US Patent 7707642 Document access auditing

The present disclosure includes systems and techniques relating to document access auditing. According to an aspect, the invention involves receiving a request relating to an electronic document associated with a document tracking system; retrieving actions-taken information associated with the electronic document and maintained by the document tracking system; combining and signing the electronic document and the actions-taken information to form a signed document that includes the actions-taken information; and providing the signed document to enable access to the actions-taken information independent of the document tracking system. According to another aspect, the invention involves presenting a consent query that requests consent to an audit event to be recorded by a document control system for an electronic document tethered to the document control system; receiving a consent indication with respect to a consent statement relating to the audit event; and sending information corresponding to the consent indication to the document control system.