EMBEDDING DATA INTO SOLID AREAS, TEXT OR LINE WORK

1 . A relief printing member comprising:

at least one solid image feature on the relief printing member;

encoded data on the at least one solid feature; and

wherein the encoded data in the at least one solid image feature comprises a modification of at least one surface of the relief printing member within a boundary of the solid image feature.

2 . The relief printing member as in claim 1 wherein the solid image feature is a line work feature, a text character, or a solid area.

3 . The relief printing member as in claim 1 wherein the at least one surface of the relief printing member has been ablated to encode the data.

4 . The relief printing member as in claim 1 wherein the relief printing member is an ultraviolet curable printing member wherein:

the at least one surface of the relief printing member has been exposed to a mask to encode the data.

5 . The relief printing member as in claim 1 wherein the relief printing member comprises a flexographic printing member.

6 . The flexographic printing member as in claim 5 wherein the flexographic printing member comprises a flexographic plate, a flexographic sleeve, or a flexographic cylinder.

7 . The relief printing member as in claim 1 wherein the relief printing member comprises a first surface pattern and a second surface pattern.

8 . The relief printing member as in claim 1 wherein the surface of the relief printing member comprises more than two surface patterns.

9 . The relief printing member as in claim 8 wherein the more than two surface patterns comprise more than one surface pattern phase.

10 . The relief printing member as in claim 7 wherein the first and second surface patterns comprise more than one surface pattern phase.

11 . The relief printing member as in claim 1 wherein the encoded data in the printed solid comprises data in human readable form.

12 . The relief printing member as in claim 1 wherein the encoded data in the printed solid comprises data in machine-readable form.