Patent ID: 7225167

Claim:
A computer program product for providing an auditable trail of product transfers, the computer program product embodied on one or more computer-readable media and comprising: computer-readable program code for computing, for each transfer of a particular product, a globally-unique identifier for the transfer and a cryptographic signature over one or more values describing the transfer; computer-readable program code for recording, for each of the transfers, the cryptographic signature, the globally-unique identifier, and zero or more of the values in an ownership transfer record in a product-integral ownership repository an the particular product, wherein the ownership transfer record is access-protected using control fields to dictate which of the cryptographic signature, the globally-unique identifier, and the zero or more of the values are updateable and which are not; computer-readable program code for recording an audit record for each of the transfers in an audit repository, wherein the audit record for each of the transfers comprises the cryptographic signature, the globally-unique identifier, and the one or more values describing the transfer; and computer-readable program code for tracing transfers of the particular product using each of the audit records that pertains to the particular product.