"The agreement will give a tremendous boost to RFID technology adoption in general and the EPCGlobal Gen2 RFID standard in particular that is being adopted by many of the biggest world players," says Andrew Fosbrook, MD of local Intermec distributor, ProScan Systems.
Intermec filed a patent infringement suit against Matrics (now Symbol Technologies) in June 2004, relating to Intermec`s RFID patents.
In terms of the new agreement between the two companies, Symbol has joined Intermec`s Rapid Start RFID intellectual property licensing programme, giving Symbol access to a number of Intermec RFID patent portfolios, including RFID tags and fixed and portable readers.
In return, Intermec gets access to Symbol`s RFID intellectual property by exercising the cross-licensing provisions of the Rapid Start programme.
"The whole IT industry is built on cross-licensing agreements for sharing IP, and while this new agreement between Symbol and Intermec is not really any different, it represents a major positive step for RFID technology adoption, says Fosbrook.
He explains that Intermec donated five RFID patents to form the core of the EPCGlobal Gen2 standard, and the Rapid Start programme is designed to facilitate real world implementations of Gen2 compliant systems that would necessitate using technologies covered by Intermec patents, such as dense reader implementations.
Symbol follows other RFID industry heavyweights like Zebra, Texas Instruments, Avery Dennison and Paxar in joining the Rapid Start programme that enables them to pursue RFID implementation and product development without infringing any patents.
"The fact that Symbol is one of the largest automated data capture companies in the world and has one of the world`s largest retail companies, Wal-Mart, as a client, makes this new agreement all the more significant," says Fosbrook.
Intermec says in a statement that all other pending or anticipated legal actions have been placed on hold while the two companies attempt to resolve their remaining IP disputes to encourage accelerated adoption of RFID technologies.
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