Patent ID: 7761922

Claim:
A method for producing certified content, the method comprising: receiving original content acquired from a content acquisition device; receiving a device identity associated with the content acquisition device; producing a certification value indicating the original content was acquired from the content acquisition device having the device identity; associating the certification value to the original content to produce certified content that can be verified to represent the original content that was acquired from the content acquisition device having the associated device identity while preventing modification to the original content by processing not associated with the operations of receiving the original content, receiving the device identity, producing the certification value and associating the certification value to the original content; wherein receiving original content acquired from the content acquisition device comprises: receiving individual portions of the original content over time, each individual portion being smaller than a sum total of the original content; and wherein each individual portion of the original content, once received, is respectively individually processed by an iteration of the operations of producing a certification value and associating the certification value to the original content such that a respective portion of certified content is produced for each individual respective portion of original content; wherein receiving portions of the original content over time includes incrementally acquiring scanned rows of pixels from a physical source, wherein the scanned rows of pixels are each separately returned for receiving the certification value; and combining respective portions of certified content to produce an entire certified document based on all individual portions of the original content that were received over time while concurrently preventing operator access to the received individual portions of the original content during performance of the operations of receiving original content, producing a certification value, and associating the certification value to the original content to ensure that the certification value is based on actual individual portions of original content and the device identity of the content acquisition device that provided the individual portions of original content.