EP0873648A1

EP0873648A1 - Facsimile certification system and method

Info

Publication number: EP0873648A1
Application number: EP97900246A
Authority: EP
Inventors: Olivier Miro; Philippe Miro
Original assignee: Scripta Probatio Sarl
Current assignee: Scripta Probatio Sarl
Priority date: 1996-01-08
Filing date: 1997-01-08
Publication date: 1998-10-28
Also published as: CA2242951A1; FR2743460B1; WO1997025810A1; FR2743460A1

Abstract

Systems for certifying the transmission, reception and content of a facsimile are disclosed. The system includes a facsimile transmission/reception device (12) in which signals received for each facsimile are recorded in a memory (MF1-MF8), an identification device (14) for identifying characteristics of the sender and addressee of the facsimile, a decision device (16) that uses identification characteristics and specific criteria to determine whether or not to forward the received facsimile to the addressee and optionally send a message to the sender, and a recording device (18) for recording the received facsimile on a non-rewritable recording medium.

Description

FAX CERTIFICATION SYSTEM AND METHOD

A system for certifying the contents of a facsimile as required and a method of implementing the system are provided. In the business world, the exchange of information and the commitments entered into are increasingly carried out by fax, so that the use of the latter as legal evidence is more and more frequent. However, faxes can be challenged as legal evidence on several aspects such as the absence of identification of the sender or recipient of the fax, the certainty that the pages received correspond to those sent in number and content, etc .... There are known fax certification systems by third party certification under the supervision of a bailiff and an expert approved by the courts with certification of the content of the documents transmitted. However, these systems are complicated to implement by their users because they require a cumbersome procedure which cannot be automated. An object of the present invention is therefore to provide a facsimile certification system by third party certification which is fully automatic and protected from any forgery.

The invention relates to a fax certification system by third party certification, characterized in that it comprises: - fax transmission / reception means in which the signals received for each fax are recorded in a memory, - means of identifying the characteristics of the sender and recipient of the fax,

- decision-making means which, on the basis of identification characteristics and specific criteria, determine whether or not the fax received is redirected to the recipient and whether a message is sent to the sender, and

means for recording the received fax and the characteristics of the received fax, of the decision taken and of the fax forwarded to the recipient on a recording medium of the non-rewritable type.

The fax transmission / reception means, the means of identifying the characteristics of the sender and of the recipient and the decision means are produced by a computer in which electronic fax transmission / reception cards available in the trade and in which are registered appropriate software which are also commercially available such as software for processing fax signals, received or to be transmitted, for analyzing fax signals to recognize alphanumeric characters, for identifying the meaning of the alphanumeric characters, for checking the recording means.

To benefit from the certification system according to the invention, the sender must, in a variant, make a prepayment of the certification services and the system then also comprises, means for managing the prepayments which consist essentially by appropriate software, also commercially available. The various means listed above are enclosed in a closed enclosure which is sealed by a bailiff, the only connections of the enclosure vis-à-vis the outside being the fax telephone line (s), a socket outlet. power supply associated with a switch, an input / output device of the computer diskette with access control button, an input / output device of the recording medium with access control button and a alarm device.

The computer diskette can only contain information and / or instructions relating to the management of prepayments without any relation to the processing of faxes and their management. The invention also relates to a fax certification method by third party certification by the certification system described above, characterized in that it comprises the following steps: a) transmission by the sender of a fax to be certified to the system certification, said fax having a format determined for the first page to indicate the characteristics of the sender and of the recipient, b) reception of the fax to be certified by the certification system and recording of the signals received for each fax in a memory, c) analysis of the signals received for each fax and corresponding to the first page to identify the characteristics of the sender and of the recipient, d) analysis of the identified characteristics of the sender and of the recipient, e) in the event that the results of the analysis of the characteristics is not satisfactory, emission of an error message to the sender , f) in the case where the results of the analysis of the characteristics are satisfactory, transmission to the recipient of the received fax, and g) recording on the non-rewritable recording medium of the received fax as is recorded in said memory and characteristics of the reception of the fax by the certification system and by the recipient, those resulting from the analysis of the fax received and those relating to the decision taken.

