Abstract:
This invention relates to a method and system that only destroys documents that a party wants destroyed. The system also maintains a record of destroyed documents and saved documents. The foregoing may be accomplished by: placing information directly on a document that uniquely identifies the document; placing information in a database that uniquely identifies the document in which information was placed, and the date, if any, in which the document is scheduled to be destroyed; scanning the placed information on documents that are going to be destroyed; attempting to destroy the document; and checking in the database to determine whether or not the document should be destroyed, whereby if the database indicates the document should be destroyed, the document is destroyed, and if the database indicates that the document should not be destroyed, the document is not destroyed.

Description:
FIELD OF THE INVENTION 
   The invention relates generally to the field of document management and, more particularly, to controlling the storage and destruction of documents. 
   BACKGROUND OF THE INVENTION 
   Writing enables the transmission of ideas over vast distances of time and space. As civilization has advanced, more and more ideas and records have been memorialized as written documents. Companies, governments and individuals produce documents to supply a written record of their business. Companies, governments and individuals, to comply with certain laws and regulations also produce documents. Under the law, certain documents must be kept for certain specified periods of time, i.e., employee wages and hours worked, health and safety records, shipment and handling of certain hazardous materials, tax records, etc. 
   Document management programs have been established to provide systematic procedures for the retention, storage, retrieval, destruction and/or protection of documents. Many document management programs archive paper documents by scanning the document and storing the scanned image of the document in an electronic storage database. Since the documents are often stored in databases to save space, the paper document is destroyed after the documents have been scanned. 
   Thus, a problem of the prior art is that some times paper documents were destroyed by parties who did not want to destroy the documents. 
   Another problem of the prior art is that parties did not have a record of which documents were saved and which documents were destroyed. 
   SUMMARY OF THE INVENTION 
   This invention overcomes the disadvantages of the prior art by providing a system that only destroys documents that a party wants destroyed. The system also maintains a record of destroyed and saved documents. The foregoing system may be accomplished by: placing information directly on a document that uniquely identifies the document; placing information in a database that uniquely identifies the document in which information was placed and the date, if any, in which the document is scheduled to be destroyed; scanning the placed information on documents; attempting to destroy the document; checking the database to determine whether or not the document should be destroyed; whereby if the database indicates the document should be destroyed, the document is destroyed; and if the database indicates that the document should not be destroyed, the document is not destroyed. 

   
     BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWING 
       FIG. 1  is a drawing of a document; 
       FIG. 2  is a drawing of a display that shows the documents entered into the system of this invention; 
       FIG. 3  is a block diagram illustrating the operation of this invention; 
       FIG. 4  is block diagram of a computer application illustrating the decision path for shredding documents and a computer application; and 
       FIG. 5  is a flow chart of the compare application. 
   

   DETAILED DESCRIPTION OF THE PREFERRED EMBODIMENT 
   Referring now to the drawings in detail and more particularly to  FIG. 1 , the reference character  11  represents a document that is of a contract of sale. A document identification code  12  is placed at a convenient location on document  11 . Identification code  12  may be represented by alphanumeric characters, a bar code, a two-dimensional bar code, glyphs, etc. Code  12  may be printed on document  11  with a black ink, colored ink, toner, invisible ink, black fluorescent ink, etc. or affixed to a label that is attached to document  11 . A black fluorescent is disclosed in the Auslander et, al U.S. Pat. No. 6,793,723 entitled “Homogeneous Photosensitive Optically Variable Ink Compositions For Ink Jet Printing” herein incorporated by reference. 
