Patent ID: 7588185

Claim:
A method of interrogating radio frequency identification (RFID) tags associated with items of interest, comprising the steps of: (a) selecting at least two categories of items using a user interface associated with an RFID reader; (b) after selecting at least two categories, using the RFID reader to interrogate at least one RFID tag associated with an item of interest to obtain information associated with the item of interest, wherein the item of interest is not currently associated with the categories selected in step (a); (c) accessing a database stored in memory of a removable flash memory card of the RFID reader to retrieve information necessary to categorize each RFID-tagged item based on the information obtained from the RFID tag; (d) thereafter using the RFID reader to automatically categorize the information obtained in step (b) with at least one of the categories selected in step (a), and wherein information necessary to categorize each RFID-tagged item may be obtained from the RFID tag itself; and (e) saving the categorized information obtained in step (d) in the database.