Patent ID: 7532836

Claim:
A document management method comprising: depicting an image of a document on a sheet of paper together with a key image expressing a first key in a form that is difficult to recognize by a human; notifying a second key corresponding to the first key to a person having authority to duplicate the document; letting a requestor requesting duplication of the document enter the second key; obtaining the document image and the key image by scanning the sheet; determining whether the requestor has said authority, based on the second key entered by the requestor and the first key expressed by the obtained key image; changing the content of the first key and the content of the second key when it is determined that the requestor has said authority; performing duplication processing for duplicating the document image onto a recording medium together with the key image expressing the changed first key; and notifying the changed second key to a person having authority to duplicate the document duplicated onto the recording medium.