Method and device for making documents secure using unique imprint derived from unique marking variations
AssigneeAdvanced Track & Trace
InventorsZbigniew Sagan, Alain Foucou, Jean-Pierre Massicot
Life of this patent
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Abstract
The document identification method includes: a step of generating an image, a step of marking a plurality of documents to form the image on each document with unique variations on each document, the majority of the images formed on the documents presenting a physical anti-copy characteristic satisfying a predefined criterion such that the characteristic of the majority of the copies that can be produced based on these images do not satisfy the pre-defined criterion, a step of characterizing the variations to form a unique imprint of the mark formed, for each document and a step of memorizing the unique imprint.
Claims20
A document identification method, comprising:
- a step of generating a digital image;
- a step of marking the digital image on a plurality of documents to form the digital image as a mark on each document of said plurality of documents with unique variations on each document,
- said unique variations being due to individually unpredictable marking errors, a majority of the marks formed on said documents presenting a physical anti-copy characteristic satisfying a pre-defined criterion such that said characteristic of the majority of the copies that can be produced based on the marks do not satisfy said pre-defined criterion;
- a step of characterizing said unique variations to form a unique imprint of the mark formed for each said document;
- and
- a step of memorizing said unique imprint.
A document processing method, comprising:
- a step of capturing an image of a mark printed on said document;
- a step of extracting a physical anti-copy characteristic of said image;
- a step of determining whether said characteristic satisfies a pre-determined criterion;
- a step of extracting unique variations of said printed mark by processing said image;
- a step of determining an imprint of said unique variations;
- a step of determining whether said determined imprint corresponds to an imprint memorized in a memory;
- and
- if said determined imprint corresponds to a memorized imprint, a step of extracting identification information associated with the memorized imprint from said memory.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.