Patent ID: 6972864

Claim:
A method for providing a mailing system, including the steps of: receiving, through a computer system, a mail item from a sender; printing the mail item in visible ink in a paper document and printing substantially simultaneously in infrared ink coded data thereon, the coded data including an indication of the identity of the mail item and of the location of a plurality of reference points on the document; receiving, in the computer system, indicating data from an optical sensing device, the indicating data including information regarding the identity of the mail item and at least one action of the sensing device in relation to the document generated by the sensing device optically reading at least some of the coded data, the coded data identifying a unique location of each of the reference points relative to the mail item, wherein each printed instance of a mail item is recorded separately in the computer system; and generating a second mail item using said indicating data from the sensing device, wherein the sensing device is further adapted to store a sensing device identifier which is adapted to distinguish the sensing device from other sensing devices of the same type.