The Uniform Code Council institutes changes in effect now and for 2005.
Before the U.P.C., several bar code styles existed, from the railroad industry's reflective orange and blue stripes to RCA's round "bull's-eye" approach, and each of these represented a different proprietary method of item identification. After the U.P.C. came on the scene, any bar code on any product could be scanned and identified in any business with the required equipment. Manufacturers could now justify the expense of adding the symbol to their packaging due to the newly adopted standardization. However, the new U.P.C. code would require manufacturers to incorporate the standardized method for identifying their company and its products. Previously some manufacturers had numbers, others had letters, some had both, and a few had no codes whatsoever. When the U.P.C. became dominant, companies had to give up their proprietary methods and register with a new industry group called the UCC, or Uniform Code Council (www.uc-council.org).