IMAGE PROCESSING APPARATUS FOR DETERMINING WHETHER A SCANNED IMAGE INCLUDES A LATENT PATTERN AND A BACKGROUND PATTERN, AND AN IMAGE PROCESSING METHOD THEREFOR

There is provided a technique of reflecting the state of the copy-forgery-inhibited pattern (CFIP) of a paper document on various operations when the paper document with the CFIP is converted into an electronic document. For this purpose, an image processing apparatus includes a first determination unit which determines whether a latent pattern exists in an input image, a second determination unit which determines whether a background pattern exists in the input image, and a control unit which, in the case that it is determined that the latent pattern exists and that the background pattern exists, controls to copy the input image, and in the case that it is determined that the latent pattern exists and that no background pattern exists, controls to inhibit copying of the input image.