6.6.4 Search activity – Investigating US5960411 (a business method patent); and its novelty

Search Activity Part One:(a) Find the inventors of US5960411 and its priority date .(b) How many patent applications cited US5960411?(c) Find the patent family for this patent.

Search for US5960411 on Espacenet

Click on the title

The inventors are Peri Hartman, Jeffrey P. Bezos, Shel Kaphan, and Joel Spiegel; and the priority date is 12 Sept 1997.

To get the number of patent applications citing US5960411, click on ‘Citing Documents’

Note that by early 2017 when this search was done, nearly 1400 patent applications had cited US5960411.

To find patent family members, click on INPADOC patent family.

There are 26 patent family members

Search Activity Part Two: Determining the patentability (novelty; inventiveness) of US596041

US5960411 was re-examined by the USPTO in 2006 in the light of a number of new prior-art documents, including US5729594 entitled "On-line secured financial transac-tion system through electronic media”.

Amended claims for US5960411 were submitted by the patent owner with a view to steering clear of US5729594.

Find the inventor, the priority date and the publication date of US5729594. Find out whether or not US5729594 destroys the novelty or inventiveness of the

amended claims of US5960411.

Step Description of step

Model answer

1 Search for US572959 in Espacenet to find the inventor, priority date and publication date

The inventor is Edwin Klingman, the priority date is 7 June 1996, and the publication date is 17 March 1998

2 Search for US5960411 in Espacenet to find the priority date and the claims

The priority date is 12 Sept 1997

Click on Claims

....There are 26 claims in all.

These are the claims in the patent as granted. For the purposes of re-examination, the patent owner has submitted amended claims, which have been reworded with a view to distinguishing the invention claimed from the new prior art document, US572959

3 Find the amended claims of US5960411

Go to the USPTO website at http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/srchnum.htmAnd search for 5960411

...Click on Images....

Click on Reexamination

Then Go to Page 45 the last page, where the claims are located:

...

...The claims on page 45 read:

As noted above, these new claims 1 and 11 have been submitted by the patent owner with a view to distinguishing the invention claimed in US5960411 from the new prior art document, US572959. The wording shown in italics is new wording; and the wording enclosed in square brackets has been deleted. As can be seen, the patent owner has been successful.