Intellectual Property Law

US Patent 7662873 - Nanobarcode for textiles

This patent from Nano-Tex has a relatively early priority date (Feb.22,2003) and includes some basic claims to using metallic nanoparticles as a type of barcode for tracking textiles, paper, or other fibrous materials. Claim 4 reads:

4. A treatment preparation for introducing nanoscopic bar codes to a fibrous substrate, the treatment preparation comprising nanoscopic nanobar code particles, a fluorescent dye or fluorophore, a particles binder, and water.

Some prior art not cited but which may have some relevance to the claims include:

US Patent 6617583- "A novel encoding system and methods for determining the location and/or identity of a particular item or component of interest is provided. In particular, the present invention utilizes a "barcode" comprising one or more sizes of semiconductor nanocrystals (quantum dots) having characteristic spectral emissions, to either "track" the location of a particular item of interest or to identify a particular item of interest. " (from abstract)

US Patent 6633370-"Quantum dots, semiconductor nanocrystals and semiconductor particles used as fluorescent coding elements" (title)

Full post as published by TinytechIP on February 21, 2010 (boomark / email).