Printing media and methods employing digital watermarking
AssigneeDigimarc Corporation
InventorsGeoffrey Rhoads, Aruna Kumar, Trent Brundage, Brett Hannigan, Tony Rodriguez, J. Carr
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Stationery, or other printable media, is encoded with a digital watermark. The watermark is not conspicuous to a human observer of the media, yet conveys plural bits of auxiliary information when optically scanned and digitally processed. The watermark can be formed by ink-jet printing, or otherwise. The encoded information can be used for various purposes, including authenticating the document as an original, linking to associated on-line resources, and distinguishing seemingly-identical versions of the same document (document serialization).
Claims21
A substrate useful in forming a printed object, characterized in that the substrate has been processed to encode a steganographic digital watermark pattern thereon that does not impair subsequent use of the substrate, yet conveys plural bits of digital information, the presence of said plural bit of digital information not being apparent to a human observer of the printed object, said steganographic pattern being detectable by visible-light scanning of the printed object to yield data from which the plural bits of digital information can be recovered.
A method of processing a blank substrate prior to formation of a printed object, the method comprising encoding the substrate with a steganographic digital watermark pattern that does not impair subsequent use of the substrate, yet conveys plural-bit digital information, the presence of said plural bit digital information not being apparent to a human observer of the printed object, said steganographic pattern being detectable by visible-light scanning of the printed object to yield data from which the plural bit digital information can be recovered.
In a method of forming a printable substrate that includes applying plural layers to a film substrate, an improvement comprising tailoring the tone or density of at least one of said layers to form a machine readable indicia encoding plural bits of digital data.
A method of sensing a watermark on a physical object, comprising illuminating the object with light emitted from a computer monitor, and controlling the computer monitor to change the light emitted therefrom so as to enhance detection of the watermark from the object.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.