Whole Chain Traceability: A Successful Research Funding Strategy

The following work product represents a critical part of the first successful strategy for obtaining funding from the USDA relative to "whole chain" traceability. It is the work of this author as weaved into a USDA National Integrated Food Safety Initiative (NIFSI) funding submission of the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™ led by Oklahoma State University and filed in June 2011. This work highlights the usefulness of Pardalis' U.S. patents and patents pending to "whole chain" traceability. It highlights the efficacy of employing granular information objects in the Cloud for providing consumer accessibility to any agricultural supply chain. In August 2011 notification was received of an award ($543,000 for 3 years) under the USDA NIFSI for a project entitled Advancement of a whole-chain, stakeholder driven traceability system for agricultural commodities: beef cattle pilot demonstration (Funding Opportunity Number: USDA-NIFSI RFA (FY 2011), Award Number: 2011-51110-31044).

With the funding of the NIFSI project, the USDA has funded a food safety project that is distinguishable from the Food Safety Modernization Act projects being funded by the FDA and conducted by the Institute of Food Technologists (IFT). Unlike the IFT/FDA projects, the scope of the funded NIFSI project uniquely encompasses consumer accessibility to supply chain information.

A useful explanation of the benefits of a “whole chain” traceability system may be made with critical traceability identifiers (CTIDs), critical tracking events (CTEs) and Nodes as described in the IFT/FDA Traceability in Food Systems Report. CTEs are those events that must be recorded in order to allow for effective traceability of products in the supply chain. A Node refers to a point in the supply chain when an item is produced, process, shipped or sold. CTEs may be loosely defined as a transaction. Every transaction involves a process that may be separated into a beginning, middle and end.

While important and relevant data exists in any of the phases of a CTE transaction, the entire transaction may be uniquely identified and referenced by a code referred to as a critical tracking identifier (CTID). For example, with the emergence of biosensor development for the real-time detection of foodborne contamination, one may also envision adding associated real-time environmental sampling data from each node.

What is not described or envisioned in the IFT/FDA Traceability in Food Systems Report is the challenge of using even top of the line “one up/one down” product traceability systems that, notwithstanding the use of a single CTID, are inherently limiting in the data sharing options provided to both stakeholders and government regulators. Pause for a moment and compare the foregoing drawing with the next drawing. Compare CTID2 in both drawings with CTID2A, CTID2B, etc. in the next drawing. The IFT/FDA food safety projects described above are at best implementing top of the line "one up/one down" product traceability systems with the use of a single CTID. But with “whole chain” product traceability, in which CTID2 is essentially assigned down to the datum level, transactional and environmental sampling data may in real-time be granularly placed into the hands of supply chain partners, food safety regulators, or even retail customers.

The scope of “whole chain” chain information sharing within the funded USDA NIFSI project goes well beyond the “one up/one down” information sharing of the IFT/FDA projects. The NIFSI project addresses a new way of looking at information sharing for connecting supply chains with consumers. This is essentially accomplished with a system in which a content provider creates data which is then fixed (i.e., made immutable) and users can access that immutable data but cannot change it.

The granularity of Pardalis' Common Point Authoring (CPA) system (as is necessary for a “whole chain” product traceability system) is characterized by the following patent drawing of an informational object (e.g., a document, report or XML object) whose immutable data elements are radically and uniquely identified. The similarities between the foregoing object containing CTID2A, CTID2B, etc., and the immutable data element identifiers of the following drawing, should be self-evident.

For the purposes of the NIFSI funding opportunity, the Pardalis CPA system invention was appropriately characterized as a “whole chain” product traceability system.  A further, high-altitude drawing, characterized the application of the invention to a major U.S. agricultural supply chain:

Several questions were required in the USDA's NIFSI "Review Package" to be addressed before actual funding. The responses to two of those questions were crafted by this author. They are worth inserting here ....

Question 1: A reviewer was skeptical that the system would be capable of handling different levels of data (consumer, producer, RFID, bar code) seamlessly.

