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:
Jun. 08, 2004
Filed:
Sep. 29, 1998
James Weldon, Boulder, CO (US);
Karl R. Schneck, Jr., Milford, PA (US);
Hilary S. Lackritz, Cupertino, CA (US);
Jerry Smith, Littleton, CO (US);
Mark McLaughlin, Baton Rouge, LA (US);
J. Bradford Merry, Annapolis, MD (US);
Hide & Seek Technologies, Inc., Akron, CO (US);
Abstract
A method and system is disclosed for purposefully modifying the accessibility of information encoded upon an optical medium for indicating a state or history of the optical medium and/or a state or history of an item associated therewith. In one embodiment, the optical medium is purposefully damaged when the information is initially accessed so that upon subsequent access attempts of the information on the optical medium, a previous access of the information is detected by the purposefully induced errors. Thus, there is provided an effective technique for limiting illegal duplication and/or use of, e.g., software, movies, and music on compact disks and digital versatile disks. The present invention provides verification of persons and/or financial transaction cards during financial transactions. In another embodiment, a compact data storage device is disclosed having the approximate dimensions of a credit card that is capable of storing large amounts of data (e.g., 50-100 Megabytes). The device may encode data in both a linear strip fashion for reading by typical card swipe data reading devices (e.g., magnetic card swipe devices) as well as by optical disc readers that read tracks of spirally encoded optical data.