claim 26's receipt relay) may get only the 2000-06-06 filing date (§102(b) critical date 1999-06-06). Every reference below qualifies under at least one subsection either way:

Grounding URLs: US6769607 · US5955961 · US5834756 / US6206293 · US5530232 · US5513102.

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3. Level of ordinary skill (PHOSITA)

A person with a B.S. in electrical engineering or computer science (or equivalent), plus 2–4 years of experience with card-based payment terminals, magnetic-stripe read-heads and encoding, and handheld computing/wireless peripherals; conversant with ISO 7810/7811/7813, ISO 7816, IrDA, and POS peripheral buses (RS-232). This is the level at which the following combinations are "ordinary creativity" rather than invention (KSR).

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4. Combination sets and motivations

Set A — Claim 1 (adapter apparatus): Gutman '756 primary, + Taylor '232, + applicant admission

Claim 1 requires (a) reader-insertable housing; (b) transceiver with the electronic transaction device; (c) processor; (d) communication circuit coupled to the POS reader and adapted to receive receipt information; (e) POS interface in the insertable portion.

• (a) Gutman: card body "at least partially inserted into the magnetic card reader," with the field "directly detectable by a magnetic card reader without further movement of the… card relative to the card reader" — i.e., a reader-insertable, stationary interface.
• (b) Gutman: an "electronic wallet" with a controller and user interface, a detachable magnetically communicative card, and a "wireless communication interface… to provide wireless reconfiguration of the magnetically communicative card remotely." Gutman also discloses a sensor that "sense[s] a sensed signal picked up by the conductor from a varying magnetic field emanating from another device" so the controller can read/receive — i.e., bidirectional magnetic communication.
• (c) Gutman: the controller/driver.
• (e) Gutman: the conductor wound on a ferrite core "extending substantially the length of the card body" and "located… to correspond to the location of the magnetic reading head."
• (d) Not in Gutman. Supplied by Taylor '232 (reader writes account data back to the card: "ADD POINT VALUE TO CURRENT ACCOUNT BALANCE AND UPDATE CARD OR CENTRAL DATABASE"; card reader updates "frequency data, bonus points… expiration dates") plus the '607 specification's own admission that POS terminals have a serial port carrying receipt/printer data.

Motivations (multiple, independent):

• Same field of endeavor / same problem. Both Wallerstein and Gutman frame the invention around the large installed base of magnetic readers; Gutman states the reader infrastructure "is a mature and stable technology" and that smartcards are "not supported by the vast existing stable infrastructure of the magnetic stripe card readers." That is the identical problem the '607 patent recites in its Background.
• Same classification. Gutman and the '607 patent sit in the card/transaction art (Class 235 subclasses 449/493/380; the examiner's own front-page citation of Gutman confirms it is analogous art).
• KSR rationale (D)/(G). Gutman already contemplates the exact architecture (a detachable, wirelessly reconfigurable card coupled to a wallet); substituting the wireless link for Gutman's wired flex-circuit coupling is "simple substitution of one known element for another" — and Gutman itself discloses the wireless alternative, so the suggestion is in the reference.
• KSR rationale (F). The economic motivation is stated in the '607 Background itself: retrofitting the POS base "would require both hardware and software modifications" and retraining; adapting the handheld side is cheaper. Market force = combine on the device side, not the terminal side.

Set B — Claims 4, 5, 6 (magnetic-stripe emulator; ≥1 electromagnet; plurality)

• Claim 4/5: Wallerstein's "magnetic strip emulation controller and an inductive coil," and the control circuit 54 → inductor 55 path, disclose a magnetic stripe emulator comprising at least one electromagnet (and arguably anticipate).
• Claim 6 ("a plurality of electromagnets"): Gutman's card carries three conductors aligned with the three read-heads (tracks 1–3) of the reader (Fig. 2). This maps directly onto the '607 specification's own two-coil/two-track embodiment.
• Motivation: the number of coils is dictated by the ISO 7811 track count; providing one coil per track is a predictable mechanical/electrical design choice (KSR rationale (A)), and the '607 specification concedes "one electromagnet may be used to emulate a single track, or three or more…".

Set C — Claims 7, 8 (smart-card emulator; both emulators)

• Claim 8's "magnetic stripe emulator and a smart card emulator": Taylor '232 expressly discloses a card comprising both a magnetic stripe and solid-state circuitry "so that it can be read by a card reader compatible with a magnetic-stripe card or by a card reader compatible with a smart card." Gutman's Fig. 7 likewise discloses "smartcard technology within the magnetically communicative card" for "dual compatibility with both the more modern smartcard reader technology and the existing magnetic card reader technology."
• Claim 7: ISO 7816 is a printed publication specifying contact count, size, position, signals, and procedure; the '607 specification itself recites "eight contacts… I/O; Vpp; GND; CLK; RST; Vcc; and two contacts reserved for future use." Implementing a published standard interface is routine (KSR (A)); US 5,157,247 (Takahira, "IC card") and US 5,068,521 (Yamaguchi, "Non-contact IC card") are cited background.
• Motivation: merchants were migrating from mag-stripe to chip; a device that serves both readers preserves the addressable market. Taylor states the benefit in haec verba.

