Help with making watermark that appears when photocopied or scanned

Thanks everyone for your input.  I was messing around with this over the weekend and found the solution.  It was a LOT easier than I thought it would be.  In fact I came up with many different patterns that worked.  In short I created a background texture.  I then overlaid the background texture on the font and made it perpendicular to the back ground.  I also rasterized it about ¼ of the resolution.  If you look for the security word, you can see it.  But it’s difficult because the pattern kind of blurs your vision.  When copied, the copier interprets the angles differently and makes one more prominent than the other.  The important thing is to keep the opacity of the background texture and the font the same.  This lets your vision blur them together. 

Now for the million dollar question. OK, so I did what I was asked.  I hid a word in a background texture that became more noticeable when copied.  Is this really a security feature?  In my opinion NO, if it can be printed on your home laser printer than someone else can reproduce it.  That’s not secure.

First I would like to thank everyone for your replies.  I also want to emphasize that I’m in total agreement that a true, quality, security watermark can only be achieved by use of specialty inks, varnishes, and more.  Personally I view this as a very basic attempt at creating a security watermark.  Unfortunately for me my boss is hell bent on this. 

Good news though, and you all might find this interesting.  I just received two close-up images of this poor man’s security watermark.  The Master is the image that was printed on the monochrome laser printer and the Copy is the image that was produced by the copier after being photocopied. As you can see the copied image is not as crisp.  Hence the watermark is more apparent. The lower curved area is a piece of the font.  The rest is the textured background.  The font is filled with a 45 degree line pattern.  The background appears to be a halftone with a evenly spaced dot. 

So I guess I should revamp my question to ask;

1 How could I create a fill pattern for a font like this?

2 How would I create a similar background pattern?

Thanks in advance for your help.

WOW… Thanks for the quick response but don’t you think your throwing in the towel a little too easily.  I’m not saying that this is common and I will agree that newer scanners can produce a higher resolution which can defeat a low level watermark of this type.  I also agree that a truly anti-photocopy watermark will need to be produced by a printing company, not a desktop laser printer.  But to say Impossible I must disagree.  Somehow this person has done it.

http://www.troygroup.com/industry/healthcare/products/printer/securerxprinter.aspx

What the others said - the whole idea won't work for a million reasons. Your own printing process alone can't deliver the goods here, as you are already introducing a raster that may make any hidden text more prominent - there is no way for even the best laser printer to print such soft greyscales without special toners/ inks. If this really is important, you will need to talk to a proper print shop who can do this with special UV/ infrared/ hi reflex inks, varnishes and ideally as a non-offset flexo process to retain contiguous features and edges....

Mylenium

LaserTest,

In order to be only become distinguishable when scanned/photocopied, the word has to have a shade that becomes darker and sharper in that process.

Unfortunately, newer scanners photocopiers have options like (best) photo with rather convincing reproduction, quite different from older ones, so I am afraid it is impossible/very difficult.

When you say monochrome, I presume you mean black (greyscale (or grayscale, especially over there)) only. If you could use another dark colour, especially one difficult to reproduce accurately, that might be a solution.