US 7107221

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

Let me look specifically for the claims of US 7,107,221 and any litigation history.

Let me verify the claim set directly from the patent document.

US Patent 7,107,221 — Summary

Caveat up front: I could not retrieve the granted claims directly from the official USPTO full-text/PTAB docket within these searches. The claim descriptions below come from a secondary aggregator (RPX Insight) and should be verified against the printed patent. I also found no CAFC 2026 docket activity involving this patent number — and, as explained below, that is expected because the patent expired in 2019.

Bibliographic data

Continuity chain (per the patent's own "Related Applications" section):

• Continuation of 09/435,883 (filed Nov. 4, 1999) → US 6,199,753
• Which is a divisional of 08/771,463 (filed Dec. 20, 1996) → US 5,979,757
• Which is a continuation-in-part of 08/706,579 (filed Sep. 5, 1996) → US 5,825,002
• Related: 08/780,023 → US 6,084,528 ("Intranet Scanning Terminal System")
• Later continuation of '221: 11/460,579 → US 7,725,326 (issued May 25, 2010)

Abstract (as printed)

"The present invention relates to an improved portable shopping system. The system is provided with improved data presentation system for presenting customer desired data on a portable terminal. The portable terminal includes audio as well as video presentation means which are used to provide customer specific marketing files to promote the sale of identified items."

Independent claims — plain-language overview

The patent has 19 claims, with independent claims reported as 1, 2, 3, 4 and 7 (claims 5–6 and 8–19 are dependent). Their substance focuses on the shopping-list / kiosk aspect of the disclosure rather than the barcode-terminal aspect.

• Claim 1 – "An improved shopping facility" (apparatus). A store environment combining four elements: (a) at least one kiosk that generates a customer's list of items to buy; (b) a self-scanning system where customers use a portable terminal to maintain an updated list of selected items; (c) multiple checkout lanes for tendering payment; and (d) a shopping-list distribution communication device that delivers the kiosk-generated list to the customer's portable terminal.

• Claim 2 – Method of delivering a customer shopping list. The store computer sends the customer a list of previously purchased items (derived from purchase history) to a home computing device; the customer builds a shopping list at home; the list is e-mailed to the store computer; stored in a user data file; sent to a kiosk on request; and finally pushed to the customer's portable terminal in a user-perceptible format.

• Claim 3 – System for delivering a shopping list (means-plus-function). Parallel to claim 2 in "means for" form: means for generating the list at a first location, means for e-mailing it to the store computer, means for storing it in a user data file (incorporating it with other list information), means for retrieving it via a kiosk, and means for communicating it to a portable shopping terminal in a format including image, text, audio, or video data.

• Claim 4 – "A shopping facility" (apparatus). A messaging communication system with a receiver for an electronic message from a customer containing a shopping list; at least one kiosk maintaining that list via a communication link; a self-scanning system with an interface letting the customer select items using a portable shopping terminal to maintain an updated selected-items list; and multiple checkout lanes for payment.

• Claim 7 – Method of delivering a shopping list to a user. Generates the desired-items list at a location remote from the store; e-mails it to a first computer; stores it in a user data file, associating it with previous lists; retrieves it at the store via a kiosk communicating with that computer; and delivers it to the customer's portable shopping terminal in a user-perceptible format.

Common thread of the independent claims: an e-mail/kiosk-mediated shopping-list pipeline feeding a portable self-scanning terminal inside a store with multiple checkout lanes. Notably, the issued '221 claims are narrower and more list/kiosk-centric than the broad "browser-on-a-scanner" disclosure in the specification.

Litigation / docket check

• No active or 2026 CAFC docket matter found for US 7,107,221. Google Patents records the patent as "Expired – Lifetime," adjusted expiration 2019-03-04, so it could not be asserted for infringement in 2026.
• Search-noise warning: a PTAB petition document surfaced referencing "the '221 patent" with claims about a data access device, removable data carrier, electronic payment system and data use rule data store (claims 17–31). That is a different patent ending in "221" and must not be conflated with US 7,107,221. I excluded it.
• Known Symbol enforcement activity (e.g., Symbol Technologies, Inc. v. Janam Technologies LLC, E.D.N.Y., ~2008–2009) asserted other Symbol patents (e.g., the '366, '969, '821), not the '221.

Uncertainty notes

1. Independent-claim numbering (1, 2, 3, 4, 7) and claim text are sourced from a third-party aggregator, not directly from the granted patent — verify against USPTO PatentCenter/Patent Public Search.
2. One aggregator listed the priority date as 1996-09-04 (likely a timezone artifact); the patent's own text and Google Patents both say 1996-09-05.
3. A Patsnap result listed the eventual owner of the related '326 patent as "Microsoft Corp" — this is an assignment-database artifact and should not be trusted over the recorded chain; the '221's recorded current assignee is Symbol Technologies, LLC.

