US 5,640,193 · Granted 1997-06-17

Lucent's 1997 Patent: Scanning Barcodes to Unlock Digital Entertainment

Imagine pointing your scanner at a barcode on a magazine ad or product box, and boom—your device instantly orders up the movie, song, or service encoded in those stripes. Lucent patented the bridge between physical marks and digital media delivery, making it possible to shop for entertainment by just scanning what you see.

Curated and verified by the IsItPatented Editorial team

The plain-English version

What it protects

The claim covers a system where a handheld scanner reads marks (like barcodes) on physical objects and sends the encoded data to a central interface, which then uses that data to request and deliver specific electronic multimedia services from remote servers. What's protected is the specific method of tying a scanned code to a multimedia service selection and delivery pipeline—essentially the plumbing that connects a printed barcode to digital content arriving at your device.

Why it matters

Filed in 1994 and granted in 1997, this patent anticipated the convergence of physical retail and digital delivery at a time when the internet was still young. Lucent was positioning itself to control the infrastructure that would let consumers scan real-world objects to access online services—a vision that later echoed in QR codes, NFC payments, and augmented reality experiences. The patent represents an early bet that the boundary between print and digital would become porous.

Real-world use

In the late 1990s and early 2000s, magazine publishers and record labels explored printed barcodes that readers could scan to preview or purchase music and videos—an early ancestor of today's QR-code-to-streaming workflows.

Original USPTO abstract

An apparatus and method enables a user to control the selection of electronic multimedia services to be provided to the user by one or more servers over a communication medium. The apparatus includes a scanner for reading marks on an object and for communicating a request signal, having an object code representing the read marks, to a user interface. The interface receives the request signal and transmits to the servers a request command including an interface identification code and the object code which is used to select the desired electronic multimedia service. The servers identify the selected electronic multimedia service using the object code. The interface then enables the selected electronic multimedia service transmitted from the servers to be received by the user's receiver.

Patent details

Publication number: US 5,640,193
Filing date: 1994-08-15
Grant date: 1997-06-17
Assignee: Lucent Technologies Inc.
Inventor(s): WELLNER; PIERRE DAVID
CPC class: H04N7/17318

View original record on Google Patents →

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