The Auto-ID Center was a unique partnership between industry and academia. Strictly speaking, the intellectual property belongs to the universities where the research is being conducted. The Massachusetts Institute of Technology, where the Auto-ID Center started, licensed the core EPC intellectual property to the Uniform Code Council on the condition that it be made available on a royalty free basis to any company that wants to use it.
EPCglobal charges membership fees. Members are issued Electronic Product Codes to use on their products. EPCglobal doesn't charge licensing fees to vendors that want to build RFID tags and readers based on the EPC standards.
EPCglobal says that it is a royalty-free standard because a vendor doesn't need to use technology patented by anyone to practice the standard. However, the standard is royalty free in only the most narrowest sense. Most experts say that today there is no practical way to build products based on the Gen 2 standard without infringing patents owned by Intermec Technologies, a vendor based in Everett, Wash. Intermec says it will charge royalties of 5 percent and 7 percent.
