Secure and efficient agent-based resale of rights to tangible and intangible goods

Recent years have seen a rapid expansion of electronic trading over the Internet. A wide range of different business models is being used in this process, including auctions, E-Malls and ECommunities. Until now, the existing systems focus on selling from the original producer / issuer to the end consumer. But there are other markets, which are for reselling products. In this situation of resale the seller will have different uncertainties, if this resale is done totally in an electronic way. The problem will be more difficult to solve, if the marketplace is based on agents or the resellers and buyers are agents. This paper describes a secure electronic transfer system, which can be used to extend existing agent based marketplaces. It opens up a whole range of new possibilities: It is possible to unambiguously identify physical and digital goods, to allocate them to an owner or agent, and furthermore enable the agent to transfer or sell and resell rights to goods securely to another agent at any time.