February 2, 2006
Patent on Capture and Processing of Bar Codes with Cameraphones
NeoMedia Technologies, Inc. a wireless technology company, has been awarded a patent covering the capture and processing of bar codes explicitly from camera cell phones.
U.S. Patent No. 6,993,573 was issued to the company on January 31st, listing Kevin Hunter, NeoMedia's chief scientist, as the inventor.
The patent explicitly describes and patents NeoMedia's method of capturing the image of a bar code by the camera device on a Web-enabled cell phone, and processing the bar code so as to deliver the appropriate URL - or Web-based information - to the user's cell phone screen. [Press Release via unwired.cc]
In all honesty, I can't really tell if this will have an impact on this technology overall, or if this is on the same level as Cingular's Patenting of the Emoticon or BT's (unsuccesful) patenting of hyperlinks... But it sounds kind of ominous:
Automatic access of internet content with a camera-enabled cell phone - U.S. Patent No. 6,993,573
Abstract
A camera-enabled cell phone that is adapted to image a machine readable code such as a bar code, decode the bar code, send the bar code data over the Internet to a resolution server that will return an associated URL that will link the camera phone to content on an information server. Thus, by taking a picture of a bar code symbol, the camera phone will automatically retrieve content from the Internet that has been linked to that bar code.
The Permanent Link to this page is: http://www.textually.org/picturephoning/archives/2006/02/011398.htm
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