CSA Preface Standards development within the Information Technology sector is harmonized with international standards development. Through the CSA Technical Committee on Information Technology (TCIT), Canadians serve as the SCC Mirror Committee (SMC) on ISO/IEC Joint Technical Committee 1 on Information Technology (ISO/IEC JTC1) for the Standards Council of Canada (SCC), the ISO member body for Canada and sponsor of the Canadian National Committee of the IEC. Also, as a member of the International Telecommunication Union (ITU), Canada participates in the International Telegraph and Telephone Consultative Committee (ITU-T). This Standard supersedes CAN/CSA-ISO/IEC 15459-4-09 (adopted ISO/IEC 15459-4:2008). At the time of publication, ISO/IEC 15459-4:2014 is available from ISO and IEC in English only. CSA Group will publish the French version when it becomes available from ISO and IEC. This Standard has been formally approved, without modification, by the Technical Committee and has been developed in compliance with Standards Council of Canada requirements for National Standards of Canada. It has been published as a National Standard of Canada by CSA Group. Scope This part of ISO/IEC 15459 specifies a unique string of characters for the identification of individual products and product packages. The character string is intended to be represented in a linear bar code symbol or two-dimensional symbol or other AIDC media attached to the entity to meet management needs. To address management needs different classes of identities are recognized in the various parts of ISO/IEC 15459, which allows different requirements to be met by the identities associated with each class. The rules for the identification of an individual occurrence of a product or product package, understood to mean the layers zero and one defined in the International Standards ISO 17367 and ISO 17366, respectively, are defined and supported by examples.