Patent 8099791 was granted and assigned to Lexmark International, Inc. on January, 2012 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
A method of generating an authentication code for a consumable in an imaging device, includes the steps of: an identification number assigned to the consumable; processing an indemnification number assigned to the consumable using a first algorithm to generate a preliminary number different from the identification number; and compressing the preliminary number using a compression algorithm that utilizes the identification number to generate the authentication code.