Patent Application Titled “Renewing Of Digital Identity Documents” Published Online (USPTO 20230171113): Thales

2023 JUN 16 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Insurance Daily News -- According to news reporting originating from Washington, D.C., by NewsRx journalists, a patent application by the inventors DAVID, Martin (Praha, CZ); MAUNIER, Gerald (Sanary-Sur-Mer, FR); SCHALLDACH, Thomas (Bustehrad, CZ); WEBSTER, Michael (Vantaa, FI), filed on March 29, 2021, was made available online on June 1, 2023.

The assignee for this patent application is Thales (Meudon, France).

Reporters obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “It is known that, institutions or authorities, such as government agencies (e.g., department of motor vehicles), issue identity cards or documents which may be used to identify a person or verify aspects of a person’s personal identity. Identity document may include, for example, a driver’s license, a fishing license, a hunting license, a passport, a health insurance card, a firearm owner’s identification card, a boating license, a commercial driver’s license, etc. Identity documents also give permission to perform certain activities, like driving or fishing and under which circumstances the identified person is allowed to do so.

“Currently, there is a trend for the issuing authorities to issue digital identity documents.

“A digital identity document is an electronic form of the physical identity document. It is issued to a device (e.g., mobile phone, smart car) from where it can be used, both online and offline.

“In order to enhance the reliability of the digital identity document, especially as it can be used offline and there may be insufficient means for checking if it is valid or not (e.g., expired, revoked), the digital identity document has a very short validity period and must be frequently renewed.

“In the current state of the art, in order to renew a digital identity document, full data preparation of the digital identity document must be performed. In other words, each time the digital identity document needs to be renewed, basically the same process as for its issuance (or production) needs to be performed all over again by an issuer of the digital identity document, for example, retrieving properties (e.g. personal data of a user, data related to the issuer, data about what activities the document allows the user to do, and under which circumstances, etc.) to be used in the document, calculating derived values (e.g. hashes, signatures) of the received properties, etc. Each time the digital identity document is renewed, the whole digital identity document needs to be generated and transmitted to the user so that the user can download it in his/her device (e.g. mobile phone).

“Consequently, the renewing mechanism of the prior art greatly increases the load on traditional IT systems of the issuing authorities, which normally issue physical documents that are valid for years or decades and may lack sufficient capabilities of frequently renewing digital identity documents which have a very short validity period.

“The current renewal mechanism also limits the issuing authorities to delegate the renewal tasks to service providers which have more powerful IT capabilities, because the service providers are often constricted by regulations in terms of collecting personal data.

“Even if the issuing authorities delegates the renewal tasks to particular authorized service providers, the IT capabilities of the service providers may be importantly affected by the heavy renewing process of the prior art. Thus, even these service providers may not guaranty an efficient renewing of the digital identity documents facing with the frequent renewal requirements.

“Hence, the current process in renewing digital identity documents is subject to several drawbacks.”

In addition to obtaining background information on this patent application, NewsRx editors also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent application: “In order to solve the above mentioned technical problem, the present invention provides a lightweight renewal mechanism for digital identity documents which allows renewing the digital identity documents in a more efficient manner and thus enables to reduce the burden on issuers of the digital identity documents.

“In a particular embodiment of the present invention, a method for facilitating the renewing of a digital identity document comprises the following steps of:

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“receiving by a renewal system a request for renewing a digital identity document from a device of a user of the digital identity document or a device of a verifier needing to inspect the digital identity document;

“checking by the renewal system whether the digital identity document can be renewed;

“if the check result is positive, creating by the renewal system an up-to-date validity-related data item to be associated with the digital identity document and to be inspected by a verifier when the validity of said digital identity document must be assessed;

“sending by the renewal system the up-to-date validity-related data item to a device of a user of the digital identity document;

“receiving by the device of the user of the digital identity document the up-to-date validity-related data item from the renewal system (103); and

“replacing by the device of the user of the digital identity document a validity-related data item previously associated with the digital identity document with the up-to-date validity-related data item at the user’s side.

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“In a particular embodiment of the present invention, the validity-related data item is a data item outside the digital identity document.

“In a particular embodiment of the present invention, the method further comprises:

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“including a creation date of the up-to-date validity-related data item in the up-to-date validity-related data item,

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“wherein the digital identity document comprises a renewing policy, and wherein the creation date and the renewing policy are suitable to be inspected by the verifier in order to determine whether the digital identity document is outdated.

“In a particular embodiment of the present invention, the renewing policy is a predetermined duration.

“In a particular embodiment of the present invention, the method further comprises:

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“providing up-to-date expiration information of said up-to-date validity-related data item in said up-to-date validity-related data item

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“In a particular embodiment of the present invention, the method further comprises:

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“providing a certificate of a creator of the up-to-date validity-related data item in the up-to-date validity-related data item,

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“wherein the digital identity document comprises a reference to an allowed creator of the up-to-date validity-related data item.

“In a particular embodiment of the present invention, the digital identity document comprises a certificate of a Certificate Authority, and the certificate of the creator of the validity-related data item is signed by the Certificate Authority.

“In a particular embodiment of the present invention, data included in the up-to-date validity-related data item is signed by a creator of the up-to-date validity-related data item.

“In a particular embodiment of the present invention, the up-to-date validity-related data item is a data component of the digital identity document, the method further comprising:

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“providing up-to-date expiration information of the digital identity document in the up-to-date validity-related data item.

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“In a particular embodiment of the present invention, the number of the validity-related data items is more than one, each validity-related data item comprising expiration-related information.

“In a particular embodiment of the present invention, the method further comprises:

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“calculating a derived value of the up-to-date validity-related data item by using a derivation function;

“signing said derived value and derived values of other data components of the digital identity document as a signed data object;

“sending the signed data object to the user.

