Patent ID: 7337321

Claim:
A contents distributing apparatus for visibly arranging additional information on contents and distributing the contents, comprising: an input unit which inputs contents on which invisible electronic watermark information is superimposed; a control port which receives a read request information from outside and outputs said read request information, wherein said read request information is a control information for the control of making said additional information visible or invisible; a memory which stores said contents on which invisible electronic watermark information input by the input unit is superimposed; an extracting unit which extracts the additional information as invisible electronic watermark information superimposed on the contents stored in said memory; a superimposing unit which embeds visible information into the contents stored in said memory and generates contents on which the visible information has been superimposed, wherein said visible information is visible graphics data which is related to said additional information extracted by the extracting unit; an output unit which outputs said contents on which the visible information has been superimposed and forms a single file of said contents; and a controller which controls said memory, said extracting unit, said superimposing unit and said output unit, and causes said extracting unit to extract the additional information from the invisible electronic watermark information which is superimposed on the contents and causes said output unit to output the contents on which the visible information has been superimposed, based on said read request information output from said control port.