   It would be obvious to one skilled in the art that document  11  may be printed on an Anoto paper page with an Anoto pattern on the paper page that represents a unique Anoto page address so that the Anoto pattern will be code  12 . Anoto systems use a digital pen that contains a camera and paper in a fashion that the pen&#39;s movement across the grid surface on the paper is stored as a series of map coordinates. The coordinates correspond to the exact location of the page that is being written on. When a mark is made on the send box on the paper with a digital pen, the pen is instructed to send the stored sequence of map coordinates which are translated into an image that will result in an exact copy of what is written on the paper with the pen, which may be stored and displayed in a computer. Anoto systems are sold by Anoto Inc. of 470 Totten Pond Road, Waltham, Mass. 02451 
     FIG. 2  is a drawing of a display  14  that displays the documents entered into the system of this invention. Display  14  has a screen  15  that displays the identification code  12  of  FIG. 1 , in columns  16 , the document description in column  17 , and the planned destruction date or document status, i.e., the document has been scanned and is ready to be shredded, of the document in column  18   
     FIG. 3  is a block diagram illustrating the operation of this invention, particularly, the paper path of documents  11  being transported to a shredder  25  or output paper tray  26 . All of the potential documents to be shredded are placed by the user of this system in input paper tray  27 . Input paper tray  27  may be any document feeder that accepts 8.5″×11″ paper or other size or format required for the documents that are potentially going to be shredded. The input paper tray  27  takes one sheet of paper at a time from a document from the stack of documents in tray  27  and passes that sheet of paper that comprises all or a portion of a document  11  to two-sided scanner  28 . Scanner  28  may be the fi4860C Scanner manufactured by Fjuitsu Limited of Shidona City Center, 1-5-2 Hiashia Shintosiu, Minato-Kutokyo 105-7123 Japan. 
   Scanner  28  makes a digital image of both sides of the single sheet of paper that comprises all or a portion of a document  11 . Scanner  28  uses conventional available scanner technology which may be accomplished by using either two scanning mechanisms simultaneously or by sequentially imaging the paper first on one side and then the other. When the imaging is done, scanner  28  passes the single sheet of paper of document  11  onto the first in first out (FIFO) delay  29 . After the images of the single sheet of paper of document  11  are created, they are passed to a computer application, which is described in the description of  FIG. 4 . 
   The images will also be used to compute the path control signal, i.e., is the document  11  going to be sent to shredder  25  or output paper tray  26 , required by separator  30 . 
   FIFO delay  29  takes the single sheet of paper that comprises all or a portion of a document  11  from scanner  28  and holds it until separator  30  is ready to accept it. FIFO  29  works like a First In First Out buffer of the paper between the scanner  28  and separator  30 . 
   This function of delay  29  is optional and would be implemented only to optimize the latency of the mechanical paper path to match the latency of the computer application described in  FIG. 4  that creates the “Path control signal” Signals required by separator  30 . 
   Separator  30  takes the single sheet of paper of document  11  from FIFO delay  29  (if implemented) or scanner  28 . Separator  30  uses control signals from the computing application (which is described in the description of  FIG. 4 ) to decide the path of each sheet of paper of document  11 . If the control signal indicates that the sheet of paper of document  11  is to be shredded, the sheet of paper is transferred to shredder  25 . If the computing application detects that sheet of paper of document  11  should not be shredded, the sheet of paper is diverted to output paper tray  26 , where the user can retrieve the diverted sheets of paper that comprise document  11 . Separator  30  may be the diverter portion of a laser printer, i.e., the long plastic panel that is activated by a solenoid so that when the solenoid is open, the paper passes under the plastic panel, and when the solenoid is closed, the paper moves over the plastic panel to take another path. Separator  30  is contained in the HP laser jet 8150 printer with duplex unit manufactured by Hewlett Packard Company, 3000 Hanover Street, Palo Alto, Calif. 94304-1185. 
   Shredder  25  takes the single sheet of paper of document  11  from separator  30  that is to be shredded. The paper is shredded in any of the conventional ways sufficient to render the original single sheet of paper of document  11  unreadable without extensive and extra ordinary effort. The unreadable original single sheet of paper of document  11  then goes into waste paper basket  31 . Shredder  25  may be the Fellows Power Shredder manufactured by Fellows, Inc. of 1789 Norwood Avenue, Liascu, Ill. 60143. 
   Output paper tray  26  takes the original single sheet of paper of document  11  from separator  30  that is to be preserved and not shredded. The user would retrieve all documents from the tray  26  and return them to a secure place. 
