JP2009272796A - Image forming apparatus - Google Patents

Abstract

<P>PROBLEM TO BE SOLVED: To provide an image forming apparatus for efficiently extracting security addition information embedded in an original. <P>SOLUTION: The image forming apparatus includes: a two-dimensional bar code generating means; an embedding position setting means for setting a position where a two-dimensional bar code is to be embedded; a two-dimensional bar code composing means for composing the two-dimensional bar codes generated by the two-dimensional bar code generating means at a set position of image data; a means for printing image data including the two-dimensional bar code composed by the two-dimensional bar code composing means; a means for cutting out four corners of the image data from image data read by a scanner; a means for decoding the two-dimensional bar code from the image data cut out of the four corners of the image data; and a control means for performing control so that two-dimensional bar codes in the remaining three corners of the image data are not decoded when a two-dimensional bar code of one of the four corners of the image data is decodable. <P>COPYRIGHT: (C)2010,JPO&INPIT

Description

  The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus. More specifically, the present invention relates to an image forming apparatus that can efficiently decode a QR code in scanning a document on which a two-dimensional barcode (QR code) has been printed.

  With the promotion of IT in offices, interest in security has increased in recent years. For example, there are frequent incidents of leakage of customer information held by companies, which threatens the confidentiality of organizations and the privacy of individuals, which is a major social problem.

  In order to deal with these problems, the introduction of IT (Information Technology) mechanisms, such as the access authority for electronic confidential information and the installation of a monitoring device in the firewall, has been implemented to prevent leakage outside the company. It has been broken. Alternatively, measures are taken such as prohibiting the taking and taking of portable media such as notebook PCs and USB memories to the office. In the case of electronic confidential information, it is possible to guard to some extent by implementing measures using the IT mechanism as described above. This is possible because electronic information can be referenced only by using IT, and a mechanism can be easily introduced therein.

  On the other hand, when confidential information is printed on a paper medium by an image forming apparatus or the like, confirmation and prohibition of taking out paper on which confidential information of an organization or personal private information is printed is based on the conventional IT mechanism as described above. It is possible to bypass. For this reason, it is more difficult than restricting taking out electronic confidential information, and it is difficult to maintain security.

In order to cope with this problem, various information leakage countermeasure means have been conventionally devised.
As a first information leakage countermeasure, a system that embeds tracking information in addition to an image of the main body on a paper medium itself at the time of printing by using a known digital watermark (watermark) technique or an information embedding technique such as a QR code is conventionally used. It has been devised. According to these systems, if information leakage occurs due to a paper medium, it is possible to extract tracking information by analyzing the leaked document. Therefore, it is possible to pursue responsibility for unintentional document take-out from the tracking information, and a deterrent effect can be expected.

  Further, as a second information leakage countermeasure means, a conventional system that embeds copy restriction information that prohibits copying in a paper medium itself when printing is performed using a known digital watermark (watermark) technology or QR code technology. Has been. In this system, at the time of copying in a corresponding image forming apparatus, it is possible to detect whether or not copying is possible by extracting the copy restriction information, thereby controlling the continuation or cancellation of copying for each page. In addition to simple copy restrictions, a method has also been proposed in which password information and permitted user information are embedded as condition information to permit copying only to specific users. For example, Patent Document 1 has been proposed as this type of system. The tracking information and the copy restriction information are collectively referred to as “security additional information” below.

JP 2003-280469 A

However, in order to limit the copy operation using the QR code printed on the original as described above, the following two processes are added to the conventional copy operation in which the QR code is not embedded. Necessary.
1. A QR code is extracted from the image data acquired by the scanner.
2. Security additional information is extracted by decoding the QR code.
For this reason, the productivity of copying deteriorates.

  In order to solve the above problems, an image forming apparatus according to the present invention includes a two-dimensional barcode generation unit that generates a two-dimensional barcode and a two-dimensional barcode generation unit that reads image data read by a scanner. An embedding position setting means for setting a position for embedding the generated two-dimensional barcode, and the two-dimensional barcode generated by the two-dimensional barcode generating means are combined with the position of the image data set by the embedding position setting means. 4 corners of the image data from the image data read by the scanner, the image data including the 2D barcode synthesized by the 2D barcode synthesis means, the 2D barcode synthesis means Means for cutting out, means for decoding a two-dimensional barcode from image data cut out from four corners of the image data, and image data And a means for controlling so as not to decode the two-dimensional barcodes of the remaining three corners of the image data when one of the four corners can be decoded. To do.

  According to the present invention, it is possible to efficiently extract additional security information embedded in a document.

