Abstract: A document transfer system enabling a consumer to obtain a document from an owner upon payment using a cryptographic protocol involving the consumer, the owner, a document source, such as printer, and a mediator, according to which protocol the consumer requests a document, the owner provides the source with first and third portions of the key and provides the mediator with a fourth portion of the key, which fourth portion can combine with said first portion to generate the complete key, the consumer provides the owner with the payment and the owner provides the source with a second portion of the key which can combine with said first portion to generate the complete key.

Abstract: A document transfer system enabling a consumer to obtain a document from an owner upon payment uses a cryptographic protocol involving the consumer, the owner, a document source, such as a printer, and a mediator, the protocol comprising the following steps:

Abstract: In a distributed computing environment, a user is able to send a document to a secure printer (140) in such a way that only a specified intended recipient can print the document. When the user specifies that the document is to be printed securely, a special print job is created in which the document is encrypted using a session key and a bulk encryption algorithm, and the session key is encrypted using the intended recipient's public key. Then, the encrypted session key, the encrypted document and an indication of the intended recipient's identity is transmitted to a print server (130), where the print job is held. When the recipient's smart card (145) is inserted into a smart card reader of the secure printer (140), the recipient's identity, taken from the smart card (145), is transmitted to the print server (130). The print server uses the identity to search for and retrieve documents intended for the recipient.

Abstract: The present invention relates to scribble matching methods, ie. methods for searching samples of electronic ink without having first to translate the ink into ASCII text. The methods of the present invention find application in pen-based computer devices. The invention entails the identification and encoding of velocity minima in the input scribble. Three scribble matching algorithms are described--a syntactic matcher, a word matcher and an elastic matcher. The syntactic matcher encodes the input scribble according to the shape of the scribble in the region of the velocity minima. The word matcher encodes the input scribble according to the heights of the velocity minima from a reference line, using a continuous height encoding scheme. The elastic matcher encodes the input scribble according to a classification of the velocity minima and intermediate points.