Patent ID: 7835563

Claim:
A method for guaranteeing the authenticity of documents the method comprising: providing a plurality of documents, before being issued, each of which has a substrate with substrate features specific to each individual document and is provided with document data; analyzing with a scanning device a respective document of said plurality of documents, before being issued, in a spatially resolved manner altogether or partly to generate a data record with information about at least one of the arrangement of and fashioning of specific substrate features of the document; and storing the data of said data record or data derived therefrom in a remote database together with or in a manner assigned to document data of the relevant document, in order to keep them ready for later authentication enquiries; wherein each authenticity check of an issued document involves performing with a checking device, a specific change in a feature of the document, and the presence of the changed feature is a prerequisite for authentication of the document in the event of a next authenticity check.