Patent ID: 6963971

Claim:
A method of secure communication of an electronic document from a sender to a recipient, verification of sending of the electronic document by the sender and verification of the receipt of the electronic document by a recipient, in association with at least one third party, comprising the steps of: the sender generating a first hashed digital string based upon said electronic document and communicating said first hashed digital string to said at least one third party; the sender encrypting first and second unencrypted portions of said electronic document with respective first and second encryption algorithms thereby generating respective first and second encrypted portions and communicating said first and second encrypted portions to said at least one third party; said at least one third party communicating said first and second encrypted portions to said recipient; said recipient using a first decryption algorithm thereby generating said first unencrypted portion; said at least one third party, in response to a key request from said recipient, communicating to said recipient said first hashed digital string and a decryption key for decrypting output of said second encryption algorithm, said key request being recorded by said at least one third party as evidence of receipt of said electronic document by said recipient; and said recipient using said decryption key to generate said second unencrypted portion, said recipient further generating a second hashed digital string based upon said first and second unencrypted portions of said electronic document and comparing said first hashed digital string to said second hashed digital string.