Patent ID: 7830535

Claim:
An information-embedding apparatus, comprising: a first embedding unit that embeds first information into data to be printed, in accordance with a first embedding mode that allows a printing apparatus to print the embedded first information and that can be selected in accordance with the printing apparatus; a second embedding unit that embeds second information that specifies the first embedding mode, into the data to be printed, in accordance with a second embedding mode that allows the printing apparatus to print the embedded second information and that is fixed irrespective of the printing apparatus; and an instruction unit that instructs the printing apparatus to print the data to be printed in which the first information and the second information have been embedded by the first embedding unit and the second embedding unit, wherein the first embedding mode and the second embedding mode are set such that if a printing apparatus can print information that is embedded in accordance with the first embedding mode, the printing apparatus can print information that is embedded in accordance with the second embedding mode.