Slashdot Mirror
Charles Walton, the Father of RFID
Roland Piquepaille writes "In a very interesting article, the San Jose Mercury News tells us about Charles Walton, the man behind the radio frequency identification technology (RFID). Since his first patent about it in 1973, Walton, now 83 years old, collected about $3 million from royalties coming from his patents. Unfortunately for him, his latest patent about RFID expired in the mid-1990s. So he will not make any money from the billions of RFID tags that will appear in the years to come. But he continues to invent and his latest patent about a proximity card with incorporated PIN code protection was granted in June 2004. Maybe he'll be luckier with this one. This overview contains some excerpts of the original article. It also contains tips to search for Walton's patents and an image of the front page of his first patent."
i don't understand the big fear of lack of privacy due to RFID tags. capitalism just takes care of it. if enough people don't want their location known, there will be a market for clothing, etc that does not have RFID tags embedded in it. the government's never going to say (knock on wood) that all clothes or shoes or whatever must have RFID tags, so it's really not something to worry about.
-ninjaneer
I want these tags on me Disc Golf discs! I lose to many and at $10 a pop it gets expensive. Just wonder if they are small enought to be embedded in the discs. Then we just need a hand held locator to find them with.
good troll. i bit.
no where did it say "He was unlucky to have made $3M" or "It was his misfortune that he only made $3M"
get off your anti-american high horse.
the only thing i think is odd, is that it says (to paraphrase) "maybe he'll be luckier". however, maybe it wasn't bad luck that his patents expired shortly before RFID starts it's boom. Maybe RFID is on the rise because his patent expired. If that is the case, then to me it says that this Walton person wanted too much in terms of licensing pay, or wanted to much to be bought out. He could have capitolized(sp?) but didn't?
who knows. you are a troll either way, and i feel dirty for feeding you.
So what you're saying is this guy held up a multi billion dollar industry for twenty years for the sake of 3 million in royalities. If anything, this is a great example of why patents are so evil.
By delaying 20 years, I would bet the guy has easially lost more than 3 million in opportunity costs anyhow - and does he deserve that amount if someone else would have invented the same thing anyhow a month after he did?
Last week, Intermec filed suit against Matrics over RFID Patent Infringment. Intermec owns a WIDE variety of patents in the RFID space that are very general in nature.
e /t echnology/story/0,10801,93744,00.html
For those of you who don't live in the RFID world...Matrics is the vendor who's hardware is being put into WalMart. Many insiders believe that Intermec's lawsuit was designed to poision the water around a possible acquistion of Matrics by one of Intermec's competitors. There is also a general train of thought that Intermec tactically blundered by moving too soon, they should have waited 6 more months for the RFID initiative within WalMart to really catch on before they hit the industry with royalties.
http://www.computerworld.com/mobiletopics/mobil
We are but the sum of our experiances
Because licensing would prevent what exactly? Identity theift? The fact that credit card companies and banks collect information on me? Would it stop websites from cookie-ing my browser? People spying through my windows? Eliminate the need for my tinfoil hat?
Have you any clue about the signal strength of passive rfid tags, which i'm assuming you're talking about? They are powered by a tag reader that is required to keep it's output power underneath FCC standards and then they transmit back using the power provided by that reader. How hard exactly do you think it would be to jam the readers from hearing a reply from these unpowered tags?
Ok, that felt better. +5 for being insightful? Anyway, with all of that out of the way, there are some privacy issues involved but to make it a black and white case that RFID tags are EVIL is the kind of overgeneraliztions used by karma whores on slashdot...oh.....
Well, firstly: there are a lot of stupid inventions (e.g.: hat that spreads into an umbrella).
Secondly: there are a lot of inventions that are developed based on previous ideas and are fully exploited (e.g.: paperclips - there are many designs, quite a few still being used).
Thirdly: many inventions are innovative, but just not quite good enough to use (e.g.: the development of the zipper took several tries).
Fourthly: The technology is often not good/economical enough in practice (e.g. Lilienfeld's invention of the field effect transistor in 1925 (patented in 1930).
Finally: some inventions are so far advanced for the time that no one (other than the inventor) sees any realistic use for it (e.g. Babbage's analytical engine)
Great minds think alike; fools seldom differ.
How about the Great Seal Bug used by the soviets ? :)
It was passive, and had to be illuminated by a certain frequencey to work. It was used for more than ID purposes though
I still don't understand how you can base the life of your company on a device that operates under Part15 of the FCC rules.
Lets say you run a business using a device that runs under part15. Then Joe Joes Auto Wrecker buys a licensed radio system on the same frequency. Your business is shut down with no recourse (SP?).
This same thing happens with WIFI networks under part15. One day your network is fine, supporting hundreds of users, then one guy with a license moves in the area and your entire company network is done for. You can't even complain.
We need to take a hard look at our spectrum use, part15 should be used for emerging technologies.