Patent Application Number: 2008206397
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Facilitator's Comment 
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United States
The claim relates to “systems and methods” only. No new “technology” is claimed nor can be claimed. Emphasizing this fact that the patent is sought for a “system” or “method” is the further statement that “other embodiments” are possible. Essentially the claim is for use of a “one-time identifier” for a given transaction or set of transactions that may be verified by the parties involved to a high degree of trust.
0035
The suggestion for the use of biometric identifiers as an embodiment is claimed to not “limit the scope, applicability or configuration” of the invention. Thus the base claim must be considered to be the system based on “on-time” usage numbers generated by an “issuer” for later verification of a transaction.
0037
It is claimed that the “order of the operations may be re-arranged” as desired and as part of a further system developed from the claimed invention. However, this statement is not verified in relation to any loss of security that may result from any such re-arrangement, normally required for any claim of trustworthiness that would be required for such a “system and method” oriented patent claim. The claim does not present any such proofs or identify any that may be available. Such claims must form part of any patent verification process as without them the base for the patent has no meaning, i.e. this is a new process for transaction security.
0039
How can an embodiment be “implemented” in a “hardware description language” as distinct from the actual hardware itself?
This paragraph is a strange inclusion in that it is nothing more than a computer engineering lesson.
0042
The claim that “the transaction identifier may be a one-time-use transaction identifier” is derived from that work done over 25 years ago and widely published.
0052
The claim is that “embodiments of the invention” mean that “a consumer is less able to repudiate a transaction, due to the tight coupling between the consumer, using the biometric, and the issuance of the one-time-use number”. This statement is not proven in the claim.
This claim is important in that it makes two important propositions, viz.
a. the “system and method” are new and unique, and
b. the “system and method “ provide enhanced security for electronic transactions.
Both of these claims are important and must be considered together although the latter is a proposition of a result to be achieved by use of the scheme rather than a description of the system itself. However, the system exists ONLY for that result. The legal significance of these two factors is unknown to this commentator but it would appear that one without the other would make the claim worthless.
An assessor must verify BOTH factors, i.e. uniqueness and usefulness of the claimed invention AND its stated claim to enable enhanced security, the end-result of use of the invention. Thus an assessor MUST be capable of measuring the success of the claim in this regard. A patent inspector, in that sense, and given that this is a system/method application, must therefore be versed in the verification of the claimed “security enhancement” property.
Even the biometric proposition has prior art in the use of "voice print" for verification of transactions via normal telephones.
Much prior art exists in this area.
It involves:
- receiving a request to transfer from the sender;
- creating a transaction record having a transaction identifier;
- providing the transaction identifier to the sender;
[the sender then provides the transaction identifier to the recipient]
- receiving the transaction identifier from a recipient;
- obtaining a first biometric sample from the recipient;
- using the biometric sample to select a transaction settlement number from a pool of predetermined transaction settlement numbers;
- associating the transaction settlement number with the first biometric sample and the transaction record;
- providing the transaction settlement number to the recipient;
- thereafter, receiving a request from the recipient to receive;
- obtaining the transaction settlement number from the recipient;
- obtaining a second biometric sample from the recipient;
- using the transaction settlement number and/or the second biometric sample to locate the transaction record;
- comparing the second biometric sample to the first biometric sample; and
- determining whether to make a transfer to the recipient based on the comparison.
In this invention, the method is applied in the field of funds transfer, but I think it would be helpful if the community of reviewers could identify prior art in which this authentication method is used in any field. My thinking on this front is that is this type of recipient authentication has been used in other fields of technology, it would be obvious to apply the method to funds transfers as Western Union has done.
Biometric has been suggested since its conception to act as a authentication scheme, which makes it an obvious choice to be used for activities such as money transfer.