present invention are of advantage for registering change of ownership of an appliance for example appliance 200 may be an automobile and cc 100 may be used to register a sale of the automobile from a previous owner to a new owner in one embodiment of the present invention change of ownership is registered by a two step process whereby i the previous owner uses cc 100 to relinquish his ownership of appliance 200 and ii the new owner uses cc 100 to register his new ownership of appliance 200 moreover appliance 200 stores the terms of the original warranty for appliance 200 in order that the new owner can determine the terms of the warranty and how much time remains for the warranty in this regard reference is now made to fig8 which is a simplified flowchart of a method for registering change of ownership of an appliance in accordance with an embodiment of the present invention the flowchart of fig8 refers to a previous owner who has transferred ownership of host appliance 200 to a new owner in the embodiment of the present invention shown in fig8 each owner has his own cc 100 at step 810 the previous owners connects his communication card to the host appliance at step 820 the previous owner relinquishes his ownership of the host thereby also relinquishing his rights to any applicable warranties the host sets an ownership flag to indicate that its ownership is currently relinquished i e there is currently no owner at step 830 the new owner connects his communication card to the host appliance in the embodiment showed in fig8 the new owner 39 s communication card has stored therein information about the new owner including inter alia the new owner 39.