There is an assumption in the reviewer’s opinion that data is different because it is consumer, producer, RFID, bar code, etc. The proposed pilot project is based on a premise that data is data. The difference in data that is perceived by the reviewer is not in its categorization per se but in its proprietary nature. That is, it is perceived to be different because it is locked up (often in categories of consumer, producer, RFID, bar code, etc.) in proprietary data silos along the supply and demand chains. It is reasonable to have this viewpoint given the prevalence of "one-up/one-down" data sharing in supply chains. As stated in the Positive Aspects of the Proposal, “[t]he use of open source software and the ability to add consumer access to the tracability (sic) system set this proposal apart from other similar proposals.” The proposed pilot project will demonstrate how an open source approach to increasing interoperability between enterprise data silos (buttressed by metadata permissions and security controls in the hands of the actual data producers) will provide new "whole chain" ways of looking at information sharing in enterprise supply and consumer demand chains. For instance, consumers could opt for retailers to automatically populate their accounts from their actual point-of-sale retail purchases. Consumers could additionally populate accounts in a multi-tenancy social network (like Facebook) using smartphone bar code image capturing applications. Supplemented by cross-reference to an industry GTIN/GLN database, the product identifiers would be associated with company names, time stamps, location and similar metadata. This could empower consumers with a one-stop shop for confidentially reporting suspicious food to FoodSafety.gov. Likewise, consumers could be provided with real-time, relevant food recall information in their multi-tenancy, social networking accounts, and their connected smartphone applications.

Question 2: A member of the panel was skeptical that the consumer accessibility would be largely attractive as this capability currently has limited appeal among consumers.

We recognize this viewpoint to be a highly prevalent opinion within an ag and food industry predominantly sharing data in a “one-up/one-down” manner. When one uses a smartphone today to scan an item in a grocery store, the probability of being able to retrieve any data from the typical ag and food supply chain is very low. However, we have been highly influenced in our thinking by the existing data showing that many consumers do not take appropriate protective actions during a foodborne illness outbreak or food recall. Furthermore, 41 percent of U.S. consumers say they have never looked for any recalled product in their home. Conversely, some consumers overreact to the announcement of a foodborne illness outbreak by not purchasing safe foods. We have been further influenced by how producers of organic and natural products are adopting rapidly evolving smartphone and mobile technologies as a way of communicating directly with consumers, and increasing their market share. We contend that by increasing supply chain transparency with real-time, whole chain technologies, “consumer accessibility” will become more and more appealing.  We contend this to be especially true when there is a product recall and the products are already in the home. And so, again, our high interest in working with FoodSafety.gov.

The foregoing strategy and comments may be freely cited with attribution to this author as CEO of Pardalis, Inc. It is offered in the spirit of the "sharing is winning" principles of the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™ (now being rebranded as @WholeChainTrace™). However, no right to use Pardalis' patent or patents pending is conveyed thereby. If you wish to be a research collaborator with Pardalis, or to license or use Pardalis' patented innovations, please contact the author.

Go to Part II

Update on Sunday, April 15, 2012 at 11:16PM by Steve Holcombe

All indications are that the emerging Wikidata Project, the next iteration of Wikipedia, will authorize end-users to centrally register immutable data elements (e.g., someone's birth date). It is no surprise that the primary benefactors of the Wikidata Project include Paul Allen's Institute for Artificial Intelligence and Google because from these immutable data elements will be created trustworthy informational objects for supporting varying semantic relationships (i.e., ontologies).

"The overall project will have three phases, the first of which involves creating one Wikidata page for each Wikipedia entry across Wikipedia’s over 280 supported languages. This will provide the online encyclopedia with one common source of structured data that can be used in all articles, no matter which language they’re in. For example, the date of someone’s birth would be recorded and maintained in one place: Wikidata. Phase one will also involve centralizing the links between the different language versions of Wikipedia. This part of the work will be finished by August 2012."

See http://techcrunch.com/2012/03/30/wikipedias-next-big-thing-wikidata-a-machine-readable-user-editable-database-funded-by-google-paul-allen-and-others/

I will be speaking about the Wikidata Project in my keynote presentation "Data objects and information exchange for whole chain traceability" at the Smart AgriMatics Conference in Paris in mid-June, 2012. For more information see http://www.smartagrimatics.eu/ConferenceInformation/Program.aspx#PlenaryOpeningSession.

Update on Tuesday, September 4, 2012 at 10:25AM by Steve Holcombe

ADVANCEMENT OF A WHOLE-CHAIN, STAKEHOLDER DRIVEN TRACEABILITY SYSTEM FOR AGRICULTURAL COMMODITIES: BEEF CATTLE PILOT DEMONSTRATION

Sponsoring Institution: USDA NIFA

Grant No. 2011-51110-31044

Project Timeline: Sep 1, 2011 to Aug 31, 2014

Recipient Organization: OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY, BIOSYSTEMS & AG ENGINEERING, STILLWATER,OK 74078

Project Director: Buser, Michael | 405-744-5288 | buser@okstate.edu

Project Methods: The software development for a working, scalable stakeholder-driven "whole chain" agricultural commodity traceability system is broken down into four categories: 1) system architecture, 2) system software, 3) content-centric networking and 4) stakeholder feedback.

