Patent ID: 7873199

Claim:
A method for checking a value document having an authenticity feature in the form of at least one luminescent substance, comprising the steps of: irradiating the value document with light from a light source, thereby causing the value document including said luminescent substance to emanate luminescence radiation; detecting said luminescence radiation emanating from the value document with spectral resolution by using a spectral sensor; forming, a measuring vector (X) from measuring values corresponding to different frequencies and/or frequency domains of the luminescence radiation; and causing an evaluation device to perform an object allocation of the measuring vector (X) to one of a plurality of given reference vectors (A 1 , . . . , A k ) corresponding to different authenticity features by allocating at least one object allocation area (G 1 , . . . , G 1 ) to each reference vector (A 1 , . . . , A k ) and checking which object allocation area (G 1 , . . . , G 1 ) the measuring vector (X) is located in to determine whether an authenticity feature corresponding to one of the reference vectors is present in the value document.