Bottom line: US 7,107,221 is a 2006-issued Symbol Technologies patent (1996 priority) covering a retail self-scanning facility in which an e-mailed/kiosk-stored shopping list is delivered to a portable shopping terminal, with audio/video/text/image presentation of customer-specific item and marketing data. It expired in 2019, and I found no CAFC 2026 docket involving it.

I'll research litigation involving US Patent 7107221. Let me run several targeted searches.

Let me search more specifically on litigation databases and the patent number itself.

Let me search litigation databases more specifically for this patent number.

Summary of findings: Litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,107,221

Bottom line: I could not identify any litigation involving U.S. Patent No. 7,107,221 ("Method and system for presenting item information using a portable data terminal"). Based on my searches, no litigation appears to be of record for this specific patent.

What I searched and what returned

I ran targeted searches against patent-litigation resources (Unified Patents portal style queries, RPX Insight, Docket Alarm, CourtListener/RECAP, CAFC, and general docket references). Every "221" hit returned involved a different patent — I am reporting these only to show they are not your patent, per your instruction not to auto-match similar numbers:

None of the above lists U.S. 7,107,221 in suit.

Why this is plausible (context, not proof)

• US 7,107,221 issued Sept. 12, 2006, from Application No. 09/692,402, filed Oct. 19, 2000, claiming priority to Sept. 5, 1996 (US 5,825,002 → US 5,979,757 → US 6,199,753 → US 7,107,221 chain).
• Assignee: Symbol Technologies, LLC (after name change from Symbol Technologies, Inc.).
• Legal status per the patent record: Expired – Lifetime, adjusted expiration March 4, 2019.

A patent that expired in 2019 and that I cannot find in any docket suggests it was either never asserted, or was asserted in a case not surfaced by these sources.

Important caveats (per your instructions)

• I do not have high confidence that litigation is definitively absent. My searches did not penetrate paywalled dockets (PACER/Unified full caselists/RPX) directly, and returned no positive hit for this number.
• I could not complete additional verification searches (tool step limit was reached), so this should be treated as "no confirmed litigation located in the sources searched," not a certified negative.
• Do not rely on this as a complete clearance. For a definitive answer you should run a dedicated docket pull (e.g., Unified Patents portal caselist filtered to patents=7107221, RPX Insight litigation for US7107221, and a PACER/LEXIS/Docket Alarm patent docket query), plus a check of any Symbol/Zebra licensing or ITC § 337 actions.

For each requested field

Because no case was identified, I cannot fill in plaintiff, defendant, jurisdiction, case number, filing date, or outcome/status for any specific case. If you can confirm a case number or party, I can pull the details.

Proceedings overview

Total AIA trial proceedings on file for US 7,107,221: 0. The structured "PTAB proceedings on file" block — the canonical list from the USPTO Open Data Portal — returns no IPR, PGR, or CBM proceedings, meaning the breakdown is 0 active / 0 claims invalidated / 0 claims sustained / 0 settled / 0 institution denials. Bottom line for a defendant: there is no PTAB record to work with in either direction — no FWD to point at as invalidating art, and (just as important) no failed petition that would have handed you a ready-made § 315(e)(2) estoppel map. Any invalidity case you build is your own, filed from scratch, and the patent's real defensive weakness lies elsewhere: it is expired.

I could not corroborate a single AIA proceeding against this patent. My searches of PTAB decision text, docket aggregators, and general web sources for "7,107,221" + IPR/CBM/PGR returned only unrelated matters, and Google Patents' full text for US7107221B1 discloses no PTAB trial history section (contrast with patents that carry IPR2016-xxxxx / CBM2014-xxxxx links in that field).

No proceedings to enumerate

The per-proceeding template is inapplicable — there is no proceeding number, petitioner, panel, institution decision, FWD, or appeal to report. I will not populate that template with invented identifiers.

False-positive traps to avoid when your team runs its own clearance search:

• US 8,118,221 B2 (Smartflash) — CBM2014-00194 / CBM2015-00117, claims 2 and 11 canceled and claim 32 held unpatentable. Different patent. The "…221" suffix collision is the single most likely source of a mis-cited FWD in a defense brief.
• US 5,940,510 (Maxim) — CBM2014-00038 (PNC Bank/JP Morgan). Also unrelated.
• Neither is in the 7,107,221 family (which runs through US 5,825,002 → 5,979,757 → 6,199,753 → 7,107,221, with related US 6,084,528 / 6,837,436 / 7,040,541 / 7,725,326).

Strategic summary

Claim status: 100% UNTESTED, but time-barred as an enforcement matter. No claim of 7,107,221 has been canceled, narrowed, or confirmed at the PTAB — there is simply no adjudication. Google Patents lists the legal status as "Expired – Lifetime," with an adjusted expiration of 2019-03-04. That date, not any FWD, is the operative defensive fact. An expired patent cannot be infringed going forward, cannot support injunctive relief, and reaches only past conduct — and only within the six-year lookback of 35 U.S.C. § 286 running back from whatever date you are actually sued. If a demand letter today cites 7,107,221, ask immediately what pre-2019-03-04 conduct is being claimed and why the claim isn't already time-barred.

