US Patent 8145909 Digitally signing an electronic document using seed data

In one example embodiment, a method is illustrated that includes parsing seed data from digital content, the seed data identifying a signing entity, transmitting identifier data to the signing entity identified by the seed data, transmitting content information relating to the digital content to the signing entity, and receiving digitally signed content information relating to the digital content, the digitally signed content information signed by the signing entity. In another example embodiment, a method is illustrated as including parsing seed data from digital content, the seed data identifying a signing entity, transmitting identifier data to the signing entity identified by the seed data, receiving a credential from the signing entity, the credential used to sign the digital content, and signing the digital content using the credential.