Patent ID: 8051047

Claim:
A document management system including a database having registered therein signature information of a document and document information that includes location information indicating a storage location of the document, the document information and the signature information being registered in association with each other, the document management system comprising: a reception unit configured to receive a designated document that has been designated by a user; an extraction unit configured to extract signature information from the designated document received by the reception unit; a search unit configured to search the database for another document having signature information that matches the signature information extracted by the extraction unit, the another document being a different version of the designated document; and a display control unit configured to, based on a result of the search performed by the search unit, perform control to display document information of the designated document and document information of the another document in association with version information determined based on the signature information; wherein the search unit searches for the another document whose signature information registered in the database includes a first signature that matches a first signature included in the signature information extracted by the extraction unit, and in each document, the first signature is a signature that was attached to the document first; wherein in each document, the document information includes an editing history that is accumulated each time the document has been edited, and the document management system further comprises: an attachment unit configured to, for each document to be newly registered in the database, attach a first signature to the document to be newly registered, and, for each document in which an editing history is to be newly accumulated, attach another signature to the document in correspondence with the newly accumulated editing history, the another signature enabling identification of which place in sequential order the another signature was attached; and wherein the reception unit, the extraction unit, the search unit, the display control unit and the attachment unit are implemented, at least in part, by hardware components of the document management system.