When is a patent just an idea and when is it a plan for the future? This question was raised in recent weeks as the leading expert on surveillance pricing promoted her new book. Walmart is visibly upset by the national debate and this week the company denied that its patents on sales-maximizing technologies would be used for price monitoring purposes.
Lindsay Owens, the author of Scam: The End of Price Fair and What It Means for Your Wallethas recently given interviews to everyone from Jon Stewart to Gizmodo. Owens spoke at length about how companies like Walmart acquire patents that could potentially be used for price monitoring, the practice of adjusting prices for individual consumers based on their personal information.
Owens is the leading expert on the subject, as CEO and president of Groundwork Collaborative, and testified before Congress last August about how American consumers are being ripped off. She was Sen. Josh Hawley’s expert witness, which was notable because Republicans aren’t exactly known as the most consumer-friendly political party. But Owens really upset Walmart by talking about things like their new electronic tags and various associated patents.
Owens spoke to Gizmodo in an interview last month about one of Walmart’s patents for changing prices via shelf labels that is being rolled out nationally. She explained that “the example they give is tuna and mayonnaise. Once you have the tuna, they can change the price of the mayonnaise.”
But it’s not like you have to take Owens’ word for it. The patents awarded to Walmart tell the story. She didn’t invent them.
For example, here’s an excerpt from the patent Walmart filed in 2018, which was granted by the U.S. Patent and Trademark Office in 2023, titled “System and method for remote control of electronic shelf labels.”
Tags and prices can be changed dynamically. For example, for a customer using “scan and go”, it can know what items a customer has in their cart. The price of other items purchased by the customer may vary depending on the items already in the basket. For example, if a customer has tuna, they may be offered a different price for mayonnaise. Prices can also vary dynamically based on the supply of the product, low supply + high demand = change in price.
Owens also discussed how companies could use similar tactics to raise the price of ice cream on hot days, something Coca-Cola experimented with in the 1990s, sparking public outrage. She writes many more examples in her book, which could be the book of the year.
But Walmart accused Owens of misinterpreting its plans and said it had no plans to engage in price monitoring. Dan Bartlett, Walmart’s executive vice president of corporate affairs, wrote a lengthy statement this week about X asking Owens to “correct the facts.”
“You inaccurately described Walmart’s deployment of digital shelf labels as part of ‘real-time dynamic pricing’ infrastructure and linked that deployment to the possibility of higher prices for ice cream on warm days and soup during snowstorms,” Bartlett wrote. “You presented these examples as what technology could enable, but repeatedly using Walmart to illustrate them implies that this is where our business is headed. That is not the case.”
Bartlett, who was White House communications director under President George W. Bush at the start of the Iraq War, said Owens should “Let us publicly correct these distortions and clearly share our practices and commitments with the public who has heard them. Bartlett emphasized that having a patent does not mean the company will use the underlying technology.
“A patent describes an invention and potential capabilities,” Bartlett wrote. “This does not mean that Walmart deployed a capability, used it with customers, or decided to do so in the future. These findings require evidence beyond a patent. The tuna and mayonnaise example illustrates the problem. Putting tuna in a customer’s cart does not cause Walmart to charge that customer more for mayonnaise. We don’t and we won’t.”
Bartlett also insisted that Owens is misleading people about the use of Sparky, the company’s AI assistant. Owens released a new report on October 5 titled “The Walmart Watchtower: Patents Speak Louder Than Pledges,” on how Walmart has seen returns on investments, directly quoting CEO David Guggina, “when customers engage with Sparky, their average order value increases by 40%.”
There are other Walmart patents that describe the use of machine learning and adjust prices, as we have previously written about. But Walmart insists none of these will be used to extort money from consumers.
Walmart customers deserve to know if, how and when their personal data is used, including pricing. It’s time for Walmart to set the record straight. @owenslindsay1 on @cnn explains exactly what Walmart should do to regain its customers’ trust. pic.twitter.com/BfF7P2xOG9
– Groundwork Collaborative (@Groundwork) October 7, 2026
But who are you going to believe? The surveillance pricing expert or George W. Bush’s former communications director? It’s a very difficult choice.
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