WO2009010854A2

WO2009010854A2 - Method for the creation of a standardised management system for analogic and digital deeds and documents for the purpose of security, ascertainment of paternity, origin, anticounterfeiting, filing, electronic storage and preservation of records

Info

Publication number: WO2009010854A2
Application number: PCT/IB2008/001846
Authority: WO
Inventors: Glauco Riem
Original assignee: Glauco Riem
Priority date: 2007-07-17
Filing date: 2008-07-15
Publication date: 2009-01-22
Also published as: ITVI20070202A1; WO2009010854A3

Abstract

The method for creation and unified management of deeds and documents, both analogical and digital, comprises a first phase of composition of a digital document by means of IT or telematic tools, a second phase of signing of the digital document by affixing the digital signature of the declarant, and is characterised in that it comprises a third phase of transfer of the digital document and the digital signature onto one RFID tag included in a printable laminar support, the RFID tag being suitable for storing only the content of the document and of the digital signature.

Description

"METHOD FOR THE CREATION OF A STANDARDISED MANAGEMENT SYSTEM FOR ANALOGIC AND DIGITAL DEEDS AND DOCUMENTS FOR THE PURPOSE OF SECURITY, ASCERTAINMENT OF PATERNITY, ORIGIN, ANTICOUNTERFEITING, FILING, ELECTRONIC STORAGE AND PRESERVATION OF RECORDS". DESCRIPTION

The invention concerns a method for creation and management of analogical and digital deeds and documents in order to ensure total security of the originality of the declarations expressed therein by parties in juridical and other sectors, and for the purposes of ascertainment of paternity and origin, and to prevent and avoid forgery, facilitate filing, storage and any preservation of records.

The same invention also concerns the product obtained by applying the above- mentioned method.

The critical aspect of safe management of analogical (paper) documents is the ease with which they can be falsified or forged for many different purposes. The recent directives and community and national laws (see Directive 99/93/EC, Presidential Decree 445/2000, Legislative Decree 82/2006) have attributed legal validity to deeds, data and documents formed by the public administration and private individuals by means of IT or telematic tools, to contracts stipulated in the same forms, and the filing and transmission thereof by means of IT tools, and to electronic documents if signed by digital signature device.

Said law therefore attributes equal juridical value to said electronic deeds and documents as that traditionally attributed to analogical (paper) documents signed by autograph signature.

Equal validity has been attributed to the electronic deeds and documents formed using the above tools, in addition to the procedures for filing and transmission, again by means of said IT tools, on condition that they are signed using digital signature devices issued by the certification bodies. In article 21 , the Italian legislative decree no. 82/2005 establishes, with referral to the Civil Code, that the digital signature (or other qualified electronic signature) "is fully valid until action for forgery is taken if the party against whom the deed is produced recognises the signature thereof, or if the latter is legally considered as recognised", thus equating the electronic document signed by digital signature with the private deed signed by autograph signature.

The aforesaid laws currently indicate to all operators a two-tier system for attribution of authenticity, referability, origin and non-repudiability of the declarations contained in both electronic documents and analogical (paper) documents.

This has created and continues to create dyscrasia in adoption of the two systems which are always used as alternatives to each other.

Consequently even if the operator who creates a document uses a digital word processing system, he normally prints the document on paper and signs it by autograph signature in order to give the declarations contained, in a contract for example, legal validity and effectiveness.

According to the current European legislation, however, an operator who creates a deed or a document on electronic support and signs it with his own digital signature device, in order to make his declarations fully valid and effective, obtains full legal validity and protection under the above legislation on condition that he correctly applies the prescriptions and technical procedures established by said legislation.

However, a first drawback of this latter procedure consists in the fact that in order to materially read the deed and the document formed electronically and in order to ascertain the authenticity thereof, the operator must necessarily use a computer, which is not always readily available.

Furthermore the above-mentioned two-tier analogical and digital system currently used to attribute authenticity and validity to deeds and documents has the limit of generating dyscrasia between the two systems, which are almost always used as alternatives to each other and when used together give rise to dangerous situations: often, in fact, the inattentive operator signs an electronic deed or document with the digital signature device, then makes a few small amendments and, after printing said deed or document with amendments, affixes his autograph signature in the mistaken belief that the second and not the first version is effective and valid.

The first object of the present invention is to overcome the limitations and drawbacks referred to above.

The present invention, in fact, aims to implement the functions and security features of each of the two systems, analogical and digital, which, instead of being used alternatively and separately, become corresponding, complementary and combined.

A further objective of said invention is for the above two systems to guarantee, reciprocally, the authenticity of the declarations made by the operator, and entered in the various formats of the deeds and documents that contain them, via simultaneous autograph and digital signature.