Estoppel landscape: empty, which cuts both ways. Because no petitioner ever filed, there is no § 315(e)(2) estoppel, no IPR-specific claim construction, and no Board or Federal Circuit validity holding binding anyone. Practically, that means: (a) no prior-art ground is foreclosed to you — you have the full universe of patents and printed publications under §§ 102/103 available, plus the broad § 112 and § 101 challenges that are unavailable in IPR but available in district court and at the ITC; and (b) you cannot free-ride on a prior petitioner's expert report, institution record, or RPI/privity chain. You would fund and prove the case yourself. Note also that because the patent has expired, an IPR petition faces an uphill discretionary and practical climb — an expired patent's claims cannot meaningfully be amended, and the Board's incentive to institute is diminished; ex parte reexamination, which any third party can still request, is generally the cheaper route to a validity paper trail on an expired patent, though it produces a narrower estoppel effect (see the Federal Circuit's treatment of reexam-based estoppel under § 315(e), which does not extend to claims never subject to an IPR).

Pattern signals: none. There is no repeat petitioner, no joinder history, no Unified Patents or other defensive aggregator in the chain, and no Symbol/Zebra appeal to the Federal Circuit arising from a PTAB trial on this patent. The 2015–2018 CBM window (when a wireless self-scanning/shopping-terminal patent of this vintage would have been a prime § 101 target) passed with no filing. Symbol Technologies' and Zebra's appellate activity in this period — e.g., the Symbol Technologies v. Lemelson prosecution-laches litigation, 422 F.3d 1378 (Fed. Cir. 2005), amended on rehearing, 429 F.3d 1051 (Fed. Cir. 2005) — involved Symbol as plaintiff on other parties' patents and has nothing to do with validity of the '221 patent. The absence of any IPR is itself informative: this patent was never asserted against a defendant with the budget and motive to file one.

Recommended next steps

If you are a defendant and the patent is being asserted against you now:

1. Lead with expiration. Demand the plaintiff identify the pre-2019-03-04 conduct it contends infringes, and confirm which specific claims and which accused products. Link the panel to the Google Patents status page showing "Expired – Lifetime," adjusted expiration 2019-03-04: https://patents.google.com/patent/US7107221/en. Then run the § 286 six-year lookback off the complaint date.
2. Do not cite a PTAB FWD. There is none. If a co-defendant's brief or an old invalidity contention cites "CBM2014-00194" or "CBM2015-00117" as invalidating this patent, that is the Smartflash '221 patent — correct the citation before it becomes a fee-shifting / Rule 11 problem.
3. Verify independently before you rely on my null result. Confirm the empty proceeding list yourself against the primary sources, because the ODP ingest lags and pre-2018 CBM filings are the likeliest thing to be missing:
   • PTAB E2E public search (search by patent number 7,107,221): https://ptacts.uspto.gov/ptacts/public-informations/petitions/search
   • PTAB API decisions endpoint: https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-api/swagger-ui.html and https://developer.uspto.gov/ptab-web/#/search/decisions
   • USPTO PTAB decisions page: https://www.uspto.gov/patents/ptab/decisions
   • CourtListener docket search for Federal Circuit appeals and district court assertions: https://www.courtlistener.com/?q=%227%2C107%2C221%22
   • USPTO PatentCenter prosecution/assignment file for reexamination or assignment-reassignment entries that might reflect related challenges: https://patentcenter.uspto.gov/
4. Preserve your invalidity case in district court, not the PTAB. With no estoppel clock running (no IPR filed and, given expiration, likely none you'd want to file), you retain §§ 102/103/112 and § 101 defenses in full. Build the prior-art record from the 1996 priority date (1996-09-05) forward — the Oosterveen patent (U.S. 5,468,942) and Dutch Application 9002296, both cited in the '221 specification's background, are obvious starting references, together with the 1994–1996 portable self-scanning art.
5. Consider ex parte reexamination if the plaintiff refuses to withdraw and you want an administrative validity determination on the record without the cost of an IPR. It remains available on an expired patent and has no § 315(e)(2)-style estoppel blowback against concurrent district court defenses.

If you were hoping the patent is already dead at the PTAB: it isn't, and no one has done that work for you. The good news is that you almost certainly do not need the PTAB — the expiration date does most of the defensive work before you ever reach validity.

Confidence and limits: I am high confidence that no AIA trial proceeding is indexed for US 7,107,221 in the ODP data supplied and that my independent searches surfaced none. I am lower confidence on the completeness of the pre-2018 CBM record, since CBM review of a 1996-priority retail shopping patent would have been a plausible filing and my searches relied on secondary sources for that era. Treat point 3 above as a mandatory verification step, not a formality.