System Architecture: We propose to implement the distributed system using a content-centric networking (CCN) data framework such as the CCNx framework currently under development by Xerox PARC, (sic)

System Software: The proposed WCTS system will extend the existing supply chain software of Pardalis, Inc. As multiple stakeholders may be generating and accessing shared data, we will develop algorithms for data synchronization, reconciliation and certification. The system must provide reports such as supply chain traceability reports. A browser-based version of the user interface will be designed and implemented. A critical subset of these will be implemented as applications in mobile Android based smart phones.

Content-Centric Networking for Food Traceability: Initially, CCNx will be applied for commodity traceability to determine system performance characteristics such as bandwidth, caching requirements, delays, throughput, etc. CCNx's performance will be compared to the Internet Protocol. The security of CCNx for commodity traceability will be analyzed. In the second phase we will seek to alleviate the bottlenecks and weaknesses identified in the first phase, particularly the security vulnerabilities and trust implementation in the whole chain. We will first identify the security goals for a whole chain commodity traceability system to define security policies. These policies, which will include access rights, for example, will be enforced by credentials. Second, we will analyze the different levels of protection and privacy required by the different types of content. Third, we will implement trust in the whole supply chain within the CCNx framework by integrating credentials (Blaze et. al. 1996) with reputation-based trust management (Zacharia 2000) and policy-based trust management. We propose to create and discover by content the distributed credentials, reputations, users and data and thereby create a trust chain that is content-centric. Sanitation algorithms (Dilys 2007)) to filter content will be explored with a view to incorporating them within CCNx to ensure privacy.

The above information was found at the following link on 4 September 2012: http://www.reeis.usda.gov/web/crisprojectpages/0226992-advancement-of-a-whole-chain-stakeholder-driven-traceability-system-for-agricultural-commodities-beef-cattle-pilot-demonstration.html. However since that time the foregoing information has been substituted with other language including the following:

Non Technical Summary: Traceability is a key component in developing a safe food supply, as evidenced by the recent outbreak of foodborne illnesses attributed to spinach, peppers, and tomatoes in the United States and the ongoing e-coli outbreak in Europe with 27 deaths reported to date. The European Union has agreed to pay over $300 million to farmers who suffered losses. The Centers for Disease Control reported that salmonella infection rates are increasing with one million people sickened by food-borne pathogens each year. Unfortunately, the current approach to product traceability is one-up, one-back information sharing at the GTIN (global trade item number) lot level. This type of traceability system has many disadvantages, including lack of privacy, and fails to maximize system benefits such as efficiency and more complete or "whole-chain" information sharing. This approach is fraught with inherent delays, limiting consumers' and regulators' ability to identify the contaminant source and limiting mitigation efforts in the event of outbreaks or bioterrorism. This lack of critical information can cause significant economic losses to multiple industries resulting from public uncertainty on the potential for human hazard, affecting even those not connected with outbreaks. Conversely, research suggests that whole-chain traceability can substantially limit the economic loss of food safety events.

The Whole Chain Traceability Consortium

The Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™ is currently comprised at its core of researchers, educators, extension specialists and collaborators at Oklahoma State University, North Dakota State University, Michigan State University, the University of Arkansas, and Pardalis, Inc., an Oklahoma advanced  information technology company. These institutions are joined together by "sharing is winning" principles. Steve Holcombe, Pardalis' CEO, serves as a networker and coordinator among, between and beyond these institutions.

The vision of the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™ is that new strategies for "whole chain" management of agricultural and food data - with a security model - are needed. We believe that these new strategies will increase the availability and quality in supply chains of transparent data. We believe that these new strategies will open up exciting sustainable business models for both large and small agricultural companies. We believe that social networking, the emergence of the "Internet of Things", and mobile technologies are dynamically driving this need. And, for instance, we believe that consumers will significantly benefit from real-time access to new data related to the safety of their food.

Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™ coalesced in preparing food safety proposals for over $50M in 2010 USDA NIFA agricultural funding. In August 2011 notification was received of an award (~$550K/3 YRS) under the USDA National Integrated Food Safety Initiative. Pardalis' enterprise-class, multi-tenancy is at the heart of that project. This project begins a process for a patent-hardened open source licensing strategy for food and ag supply chains branded with Pardalis’ Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™.

The Web was originally conceived as a tool for researchers who trusted one another implicitly. Building in the missing layers of trust and provenance that make possible “whole chain” information sharing is one of the “next Big Things” for the Internet. Global patent portfolios are expensive and time-consuming to obtain and protect. Pardalis has been patiently building a formidable global patent portfolio in the U.S., China, the EU and other countries since 2001. These patents cover critical methods for introducing trust and provenance to whole chain information sharing with information-centric networking.

