The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document.
The patent badge is an abbreviated version of the USPTO patent document. The patent badge covers the following: Patent number, Date patent was issued, Date patent was filed, Title of the patent, Applicant, Inventor, Assignee, Attorney firm, Primary examiner, Assistant examiner, CPCs, and Abstract. The patent badge does contain a link to the full patent document (in Adobe Acrobat format, aka pdf). To download or print any patent click here.
Patent No.:
Date of Patent:
Jul. 13, 1999
Filed:
Dec. 27, 1995
Donald T Dolan, Ridgefield, CT (US);
Dale A French, Clinton, CT (US);
Kathryn V Lawton, Branford, CT (US);
Pitney Bowes Inc., Stamford, CT (US);
Abstract
A method for ensuring for each postage transaction in a postage meter having a vault subsystem and a printing subsystem that debiting occurs prior to printing of a postal indicia includes authenticating the postage transaction as being valid, performing debiting within the vault subsytem, sending an encrypted debit certificate from the vault subsystem to the printing subsytem, independently recreating the encrypted debit certificate in the printing subsystem, comparing the encrypted debit certificate to the recreated encrypted debit certificate to ascertain if a predetermined relationship exists therebetween, and initiating printing of the postal indicia only upon determination of the existence of the predetermined relationship. An apparatus incorporates the method.