Registers – Records – Conductive
Reexamination Certificate
2002-05-18
2003-07-15
St. Cyr, Daniel (Department: 2876)
Registers
Records
Conductive
C235S488000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06592043
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a fixture for mounting a miniature proximity transponder to another article. Miniature proximity transponders are known in the art and have been put to use to date mainly in applications for signaling access control panels for protecting access-ways from unauthorized breach of access. The fixture in accordance with the invention makes use of the prior art, miniature proximity transponders more attractive for expanding to use in other applications such as and without limitation, for arming or disarming an automatic, premise-monitoring alarm system (eg., burglary and/or burglary/fire alarm system), or for attaching to an asset as a tracking device for an asset tracking system.
A number of additional features and objects will be apparent in connection with the following discussion of preferred embodiments and examples.
2. Prior Art
Security measures are employed in a variety of ways to provide automatic monitoring of various properties or assets. One common example is a premise-monitoring alarm system. It monitors a given protected premise—say, for example, a residential home, a commercial property, a bank vault, or an ATM machine and the like—for the occurrence of a given alarm event:—e.g., an unwanted intrusion, unauthorized motion in a vacated area, or smoke and so on. Access control systems prevent unauthorized access to bounded secure areas through a protected access-way. For example, organizations use access control systems to restrict entry and exit to and from given secure areas to authorized personnel only. Asset tracking systems prevent or monitor unauthorized removal of a protected asset away from or past through a tracking station or access-way.
Such security systems as alarm systems, access control systems, and/or asset tracking systems can be thought of simply as having armed and dis-armed states. Consider an alarm system for a residential property. A user departing the residence may arm or activate the alarm system by punching in the arm or activate commands at the control panel when walking out the door. Upon return, when a/the user re-enters the door, typically this user has a short time period to dis-arm the alarm system. The use has to move rather quickly to find and disarm the control panel by entering a code. Hence the activities of arming and disarming has generally involved typing in commands or codes at a keypad.
Access control is nowadays more typically associated with plastic, wallet-sized cards featuring bar code or magnetic-swipe technology. For example, personnel who may be authorized access through a restricted access-way are given such a plastic card. The plastic card will have an encoded magnetic strip or else a bar code and so on. The user passes through the restricted access-way by swiping a mag-striped card through an appropriate reader, presenting a bar-coded plastic card underneath an optical reader. The user must physically handle and manipulate the card through or under the reader. The user may keep the card in a billfold. If a user wants more handy access to the card, then the user can wear it on clothing or around the neck as dangled from a ribbon or beaded-chain or the like.
When approaching a protected access-way, an authorized party's goal is to disarm the access control system just long enough to pass through, like to get a door to open or unlock. Asset tracking involves tagging an asset with a device which, when moved relative to a tracking system, provides an alert.
To turn to another matter of the prior art, the “HID Corporation” of Irvine, Calif., provides a radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology for unlocking doors and the like. The technology comprises a proximity reader that is stationed next to the corresponding door, and a proximity transponder to activate the reader. The transponder is a passive RFID device. The transponder has no battery. In other words, it has no power storage device of any kind onboard. The transponder ekes out the power it needs from a tightly wound, fine-wire coil which functions both as a passive inductor and an “active” signal-transmitting antenna. The inductor aspects of the coil induce sufficient power from an electromagnetic field emitted by the reader. Hence the reader's field supplies by inductance the power needed by the transponder to operate its circuit.
Thus the transponder requires no additional power to operate. The RFID proximity technology was designed for use in applications that traditionally have used bar code or magnetic-swipe technology. For example, door or access control is sometimes controlled by taking a plastic card having an encoded magnetic strip and swiping it through an appropriate reader. Or else by presenting a bar-coded plastic card underneath an optical reader. Unlike mag-swipe or bar-code cards, the RFID proximity transponder does not need to be physically handled or even visible when read by the reader.
Therefore, if the RFID proximity transponder is encased in a wallet-sized plastic card, a user can insert the RFID proximity transponder into a billfold like any other business or credit card or driver's license. That way, for example, if the billfold is worn in a waist-pocket or in a purse at the hip, the user only need swish his (or her) hip in the vicinity of the reader. Then the door that is controlled by the reader will un-lock and the user can enter.
The above-referenced HID Corporation of Irvine, Calif., has miniaturized an RFID proximity transponder to a size smaller than a U.S. quarter-dollar coin. This is shown by for example FIG.
2
. The transponder shown by
FIG. 2
optionally corresponds to HID Corp.'s “eProx Tag,” model no. 1390. The prior art effort to date to attach to another article such miniaturized RFID proximity transponders as shown by
FIG. 2
has included the following.
The prior art has completely encased the miniaturized RFID proximity transponder of
FIG. 2
in a hard plastic coin or token (this is not shown by the drawings). This hard plastic casing can be likened to a “tiddly-wink” chip.
There are shortcomings associated with the hard plastic case. The hard plastic case is rigid and thick. The hard plastic case has a square-edged periphery. Mounting the hard plastic case to an article or surface requires a bonding agent like epoxy, hot glue or an adhesive or the like. Regardless of the bonding agent used, the square-edged periphery tends to catch against other objects in the environment. As a result, the hard plastic case gets knocked off easily despite the purported strength of the bonding agent.
This problem is promoted by the following matter. Many of the articles that a user would like to bond the “tiddly-wink” on, present challenges for bonding agents. In the case of a billfold proper, billfold material is flexible and the matte will tear away if the “tiddly-wink” scrapes on something. In the case of a key head, the mounting surface is likely to be substantially non-absorbent like metal or enamel—and then not flat either—and so on, as with cell phones and pagers. The mounting surfaces thereon are likely non-absorbent and smoothly warped. Experience teaches that, the absence of a good flat surface of appropriate material tends to find that the tiddly wink is highly vulnerable to getting scraped off.
Nevertheless, the problem is not with the users' choice of articles to mount the tiddly wink, but the tiddly wink's construction itself. It is an object of the invention to overcome the shortcomings of the prior art provide an improved means of mounting the miniaturized proximity transponder of FIG.
2
.
Other prior art fixture products for miniature proximity transponders have been introduced by Sokymat, SA, of Switzerland. Sokymat makes a CD/DVD label which is a washer-shaped RFID label having outside dimensions of about a 34 mm outside diameter by about a 0.4 mm thickness, with a 16 mm central hole to co-align with the central hole of the given CD or DVD (ie., part no. 601501). The 601501 CD/DVD label is attached by gluin
Bay Jonathan A.
Cyr Daniel St.
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