This is really a curious patent that Neomedia got. There has to be a lot of
prior art in the US but especially Japan that would invalidate this patent.
Should Neomedia want to wield this patent it could be a headache for those
ofus either developing or implementing bar code technology. If anyone knows
of some prior art let the list know. To understand this patent one needs to
really look a lot deeper than the Neomedia press release. If you read their
press release (what is now all over the web) you would think that they had
gotten a patent on cell phone barcode scanning. They did not! What they got
comes in two main claims: 1. Decoding a barcode that carries a URL, then
whenthe cell phone accesses a server the server redirects that URL to
anotherURL which is returned back to the cell phone. The essence is not that
the barcode carries the URL, it is the redirect that is the novelty. How one
can patent a web redirect is beyond me. How can one patent a process that is
part of the original W3 specification from Tim Bernards Lee? Also, web
redirects happen all of the time for a variety of reasons. In any case, I
would expect that there must be prior art in Japan. Anyone have
documentationthat they were doing web redirects with camera phone scanned
URLs prior to Jun. 6, 2003 which was their provisional filing date? 2. The
second issue that they got a claim for is to put a contact lens onto the
optics of the phone to correct for the lens of the phone. This seems to be
even more ridiculous since glasses and magnifying glasses essentially do
this, plus such lenses were commonly available for camera phones in Japan. I
recall seeing a strip of little press on lenses available in Japan in 2002
that would stick over cell phone optics to provide macro capabilities.
Anyonehave a record of having bought any of these back then? Dave Harper
Wireless Ink/WINKsite.com -------------------------
Curt Sampson wrote: On Fri, 3 Feb 2006, Mika Tuupola wrote: Does this have
effect on such project as Semacode?
Received on Sat Feb 4 23:02:12 2006