European Article Number

EAN-13 is used world-wide for marking retail goods. The symbol encodes 13 characters:

The first two or three are a system code, usually identifing the country in which the manufacturer is registered (not necessarily where the product is actually made). This can be replaced with 978 or 979, for ISBN s, or 977, for publications.

The country code is followed by 9 or 10 data digits (depending on the length of the country code)

2-digit and 5-digit supplemental Barcode s may be added for a total of 14 or 17 data digits.

The EAN-13 Barcode is defined by GS1 .

SEE ALSO

Global EAN Party Information Register a searchable distributed database of EAN codes

EXTERNAL LINKS

	CATEGORIES ABOUT EUROPEAN ARTICLE NUMBER

	barcodes

	identifiers

	universal identifiers

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