NeoMedia Technologies, Inc (NEOM)

[jonesieatl]

New NeoMedia Patent Covers Mobile Marketing-Enabling Technology for the Capture and Processing of Bar Codes with Camera Cell Phones

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BusinessWire
10:21 a.m. 02/02/2006


FT. MYERS, Fla., Feb 02, 2006 (BUSINESS WIRE) -- NeoMedia Technologies, Inc. (NEOM), an innovator in wireless services and patented technologies that provide mobile marketing-enabling automatic links to Internet-based information, said today that it 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.

'A Mobile Marketing Necessity'

"This is NeoMedia's 27th patent and in many ways the most important patent since our first was issued in the late 1990s covering similar technology for codes scanned (or their numeric equivalents entered) into a PC," said Charles W. Fritz, the company's founder and chairman.

Mr. Fritz said that NeoMedia also has patents covering search, location-based ads, and "other enabling technology for a wide range of mobile marketing activities and applications.

"Our patented technology is a mobile marketing necessity," Mr. Fritz said.

"Today, mobile devices are omnipresent and the desire for information on-the-go is a worldwide phenomenon," he said. "Marketing-driven companies recognize the Mobile Internet as the 'in' way to reach hundreds of millions of cell phone-carrying consumers in the U.S. alone, and our technologies create a patented bridge they need to cross to showcase and receive orders for their products and services."

The PaperClick IP Portfolio Grows

The new patent is the latest in the growing PaperClick(R) IP portfolio ( www.PaperClick.com ), an array of mobile marketing-enabling technologies and applications developed or offered by NeoMedia.

"According to the Cellular Telecommunications & Internet Association (CTIA) and Mobile Marketing Association (MMA), there are 1.9 billion-plus phones in use worldwide - more than TVs and PCs combined," said Mr. Fritz, noting that these global industry groups project that by the end of 2008, more than 600 million phone users will have Internet access.

"This mobile information boom drove worldwide revenue to more than $3 billion in '04 according to CTIA and MMA, who project the total will be at least $9 billion for 2006," Mr. Fritz said.

"Now, with this latest patent explicitly covering use of our technology with camera cell phones, NeoMedia is well positioned to help facilitate this global boom in mobile marketing," he said.