<Embodiment 1>
Embodiments according to the present invention will be described below.
FIG. 1 is a diagram illustrating an image forming apparatus. The scanner unit 113 shown in FIG. 1 inputs reflected light obtained by exposing and scanning an image on a document to a photosensitive element such as a CCD (Charge Coupled Devices) or a CIS (Contact Image Sensor). Thereby, the image information is converted into an electrical signal. The scanner unit 113 further converts the electric signal into a luminance signal composed of R, G, and B colors, and outputs the luminance signal as image data.

  The document is set on the tray 102 of the document feeder 101. When the user gives an instruction to start reading from the operation unit 112, an original reading instruction is given to the scanner unit 113. Upon receiving this instruction, the scanner unit 113 feeds documents one by one from the tray 102 of the document feeder 101, and performs a document reading operation. The document reading method may be a method of scanning the document by placing the document on a glass surface (not shown) and moving the exposure unit instead of the automatic feeding method by the document feeder 101.

  The printer unit 114 is an image forming device that forms the previous image data on a sheet. In this embodiment, the image forming method is an electrophotographic method using a photosensitive drum or a photosensitive belt, but the present invention is not limited to this. For example, the present invention can also be applied to an inkjet method in which ink is ejected from a minute nozzle array and printed on a sheet. The printer unit 114 is provided with a plurality of paper cassettes 103, 104, and 105 that can select different paper sizes or different paper orientations. The printed paper is discharged to the paper discharge tray 106.

  FIG. 2 is a system block diagram according to the first exemplary embodiment, which is mounted on the image forming apparatus illustrated in FIG.

  The controller 200 shown in FIG. 2 is connected to the scanner 113 serving as an image input device and the printer unit 114 serving as an image output device. On the other hand, the controller 200 is connected to a LAN 211 or a public line (WAN) 251 to input image information and device information. Output.

  The CPU 201 in FIG. 2 controls the entire system. A RAM 202 is a system work memory for the CPU 201 to operate, and temporarily stores image data. The ROM 203 is a boot ROM and stores a system boot program. The HDD 204 is a hard disk drive and stores system software and image data. An operation unit I / F 206 is an interface unit with an operation unit (UI) 112 having a touch panel, and outputs image data displayed on the operation unit 112 to the operation unit 112. The operation unit I / F 206 serves to transmit information input by the user from the operation unit 112 to the CPU 201. A network I / F 210 is connected to the LAN 211 and inputs / outputs information. The MODEM 250 is connected to the WAN 251 and inputs / outputs information.

  The devices indicated by reference numerals 201 to 206, 210, and 250 described above are connected to the system bus 207.

  The Image Bus I / F 205 connects the system bus 207 and the image bus 208 that transfers image data at high speed, and converts the data structure. The image bus 208 includes a PCI bus or IEEE1394.

  To the image bus 208, devices indicated by reference numerals 205, 220, 230, 240, 260, 270, 280, and 290 described below are connected. The device I / F 220 connects the scanner 113 and the printer unit 114, which are image input / output devices, and the controller 200, and performs synchronous / asynchronous conversion of image data. A scanner image processing unit 280 corrects, processes, and edits input image data. The printer image processing unit 290 performs printer correction or the like on the print output image data. The image cutout unit 230 performs a process of cutting out part of the image data. The image synthesizing unit 240 performs a process of synthesizing two input image data. The QR code generation unit 260 generates a corresponding QR code (two-dimensional barcode) from the input data. The information extraction unit 270 extracts additional security information from the image data.

  Hereinafter, the embedded copy setting of the QR code will be described with reference to FIGS.

  FIG. 3 shows a normal copy screen GUI in the image forming apparatus. The GUI shown in FIG. 3 is displayed on the operation unit 112 in FIG. In FIG. 3, a UI (user interface) 301 is a GUI screen itself, and a tab 302 indicates that copy is selected. The status display window 303 displays copy settings, and the status display window 303 displays the set magnification, the selected paper size, and the number of copies.

  FIG. 4 shows a screen displayed on the operation unit 112 in FIG. 1 when the application mode button 304 in FIG. 3 is pressed. The application mode setting screen in FIG. 4 includes setting buttons 401 to 403. A setting button 401 is used for bookbinding copying. A setting button 402 is used for performing a reduced layout copy. A setting button 403 is used to embed and print a QR code on a scanned document.

  When the setting button 403 is pressed, the screen displayed on the operation unit 112 in FIG. 1 is the QR code embedding setting screen shown in FIG. Buttons 501 to 506 are arranged on the QR code embedding setting screen of FIG. A button 501 is used to set copy prohibition as information to be embedded. A button 502 is used to set copying permission. Buttons 503 to 506 are embedding position setting buttons for setting where to embed the QR code in the document.