Other funding activities - both national and international - are in process. That includes a pre-submission seeking funding under the NSF Partnerships in International Research and Education (PIRE). On 19 October 2011 the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™ - led by Oklahoma State University - filed a pre-submission entitled "Advancement of a whole-chain, stakeholder-driven traceability and supply chain management system to improve food safety and reduce food waste". As well phrased by Leo Bonanni of SourceMap, global trade in agricultural and food products is a series of discrete transactions between buyers and sellers. It is generally difficult – if not impossible – to determine a clear picture of the entire life cycle of such products.

The goals of the proposed NSF PIRE research are epitomized by a vision of consumers able to point a smartphone at a food product bar code, and retrieve a global sourcing map and reliable information about the product. This access may help save peoples lives in a food safety recall, verify sustainable agricultural practices, and learn more from consumers about their personal experiences with food products.

Domestic collaborators with the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™ in the NSF PIRE pre-submission include Top 10 Produce, LLC and SourceMap. International collaborators include Dr. Sjaak Wolfert, Sr. Scientific Researcher on ICT in Agri-Food Supply Chain Networks at the University of Wageningen, the Netherlands, and Coordinator of the EU funded Smart Agri-Food Project. Also, Prof. Maohua Wang, College of Information and Electrical Engineering, Chinese Agricultural University – Beijing, China. Prof. Wang is Director of Strategic Research on Key Technology of Agricultural Information Technology funded by National Science Foundation of China.

Check out this and other funding opportunities being discussed and considered by the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™ at http://pardalis.squarespace.com/funding-opportunities/">http://pardalis.squarespace.com/funding-opportunities/.

There are three social networking sites for the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium™. One is the Whole Chain Traceability Funding Opportunities networking group on LinkedIn. Another is on Facebook at the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium page. There is also a Twitter account at @WholeChainTrace. For more information, visit any of these websites or contact any of the following:

• Dr. Brian Adam, Oklahoma State University Professor of Agricultural Economics - http://agecon.okstate.edu/faculty/profile.asp?id=brian.adam&type=faculty
• Dr. Michael Buser, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering - http://bioenergycenter.okstate.edu/faculty/Buser
• Dr. Deland Myers, Professor and Director, School of Food Systems, North Dakota State University - http://www.ag.ndsu.edu/foodsystems/contactus.html
• Dr. John Stone, Co-Director and Sr. Research Scientist, at the Center for the Study of Standards in Society, Michigan State University - http://cs3.msu.edu/people/profile/stone-john/
• Dr. Jean-Francois Meullenet, Head and Professor, Department of Food Science, University of Arkansas - http://foodscience.uark.edu/2349.htm
• Steve Holcombe, Pardalis, Inc. - http://www.linkedin.com/in/steveholcombe

Update on Wednesday, November 30, 2011 at 10:06AM by Steve Holcombe

Tracking & Incentivizing Data Sharing: The Whole Chain Traceability Consortium

Beth Hoffman, Managing Editor and Partner, Food+Tech Connect, interviewed Dr. Brian Adam, Oklahoma State University Professor of Agricultural Economics, Dr. Michael Buser, Assistant Professor in the Department of Biosystems and Agricultural Engineering, and me.

Introductory excerpt -

"Knowing where food comes from and how it was grown is a top priority in an increasing number of American households. But aside from costly technological solutions employed by large, vertically-integrated corporations, very little exists to follow food throughout fragmented food systems from ‘farm to fork.’ The Whole Chain Traceability Consortium ... aims to change that, and make it available on smart phones."

See the full post published on 29 Nov 2011 at:

http://www.foodandtechconnect.com/site/2011/11/29/tracking-and-incentivizing-data-the-whole-chain-traceability-consortium/

Update on Thursday, January 26, 2012 at 10:16PM by Steve Holcombe

Whole Chain Traceability: A Successful Research Funding Strategy
http://pardalis.squarespace.com/blog/2012/1/26/whole-chain-traceability-a-successful-research-funding-strat.html

Update on Saturday, April 28, 2012 at 8:47PM by Steve Holcombe

-------- Original Message --------
Subject: Update: National Institute for Whole Chain Traceability
From: "Steve Holcombe"
Date: Thu, January 19, 2012 11:15 am
To:

Dr. Deland Myers
Professor and Director
Great Plains Institute of Food safety
School of Food Systems
North Dakota State University

