Patent ID: 7248754

Claim:
A checkout station comprising: a scanner reading machine readable information on an item being checked out to provide data for determining a value represented by said machine readable information, additionally providing data for determining a location of said machine readable information on said item being checked out, and additionally providing data for determining a measured dimension for each visible feature within a plurality of visible features of said item being checked out as said machine readable information is read; a conveyor extending between said scanner and a collection area; data storage including a data structure having a number of records, wherein each of said records includes a code field storing a value determined from machine readable information of an item corresponding to said record and a dimensional field storing an expected dimension for each of a plurality of visible features of said item corresponding to said record; and a microprocessor programmed to determine said value represented by said machine readable information from data received from said scanner, to find a corresponding record in a data structure within said data storage with a value in said code field corresponding to said value represented by said machine readable information, to compare measured dimensions of said plurality of visible features with expected dimensions of said plurality of visible features stored in said corresponding record, and to permit operation of said conveyor to move said item being checked out from said scanner to said collection area following a determination that said measured dimensions of visible features match various of said expected dimensions of visible features.