Package making – Group forming of contents unit and subsequent or further...
Reexamination Certificate
1999-03-12
2001-04-24
Kim, Eugene (Department: 3721)
Package making
Group forming of contents unit and subsequent or further...
C053S203000, C209S900000, C493S011000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06219994
ABSTRACT:
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
The present invention relates to a method and a system unit of mail wrapping, more specifically, to a method of mail wrapping and a mail wrapping system unit used to execute the method for grouping a multiplicity of address-indicated postal items, as issued and collected from a plurality of companies of various industries, at a facility in accordance with a coincidence of the destination addresses respectively expressed on said address-indicated postal items. And the present invention is designed to be used when the companies of the various industries have the address-indicated postal items (including enveloped letters and postcards intended to be delivered via a specified delivery agency and addressee-specific correspondences on which the addresses and names of the addressees are indicated in advance such as bills and account statements) respectively and at the same time the companies want to send the address-indicated postal items all together to the same addressees of households or enterprises at one time.
When a key telephone company, cellular phone companies, public corporations such as electric power companies or gas supply companies (including waterworks bureau), banking organs, credit card companies, mail-order houses that operate product sales by a direct mail method (referred to as “direct mail companies” hereinafter), government offices, and any companies of various types of industries (government offices are referred to as a part of companies in various types of industries, hereinafter) send any type of correspondence to their respective customers (including enterprises), they usually deposit such postal items in post offices individually and independently.
FIG. 6
shows the types of postal items delivered to some household. As shown in the figure, it clearly indicates that a lot of postal items are delivered to the household scattered at random over the weekdays in a given month. It is also obvious that there are many postal items, each of which carries a specific document (an exceptional correspondence on which the address and name are expressed in advance), that are issued periodically and delivered such as bills and account statements prepared by the respective companies. (For example, the key telephone company issues telephone bills once every five days, though depending on the customers' districts, and the credit card company issues account statements on specified days of the month.)
As in the typical case of the key telephone company which sends bills to the respective users of its telephone services, most companies which send postal items to their customers utilize postage discount systems available to them such as basic discount rates or special discount rates for special local mail services in order to minimize their mailing costs. The average annual postage cost of these companies in connection with postal items sent to their respective customers stands at several billion yen and in an extreme case, a company of some industry spends more than 100 billion yen a year on postage.
The circumstances do not in any way inconvenience the customers, since no customers are obliged to pay for the postage of such postal items. However, if the postal charges shouldered by such companies are increased sharply due to a revision of the Postal Law, the companies will have no alternative but to pass along the increased cost to their service charges. As a solution to this problem in the future, some companies are studying plans to send a large percentage of their postal items through private carriers which recently feature much lower service charges than the postal services.
In the conventional delivery method of postal items, a lot of postal items of similar types, such as bills and account statements, are delivered separately at random on different days of any given month, which is bothersome to some customers who believe it convenient to receive bills and account statements on a single fixed day every month and settle each payment at a bank or the like at one time.
Also post offices are under the pressure of dramatically increased indoor handling work resulting from a huge volume of mail deposited each time by different companies in different industries. With the yearly increasing number of postal items handled at post offices, it is likely that efficient transportation and delivery of these postal items will be seriously affected in the future.
Such problems as those mentioned above may be solved easily if the different companies of different industries cooperate in collecting, whether periodically or not, the address-indicated postal items issued by the companies all together at one time, sorting such postal items by forming groups of postal items having the same destination addresses, and further depositing the postal items in a specified delivery agency such as a post office or a private carrier. However, no such intensive operation systems have been initiated as yet.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
Under these circumstances set forth above, major objects to be achieved by the present invention are as follows.
That is, a first object of the present invention is to provide a method and a system unit of mail wrapping which realize a substantial reduction in the charges or postage of address-indicated postal items which are sent to respective customers by companies.
A second object of the present invention is to provide a method and a system unit of mail wrapping which will alleviate the inconvenience of receiving postal items on the part of the recipients of address-indicated postal items.
A third object of the present invention is to provide a method and a system unit of mail wrapping which will substantially reduce the volume of address-indicated postal items, the number of deliveries, and the indoor handling work at delivery agencies.
Other objects of the present invention will become apparent from the specification and drawings, and especially from the description of claims.
As a means of solving the problems mentioned above, the present invention comprises the steps of: extracting groups of same-address-indicated postal items having same destination addresses from address-indicated postal items of different companies which are collected at a single facility; wrapping the groups of the same-address-indicated postal items as collected group by group; and applying a multiplicity of bundled address-indicated postal items as respectively wrapped for use in depositing in a postal office or a private carrier.
In the present invention, “Address-indicated postal items” refers to all types of postal items with their respective destination addresses indicated in advance, including all types of correspondence having destination addresses indicated in advance for use when enclosed in envelopes with a transparent film panel in such manner that the address indication can be identified from the outside of each envelope. Bills and account statements in particular are referred to as “Exceptional correspondences” as they are special correspondences on which the names and addresses of the addressees are indicated, while advertisement leaflets are referred to as “General correspondences” as they are general correspondences without any indication of the names and addresses of the addressees.
More specifically, in order to solve the problems mentioned above, the present invention is practiced by using novel constituent methods and means whose features are listed below, including generic concepts and more specific concepts.
That is, a first feature of the method of the present invention resides in a method of mail wrapping, applied prior to any one company's mailing a multiplicity of address-indicated postal items of any type to each of destination addresses expressed thereon, comprising steps of: collecting the address-indicated postal items issued from a plurality of companies of various industries; grouping the address-indicated postal items as collected into a multiplicity of bundled address-indicated postal items wrapped singly in accordance with a c
Jordan and Hamburg LLP
Kim Eugene
NTT Comware Corporation
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