I'll research the assignment record and litigation history before reconstructing the chain.

Let me dig for reel/frame numbers and any litigation specifically naming this patent.

US 7107221 — Assignment & Ownership Reconstruction

Sourcing note (read first). I do not have direct query access to the USPTO Assignment Center. This reconstruction is built from (a) the authoritative Google Patents legal-events record supplied in the patent text, and (b) live web cross-references (PlainSite, SEC/10-K exhibits, ITC filings). Reel/frame numbers and correspondent-of-record names were NOT retrievable from any source I could reach. I am flagging that gap rather than filling it with plausible-looking data. Everything below is either directly cited or labeled [unavailable].

Inventors

Unusual pattern — late inventor assignment recordation. All six inventors appear as assignors on a single recorded instrument dated/recorded 2012-05-22, conveying "ASSIGNMENT OF ASSIGNORS' INTEREST" to Symbol Technologies, Inc. (Google Patents legal events for US7107221). This application was filed 2000-10-19 and its earliest priority application (US 08/706,579) was filed 1996-09-05. The inventor-to-company assignment thus hit the USPTO record ~12 years after this filing and ~16 years after the priority filing — that is not an original prosecution-stage recordation. A 2012 bulk/confirmatory re-recordation is a classic housekeeping step taken during portfolio due diligence. I found no evidence of a 2012 transaction to tie it to, so I state the fact and stop short of a cause. I also could not verify whether any inventor departed Symbol within 12 months of filing — no source I reached addresses it.

Original assignee

At grant (2006-09-12): Symbol Technologies, Inc., One Symbol Plaza, Holtsville, New York — a maker of handheld data-collection terminals, laser bar-code scanners, scan engines and wireless LAN infrastructure. Google Patents' "Original Assignee" field now reads Symbol Technologies, LLC, which is the post-2015 change-of-name form of the same entity, not a different owner.

Product embodiment: yes, clearly. The specification describes Symbol's own commercial hardware by name — the PPT 4100 and PPT 4600 terminals, the SPECTRUM24™ PCMCIA Type II frequency-hopping radio (IEEE 802.11 Draft D5), and the PDF417/UPC scanning terminal with "plus / minus / equals" keys asserted in the self-scanning claims. This is a product-bearing operating-company patent.

Current status: going concern, indirectly held by a public company. Symbol was acquired by Motorola (Motorola Solutions, 2007); Motorola Solutions' Enterprise business — which included Symbol — was acquired by Zebra Technologies Corporation (NASDAQ: ZBRA) for $3.45B cash, announced 2014-04-15 and completed 2014-10-27 (Wikipedia, "Symbol Technologies"; Zebra press release 2014-09-16; Zebra 8-K/10-K exhibits). Zebra is not dissolved and not in bankruptcy.

Assignment timeline

Recorded dates below are the USPTO recordation dates as published in the Google Patents legal-events feed. Execution dates are not exposed in that feed and I could not retrieve them — flagged per entry. Reel/frame and correspondent of record: [unavailable] for every entry.

• Executed [unavailable] / recorded 2012-05-22 — Reel [unavailable]/[unavailable]

  • Conveyance: Assignment of Assignors' Interest
  • Assignor: William X. Tracy; Thomas K. Roslak; Judith Murrah; Francis Riso; Robert Beach; Robert Sandler (all six individually named)
  • Assignee: Symbol Technologies, Inc.
  • Correspondent: [unavailable] — cannot be flagged as recurring or non-recurring; no correspondent data reachable.
  • Context: Confirmatory/late-recorded inventor-to-company assignment; normalizes title long after the 1996 priority filing, consistent with portfolio diligence.

• Executed [unavailable] / recorded 2014-10-31 — Reel [unavailable]/[unavailable]

  • Conveyance: Security Agreement (collateral grant — not an ownership transfer)
  • Assignor: Laser Band, LLC; Symbol Technologies, Inc.; Zebra Enterprise Solutions Corp.; ZIH Corp.
  • Assignee: Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc., as Collateral Agent
  • Correspondent: [unavailable]. Corroborating third-party record: PlainSite assignment record id 7725435, "Patent Assignment from Zih Corporation; Laser Band, LLC; Zebra Enterprise Solutions Corporation; and Symbol Technologies, Inc. to Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc." — https://www.plainsite.org/patents/assignment.html?id=7725435
  • Context: Securitization — lien on the Zebra grantor group's IP to secure the term loan financing the Motorola Enterprise acquisition. Matches the Credit Agreement dated 2014-10-27 among Zebra, JPMorgan Chase as administrative agent, and Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc. as collateral agent (Zebra 10-K exhibit list), funded alongside $1.05B of 7.25% senior notes due 2022 (Escrow and Security Agreement dated 2014-10-15). This is a lender hypothecation, not a transfer to an asserter.

