Device and process for protecting a digital document, and corresponding process for verifying the authenticity of a printed hardcopy

摘要

According to the invention, a digital document is protected through:
- receiving (11) the digital document;
- receiving (12) associated data comprising at least partially data from the digital document;
- creating (13) a hash of the associated data;
- asymmetrically encrypting (14-15) the hash with a private key to generate a digital signature;
- encoding (16) in a machine-readable code the digital signature and the associated data; and
- recording (17) the machine-readable code onto a resulting hardcopy. The authenticity of a printed hardcopy of the digital document can be verified through comparison (31) of data extracted from the printed hardcopy (21) with the associated data decoded (23) and verified (24-30) from the machine-readable code.