How much is the intellectual property (IP) debate affecting companies' implementation plans for RFID? The results of AIM's RFID survey suggest that it isn't having as large an impact as some reports have suggested--and some news releases have warned of.
The survey announcement was posted July 12 at the www.aimglobal.org Web site with the headline
The survey asked, "How much is the IP debate affecting your planned implementation of RFID?" The survey was posted on both the AIM Global and RFID.org web pages and results were tabulated separately. The results were somewhat surprising insofar as more respondents on the RFID.org site seemed unaware of the debate than those on the AIM Global main page. The majority of those who took the survey—more than 40%--answered “What IP debate?”, while the next most popular response was “Not very much (monitoring the situation),” which was noted by an average of 17% of respondents.
Overall, however, it appears that the debate over whose patents are "essential" to implement UHF Gen 2 (which includes EPC Gen 2) tags and readers is seen more as the normal course of doing business than as a serious issue. Companies seem to believe that it will all be worked out. Eventually.
One interesting, but not surprising, result of the survey was that privacy seemed to be a bigger concern to some than the IP issue.
If you click on the article via the link above, you’ll also find a new AIM Web survey that you may participate in that looks at privacy.
