So where does this leave us? Up the USB creek with no VID/PID. Unfortunately, the USB-IF, never one to be cheated out of milking developers dry, threatened to sue all such resellers, and attempted to retroactively add in a clause to their license preventing resale. That was great for them and great for the buyers, since they could sell blocks of 10 or so at a reasonable price, and small companies could then use the purchased PIDs in their small line of products. While 65,536 products is a lot for a single company, having only 65,536 different VIDs available means that most of the possible VID/PID combinations are wasted.Ī few years ago, some smart businessfolk came up with a good idea pony up the US$2000 or so per year it takes to secure a VID, and then resell the PID values to private buyers in small blocks. Each VID value grants a company the ability to make a full 65,536 different USB products, which is a good thing - but it means that tiny businesses with only one or two products get shafted, since they’re stuck picking up the tab for a large keyspace that they simply don’t use. This is a problem only because the USB-IF charges companies out the rear for a VID value. The problem with this is that for such a scheme to work, you need the USB-IF to act as a central registry for VID values, so that no two manufacturers release products to the market with the same VID/PID pair. “Happy Fun Technologies’ USB Webcam Model E123”). Note that this value is unique for a particular product, not device - each device can optionally have a unique serial number, but the VID/PID alone simply identifies to the host what the device is (e.g. A PID, or Product ID, is supposed to identify a particular product manufactured by the vendor, so that when used together it forms a 32-bit unique code for each and every USB product on the market. A VID, or Vendor ID, is a 16-bit value which is supposed to identify the exact manufacturer of a USB device, via a gigantonormous lookup table from the USB-IF.

Most people who have worked with USB for more than a few minutes have discovered its dirty little secret you can’t sell a USB compatible/compliant (note there is a difference, the latter requires a large payment) devices without first obtaining a unique VID/PID combination for your product.

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