Set D — Claims 9, 10, 22, 23 (IR/RF transceiver)

• Gutman's "wireless communication interface" (RF channel) supplies claim 10/23; Hanson '188 and Parienti '287 supply the hand-held RF terminal context; IrDA is an admitted standard, and the '607 specification concedes PDAs/phones "may be equipped with an infrared transceiver."
• Motivation: keep the wallet in the user's pocket (Gutman's stated "wireless reconfiguration remotely"); eliminate the flex-circuit/cable. KSR rationale (B) — simple substitution of a known wireless link for a known wired link, predictable results.

Set E — Claims 11–16, 24, 25 (data buffer; purge by time / by count)

• Wallerstein discloses presenting the account number "for a predetermined period of time, after which time the account number is no longer presented" — a purge-by-elapsed-time teaching.
• Purge-by-count is a conventional counter; buffers "such as memory, registers, or other suitable storage means" are admitted in the '607 specification.
• Motivation: security/loss-mitigation for stored account data — the express purpose in Wallerstein. KSR rationale (A) + design choice.

Set F — Claims 17, 18, 19, 20 (serial/RS-232 port to the POS reader)

• Claim 19 is the cleanest §103 case in the patent. It requires only: insertable housing (Gutman), transceiver (Gutman wireless interface), processor (Gutman controller), electromagnet emulating a magnetic stripe (Gutman conductor/ferrite core; Wallerstein coil), and an RS-232 port to the POS serial port (applicant's admission that POS terminals have an RS-232 port; reader-side port/serial handling in US 6,223,984 Cybermark).
• Motivation: the '607 Background supplies it verbatim — using the existing serial port avoids "hardware changes, software changes or both," avoids retrofitting IR/RF into the POS base, and avoids retraining personnel. KSR rationale (F) (market forces) and (D) (known technique applied to a device ready for improvement).

Set G — Claim 26 (method, including the receipt relay) and claims 37–40, 46

Steps (a)–(e) fall out of Wallerstein/Gutman as above. The distinguishing steps (f)–(g) — reader outputs receipt information to the adapter via a communication port; adapter transmits it to the handheld — are met by:

• Taylor '232: card reader writes/updates account data on the card (rewards, expiration, frequency data) and touts the benefit "reduces the expense of mailings every time a transaction occurs."
• Applicant admission + incorporated Pitroda '038/'884,271: POS "RS-232 port… for outputting information to be printed on a paper receipt"; and express incorporation of receipt-storing, paperless-transaction disclosures.
• Motivation: eliminate paper receipts (Pitroda, incorporated by the applicant); reduce mailing costs (Taylor); keep the handheld's records current (Taylor). Result is predictable.

Set H — Claims 27–29, 30, 31 (emulation sub-steps)

• Claim 29 ("formatting… to conform with magnetic stripe standards" + "dynamically writing the formatted information to an electromagnet") is met almost verbatim by Wallerstein: control circuit 54 drives inductor 55; "Signals representing the data to be communicated are output serially, thus emulating data encoded on a magnetic strip"; the card "has substantially the same thickness of about 0.8 mm… [and] meets other ISO standards."
• Claims 30–31 (smart-card sub-steps) → Taylor/ISO 7816 as in Set C.

Set I — Claims 32–36 (ordering; buffering; purging)

• Buffering when the device transmits before the adapter is placed in the reader (claim 33) is the natural consequence of splitting the two acts; purge-by-time/count is §4 Set E. The restaurant "split-bill" narrative is a business use case, not a technical distinction. KSR (A).

Set J — Claim 41 (+ 42–46): promotional-information delivery through the adapter

Claim 41 requires an adapter with a card-emulation interface coupled to both the magnetic reader interface and the POS electronic communication port; promotional information selected; transmitted POS → adapter → handheld.

• POS coupon/promotion generation is admitted prior art ("coupon printers are known which print paper coupons in response to purchases of items at a grocery store POS"; "POS terminals that print coupons and other promotional information based on purchases made during a transaction are known").
• US 5,513,102 (Auriemma) discloses awarding coupons/values to a credit-card user based on transaction amounts.
• US 5,537,314 (retrieved text) discloses a POS system that "determine[s] a discount value to apply to the participant's purchase based upon transaction data input and the participant's point accumulation," with an award output device. (Caveat: I could not confirm the title/inventor of '314 in this session — verify before citing.)
• Taylor '232 supplies the read-back channel that carries the promotion onto the customer's card/handheld, and the loyalty/rewards motivation ("when the card is used as a frequency card, tie-ins or links… can easily be made").
• Motivation: merchants already target promotions by purchase history, and already write loyalty data back to cards (Taylor). Delivering the same promotion electronically to a handheld the customer is already presenting — instead of printing paper — is the predictable application of a known technique to a known device ready for improvement (KSR (D)/(F)). Handheld-side filtering (claim 45) is a routine software configuration on a device the '607 specification says already stores a shopping list.
• Honest strength assessment: claim 41 is the strongest non-obviousness candidate in the patent, because I found no single reference that pushes promotions into a handheld through a card-emulating adapter. The attack is a three-reference combination (POS coupon art + card-emulation adapter + read-back channel), which is more vulnerable to a "no motivation to modify the adapter's data path to be a marketing conduit" argument. Still, it is a §103 case, not a blank slate as the earlier section suggested.

