Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Including point of sale terminal or electronic cash register
Reexamination Certificate
1998-09-30
2001-03-06
Trammell, James P. (Department: 2764)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Including point of sale terminal or electronic cash register
C705S016000, C705S021000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06199049
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to point of sale systems in general and in particular to journals for such transaction based devices. The present invention further relates to methods for using point of sale systems.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Face to face retail sales transactions take place at the point of sale or what is commonly referred to as the checkout line or counter. It is at this location that the customer pays for the goods purchased, typically by either cash, check, charge or debit card. To effectuate the sale, many retailers presently use electronic devices to facilitate and provide a record of transactions. Such a point of sale system may include a scanner for reading coded product information, a terminal for manual entry of transaction information and storage of currency, a display for displaying transaction information and a printer which may be used to produce a documentary record or journal for the business and a printed receipt for the customer.
As part of the check out procedure, the sales price of each item purchased is typically entered into the point of sale terminal. Each item price and a total is printed by the point of sale printer on a customer receipt and may also be printed on a separate journal by the same point of sale printer. A tax due is commonly also determined and printed on the customer receipt. The customer receipt is then provided from the printer to the customer.
In a two station point of sale printer, the second printer station maintains a journal record of all sales transactions. This provides a written record for auditing sales activity such as gross sales amounts and taxes collected during a journal period covered by the journal record. This information could be used, for example, by a taxing authority to determine if a retailer has submitted payment to the taxing authority of all taxes collected from customers.
Where governmental authorities acquire an interest in retail journal information, such as through value added tax laws or sales tax laws, the respective tax laws frequently define the format and content of printed receipts and mandate secure methods of sales data capture. It is known to respond to such “fiscal” requirements by providing a fiscal printer such as the
3
F printer from International Business Machines, Inc. of Armonk, N.Y. With such a fiscal printer, a secure (i.e., tamper-evident or resistant enclosure) logic card with dedicated nonvolatile random access memory (NVRAM) and electronically programmable read only memory (EPROM) may be placed both physically and logically between a point of sale terminal and a point of sale printer which generates customer receipts and journal records.
With a fiscal printer, such as the Model
3
F, the point of sale terminal may be connected to a fiscal base device which is secured to the point of sale printer and which controls all printing functions by a communications link such as a serial communications link. An example of such a fiscal base is illustrated in FIG.
1
.
Point of sale terminal
10
is connected to fiscal base
24
over communications link
22
. Fiscal printer
20
in turn includes both fiscal base
24
and two station printer
26
.
Fiscal base
24
includes a fiscal processor
28
or other control means for controlling journal and printing operations. Fiscal base
24
further includes a battery backed (nonvolatile) random access memory
30
to store intermediate sales and tax totals during a journal period. As shown in
FIG. 1
, fiscal base
24
further includes a separate program EPROM
32
and fiscal memory EPROM
34
. A separate fiscal memory EPROM
34
is provided, encased in epoxy, for permanent storage of data, which typically includes daily sales and tax totals for some number of daily journal periods depending upon the capacity of fiscal memory EPROM
34
. Program EPROM
32
may then be used for program information or data values used by fiscal processor
28
. Also shown in
FIG. 1
is a time of day clock
36
which may be used for tracking transactions and journal periods.
Two station printer
26
is controlled by fiscal processor
28
. A first printing station provides a customer receipt station whose printing is controlled by fiscal processor
28
to assure that the sales receipt provided to the customer has the correct data on it related to a particular transaction. The second station provides a journal station which records transaction by transaction sales data and daily reports. The paper journals from the journal station of printer
26
are, typically, subsequently stored for tax audit purposes pursuant to the fiscal laws of various taxing authorities.
Various countries with fiscal taxing laws have expressed an interest in replacing the current system of journal paper tape storage with a digital electronic journal record. Such a transition could reduce equipment, consumable, record-handling and storage costs for retailers. It could allow the use of single station lower cost printers and halve paper consumption. While both retailers and fiscal authorities may recognize the potential advantages of an electronic journal, there are continued concerns that such electronic journal files could be readily modified by an end user intent on defrauding the government.
One proposed solution also relying on a fiscal printer device approach but using an electronic journal has been proposed. This approach utilizes a checksum calculated from all of the data stored in the fiscal secured memory using a key that is not known outside the fiscal printer. The entire journal data block may then be transferred from the fiscal base
24
to a point of sale terminal
10
rather than being maintained in the secure fiscal printer. However, this approach fails to address all of the objectives for such a verifiable electronic journal system. For example, to validate the data in the point of sale terminal, the data must be fed back to the fiscal base where an associated checksum can be obtained from fiscal memory and compared to a new checksum generated from the data downloaded from the point of sale terminal. Furthermore, depending upon the size of the journal unit transferred to and from the point of sale terminal, a large volume of nonvolatile random access memory may be required in the fiscal base. In addition, it may be necessary to sustain data in fiscal memory EPROM for a greater period of time for potential verification requiring an increased size of fiscal memory EPROM. Finally, this approach is limited in that it does not readily allow for remote verification of journal records.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Accordingly, it is an object of the present invention to provide a verifiable electronic journal system for a point of sale device which allows detection of any tampering with journal data.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide such a verifiable electronic journal system for a point of sale device which does not require an increase in the size of NVRAM or the secure EPROM contained on the printer device such as a fiscal base.
It is a further object of the present invention to provide a verifiable electronic journal system for a point of sale device which may be remotely verified.
These and other objects are provided according to the present invention by a verifiable electronic journal system for a point of sale device which maintains an electronic journal file in lieu of a journal print station on a two station point of sale printer. Transaction information is stored in a nonvolatile random access memory. A data signature is determined based on the contents of the random access memory for a journal. Both the transaction information and the data signature are transferred to the separate journal memory. The journal memory may, for example, reside on the point of sale terminal and tampering with the journal transaction information may be detected by reference to the data signature which is also transferred and maintained in the electronic journal file. Preferably, the data signature is encrypted such as by a shared key encryption s
Conde Alberto Gustavo Gonzalez
Fortenberry Robert Scott
Hucaby Wayne Roger
Flynn John D.
Hess Richard W.
International Business Machines - Corporation
Myers Bigel Sibley & Sajovec P.A.
Trammell James P.
LandOfFree
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