Internet system for producing electronic reward cards

Details Internet system for producing electronic reward cards Internet system for producing electronic reward cards

1999-07-21

2001-07-03

Trammell, James P. (Department: 2162)

Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co

Automated electrical financial or business practice or...

Discount or incentive

C705S072000, C705S041000

Reexamination Certificate

active

06256614

ABSTRACT:

BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
1. Field of the Invention
This improvement invention relates to the unique use of an Internet System in rewarding Web Site visitors who access a Web Site, with a reward of an electronic free telephone calling card (or other electronic reward debit card) or adding free long distance calling minutes to an existing calling card, or adding value to another type of existing debit card. A subset of the Electronic Phone Card System allows important and personally tailored healthcare messages to be automatically delivered to patients via E-Mail based upon information the patient supplied when visiting a particular web site. An individual's unique E-mail address is used in a security function to prevent system abuse (ie: multiple requests for a reward by one individual).
2. Description of Prior Art
Phone Cards have been in use for several years now. The cards are generally either sold to the public through retail outlets (ie: 7-Eleven, etc:) or given away by businesses as a promotional tool. One of the applicants has been engaged in this business for the past three years. Although phone cards and the Internet have both been in existence for several years, no one, prior to this invention, has seen how to tie the two together, while expanding the capabilities of both.
One of the problems with the current distribution of phone cards is that consumers have to wait to receive their cards (rewards) by mail. Occasionally consumers (after purchasing a product) have to mail in UPCs and wait 6-8 weeks to receive a card. Or consumers might perform some other function such as taking a survey, participating in a focus group, etc: and still have to wait several weeks for their phone card to be mailed to them. This delay tends to have a detrimental effect on the whole promotion. The present invention eliminates this “delay” problem and solves many others (described in the Summary of the Invention).
U.S. Pat. Nos. 5,128,752, 5,368,125 and 4,850,007 are examples of immediate reward systems not involving phone card rewards or other features of the invention to be described.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention is an improvement on the Electronic Free Calling Card or other electronic debit card reward which is generated by an Internet System for collecting consumer and survey data, delivering targeted marketing messages, and distributing Personal Identification Numbers (PINs) via the Internet, Web-TV and related electronic media as disclosed in said patent application Ser. No. 09/060,783 dated Apr. 15, 1998. In the case of a calling card, the result is manifested in an electronic image of a free telephone calling card that incorporates the marketing message, 800 number for fulfillment and the PIN number, all delivered by a secure Internet server. The Electronic Free Calling Card is given as an immediate reward for taking a specific action on the Internet such as completing an on-line survey. The invention disclosed in the above application permits, for the first time, the ability to send a premium to a consumer that can be used immediately without even printing something out. The consumer need only write down the 800 number and his/her personal PIN number, and can immediately make free long distance calls.
It should be noted that if a consumer already has a calling card, in accordance with one aspect of the present improvement invention whether it be an Electronic version from this system, or a physical card received in the mail for example, free calling minutes can be added to the card rather than issuing a new card. The improvement invention thus includes the methodology and software to construct transactions on the Internet that can be transmitted to the phone company's FTP and are subsequently used to update the phone company's internal computers to reflect the addition of free calling minutes to a particular PIN number. The basic invention and improvement also allows other premiums and debit/credit cards to be transmitted to consumers such as, but not limited to: gasoline cards, ATM cards, Smart cards (cash debit system), credit cards, movie rental cards, cards providing free Internet access time or free access to a particular Web site and activities at that site, and airline cards. Further the improvement inventionallows value to be added to any of these types of debit cards in a manner similar to that described above for adding free calling minutes to existing calling cards.
The turnkey EPC survey and free calling card system of the basic invention includes: survey design and phrasing of questions for maximum market research effectiveness, programming the survey to run on a Web server, maintaining the survey data securely, electronically processing and delivering PIN numbers securely, preventing system abuse by only allowing one PIN # per unique E-mail address (an improvement to the basic invention) or by employing “cookies” technology, providing the long distance minutes, adding free calling minutes to an existing card (also an improvement to the present invention), providing a facsimile image of a phone card (the Electronic Free Calling Card) with imprinted PIN number and tailored marketing message (which the consumer can print out on his user station/PC), playing audio messages that match the marketing messages printed on the phone card image, interacting with the caller via an Interactive Voice Response System (IVR), survey database management and survey reports.
A subset of the improvement invention concerns sending important healthcare messages to patients via E-mail. The basic invention captures each patient's unique E-mail address when they are applying for a free calling minutes. This address is stored in the system's database along with the patient's name and medical condition. This information is matched against healthcare information (ie: information on taking medicine) previously stored in the client database. Then for example, if you indicated that you were suffering from asthma, you would receive a variety of information via E-Mail about your condition. Typical information might include symptoms to watch for, questions to ask your doctor, how to find a specialist in your area, side effects of various medications, etc:.
The following description is one example of the use of the present basic invention and the improvement invention in the pharmaceutical/medical health care industry:
The ADF Pharmaceutical Company (fictitious) has a web site devoted to its prescription drug product ADZORP, a new cholesterol-lowering drug. It wishes to promote the benefits of this drug to prescribing physicians, pharmacists, and consumers and learn more about how to market its product to these audiences. To do this, ADF will develop a survey and use it to collect valuable market data as well as get qualified leads for their sales reps. Realizing that people may be reluctant to fill out such a survey without inducements, ADF will offer the Electronic Free Calling Card to each person who completes the on-line survey. Also, ADF wishes to offer different premiums (ie: phone cards with varying amounts of free calling minutes) and marketing messages to each audience depending upon their responses on the survey.
ADF, utilizing the invention, implements a survey on the secure server. Banners and links to the survey are placed on the ADF web site and on other web sites such as PharmInfoNet (http://www.pharminfo.com/). The survey is programmed in a way that encourages a complete and truthful response from each person surveyed. The survey is linked to a database of physician DEA numbers and pharmacist ID numbers to verify whether the respondent is a physician or pharmacist. The survey program uses cookies (tracks previous activity on an individual's user station/PC) and other Internet technology to prevent the same person from filling out the survey more than once in order to get multiple PIN numbers and defraud the system. In the improvement invention, the PIN # is sent to an individual's E-mail address. In this way, abuse is m

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