	US 7,527,198 B2
	Operation monitoring and enhanced host communications in systems employing electronic article surveillance and RFID tags
Mohamed Arif Salim, Eugene, Oreg. (US); Harold C. Clifford, Eugene, Oreg. (US); Alan Jackson Guess, Eugene, Oreg. (US); and Bruce Edward Paris, Eugene, Oreg. (US)
Assigned to Datalogic Scanning, Inc., Eugene, Oreg. (US)
Filed on Jul. 02, 2003, as Appl. No. 10/612,870.
Application 10/612870 is a continuation in part of application No. 10/390542, filed on Mar. 14, 2003, abandoned.
Claims priority of provisional application 60/365432, filed on Mar. 18, 2002.
Prior Publication US 2004/0113791 A1, Jun. 17, 2004
Int. Cl. G06F 19/00 (2006.01); G06Q 30/00 (2006.01); G06Q 90/00 (2006.01); G06Q 40/00 (2006.01); G06K 5/00 (2006.01); G06K 15/00 (2006.01); G07D 11/00 (2006.01); G08B 13/14 (2006.01)

U.S. Cl. 235—385 [235/380; 235/378; 235/379; 340/572.1; 340/572.3]

26 Claims

1. A host notification method for use in an electronic checkout system that includes an optical code reader and electronic article surveillance (EAS) system, the checkout system coupled to an electronic point-of-sale (POS) terminal, the method comprising the following steps:

operating in an automatic activation mode whereby the EAS system is automatically activated in response to a signal from the optical code reader of good read of a product optical code to deactivate an EAS tag of the product;

operating in a manual activation mode whereby the EAS system is manually activated by action of an operator to deactivate an EAS tag;

detecting, by the checkout system, a manual deactivation attempt of the LAS system;

electronically determining whether the manual deactivation attempt was successful;

in response to determining a successful manual deactivation attempt, transmitting notification thereof by mimicking a reading operation of a read product optical code by transmitting a predetermined special optical code data to the POS terminal or host system using a pre-existing interface of the POS terminal or host system that is operative to handle product optical code data;

storing, by the POS terminal or host system, the predetermined special optical code data, wherein the predetermined special optical code data does not identify a product, is of a same format as product optical code data, and is able to be processed via the pre-existing interface.