In the case of prepayments by senders, the method further comprises the step of comparing the characteristics of the sender with those of the people who have made prepayments so as not to authorize the redirection of the fax to the recipient only if the sender's prepayment credit is sufficient with regard to the certification price.

Other characteristics and advantages of the present invention will appear on reading the following description of a particular embodiment, said description being made in relation to the accompanying drawings in which:

FIG. 1 is a functional diagram of a facsimile certification system according to the present invention, and

- Figure 2 is a simplified diagram of a facsimile device using N = 8 telephone lines.

A fax certification system 10 by third-party certification comprises, as shown in the functional diagram of FIG. 1, a fax transmission / reception device 12, a device 14 for identifying the characteristics of the sender and the recipient of fax, a decision device 16 which, on the basis of the characteristics identified and of specific criteria, decides whether or not to redirect the recipient to the recipient of the received fax and a device 18 for recording the received fax on an erasable medium after a first entry, it that is to say a non-rewritable medium. The devices 12, 14 and 16 are in fact produced using a computer 22 equipped with additional electronic cards and suitably programmed as will be described below.

The fax transmission / reception device 12 is of conventional type and comprises at least one input / output telephone line so as to allow reception or transmission of a fax. For example, the device 12 is connected to N = 8 input / output telephone lines LT1 to LT8, each telephone line being connected respectively to an electronic card CF1 to CF8 (FIG. 2) which constitutes an additional card of the computer 22.

Each electronic card CF1 to CF8 very schematically comprises a modem MOD1 to MOD8 to receive and transmit the fax signals and a memory MF1 to MF8 to record the signals received or to be transmitted.

The signals recorded in the memories MF1 to MF8 are processed by the computer 22 using an appropriate software, for example that known under the trade mark WINFAX and marketed by the company BVRP SOFTWARE. The device 14 for identifying the characteristics of the sender and recipient of the fax analyzes the signals received corresponding to the first page of the fax in order to recognize the alphanumeric characters and to interpret them. This first page has a particular format as shown in TABLE 1, the information contained in this first page being essential for the operation of the system of the invention. This first page is, for example, divided into four parts PI, P2, P3 and P4.

The PI part indicates the legal value which is attributed to the fax whose content is listed on the following pages, namely: "Certified Fax" or "Recommended Confirmation in Pre-Payment".

Part P2 identifies the recipient of the fax by name, address and fax line number. This P2 part also indicates the total number of pages of the fax and whether it is URGENT or NOT. Finally, this part identifies the sender of the fax by name, address and fax and possibly telephone numbers. In addition, an identification code can be assigned to the sender as an accredited user of the system.

The P3 part is reserved for free text while the P4 part is reserved for giving general information for the use of the sender but especially of the recipient. For the operation of the system, only the information in part P2 is essential. To simplify their identification, they will preferably be placed in boxes whose positions on the page are perfectly defined.

TABLE 1

PI Certified Fax

(or Confirmation Recommended in Pre-Payment.

P2 Addressee: DURAND FAX N °:

ADDRESS

Number of pages including this one: URGENT: YES / NO

From: DUPONT Code:

ADDRESS N ° FAX

TELEPHONE N °

P3 Other possible information

P4 The copy of this document is automatically archived on a non-rewritable medium with the date and time of receipt by the recipient. It has the same legal value as the original (Article 1348, paragraph 2 of the Civil Code) and is transmitted to the sender on simple request to assert that as of right.

The identification device 14 comprises software for analyzing the facsimile signals to determine the alphanumeric characters of the first page or at least of the P2 part and an alphanumeric character recognition software to identify the elements of the P2 part.

Such software is for example commercially sold under the brand EASY RIDER ELITE and is sold by the company INNOVATIC. The decision device 16 is produced by the computer 22 in the form of appropriate software and the decisions taken depend on the characteristics identified or not of the part P2 of the first page of the fax. In the event that the identification of the information contained in the part P2 does not reveal any error, the fax which has been received on one of the telephone lines LT1 to LT8, is re-transmitted in the state as received, to the identified recipient the identified number of the recipient's telephone line.