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“In a particular embodiment of the present invention, a system comprises:

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“a renewal system configured to:

“receive a request for renewing a digital identity document from a device of a user of the digital identity document or a device of a verifier needing to inspect the digital identity document;

“check whether the digital identity document can be renewed;

“if the check result is positive, create an up-to-date validity-related data item to be associated with the digital identity document and to be inspected by a verifier when the validity of the digital identity document must be assessed;

“send the up-to-date validity-related data item to a device of a user of the digital identity document;

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“the device of the user of the digital identity document configured to:

“receive the up-to-date validity-related data item from the renewal system;

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“replace a validity-related data item previously associated with the digital identity document with the up-to-date validity-related data item at the user’s side.

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“The foregoing has outlined rather generally the features and technical advantages of one or more embodiments of the present invention in order that the detailed description of the present invention that follows may be better understood. Additional features and advantages of the present invention will be described hereinafter which may form the subject of the claims of the present invention.

“The advantages and features of the system and the computer program according to the embodiments of the present invention are the same with those of the above described method and will not be repeated here.

“It is to be understood that both the foregoing general description and the following detailed description are exemplary and explanatory only and are not restrictive of the invention, as claimed.

“Specific embodiments in this invention have been shown by way of example in the foregoing drawings and are hereinafter described in detail. The figures and written description are not intended to limit the scope of the inventive concepts in any manner. Rather, they are provided to illustrate the inventive concepts to a person skilled in the art by reference to particular embodiments.”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A method for facilitating the renewing of a digital identity document, the method comprising the following steps of: receiving by a renewal system a request for renewing a digital identity document from a device of a user of said digital identity document or a device of a verifier needing to inspect said digital identity document; checking by said renewal system whether said digital identity document can be renewed; when the check result is positive, creating by said renewal system an up-to-date validity-related data item to be associated with said digital identity document and to be inspected by a verifier when the validity of said digital identity document must be assessed; sending by said renewal system said up-to-date validity-related data item to a device of a user of said digital identity document; receiving by the device of the user of said digital identity document said up-to-date validity-related data item from said renewal system; and replacing by said device of the user a validity-related data item previously associated with said digital identity document with said up-to-date validity-related data item at the user’s side.

“2. The method according to claim 1, wherein said validity-related data item is a data item that is suitable to exist outside said digital identity document.

“3. The method according to claim 2, the method further comprising: including a creation date of said up-to-date validity-related data item in said up-to-date validity-related data item, wherein said digital identity document comprises a renewing policy, and wherein said creation date and said renewing policy are suitable to be inspected by said verifier in order to determine whether said digital identity document is outdated.

“4. The method according to claim 3, wherein said renewing policy is a predetermined duration.

“5. The method according to claim 2, the method further comprising: providing up-to-date expiration information of said up-to-date validity-related data item in said up-to-date validity-related data item.

“6. The method according to claim 5, wherein the method further comprises: providing a certificate or an identifier of a creator of said up-to-date validity-related data item in said up-to-date validity-related data item, wherein said digital identity document comprises a certificate or an identifier to an allowed creator of said up-to-date validity-related data item.

“7. The method according to claim 6, wherein said up-to-date validity-related data item comprises a digital signature of a Certificate Authority signing a certificate or an identifier of the creator of said up-to-date validity-related data item, and said digital identity document comprises a digital signature of said Certificate Authority signing a certificate or an identifier to an allowed creator of said up-to-date validity-related data item.

“8. The a method according to claim 6, wherein data included in said up-to-date validity-related data item is signed by a creator of said up-to-date validity-related data item.

“9. The method according to claim 7, wherein, when said request is received from said verifier, said up-to-date validity-related data item is sent to a device of said verifier.

“10. The method according to claim 1, wherein said up-to-date validity-related data item is a data that is suitable to exist inside said digital identity document.

“11. The method according to claim 10, the method further comprising: providing up-to-date expiration information of said digital identity document in said up-to-date validity-related data item.

“12. The method according to claim, wherein the number of said validity-related data items is more than one, each validity-related data item comprising expiration-related information.

“13. The method according to claim 12, wherein the method further comprises: calculating a derived value of the up-to-date validity-related data item by using a derivation function; signing the calculated derived value and derived values of other data components of the digital identity document as a signed data object; and sending said signed data object to the user.

“14. The method according to claim 13, wherein, when said request is received from an issuer of said digital identity document, said up-to-date validity-related data item is sent to a device of said issuer so that a validity-related data item previously associated with said digital identity document can be replaced by said up-to-date validity-related data item at the issuer’s side.

“15. The system for facilitating the renewing of a digital identity document, comprising: a renewal system configured to: receive a request for renewing a digital identity document from a device of a user of said digital identity document or a device of a verifier needing to inspect said digital identity document; check whether said digital identity document can be renewed; when the check result is positive, create an up-to-date validity-related data item to be associated with said digital identity document and to be inspected by a verifier when the validity of said digital identity document must be assessed; send said up-to-date validity-related data item to a device of a user of said digital identity document; the device of the user of said digital identity document configured to: receive said up-to-date validity-related data item from said renewal system replace a validity-related data item previously associated with said digital identity document with said up-to-date validity-related data item at the user’s side.”

For more information, see this patent application: DAVID, Martin; MAUNIER, Gerald; SCHALLDACH, Thomas; WEBSTER, Michael. Renewing Of Digital Identity Documents. U.S. Patent Application Number 20230171113, filed March 29, 2021 and posted June 1, 2023. Patent URL (for desktop use only): https://ppubs.uspto.gov/pubwebapp/external.html?q=(20230171113)&db=US-PGPUB&type=ids

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