• Executed [unavailable] / recorded 2015-07-08 — Reel [unavailable]/[unavailable]

  • Conveyance: Change of Name
  • Assignor: Symbol Technologies, Inc.
  • Assignee: Symbol Technologies, LLC
  • Correspondent: [unavailable]
  • Context: Internal reorganization / entity conversion only — same owner, new corporate form. No change in beneficial ownership.

• Executed [unavailable] / recorded 2015-08-17 — Reel [unavailable]/[unavailable]

  • Conveyance: Release by Secured Party
  • Assignor: Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc.
  • Assignee: Symbol Technologies, Inc. (as indexed; see note)
  • Correspondent: [unavailable]
  • Context: Termination of the 2014-10-31 collateral lien. Recordkeeping note: the release is indexed back to "Symbol Technologies, Inc." even though the change-of-name to Symbol Technologies, LLC was recorded five weeks earlier on 2015-07-08. That is an indexing lag in the source record, not a second entity.

• N/A / recorded 2019-03-04 — Administrative entry only: "Adjusted expiration." Not an assignment. Google Patents status: Expired – Lifetime; term adjusted to expire 2019-03-04.

No assignment to any third party, NPE, or defensive aggregator is recorded. Post-2015-08-17 the chain is silent — consistent with the patent simply running out its term inside Zebra.

Timeline diagram

timeline
    title Ownership of US 7107221
    1996 : Priority applications filed by Symbol
    2000 : Continuation filed 19 Oct
    2006 : Patent issued 12 Sep to Symbol Technologies
    2012 : Inventor assignments recorded 22 May
    2014 : Symbol entity in Zebra financing group
         : Security agreement to Morgan Stanley
    2015 : Name change to Symbol Technologies LLC
         : Security interest released
    2019 : Patent term expires 4 Mar

NPE / troll-pattern signals

1. Shell-entity transfer — not present. Every recorded link runs within one corporate family: the six inventors → Symbol Technologies, Inc. → (name change) Symbol Technologies, LLC, all under the Zebra Technologies umbrella. No "IP / Holdings / Licensing / Ventures" suffix appears anywhere on the record. Assignee address of record is the operating company's campus (One Symbol Plaza, Holtsville, NY — seen in Zebra/Symbol UCC filings), not a registered-agent service. No single-member Delaware or Texas LLC appears in the chain.

2. Known asserter in the chain — not present. No assignee in this chain matches Acacia, Marathon, Intellectual Ventures, IPNav, Wi-LAN, Mosaid/Conversant, Vringo, Pendrell, Innovatio, MPHJ, Lumen View, Round Rock, Document Generation Corp, or a Spangenberg entity. Caveat: I could not query Unified Patents' or RPX's live asserter directories from this environment, so this is "no match found in the sources I reached," not a certified negative.

3. Repeat correspondent across the chain — unclear / unverifiable. No correspondent-of-record data for US7107221 was retrievable at any link, so recurrence cannot be tested. Do not confuse this chain with a lookalike: one search result surfaced a Schulte Roth & Zabel correspondent ("S. Kareff") on a different patent (US 8,130,775, the Acacia → Monarch Networking chain, reels 053654/0254, 055100/0624, 055101/0608). That is a genuine NPE-family correspondent pattern — but on someone else's patent, not this one. I am calling it out expressly so it is not mis-attributed here.

4. Cascading transfers — not present. Four recorded instruments are spread across 2012, 2014, and 2015, and two of the four (change of name; release of security interest) are not ownership transfers at all. There is no cluster of chained LLC-to-LLC conveyances inside a 24-month window, and no shared correspondent address to test.

5. Pre-litigation transfer — not present. I found no infringement suit naming US 7,107,221 in any source I reached, so there is no assertion to predicate a transfer on. Caution: search hits referring to "the '221 patent" in Datastrip v. Symbol concern Datastrip's own patent, not US 7,107,221 — a same-number collision that would produce a false positive if not checked. Symbol's documented assertion activity (ITC Inv. No. 337-TA-551 against Metro/Metrologic, instituted 2005-10-26) asserted US 5,457,308; 5,545,889; 6,220,514; 5,262,627; and 5,917,173 — not this patent.

6. Bankruptcy fire-sale — not present. No assignor or assignee in the chain filed Chapter 7/11. Symbol exited via a $3.9B acquisition by Motorola (2007), and the Symbol/Motorola Enterprise business moved to Zebra by negotiated purchase (2014), not insolvency.

7. Privateering — not present. The only outward-facing transaction in the record is a lender's security interest to Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, which is a collateral agent for a bank syndicate, not an assertion vehicle. Nothing indicates Symbol/Zebra funded an NPE to sue its competitors.

8. Defensive aggregator (anti-NPE) — not present. The chain does not terminate at RPX, AST, LOT Network, Unified Patents, or OIN. It terminates at Symbol Technologies, LLC, an operating subsidiary of Zebra Technologies Corporation.

Verdict

Operating-company assertion.

