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US 7,731,435 B2Granted
Techniques for printing with integrated paper sheet identification
AssigneeRicoh Company, Ltd.
InventorsKurt Piersol, Stephen Weyl
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
A printing method and apparatus includes fingerprinting a sheet of printable media such as paper to obtain a fingerprint. The fingerprint is encrypted using an encryption key known only to the user wanting to print the document. The encrypted fingerprint is then encoded and transferred to the document as machine readable information.
Claims20
A method for printing an electronic document comprising:
- a first computer system receiving from a second computer system, separate from the first computer system, a communication to print a document;
- transmitting to the second computer system fingerprint data for at least a first sheet of printable media on which the document is to be printed, the fingerprint data based on data obtained from intrinsic structure of the first sheet of printable media;
- receiving from the second computer system encrypted fingerprint data and a first decryption key, the encrypted fingerprint data comprising an encrypted form of the fingerprint data produced by the second computer system, the first decryption key suitable for decrypting the encrypted fingerprint data to thereby recover the fingerprint data;
- and
- printing the document on the first sheet of printable media, including transferring machine readable information to the first sheet of printable media, wherein the encrypted fingerprint data and the first decryption key can be obtained from the machine readable information.
2 more elements
A printing device comprising:
- a control component configured to control operations in the printing device and to communicate with a computer system that is separate from the printing device and is a source for print requests;
- a source of printable media;
- a fingerprinter operable to obtain fingerprint data from a sheet of printable media, the fingerprint data being determined based on an intrinsic structure of the sheet of printable media;
- and
- a printer component operable to produce printed matter on a sheet of printable material,
- the source of printable media configured to provide a first sheet of printable media in response to receiving a request from the computer system to print an electronic document,
- the control component further configured to:
- cause the fingerprinter to obtain data from a portion of the first sheet of printable media;
- transmit the fingerprint data to the computer system;
- receive fingerprint information from the computer system comprising encrypted fingerprint data produced by the computer system and a first decryption key suitable for decrypting the encrypted fingerprint data to thereby recover the fingerprint data;
- cause the printer component to produce printed matter on the first sheet of printable media;
- and
- transfer machine readable information to the first sheet of printable media, wherein the fingerprint information can be obtained from the machine readable information.
10 more elements
A method for printing an electronic document at a first computer system comprising:
- receiving from a second computer system, separate from the first computer system, a request to print a document;
- transmitting to the second computer system fingerprint data for a first sheet of printable media on which the document is to be printed, the fingerprint data determined from an intrinsic property of the first sheet of printable media, wherein the second computer system encrypts the fingerprint data and stores the encrypted fingerprint data and a first decryption key in a data store, the first decryption key suitable for recovering the fingerprint data from the encrypted fingerprint data;
- receiving from the second computer system a location indication which can be used to obtain from the data store the encrypted fingerprint data and the first decryption key stored therein;
- and
- printing the document on the first sheet of printable media, including transferring machine readable information to the first sheet of printable media, wherein the location indication can be obtained from the machine readable information.
2 more elements
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.