Dr. Steve Pueppke
Director of Michigan State University AgBioResearch

Dr. Lawrence Busch
Founding Director
Center for the Study of Standards in Society
Michigan State University

Dr. John V. Stone
Co-Director & Senior Research Scientist
Center for the Study of Standards in Society
Michigan State University

Dr. Jean-Francois Meullenet
Head & Professor
Department of Food Science
University of Arkansas

Dr. Sjaak Wolfert
Sr. Scientific Researcher on ICT in Agri-Food Supply Chain Networks
University of Wageningen, the Netherlands

Prof. Maohua Wang
(c/o Dr. Ning Wang)
College of Information and Electrical Engineering
Chinese Agricultural University
Beijing, China

Vladimir Krasojevic
Research Director at Gartner
Zurich, Switzerland

Dr. Sam Saguy
Professor of Food Science, Technology, and Innovation
Hebrew University of Jerusalem

Greetings, All,

Last fall I had the distinct privilege of personally soliciting from each of you a letter of support for the founding of a "National Institute for Whole Chain Traceability and Food Safety Research" at Oklahoma State University. Each of you submitted letters of support to Dr. Brian Adam, Professor, Department of Agricultural Economics at OSU. Your letters were received with great interest, hope and excitement. My final draft of the news release, which was personally submitted to Dr. Stephen McKeever, VP of Research and Technology Transfer at OSU, is attached. [Editors's Note: In fact, Dr. McKeever gave his own letter of support, too].

In your letters you appropriately noted that unfunded, multi-institutional activities do not commonly coalesce and stay together for as long as they had done so (over 2 long years) with the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium (WCTC). And you further noted that the initial funding and founding of the Institute was truly be a milestone achievement for the WCTC.

This last week I was informed by Drs. Buser and Adam that the National Institute will come into existence sometime later in 2012 but that neither the efforts of the "Whole Chain Traceability Consortium" nor "Pardalis Inc." will be specifically identified. At best I imagine there will be some reference to the activities of a "consortium" or something to that effect. Furthermore, I was informed that henceforth there would be no further, specific reference to the Whole Chain Traceability Consortium nor Pardalis Inc. in future, OSU-led traceability funding submissions. As to the reasons for these decisions, I would refer you to Drs. McKeever, Buser or Adam. But I will say that I was invited to continue my participation - at the same level of energy and interest - in current and future OSU-led traceability funding activities.

I regret to inform you that Pardalis will no longer be participating in the formation of the National Institute. Nor will Pardalis be participating any further in conjunction with OSU-led funding activities or funding submissions. This includes the currently funded USDA National Integrated Food Safety Initiative project, the NSF Partnerships in International Research and Education (PIRE) and the USDA Specialty Crops Research Initiative submission.

I want to again thank you for your letters of support. I was walking on “Cloud Nine”, as they say. And I want you to know that I had the very, very best of intentions in soliciting your support in a manner that was inextricably connected to the "sharing is winning" principles of the WCTC. Those principles remain unaltered and unaffected.

The WCTC will evolve. In fact, Pardalis Inc is already in the process of rebranding its trademark under the moniker of @WholeChainTrace™. Furthermore, Clive Boulton, co-organizer of the significant Seattle-area Google Technology User Group, has come on board as a technical advisor to Pardalis Inc., @WholeChainTrace™ and an even broader brand, @WholeChainCom™ (for Whole Chain Communications).

Thanks again for your support letters. I mean that. I sincerely hope that I have not lost an opportunity to again solicit your support for the future activities of @WholeChainTrace.

Cheers,

Steve

----
Steve Holcombe
CEO - Pardalis, Inc.
    
Cc:
Dr. Stephen McKeever, VP of Research and Technology Transfer
Dr. Brian Adam, Professor, Department of Agricultural Economics
Dr. Michael Buser, Assistant Professor, Department of BAE

Update on Tuesday, September 4, 2012 at 12:25PM by Steve Holcombe

ADVANCEMENT OF A WHOLE-CHAIN, STAKEHOLDER DRIVEN TRACEABILITY SYSTEM FOR AGRICULTURAL COMMODITIES: BEEF CATTLE PILOT DEMONSTRATION

Sponsoring Institution: USDA NIFA

Grant No. 2011-51110-31044

Project Timeline: Sep 1, 2011 to Aug 31, 2014

Recipient Organization: OKLAHOMA STATE UNIVERSITY, BIOSYSTEMS & AG ENGINEERING, STILLWATER,OK 74078

Project Director: Buser, Michael | 405-744-5288 | buser@okstate.edu

Project Methods: The software development for a working, scalable stakeholder-driven "whole chain" agricultural commodity traceability system is broken down into four categories: 1) system architecture, 2) system software, 3) content-centric networking and 4) stakeholder feedback.

