Systems and methods for assessing documents using analysis of machine-printed writing and pre-printed information

• US 7,664,304 B2
• Filed: 11/14/2003
• Issued: 02/16/2010
• Est. Priority Date: 03/15/2002
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Computer Sciences Corporation (DXC Technology Company)
• Original Assignee: Computer Sciences Corporation (DXC Technology Company)
• Inventors: Berkhuysen, Johan Willem Piere, Bakker, Ronny, Mason, James G., Blinova, Katerina, Shridhar, Malayappan, Nugmanov, Babur, Houle, Gilles
• Primary Examiner(s): Lu; Tom Y
• Application Number:
  US10/714,523
• Publication Number:
  US 20040228513A1
• Time in Patent Office: 2,286 Days
• Field of Search: 382/137
• US Class Current: 382/137
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/10 Character recognition
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/133 Evaluation of quality of the acquired characters
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 30/274 Syntactic or semantic context, e.g. balancing
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 40/30 Writer recognition; Reading and verifying signatures

Abstract

Methods and systems are provided for analyzing and assessing documents using a profile for documents, such as a payment instrument. In one embodiment, the profile may include variable machine-printed writing. In other embodiments, the profile may include pre-printed information. A method may include providing a document to a computer system. In one embodiment, profile representations may be determined for information fields of the document. The determination may use variable machine-printed writing and/or pre-printed information from at least one of the information fields of the documents. In one embodiment, the method may further include comparing machine-printed writing and/or pre-printed information in information fields of the document to at least profile representation from at least one information field of at least one other document. In some embodiments, the method may include assessing fraud in the document using at least one of the comparisons.

Claims

1. A method of assessing the validity of a payment instrument using a computer system, comprising:

providing the payment instrument to a computer system, wherein the payment instrument comprises pre-printed information;

comparing, using the computer system, at least a portion of the pre-printed information in the payment instrument to one or more document stock profile representations associated with a profile for one or more accounts or a profile for one or more individual writers, entities, or representatives of an entity, wherein evidence of non-validity of the payment instrument comprises failure of at least a portion of the pre-printed information in the payment instrument to approximately match at least one of the one or more document stock profile representations; and

analyzing a correlation of information between two or more information fields of the payment instrument, wherein the analysis of a first information field of the payment instrument is dependent on what information is in a second information field of the payment instrument, and wherein the comparison of the pre-printed information in the payment instrument to the at least one document stock profile representation is based on the correlation analysis between the first information field and the second information field.

2. The method of claim 1, wherein the payment instrument is a check.

3. The method of claim 1, wherein the payment instrument is a giro.

4. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the payment instrument to the computer system comprises providing one or more images of the payment instrument to the computer system.

5. The method of claim 1, wherein providing the payment instrument to the computer system comprises providing one or more images of at least a portion of the pre-printed information of the payment instrument to the computer system.

6. The method of claim 1, wherein the pre-printed information comprises pre-printed words, pre-printed characters, pre-printed graphic elements, or combinations thereof.

7. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one pre-printed profile representation comprises images of pre-printed graphic elements, pre-printed words, pre-printed characters, or combinations thereof.

8. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one pre-printed profile representation is obtained from a validated payment instrument.

9. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

comparing handwriting in one or more amount fields of the payment instrument to one or more writing profile representations derived from at least one other payment instrument, wherein evidence of non-validity of the payment instrument further comprises failure of at least a portion of the handwriting in at least one of the amount fields of the payment instrument to approximately match at least one writing profile representation.

10. The method of claim 9, wherein at least one of the amount fields is a courtesy amount field.

11. The method of claim 9, wherein at least one of the amount fields is a legal amount field.

12. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

comparing handwriting in a signature field of the payment instrument to one or more writing profile representations derived from at least one other payment instrument, wherein evidence of non-validity of the payment instrument further comprises failure of at least a portion of the handwriting in at least one of the signature fields of the payment instrument to approximately match at least one writing profile representation.

13. The method of claim 1, further comprising:

comparing handwriting in one or more information fields of the payment instrument to one or more writing profile representations derived from at least one other payment instrument, wherein evidence of non-validity of the payment instrument further comprises failure of at least a portion of the handwriting in at least one of the information fields of the payment instrument to approximately match at least one writing profile representation.

26. The method of claim 1, wherein comparing at least a portion of the pre-printed information in the information field of the payment instrument to at least one pre-printed profile representation derived from a corresponding information field in at least one other payment instrument comprises comparing a size of the pre-printed text in the information field of the payment instrument to the size of pre-printed text in the corresponding information field of the other payment instrument.

