US 7,430,528 B2
3 4
sites) for the purpose of projecting a desired "corporate
image' and providing a backdrop for financial investment
Solicitation, as well as product advertising, sales and mainte
nance operations.
Presently, a person desiring to acquire information about
any particular product has a number of available search
options. In particular, he or she may attempt to directly con
tact the manufacturer, wholesaler or reseller by telephone, US
mail, e-mail, or through the company's World WideWeb-site
(WWW), if they have one. In the event one decides to acquire
product information through the seller's WWW site, he or she
must first determine the location of its WWW site (i.e. Inter
net address) which oftentimes can involve using Internet
Search engines such as Yahoo R, AltaVistaTM, WebCrawlerTM,
LycosTM, ExciteTM, or the like. This can be a very time con
Suming process and can sometimes lead to a dead end. Once
the Internet address is obtained, one must then review the
home page of the company’s Web-site in order to find where
information about a particular product resides on the Website,
if it so exists. This search process can be both time consuming
and expensive (in terms of Internet time) and may not turn up
desired information on the product of interest.
In some instances, product brochures bear a preprinted
Internet address designed to direct or point prospective cus
tomers to a particular Web-site where more detailed product
information can be found. A recent example of this “pre
printed Web Address' pointing technique is the 1996 product
brochure published by the Sony Corporation for its Sony(R)
PCV-70 Personal Computer, which refers prospective cus
tomers to the Sony Web Address “http://www.sony.com/pc'.
While this approach provides a direct way of finding product
related information on the Internet, it is not without its short
comings and drawbacks.
In particular, when a company improves, changes or modi
fies an existing Web-site which publishes product and/or ser
vice advertisements and related information, it is difficult (if
not impossible) not to change the Internet locations (e.g. Web
addresses) at which Such product and/or service advertise
ments and related information appear. Whenever a company
decides or is forced to change any of its advertising, market
ing and/or public relations firms, there is a Substantial likeli
hood that new Web-sites will be created and launched for
particular products and services, and that the Web addresses
of such new Web-sites will no longer correspond with the
Web addresses on preprinted product brochures currently in
circulation at the time. This can result in pointing a consumer
to erroneous or vacant Web-sites, that present either old or
otherwise outdated product and/or service information, pos
sibly adversely influencing the consumers purchasing deci
Sion.
Moreover, when a company launches a new Web-site as
part of a new advertising and marketing campaign for a par
ticular product, any preprinted advertising or marketing
material relating to such products will not reflect the new
Web-site addresses which the campaign is promoting. This
fact about preprinted advertising media renders it difficult to
unify new and old advertising media currently in circulation
into an advertising and marketing campaign having a coher
ent theme. In short, the inherently static nature of the “pre
printed Web address' pointing technique described above is
wholly incapable of adjusting to the dynamic needs of adver
tising, marketing and public relations firms alike.
Recently, two different methods have been proposed for
providing product information to consumers over the Inter
net.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,640,193 to Wellner disclose's a system and
method for accessing and displaying Web-based consumer
product related information to consumers using a Internet
enabled computer system, whereby in response to reading a
URL-encoded bar code symbol on or associated with a prod
uct, the information resource specified by the URL is auto
5 matically accessed and displayed on the Internet-enabled
computer system. While this system and method enables
access of consumer product information related information
resources on the WWW by reading URL-encoded bar code
symbols, it requires that custom URL-encoded bar code sym
10 bols be created and applied to each and every consumer
product in the stream of commerce.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,978,773 to Hudetz, etal discloses a solution
to the problem presented by the system and method of U.S.
Pat. No. 5,640,193, by proposing the use of a UPC/URL
15 database in order to translate UPC numbers read from con
Sumer products by a bar code scanner, into the URLs of
published information resources on the WWW relating to the
UPC-labeled consumer product.
While U.S. Pat. No. 5,978,773 provides an effective solu
tion to the problem presented by U.S. Pat. No. 5,640,193, it
completely fails to recognize or otherwise address the myriad
of problems relating to UPC/URL-link collection, manage
ment, delivery, access and display along the retail Supply and
demand chain, which the system and method of U.S. Pat. No.
25 5.978.773 presents and must be first solved in order deliver a
technically feasible, globally-extensive, UPC-driven con
Sumer product information system for the benefit of consum
ers worldwide.
Thus, it is clear that there is great need in the art for an
30 improved Internet-based method of and system for delivering
product related information to the consumers along the entire
retail supply and demand chain, while avoiding the shortcom
ings and drawbacks of prior art systems and methodologies.
35 DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, a primary object of the present invention is to
provide a novel method and apparatus for collecting product
related information and transmitting and delivering the same
40 between the manufacturers and retailers of products to the
consumers thereof in retail shopping environments as well as
at home, work and on the road, while overcoming the short
comings and drawbacks of prior art systems and methodolo
gies.
45 Another object of the present invention is to provide such
an apparatus in the form of a novel consumer-product infor
mation collection, transmission and delivery system.
Another object of the present invention is to provide such a
system with an Internet-based product information database
50 Subsystem which, for each commercially available con
Sumer-product, stores a number of information elements
including: the name of the manufacturer; the Universal Prod
uct Code (UPC) assigned to the product by the manufacturer;
one or more URLs specifying the location of information
55 resources (e.g. Web-pages) on the Internet relating to the
UPC-labeled consumer-product; and the like.
Another object of the present invention is to provide such a
system, in which the URLs stored in the Internet-based prod
uct information database are categorically arranged and dis
60 played according to specific types of product information
(e.g., product specifications and operation manuals; product
wholesalers and retailers; product advertisements and promo
tions; product endorsements; product updates and reviews;
product warranty/servicing; related or complementary prod
65 ucts; product incentives including rebates, discounts and/or
coupons, etc.) that relate to the kind of information required,
desired or otherwise sought by consumers, wholesalers,