PURPOSE: To contrive to shorten a time required for operations for detecting presence or absence of interior marks by a method wherein detecting means is so controlled as not to perform operations for detecting presence or absence of the inferior marks of each substrate part when absence of the substrate inferior marks is detected.

CONSTITUTION: On the outside of substrate parts 36A to 36F of a multiple pattern substrate 5 marking parts 37A to 37F corresponding to the respective substrate parts are provided parallel, and when any substrate part is inferior, the making part corresponding to the substrate part is marked a bad mark. A CPU marks X-axis and Y-axis motors 2, 3 rotate based upon mark positioning data to move a substrate inferior marking part 38 of the substrate 5 to a location of a photographing area of a substrate cognitive camera 20. After photographing, a photographing image plane is cognition-processed to detect presence or absence of the substrate inferior mark. At this time, if the CPU judges that the inferior mark is present, operations for detecting presence or absence of the bad mark in the respective marking part start, and if it judges that the substrate inferior mark is absent, the detecting operations do not start. Thus, a time required for the bad mark detecting operations can be shortened.