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  System and method of directly providing electronic receiptsUSPTO Application #: 20070094088Title: System and method of directly providing electronic receipts Abstract: A method and program product for providing paperless receipts for conducting business transactions. Biometric data and product specific identification information is collected with each purchase and included with an electronic receipt generated for each purchase. The collected product specific information may include product serial numbers for some products, all products or product valued above a minimum threshold cost. The biometric data may include a digital image of each purchaser. The electronic receipt may be passed directly to the customer. (end of abstract) Agent: Law Office Of Charles W. Peterson, Jr. -- Printers - Reston, VA, US Inventors: Scott D. Mastie, Joan L. Mitchell USPTO Applicaton #: 20070094088 - Class: 705024000 (USPTO) Related Patent Categories: Data Processing: Financial, Business Practice, Management, Or Cost/price Determination, Automated Electrical Financial Or Business Practice Or Management Arrangement, Including Point Of Sale Terminal Or Electronic Cash Register, Specified Transaction Journal Output Feature (e.g., Printed Receipt, Voice Output, Etc.) The Patent Description & Claims data below is from USPTO Patent Application 20070094088. Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims
CROSS REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS [0001] The present invention is a continuation in part of published U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/430,824 (Attorney Docket No. BLD920030021US1), entitled "Point-of-Sale Receipt Electronic Generation" to Joan L. Mitchell et al., filed May 6, 2003 and published Nov. 11, 2004, publication No. 2004/0225567 A1; and related to U.S. Pat. No. 6,883,706 B2 (Attorney Docket No. BLD920030020US1), entitled "Point-of-Sale Bill Authentication" to Scott D. Mastie et al., issued Apr. 26, 2005; to published U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/446,204 (Attorney Docket No. BLD920030019US1), entitled "Expense Accounting Data Management Based on Electronic Expense Document" to Joan L. Mitchell et al., filed May 27, 2003 and published Dec. 2, 2004, publication No. 2004/0243489 A1; and to U.S. patent application Ser. No. 11/______ (Attorney Docket No. BLD920050044US1), entitled "System And Method of Handling Product Returns" to Joan L. Mitchell et al., filed coincident herewith; all assigned to the assignee of the present invention and incorporated herein by reference. BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION [0002] 1. Field of the Invention [0003] The present invention generally relates to business transactions and more particularly to in-store business transactions and payment of such in-store business transactions and self service transactions at electronic Point of Sale kiosks, such as at automated gas pumps and the like. [0004] 2. Background Description [0005] Currently, retail stores typically produce a paper receipt reflecting a purchase or purchases by each customer. Normally, a point-of-sale terminal generates the paper receipt, which lists each item purchased. Traditionally, the merchant passes the paper receipt to the customer, which the customer must retain for any allowed returns. These paper receipts provide documentation of the purchases for example, for registering product rebates, for product returns, for ownership transfers, and for warranty registration. Anyone that has ever been involved in an Internal Revenue Service (IRS) audit was required to produce paper receipts as proof of legitimate expenditures. Employers typically require employees to submit paper receipts to document expenses for re-imbursement or as proof of chargeable expenses against an expense account. It is important for employers to track expenditures in real time, including expenditures incurred by individual employees. [0006] Frequently, new businesses fail because of cash-flow problems and under capitalization, often because a new business person finds it difficult and time consuming to track business expenses from paper receipts. A typical small business may maintain expense information in some well known accounting/expense tracking program. There are a number of commercially available accounting software packages to assist small businesses in expense tracking. Unfortunately, entering receipt information in any of these off-the-shelf packages requires converting paper receipt information to a suitable electronic format. Conversion may entail, for example, either re-keying the physical receipt (if it is legible and has not been lost), making a photocopy of the original receipt and passing the photocopy to optical character recognition (OCR), or in some those cases where it is available, downloading the information from merchant websites. With larger business, as each employee submit paper receipts, the employer may forward them to an accounting department and/or to a tax accountant. [0007] While this conversion may be a complicated, labor intensive and time consuming for a business, it may be unreasonably burdensome for an individual. It is hard to keep track of and organize all of those paper receipts. Moreover, this is very time consuming, and thus difficult to make it a priority. Further, paper-based processes like this depend upon human collation and so, are vulnerable to tracking, timelines, and audit-readiness problems. At best keeping organized takes time away from other things; and at worst, either from lost paper receipts and/or failure to organize, can cost someone, e.g., from available tax credits that are lost or from failing to be audit-ready when the need arises. [0008] Additionally, merchants normally require the original paper receipt for refunds to discourage fraud. If a customer fails to produce the receipt, at best, the customer may be allowed to exchange the item for comparable merchandise or merchandise of the same value. However, at Christmas time, especially, thieves target cars with bags in sight. If the receipt is in the bag with the merchandise, after breaking into the car and stealing the packages, the thief has the merchandise and the receipt. The thief can make the return and the customer is left with the bill and auto damage. Consequently, retail clerks have begun asking if the purchaser wants the receipt placed in the bag with the purchases or kept separately. But if the receipt is separated from the merchandise, it may not be easy to match the receipt with the merchandise, especially if the receipt includes inadequate or skimpy purchase documentation, or is partially or completely illegible due to poor