Patent 7884957 was granted and assigned to Konica Minolta on February, 2011 by the United States Patent and Trademark Office.
The present invention provides an image forming apparatus, an image management method and an image management program in which a security of image data to which anti-counterfeit information and the like is added can be ensured. The image forming apparatus connected to the network has an image data forming unit which forms the image data, and a control unit which prohibits transference of anti-counterfeit added image data in which the anti-counterfeit information is added to the image data between devices connected to the network. Thus, since the transference of the anti-counterfeit added image data is prohibited in general, security of the anti-counterfeit added image data can be improved.