27. The method of claim 1, wherein evidence of non-validity of the payment instrument comprises failure of at least a portion of the pre-printed information in the information field of the payment instrument to approximately match at least one pre-printed profile representation derived from the at least two information fields in at least one other payment instrument.

28. The method of claim 1, further comprising performing one or more fraud tests and assigning a fraud weight to at least one of the one or more of the fraud tests, wherein the fraud weight corresponds to the strength of the indication of fraud in the payment instrument, wherein one of the fraud tests is weighted differently than at least one of the other fraud tests.

29. The method of claim 28, wherein at least one of the fraud tests is based on a comparison of handwriting in an information field of the payment instrument to at least one handwriting profile representation, wherein at least one of the fraud tests is based on a comparison of pre-printed information in an information field of the payment instrument to at least one pre-printed profile representation, wherein at least one of the fraud tests based on handwriting is weighted differently than at least one of the fraud tests based on pre-printed information.

30. The method of claim 1, wherein at least one of the pre-printed profile representations is based on a writing profile comprising data on at least one cross-field relationship between at least two information fields in the payment instrument, wherein the comparison of the pre-printed information in the information field of the payment instrument to the at least one pre-printed profile representation derived from a corresponding information field in at least one other payment instrument is based on cross-field relationship data retrieved from the writing profile.

31. The method of claim 1, wherein analyzing the correlation of information between two or more information fields comprises reading information from at least one cross-correlation table.

32. The method of claim 1, wherein analyzing the correlation of information between two or more information fields comprises determining whether the writing in the first field of the payment instrument matches an entry in a lexicon associated with the information in the second information field of the payment instrument, wherein the lexicon is based on at least one other payment instrument.

33. The method of claim 1, further comprising comparing a size of payment instrument to the size of at least one other payment instrument, wherein evidence of non-validity of the payment instrument comprises failure of the size of the payment instrument to approximately match the size of at least one other payment instrument.

34. The method of claim 1, wherein comparing pre-printed information in the document to at least one of the one or more document stock profile representation comprises comparing pre-printed information against layout characteristics of the stock profile.

35. The method of claim 1, wherein comparing pre-printed information in the document to at least one of the one or more document stock profile representation comprises comparing pre-printed information against characteristics of a graphic element of the stock profile representation.

36. The method of claim 1, wherein comparing pre-printed information in the document to at least one of the one or more document stock profile representation comprises comparing pre-printed information against a bank logo from the stock profile representation.

37. The method of claim 1, wherein comparing pre-printed information in the document to at least one of the one or more document stock profile representation comprises comparing a location of a graphical element in the pre-printed information against a location of a corresponding graphical element in at least one of the one or more stock profile representations.

14. A system, comprising:

a CPU;

a data memory coupled to the CPU; and

a system memory coupled to the CPU, wherein the system memory is configured to store one or more computer programs executable by the CPU, and wherein at least one of the computer programs are executable to implement a method of assessing the validity of a payment instrument, the method comprising;

providing the payment instrument to a computer system, wherein the payment instrument comprises pre-printed information;

comparing at least a portion of the pre-printed information in the payment instrument to one or more document stock profile representations associated with a profile for one or more accounts or a profile for one or more individual writers, entities, or representatives of an entity, wherein evidence of non-validity of the payment instrument comprises failure of at least a portion of the pre-printed information in the payment instrument to approximately match at least one of the one or more document stock profile representations; and

analyzing a correlation of information between two or more information fields of the payment instrument, wherein the analysis of a first information field of the payment instrument is dependent on what information is in a second information field of the payment instrument, and wherein the comparison of the pre-printed information in the payment instrument to the at least one document stock profile representation is based on the correlation analysis between the first information field and the second information field.

15. A computer readable storage medium comprising program instructions, wherein the program instructions are computer-executable to implement a method of assessing the validity of a payment instrument, the method comprising:

providing the payment instrument to a computer system, wherein the payment instrument comprises pre-printed information;

comparing at least a portion of the pre-printed information in the payment instrument to one or more document stock profile representations associated with a profile for one or more accounts or a profile for one or more individual writers, entities, or representatives of an entity, wherein evidence of non-validity of the payment instrument comprises failure of at least a portion of the pre-printed information in the payment instrument to approximately match at least one of the one or more document stock profile representations; and

analyzing a correlation of information between two or more information fields of the payment instrument, wherein the analysis of a first information field of the payment instrument is dependent on what information is in a second information field of the payment instrument, and wherein the comparison of the pre-printed information in the payment instrument to the at least one document stock profile representation is based on the correlation analysis between the first information field and the second information field.