The above-mentioned objects are achieved by the creation of a method for unified management of deeds and documents both in analogical and digital form which, in accordance with the contents of the first claim, comprises a first phase of composition of a digital document by means of IT and/or telematic tools and a second phase of signing of said digital deed or document by affixing the digital signature of the operator, said method being characterised in that it comprises a third phase of transfer of said digital document and digital signature onto at least one RFID tag included in a printable laminar support; said RFID tag is suitable for storing the contents of the electronic document and the digital signature affixed thereon.

In accordance with the contents of the second claim, the method furthermore comprises a fourth phase of affixing on said printable laminar support the autograph signature of the operator which confirms and further corroborates the identical declarations expressed in the electronic format assisted by the digital signature already associated with the document.

The same method, in accordance with the contents of the third claim, provides for implementation of the above defined third phase of transfer in unicum of the documentation thus formed (declarations made in the deed or document in analogical and electronic format) via a printer modified so as to use special type laminar supports for printing, each one including at least one RFID tag. Advantageously, the invention permits printing of the text of the deed or document on supports consisting of sheets of paper with traditional formats and composition.

This allows the operator to immediately check and directly read each page of the paper document printed and signed with autograph signature, and to verify - by means of the necessary electronic equipment described below - the identical and corresponding contents of the electronic document bearing the digital signature of the person who has made the declarations in the deed or document. The objects and advantages mentioned, in addition to others which will be specified subsequently in the present description, will be better clarified with reference to an example of application of the method in question which refers preferably, but not exclusively, to the juridical and judicial sector.

Said application example concerns the creation of a doubly original and authentic document which is illustrated schematically in the attached drawing at the foot of the present description.

The method of the invention can be implemented due to the results of the latest technological developments in new generation IT supports, mainly the

RFID Tag (or Radio Frequency IDentification Tags).

As is known, this is a technology for the automatic identification of objects and other which is based on remote reading of information previously entered in an

RFID TAG (or transponder) using the appropriate RFID UHF readers and antennae.

Each RFID TAG consists of:

- a microchip which contains data, including one single universal number written on the silicon which composes it;

- an antenna,

- a battery (only in active tags).

Without going into further detail concerning the various applications of the technology in question, at the moment the method of the invention uses passive RFID Tags, i.e. without their own power supply (of the write once and read many type), but, looking ahead to future evolution of chip miniaturisation, the system described here also envisages the possible use of active RFID

TAG chips.

To permit transfer onto the above-mentioned IT support of approximately two thousand characters in electronic form corresponding to the graphic content of a page of text signed by digital signature, as provided for by the current legislation, one or more chips are required with an overall memory of at least two kbit.

The commonest passive type RFID contains a microchip connected to an antenna; it is powered by an RFID UHF reader.

The tag has reached such small dimensions that it can be easily inserted in a plastic film (inlay) or be layered in a self-adhesive label (smart label).

The invention described here, however, requires recourse to the latest technology in which the chips are embedded in sheets of ordinary paper, i.e. tags included or stamped in the paper which, also to ensure greater security, cannot be separated from it.

The results of recent research carried out in Germany have shown that the best results in terms of development of microscopic plastic chips and antennae produced using conductive inks and polymers, all printable on thin sheets, have been obtained by printing on recycled photocopy paper. This strengthens the belief that further rapid developments in material technology and printing techniques will make applications of the method of the invention increasingly easy, widespread and advantageous, extending it to the storage of images and topographies with evolution of technology in the RFID Tag sector, increasing the storage capacity of the chip and at the same time reducing its dimensions.

As can be seen in Fig. 1 , the procedures for application of the method comprise a first phase of composition of the document via the use of a computer or an IT or telematic means, such as the computer indicated by 1. Said first phase is followed by a second phase in which the digital signature contained in the SMART card 2 is affixed on the document to certify the origin of the declarations made in said document.

The text and the digital signature will be saved in a traditional magnetic support, the most suitable for the purpose and following the known procedures. The next innovative phase of the method of the invention provides for transfer of said document and digital signature combined with it to an electronic apparatus 3, which is able to simultaneously read/write the tag 4 included in the paper support 5, and print the document on said paper support. Advantageously, a modified laser printer of known type can be used for the above-mentioned functions.

The software provided permits synchronisation of the printing of one single sheet of paper 5 with reading/writing of the memory of the tags 4. In this way the document in analogical (paper) form 6 produced by the above- mentioned electronic apparatus 3 stores in the tag 4 the contents of the document/digital signature and also makes the text of the document immediately legible without requiring the use of a computer. Using a suitable management software for reading the document created, said document can be read via trays which contain an antenna (these already exist on the market).

