First he argued laches, the legal term meaning Lemelson had waited too long to press claims over his bar-code reader supposedly invented in the early 1950s.

FORBES: The Patent Troll You Don't Read About In Bar-Code Inventor's Obituaries

Equipped with a bar-code reader to scan New York registration stickers and synchronized with an atomic clock in Colorado, the devices make it almost impossible for an agent to make the kinds of errors Bolofsky depends on for appeals.

FORBES: The Ticket Fixer

Some of them rely on technology other than NFC, such as offering services that let people pay for purchases by sending text messages or by scanning product bar codes using a phone's QR-code reader.

WSJ: What's in Your Mobile Wallet? Not Much

Kettmann also takes the reader to Santo Domingo, where Pedro Martinez's former coach watches the action from a sports bar, and to Kwangju, South Korea, where former Sox reliever Byung-Hyun Kim's old high school coach is watching the game at two in the morning.

FORBES: Remaking The Red Sox