Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Business processing using cryptography – Secure transaction
Reexamination Certificate
1998-10-20
2001-07-10
Swann, Tod R. (Department: 2767)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Business processing using cryptography
Secure transaction
C705S064000, C705S065000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06260027
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an electronic ticket system, a collecting terminal, a service providing terminal, a user terminal, an electronic ticket collecting method and a recording medium, all being for use in a system which utilizes electronic tickets and all being capable of preventing illegal actions such as copying an electronic ticket and information concerning its use, etc.
2. Description of the Related Art
Of late, an electronic ticket system which carries out transactions through the use of electronic tickets has been proposed.
In the above system, an issuing agency issues an electronic ticket to a user, and the user sends the electronic ticket to a service providing agency when he/she uses the electronic ticket, in order to request services, etc. from the service providing agency. The used electronic ticket, which the service providing agency has received from the user, is collected by a collecting agency or the like, and is returned to the issuing agency. Simultaneously, the charge for the electronic ticket as used and returned to the issuing agency is paid to the service providing agency.
In order to find out any illegal actions beforehand, it has been planned to send to the issuing agency the to-be-used electronic ticket which the service providing agency has received from the user, and to provide the user with services after the electronic ticket is authenticated. In this case, however, online reference transactions have to be made each time the user uses such an electronic ticket, and the processing speed is low accordingly.
Furthermore, there is the possibility that any unjust service providing agency, for example, may copy the used electronic ticket received from the user and send its copies to the collecting agency in order to unjustly charge a large amount of money.
There is a plan to store data in a highly tamperproof storage device as a countermeasure against the illegal action of copying important data without permission. In this case, as regards the electronic ticket which the user has, the illegal copying action can be prevented by storing data in an IC card or the like. However, since the service providing agency receives electronic tickets from individual users and the collecting agency collects used electronic tickets from the service providing agency, a huge number of electronic tickets are concentrated at the service providing agency and the collecting agency. Under this condition, an IC card or the like is not sufficient to store huge data, and a highly tamperproof specific storage device having a large capacity is necessary.
Not only electronic tickets having a monetary value, but also other various tickets involve such problems.
The present invention has been made in consideration of the above circumstances, and it is an object of the present invention to provide a quick-response electronic ticket system, a collecting terminal, a service providing terminal, a user terminal, an electronic ticket collecting method and a recording medium, all being capable of preventing the illegal action of copying an electronic ticket and information concerning its use, without requiring any specific hardware.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
According to the first aspect of the present invention having the above object, there is provided an electronic ticket system comprising:
at least one user terminal which stores an electronic ticket;
at least one service providing terminal for performing a deal with the at least one user terminal; and
a financial agency in which the electronic money after used for the deal is deposited;
wherein the at least one service providing terminal includes sending means for sending challenge information which differ depending on deals to the at least one user terminal in response to a dealing request therefrom, and
the at least one user terminal includes acquiring means for acquiring, before the deal, account information identifying an account which the at least one service providing terminal has opened with the financial agency and in which the electronic ticket is deposited, generating means for generating an assignment which specifies an electronic ticket's monetary amount, an electronic ticket's destination which is the account identified by the acquired account information, and a dealing ID code including the challenge information sent to the at least one user terminal, and ticket sending means for affixing the generated assignment to the electronic ticket to be used for the deal and sending the electronic ticket with the assignment to the at least one service providing terminal.
According to the above-described structure, the electronic ticket after utilized for the deal does not have any other use than being deposited in the account in the financial agency which the assignment affixed to the electronic ticket specifies. Consequently, the illicit use of the electronic ticket is avoided.
According to the second aspect of the present invention, there is provided an electronic ticket system for collecting electronic tickets in accordance with money bag numbers serving as collection ID information, comprising:
user terminals which store the electronic tickets;
at least one service providing terminal for performing deals with the user terminals; and
at least one collecting terminal for collecting the electronic tickets after used for the deals; and
wherein the at least one service providing terminal includes request information sending means for sending request information to the user terminals in response to dealing requests therefrom, the request information containing a collecting terminal ID code which identifies the at least one collecting terminal, and a money bag number which serves as the collection ID information,
each of the user terminals includes signature generating means for generating a digital signature which contains the request information sent from the at least one service providing terminal, and ticket sending means for affixing the signature generated by the signature generating means to an electronic ticket to be used for a deal and for sending the electronic ticket with the generated signature to the at least one service providing terminal, and
the at least one service providing terminal includes used ticket sending means for collecting, of the electronic tickets sent from the used terminals, electronic tickets with digital signatures containing identical money bag numbers, and for sending the collected electronic tickets to the at least one collecting terminal which is identified by the collecting terminal ID code contained in the digital signatures.
According to the above-described structure, a user terminal before a deal acquires information concerning the collecting terminal, by which an electronic ticket after used is to be collected, and the to-be-collected group (the money bag number) to which the electronic money belongs, etc. The user terminal affixes the acquired information to the to-be-used electronic ticket, and sends the electronic ticket with the acquired information to the service providing agency. The electronic ticket after used is collected in accordance with the information affixed thereto. Even if the electronic ticket should be collected improperly by an illegal action such as stealing or the like, the illegality can be easily detected by reference to the information affixed to the electronic ticket.
The at least one collecting terminal may include supplying means for supplying the collecting terminal ID code and the money bag number to the at least one service providing terminal.
The supplying means of the at least one collecting terminal may include storage means for storing the money bag number which the supplying means has sent to the at least one service providing terminal; and
the at least one collecting terminal may further include money bag number checking means for checking, by reference to the storage means, whether the money bag numbers, contained in the digital signatures affixed to the electronic tickets collected a
Moribatake Hidemi
Takahashi Yoshio
Baker & McKenzie
Myhre James W.
NTT Data Corporation
Swann Tod R.
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