QR code is familiar to almost all China, because we have to scan the code to pay every day.
However, as the inventor of the QR code, Tenghongyuan of Japan said that "the QR code has a maximum life span of 1 years" when receiving the patent award issued by the European Patent Office in 214. Now that five years have passed, there is still half of the 1-year period mentioned by Tenghongyuan. Will the QR code really be eliminated after five years? Not necessarily!
QR code globalization
Recently, the international conference of QR code industry-"219 International QR code Industry Development Conference" was successfully held in Foshan, Guangdong. Representatives from 14 countries, including China, the United States, France, Germany, Japan and Russia, unanimously agreed to formally establish the Preparatory Committee for the International QR Code Industry Cooperation Organization to promote the establishment of an international standard system for QR codes.
is this the rhythm when the QR code is finished? This is the rhythm when the QR code is sent!
At present, China accounts for more than 9% of the world's QR code applications. In recent years, driven by the outward expansion of Alipay and WeChat, the QR code industry chain in other parts of the world is also accelerating, and the global development of QR codes presents three major trends:
Technology is developing rapidly: coding technology, storage technology, reading and parsing technology are mature, stable and diversified. At present, there are more than 2 types of QR codes in the world.
extensive and in-depth application: apart from mature fields such as mobile payment and marketing, QR code is becoming a new item identification technology, a mobile internet portal and a carrier for trade settlement, and this in-depth application will inevitably penetrate into all aspects of work and life with the development of network technologies such as industrial internet, Internet of Things and big data.
standards of various countries are in conflict and need to be unified urgently: before, all countries developed their own two-dimensional code standards, but with the application of two-dimensional code crossing national boundaries, standards of various countries are interoperable
Therefore, for the future industrial development, it is imperative to unify standards. The globalization and standardization of QR codes will also make QR codes better serve the rapid development of global digital economy and trade facilitation. At the same time, the QR code industry itself will develop rapidly. It is predicted that by 225, the application scale of QR codes and related industries in China will reach trillions, and the industrial scale in other parts of the world will be at least 2 billion to 3 billion.
Japan's idea of extorting patent fees is shattered
In 218, after China's payment giants landed in Japan one after another, Japan discovered that QR codes were so popular. You know, in 216, China used QR codes as many as 5 billion times a year, not to mention the rapid development of the QR code industry in the past two years, and the annual usage is estimated to be trillions.
As the birthplace of two-dimensional code, Japan, after seeing that two-dimensional code is so prosperous in China, and the industry prospect is bright, has the intention of making money again: at the beginning of this year, Japan plans to reaffirm the patent income right of two-dimensional code, and wants to charge China people a patent fee of 1 cent each time, and each person will need a penny for scanning the code, so it will cost 1 billion yuan.
you should know that the QR code was invented by Teng Hongyuan, an employee of Denso Wave, a subsidiary of Denso Corporation, Japan's largest component manufacturer. The original QR code is an upgraded version of the bar code, and the display form is the two-dimensional code of Toyota's "Kanban Management System".
however, Teng Hongyuan didn't find any great commercial value in the QR code at the beginning, and he was not optimistic that the QR code could be widely used by the society from the very beginning of the invention. Denso Wave Company, although owning the patent right of the QR code technology, did not consider charging the whole society or selling the patent.
China's QR code technology was introduced by Wang Yue in 21, so Wang Yue was also called "the father of QR code in China". In 25, China established its own two-dimensional code standard-"Hanxin Code", which has now become the international standard of ISO. Since then, China's QR code has parted ways with Japan, and the patent of "QR code scanning" registered by Xu Wei, the founder of Lingkong.com, which is widely used at present, is developed on the basis of "Hanxin code".
Therefore, apart from the basic things, the QR code system in China is completely different from that in Japan, and it has nothing to do with about 2, patents related to QR codes in Japan. And the basic patent of two-dimensional code held by Denso Japan now wants to collect money-it's too late!
according to article 33 of the international WTO intellectual property agreement, the patent "shall be protected for a period of not less than the end of the twentieth year from the date of filing the application", that is to say, the invention patents registered in China, Japan, the United States, Germany and France are valid for 2 years, even if they are extended, they will be at most 5 years.
Therefore, 214 happens to be the 2th anniversary of Tenghongyuan's QR code patent. Even if it is postponed for five years, the validity period of this year's patent will expire, which means that other countries can use the basic patent of QR code as they want, without paying a penny to Japan.
So it's too late for Japan to charge the patent fee for China QR code!
why are QR codes promising?
after the invention of QR code in 1994, its commercial prospect has been bleak, which makes its inventors have no confidence, and its promotion in China is not smooth sailing.
Wang Yue, who completed the QR code reading equipment in p>28, couldn't even pay the employees' salaries, and the company was almost on the verge of collapse. It was not until 213 that WeChat began to implement QR codes. In 214, mobile payment became popular, and the QR code industry ushered in spring, followed by explosive growth.
Two-dimensional code, to put it bluntly, is to stack bar codes layer by layer. The previous two-dimensional code can't be developed because it doesn't use such high-end technology, but a bar code is enough.
the bar code introduced in p>1949 initially had 13 digits, and later 26 English letters could be added. The 39 digits and letters were enough to represent most commodities in more than 2 countries and regions around the world. And the uniqueness of commodity bar code has brought us great convenience. Every day, global bar codes will be scanned 8 billion times, and in China, bar codes can save 3 billion RMB annually.
In the era of mobile payment, a large amount of payment data is generated every day, and bar codes are not enough; The two-dimensional code has 219 characters, which can store information in both horizontal and vertical directions, and has more information capacity than bar code.
It can be said that the QR code is specially born for the data age, and the future will be the era of the Internet of Everything. To achieve the Internet of Everything, we must first have "one thing and one code", so that each product can have its own QR code "ID card"!
At present, QR codes are mainly used in the field of payment. Since last year, the application fields are gradually expanding to transportation, pesticides, aquatic products, cosmetics and other fields, and its application scenarios will be more in-depth in the future.