The record shows an unbroken corporate-family chain — inventors → Symbol Technologies, Inc. (2012-05-22) → Symbol Technologies, LLC by change of name (2015-07-08) — with the only "third party" being Morgan Stanley Senior Funding, Inc. as collateral agent under a security agreement (2014-10-31) released back (2015-08-17). Every NPE hallmark is absent: no licensing-only LLC, no listed asserter, no chained conveyances, no bankruptcy, no privateering, no defensive aggregator. The current owner is an operating company whose products (PPT-series terminals, SPECTRUM24 radios, PDF417 scanners) practice the disclosed system, and the patent has since expired (term adjusted 2019-03-04).

One honest qualification on the label: the "assertion" prong is not independently evidenced for this specific patent — I found no suit naming US 7,107,221, and the Datastrip " '221" reference is to a different patent. If your rubric requires a suit on this patent to satisfy that prong, the accurate characterization is "not an NPE — operating-company ownership, now expired," which is the substantive conclusion either way. Given the enumerated options, Operating-company assertion is the closest fit; Defensive / non-asserting would be wrong because no defensive aggregator appears.

Verification links:

• USPTO Assignment Center — https://assignmentcenter.uspto.gov/ (search patent 7107221; the indexing UI at https://assignment.uspto.gov/patent/index.html mirrors it)
• Google Patents legal events — https://patents.google.com/patent/US7107221/en
• Corroborating security-agreement record — https://www.plainsite.org/patents/assignment.html?id=7725435

Open items requiring a live Assignment Center query (I could not perform one): the reel/frame for all four records, the correspondent of record for each, and the executed (as opposed to recorded) dates. Those three data points are exactly what would let Signal 3 be tested properly; I have not guessed at them.

I'll research US Patent 7107221 and its cited prior art references.

Let me get the specific prior art citations listed on the US7107221 patent page.

Let me look for the specific citation list on the patent databases.

I'll ground this analysis in the actual claim language and the cited prior art. Let me pull the claims and key references.

Let me pull the actual claim set and the key prior-art references cited on the patent.

Let me verify the exact claim set from another source.

Obviousness Analysis — U.S. Patent No. 7,107,221

Prepared under 35 U.S.C. § 103 (pre‑AIA), Graham v. John Deere; KSR Int'l Co. v. Teleflex Inc., 550 U.S. 398 (2007).
Primary source: https://patents.google.com/patent/[US7107221](/patent/US7107221)/en

1. Analytical caveats (read first)

Two things materially limit the precision of this analysis:

1. Claim text. The Google Patents rendering of US 7,107,221 that governs this exercise supplies the Abstract, Definitions, Classifications and full Description, but not the claims. I located the issued claim set (19 claims) only via a secondary source (https://insight.rpxcorp.com/patent/[US7107221B1](/patent/US7107221B1)), which reproduces claims 1, 2, 3, 4 and 7. I could not independently reconcile those claims against an official copy, and they read more like the shopping‑list/kiosk branch of the family than the URL/browser branch described in the Definitions. Claims 8–19 were not retrievable. Treat everything below as a framework keyed to the claim text as reported, and re‑run against the official claim set before relying on it.
2. Priority. Filed 2000‑10‑19 as a straight continuation of 09/435,883 (a divisional of 08/771,463, itself a CIP of 08/706,579). A continuation of a divisional cannot add new matter, so the '221's disclosure is limited to the 1996 material — which pushes the effective filing date toward 1996‑09‑05. But several issued claims recite kiosk/e‑mail/home‑PC subject matter whose § 112 support in the 1996 applications needs verification. Scenario A (1996 date) vs. Scenario B (1999/2000 date) materially changes which references are § 102(b) art. I flag this per reference below.

2. Person of ordinary skill in the art (POSITA)

A POSITA here is an engineer with a B.S. in EE/CS (or equivalent) and ~2–3 years' experience in retail point‑of‑sale and portable data‑collection systems, familiar with bar‑code symbologies (UPC, PDF417), wireless LANs (frequency‑hopping spread spectrum, IEEE 802.11 Draft D5), client/server retail architectures, and HTML/browser client design. Critically, the patent's own specification admits every hardware and software building block it relies on as off‑the‑shelf: Symbol PPT 4100/4600 terminals, SPECTRUM24™ PCMCIA Type II radio, Spectrum One®, IEEE 802.11 Draft D5, IBM 4680/90 POS controller, PDF417, HTML 3.0, TCP/IP, and CDPD. These are admissions usable as evidence of the ordinary level of skill and of what a POSITA would have found obvious to arrange (KSR; MPEP 2144.03).