Then, as will be explained in more detail below, the received fax will be recorded in the state as received on an erasable recording medium after a first recording, that is to say non-rewritable, by the through a recording device 18.

The recording medium is, for example, a disc of the compact disc type, read only, better known by the English abbreviation "CD-ROM" and the recording device 18 will be a CD disc "burner" -ROM. Such a CD-ROM disc recording device is for example that sold under the reference CDR102 by YAMAHA MUSIQUE FRANCE. Such a recording device is under the control of computer 22 by means of appropriate software such as that sold under the brand EASY-CD PRO by the company INCAT SYSTEMS.

This recording medium must make it possible to keep a copy of the fax received which is the indelible, faithful and lasting reproduction of the document received by irreversibly modifying a medium. In the remainder of the description, such a medium will be defined as being non-rewritable, that is to say, it cannot be rewritten or erased after a first registration.

The computer 22 implements, in addition to the software which has been mentioned above, other so-called management software which will be described more fully below, in relation to the description of the operation of the system.

The computer 22, including the electronic cards CF1 to CF8, and the recording device 18 are enclosed in an enclosure 20 which is sealed by a bailiff. The only connections between the elements enclosed in this enclosure and the outside world are:

a power supply socket 24 with a switch (not shown), the telephone lines LT1 to LT8,

an input / output device 26 for a computer diskette 22 with an access control button (not shown),

an input / output device 28 for a CD-ROM disc 32 of the recording device 18 with an access control button (not shown),

an alarm device 34, for example an audible one, to indicate the existence of a system error status message. To ensure the unforgettable nature of the content of CD-ROM discs 32, these are first of all numbered indelibly by a bailiff on one and / or the other of their faces. The floppy disk 30 constitutes the only access to the computer 22 and can only contain information and / or instructions relating to the management of the system, this information and / or instructions therefore having no connection with the processing of faxes. The operation of the system of FIG. 1 will now be described in the case where a fax sender wishes that his fax be certified as to its date and its content. In order to benefit from such a certification service, the sender must be recognized as a user who has subscribed to the certification system by contract with prepayment of a sum credited to the user's account. However, this service could work without this aspect. To this end, the different users of the system will have to sign a contract under which they will be assigned a code number and an amount according to the monetary value of the prepayment made. In addition to this code number and this amount, each user file will also include his address, fax number and possibly his telephone number.

The steps for processing received faxes are as follows: 1. Arrival of a fax,

2. Allocation of the first free line among the eight lines LT1 to LT8, for example LT1, to receive the fax, 3. Reception of the fax by the electronic card CFl to CF8 assigned to the allocated line, that is to say CF1 in the case described, by means of the software for receiving the card CFl and recording of the fax received in the memory MFl,

4. Scan of memories MF1 to MF8 to detect the reception of a fax, thanks to the WINFAX software,

5. Stop scanning of memories MF1 to MF8 upon detection of a received fax, for example on MFl,

6. Recording of the fax received and selected on the hard disk of the computer 22, for example in a first file F1 (not shown),

7. Analysis of the first page of the fax using the character recognition software to determine the alphanumeric characters contained in at least part P2,

8. Identification of the information represented by the alphanumeric characters of certain zones of part P2 which are:

- the type of fax:

"Certified Fax" (or "Confirmation Recommended in Pre-Payment"),

- the character of the fax: URGENT or NOT, - the sender's code,

- the sender's fax number,

- the number of pages of the fax.

9. Analysis of information from the zones and decision as to the continuation of the procedure, 10. Whatever the result of the analysis and the decision taken:

recording on the hard disk of the computer 22, for example in a second file F2 (not shown), of the reception characteristics of the fax received, results of analysis performed and decision made.

