SubGeneral

AVID President Misleads Public

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
October 15, 2007

Los Angeles, CA. --


This letter is to address certain statements made by Dr. Hannis Stoddard, President of AVID, in his continuing efforts to protect his microchip business. (see NACA NEWS, September/October 2007)

Recent comments made by Dr. Stoddard regarding the TROVAN microchip being sold by AKC Companion Animal Recovery are misleading and in certain cases factually not true.

For instance, he states that there is a permanent injunction in place in the US …..against any person for ……. selling any TROVAN microchip (TROVAN ID -100 transponder). What he fails to tell you is that the TROVAN product being sold and marketed by AKC CAR and manufactured by TROVAN is the TROVAN ID 100US transponder with lancet which has no such injunction and is non-infringing. Dr. Stoddard is well aware of this.

This is no accident. In a recent court ruling in Texas dated September 28, 2007 where AVID and another chip manufacturer (not TROVAN) have been in dispute the Judge made the following comments regarding AVID and Dr. Stoddard. “The court finds Dr. Hannis Stoddard’s trial and deposition testimony is simply not credible on key issues. This finding flows from Stoddard’s conspicuous inability to recall facts while testifying, combined with his refusal to acknowledge incontrovertible events.” The court goes on to say “that AVID intentionally withheld information from the PTO in an effort to deceive the PTO and obtain allowance of the ‘326’ patent.” Click here.

Dr. Stoddard presents a genuine problem that exists with the microchip scanning network in the U.S. today. That problem is that any veterinary practice, animal shelter, or law enforcement agency that depends on the AVID MiniTracker Scanner to protect the hundreds of thousands of pets that have been identified with the Trovan microchip since 1991, and an undetermined number of ISO microchip implanted pets, is putting the safety and well being of those pets in real jeopardy.

Scanners can excite and read chips that operate at125kHz, 128kHz and 134kHz. The idea that 128 kHz is incompatible with125kHz is a result of AVID manufacturing scanners to NOT read other chips apart from their own and Home Again. And this despite the fact that TROVAN microchips have been identifying American pets since the early 1990s. The example Mr. Stoddard used as an argument against TROVAN/AKC microchips in the market is actually not even a Trovan microchip, but an Allflex clone of the HomeAgain microchip. This year 20,000 scanners have been issued by Bayer, plus 30,000 Home Again Scanners will be retrofitted and provided in the US market announced by Home Again at the AVMA conference in Washington DC and all these scanners can and will read chips that operate at 125kHz, 128kHz and 134kHz.

There is growing recognition by most US entities that the US needs and deserves a microchip and recovery system that is truly universal and not captive to the business interests of one manufacturer, consequently putting some microchipped pets at risk.

Trovan strongly recommends that any entity in the current pet microchip scanning network that is relying on the AVID MiniTracker reader to immediately contact the AKC for an upgrade so they can adequately protect all microchipped pets.

Trovan recognized in the early nineties the need for readers that provided true universality in reading, with performance that does not arbitrarily discriminate for “business” purposes. Subsequently, AVID refused to make its encryption scheme available to other companies. Trovan has independently developed a capacity to read and correctly display AVID encrypted microchips in the readers it distributes, and has continued its devotion of resources toward this universal reader goal, expanding the microchip types detected to include ISO types of microchips. It has embodied this capability into its AKC CAR pocket reader (LID-560) and its shelter reader (GR-251).

If anyone has any questions please do not hesitate to contact me.
Joseph V. Masin
President,
Electronic Identification Devices, Ltd.

Contact:

EID, Ltd.
telephone: (805) 565-1288

BACK