On October 16, 2006, Via Licensing in conjunction with the RFID Consortium issued an initial patent call for essential patents for its UHF RFID patent joint licensing program. Since then the consortium has established a licensing committee, developed the program terms and conditions, and has now submitted the program to the Department of Justice for review prior to launching the program. During this period Via Licensing is reissuing its patent call and is seeking additional essential patent holders for its program. This patent call will remain open, but interested essential patent holders should submit their patents for evaluation prior to January 31, 2008 to assure sufficient time for patent evaluation prior to the program launch.

This patent call has been issued to identify owners of patents that are necessary for the practice of the UHF RFID standards listed below. Any entity that believes it has a granted patent that is essential to the UHF RFID standard and wishes to participate in a group of essential patent holders jointly offering to license their patents is invited to contact Via Licensing Corporation for information about how to submit patents for evaluation.

An issued patent is determined to be "essential" if one or more of its claims is necessarily infringed by a product designed to practice the relevant RFID standards. The UHF RFID standards covered by this call are: the EPCglobal Air Interfaces Standards Generation 1 (Class 0, Class 0+ and Class 1) and Generation 2 (Class 1); and ISO/IEC 18000-Part 6 (including Amendment 1) and the communications and interface protocols and conformance specifications referred to in those documents. Copies of the above referenced documents can be obtained online at www.epcglobalinc.org and www.iso.org.

An independent third-party patent examiner will review patents related to label and reader products for essentiality to the UHF RFID standard. Patent holders are encouraged to submit essential patents for both types of products in order to fully participate in this program.

To request information on submitting patents for evaluation, entities should send an email to
UHF-RFID@vialicensing.com and specify an interest in making a submission for consideration of essentiality to the UHF RFID standard.