System Architecture: We propose to implement the distributed system using a content-centric networking (CCN) data framework such as the CCNx framework currently under development by Xerox PARC, (sic)

System Software: The proposed WCTS system will extend the existing supply chain software of Pardalis, Inc. As multiple stakeholders may be generating and accessing shared data, we will develop algorithms for data synchronization, reconciliation and certification. The system must provide reports such as supply chain traceability reports. A browser-based version of the user interface will be designed and implemented. A critical subset of these will be implemented as applications in mobile Android based smart phones.

Content-Centric Networking for Food Traceability: Initially, CCNx will be applied for commodity traceability to determine system performance characteristics such as bandwidth, caching requirements, delays, throughput, etc. CCNx's performance will be compared to the Internet Protocol. The security of CCNx for commodity traceability will be analyzed. In the second phase we will seek to alleviate the bottlenecks and weaknesses identified in the first phase, particularly the security vulnerabilities and trust implementation in the whole chain. We will first identify the security goals for a whole chain commodity traceability system to define security policies. These policies, which will include access rights, for example, will be enforced by credentials. Second, we will analyze the different levels of protection and privacy required by the different types of content. Third, we will implement trust in the whole supply chain within the CCNx framework by integrating credentials (Blaze et. al. 1996) with reputation-based trust management (Zacharia 2000) and policy-based trust management. We propose to create and discover by content the distributed credentials, reputations, users and data and thereby create a trust chain that is content-centric. Sanitation algorithms (Dilys 2007)) to filter content will be explored with a view to incorporating them within CCNx to ensure privacy.

More information: http://www.reeis.usda.gov/web/crisprojectpages/0226992-advancement-of-a-whole-chain-stakeholder-driven-traceability-system-for-agricultural-commodities-beef-cattle-pilot-demonstration.html

Pardalis receives patent originals from Australia, China, and Mexico

September 18, 2009 —Pardalis, Inc. announced today the receipt of the following patent originals issued by Australia, China and Mexico.

• The original of Australian Patent No. 2002323103 issued August 9, 2007. This patent will remain in effect until August 12, 2022.
• The original of Chinese Patent No. ZL 200480037094.4 issued May 20, 2009. This patent will remain in force until September 23, 2024.
• The original of Mexican Patent No. 251,221 issued November 1, 2007. This patent will remain viable until August 20, 2022.

The receipt of these original patents represent another milestone in the continued, global expansion of Pardalis' parent patent, U.S. Patent #6,671,696, and its continuations.

The Pardalis 696 Patent was issued by the United States in 2003 and is entitled ‘Informational object authoring and distribution system’. Pardalis' 696 patent is also known as the parent patent for the Common Point Authoring™ system.

The critical means and functions of the Common Point Authoring™ system provide for user-centric authoring and registration of radically identified, immutable objects for further granular publication, by the choice of each author, among networked systems. The benefits of CPA include minimal, precise disclosures of personal and product identity data to networks fragmented by information silos and concerns over 'data ownership'.

“Australia, China, Mexico New Zealand and, of course, the United States are the countries that have so far issued one or more patents to Pardalis,” said Steve Holcombe, Pardalis’ CEO. “Given our track record of success, we also have high expectations for similar actions on our applications pending in Brazil, Canada, Europe, Hong Kong, India and Japan.”

About Pardalis, Inc.

Pardalis' Common Point Authoring™ system provides the first object-oriented supply chain solution for minimal identity and data disclosures for both people and products. For more information, see The Roots of Common Point Authoring or contact Steve Holcombe through the contact form of The Pardalis Data Ownership Blog.

Microsoft Office Applications and Data Ownership

Part I of a two-part series ....

Microsoft Office Applications as Seamless Supply Chain Tools

There is systemic supply chain problem for small businesses (defined here as 1 to 10 employees in size) that reverberates throughout our global economies. It may be seen in any product or service supply chain comprised of small businesses.

• In other words, in the 'last mile' of any and every supply chain.

Of all the product supply chains in the world the U.S. beef livestock and meat products' industry is arguably the most challenging. There are approximately 110 million cattle in the U.S. and Canadian beef supply chain. Each year, about 44 million animals are slaughtered. In the U.S. there are approximately 1 million beef cattle operations the vast majority of which are small farms and family-owned operations commonly using Microsoft Office Excel for electronically storing and managing their livestock data.

