UPC Registration

[dizzle]

Does anybody have any major experience with this?

I'm working for a new company that's been in business for over 30 years and had purchased UPC's about 15-20 years ago. The previous company I worked for had purchased UPC's as well and I know that we had to register every single product via GS1 services and GS1 was the company that generated the UPC for us.

My current company (and myself) is wondering what the standards are for UPC's that were purchased way back in the day. I know that with GS1 you had to pay a yearly fee (i think) for every 100 or 1000 UPC's that you purchased. What about UPC's that were purchased before GS1 was ever created?

Thanks for the help!

[vangogh]

I don't have any experience with this, but I noticed your thread falling of the today's post list so I wanted to give it a boost. You probably already know about this site, but here's GS1us.org (http://www.gs1us.org/). I searched the site a little, though admittedly not a lot, but didn't find anything. Hopefully giving this thread a boost will grab the attention of someone who can offer more.

[lucas.bowser]

OK. It's been a while since I dealt with this and had to dig out my notes, but the answer depends upon date of purchase. Any company prefix assigned before August 28, 2002 are yours in perpetuity, i.e. you own them. Under the new model you are licensing them. Refer to a summary of the GS1 settlement (http://bellsouthpwp.net/l/a/laurergj/UPC/renufee.html) relating to a legal case brought by UCC members when new organization was created and tried to make them pay an annual licensing fee.

If you run out of item numbers under your current "Company Code", you will have to license a new one. Your initial and annual charge for the new company code I believe depends upon the number of bar codes.

[dizzle]

Thanks lucas for that clarification. I've worked with GS1 before and I know that they are who you need to purchase your UPC codes from in order them to be registered directly to you. I also know that with GS1, before a code is registered and given to you for a specific product, you had to register the product description with GS1 for there databases and to make sure that you weren't improperly coding items for your company.

So, if UPC's were purchased prior 08/28/2002, I don't have to pay any fees to have them be "up to date" or do I? I just wanted to make sure that we're still in compliance for all of this even after 20 years since the UPC's were purchased.

[lucas.bowser]

You would have to confirm that with GS1 to be sure, but that is my understanding. I would think you should be able to call them and find that out.

I would also confirm the original terms of the UPC codes. I thought under the pre-2002 terms, you could add as many as you wanted under your company code until you ran out, but I never had to deal with that specifically and no longer have access to a copy of a pre-2002 agreement where it would have been spelled out. Again, this is something GS1 should be able to confirm for you.