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. 18, 2003
Filed:
May. 19, 1999
Philippe A. Janson, Waedenswil, CH;
Helmut Scherzer, Tuebingen, DE;
International Business Machines Corporation, Armonk, NY (US);
Abstract
The invention relates to data integrity in applications employing smartcards, in particular smartcards in connection with remote stations like personal or desktop card readers or similar inexpensive terminals. Since smartcards today are extensively used particularly in the financial and banking field, the data integrity issue is of particular importance. In such applications, any interrupted data transfer between the smartcard and a terminal can result in making the smartcard unusable and/or corrupt the data, any of which in turn often greatly affects the user. The solution according to the invention is, in brief, to apply an “adapted atomicity approach” to the smartcard environment, i.e. to adapt and use an atomic approach for smartcard transactions. To implement this, two essential features are incorporated, one being the provision and use of an internal trigger mechanism on the smartcard, the other being the provision and use of a failure-resistant recovery scheme on the smartcard, in particular a record index swapping scheme for data handling on the smartcard during the transaction.