US 6,086,706 A · Document copying deterrent method

Abstract

The present invention is directed to a method of deterring the illicit copying of electronically published documents. It includes utilizing a computer system to electronically publish a plurality of copies of a document having electronically created material thereon for distribution to a plurality of subscribers and operating programming within the computer system so as to perform the identification code functions. The steps are to encode the plurality of copies each with a separate, unique identification code, the identification code being based on a unique arrangement of the electronically created material on each such copy; and, creating a codebook to correlate each such identification code to a particular subscriber. In some embodiments, decoding methods are included with the encoding capabilities. The unique arrangement of the electronically created material may be based on line-shift coding, word-shift coding, or feature enhancement coding (or combinations of these) and may be effected through bitmap alteration of document format file alteration.

Claims25

Dependent claims

A method of deterring illicit copying of electronically published documents, which comprises:

(a) utilizing a computer system to electronically publish a plurality of copies of a document having electronically created material thereon for distribution to a plurality of subscribers;
(b) operating programming within said computer system so as to perform the following steps:
(i) encoding said plurality of copies each with a separate, unique identification code, said identification code being based on a unique arrangement of the electronically created material on each such copy based on line-shift coding, wherein said line-shift coding includes altering a bitmap image of the document to shift locations of at least one line of text relative to other lines of text contained in the document to uniquely encode each copy of the document;
and
(ii) creating a codebook of a plurality of identification codes to correlate each such identification code to a particular subscriber, whereby illicit copies of a document can be traced to the particular subscriber associated with the identification code within the document.

2 more elements

A method of deterring the illicit copying of electronically published documents, which comprises:

(a) utilizing a computer system to electronically publish a plurality of copies of a document having electronically created material including words arranged in a predetermined sequence thereon for distribution to a plurality of subscribers;
(b) operating programming within said computer system so as to perform the following steps:
(i) encoding said plurality of copies each with a separate, unique identification code, said identification code being based on a unique arrangement of the electronically created material on each such copy based on word-shift coding, wherein said word-shift coding includes altering a bitmap image of the document to shift locations of at least one word relative to other words contained in the document to uniquely encode each copy of the document;
and,
(ii) creating a codebook of a plurality of identification codes to correlate each such identification code to a particular subscriber whereby illicit copies of a document can be traced to the particular subscriber associated with the identification code within the document.

2 more elements

A method of deterring the illicit copying of electronically published documents, which comprises:

(a) utilizing a computer system to electronically publish a plurality of copies of a document having electronically created material including standardized print features thereon for distribution to a plurality of subscribers;
(b) operating programming within said computer system so as to perform the following steps:
(i) encoding said plurality of copies each with a separate, unique identification code, said identification code being based on a unique arrangement of the electronically created material on each such copy based on feature-altered coding, wherein said feature-altered coding includes altering a bitmap image of the document to alter at least one print feature relative to said standardized print features;
and,
(ii) creating a codebook of a plurality of identification codes to correlate each such identification code to a particular subscriber whereby illicit copies of a document can be traced to the particular subscriber associated with the identification code within the document.

2 more elements

Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.

Document copying deterrent method

Life of this patent

Document copying deterrent method

Life of this patent

Abstract

Claims25