  The contents set using the buttons 501 to 506 are transmitted to the CPU 201 via the operation unit I / F 206 of FIG.

  In the QR code embedding setting screen shown in FIG. 5, when “Copy prohibited (button 501)” is selected as the embedded information and “Upper right (button 504)” is selected as the embedded position, the QR code embedded copy operation is performed. This will be described below.

  FIG. 6 is a diagram showing the flow of data in scanning a document. As shown in FIG. 6, a copy original 601 is set on the tray 102 of the original feeder 101 in FIG. 1, and a scanning process 602 is performed. In the scan process 602, for example, on the QR code embedding setting screen shown in FIG. 5, “copying prohibition (button 501)” can be selected as the embedding information, and “upper right (button 504)” can be selected as the embedding position. In this case, when a reading start is instructed from the operation unit 112, a document reading instruction is given to the scanner unit 113. In the scanning process 602, the scanner unit 113 that has received a document reading instruction feeds the document and performs a document reading operation. The document image data 603 read by the scanner unit 113 is expanded in the RAM 202 in FIG. 2 and written in the HDD 204 (HDD 604 in FIG. 6).

  Next, processing for obtaining an output result in which a QR code is embedded will be described with reference to FIG. First, image data stored in the HDD 204 (HDD 701 in FIG. 7) is read into the RAM 202, and the image data 702 is expanded in the RAM 202. On the other hand, in the QR code generation process 703, the QR code generation unit 260 of FIG. 2 generates a QR code from the information “copying prohibited (button 501)” set as the embedded information in FIG. The generated QR code 704 is expanded in the RAM 202. Next, in the composition process 705, the image composition unit 240 in FIG. 2 performs composition on the “upper right (button 504)” in which the QR code 704 is set as the embedding position on the setting screen in FIG. . The combined image data 706 is developed in the RAM 202 in FIG. 2, transferred to the printer unit 114 in FIG. 1, printed on paper, and an output result 708 in which a QR code is embedded is obtained.

  Next, a copy operation for a document in which a QR code is embedded will be described with reference to FIG.

  First, the output result 708 in which the QR code is embedded is scanned by the scan processing 801, and the image data 802 is developed in the RAM 0202. Then, the image data 802 is written to the HDD 204 (HDD 803 in FIG. 8).

  On the other hand, QR code extraction and analysis are performed from the image data 802. Specifically, first, four corners in which QR codes may be embedded from the image data 802 are cut out by the image cutout unit 230 in FIG. As described with reference to FIG. 5, the QR code is printed at any one of the four corners “upper left”, “upper right”, “lower left”, and “lower right” on the sheet.

  Next, in the cutout process 804, the upper left of the image data 802 is cut out, and the cut out image data 805 is developed in the RAM 202.

  Similarly, in the cutout process 807, the upper right of the image data 802 is cut out, and the cut out image data 808 is developed in the RAM 202.

  Similarly, in the cutout process 810, the lower left of the image data 802 is cut out, and the cut out image data 812 is developed in the RAM 202.

  Similarly, in the cutout process 814, the lower right corner of the image data 802 is cut out, and the cut out image data 815 is developed in the RAM 202.

  In the analysis processes 806, 809, 813, and 816, the information extraction unit 270 analyzes the QR code for the image data 805, 808, 812, and 815. The analysis is performed as follows, for example.

  In the analysis process 806, when the QR code analysis is performed on the image data 805, it can be seen that the QR code is not embedded in the image data 805.

  Next, in the analysis processing 809, when the QR code analysis is performed on the image data 808, it is understood that the QR code is embedded in the image data 808 and the embedded data is “copy prohibited”.

  In the analysis process 809, since the QR code is found from the output result 708 in which the QR code is embedded, the remaining image data 812 and image data 815 are not analyzed, and the process ends. In addition, since the QR code “copy prohibited” is embedded in the output result 708 in which the QR code is embedded, the image data 802 stored in the HDD 204 is discarded, the printing operation is not performed, and the copying operation ends. To do.

  Next, as an example, an operation when copying a total of three originals 901 to 903 as shown in FIG. 9 will be described. Here, in the document 901, a QR code of “copy prohibited” is embedded in the upper right. Also, in the original 902, a QR code “copy prohibited” is similarly embedded in the upper right. In the document 903, a QR code “copy prohibited” is embedded in the lower right.

  First, a copy operation for the first document 901 will be described. First, similarly to the procedure described with reference to FIG. 8, four corners in which QR codes may be embedded are cut out from the image data obtained by the scanner. The QR code is analyzed in the order of upper left-> upper right-> lower left-> lower right. Then, since the “copy prohibited” QR code is found from the upper right image data, the remaining lower left and lower right image data are not analyzed. Then, the image data stored in the HDD 204 is discarded, and the document 901 is not printed.

