Production printers are used to print transactional data like bills and statements. The generation of such transactional data is usually done by generating a base document that contains the fixed or common part of the material to be printed and a variable data part containing the unique or specific information that is relevant to each document to be printed. Examples of such printing are very common, for example, monthly credit card bills.
Often the producer of the transactional data would like to include extra materials along with the bill or other documents. For example, a credit card company may desire to print bill statements as well as related promotional material and mail the packets to its customers. The credit card company's database of its customers may contain information as to who has ordered high valued or a large number of goods. Therefore, the credit card company may decide to print the bills for those customers, as well as tailored promotional material, on special glossy paper in color and using an expensive process that includes printing on a high end color printer. The printed material may also be mailed out using some speedier delivery systems like overnight delivery. Such extra processing is more expensive than the standard processing.
In many cases, the generator of a production printing document and the facility that prints and distributes the document may be separate facilities of the same organization or even separate companies. Even if the document is printed locally with respect to the generator of the document, both are interested in ensuring that only the more expensive processing is done only for those customers that meet some set of criteria.
An additional effect of the generation of documents like those described above is that the printing facility may acquire a significant amount of data from the variable data associated with documents being submitted for printing. If the printing facility were to save this data, it would have the ability to generate additional documents, using the variable data from the documents submitted to it, to target certain people with directed promotional material. Alternatively, the generator of the documents may not include the actual variable data in the document, but instead give the printing facility access to its database that contains the variable data.
This data accumulation or access capability may be used to the advantage of the customers of the printing facility as well as the facility itself. However, the originators of the data need to be assured that the data is only used in ways that the originators desire. Furthermore, it is often necessary to ensure that the data, which may contain private information about customers of the data originator, is properly protected in terms of customer privacy.
Both of these issues center on the ability to control the usage of sets of data that may be associated with another document, or may be separate. The control issues affect both the generators and/or original owners of the data and any subsequent entities that acquire the data.
USPTO Backgrounds
USPTO Backgrounds