11. Delayed transmission or not of the fax received to the recipient in the event of a transmission decision.

12. Recording on the hard disk of the computer 22, for example in a third file F3 (not shown), of the characteristics of the reception by the recipient of the fax. 13. Go to the next fax in the memory MFl if there is another one or one of the memories MF2 to MF8 if no other fax does not exist in the memory MFl, that is to say, resumption of the scanning of step 4. 14. Recording of the files F1, F2 and F3 from the hard disk of the computer 22 on the CD-ROM disk, that is to say in the non-rewritable memory. The analysis and decision step 9 may lead to the following decisions depending on the result of the analysis: 9.1 if the sender code and the fax number are incorrect:

- destruction of the fax received in the memory MF1 and,

- switching to the next fax in the memory MF1 or in one of the following memories MF2 or MF8,

9.2 if the sender code is incorrect and the fax number is correct:

- destruction of the fax received in the memory MFl and, - sending a fax to the sender to warn him of the error, in addition, invoicing of the corresponding service to the sender by debiting his pre- payment, 9.3 if the sender code is correct and the fax number is incorrect:

- destruction of the fax received in the memory MFl and, - sending a fax to the fax number corresponding to the sender's code, in addition, invoicing of the corresponding service to the sender identified by the code by debiting his code prepayment. 9.4 if the sender's code is correct and the recipient's fax number cannot be read:

- destruction of the fax received in the memory MFl, sending a fax to the sender to warn him of the error, in addition, invoicing the service provision to the sender by debit to his pre¬ account payment.

9.5 if the sender's code is correct and if the prepayment account is exhausted:

- destruction of the fax received in the memory MFl,

- alternatively, send a fax to the sender to indicate that the account is exhausted or insufficient and that the reshipment to the recipient will not take place.

9.6 if the number of pages received is different from the expected number:

- destruction of the fax received in the memory MF1 and,

- sending a fax to the sender to indicate this error; in addition, invoicing of the service to the sender by debit to the prepayment account; 9.7 if everything is correct: - decision to send the fax received to the recipient and, invoicing the service performed to the sender by debit to the prepayment account, in a variant, sending a fax to the 'sender to indicate the redirection to the recipient of the fax and the corresponding characteristics.

The steps which have just been described show that all the received faxes, whether redirected or not, are recorded on the CD-ROM disk as received from the file Fl of the hard disk of the computer 22.

In addition, the F2 and F3 files are saved on the CD-ROM disc and contain the following information:

- those provided by any fax at reception and at transmission, namely:

. date / time of fax,. number of pages transmitted,. duration of emission,

. reception code or error code, etc, ..., - those provided by the identification of the information in part P2 of the first standardized page of the fax, namely:

. the fax number of the recipient,. the sender's fax number,. the sender's subscriber code,

. the sender's telephone number,. the urgency of the fax, - those resulting from the analysis of the identified information and the decision taken, this information may be in the form of codes.

IT management of all these elements can be carried out by database management software of the type sold under the brands

DBASE3, DBASE4 or FOX PRO.

The above description shows that the facsimile certification method according to the invention comprises the following steps: a) transmission by the sender of a facsimile to be certified to the certification system, said facsimile having a format determined for the first page to indicate the characteristics of the sender, recipient and fax, b) reception of the fax to be certified by the certification system and recording of the signals received for each fax in a memory, c) analysis of the signals received for each fax and corresponding to the first page to identify the characteristics of the sender, of the recipient and of the fax, d) analysis of the characteristics of the sender, of the recipient and of the fax, e) in the event that the results of the analysis are not satisfactory, emission of an error message to the sender, f) in the event that the results of the analysis are satisfied doing, sending to the recipient of the received fax, g) recording on the non-rewritable recording medium (32) of the received fax as it is stored in said memory and of the characteristics of the received fax, the decision made and fax re-sent to recipient. In certain circumstances, the sender may be interested in receiving, at its expense, a confirmation by fax of a document sent, for example an order for products and / or services. In this case, the invention provides that the sender sends, by any means, to the addressee of the order, a page whose PI zone includes the mention: "Confirmation Recommended in Pre-Payment".

The P2 area includes the characteristics of the sender and the recipient, but in this case, the recipient is in fact the initial sender who is interested in receiving this confirmation, sender who is a user of the certification system and to whom has been assigned. a code number for prepayment transactions. It is therefore the code number of the original sender that appears on this page. This page can be sent by the original sender either by normal fax, certified fax or any other means.

