NeoMedia Technologies, Inc (NEOM)

[Major_Bankz]

NEOM US Pat. 6,199,048 For example, suppose a consumer walks into a supermarket and comes across a
brand of soup he has heard about but never seen before. The consumer wants to get more
information on this product, and he turns to his web-enabled cell phone to see if the
company who produces the soup has a web site with more information about the product.
Instead of running a search on any widely-known search engine, the consumer types the
UPC number found on the can of soup into his phone. The phone then looks up a web
site associated with the UPC number, and that website is loaded into his phone’s web
browser. This phone would likely be found to infringe many of the claims contained in
this patent.
In this example, the key aspect of the infringing activity is not the fact a UPC
number is used, that a URL is retrieved, or that the phone’s web browser is used to access
a web page; rather, the fact that the phone paired the UPC number with a URL is the
central idea behind this patent. Of course, pairing a UPC number with another piece of
information is nothing new at all – prices of items have been routinely paired with UPC
numbers at cash registers all across the country. This patent claims to have invented the
idea of pairing identifying numbers, such as UPC numbers, with information used to
connect to remote computers, such as URLs.