3. Prior art on the face of the document

Source for the EPO citations (sibling EP 0 856 812, "Portable shopping and order fulfillment system"): https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/2b/b2/79/c2ef4b149bb349/EP0856812A3.pdf
Source for the Roslak/Petrovich family and the home‑cradle/kiosk‑cradle architecture: https://patentimages.storage.googleapis.com/55/3e/ac/4c7ab6b52ffa9c/US7010501.pdf

4. Combination 1 — Claims 1 and 4

Claim 1: "improved shopping facility" = (a) kiosk generating a customer list of items to be purchased by each of a plurality of customers; (b) self‑scanning system where each customer selects items with a portable terminal maintaining an updated list of selected items; (c) plurality of checkout lanes to tender payment; and (d) a "shopping list distribution communication device" that delivers the kiosk‑presented list to the corresponding customer's portable terminal.

Claim 4: same facility, recast as a messaging communication system whose receiver gets an electronic message from the customer containing the shopping list, a kiosk maintaining that list via a communication link, a self‑scanning interface, and checkout lanes.

Proposed combination:

• Primary (system): Oosterveen '942 in view of Dutch '296 — the issued‑terminal self‑scanning system, purchase list in terminal memory, dispenser‑based data transfer, and payment at checkout lanes. Every element (b) and (c) is disclosed.
• Secondary (list‑distribution and user file): US 5,825,002 (Roslak) — the terminal dispenser/kiosk, per‑customer data file, terminal‑to‑customer assignment, and updating the customer data file after a session. This supplies element (d)'s "device that delivers the list to the portable terminal corresponding to the customer" and the "corresponding customer" identification.
• Tertiary: WO 90/16033 (Norand) and EP 0 619 662 (Symbol) for the portable terminal + wireless LAN coupling of the kiosk/host to the terminal.

Motivation (KSR prongs): (i) Same field, predictable result — both references are self‑checkout/portable‑terminal retail systems; (ii) Art‑recognized problem — the '221's own Background admits prior self‑checkout was "limited to providing simple pricing and product identification information," creating a market‑driven need to move the customer's list onto the terminal; (iii) Design incentive — the specification states the central host "performs most of the computing functions," an admitted economy of reducing terminal memory/power; (iv) Known technique — downloading a user‑specific file to a mobile device at a kiosk was routine. Each element performs its known function; the combination is an aggregation, not a new mode of operation.

5. Combination 2 — Claims 2, 3 and 7

Claim 2: (a) transmitting from a store computer to a home computing device a list of previously purchased items generated from the user's purchase history; (b) generating the shopping list on the home computer; (c) transmitting it by e‑mail to the store computer; (d) storing it in a user data file; (e) retrieving it to a kiosk for presentation; and (f) transmitting it to the user's portable terminal in user‑perceptible form.
Claim 3: same, as a means‑plus‑function system, with the delivering list containing image/text/audio/video content.
Claim 7: generating the list remotely, e‑mailing to a first computer, storing in a user data file associated with previous lists, retrieving at the store via kiosk, delivering to the portable terminal.

Proposed combination:

• Primary: Oosterveen '942 / Dutch '296 (self‑scanning terminal + checkout).
• Secondary: Roslak US 5,825,002 for the per‑customer data file, terminal assignment at the dispenser/kiosk, and post‑session data‑file update.
• Tertiary (remote/PC ordering and list transport): the conventional home‑shopping/PC‑order art — e.g., EP 0 697 793 (AT&T) and the field generally — for host‑mediated retrieval of data on demand; and the general‑knowledge practices of e‑mail transmission to a password‑protected customer account, which the '221 itself treats as unremarkable ("a customer may generate a shopping list and Email the list to a predetermined secure (i.e., password protected) Email address"). I could not verify the specific teaching of EP 0 697 793 from search output — flag for verification against the reference.

Motivation: the patent supplies it verbatim — the item‑selection method exists to "ensur[e] that the notation used by a customer for items selected for purchase will match the product identifiers used by the central host," which "also permits for home delivery." That is a self‑evidenced design rationale. Sending a list by e‑mail instead of by telephone, fax or mail was a predictable substitution of one known transmission medium for another (KSR; MPEP 2144.04 — obvious substitution of known equivalents). Storing it in a "user data file" alongside prior lists (claim 7's "associating the list with previous lists") is routine database normalization, and § 103 does not require "a design choice to have been the only or the best one" (In re Applied Materials).

6. Dependent claims 8–19 (provisional only)

Because the dependent claims could not be retrieved, I can only map the disclosed subject matter to art, not chart it:

• Preferences/nutritional comparison, better‑buy/alternative brands, electronic coupons → US 5,448,471 (Deaton) and in‑store coupon dispensers (admitted in the specification).
• News ticker tape, audio/video broadcasts, celebrity briefs → general‑purpose broadcast/data‑to‑mobile‑device art; the specification treats this as ordinary content delivery.
• EAS tag activation/deactivation integrated with the terminal → the sibling EP 0 856 812 search report itself placed "EAS tag deactivator" in a separate unity‑of‑invention group, evidencing it as a discrete, known add‑on.
• Telephony over the wireless network (PCM CODEC + CT8015 DSP + 6805, TCP/IP stack over the SPECTRUM24 PCMCIA card) → the specification describes the entire bill of materials and protocol stack as pre‑existing parts; a POSITA combining a known DSP/codec chipset with a known packet radio is a textbook predictable use of prior art elements according to their established functions (KSR).
• Dynamic page builder with "next page" links and reformatting constraints → routine adaptive rendering for a small display; the specification's "four by twenty line display" is an admitted constraint, not an inventive contribution.

