Highly secure playing cards for instant lottery and games

• US 4,191,376 A
• Filed: 01/28/1977
• Issued: 03/04/1980
• Est. Priority Date: 05/27/1975
• Status: Expired due to Term

• Current Assignee: Webcraft Direct Marketing (Quad Graphics, Inc.)
• Original Assignee: Systems Operations Incorporated
• Inventors: Alexoff, Carl, Goldman, Max
• Primary Examiner(s): Pinkham, Richard C.
• Assistant Examiner(s): Kramer, Arnold W.
• Application Number:
  US05/763,639
• Time in Patent Office: 1,131 Days
• Field of Search: 273/139, 273/138 A, 235/385, 340/149 A
• US Class Current: 273/139
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 3/0645 Electric lottos or bingo games
• CPC Class Codes: A63F 3/065 Tickets or accessories for use therewith A63F3/0625 takes precedence
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 50/34 Betting or bookmaking, e.g. Internet betting
• CPC Class Codes: G07C 15/005 with dispensing of lottery tickets
• CPC Class Codes: G07F 17/3288 Betting, e.g. on live events, bookmaking

Abstract

Tickets for an instant lottery are imprinted with lottery numbers and serial numbers that are uniquely related and the lottery numbers are covered from view until after purchase, to provide control and distribution of winners and a high degree of security from fraud. By means of computerized fabrication a low cost and high security ticket is achieved. Playing cards for other games are also inexpensively fabricated.

Claims

1. An instant lottery ticket construction for a game comprising:

a plurality of lots of tickets, each of said tickets being imprinted with a serial number, and imprinted with a lottery number seemingly randomly associated with the serial number, said lottery number being not discernible after the ticket is fabricated and when given to the player being transformable by the player to be intelligible for comparison with known winning lottery numbers set forth in the game in association with the tickets when dispensed to the player, the tickets for each of said lots being physically connected and disconnected when dispensed to the player;

said serial numbers being imprinted by means of a computer-controlled printer on successive ones of said lottery tickets with said serial numbers being sequential within each of said lots and providing an inventory control of the tickets in each of said lots;

said lottery numbers being imprinted by means of said printer on said lottery tickets with each of said lottery numbers being correlated seemingly randomly to the serial number of the same ticket by a certain computer algorithm of logical operations so that improperly altered or counterfeit lottery numbers can be detected by testing for correlation with the associated serial number;

said physically connected tickets in said lots having a certain quantity of winning ones of said lottery numbers in a particular game, the winning lottery numbers being seemingly randomly distributed through said physically connected tickets of said lots without physical manipulation of said tickets and correlated with said serial numbers by a certain computer algorithm associated with said lottery number algorithm;

whereby a highly reliable lottery is economically established in the ticket fabrication by the ability to validate winning lottery tickets, by the distribution and dispensing of tickets being accounted for by serial numbers, and by the assurance to players and ticket dispensers of a certain number of winning lottery tickets in seemingly random relation to non-winning tickets.

2. An instant lottery ticket construction as set forth in claim 1 wherein the lottery numbers of said lottery tickets are covered with a removable covering.

3. An instant lottery ticket construction as set forth in claim 1 wherein said lottery tickets are sales slips for commercial promotions.

4. An instant lottery ticket construction as set forth in claim 1 wherein said lottery tickets are commercial coupons.

5. An instant lottery ticket construction as set forth in claim 1 wherein said tickets in each of said lots are folded in a continuous strip and detached from said strip when dispensed.

6. An instant lottery ticket construction as recited in claim 5 and further comprising an additional validation number imprinted on each of said tickets and correlated seemingly randomly to the serial number of the same ticket by a certain computer algorithm so that improperly altered or counterfeit lottery tickets can be detected by testing for correlation of the serial and validation numbers thereof and partially mutilated tickets can be reconstructed by the correlating computer algorithms.