The present invention discloses an over-current protection apparatus, comprising a current-sensitive element, a first electrode and a second electrode. In order to improve the adaptation of the sensor to the spring body, one of the sensor parts is attached to the spring body with interposition of an electromechanical actuator and a control device is present, which controls the actuator dependent on the sensor signal in the direction of a reduction in the positional difference of the sensor parts. A strip of electronic tags is fed through an encoder that detects defective tags and then to a tag cutter 246 that cuts the strip into discrete tags.