The document can also be transferred from the tray to a computer, even remote.

It is always possible to check the identity of the printed text with that contained in the tag by means of an RFID UHF tag reader, even of the manual type.

Lastly, with the method conceived, the analog text can be validated by the holder of the digital signature contained in the tag 4 as above by affixing, at the foot of the document, the autograph signature 7 corresponding to said digital signature.

The autograph signature certifies perfect correspondence between what is printed and what is stored in the tag.

For greater functionality, the operator may furthermore directly transfer the same documental content onto his computer or into a central information system, even without recourse to the current optical storage devices.

This will then enable the persons in charge of preservation of the deeds and documents thus produced to manage the same by proceeding directly with preservation of the records on CD or other support, thus eliminating the current procedure which uses OCR (Optical Character Recognition) systems, which by their very nature oblige the operators to meticulously check the correctness of the storage.

A further advantage in management of the documents in question, for Italian operators for example, will be the possibility of complete formation of the information file as established by art. 41 of the Legislative Decree 82/05 "Code of digital administration", also for the purposes of sharing between several public administration departments the contents of the deeds and documents of administrative proceedings, in order to meet the need for increasing transparency in administration.

Obviously the set of tags contained in the individual printed sheets forming a multi-sheet document must also contain a collision-avoidance IT device to permit unique, distinct linear and simultaneous reading of the contents of the above-mentioned set of tags printed on as many sheets of paper as are necessary to contain the entire document of the file.

In this way, the further advantage consists in overcoming the problem connected with verification and certainty of the authenticity of the analogical printing of the original digital document, formed and signed with digital signature device.

This avoids having to use the so-called "digital stamp" which has to be stamped on the paper support to indicate correspondence of the contents in the various separate digital and analogical formats.

Further important advantages of the system of the invention lie in the fact that the joint digital-analogical document acquires an absolute guarantee of originality, origin and non-modifiability, via a dual verification system which definitively excludes possible forgeries or illegal duplications.

The above description and illustration with reference to the preferred application of the method in question to the judicial sector does not limit in any way application of said method to various other sectors in which the above advantages are desired.

By way of example the following uses are mentioned:

- in the composition of banknotes in place of or in conjunction with the watermark;

- in the drawing up of certificates of credit or bills of exchange;

- in unique documents which give the bearer a title such as treasury bills, treasury credit certificates, share certificates and similar;

- in notarial deeds, balance sheets, explanatory notes, minutes of meetings, public administration documents, writs of execution, court decisions and all other deeds which must be protected against any type of alteration or forgery.

All the deeds and documents produced by means of the method described and illustrated above must be considered protected by the present invention.

The hardware devices necessary for application of the invention are known electronic devices hence they are not included in the claims.

It will be necessary to use equipment for writing and reading the tags as anticipated above, document trays provided with reading antenna and other devices which will be developed by the new technologies and made available for use by the innovative idea and products claimed below.

Where technical features mentioned in any claim are followed by reference signs, those reference sings have been included for the sole purpose of increasing the intelligibility of the claims and accordingly such reference signs do not have any limiting effect on the interpretation of each element identified by way of example by such reference signs.

Claims

1) Method for creation and unified management of deeds and documents, both analogical and digital, comprising a first phase of composition of a digital document by means of IT or telematic tools, a second phase of signing of said digital document by affixing the digital signature of the declarant, characterised in that it comprises a third phase of transfer of said digital document and said digital signature onto at least one RFID tag included in a printable laminar support, said at least one RFID tag being suitable for storing only the content of said document and said digital signature.

2) Method as claimed in claim 1), characterised in that it comprises a fourth phase of affixing on said laminar support the autograph signature corresponding to said digital signature.

3) Method as claimed in claim 1), characterised in that said third phase is performed by means of a printer modified so as to permit printing of the digital document and storage of the equal content of the document on said RFID tag included in said laminar support.

4) Product produced according to the method of claim 1), characterised in that each laminar support (5) includes at least one RFID tag (4) which stores only the text and the digital signature of each page of a document to be authenticated, said laminar support bearing said text in analog form.

5) Product as claimed in claim 4), characterised in that said laminar support is a sheet of paper.

6) Product as claimed in claim 4), characterised in that said laminar support bears the autograph signature corresponding to said digital signature.

7) Product as claimed in claim 4), characterised in that said laminar support is a banknote replacing or comprising the watermark.

8) Product as claimed in claim 4), characterised in that said laminar support is the sheet of a bill of exchange, a certificate of credit, a state bond, a share certificate or similar.

9) Product as claimed in claim 4), characterised in that said laminar support is a thin sheet of a special polyester.