Patent ID: 6681214
Filing Date: 2004-01-20
Classification: G06F,G06Q,G07B,H04L

Abstract:
A method of securing one or more product indicia for use in authenticating products or collecting a tax, comprising the steps of:generating one or more product indicia; encrypting the one or more product indicia with a public encryption key; transferring the one or more product indicia to an indicia application location for application of the one or more product indicia to one or more products, respectively; and processing the one or more product indicia securely while applying the one or more product indicia to the one or more products, thereby preventing a tampering, misuse or theft of one or more product indicia at the indicia application location, wherein processing the one or more indicia securely while applying the one or more product indicia to the one or more products comprises: decrypting an encrypted private key associated with the public encryption key used to encrypt the one or more product indicia using a code-protected key at the indicia application location; decrypting the one or more product indicia using the private key; and applying the one or more indicia which have been decrypted to the one or more products, respectively, and wherein the processing step further comprises: decrypting an encrypted logfile associated with the indicia application location, wherein the logfile includes at least one of each group of one or more product indicia which have been processed previously and applied to products at the indicia application location or other locations, and wherein the at least one of each group of one or more product indicia forms an indicia history file; comparing the decrypted one or more product indicia which were decrypted with the private key to the indicia history list; and determining whether the decrypted one or more product indicia are valid using the comparison.