Smart electronic receipt system

Abstract

A smart electronic receipt system that provides intelligent receipts, called Smart Receipts, that electronically document a transaction between two parties and maintains a persistent connection between the two parties following a successful online transaction. A Trusted Agent on the Buyer's client system creates an order record which is stored in a database on a Trusted Agent Server and starts the transaction process with the merchant. A Smart Receipt is delivered by a Smart Receipt Agent over a secure connection from the merchant to the Trusted Agent Server upon successful completion of a purchase and reflects the details of the transaction. It is stored in a secure database on the Trusted Agent Server and is made available to the Buyer (user) through a Trusted Agent located on his machine. The Trusted Agent Server compares the order record Limited Edition Digital Objects (LEDOs) stored in database with the Smart Receipt's LEDO to find the corresponding order record. The Smart Receipt provides the customer with detailed information about an online purchase in a standardized format. Hyperlinks embedded in the Smart Receipt enable the customer to access customer service and order status. The merchant may also embed additional services within the Smart Receipt, including special offers for future purchases. Offers provided in a Smart Receipt can be personalized to a user's preferences which are stored on the Trusted Agent Server. Each Smart Receipt is comprised of a chain of LEDOs with each LEDO object having a unique owner. A Smart Receipt is a dynamic entity and is continuously updated until the Buyer deletes it from the Trusted Agent Server.

Description

[0001] This application is a continuation of U.S. Ser. No. 09 / 467,545 filed Dec. 10, 1999.[0002] 1. Technical Field[0003] The invention relates to electronic commerce in a computer environment. More particularly, the invention relates to the creation of intelligent receipts for electronic commerce and impartial intermediation for electronic negotiations in a computer environment.[0004] 2. Description Of The Prior Art[0005] Electronic commerce systems have grown dramatically in popularity in a very short time. More and more consumers are switching from shopping in the local shopping malls to shopping online across the Internet.[0006] The current models for electronic commerce deal mostly with secure transactions at the purchase stage. Digital certificates and Secure Socket Layers (SSL) are used to ensure that the buyer's transaction is secure from outside eyes.[0007] However, the receipt stage of the transaction where the buyer receives confirmation of a purchase is still rather prim...

AI Technical Summary

Benefits of technology

[0014] The Smart Receipt provides the customer with detailed information about an online purchase in a standardized format. Hyperlinks embedded in the Smart Receipt enable the customer to access customer service and order status. The merchant may also embed additional services within the Smart Receipt, including special offers for future purchases. Offers provided in a Smart Receipt can be personalized to a user's preferences which are stored on the Trusted Agent Server.

Problems solved by technology

However, the receipt stage of the transaction where the buyer receives confirmation of a purchase is still rather primitive.

These approaches do not take advantage of the power of the Internet and the buyer's computer system.

It can, however, detect certain kinds of cheating that might occur in its conversations with those other Transactor servers.

Thus, they are limited to the core Transactor activities of creating objects, making transactions, and authenticating ownership and existence.

That is, if the originally registered game object was flawed or illegal for the game universe, it will be "correct" as far as the Transactor Server is concerned, but will be "incorrect" when the game server tries to use it.

Game servers that do not play a fair game are unlikely to be successful in the game market, but there is no final Transactor arbiter of what constitutes a "fair game."

A typical problem involving a game, game-players, and ownership transfer is first presented.

The basic problem is how a game server or anyone else in the above scenario can truly enforce transferring ownership involuntarily; that is, without the active assent of the object's original owner.

Even if the game-client software running on the player's machine automatically responded to a game server request to transfer ownership, the user could have hacked the software to not permit ownership transfers.

Thus, in conventional circumstances, the game server would have no way to enforce ownership transfer to the object's new owner.

This approach appears simple, but would require greater underlying complexity in the overall Transactor system.

This arrangement would also require that Transactor servers trust all game servers, thus opening up potential holes in the overall system security model and greatly expanding the required trust relationships in the overall system.

But that asynchronicity can propagate to any depth, since objects may rapidly change owners again before a prior ownership transfer has completed.

This quickly leads to a large "roll-back" problem that a game server must handle on its own.

If a player's connection goes out, the game server maintains the "designated owner" tags, subject to plundering by other players within the game context.

One downside to this arrangement is that, if a game is played and no objects change "true" owners, there is an initial ownership transfer from the players to the game server, plus a closing transfer back to the original owner.

In embodiments employing this "simple solution," there is no way to avoid this, because without it the game server has no enforceable authority to transfer objects that are in play.

Fortunately, this activity is largely confined to game startings and endings.

Normally Transactor objects are useless to those who would simply take them (i e. copy the file), because the object itself is encrypted under the owner's key, and because a Transactor server would disallow the object's use except by the owner.

It does not validate objects or ownership, only the identity of users.

These values are essentially impossible to forge or fake, nor do they allow an altered or forged object or user to be improperly recognized as valid.

The fact that objects are, in this sense, immutable once registered does not prevent time-varying properties from accruing to the object.

Thus, the worst effect from tampering is to gain a full power level.

This makes such objects recognizable but unusable.

But even the owner can't do everything.

There are advantages and disadvantages to any particular Financial Module design, anywhere along the continuum between the two possible methods presented above.

Note that even rejected transactions are logged, since they indicate some kind of problem (data loss, theft attempt, etc.).

If rejected, there is no ownership transfer, but the Bookkeeper retains the record so it can detect patterns of fraud or other difficulties.

Without the expiration-time X, this would be a security flaw, since Sellers are not required to trust Buyers.

If either one detects cheating or improper data using its own knowledge, it can simply refuse to sign the transaction record.

Some reasons may be embarrassing for either Buyer or Seller, such as "insufficient funds", so not all reasons for rejection are sent to the clients, only some.

Thus, the main reason for using a message-digest would be lost.

Rejection may mean any error.

Rejection may mean any error.

Transient objects cannot be stored in a user's inventory, and they automatically disappear when the connection with their originator is broken.

This transient object has no value, is unusable in play, and cannot be traded or retained in the user's inventory.

A membership card also identifies the holder as a member of the issuing organization, but this is primarily for use by other organizations, since in an electronic world an organization may be presumed to have an available database of members, making membership cards superfluous.

But perhaps the best-known example is S&H green stamps--they are fungible and valuable, but have no actual cash value.

Typically, the problem is in getting a sufficiently random initial seed.

It suffers from the problems that it may be hard to find a trusted server machine which has the computational ability and bandwidth to and from each player's machine to do this effectively.

Presenting users with signed versions of their ownership certificates is unimportant, as is verifying those signatures; instead, the server keeps track of everything.

However, if the Proxy is dishonest, then its dishonesty (at least in changing around object ownerships) should be easily detected.

This document will get larger for each transfer, which will leak information about this object's past.

If he doesn't want to allow the transfer, he can send any message that isn't the expected response, and the transfer will fail.

This makes the protocols much harder to make resistant to various kinds of cheating.

Businesses of type 1 are legacy businesses that are not yet enabled with the more modern direct techniques.

However, other, less efficient techniques may be applied to manage the instrument's business affairs.

The standard export-approved browser has only 40 bit bulk encryption and 512 bit RSA, accordingly such certificate provides much less security.

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