Practically none of that data is shared, and even when it is shared it's in the form of difficult to trace and authenticate paperwork, faxes, e-mails and phone calls.

One reason is that there has heretofore been no 'chain of custody' SaaS designed for small businesses. Not only that but neither Microsoft Excel nor any other components of the Microsoft Office Applications (like Outlook or Word) have yet to be designed to be supply chain traceability and authentication solutions for small businesses.

Other reasons have to do with common fear factors. Farmers and ranchers constantly wrestle with convergent 'data ownership' issues related to genetics, pharmaceuticals, food safety, traceability, authentication, government regulation, product marketability, health records, and information producer confidentiality.

• Why provide ammunition to a competitor?
• Why let the government (i.e., the USDA, FDA, IRS, etc.) know how many cattle you - as a farmer - really own?
• And why do so especially if you - as a farmer - don't see an increase on your return on investment (ROI)?

So, the small businesses of de-centralized U.S. agri-food supply chains are not providing customers or regulators with traceable, pedigree data about their crops and livestock.

• The result? Continuing U.S. food safety crises. Mad cow prions, tainted spinach, hamburger recalls, etc.

And you don't have to be guilty, either, to be ensnared. The 2008 tomato recalls found the U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) wrongly fingering the tomato industry for salmonella poisonings. That went on for weeks.

• What if small business users of Microsoft Office Applications could be seamlessly linked to the large and mid-sized enterprises already using ERP, CRM, SCM and other federated supply chain solutions?
• For example, what if a metadata service layer could transform Microsoft Excel into a supply chain solution for increasing ROI for small farmers who could then be paid for both their cash crop and the pedigree data identifying the history of their cash crop?
• And what if that metadata service layer also directly addressed the ‘data ownership’ fears prevalent among U.S. farmers that their data will be wrongly used by regulators or unfairly exploited by competitors?

Pardalis’ Metadata Service Platform

Pardalis’ metadata service platform helps draw small businesses into the emerging ‘Cloud’. With Microsoft technology (Windows server, SQL server, .Net, Excel-like UI), Pardalis has engineered a metadata SaaS platform for small business end-users to granularly author, register and control immutable data objects. Pardalis' business rules advance the capabilities of a relational database (i.e., SQL) toward an emerging, object-oriented Cloud. But the end-users merely see it as an affordable service for ‘banking’, porting and controlling access to their data products using a SaaS-anized Excel-like user-interface.

Early Market Validation

Pardalis’ platform is being deployed by CalfAID, a USDA process verified RFID cattle tracking program using ISO 9000 series standards for documented quality management systems. CalfAID is owned by the small farmers comprising the North Dakota Beef Cattle Improvement Association, and administered by North Dakota State University for:

• Linking small beef producers, feedlots, processors and restaurants with consumers,
• Bringing ultra-high frequency, RFID tags to commercial viability,
• Protecting livestock producers, food system industries, veterinary health, and consumer health from accidental or intentional disease outbreaks, and
• Overcoming the ‘scary picture’ of RFID tracking by empowering small farmers with direct, granular, data portability control over their identities and pedigree data.

The Value of Microsoft Office Applications As Seamless Supply Chain Tools

The vertical value of pedigree data gathered from agri-food supply chains, using Microsoft Office Applications communicating through a Pardalis metadata service layer, can now be monetized:

• Consumers retrieving deep search results (permission being granted by a data owner)  to determine food history, quality and safety,
• Retailers promoting consumer loyalty with pedigree-driven purchase orders directly communicated back through the metadata service layer to small business farmers,
• Farmers discovering a new profit center - pedigree data about their cash crops,
• RFID product vendors selling outside of federated supply chains and into the ’last mile’, and
• Regulators receiving more and better data for rapidly responding to food health crises.

Horizontally Monetizing SaaS in the Cloud with Data Ownership

Challenges related to data chain of custody are not limited to agri-food. There are approximately 500 million world-wide end-users of Microsoft Office Applications. So, what would be the definition of 'data ownership' that might horizontally pull these end-users into SaaS-anized versions of their Office Applications residing in the Cloud?

• That is, into the 'software plus services' versions of Office Applications as envisioned by Steve Ballmer for Windows Azure?

Empower the end-users with SaaS tools for tracing access to their data objects one-step, two steps, three-steps, etc. after the initial share. They'll know what data ownership is when they see it. The result? The Cloud becomes inflated sooner rather than later with traceable, trustworthy, authenticated data that would otherwise go missing from the invisible hand of informational capitalism.

• That is, sail past the siren-songs of abstract, privacy laws that small businesses don't trust anyway, and capacitate those small business with real, hands-on functionalities that they viscerally recognize as data ownership.

