Electronic Product Code

The Electronic Product Code (EPC) is designed as a universal identifier (using an idiosyncratic numerical code for each different commodity) that provides a unique identity for every physical object anywhere in the world, for all time. The EPC structure is defined in the EPCglobal Tag Data Standard, which is a freely available standard. The canonical representation of an EPC is a URI, namely the 'pure-identity URI' representation that is intended for use when referring to a specific physical object in communications about EPCs among information systems and business application software. The EPCglobal Tag Data Standard also defines additional representations of an EPC identifier, such as the tag-encoding URI format and a compact binary format suitable for storing an EPC identifier efficiently within RFID tags (for which the low-cost passive RFID tags typically have limited memory capacity available for the EPC/UII memory bank). The EPCglobal Tag Data Standard defines the structure of the URI syntax and binary format, as well as the encoding and decoding rules to allow conversion between these representations. The EPC is designed as a flexible framework that can support many existing coding schemes, including many coding schemes currently in use with barcode technology. EPC identifiers currently support 7 identification keys from the GS1 system of identifiers, as well as a General Identifier and EPC identifiers that can be used for encoding supplies to the US Department of Defense. EPCs are not designed exclusively for use with RFID data carriers. They can indeed be constructed based on reading of optical data carriers, such as linear bar codes and two-dimensional bar codes, such as Data Matrix symbols. The 'pure identity URI' canonical representation of an EPC is agnostic to the data carrier technology that was used to attach the unique identifier to the individual physical object. The EPC is...