gnu@sun.uucp (John Gilmore) (06/12/84)
I hate to tell you, but there is a company already that does this. They assign the numbers used for Universal Product Codes and hold a monopoly on the assignment. They charge over $100 to assign you a number -- I think it may be more like $1000. Somehow they locked in the coding scheme so there were no extra fields (that could be used to distinguish numbers from different registries) and locked in the major chain stores such that the chains would only buy things with upc on them. Thus to sell to that market you just have to ante up the bucks for these guys to tear off a number and send it to you.