Abstract: Products such as instant lottery tickets, pull-tabs, coupons, and gift cards including multi-purpose indicators that function with multiple different systems to enable activation, validation, purchase, use, and/or redemption by such multiple different systems.

Abstract: Some example embodiments of the present invention address growing demand by lottery customers for expanded gaming options and new gaming concepts. Example embodiments may include methods and systems for providing a shared centralized gaming host which implements software as a service concepts for lottery and other wagering games.

Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention provide a method and system for authentication. In one embodiment, a first identifier associated with an item to be authenticated may be received. A first decryption key associated with the item may also be received. The first identifier may be decrypted using the first decryption key to generate a second identifier. The contents of an authentication database may be searched to find a match for the second identifier. If a match for the second identifier is found in the authentication database, the item may be confirmed as authentic. In embodiments of the present invention, the item may be a lottery ticket, a document, a receipt, a ticket, a credit card, etc.

Abstract: Embodiments of the present invention provide a platform-independent execution environment for executing embedded instructions. In one example, the instructions may be embedded in an active barcode format. In this embodiment a barcode encoded with an instruction may be read. A machine executable instruction may be generated based on the read barcode using a virtual machine. The machine executable instruction may be executed using the virtual machine.