Patent ID: 8024310

Claim:
An information processing apparatus comprising: a document information holding unit that stores document information of a document; a user information holding unit that stores user information of a user; a concealment region information holding unit that stores concealment region information, wherein the concealment region information includes (i) information that specifies a region of the document that is to be concealed when the document is accessed and (ii) concealment condition information that indicates at least one user that is restricted from viewing the region of the document when the document is accessed; an information reading unit that reads, from the user information holding unit, the user information of the user when the user requests access to the document; a generation unit that determines that the region is to be concealed from the user based on the user information and the concealment condition information, and generates a modified document, the modified document including the document information of the document and excluding the region of the document, when the user requests access to the document and when it is determined that the region is to be concealed from the user; and an output unit that outputs the modified document to the user, wherein the region is a portion of the document that is less than the entire document.