Registers – Systems controlled by data bearing records
Patent
1996-01-18
1998-11-24
Hajec, Donald T.
Registers
Systems controlled by data bearing records
235380, G06K 510
Patent
active
058411160
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
This invention relates to a method and system for identifying personal possessions and the ownership thereof, and more particularly to a method and system for electronically assembling and correlating such identifying information.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The theft or loss of personal possessions, or items, that are unmarked and non-unique can create difficulties for both the original owners of the items and those that find or recover such items.
In many cases lost or stolen articles, or items, are recovered by police or other public authorities but cannot be returned to the owners of the articles because ownership of the articles cannot be determined. In other words, the personal possessions cannot be accurately identified. The inability to track down the owners of recovered articles results in warehousing and other administrative costs which must be borne by the police or the public authority involved. The owner of the item will often remain unaware that the item has been found and is available to be recovered by the owner.
One method used to identify personal possessions is to label the items with the name and address of the owner. This has the disadvantage that the address of the owner may change and the labels will therefore be incorrect. To avoid this, the labels may be updated when the owner of the items changes addresses but such an operation is inconvenient and time consuming. This is difficult to achieve and may be awkward where the labels are lost or difficult to obtain. Some labels are difficult to apply to certain surfaces or may become illegible if damaged.
A related problem in identifying items arises when an item is lost or stolen and an insurance claim is made. An estimate of the value of the item is typically provided to the insurer by the owner. The value indicated in the insurance claim is typically chosen at the discretion of the owner and the insurance adjuster must make inquiries to determine the accuracy of both the estimated value of, and the exact identity of, the lost or stolen item.
Therefore a method and a system for identifying ownership of personal possessions which is straightforward to carry out, which require no updating of information on the possessions and which permit the secure retention of an accurate description of the possessions are desirable.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
It is an object of one aspect of the present invention to provide an improved method and system for identifying personal possessions.
According to the present invention, a method is provided to permit the ownership of a lost or stolen item to be determined (i.e. the ownership of the personal possession to be identified). The method also provides the ability to maintain accurate information regarding items which may become lost or stolen and for which an insurance claim may be made.
According to an aspect of the present invention there is provided a system for identifying personal possessions belonging to a plurality of owners, comprising a set of labels, each label bearing a predetermined identifying insignia, each insignia corresponding to a unique owner, means for affixing selected ones of the set of labels to selected ones of the personal possessions, means for storing, at a first location, a set of owner identifiers for the plurality of owners, each owner identifier corresponding to a unique owner and for each owner identifier stored, a set of insignia data records, each insignia data record corresponding to one of the set of labels, means for inputting, at a second location remote from the first, identifying data corresponding to the identifying insignia on a selected one of the set of labels affixed to a personal possession, means for receiving the identifying data at the second location and transmitting the identifying data to the first location, means for receiving the identifying data at the first location, means for comparing the identifying data with the insignia data records stored in the means for storing at the first location and where the identifying dat
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Hajec Donald T.
The Tracker Corporation
Tremblay Mark
LandOfFree
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