Patent ID: 7002473

Claim:
A monitor for a loss prevention system, comprising: an RF communication circuit adapted for communication with at least one radio frequency identification tag; a control circuit having a microprocessor and a memory, the control circuit being electrically connected to the RF communication circuit; an alarm electrically connected to the microprocessor; and a computer readable program code stored in the memory and executing under control of the microprocessor, the program code having; means for acquiring the identification tag by storing a unique identifier associated with the identification tag in the memory and associating the identifier with an alias: means for dropping the identification tag by deleting the unique identifier associated with the identification tag from the memory; means for operating the RF communication circuit to interrogate the identification tag; means for causing the alarm to activate when the identification tag is out of range of the RF communication circuit; and means for dropping the identification tag by deleting the unique identifier associated with the identification tag from the memory; wherein said means for operating systematically polls each at least one identification tag, and said means for dropping deletes the unique identifier upon subsequent polling when the identification tag is determined out of range.