Remote electronic information display system for retail facility

Claim 1

An inproved energy efficient, electronic merchandise price display system having at least two levels of sequential addressability for a retail store having a plurality of point-of-purchase (POP) locations at which items of merchandise are available for purchase, the system comprising: a plurality of individually addressable battery powered electronic price information display tags mounted at the respective locations, said display tags being normally maintained at a first low power mode and being temporarily switchable to a second high power mode in response to receipt of an infrared signal, a store platform computer for coordinating price, product, and location data at the retail store; a plurality of point-of-sale (POS) terminals linked to the computer; a plurality of individually addressable infrared transmitters having different fields of view distributed above the store collectively to cover the store, each infrared transmitter having a unique address assigned thereto, wherein the number of transmitters is less than the number of display tags and each transmitter communicates with a plurality of display tags; hardwired means for coupling the computer to the transmitters to transmit from the computer to the transmitters a signal having a first field in which an address assigned to one of the transmitters is stored and a second field in which price information and a tag address are stored; means for controlling one of the transmitters to selectively transmit an infrared signal containing the second field to the tags responsive to the transmitter address in the first address field so only the transmitter designated by the address in the first field transmits the infrared signal; means responsive to the receipt of the infrared signal to temporarily switch selected ones of said display tags to said second high power mode, and means at one of the display tags for displaying the price information from the second field responsive to the tag address in the second field.