US 7,533,044 B2
System for sale of consumer goods
Nicholas Arthur Scott, Minden (Germany)
Assigned to Vensafe ASA, Gressvik (Norway)
Filed on May 07, 2002, as Appl. No. 10/141,022.
Claims priority of application No. 20020893 (NO), filed on Feb. 22, 2002; application No. 20020905 (NO), filed on Feb. 25, 2002; and application No. 20021679 (NO), filed on Apr. 10, 2002.
Prior Publication US 2003/0163407 A1, Aug. 28, 2003
Int. Cl. G06Q 40/00 (2006.01)
U.S. Cl. 705—35  [705/65; 705/66; 705/67] 26 Claims
OG exemplary drawing
 
1. A system for sale of consumer goods, the system comprising,
an article token selection panel device activatable by a customer, the device displaying different articles of merchandise or representations thereof and including manually activatable selection means for selecting one of the different articles by a customer upon activation of the device,
a printer controlled by the article token selection panel device for providing a customer with a non-validated token that corresponds to an article of merchandise selected by the customer, when the article token selection panel device is activated by the customer,
the printer having means for printing the non-validated token with article identifying information for the article of merchandise selected by the customer upon activation of the article token selection panel device,
a checkout unit for customer payment for the selected article when checking out the non-validated token at the checkout unit,
an article dispensing device linked with the checkout unit via communication means, the checkout unit configured to provide the article dispensing device with a first transaction code following said payment for the selected article,
means for providing the customer with a validated token following said payment, said validated token carrying a second transaction code, validated for use in obtaining the bought selected article from the article dispensing device,
a comparator device at said article dispensing device for comparing the second transaction code on the validated token as input to the comparator device with the first transaction code communicated by the communication means from the checkout unit to the article dispensing device, and
means in the article dispensing device for delivery of the bought selected article upon a defined code match between the first and second transaction codes,
wherein the non-validated token carries information related to the type of article and wherein the type-of-article information is elected from the group of: numerical code, bar-code, EAN code, UPC-code, magnetically readable code, rf-tag readable code, manually interpretable article identification, and wherein the type-of-article information is in addition elected from the group of: animation of the article, name of article, article price, a unique token number, and wherein the unique token number is generated serially or randomly by the printer.