First he argued laches, the legal term meaning Lemelson had waited too long to press claims over his bar-code reader supposedly invented in the early 1950s.

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Equipped with a bar-code reader to scan New York registration stickers and synchronized with an atomic clock in Colorado, the devices make it almost impossible for an agent to make the kinds of errors Bolofsky depends on for appeals.

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Some of them rely on technology other than NFC, such as offering services that let people pay for purchases by sending text messages or by scanning product bar codes using a phone's QR-code reader.

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