Hi balloo-ga,
Good question to find potentially valuable stocks! My answer has two
parts. The first part deals with why you *cannot* buy the stocks of
the entity that owns the basic RFID patents. Second part deals with
the stocks you *can* buy of companies that have patents *based on*
RFID technology.
Part 1:
RFID is a very old technology that orinigally came out of MIT's Auto
ID center. According to http://www.epcglobalinc.org/about/faqs.html#1
the administrative functions of the Auto ID center would transfer to
EPCglobal, a non-profit organization formed by the Auto ID Center. The
above given link has all information regarding Auto ID Center,
EPCglobal and RFID.
Any company that wants to use RFID technology must participate with
EPCglobal by signing their IP policy.
Check this page for their IP information:
http://www.epcglobalinc.org/action_groups/031223EPCglobalIPPolicy12152003A.html
Walmart is one of the organization that has signed their IP policy:
check this page, you will find Walmart's name there:
http://www.epcglobalinc.org/action_groups/participating_companies.cfm.
Since EPCglobal is a non-profit organization, you cannot buy stocks in EPCglobal.
Part 2:
Though the basic RFID IP is held by EPCglobal, there are many
companies that have got patents based on the initial RFID related
technologies. You can check many patents related to RFID here:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2Fsearch-bool.html&r=0&f=S&l=50&TERM1=rfid&FIELD1=&co1=AND&TERM2=&FIELD2=&d=ptxt
For example, Checkpoint Systems Inc, is one company that has an RFID
related patent that helps inventory control. Check:
http://patft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO2&Sect2=HITOFF&p=1&u=/netahtml/search-bool.html&r=31&f=G&l=50&co1=AND&d=ptxt&s1=rfid&OS=rfid&RS=rfid
You can go through the patents given in the first link under Part 2
and find all the companies that own RFID related patents.
Friendly suggestion:
While RFID continues to be an exciting technology, it may not be
prudent to buy stocks in a company solely based on its ownership of
RFID related patents. It would help to check other aspects of the
company.
I did not use any search engine to answer this question. I had been
following RFID for a few years and hence knew where to go to get the
answer.
Hope this answer is useful to you.
Regards,
Nutshell-ga |