| 20100325020 | Systems and/or methods for globally tracking items and generating active notifications regarding the same - Certain exemplary embodiments relate to techniques for fraud reduction and/or product recovery. For example, in certain exemplary embodiments, a central repository for item-level data related to stolen, missing, counterfeit, or other items may be provided. The item-level data may be stored as a function of EPC/RFID and/or serial number information in certain exemplary embodiments of this invention. According to certain exemplary embodiments, notification and/or subscription systems may be deployed to search for missing, stolen, or other items throughout the various “touchpoints” in the sales universe by consulting the centralized electronic registration (ER) database. This searching may be performed among and between, and/or on behalf of, interested parties including, for example, retailers, manufacturers, pawnshops, online auction houses, etc. These and/or other parties may be notified, as appropriate, with the notifications being based on subscriptions may by the entities and/or predefined rules. | 12-23-2010 |
| 20110016008 | Electronic registration systems for processing variable or multiple return/warranty policies, and associated methods - The exemplary embodiments described herein relate to the field of electronic registration (ER) of purchased products and, more particularly, to an improved electronic registration system that enables variable or multiple return/warranty policies to be processed. In certain exemplary embodiments, at least some transaction information corresponding to an originally purchased product is selectively provided to replacement products provided as a part of a return/warranty request. Thus, it is possible in certain exemplary embodiments to make sure that a return/warranty policy's terms and/or conditions are managed consistently and effectively, even though one or more replacement products may be provided during the lifetime of the policy. In an example variable policy, no refunds are available past a first time period, no exchanges are available past a second time period, and only pro-rata exchanges are available in a third time period, with the periods being fixed regardless of how many times a product has been replaced. | 01-20-2011 |
