Semi-fragile watermarks
US6834344B1 · kind B1 · utility
Assignee
Inventors
Key dates
| Filing date | Sep 17, 1999 |
| Grant date | Dec 21, 2004 |
| Priority date | — |
| Expiry date | Sep 17, 2019 |
Classification
- Technology area (CPC H)Electricity
- CPC primaryH04N2201/327
- WIPO fieldAudio-visual technology
- WIPO sectorElectrical engineering
Abstract
A method is presented for marking high-quality digital images with a robust and invisible watermark. It requires the mark to survive and remain detectable and authenticatable through all image manipulations that in themselves do not damage the image beyond useability. These manipulations include JPEG “lossy” compression and, in the extreme, the printing and rescanning of the image. The watermark also has the property that it can detect if the essential contents of the image has changed. The first phase of the method comprises extracting a digest or number N from the image so that N only (or mostly) depends on the essential information content, such that the same number N can be obtained from a scan of a high quality print of the image, from the compressed form of the image, or in general, from the image after minor modifications (introduced inadvertently by processing, noise etc.). The second phase comprises the marking. This can be done in form of an invisible robust watermark, or in form of some visible signature or watermark.
Source: USPTO / EPO open patent data. Objective bibliographic and citation counts.