DOCUMENT AUTHENTICATION SYSTEM

• US 20080005024A1
• Filed: 05/17/2007
• Published: 01/03/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 05/17/2006
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: Docuthentic LLC
• Original Assignee: Docuthentic LLC
• Inventors: Kirkwood, Carter
• Application Number:
  US11/750,178
• Publication Number:
  US 20080005024A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 705/50
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 10/00 Administration; Management
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 40/00 Finance; Insurance; Tax strategies; Processing of corporate or income taxes

Abstract

A document management system separates the rights and control of the author of a document, such as a financial institution reporting financial information to a client front the rights and control over the document contents of the owner of the document, such as the client of the financial institution whose information is being presented. In preferred embodiments, the document owner controls distribution of the document to desired users, such as a mortgage broker or a tax accountant, but without the ability to change the contents or at least without the ability to do so without the ability to make changes without detection. As a result, the author may provide the owner with a document that the owner can cause to be received by a desired user or other recipient while maintaining the authentication of the document by the issuing author, for example, the financial institution. The privacy and security of the data contents may be protected by encryption. In one embodiment, for example, the author may encrypt the document and the owner may select recipients to receive the decryption key, for example, via a website. Many alternate embodiments are described using techniques which produce similar results.

Claims

1. A method of providing financial documents, comprising:

obtaining an encrypted financial document related to a financial services user from a source of financial services;

forwarding, to a escrow key server, one or more encryption keys for decrypting the encrypted financial document;

facilitating the transfer of the encrypted financial document to a financial document user as authorized by the financial service user; and

transferring a copy of the one or more encryption keys from the escrow key server to the financial document user as authorized by the financial service user so that the financial document user can decrypt the encrypted financial document as an authenticated document unchanged from when it was obtained from the source of financial services.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein facilitating the transfer of the encrypted document to the financial document user further comprises:

receiving a request for the encrypted document at the escrow key server from the financial document user;

obtaining approval from the financial services user to transfer the encrypted financial document to the financial document user; and

then

transferring the encrypted financial document to the financial document user.

3. The method of claim 2 wherein the encrypted document and one or more encryption keys are transferred together to the financial document user.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein facilitating the transfer of the encrypted document to the financial document user further comprises:

receiving authorization from the financial services user for the key escrow server to transfer the encrypted financial document to the financial document user upon request; and

forwarding the encrypted financial document from the escrow key server to the financial document user upon receipt of a request therefore from the financial document user.

5. The method of claim 1 further comprising:

forwarding a copy of the encrypted financial document to the financial services user.