!!! Overview [1]
[{$pagename}] is a component of the [GS1] [Global Trade Item Number] and is a [Unique Identifier] assigned to each manufacturer by the numbering authority indicated by the [GS1 Company Prefix]. 

All [products] produced by a given company will use the same [{$pagename}]. 

[EAN]-13 uses what is called "variable-length manufacturer codes." Assigning fixed-length 5-digit manufacturer codes, as the [UCC] has done until recently, means that each manufacturer can have up to 99,999 product codes--and many manufacturers don't have that many products, which means hundreds or even thousands of potential product codes are being wasted on manufacturers that only have a few products. Thus if a potential manufacturer knows that it is only going to produce a few products, [EAN]-13 may issue it a longer manufacturer code, leaving less space for the product code. This results in more efficient use of the available manufacturer and product codes.

In [ISBN] and [ISSN], this component is used to identify the language in which the publication was issued and managed by a transnational agency covering several countries, or to identify the country where the legal deposits are made by a publisher registered with a national agency, and it is further subdivided any allocating subblocks for publishers; many countries have several prefixes allocated in the [ISSN] and [ISBN] registries.

!! More Information
There might be more information for this subject on one of the following:
[{ReferringPagesPlugin before='*' after='\n' }]
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* [#1] - [International_Article_Number|Wikipedia:International_Article_Number|target='_blank'] - based on information obtained 2017-10-28-