16. A method of assessing the validity of a payment instrument using a computer system, comprising:

providing the payment instrument to a computer system, wherein the payment instrument comprises at least one machine-printed text block;

comparing, using the computer system, machine-printed text in at least one machine-printed text blocks of the payment instrument to one or more document stock profile representations associated with a profile for one or more accounts or a profile for one or more individual writers, entities, or representatives of an entity, wherein evidence of non-validity of the payment instrument comprises failure of at least a portion of the machine-printed text in at least one machine-printed text block in the payment instrument to approximately match at least one of the one or more document stock profile representations; and

analyzing a correlation of information between two or more information fields of the payment instrument, wherein the analysis of a first information field of the payment instrument is dependent on what information is in a second information field of the payment instrument, and wherein the comparison of the pre-printed information in the payment instrument to the at least one document stock profile representation is based on the correlation analysis between the first information field and the second information field.

17. The method of claim 16, wherein providing the payment instrument to the computer system comprises providing one or more images of the payment instrument to the computer system.

18. The method of claim 16, wherein providing the payment instrument to the computer system comprises providing one or more images of at least a portion of at least one machine-printed text block to the computer system.

19. The method of claim 16, wherein the machine-printed text blocks comprise machine-printed words, machine-printed characters, or combinations thereof.

20. The method of claim 16, wherein at least one stock profile representation is obtained from a validated payment instrument.

21. The method of claim 16, further comprising:

comparing handwriting in one or more amount fields of the payment instrument to one or more writing profile representations derived from at least one other payment instrument, wherein evidence of non-validity of further comprises failure of at least a portion of the handwriting in at least one of the amount fields of the payment instrument to approximately match at least one of the writing profile representations of an amount field.

22. The method of claim 16, further comprising:

comparing handwriting in one or more signature fields of the payment instrument to one or more writing profile representations of a signature field derived from at least one other payment instrument, wherein evidence of non-validity of the payment instrument further comprises failure of at least a portion of the handwriting in at least one of the signature fields of the payment instrument to approximately match at least one of the writing profile representations of a signature field.

23. The method of claim 16, further comprising:

comparing handwriting in one or more information fields of the payment instrument to one or more writing profile representations of an information field derived from at least one other payment instrument, wherein evidence of non-validity of the payment instrument further comprises failure of at least a portion of the handwriting in at least one of the information fields of the payment instrument to approximately match at least one of the writing profile representations of an information field.

24. A system, comprising:

a CPU;

a data memory coupled to the CPU; and

a system memory coupled to the CPU, wherein the system memory is configured to store one or more computer programs executable by the CPU, and wherein at least one of the computer programs are executable to implement a method of assessing the validity of a payment instrument, the method comprising;

providing the payment instrument to a computer system, wherein the payment instrument comprises at least one machine-printed text block;

comparing machine-printed text in at least one machine-printed text blocks in the payment instrument to one or more document stock profile representations associated with a profile for one or more accounts or a profile for one or more individual writers, entities, or representatives of an entity, wherein evidence of non-validity of the payment instrument comprises failure of at least a portion of the machine-printed text in at least one machine-printed text block in the payment instrument to approximately match at least one of the one or more document stock profile representations; and

analyzing a correlation of information between two or more information fields of the payment instrument, wherein the analysis of a first information field of the payment instrument is dependent on what information is in a second information field of the payment instrument, and wherein the comparison of the machine-printed text in the payment instrument to the at least one document stock profile representation is based on the correlation analysis between the first information field and the second information field.

25. A computer readable storage medium comprising program instructions, wherein the program instructions are computer-executable to implement a method of assessing the validity of a payment instrument, the method comprising:

providing the payment instrument to a computer system, wherein the payment instrument comprises at least one machine-printed text block;

comparing machine-printed text in at least one machine-printed text block in the payment instrument to one or more document stock profile representations associated with a profile for one or more accounts or a profile for one or more individual writers, entities, or representatives of an entity, wherein evidence of non-validity of the payment instrument comprises failure of at least a portion of the machine-printed text in at least one machine-printed text block in the payment instrument to approximately match at least one of the one or more document stock profile representations; and

analyzing a correlation of information between two or more information fields of the payment instrument, wherein the analysis of a first information field of the payment instrument is dependent on what information is in a second information field of the payment instrument, and wherein the comparison of the machine-printed text in the payment instrument to the at least one document stock profile representation is based on the correlation analysis between the first information field and the second information field.