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RFID INTEROPERABILITY, STANDARDISATION, GOVERNANCE AND INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS

1 June 2006, Brussels

Renaissance Hotel
Rue du Parnasse 19
1050 Brussels

Updated Programme 30 May 2006

The workshop intends to raise and discuss a wide range of issues concerning standardisation, interoperability, intellectual property rights (IPRs) and governance in the RFID sector. The scope of the work will cover, amongst other things, all the levels of interoperability that play a role in facilitating the rollout of the technology, including a discussion on governance issues and procedures for the communications infrastructures of RFID technologies and associated database systems when tagged objects of any kind are linked to a data source (Electronic Product Code, Object Name Service, IPv6, etc.).

Thursday 1 June 2006

08:30 Registration

09:00 Opening remarks: João da Silva,
Director, Network and Communication Technologies Directorate -
Information Society and Media Directorate General – European Commission (EU)

The opening session will provide an introduction to the theme; its relevance for the work of the European Commission, and the steps that may be taken after the consultation round has finished.

09:15 Session 1: Interoperability and Standardisation

Technological solutions that are deployed on their own, e.g. on one factory’s floor, are already being demonstrated successfully. In order to have companies and organisations work together, technologies need to be aligned through standards, so that both competition and innovation can take place on a level playing field. Sometimes, these standards are proposed by industry itself and little outside intervention is required or asked for. However, there can be competition issues with regard to standards, particularly when they are not set or decided transparently, or when these standards incorporate barriers for newcomers. In this session the speakers will give an overview of the current state of play of European and international standards organisations.

Moderator: Bernie Hogan,
Senior Vice-President, GS1 United States (USA)

Speakers:
John Canvin,
Managing Director, Odette International Ltd. (UK)

Paul Chartier,
Principal Praxis Consultant, Praxis Consultants (UK)

Patrick Guillemin,
Technical Officer, European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) (FR)

Ajit Jillavenkatesa,
Senior Standards Specialist, United States National Institute of Standards and Technology (USA)

Paul Roberts,
Group Distribution Engineering Manager, Nestlé (UK)

10:45 Coffee break

11:15 Session 2: RFID Integration with the Network

For the longer-term perspective, the image of the “Internet of Things” is a very powerful one. It builds upon, but goes beyond RFID and assumes smooth system integration. However, interoperability and competitiveness should not be underestimated, especially when it comes to globally, non-closed applications. In the future, RFIDs physically attached to objects will be used by various parties and at various parts of the object life-cycle. The data associated with the so-called tagged item may be held on the RFID itself or it may be stored elsewhere in one or more databases. How to establish a linkage that acts as a pointer to the associated data? How to locate this data source and finally access the data records? And last but not least, against the background of an open, interoperable environment there are some requirements for the supporting information infrastructure.

Moderator: Alexander Zeier,
Official Substitute Professor of the Hasso Plattner Chair at the
Hasso Plattner Institute at the University of Potsdam (DE)

Speakers:
Lion Benjamins (presentation 1 / presentation 2),
Senior Vice-President, Stockway Oy (FI)

Brian Cute,
Vice President, Government Relations, Verisign (USA)

Florian Michahelles,
Associate Director, Auto-ID Labs, Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule Zürich (CH)

Kathy Smith,
Department of Defense, Office of the Secretary (USA)

Andreas Trautmann,
Fraunhofer Institute for Material Flow and Logistics (DE)

12:45 Lunch

14:15 Session 3: Intellectual Property Right Issues

At present all major industries seem to rally behind EPCglobal, establishing the Gen 2 RFID specification. However, disputes with regard to the technology used are expected to become tougher in the future as the stakes become higher. Last year it was announced that EPCglobal’s specification had to deal with the Intermec Technologies Corporation, which claims to hold more than 140 RFID patents and patent applications; the dispute being which patents would be considered "essential" to create an RFID solution utilizing the Gen 2 specification. Will technology development and deployment be hindered if royalties could substantially raise the price? Will SMEs be able to bear the added costs? At the same time, the open source community e.g. is working on a specification for providing objects with a unique ID-number that is not considered proprietary. This session will provide more detail on the feasibility of open source solutions and the potential lock-in due to patents.

Moderator: Dr. Patrick van Eecke,
Counsel, DLA Piper Rudnick Gray Cary (BE)

Speakers:
Bernie Hogan,
Senior Vice-President, GS1 United States (USA)

Humberto Moran,
CEO – Open Source Innovation Ltd, RFID open source solutions (UK)

15:15 Coffee break

15:45 Closing Session: The way forward?

Moderator: Patrick Guillemin,
Technical Officer, European Telecommunications Standards Institute (ETSI) (FR)

Presentation by the Rapporteur and Moderators appointed to each of the individual sessions of the related findings and policy options, followed by an open discussion.

17:00 Closing Remarks: Gérald Santucci,
Head of unit “ICT for Enterprise Networking” -
Network and Communication Technologies Directorate -
Information Society and Media Directorate General – European Commission (EU)