NeoMedia Announces Licensing Program

NeoMedia Technologies, the global leader in mobile barcode scanning solutions, has finalized its patent licensing program and begun negotiations with interested vendors.

In response to the successful reexamination by the USPTO of NeoMedia’s "Barcode Lookup Patent", NeoMedia has moved assertively to re-energize the U.S. mobile barcode marketplace by helping lead a pivotal interoperability pilot and initiating a licensing program both designed to unify the marketplace.

"Now that the patent situation has been clarified, we are looking forward to quickly establishing a viable system that provides the critical elements needed to attract advertisers: reliability and scale. Our recent partnership with NeuStar demonstrates that an interoperable infrastructure is deployable now and provides advertisers with a trusted solution that delivers the largest audience in the U.S. mobile barcode marketplace. It was a great success and a real rallying point for the industry," stated Iain McCready, CEO of NeoMedia.

In keeping with its vision and commitment to developing an interoperable global ecosystem, NeoMedia is licensing its technology to foster innovation and competition in the creation of exciting new mobile barcode applications and services for the advertising industry. NeoMedia’s licensing program is available to all participants who are interested in becoming part of a collaborative ecosystem aligned and committed to growing the mobile barcode marketplace.

"Between the PTO ruling and the NeuStar pilot, the interest in our technology and services is spiking on both the vendor and advertiser fronts. We’ve had some key brand deployments in Europe leveraging NeoSphere, our new code management platform and we’ve had strong initial interest in our licensing program as well," said Dean Wood, VP of Business Development for NeoMedia.

NeoMedia has recently requested the stay be lifted in their pending infringement case against Scanbuy. At a pre-trial hearing on April 17^th, NeoMedia pushed for the case to move forward on an expedited basis.

NeoMedia currently has 30 active patents spanning 13 countries, with 29 additional patents pending. These patents cover various linkage methods including: Barcodes, RFID, Mag Stripe, Voice, and other machine readable and keyed entry identifiers.

NeoMedia & Arvato Reach 120 Million Worldwide

NeoMedia Technologies has entered into a strategic partnership with arvato services. The cooperation brings together innovative technology and leading services in the fields of media service, customer relationship management, data, finance, supply chain management, customer care, mail and IT to create a new and unique service chain.

arvato services is a leading service provider for effective customer communication, customer loyalty and supply chain management solutions both inside and outside of Europe. NeoMedia is a global leader in camera-initiated transactions using mobile phones and offers innovative and service-oriented solutions for targeting consumers with mobile marketing tactics. Using the NeoReader barcode scanning application and a 2D barcode on print products, consumers can connect to the mobile internet. By linking classical “push” media with the barcode as a “pull” instrument the marketing circle is completed. NeoMedia technology effectively turns books, magazines, posters and advertisements into vehicles that create an interactive dialogue with consumers.

In order to provide its customers with targeted, inexpensive marketing campaigns, arvato services is increasingly focusing on mobile marketing, and therefore on mobile code reading, taking advantage of the innovative technologies supplied by NeoMedia Technologies. With NeoReader® a mobile phone camera becomes a barcode reader, giving the user immediate access to content and services available on the World Wide Web. Valuable customer data can also be generated in this way.

Thomas Leitner, Vice President of arvato media GmbH explains: "NeoMedia is enabling us to open up a new dimension of dialogue with the customer. The ability to interact with a consumer via his or her mobile device adds infinite value to the CRM and marketing disciplines. NeoMedia’s system offers an unrivaled level of performance monitoring – way above that of conventional methods, allowing us to precisely tailor future marketing activities for our customers as well as accurately measure feedback."

Iain McCready, CEO of NeoMedia Technologies: "Gaining arvato services as a business partner is very gratifying. This accomplishment underlines our global market leadership and the outstanding quality of NeoMedia solutions. With this partner at our side we believe we will be able to reach new target groups and extend our mobile marketing value chain to the highest level thanks to integrated arvato solutions."

NeoMedia & IQ Mobile Power Nokia Campaign

NeoMedia Technologies, the global leader in mobile barcode scanning solutions, was selected by IQ mobile, the leading mobile marketing company in Central Europe, to provide 2D barcoding services for their advertising campaigns. The first campaign launched using this technology was an interactive advertising campaign to promote Nokia’s new Navigation phones in Austria, which recently concluded.

IQ mobile uses NeoMedia’s patented technologies to provide their customers with mobile advertising campaigns that leverage 2D barcodes. The NeoReader application delivers a fast and accurate scanning experience to consumers and the NeoSphere code management platform provides IQ mobile with a simple but powerful tool to create, track and measure 2D barcode campaigns.

Nokia recently launched their new line of Navigation phones and IQ mobile wanted to provide an innovative campaign that would garner attention and highlight the navigation features of the new phones. Leveraging NeoMedia’s mobile barcoding solutions, IQ mobile developed a multi-channel advertising campaign that enabled mobile consumers to scan a 2D code for a chance to win a Nokia 6210 Navigation phone.

This heavily promoted launch featured a 2D barcode in full-page print ads placed in the high profile Austrian men’s lifestyle magazine “WIENER” as well as “Weekend,” another popular lifestyle magazine. The campaign was further supported with banners, flyers and posters which were placed in bus stations and city lights across Austria. A digital component featured banner ads across 10 different mobile portals.

"IQ mobile was looking for an innovative solution that would help reinforce Nokia’s ‘pioneering’ spirit as well as provide clear value and results. NeoMedia’s 2D barcode solutions created intrigue for consumers, but more importantly, delivered real added-value to Nokia by "turning on" the printed mediums and delivering real-time results for each element of the campaign. The combination of a qualitative interactive consumer experience with a quantifiable and measurable response mechanism makes mobile barcodes a powerful tool for marketers," said Iain McCready, CEO of NeoMedia Technologies. "IQ mobile understands the power of 2D barcodes and works hard to ensure the experience is easy and intuitive for consumers in order to optimize results for their clients."

IQ mobile conducted in-depth response analysis to understand how each element of the Nokia campaign performed. The response rates were similar to that of SMS campaigns which was very compelling when comparing a new technology with a more mature, highly available technology. Additionally, the re-marketing opportunity proved valuable due to the high rate of consumers who opted-in to receive more information. The additional costs required to include the 2D barcodes in the media campaign were minimal but the interactive dialogue with consumers delivered real value.

"The performance of the 2D code campaign has far exceeded both ours and Nokia’s expectations. Due to the strong response rates and opt-in interest, Nokia will be incorporating more campaigns with 2D codes in Central Europe. We are currently running a campaign in Switzerland featuring 2D codes to promote the Nokia Music Device 5800 via the Mobilezone^®, a major catalog retailer," said Harald Winkelhofer, Founder & CEO of IQ mobile. "In general, the 2D code technology plays a very important role in all the mobile marketing concepts that we bring to our client base of international brands and agencies."

Alexander Oswald, Head of Marketing - Alps South East Europe for Nokia added, "We are very pleased with the results and being the first one to use this solution. As we are one of the leading mobility brands, using mobile advertising technologies is important as a new and exciting communication channel. And as well part of our brand DNA of connecting people through mobile solutions."