Method and system for assessing copyright fees based on the content being copied
Described system makes it possible to charge copy fees related to the amount of copyrighted material being copied and to provide those fees to the appropriate copyright holder. The scanned information is passed through an OCR filter that produces a stream of text, which is then passed to a full-text search service that identifies matching passages in its index. Sufficiently long passages found in the copied document that match previously indexed documents held by the service constitute copyrighted materials. In addition, the scanned image may be processed to identify instances of copyrighted images present in the scan.
1. A system for assessing copyright fees based on the content being copied, comprising:
a processor;
a scanning module operable to scan a document comprising at least one page;
a content identifying module operable to identify a content on each scanned page of the document and comprising an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) engine operable to extract a stream of text from each scanned page of the document; and
a copyright holder identifying module operable to identify a copyright holder of the identified content;
wherein the identifying a copyright holder of the identified content comprises:
processing the stream of text into contiguous text segments;
forming a separate query for each of the contiguous text segments; and
searching a copyrighted content database for matching copyrighted content based on the query;
wherein the processing the stream of text into contiguous text segments is based on textual coherence determined in accordance with linguistic analysis of the scanned text.
2. The system of claim 1 wherein the scanning module comprises a Multi-Function Device.
3. The system of claim 1 wherein the content identifying module utilizes the processor to process image data from each scanned page of the document.
4. The system of claim 1 wherein the copyright holder identifying module comprises an index of copyrighted information and wherein the copyright holder identifying module is operable to identify the copyright holder of the identified content by searching the index of the copyrighted information using at least a portion of the identified content as a part of a query.
5. The system of claim 1 wherein the copyright holder identifying module is further operable to identify copyrighted content and wherein the copyright holder is remunerated for copying of the copyrighted content.
6. The system of claim 5 wherein the amount of remuneration is based on the number of copies made.
7. The system of claim 5 wherein the copyright holder identifying module is further operable to determine the amount of the copyrighted content and wherein the amount of remuneration is based on the determined amount of copyrighted content being copied.
8. The system of claim 5 wherein the amount of remuneration is based on a copy quality.
9. The system of claim 5 wherein the amount of remuneration is based on a policy.
10. The system of claim 9 wherein the policy is specified by the copyright holder.
11. The system of claim 9 wherein the policy is specified by an owner or an operator of the system for assessing copyright fees.
12. The system of claim 5 further comprising a billing module operable to assess a copy charge comprising one or more of: a fee charged by an operator of the system for assessing copyright fees, a fee charged by the copyright holder, and a fee charged by a hardware manufacturer.
13. The system of claim 12 wherein the fee charged by the operator of the system for assessing copyright fees is based on a fee charged by the copyright holder.
14. The system of claim 12 wherein the fee charged by the hardware manufacturer is based on the fee charged by the copyright holder.
15. The system of claim 1 , wherein the copyright holder identifying module is further operable to log operations relating to the content being copied.
16. A method for assessing copyright fees based on the content being copied, comprising:
a. scanning a document comprising at least one page;
b. identifying a content on each scanned page of the document by performing an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to extract a stream of text from each scanned page of the document; and
c. utilizing a processor to execute a process for identifying a copyright holder of the identified content;
wherein the process for identifying a copyright holder of the identified content comprises:
processing the stream of text into contiguous text segments;
forming a separate query for each of the contiguous text segments; and
searching a copyrighted content database for matching copyrighted content based on the query;
wherein the processing the stream of text into contiguous text segments is based on textual coherence determined in accordance with linguistic analysis of the scanned text.
17. The method of claim 16 wherein the process for identifying the content comprises processing image data from each scanned page of the document.
18. The method of claim 16 wherein the process for identifying the copyright holder comprises searching the text index of the copyrighted information using at least a portion of the identified content as a part of a query.
19. The method of claim 16 further comprising identifying copyrighted content and remunerating the copyright holder for copying of the copyrighted content.
20. The method of claim 19 wherein the amount of remuneration is based on the number of copies made.
21. The method of claim 19 , further comprising determining the amount of the copyrighted content, wherein the amount of remuneration is based on the determined amount of copyrighted content being copied.
22. The method of claim 19 wherein the amount of remuneration is based on a copy quality.
23. The method of claim 19 wherein the amount of remuneration is based on a policy.
24. The method of claim 23 wherein the policy is specified by the copyright holder.
25. The method of claim 23 wherein the policy is specified by an owner or an operator of a copy system.
26. The method of claim 19 , further comprising assessing a copy charge comprising one or more of: a fee charged by an operator of the system for assessing copyright fees, a fee charged by the copyright holder, and a fee charged by a hardware manufacturer.
27. The method of claim 26 wherein the fee charged by the operator of the system for assessing copyright fees is based on a fee charged by the copyright holder.
28. The method of claim 26 wherein the fee charged by the hardware manufacturer is based on the fee charged by the copyright holder.
29. The method of claim 16 , wherein the processing the stream of text into contiguous text segments is based on a predetermined minimum length.
30. A computer programming product embodied on a non-transitory computer readable medium for assessing copyright fees based on the content being copied, comprising:
a. Code for scanning a document comprising at least one page;
b. Code for identifying a content on each scanned page of the document by performing an Optical Character Recognition (OCR) to extract a stream of text from each scanned page of the document; and
c. Code for identifying a copyright holder of the identified content;
wherein the identifying a copyright holder of the identified content comprises:
processing the stream of text into contiguous text segments;
forming a separate query for each of the contiguous text segments; and
searching a copyrighted content database for matching copyrighted content based on the query;
wherein the processing the stream of text into contiguous text segments is based on textual coherence determined in accordance with linguistic analysis of the scanned text.