  Next, similarly to the procedure described with reference to FIG. 8, for the second original 902, four corners in which QR codes may be embedded are cut out from the image data obtained by the scanner. QR code analysis is performed. In this case, the analysis order is started from the position where the QR code is embedded in the immediately preceding document. This is because the QR code is embedded in the upper right of the first document 901, and it is highly likely that the QR code is embedded in the upper right of the second document 902 as well. Therefore, in this case, the QR code analysis order is in the order of upper right-> upper left-> lower left-> lower right. Then, in the original 902, it can be seen that the “copy prohibited” QR code is embedded in the first analysis (upper right image data). Since the QR code is found, the QR code is not analyzed for the remaining upper left, lower left, and lower right image data, the image data stored in the HDD 204 is discarded, and the document 902 is not printed.

  Similarly to the procedure described in FIG. 8, for the third original 903, four corners where the QR code may be embedded are cut out from the image data obtained by the scanner, and the QR code Analysis is performed. In this case, as in the case of the second original, analysis is performed from the position where the QR code is found in the immediately preceding original (here, the second original). In the immediately preceding document (here, the second document), since the QR code is found in the upper right, the analysis is performed in the order of upper right-> upper left-> lower left-> lower right. In this case, the third document 903 has a QR code embedding position different from that of the immediately preceding document 902, so it cannot be found in the first (upper right image data) analysis, and the remaining upper left-> lower left-> lower right Results are obtained as the analysis proceeds in order. In the case of the document 903, it can be seen that “copy prohibited” is embedded when the QR code is analyzed for the last lower right image data. Then, the image data stored in the HDD 204 is discarded, and the document 903 is not printed.

  As described above, according to the present embodiment, it is possible to efficiently extract the additional security information embedded in the document by decoding the QR code efficiently from the image data.

<Other embodiments>
The object of the present invention can also be achieved by a computer reading and executing the program code from a storage medium storing the program code for realizing the processing procedure described in the above embodiment. In this case, the program code itself read from the storage medium realizes the functions of the above-described embodiment. Therefore, this program code and a storage medium storing the program code can also constitute the present invention.

  As a storage medium for supplying the program code, for example, a floppy (registered trademark) disk, hard disk, optical disk, magneto-optical disk, CD-ROM, CD-R, magnetic tape, nonvolatile memory card, ROM, or the like is used. be able to.

1 is a diagram illustrating an image forming apparatus. 1 is a system block diagram of an image forming apparatus. 3 is a GUI diagram illustrating a normal copy screen of the image forming apparatus. FIG. It is a GUI figure which shows the screen for performing copy operation setting. It is a GUI figure which shows the screen for performing the embedded copy setting of QR Code. It is a figure which shows the operation | movement flow with respect to the scanning of a document. FIG. 5 is a diagram illustrating an operation flow when printing is performed with a QR code embedded in image data obtained by scanning. It is a figure which shows the operation | movement flow with respect to the scanning of the original document with which QR Code was embedded. FIG. 4 is a diagram illustrating a plurality of originals embedded with a QR code.

Explanation of symbols

101 Document feeder 102 Tray 103 Paper cassette 104 Paper cassette 105 Paper cassette 106 Paper discharge tray 112 Operation unit 113 Scanner unit 114 Printer unit

Claims (3)

2D barcode generation means for generating a 2D barcode;
Embedding position setting means for setting a position for embedding the two-dimensional barcode generated by the two-dimensional barcode generation means for the image data read by the scanner;
Two-dimensional barcode synthesis means for synthesizing the two-dimensional barcode generated by the two-dimensional barcode generation means at the position of the image data set by the embedding position setting means;
Means for printing image data including the two-dimensional barcode synthesized by the two-dimensional barcode synthesis means;
Means for cutting out four corners of the image data from the image data read by the scanner;
Means for decoding a two-dimensional barcode from image data cut out from four corners of the image data;
Means for controlling so as not to decode the two-dimensional barcodes of the remaining three corners of the image data when one of the four corners of the image data can be decoded. An image forming apparatus. In the case where a two-dimensional barcode of a plurality of image data is decoded, the image data immediately before decoding is further provided with storage means for storing a position where the two-dimensional barcode can be decoded,
The image forming apparatus according to claim 1, wherein when the two-dimensional barcode is decoded, the position stored by the storage unit is processed first.   The image forming apparatus according to claim 2, wherein the position that can be set by the embedding position setting unit is one of four corners of the image data.

Images