From June 1 through August 31, customers will receive deep discounts on licensing Intermec’s IP. During this time, customers would pay roughly half the regular price, said Mike Wills VP, Intermec RFID vice president.
Intermec holds 146 patents pertaining to RFID in four broad categories: chips, tags, readers (fixed and wireless) and systems protocols.
Wills said customers would be able to license IP from all its patents during its 3-month special. Beyond that, just 15 patents will be available for licensing through ISO at a higher cost — effectively double, Wills said.
The 40-year-old company hopes the move will encourage reluctant companies to make an RFID investment. Wills said a common thread among its negotiations with more than a dozen companies was not wanting to pony up for RFID technology, especially when their competitors haven’t.
Intermec hopes its cut-rate IP program will be enough of an incentive to get companies to invest in its RFID know-how. If successful, the program may help boost RFID adoption.
Efforts to avoid the royalties have only served to distract users and delay experimentation with the technology, said Jeff Woods, an analyst at Gartner. Every step that the vendors and standards community can take toward clarification and simplification of intellectual property issues around RFID will accelerate rollouts of this important technology.
Wills said the IP program will not be affected significantly by its IP patent lawsuit against Symbol Technologies, since the lawsuit pertains to just two of its 146 patents. Intermec filed the lawsuit last June against Matrics, a company that Symbol acquired in September 2004.
