Digital signature generating method for e.g. patent management, involves combining fingerprint with private key to form signature to be affixed on electronic document, and associating fingerprint with words/numbers of content in document

摘要

The method involves generating a fingerprint (11) by compression of content (12) of an electronic document (10) according to a given algorithm e.g. message-digest algorithm 5 (MD5), where the document comprises data in the form of alphanumeric characters. The fingerprint is combined with a private key (14) for forming a digital signature (15) to be affixed on the electronic document. The fingerprint is associated with words or numbers (16) of content in the document.