Patent ID: 7424458

Claim:
A method for generating and printing an indicium on an object, said object having other material printed thereon, said method comprising the steps of: a) obtaining a digital image of said other printed material and generating characterizing information descriptive of aspects of said image, said aspects being selected from the group consisting of, lengths of elements of said image, numbers of outliers in said image, and shapes of said image or of elements of said image, said characterizing information being selected to fit within said indicium; b) cryptographically authenticating said characterizing information and other information; c) generating said indicium to be representative of said cryptographically authenticated information; d) printing said indicium on said object; and whereby e) said object's relationship to said indicium is verified by regenerating said characterizing information from said other printed material and comparing said regenerated characterizing information with characterizing information recovered from said indicium, and copies of said indicium cannot easily be used without detection on other objects which do not include said other printed material.