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The EPCglobal Network, an emerging standard for RFID, aims to raise visibility in supply chains by enabling interested parties to query item-level data. To get there, however, a critical piece is yet missing: a Discovery Service to identify possibly unknown supply chain actors holding relevant data for specific EPC numbers of individual products. Unfortunately, the Discovery Service architecture as initially conceived by EPCglobal needs revision as it either infringes the confidentiality of participating companies or its use is limited to identifying only participants already known. Against this background, this paper first discuusses the limitations of the architecture under consideration by EPCglobal and presents an alternative, more adequate Discovery Service design. Our concept encourages participation in the network while ensuring information provider confidentiality. Secondly, we present a roadmap for extending the existing EPCglobal Network with two critical services: an automated contract negotiation service and a billing service.

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