Trolleyponder protocol patents allowed by EU and US authorities

6 November 2002 News

Trolley Scan has been informed by both the European and the United States patent offices, that they are allowing the claims filed by Trolley Scan in its patent applications for its unique protocol. These countries join Taiwan, Singapore, New Zealand and South Africa in granting this patent; while applications are still pending inspection and decision in most of the other countries that constitute major trading countries.

Trolleyponder protocol is one of the important developments in UHF RFID. It allows many transponders to communicate with a reader at the same time using one frequency. Trolleyponder protocol is further significant, in that it allows transponders with either unique or common identities to be read accurately. The common identity allows many tags to have identical data, which might be used when groceries, books, clothing and similar mass produced items are being labelled - for example identifying 100 of 500 g boxes of a breakfast cereal.

Included in the Trolleyponder protocol is the ability to integrate EAS (anti-shoplift features) in the signalling, making this protocol suitable for un-manned checkouts in the retail environment, such as the 'Branders' prototype shown on the Trolley Scan website.

Trolleyponder is a 'transponder talks first' protocol. Whenever a transponder enters the energising field of the reader, it communicates its presence to the reader without any polling protocol being needed by the reader. This means that the Trolleyponder protocol does not require the reader to continually broadcast polling messages to potential transponders in case a transponder has entered its zone, even when the reading zone is quiet - thereby reducing interference from the reader, increasing reliability and read rates.

Trolley Scan licences its patents to companies wishing to use the protocol and provides technical assistance to help those licensees enter production.

For more information see www.trolleyscan.com

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