In order to protect the user of the certification system against unauthorized use of prepayment by a non-user third party, the user code is subject, in a variant, to encryption processing using the transmission to the sender and reverse decryption processing in the certification system. For this purpose, the user of the certification system receives a floppy disk or an electronic card compatible with his facsimile machine which can be a microcomputer equipped with a WINFAX or other device. The floppy disk or electronic card contains software for processing the user code of so as to arrive at a new code which can only be decrypted by the certification system using appropriate software.

This diskette can also contain the format of the first page of the fax, whether it is a "Certified Fax" or a "Recommended Confirmation in Pre-Payment".

Claims

1. Fax certification system by third certification, characterized in that it comprises:

- fax transmission / reception means (12) in which the signals received for each fax are recorded in a memory,

means of identification (14) of the characteristics of the sender and recipient of the fax,

- decision means (16) which, on the basis of identification characteristics and specific criteria, determines whether or not the fax received is redirected to the recipient and whether a message is sent to the sender, and

- Means for recording (18) the received fax and the characteristics of the received fax, the decision taken and the fax forwarded to the recipient on a recording medium of the non-rewritable type.

2. System according to claim 1, characterized in that the fax transmission / reception means

(12), the identification means (14), the decision means (16) and the fax recording means (18) are enclosed in an enclosure (20) under seal.

3. System according to claim 1 or 2, characterized in that the fax transmission / reception means (12), the identification means (14) and the decision means (16) are produced by a computer (22 ) equipped with at least one electronic fax transmission / reception card and software fax transmission / reception, identification, interpretation and comparison of alphanumeric characters.

4. System according to claim 1, 2 or 3, characterized in that the identification means (14) are produced by software for recognizing the characters contained in all or part of the first page of the received fax.

5. System according to claim 1, 2, 3 or 4, characterized in that the recording means (18) comprise an engraving device on a support of the CD-ROM disc type.

6. System according to any one of the preceding claims 1 to 5, characterized in that the decision means comprise at least one memory in which the identification characteristics of the users of the certification system are recorded as well as the amount of the monetary credit. posted to their account for third-party certification operations, said memory being updated as necessary according to new users, payments made by users and third-party certification operations carried out.

7. Fax certification method by third party certification by the certification system according to the preceding claims 1 to 6, characterized in that it comprises the following steps: a) transmission by the sender of a fax to be certified to the system of certification, said fax having a format determined for the first page to indicate the characteristics of the sender, recipient and fax, b) reception of the fax to be certified by the certification system and recording of the signals received for each fax in a memory, c) analysis of the signals received for each fax and corresponding to the first page to identify the characteristics of the sender, recipient and fax, d) analysis of the characteristics of the sender, recipient and fax, e) in case the results of the analysis is not satisfactory, transmission of an error message to the sender, f) in the event that the results of the analysis are satisfactory, transmission to the recipient of the fax received, g) recording on the medium non-rewritable recording (32) of the fax received in the state as recorded in said memory and of the characteristics of the fax received, of the decision taken and fax re-sent to the recipient.

8. Method according to claim 7, characterized in that it further comprises the following step in the case where the senders are users of the certification system with prepayment according to one of claims 1 to 6: - comparison of the characteristics of the sender with those of the users of the certification system to authorize the redirection of the fax received to the recipient only if the sender is a user of the system whose prepayment credit is sufficient with regard to the price of certification.

9. Method according to claim 8, characterized in that the format of the first page of the fax is determined by a computer file supplied to the user.

10. The method of claim 9, characterized in that the format of the first page comprises a code identifying the user, said file further comprising software for encrypting said code to obtain an encrypted code which is decrypted by the certification system according to the invention.

11. Method according to claim 8, 9 or 10, characterized in that step a) is preceded, in the case of a "Recommended Confirmation in Pre-Payment", by a sending by the user to the recipient d 'a first page indicating the user as recipient of the confirmation as well as the user's code encrypted or not.