Invalidity dossier
US 6820062
Product information system
Current assignee: Digicomp Research Corp
Added 9/23/2026, 11:58:40 PM
Active provider: DeepSeek · deepseek-flash
Patent summary
Title, assignee, inventors, filing/issue dates, abstract, and a plain-language overview of the claims.
Patent Overview — US6820062B1
Title: Product Information System
Patent number: US6820062B1
Application number: US07/878,100
Assignee: Digicomp Research Corp (original assignee; listed current assignee)
Inventors: Om P. Gupta; Robert C. Ricketson; Jack F. Bailey; Carol C. Shilepsky; Arnold C. Shilepsky
Dates: Priority date 1991-08-20; filing date 1992-05-04; publication/grant 2004-11-16; anticipated expiration 2021-11-16; legal status "Expired – Lifetime." The source states legal status is an assumption, not a legal conclusion.
Purpose and plain-language scope: The invention relates to grocery shopping cart processors and displays that provide a shopper with product information correlated with the shopper's personal buying habits. A "Product Information System" (PISYS) remote unit carried on each shopping cart includes a bar code scanner for scanning product UPC labels. The system displays information such as product description, price, state and local taxes, food stamp eligibility, discount coupon eligibilities, and nutrition information, and can keep a running total of purchased items; differences with the check-out tally can be downloaded to the check-out terminal via infrared communications. Described as an inference-based advertising and information system, it combines acquired and inferred knowledge about the shopper with the shopper's proximity to advertisable competing or complementary products to select advertisements and information shown on the cart display—for example, competing soft drinks or complementary items—potentially based on store margins or promotion fees. It maintains a Preference and Purchase Profile (PPP) per customer, containing voluntarily entered interests and historical buying parameters, which may be stored in an in-house central computer or on a store card read at the entrance or by the scanner, with initialization possibly via infrared transmission from the main (text truncated).
Source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US6820062](/patent/US6820062)/en
What the excerpt does not establish: It does not provide the claims, a complete written description, an abstract, or any prior-art references. It also does not establish litigation, ownership transfers, validity, or the accuracy of the listed legal status or assignee data.
Generated 10/1/2026, 9:32:11 PM
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Litigation summary
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Proceedings on file (0)
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PTAB challenges
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Assignment history
Inventors, original assignee, and the chain of ownership recorded with the USPTO — including the correspondent attorney who recorded each assignment, since shell-LLC chains often share one repeat-player attorney even when the entity names look unrelated. Surfaces NPE / patent-troll patterns: shell-entity transfers, known asserters in the chain, repeat correspondent fingerprints, pre-litigation assignments, and bankruptcy fire-sales.
Prior art
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Obviousness
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Extensions
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Derivative works
Defensive disclosure: derivative variations of each claim designed to render future incremental improvements obvious or non-novel.