Patent 7327267 was granted and assigned to Sanden Corporation on February, 2008 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A vending machine reads a commodity data on a commodity from a QR code of a commodity housing unit by a code reader of a commodity receiving unit when the commodity receiving unit receives the commodity from a predetermined commodity housing unit selects an operation mode of the commodity receiving unit in accordance with the read commodity data, and operates the commodity receiving unit in accordance with the selected operation mode.