Patent ID: 8416462

Claim:
An information processing apparatus, comprising: a first information acquisition unit configured to obtain target information; a second information acquisition unit configured to obtain given information to be embedded in the target information; a selection-screen display unit configured to display a screen for selecting one of a plurality of methods for obtaining control information to be embedded in the target information and accept a user selection indicating the method selected for obtaining the control information, the control information for authorizing access to the given information obtained by the second information acquisition unit; a third information acquisition unit configured to obtain the control information according to the accepted user selection indicating the method selected by the selection-screen display unit; and an information embedder configured to generate embed information from the given information obtained by the second information acquisition unit and the control information, and add identifying information to the embed information to distinguish the given information from the control information, wherein the information embedder is further configured to separately arrange the given information and the control information in a predetermined pattern in the embed information, and generate an information-added image by embedding the embed information in the target information.