Patent ID: 7369279

Claim:
A protection method relating to the creation of printed-document media involving, as a part of document creation, the implementing through marking of visually apparent machine-readable permission control regarding the post-created-document act of converting printed information contained in such a document into a surrogate data-stream of another one of plural, selectable media types, and wherein the mentioned permission control may be specific to a selected media type, or types, said method comprising providing an environment which offers to a user selectability, for marking such a document, of a printed-document visual component, including selectability of a marking-style characteristic for such a component, for association of that component with such permission control, where such offering enables user selection from within a free range of selections including, and under the selection control of style of marking, (a) all, or less than all, of the full pages in a document, and (b) the entirety, or less than the entirety, of a particular single such page in a document, enabling a user, via such a provided environment, to select at least one such visual printed-document component for controlled association with such permission control, and on the basis of such an enabled user selection, creating the desired document in a manner which embodies the user-selected, visual component-associated permission control, wherein the environment associates the selected style of marking with the selected permission control for the selected printed-document visual component.