Patent ID: 8335985

Claim:
A document use managing system comprising: a document processing apparatus; and a manipulation authority managing apparatus, wherein the document processing apparatus comprises: an instruction receiving section that receives an instruction to copy data from a first electronic document which is correlated with first manipulation authority information to a second electronic document which is correlated with second manipulation authority information; a new document generating section that newly generates a third electronic document which is correlated with third manipulation authority information, and is a result of copying of the data from the first electronic document to the second electronic document in response to the instruction received by the instruction receiving section; a combining requesting section that requests the manipulation authority managing apparatus to generate the third manipulation authority information by combining the first manipulation authority information and the second manipulation authority information together; and a registration requesting section that requests the manipulation authority managing apparatus to register the third electronic document generated by the new document generating section, and wherein the manipulation authority managing apparatus comprises: a storage section that stores electronic documents and corresponding relationships between the electronic documents and pieces of manipulation authority information which indicate manipulation authorities of users or user groups over the associated electronic documents; a new manipulation authority information generating section that newly generates the third manipulation authority information by combining the first manipulation authority information and the second manipulation authority information together in response to the request from the combining requesting section of the document processing apparatus; and a registering section that registers, in the storage section, a corresponding relationship indicating that the third manipulation authority information corresponds to the third electronic document in response to the request from the registration requesting section of the document processing apparatus, wherein at least one of the instruction receiving section, the new document generating section, the combining requesting section, the registration requesting section, the storage section, the new manipulation authority information generating section, and the registering section includes a hardware circuit.