Patent ID: 7624284

Claim:
A system for printing a document, the system comprising: a print manager configured to receive an encrypted document for printing; a mail monitor configured to receive an email authorization message including a decryption key for the encrypted document and document usage information for the encrypted document and tag the email authorization message to prevent a subsequent copy of the authorization message from being processed; the print manager responsive to receiving a first request for printing the encrypted document further configured to: process the email to retrieve the document usage information; determine from the document usage information if the first request for printing the encrypted document is authorized; if the first request for printing the encrypted document is authorized, then the print manager further configured to: process the email to retrieve the decryption key for the encrypted document; decrypt the encrypted document using the decryption key to generate an unencrypted document without writing a decrypted datastream to user-accessible memory; and transmit the unencrypted document to a printer for printing.