And then watch those small businesses grease the wheels for monetizing SaaS in the Cloud.

Go to Part II ...

KPCB launches $100M iFund

The following excerpt was posted last March (2008) by Kleiner Perkins Caufield & Byers:

KPCB's iFund^TM is a $100M investment initiative that will fund market-changing ideas and products that extend the revolutionary new iPhone and iPod touch platform. The iFund^TM is agnostic to size and stage of investment and will invest in companies building applications, services and components. Focus areas include location based services, social networking, mCommerce (including advertising and payments), communication, and entertainment. The iFund^TM will back innovators pursuing transformative, high-impact ideas with an eye towards building independent durable companies atop the iPhone / iPod touch platform.

For more information, and to submit an application, see http://www.kpcb.com/initiatives/ifund/index.html.

Just now getting around to it, but here's my submission on behalf of Pardalis.

Please describe the market opportunity as you see it. Include information on the unmet market need, market size estimates, and unique features of the market that are relevant to your venture.

The first information bank is operating in North Dakota for the members of the CalfAID USDA PVP program. This is a member-trusted program that keeps verifiable pedigree information connected with animals as they make their way through a complex, owner-segmented food supply chain. CalfAID recognizes that there are now two products being produced along agricultural supply chains (1) the traditional farm product, and (2) a new, informational product. Build to the Cloud from trusted institutions and groups. Measure the economic impact upon family farms who will now for the first time be compensated not just for their traditional farm products but also for their informational products. Measure the impact upon the emerging Semantic Web that without an adjacent informational banking infrastructure will have virtually no opportunity to bargain for access to information that that participants to complex supply chains consider to be confidential.

Please describe your solution. Focus on how it is unique and distinctive from other similar solutions.

People are comfortable and familiar with monetary banks. Without people willingly depositing their money into banks, there would be no banking system as we know it. Without a healthy monetary banking system our economies would be comparatively dysfunctional, and our personal lives would be critically deficient in opportunities. Imagine empowering people with data ownership similar to the trustworthy, granular control they have over depositing and spending their banked money. What is technologically required is a flexible, integrated architectural framework for information object authoring and portability. One that easily adjusts to the definition of data ownership as it is variously defined by the data banks serving each information supply chain and product supply chain. The lowest common denominator will be the trusted, immutable informational objects that are authored, controllable and traceable by each data owner one-step, two-steps, three-steps, etc. after the initial port.

Please describe your technology and any proprietary intellectual property you have developed or intend to develop. Focus on how it is unique and distinctive from other similar technologies.

Pardalis holds a significant, global portfolio intellectual property (IP) uniquely designed for virtually integrating information and product supply networks that are not otherwise vertically integrable. Pardalis holds two U.S. patents that will enforceable until at least 2021, a pending U.S. continuation patent, and now four international patents issued by Australia, China, Mexico and New Zealand. Similar patents are pending in Brazil, Canada, Europe, Hong Kong, India, and Japan. Significantly, Pardalis' parent patent has been distinguished from prior art held by IBM, Microsoft, and SAP AG, all of which generally apply to the runtime efficiencies of immutable objects. Also distinguished from Pardalis' IP has been a seminal 1993 Xerox patent pertaining to collaborative data authoring and sharing. For further information begin with the blogged entry US Patent 6,671,696: Informational object authoring and distribution system (Pardalis Inc.) at http://www.pardalis.squarespace.com.

Please describe the competitive landscape. Include details how you are different from each of the competitors named.

Here's one example. Metaweb Technologies is developing technology for a semantic ‘knowledge web' marketed as Freebase Parallax^TM. Philosophically, Freebase Parallax is a substitute for a great tutor, like Aristotle was for Alexander. Using Freebase Parallax users do not modify existing web documents but instead annotate them. Freebase Parallax links the annotations so that the documents are more understandable and more findable. In the spirit of statistical reliability, annotations are also modifiable by their authors as better information becomes available to them. Metaweb characterizes its service as an open, collaboratively-edited database (like Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia) of cross-linked data but it is really very much a next generation competitor to Google. As Freebase strives to become the premier ‘knowledge web', it will need access to new, reservoirs of data. Without a new Ownership Web infrastructure, such trustworthy information will forever remain missing or incomplete.

That's the substance of my submission. FYI, the submission form did not allow entry of hyperlinks or the addition of font emphasis, as I have included above in this blog entry. Also the limit was 1,000 characters (including spaces) for each of the four descriptions, above. For a more robust submission, see and compare CNN: Got an idea to help the world? Here's $10 million.