Patent ID: 8643489

Claim:
An image processing system comprising: a detection unit that detects document identification information from an input document; an output unit that executes image processing on the input document, and appends unique document identification information to an output document serving as an execution result of the image processing, to output the output document; a storage unit that stores history information of the image processing, wherein the history information contains (i)set-membership information containing the document identification information of the input document and the document identification information of the output document, and (ii) an image of the input document or an image of the output document, or both of the images; and a notification unit that, when history information in which a surveillance target element is contained in an image of an input document or an image of an output document is detected from the storage unit, notifies a notified party determined in advance of the detected history information or information which indicates the history information is detected, wherein ancestral documents are specified based on the set-membership information contained in other respective pieces of history information stored in the storage unit, and even in the case in which the surveillance target element is not contained in both of the image of the input document and the image of the output document in the history information, and when it is identified that at least one of the ancestral documents of the input document has the surveillance target element, the notification unit notifies the notified party of the history information or the information that indicates the history information is detected, wherein the ancestral documents are specified based on the set-membership information contained in the stored history information, and the input document is identified, according to execution of image processing on one of the ancestral documents, as an output document with respect to the one of the ancestral documents, and the document identification information of the input document is the unique document identification information appended to the output document with respect to the one of the ancestral documents, according to the execution of the image processing on said one of the ancestral documents.