Data processing: financial – business practice – management – or co – Automated electrical financial or business practice or... – Finance
Reexamination Certificate
1999-06-18
2001-09-11
Cosimano, Edward R. (Department: 2161)
Data processing: financial, business practice, management, or co
Automated electrical financial or business practice or...
Finance
C705S401000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06289323
ABSTRACT:
AREA OF THE INVENTION
The present invention generally relates to a method and system for paying for goods, services, etc. in a manner similar to checks, credit cards, and debit cards. More particularly the present invention relates to the use of cryptographically transformed user information to authenticate payments from a payer to a payee wherein the form of payment is a value message bearing, in addition to the typical information on a check, cryptographically transformed information including a digital signature for purposes of authenticating the value message. The value messages are authenticated and debited/credited to the payer/payee.
BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION
Bank checks have been used for centuries to conduct “cashless” transactions, and involve the submission of a signed negotiable instrument in exchange for a product or service of value to the payer. Bank checks, while convenient, do have certain drawbacks since they can be easily forged and fraudulently endorsed by parties other than the intended recipients. As a result, a whole body of rules, regulations and restrictions—including delays in clearing bank checks for multiple days—has developed to deal with the inherent flaws in this system which relies upon an easily defeated form of authentication, a handwritten signature.
In this age of high technology, electronic funds transfers are becoming more and more prevalent and come in many forms. Credit cards are now more widely used. Automatic bill payment is the chosen means for many homeowners to pay the monthly mortgage and utility bills. Debit cards are similar to credit cards. However, the amount of a debit card transaction is taken immediately from a payer's corresponding bank account. A “smart” card is similar to a debit card except that value is stored within a smart card and therefore a user need not have a separate bank account from which funds are taken when a debit transaction occurs. A smart card is essentially a self-contained electronic wallet or purse.
Notwithstanding the advantages of electronic transactions, these methods continue to suffer from several drawbacks. One is authentication. Debit and credit cards continue to rely upon handwritten signatures.
The Internet has increased the public's awareness of the capabilities of the “information highway.” This has led to users performing tasks such as buying goods and communication over the Internet. Some believe that the days of “old-fashioned” postal authority delivery of mail will fall by the wayside as email and facsimile transmissions provide instant delivery of communications at comparable cost. The electronic communications and transactions have certain drawbacks since a user must forfeit privacy to companies to carry out electronic communications and transactions. Furthermore, there is no easy way to establish trusted payment in electronic transactions over the Internet because private keys are difficult to secure and there is no trusted location to store such keys and value messages once they are issued.
SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION
The present invention remedies shortcomings of the prior known monetary transaction methods and apparatuses regarding authentication, privacy and convenience. In particular, in accordance with the present invention, a system and method are described for conducting monetary transactions using secure value messages.
In accordance with the present invention, a party wishing to make a purchase creates a value message using a postal authority postage evidencing/accounting device. The value message includes payer identification, payee identification and a value amount. The value message is then “signed” by the payer by generating and appending a digital signature to the value message. Upon presentation of the value message to a postal authority outlet, the value message is authenticated by applying a public key to the digital signature. Upon successful authentication of the digital signature, an account status is adjusted to reflect successful completion of negotiating the value message.
In accordance with another aspect to particular embodiments of the invention, parties using the postage accounting device can preserve privacy when making purchases from a merchant. A user submits a purchase order in the form of a value message to the merchant. The merchant ships the purchased goods with indicia including an identification number corresponding to the anonymous customer. The postal authority resolves the customer identification into an address.
In accordance with another aspect of particular embodiments of the invention, the postal authority can notify the customer when the mail is received by the postal authority or placed into a P.O. box, and in that notification can tell the customer who the sender is and what's inside the package.
In accordance with yet another aspect of particular embodiments of the invention, indicia are placed upon postcards to facilitate bill payment. A vendor places a postcard carrying bill payment indicia within a bill notification envelope. The customer, upon receipt of the bill notification envelope, initiates bill payment by placing the postcard into the postal stream. The postcard is extracted from the postal stream and the indicia decoded to affect bill payment in accordance with billing instructions encoded on the postcard.
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Symoens: “Transact 3.0: Scalable solution”; InfoWorld, Sep. 8, 1997, v19, n36, pp. 63, 70.*
Business Wire: “Netcom Includes E-Commerce Software as Standard Feature in Web Hosting Line; Company Is Only ISP to Offer Open Market ShopSite Manager Lite.”, Sep. 10, 1998, p. 9100012.
Gordon Roy R.
Lord Dan
Wilkerson Wayne E.
Cosimano Edward R.
Leydig , Voit & Mayer, Ltd.
United States Postal Service
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