7. Why the combinations are properly motivated (aggregate)

The Federal Circuit's KSR factors are unusually well satisfied here:

1. Finite, predictable set of solutions. Every reference operates on the same field (retail self‑checkout / portable data terminals) and addresses the same problem (getting purchase information to and from a shopper‑carried terminal).
2. Art‑recognized problem, admitted in the patent. The Background expressly criticizes the prior art as "limited to providing simple pricing and product identification information." An applicant's own characterization of the prior art is a candid admission usable as motivation.
3. Design incentives. Centralizing computation at the host to reduce terminal cost/memory/power is expressly stated and is a classic client‑server economy.
4. Known techniques. E‑mail transport, password‑protected user accounts, kiosk retrieval, and file storage per user were all off‑the‑shelf by 1996; the patent admits HTML 3.0, TCP/IP and 802.11 Draft D5 as standards.
5. Crowded art. Google's own extraction of this record shows the "prior art keywords" as list, customer, items, shopping, user — the very concepts of claims 1–7 — confirming a crowded, incremental field where combination is expected.

8. Counter‑arguments the patentee can raise (and their strength)

• § 103(c) common ownership (pre‑AIA) — STRONG. The '221 was filed 2000‑10‑19, after § 103(c) took effect (Nov. 29, 1999). US 6,084,528 and US 7,010,501 (and the EP 1 124 193 family) are Symbol Technologies work and can only be prior art under § 102(e)/(f)/(g); they are therefore disqualified for § 103. Any rejection built on the family's kiosk‑cradle / personal‑shopping disclosures fails for that reason alone. (§ 102(b) art — Oosterveen, the Dutch '296, Norand, Dumont, EP 0 619 662, Deaton if the date is 2000 — remains fully available.)
• Priority / § 112 support — MEDIUM. If the kiosk/e‑mail claims are entitled to 1996‑09‑05, EP 0 744 856 (pub. 1996‑11‑27) drops out entirely; if they are not, it is available as § 102(b). Because the '221 descends through a divisional, new matter is presumptively impermissible, so Scenario A is likely — which narrows the arsenal.
• Non‑analogous art — WEAK. All candidates are from the same field or are reasonably pertinent to the same problem.
• Teaching away — WEAK, but arguable. The '221 touts a commercial‑transmission "on/off" button protecting consumers from unwanted broadcast; a patentee could argue the art taught away from pushing item‑specific data to a shopper terminal. That is a thin reed given the art taught targeted, on‑demand retrieval rather than broadcast.
• Secondary considerations — UNKNOWN. A 30‑year‑old, long‑expired patent (adjusted expiration 2019‑03‑04) with a large asserted family suggests commercial success and industry adoption, but licensing/royalty facts alone are legally insufficient to rebut obviousness absent a nexus to the claimed combination. Any obviousness case should be built before preserving secondary‑consideration evidence.
• Obviousness‑type double patenting. Because the '221 is a continuation in an active chain (US 5,979,757 → US 6,199,753 → US 7,107,221 → US 7,725,326), ODP over the other family members is a live, sometimes more robust invalidity theory than § 103 and should be evaluated in parallel.

9. Bottom line

On the art visible on the face of this document and in the sibling's EPO search report, claims 1, 4, 2, 3 and 7 are, on the merits, strong candidates for obviousness over (a) Oosterveen '942 / Dutch '296 as the self‑scanning baseline, in further view of (b) Roslak's dispenser/kiosk + per‑customer data‑file teaching and (c) the conventional home‑ordering and e‑mail/user‑account practices the specification itself admits. The motivation is supplied by the specification's own admissions (host‑centric computation, the limited prior art it criticizes, the "match notations" and home‑delivery rationale) and by the finite, predictable nature of the design space.

However, the strongest defensible position is procedural, not technical: under pre‑AIA § 103(c), the most on‑point references (US 6,084,528; US 7,010,501/EP 1 124 193) are commonly owned and unavailable for § 103, and the 1996 priority date likely excludes EP 0 744 856. A viable § 103 attack therefore has to be built on the § 102(b) references alone — principally Oosterveen, the Dutch '296 application, WO 90/16033 (Norand), US 5,345,071, EP 0 619 662 and US 4,628,193 — plus admissions in the specification. Before anything is relied upon, three items must be confirmed against primary sources: (1) the official claim set (claims 8–19 in particular), (2) the actual teaching of EP 0 697 793 and US 5,440,193/5,448,471, and (3) whether the 1996 applications provide § 112 support for the kiosk/e‑mail claim limitations.