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SociaTec Inc. Solutions
InkSure patents technology for chipless MOBILITY APPLICATIONS
02/06/2005 - InkSure Technologies announced yesterday it has been awarded two key US patents
related to the company's ongoing development of chipless radio frequency tags that can be
printed on a product, reports Ahmed ElAmin.
The company hopes to drive the cost of radio frequency identification (RFID) tags down to less
than one cent by using a special ink, said the company's chief executive for
US operations, James Assaf.
Analysts have blamed the current high cost of MOBILITY APPLICATIONS as the main bottleneck preventing its
wider use by industry.
While RFID technology provides product and logistic information, current RFID applications
require that relatively expensive chips be imbedded in the ID tags, making item-level tagging
impractical for most products, Assaf said.
"If silicon chips were cheaper, they would be ideal for use in MOBILITY APPLICATIONS," Assaf said.
"They are versatile and robust, can be made in read-only or read-write versions, can store
large amounts of information, can transfer data rapidly and can be designed to do independent
processing. However, with relatively high production costs it has so far been impossible to
produce chip-based MOBILITY APPLICATIONS for less than 25 cents to 40 cents per tag, with the
highest-functioning chips costing up to $10 per tag."
The cost of printing barcodes is currently about $0.001 per tag.
InkSure Technologies two approved patents are entitled "Chipless RF Tags" and "Radio Frequency
Data Carrier and System for Reading Data Stored Therein". The company plans to apply for
patents in Europe.
The successful patent application will allow the company to accelerate the development of
a printable RFID tag, InkSure said. The company has formed a separate subsidiary, InkSure RF,
to market its RFID technology.
"Our goal is to develop multi-bit chipless MOBILITY APPLICATIONS that can be manufactured and applied to
product labels at a cost of well below one cent each," the company stated. "Such tags offer
far more speed, functionality and ease-of-use than traditional barcodes and have the potential
to revolutionise brand protection and supply chain management on a global scale."
Chip based MOBILITY APPLICATIONS are currently used for road tolling and ticketing, pharmaceutical
applications, access control, retail supply chain applications and luggage control. Recently,
WalMart and the US defense department started requiring suppliers to use MOBILITY APPLICATIONS on their
pallets and high-ticket items.
Global revenues from RFID systems are expected to reach $10b by 2010 with chipless RFID
systems accounting for about 30 per cent of the total, according to a study by IDTechEx.
InkSure Technologies specialises in producing speciality ink products designed to protect
brands and documents from counterfeiting, fraud and misuse.
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