Registers – Systems controlled by data bearing records – Credit or identification card systems
Patent
1998-01-16
2000-09-05
Hajec, Donald
Registers
Systems controlled by data bearing records
Credit or identification card systems
235492, G06K 500
Patent
active
061129852
DESCRIPTION:
BRIEF SUMMARY
FIELD OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a chip card system, in particular, a system which is controlled by a license card.
BACKGROUND INFORMATION
Chip cards are increasingly being used in a wide variety of areas of daily life. Therefore a very great number of such cards are in circulation. Usually, many measures are taken to avoid pecuniary losses, in particular for the respective card owner, once the chip card has been issued, i.e. during normal use. For example, after the loss of a card, at least, unauthorized use of the card by any third party must be prevented.
Owing to the increasing numbers in distribution, however, measures must also be taken on the one hand to protect, in particular, sizeable batches of cards already before they are individually issued to final customers, and on the other hand to monitor or limit the quantity of cards legally issued to final customers or the quantity of cards which can be issued as a maximum, for example for a period of time, or an amount of remuneration currently paid to a licensor or service provider.
For example, cards are sent in sometimes very large quantities by a card manufacturer to a distributor of cards, for example to a financial institution. This transfer is comparable to the transportation of large amounts of money between banks and is consequently subject to corresponding risks. Furthermore, it is often desirable on the part of the distributor of cards to monitor, document and limit exactly the number of cards which can be issued, for example per employee, to final customers in order to rule out as far as possible the risk of misuse. Since handing over a card to a final customer generally makes it possible for the latter to make use of services, considerable pecuniary losses can be caused by chip cards which are brought into circulation impermissibly, sometimes in quite a large quantity.
The document DE 30 41 393 C2 describes a method of producing a predetermined number of authorization cards having a storage medium. By means of a master card and a first activation station, a limited number of authorization cards is activated. The activation of authorization cards is performed only if the number of activatable authorization cards which is stored in the memory of the master card has not yet been exhausted. After each activating operation, the number of activatable authorization cards is decremented in the memory of the master card. In addition, in the authorization cards there may be a supplemental scope of authorization whereby a predetermined number of additional cards can be activated by a second activation station.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
An object of the present invention is to provide a card system with the highest possible data and falsification security for producing a predetermined number of chip cards.
The aforementioned object is achieved by a chip card system with chip cards which each have at least one internal processor and a non-volatile memory for holding at least an operating system of the processor. The system includes at least one read-write station for chip cards, a multiplicity of user chip cards, whose processors can each execute user command instructions only after an activation, and at least one license chip card, in whose non-volatile memory a limitable number of activatable user chip cards can be managed. In the system of the present invention, for initiation of an activation, a random number is generated by the processor of a user chip card and is transmitted by means of the read-write station to the license chip card. In the event that the number of activatable user chip cards in the memory of the license chip card is not yet exhausted, an enabling identification dependent on the respective random number is generated by the processor of the license chip card and is transmitted by means of the read-write station to the user chip card. The enabling identification is checked by the processor of the user chip card for correspondence with the random number. If there is a positive outcome of the check, an a
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Jose Luis Zoreda and Jose Manuel Oton, Smart Cards Artec House, Inc., 1994, pp. 97-98, and 123-127.
Hajec Donald
Siemens Aktiengesellschaft
Tremblay Mark
LandOfFree
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