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:
Mar. 20, 2001
Filed:
Mar. 30, 1999
James L. Nulph, Cumming, GA (US);
Scientific Games, Inc., Alpharetta, GA (US);
Abstract
In a method of administering an interactive transaction in a lottery game, a plurality of play spots is printed on each lottery ticket of a plurality of lottery tickets. Each play spot has a value selected from a set of values and the values of the play spots are distributed randomly on the tickets. Thus, the distribution makes it impossible to predict the values of the play spots on a given ticket of the plurality of tickets based on knowledge of the values of play spots of other tickets of the plurality of tickets. Each of the plurality of play spots is covered with a removable medium and a unique identifier is placed on each ticket. A record of the unique identifier and of the values of the play spots for each ticket are stored in a database. If a first communication has been received from a distributor indicating that a user has properly obtained a distributed ticket, then the record of the unique identifier corresponding to the distributed ticket is flagged to indicate that the distributed ticket may be activated and if a second communication has been received from the user that identifies the distributed ticket, then interactive data is received from the user; the user is instructed to uncover a preselected set of play spots by removing the removable medium; and the record of the unique identifier corresponding to the distributed ticket is flagged to indicate that the distributed ticket has been activated.