Registers – Records
Reexamination Certificate
1999-08-31
2002-01-15
Le, Thien M. (Department: 2876)
Registers
Records
C235S492000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06338435
ABSTRACT:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to the field of portable tokens, such as smart cards. More particularly, the present invention relates to a smart card capable of effectively correcting or amending ROM based programming. Such correction may be done in the field through non-secure medium.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Most consumers are familiar with credit cards, debit cards, and automatic teller machine (ATM) cards. Such cards are increasingly used to access, transfer and spend money. The back of these cards includes a magnetic strip storing encoded information about the cardholder and the account(s) accessible by the card. Terminals, including ATMs and merchant “point-of-sale” terminals, read the encoded information from the card and access the cardholder's account to complete a transaction.
Besides the well-known credit and debit cards, stored value cards are becoming increasingly popular. Stored value cards are purchased or issued with a specific monetary value. When the cardholder desires to use the stored value card to purchase goods or services, the card is presented at the point of sale and the cost of the goods or services is deducted from the value of the card. The cardholder may continue to use the stored value card in this manner until all the value has been removed from the card. The card may then be discarded, or its value may be replenished. Such cards are commonly used to pay subway fares or to make long distance phone calls.
For many types of transactions, however, the current trend is away from credit/debit cards and stored value cards, and into a class of devices generally called smart cards. Rather than employing information encoded on a magnetic strip, smart cards include a microprocessor and a memory element embedded within a credit card size device. With a microprocessor, smart cards are able to interact with terminals across a broader range of transactions, and are able to communicate a broader, and a more detailed range of information regarding the cardholder, a cardholder account, transaction authorization, or other information.
The term “smart card” is used throughout as a convenient name for a broad class of devices sometimes referred to as portable tokens. Smart cards are the most common present form of portable tokens, but as will be seen hereafter the actual physical form of the portable token, as well as the specific means by which the portable token communicates data to the outside world are not the subject of the present invention.
Smart cards have been used in various applications for some time.
FIG. 1
shows an exemplary smart card
10
. Roughly the size of a credit card, smart card
10
includes a microprocessor
12
with an integral memory element, and conductive contacts
13
. Microprocessor
12
is typically a single wafer integrated circuit mounted on, or embedded within the otherwise plastic smart card. Conductive contacts
13
interface with a terminal to electrically transfer data between the terminal and the smart card. Other embodiments of the smart card do not include conductive contacts
13
. Such “contactless” smart cards receive information via proximately coupling, such as magnetic coupling, or via remote coupling, such as radio communication.
The microprocessor
12
and conductive contacts
13
of
FIG. 1
, are shown in some additional detail in FIG.
2
. Conductive contacts variously include power contacts, at least one input/output (I/O) port, a reset port, and a clock (clk) signal port. Microprocessor
12
comprises a central processing unit (CPU)
21
which is generically control logic including I/O circuitry
23
. Terminal signals variously interface with CPU
21
through the conductive contacts
13
and I/O circuitry
23
. Microprocessor
12
is associated with a memory element
20
. The “memory” may be formed on the same integrated circuit as the microprocessor, or may be formed on a separate device. Generally, the memory includes Random Access Memory (RAM)
22
, Read Only Memory (ROM)
24
, and Read/Write (R/W) Memory
26
, such as Electrically Erasable Programable Read Only Memory (EEPROM). However, some or all of these presently-used memory elements may be replaced by battery backed-up RAM, flash memory, or other electronic data storage media.
Operating power, a user input keypad, and a display for the smart card microprocessor are typically provided by a terminal. The term “terminal” broadly indicates any device exchanging information with a smart card using any number of data transfer means. A computer, ATM, merchant point-of-sale device, or security control device, are present examples of terminals.
The terminal nominally includes a mechanism detecting the presence of a properly positioned smart card. Upon detecting the smart card, the terminal provides power to the microprocessor, and typically sends a reset (RST) signal to the smart card. The smart card uses the RST signal to reset itself, or to initiate an internal reset function. After reset, the smart card returns an answer-to-reset (ATR) signal to the terminal. The ATR signal communicates basic information concerning the smart card to the terminal. Once such basic information is successfully recognized by the terminal, communication, i.e., data transfer, between the smart card and the terminal can be established.
Smart cards can be programmed to operate as stored value cards, credit cards, debit cards, ATM cards, calling cards, personal identity cards, critical record storage devices, etc. In these varied capacities, a smart card may, at least in theory, be designed to use a number of different application programs. In actual practice, however, an inability to readily develop applications has limited the type and number of applications placed on the conventional smart card. In fact, most conventional smart cards include only a single application, or at most a single type of application.
This is not surprising when one considers that from a programming perspective, conventional first generation smart cards are little more than an embedded application. Looking at
FIG. 3A
, such first generation cards can be viewed as an application
30
stored in memory which runs a set of microprocessor-specific instructions on hardware resources
32
. The term “hardware resources” is used to generically indicate the memory and logic circuits, with their associated interfaces, used to execute microprocessor instructions but may also include I/O circuits, power circuits, and the other hardware. Given the structure shown in
FIG. 3A
, each application must be written in a very low level, or machine level language. This language is specific to the microprocessor on which the application is intended to run.
The first generation, embedded application programming model offers at least one significant advantage—programming flexibility. Microprocessors are typically able to execute a significant set of instructions. Since an embedded application is written at the machine level, the full range of the microprocessor's instructions set may be accessed and utilized by the application.
Unfortunately, such programming flexibility comes at a high price. In order to run an existing application on a different microprocessor, it must often be completely rewritten. Debugging, updating, and testing of embedded applications are arduous. Further, machine level programming is difficult and requires a great deal of hardware specific expertise. Embedded programmers are, thus, hard to find and expensive to retain. All of these factors combine to restrict the number and quality of smart card applications. Further, the hardware specific nature of the resulting applications contributes to the incompatibility problems which characterize conventional smart cards.
Such conventional smart cards do not employ a true operating system. Rather, a specific application written according to the microprocessor instruction set is stored in ROM and executed in accordance with commands received from a terminal. MPCOS, VisaCash, GSM, and Proton are examples of such first generation embedd
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