printing quality, sun exposure, or other forms of wear and tear. [0009] Thus, there is a need to improve purchase documentation while reducing purchase tracking effort and discouraging theft; and, more particularly, there is a need to improve expense and purchase tracking for businesses and individuals while reducing the effort required for accurately recording expenses and purchases without encouraging fraudulent returns or theft. SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION [0010] It is therefore a purpose of the invention to eliminate the need for paper receipts; [0011] It is another purpose of this invention to reduce the incidence of fraudulent returns in retail sales; [0012] It is yet another purpose of the invention to eliminate the need for paper receipts, while allowing returns for goods that were purchased without providing paper receipts, while reducing the incidence of fraudulent returns in retail sales. [0013] The present invention is related to a method and program product for providing paperless receipts for conducting business transactions. Biometric data and product specific identification information is collected with each purchase and included with an electronic receipt generated for each purchase. The collected product specific information may include product serial numbers for some products, all products or product valued above a minimum threshold cost. The biometric data may include a digital image of each purchaser. The electronic receipt may be passed directly to the customer. BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS [0014] The foregoing and other objects, aspects and advantages will be better understood from the following detailed description of a preferred embodiment of the invention with reference to the drawings, in which: [0015] FIG. 1 shows an example of a preferred point-of-sale (POS) terminal electronic receipt generation/electronic return environment, for transacting business at POS terminals. [0016] FIG. 2 shows an example of generating electronic receipts for use in electronic returns according to a preferred embodiment of the present invention. DESCRIPTION OF PREFERRED EMBODIMENTS [0017] Turning now to the drawings, and more particularly, FIG. 1 shows an example of a preferred point-of-sale (POS) terminal electronic personal receipt generation environment 10, customer location (i.e., identified with a client business) 12 and point-of-sale terminal 14 (hereinafter "POS terminal 14"), such as described in published U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/430,824 (Attorney Docket No. BLD920030021US1), entitled "Point-of-Sale Electronic Receipt Generation" to Joan L. Mitchell et al., filed May 6, 2003, published Nov. 11, 2004, publication No. 2004/0225567 A1, assigned to the assignee of the present invention and incorporated herein by reference. Customer locations 12 (e.g., a wallet carried by a customer) include, for example, cash 16, a check 18, a credit card 20 and/or a smart card 22, or any other suitable well known payment mechanism(s) for paying for merchandise, e.g., gift certificates or store credits. Further, each customer location 12 includes some from of personal storage, such as a thumb drive, a personal digital assistant (PDA) 24, an Apple iPod or the like. Each customer location 12 may also communicate with POS terminal 14 using PDA 24 or any other suitable handheld computer or communication system, with an appropriate communication port (not shown), e.g., infrared (IR) or radio frequency identification (RFID). POS terminal 14 conducts each sales transaction and generates an electronic receipt 26 for each and, optionally, a conventional paper receipt 28. POS terminal 14 can also be a self-service electronic Point of Sale kiosk. According to a preferred embodiment of the present invention, instead of paper receipts purchasers receive detailed personal electronic receipts as original receipts. [0018] As used herein for example only, a customer, shopper or purchaser (used interchangeably) at a customer location 12 may be identified with a private or public concern and is conducting a transaction with a merchant or other business concern. The private concern may be, for example an individual, a business or other organization. Thus, a customer/purchaser may be a member of the household, a business employee or a member of a private organization or a government employee. Similarly, although typically, the merchant may be located, for example, at a retail place of business, the business concern 30 may be any business or non-profit private or public organization that issues receipts for money collected, e.g., in exchange for purchases. The POS 14 is located with the business concern 30, e.g., on the premises of a department or grocery store or, any place of business that normally requires proof of purchase for returns. [0019] Further, each POS terminal 14 may include an imager 40, a check/currency inserter 42, a camera (e.g., a digital camera, web cam or IR cam) 44, a thumb reader 45, a receipt instruction receiver 46 with a receipt destination retriever 62, an electronic receipt generator (ERG) 48 with an authenticating data generator (ADG) 50, a transmitter 52 and any other components (OC) 54. Imager 40 converts cash (paper currency or bills) 16, and/or checks 18 into images 58 that may be inserted by check/currency inserter 42 into a paper receipt, 28 an electronic receipt 26 or both for recordation. Electronic receipt generation and storage is also described, for example, in published U.S. patent application Ser. No. 10/446,204 (Attorney Docket No. BLD920030019US1) entitled "Expense Accounting Data Management Based on Electronic Expense Document" to Joan L. Mitchell et al., filed May 27, 2003, published Dec. 2, 2004, publication No. 2004/0243489 A1, assigned to the assignee of the present invention and incorporated herein by reference. Also, the POS terminal 14 may include a typical PDA cradle, a wireless connection capability (e.g., infrared or WiFi), for connecting to a PDA 24, a cell phone, a handheld computer, a handheld game unit, a pager, or any suitable unit with personal storage. Further, the POS terminal 14 may include appropriate encryption or compression capability. Continue reading... Full patent description for System and method of directly providing electronic receipts Brief Patent Description - Full Patent Description - Patent Application Claims Click on the above for other options relating to this System and method of directly providing electronic receipts patent application. ###  How KEYWORD MONITOR works... a FREE service from FreshPatents1. Sign up (takes 30 seconds). 2. Fill in the keywords to be monitored. 3. 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