August 10, 2005
Consortium to Pool Radio-Tag Patents
By BARNABY J. FEDER
NY Times
http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/10/technology/10tags.html?pagewanted=print
A consortium of companies that make radio-based identification tags,
scanners and related software said yesterday that they planned to pool
their patents in a venture that would provide one-stop licensing and
royalty management.
The effort to stimulate adoption of what is known as radio frequency
identification, or RFID, will be closely modeled on licensing organizations
that have aided the growth of the DVD industry and the development of
products that use the MPEG-2 standard for encoding audio and video
programming, said Stan Drobac, vice president for RFID strategy and
planning at Avery Dennison, one of the 20 founding members of the group.
"It's a model that's known to work," Mr. Drobac said, "and it has been
approved in the past by the Justice Department."
RFID supporters are expecting the technology to supplant bar codes
eventually because it allows goods to be identified without the need for
them to be scanned item by item. Wal-Mart and the Defense Department are
among those pushing for the technology's adoption.
The most conspicuous vendor missing from the consortium's member list is
Intermec Technologies, a subsidiary of Unova; it claims its 145 RFID
patents cover many crucial applications of the technology.
Intermec is already embroiled in RFID patent litigation with Symbol
Technologies. An Intermec spokesman said yesterday that the company had not
been asked to join the consortium.
The group plans to incorporate this fall and hire a specialist to evaluate
who owns the most important patents and the potential royalty structure for
its members. It is unlikely to begin offering licenses before next year.
Mr. Drobac said that even if Intermec and some others remained outside the
consortium, the group's existence would make the patent landscape
substantially simpler. There are more than 3,000 RFID patents, said Erik
Michielsen, a RFID analyst in New York for ABI Research.
================================
George Antunes, Political Science Dept
University of Houston; Houston, TX 77204
Voice: 713-743-3923 Fax: 713-743-3927
antunes at uh dot edu
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