Patent ID: 8258924

Claim:
A system for establishing a secure electronic transaction receipt for a product, comprising: a computer comprising a processor; and instructions which are executable, using the processor, to implement functions comprising: accessing a product-integral ownership record stored in a memory on the product; providing at least a portion of the accessed ownership record, and information pertaining to a current transfer of the product, to a registrar for identifying, from the provided at least a portion, a current owner of the product; receiving, from the registrar responsive to successful validation of the current owner, ownership information for the current transfer of the product, the received ownership information reflecting a new owner of the product as the current owner and specifying a non-changeable globally-unique identifier computed by the registrar to represent the current transfer, the received ownership information comprising a cryptographic signature computed over data pertaining to the current transfer, the data including the globally-unique identifier representing the current transfer, and the data pertaining to the current transfer; securely revising the product-integral ownership record to reflect the new owner of the product, pursuant to the current transfer of the product, comprising appending the non-changeable globally-unique identifier computed by the registrar to represent the current transfer to the product-integral ownership record stored in the memory on the product; and logging a record of the current transfer in an audit repository, wherein: the record comprises the cryptographic signature computed over the data pertaining to the current transfer, the data including the globally-unique identifier representing the current transfer, and the data pertaining to the current transfer; and the globally-unique identifier is used as an index for logging the record in the audit repository, in addition to being appended to the product-integral ownership record stored in the memory on the product.