Patent ID: 8499347

Claim:
A document use managing system comprising a document use managing apparatus that stores pieces of management information which prescribe scopes of operation authority of respective users over documents and that manages users' operations on documents according to the pieces of management information; a temporary use license issuing apparatus; and a document using apparatus, wherein the temporary use license issuing apparatus includes an instruction receiving unit that receives, from a first user, an instruction to issue a temporary use license for a first document to which unique document identification information is assigned, and an issuing unit that issues the temporary use license containing document identification information of the first document to which the issuance instruction is directed, and operation authority information indicating a scope of operation authority over the first document, the operation authority indicated by the operation authority information being within a scope of the operation authority of the first user over the first document which is prescribed by the pieces of management information, the document using apparatus includes a document input receiving unit that receives input of a second document and the temporary use license from a second user, a reading unit that reads document identification information from the second document and reads the document identification information and the operation authority information from the received temporary use license, and an operation execution unit, and if the document identification information read from the second document coincides with the document identification information read from the temporary use license, the operation execution unit executes an operation on the second document in accordance with an operation instruction of the second user within the scope of the operation authority indicated by the received operation authority information; wherein the temporary use license, which is issued by the issuing unit of the temporary use license issuing apparatus, further contains apparatus identification information for identification of a document using apparatus that is permitted to use the temporary use license, the reading unit of the document using apparatus further reads the apparatus identification information from the temporary use license, and if the apparatus identification information read by the reading unit is different from apparatus identification information of the document using apparatus, the operation execution unit of the document using apparatus does not execute the operation in accordance with the operation instruction of the second user.