Registers – Records – Conductive
Reexamination Certificate
1998-02-04
2001-09-04
Le, Thien M. (Department: 2876)
Registers
Records
Conductive
C705S014270
Reexamination Certificate
active
06283377
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an IC card, particularly a card used as a tag attached to a commodity for accumulating the degree of shoppers' interest in the commodity, and to a system for accumulating the degree of interest utilizing such card.
2. Description of the Related Art
Conventionally, tags have been attached to commodities for indicating the price, size, and material thereof and displayed at the store. Proposals have been made to employ IC cards as the tags and attach them to commodities for applications such as distribution management and the like so as to enhance the efficiency.
For retail stores actually selling commodities to shoppers, data related to the commodities drawing the shoppers' interest is extremely important for sales strategy. However, the conventional IC card tags described above do not accumulate the degree of shoppers' interest as objective data. Therefore, the degree of shoppers' interest is accumulated by a person in charge standing in front of a prescribed commodity and counting the number of times the shoppers touch the commodity. As a result, accumulating the degree of interest has been highly costly.
In addition, the conventional IC card described above is used only to indicate prescribed matters such as the price of the commodity, and therefore the card becomes useless to the shopper once he/she has purchased the commodity. Although the IC cards used as the tags can be collected by the retailer for reuse, good commodity service can be desirably provided if the use of the cards can be changed to a more valuable one to the purchaser when the commodity is sold.
In order to provide the IC card with a new use, the contents stored in the logic and the memory therein must be changed. However, the conventional IC cards described above do not have the arrangement that allows an easy change to be made at, for example, the sales area of the retail shop.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention has been made to overcome the problems described above, with an object of providing an IC card for accumulating the degree of shoppers' interest in a commodity, and a system for accumulating the degree of interest utilizing such card.
Another object of the present invention is to provide an IC card that allows an easy change of its use to be made.
In order to achieve the above objects, the present invention relates to an IC card for accumulating the degree of shoppers' interest in a commodity, comprising a display unit for displaying prescribed commodity information capable of changing the displayed contrast, a sensor for sensing a touch of the shopper and, if the touch is sensed, changing the contrast of the display unit, and a counter for counting the number of times the sensor is touched. According to the IC card of the present invention, the degree of shoppers' interest can be accumulated as the number of times the shoppers touch the sensor.
According to the above arrangement that allows a change to be made in the contrast of the display unit, shoppers touch the sensor of the IC card attached to the commodity they are attracted to and increase the contrast of the display for checking the displayed content. The degree of shoppers' interest in the commodity can be accumulated by counting the number of times the shoppers touch the sensor.
The above IC card for accumulating the degree of interest further comprises a transmission/reception unit for communicating data with the outside world, a storage unit for storing prescribed data, and a control unit for controlling such operations. In the above IC card for accumulating the degree of interest, the contents of the storage and control units are changed based on a change signal received by the transmission/reception unit, so that a change in use of the card can be made.
Further, in the above IC card for accumulating the degree of interest, the control unit is formed by a reconfigurable FPGA and the storage unit is formed by any one of a flash memory, a ferroelectric memory and an SRAM.
According to the above IC card for accumulating the degree of interest, the change signal is transmitted by either wireless or wired communication.
The above arrangements make it possible to change the contents of the data and the logic incorporated therein so that use of the IC card can be changed, thereby expanding the use of the card.
In the above IC card for accumulating the degree of interest, antenna wire is provided around the side surface of the body thereof.
The above arrangement in which the antenna wire is provided around the side surface of the body allows a large effective area to be secured at the front surface for use as the display unit and the like.
In the above IC card for accumulating the degree of interest, a capacitor is provided at the rear surface of the body so as to supply electric power during operation consuming a large amount of power.
Since the capacitor is thus provided at the rear surface for supplying electric power during power-consuming operation, the capacitor with a large area can be formed, which leads to a high ability to supply electric power, without occupying the space for other elements.
The present invention is also directed to a system for accumulating the degree of interest in which the degree of interest accumulated by the above IC card is collected by a local control device provided at each sales area.
In addition, in the above system for accumulating the degree of interest, data related to the degree of interest accumulated by the IC card is fed back to the supplier of the commodity.
The above arrangement enables the local control device to easily collect the degree of interest accumulated by the IC card, thereby allowing prediction of a good seller.
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patent: 4528679 (1985-07-01), Shahbaz et al.
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patent: 5138638 (1992-08-01), Frey
patent: 5331312 (1994-07-01), Kudoh
patent: 5519669 (1996-05-01), Ross et al.
patent: 5712830 (1998-01-01), Ross
patent: 5878401 (1999-03-01), Joseph
patent: 61-211788 (1986-09-01), None
patent: 62-74189 (1987-04-01), None
patent: 3-273377 (1991-12-01), None
patent: 6-68320 (1994-03-01), None
patent: 7-297291 (1995-11-01), None
patent: 9-212445 (1997-08-01), None
Japanese Office Action dated Jul. 6, 1999.
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