Reexamination Certificate
1998-01-26
2001-07-03
Hafiz, Tariq R. (Department: 2762)
Reexamination Certificate
active
06254288
ABSTRACT:
The present invention relates to an integrated circuit controlled transaction management system intended to execute a transaction between an integrated circuit card (ICC) and a terminal connected or not to a central unit, a transaction consisting of at least one execution of the following sequence:
1. creating a communication link between the ICC and the terminal;
2. performing a compatibility check to ensure that the ICC and the terminal are mechanically and electrically compatible;
3. selection of an application supported both by the ICC and the terminal, that means the selection of a computer program and the associated data set that defines the transaction in terms of the specific ICC and terminal combination present;
4. execution of said application on the ICC and terminal system, and
5. termination of the transaction, which optionally includes breaking of the communication link between the ICC and the terminal.
Document WO 92/13322 describes a secured method for loading a plurality of applications in a microprocessor memory ICC, containing means for creating a communication link in an ICC and terminal system.
There are several types of transactions between an ICC and a terminal: the terminal may control access to places where only ICC holders may have access to; in so-called financial transactions the ICC can be loaded with tokens representing consumption goods obtainable at a terminal site (e.g. frequent flyer miles, telecommunication units, etc....), or the ICC may act as a depository of bank account information which allows more general financial transactions; or the ICC may be used as data storage, e.g. as an identity ICC or medical record storage.
Known features of said ICC and terminal system are
1. The terminal hardware (i.e. the processor and the peripherals, which at least include the ICC communication device) is accessible via the terminal operating system. Terminal operating systems are vendor specific.
2. Each terminal that participates in certain types of standardised transaction types (e.g. international financial transactions) supports, for those transactions, a common standard allowing the ICCs to perform applications in a standard way with terminals from any vendor. By way of example, international financial transactions are currently based on the inter industry standards as defined in ISO 7810/7811/7812/7813/7816.
3. Each provider of standardised transactions on a terminal has to provide an application, i.e. a program and the associated data set, or an application specification, defined in terms of a common standard.
4. Some parties provide applications or application specifications that are only partly built on a common standard. For special requirements which are outside the scope of the common standard, said parties need to rely on the terminal operating system.
5. Other parties provide applications or application specifications, which are proprietary to them or which are not based on any common standard. In this case they solely rely on the terminal operating system to perform the transaction.
6. Each application program needs to be compiled and linked separately for each terminal type. This means that specific software has to be resident in the terminal for each application.
7. Applications define large sets of terminal parameters governing the rules of their acceptance. These parameters may need to be shared with other applications.
8. Application software must be physically installed in each terminal.
9. Different versions of application software defining the same transaction may be required on the terminal during more or less extended conversion periods.
The features associated with said known ICC and terminal system loaded with multiple applications, impose heavy constraints on the terminal hardware, which must be able to store and to manage all possible application software and the assorted data sets. Moreover, a considerable logistic effort is indispensable to manage the distribution and the maintenance of all the software in all the terminals. Those features have the following drawbacks:
Changing terminal software specifications or parts thereof, changing application software specifications or parts thereof or changing the implementations of a specification or parts thereof or creating new applications requires development of new software for each target terminal type and to load this new software in each target terminal. Moreover, certification against all ICC types in circulation at that moment and against those scheduled for future release is required;
Restricted flexibility because even minor changes to a common standard have to be agreed between all parties that use it;
Every application requires storage capacity on the terminal, which is limited;
Common standards are not complete enough to support all proprietary needs;
The applications need to be implemented carefully so that neither their programs, nor their parameters interfere with each other;
This approach reduces the ICC to a mere memory device, as it is not possible to give the ICC the control over each type of terminal due to the plethora of different operating systems in use.
The above mentioned drawbacks result in a lack of flexibility of said ICC and terminal system. Hence the time to market new, upgraded or improved applications is extremely long, in the order of several years as all ICCs and all terminals are affected.
The present invention aims to ease the management of all possible applications with all possible ICCs on all possible terminals. This purpose is achieved by means of an ICC transaction management system of the type described in the preamble of the enclosed claim
1
by using an interpreter which deals with the execution of an application either on the ICC, or on the terminal, or on both whereby the interpreter in the terminal is able to access and to use at least a part of the terminal memory and a part of the terminal peripherals, e.g. keyboard, display, printer, modem, while an optional interpreter in the ICC is able to access and to use at least a part of the ICC memory and at least a part of ICC peripherals, e.g. keyboard, display.
Indeed, an interpreter performs the interpretation between a program written in a compact high level and universal language and the language specific to operate the terminal or the ICC. For all practical purposes an interpreter consists of a program which reads an input stream (the interpreter on the ICC reads the input stream coming from the terminal and the interpreter on the terminal reads the input stream coming from the ICC) and of one or more dictionaries, whereby a dictionary is a collection of words, each referring to executable statements. The interpreter language is independent of the ICC and terminal system, and may e.g. be FORTH (see ANSI standard: X3J14 Secretary, c/o FORTH Inc. 111 Sepulveda Blvd. Suite 300, Manhattan Beach, Calif. 90266).
A first advantage of using an interpreter in an ICC controlled transaction management system according to the invention, is the possibility to store new applications or parts thereof or upgrades or improvements to existing applications or parts thereof on the ICC coded in an interpreted language. This allows to reduce the time to market new applications or to up-grade or improve existing applications or parts thereof.
Time or effort required to market new, upgraded or improved applications is reduced to the time or effort required to load them in terms of the interpreter language in the ICC, which may require loading new, improved or upgraded dictionaries on the ICC. In this way the ICC has control over the application. No time or effort is required to update terminals. Even when changes to terminal dictionaries must be made, it is sufficient to load the new, upgraded or improved definitions in the ICC during an introductory or reconversion period until the new upgraded or improved definitions are available on the terminal. It is possible to implement the ICC and terminal system in such a way that the new, upgraded or improved definitions in the ICC are transferred to the termi
Heyns Guido
Johannes Peter
Das Chameli Chaudauri
Hafiz Tariq R.
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