Facsimile and static presentation processing – Static presentation processing – Data corruption – power interruption – or print prevention
Reexamination Certificate
1999-09-28
2004-02-03
Wallerson, Mark (Department: 2626)
Facsimile and static presentation processing
Static presentation processing
Data corruption, power interruption, or print prevention
C358S001150, C399S366000
Reexamination Certificate
active
06687017
ABSTRACT:
TECHNICAL FIELD
The present invention relates to printers equipped with an image recognition unit for preventing counterfeiting, for example, of bank notes and securities, computers providing the printer with print sources, and print systems including the printer and the computer. More specifically, the present invention relates to a printer, a computer, and a print system including the printer and the computer which are reliable in preventing false recognition by an image recognition unit for counterfeiting prevention from hindering printing out even of ordinary images.
BACKGROUND ART
Bank notes and securities have been counterfeited generally by using only color copy machines. Recently, similar counterfeiting has come to be possible even by using a combination of “color copy machine components” such as a color scanner, a personal computer, and a color printer.
The inventor previously proposed a novel color printer with a high possibility of preventing crimes, equipped with an image recognition unit for preventing counterfeiting, for example, of bank notes and securities. The basic operation of the image recognition unit provided in the color printer is to receive image data immediately before being printed out, extract a feature pattern of the received image data, collate it with the feature pattern of an image as an object of counterfeiting prevention, determine, based on the collation result, whether the received image data corresponds to the image data, for example, of bank notes or securities which are objects of counterfeiting prevention, and prohibit normal printing out of the received image data when it is determined that the received image data corresponds to the image data as an object of counterfeiting prevention.
Normal printing out is prohibited in various manners. There may be cases where printing out is not performed at all, where a color or a size is changed although printing out is performed, where a graphic pattern is covered with a certain color although printing out is performed, where a certain symbol or graphic pattern is overlapped although printing out is performed, and so on.
According to such a color printer, normal printing out is prohibited by operation of the equipped image recognition unit even if the printer is used to counterfeit bank notes and securities, for example, in combination with a color scanner and a personal computer. Thus, counterfeiting is prevented beforehand.
In the color printer equipped with such a conventional image recognition unit for counterfeiting prevention, however, all image data to be printed out have been determined as to whether they correspond to an image as an object of counterfeiting prevention by operating the image recognition unit regardless of how the image data to be printed out are formed. Therefore, even when an image produced by a personal computer using drawing software uncommonly includes a feature pattern to be recognized, it is falsely recognized as an image as an object of counterfeiting prevention, thus hindering normal printing out. Further, the image recognition unit is operated even for images, irrelevant to an image as an object of counterfeiting prevention when considering the image formation method, such as character fonts formed by word processing software and images formed only of geometric patterns made by CAD software. In those cases, the printing-out speed is unnecessarily lowered.
Here, the inventor obtained following information. That is, although the elements of images printed out by such type of color printers include character fonts, graphic elements such as straight lines and circles, and bit map images, only color bit map images among them are concerned with bank notes and securities. As long as bank notes and securities are regarded as images as an object of counterfeiting prevention, for example, operation of the image recognition unit for counterfeiting prevention is not necessary unless image data to be printed out is a color bit map image.
FIG. 9
is a block diagram illustrating how external image data is received and printed out in a conventional color printer.
The above described color printer is not provided with a specified scanner. As shown in
FIG. 9
, external image information {circle around (
1
)} is therefore read through a general purpose I/F (interface) as a unique language (printer language) {circle around (
2
)} and then expanded in an internal frame memory. Even for image formation, image data is formed to an image by subtractive color mixture of inks, for example, and therefore it is converted to CMYK type color information. Since image formation is generally carried out for each color, there is often image data of only one color at a time.
Thus, the color printer does not have an area to which full RGB color components of an image are collectively transferred as in a color copy machine. This is a serious problem with image recognition.
Solutions to this problem have been proposed such as the method
1
of recognition for each color using a laser drive signal ({circle around (
1
)} in FIG.
9
), the method
2
of recognition using data ({circle around (
2
)} in
FIG. 9
) input to a color conversion portion and a gradation processing portion, for example, and the method
3
of recognition using data ({circle around (
3
)} in
FIG. 9
) when external image information is expanded in a frame memory.
Recognizable color images can be obtained by these methods. However, the entire image to be formed is basically regarded as an object of recognition, which results not only in an increase in circuit size and cost and a reduction in the processing speed but in an increase in the possibility of false recognition due to recognition of an unnecessary region in the image. In the above described methods
1
and
2
, there is not enough time from recognition to stopping output of a formed image. In the case of recognition for each color, it is difficult to define an image, which is prohibited from being output, in a necessary sufficient color range. In the above described method
3
, a new problem emerges that the order of expansion is not uniform and collective recognition of the entire image is difficult.
Therefore, an object of the present invention is to provide a printer, a computer providing the printer with a print source, and a print system, which can reduce the probability of falsely recognizing an ordinary image irrelevant to counterfeiting to be an image as an object of counterfeiting prevention in an equipped image recognition unit for counterfeiting prevention and which can improve the printing-out speed as a whole.
Another object of the present invention is to provide a printer which can reduce the probability of false recognition of images by recognizing only image data in a necessary region so as to monitor data being processed in image formation and which can improve the processing speed.
DISCLOSURE OF THE INVENTION
The invention according claim
1
of the present specification is a method of processing input data in a printer, having a first examination step of examining whether received input data includes data which can correspond to data as an object of a prescribed examination, a second examination step of examining in detail data which can correspond to the data as an object of a prescribed examination to determine whether it is the object data when the first examination step detects that the data which can correspond to the data as an object of a prescribed examination is included, and a step of permitting data processing of the, input data when the first examination step detects that the data which can correspond to the data as an object of a prescribed examination is not included or the second examination step detects that the data which can correspond to the data as an object of a prescribed examination is not the object data.
Since the input data is examined at two stages in the above described input data processing method, it is possible to quickly detect whether data in the input data is the object data.
A controller of the printer according to cl
Hiraishi Junji
Kakiuchi Takashi
Taniguchi Keitaro
Dickstein , Shapiro, Morin & Oshinsky, LLP
Omron Corporation
Wallerson Mark
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