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5. Consolidated motivation-to-combine rationale

For each of the KSR/MPEP rationales, the record supplies a specific motivating statement:

Precedent template (not binding, but probative of what a PHOSITA would do): in the 2013 IPR petitions against US 7,828,207 and US 6,764,005 (eCharge Licensing), petitioners argued "Wallerstein in view of Taylor" for essentially the "universal card that both emits account data to a reader and receives account data back from the host," with express motivation ("so that the card does not need to be reissued… reduces the expense of mailings"), analogous-art reasoning (all in Class 235/380), and KSR's "simple substitution… predictable results" language. See petitions/1462249 and petitions/1462153. The '607 patent's claim 26(f)–(g) is the same species of limitation.

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6. Secondary considerations (the counterarguments, assessed honestly)

• Long-felt need / failure of others — weak for the applicant. The '607 Background asserts a "potential hurdle… compatibility with the existing infrastructure of magnetic card readers." But Wallerstein (1991) and Gutman (1996) identified and solved that same problem years earlier. A problem already solved by the art is not a long-felt need (In re Gershon).
• Unexpected results — none claimed. The specification reports ~25 mV generated vs. ~20 mV from a swiped stripe. That is a routine engineering calibration, not an unexpected result. Wallerstein's "predetermined" signal is the same order.
• Commercial success — weak nexus. The chain ends with Mastercard (per the Assignment section). But the accused product would be C-SAM's mobile wallet platform, not the claimed adapter card; the asserted nexus between the claim and the commercial product is thin and rebuttable.
• Copying — arguable but uncorroborated. Vivotech (US 2003/0218066, US 2004/0094624, US 2006/0163353 "Adaptor for magnetic stripe card reader"), Tyfone, Gonow, Coin, and Cedar Ridge (US 8,141,780 "System and method for data card emulation") are forward citations showing the patent was foundational. Forward citations show significance; they do not establish non-obviousness.
• Best non-obviousness arguments available to the patentee (state these so the analysis is balanced):
  1. Architecture. Wallerstein and Gutman place the emulation mechanism inside the wallet/card; claim 1 places it in a separate adapter that receives account data wirelessly from a different handheld. That is a genuine claim-scope difference. But Gutman's detachable card + wireless interface + partial-removal-from-pocket embodiments (claims 6 and 10) collapse most of that gap — the Gutman card is functionally an adapter tethered to a wallet.
  2. Claim 41's reverse channel. As above, the promotion push into a handheld through an emulating adapter is the least-anticipated feature.
  3. Claim 1(d) as a reader-side receipt input. If the patentee reads "communication circuit… adapted to receive receipt information" narrowly (a dedicated receipt port distinct from the emulation interface), Taylor is a weaker fit, because Taylor writes rewards data to the card rather than receiving printer/receipt data. The applicant's own admission about the RS-232 printer port is then the only support — which is why the admission matters so much.

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7. Claim-by-claim §103 summary

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8. What must be verified before filing an invalidity contention

1. Full-text claim charts against US 5,955,961 and US 5,834,756 — these are the examiner's own cited references, so the prosecution history is dispositive: pull the '607 IFW from PatentCenter to see whether and how they were applied and distinguished. (I could not retrieve it; the earlier sections flagged the same gap.)
2. Taylor '232's full text, columns 3:64–6:44, for the read-back/rewards passages actually quoted in the eCharge petitions.
3. Claim 41 art: confirm the identity/title of US 5,537,314, and locate the canonical POS coupon-dispensing references (e.g., verify the Catalina Marketing "dispensing discount coupons" patent — my search for it exhausted the tool budget and returned nothing citable; do not cite it unverified).
4. CIP priority allocation — determine, claim by claim, which claims are supported by the 1999-11-15 parent. This affects only marginal art (Wallerstein remains available via §102(e)), but it is a clean way to knock out a priority argument.
5. Peek WO 1996/026500 A1 ("magnetic stripe card simulation means, system and method", published 1996-08-29) — a direct anticipation/obviousness reference on the emulation concept that I located but did not open; it should be charted first for claims 4/5/27/28.

Bottom line: on the recovered record, claims 4–6, 7–8, 19, and 27–29 are the most exposed under §103 — Gutman and Wallerstein together, and in some readings alone, supply the dynamic magnetic emulation and the reader-insertable, no-swipe architecture. The receipt-return claims (1(d), 26(f)–(g), 38–39) rest on a Taylor-plus-admission combination that is strong but construction-sensitive, and claim 41 is the one claim for which the record supports only a multi-reference, "predictable application of known techniques" argument rather than a near-paper case.