     FIG. 4  is block diagram of a computer application illustrating the decision path for shredding documents  11 . The image of the original single sheet of paper of document  11  that has been scanned by scanner  28  passed through a set of filters and algorithms to extract data from the original single sheet of paper of document  11 . This data is processed by image processing  52 . Image processing  52  may be the Task Master Recognition software program written by Data Cap Inc. of 660 White Plains Road, Tarrytown, N.Y. 10591. There are at least three forms of information that can be used by image processing  52  that may be extracted to uniquely identify the aforementioned page of paper. The first (1) mode of identifying the page is through the use of barcodes. If the page has a barcode of any kind, the image processor contained in scanner  28  should locate the barcode and extract the data from that barcode and pass the data to barcode information database  53  and then to the compare application  29 . The flow chart for application  29  is described in the description of  FIG. 5 . The second (2) mode of uniquely identifying a page is to use an Anoto pattern. If the abovementioned paper page was an Anoto paper page, with an Anoto pattern on it, the pattern is read to determine the unique Anoto Page Address. This address is first passed to anoto page information database  54  and then to the compare application  29 . The third (3) mode of uniquely identifying the aforementioned page is to extract data typed or handwritten on the page. If there are fields that identify the document uniquely, those fields are extracted through a character recognition function, i.e., Optical Character Recognition or Intelligent Character Recognition and that data from this operation will be transmitted to OCR database  55  and then to compare application  29 . The above three methods may be used individually or in combination. The more data available to uniquely identify the original single sheet of paper of document  11 , the higher the confidence that the page that is being shredded was identified correctly. 
   The Compare application  29  consists of software running in computer  51  that compares the data extracted by scanner  28  to data held in database  50 . Database  50  contains a series of records that have information to identify every document  11  known in the environment combined with an indication of that document&#39;s scheduled destruction date. If the document  11  has a destruction date before the present date or is an inactive file that the user wants to destroy, it should not be shredded. If the document  11  has a destruction date before the present date, it should be shredded. When the compare application  29  receives the barcode, Anoto, or other OCR data from the document  11  that uniquely identifies it, then the compare application  29  searches the database  50 , and reads the scheduled destruction date of the document  11 . If the compare application  29  finds the document  11  should be shredded, the path control signal to separator  30  commands that the document  11  be shredded. In all other cases, the path control signal will tell separator  30  to save document  11  in the output tray  26 . 
   Database  50  is coupled to data entry  56  and display  14  of computer  51 . A user may change the scheduled destruction date of any document  11  by entering a new destruction date for a document  11  in data entry  56 . The information entered in data entry  56  is stored in database  50  and displayed on screen  15  of display  14 . 
     FIG. 5  is a flow chart of compare application  29 . The program begins in step  101  where document  11  is scanned. Then in step  102 , image data is obtained from document  11 . Next in step  103 , Anoto, OCR or barcode data is extracted from document  11 . Then in step  104 , document data is looked up in database  50 , i.e., identification code  12  for document  11 , scheduled destruction date for document  11 . Step  105  is the next step. Step  105  determines whether or not identification code  12  for document  11  is listed in database  50 . If the identification code  12  for document  11  is not listed in database  50 , the next step will be step  106 . Step  106  will send document  11  to output paper tray  26 . If the identification code  12  for document  11  is listed in database  50 , the next step will be step  107 . Step  107  determines whether or not the document  11  scheduled destruction date is later than today&#39;s date. If step  107  determines that the scheduled destruction date of document  11  is later than today&#39;s date, the next step will be step  106 . Step  106  will send document  11  to output paper tray  26 . If step  107  determines that the scheduled destruction date of document  11  is not later than today&#39;s date, the next step will be step  108 . Step  108  will send document  11  to shredder  25  to be destroyed. 
   The above specification describes a new and improved system that only destroys documents that a party wants destroyed. It is realized that the above description may indicate to those skilled in the art additional ways in which the principles of this invention may be used without departing from the spirit. Therefore, it is intended that this invention be limited only by the scope of the appended claims.