RFID: Enhancing Paper Documents with Electronic Properties

RFID (Radio Frequency Identification) tags are getting small and robust enough to be printed on paper documents. This opens the way for enhancing paper with electronic properties by providing a connection between the paper document and an electronic database, as well as providing a tracking mechanism for paper documents. This paper describes a prototype application which was designed to do just this in a document intensive environment – the patent department of a large multinational company. The paper also discuss the affordances of paper vs. digital documents in a patent department.