Digital watermarks and postage
AssigneeDigimarc Corporation
InventorGeoffrey B. Rhoads
Life of this patent
Estimating the term…
Abstract
Postal stamps are steganographically encoded with plural bit data. This data can represent information such as value, or zip code. Or it can serve as a pointer to a remote data repository, where additional information is stored.
Claims28
A postal stamp representing postage value, the stamp having a front side presenting human-perceivable indicia, and having a rear side provided with adhesive, the stamp having plural bits of auxiliary data steganographically encoded in said human-perceivable indicia.
A postal stamp representing postage value and having plural bits of auxiliary data steganographically encoded therein, wherein the steganographic encoding is manifested in texture of the stamp.
A postal stamp representing postage value and having plural bits of auxiliary data steganographically encoded therein, wherein the steganographic encoding comprises a 128 by 128 element array.
A method of producing a postal stamp having postage value, comprising:
- providing a graphic represented in digital form;
- steganographically encoding the graphic to redundantly embed plural bits of auxiliary data therein;
- and
- printing the graphic on a substrate, the printed graphic serving as postage;
- wherein the redundancy permits recovery of all of said bits notwithstanding at least certain corruptions of the encoding.
A method of producing a postal stamp having postage value, comprising:
- providing a graphic represented in digital form;
- steganographically encoding the graphic to embed plural bits of auxiliary data therein;
- and
- printing the graphic on a substrate, the printed graphic serving as postage;
- wherein the steganographic encoding comprises a 128 by 128 element array.
A method comprising:
- producing optical scan data by scanning a postal stamp with visible light and sensing visible light reflected thereby, the postal stamp having postage value;
- steganographically decoding plural bits of auxiliary data from said postal stamp;
- and
- controlling some aspect of an apparatus in accordance with the decoded data.
A method comprising:
- producing optical scan data by scanning a postal stamp with visible light and sensing visible light reflected thereby, the postal stamp having postage value;
- steganographically decoding plural bits of auxiliary data from said postal stamp notwithstanding skewed scanning of the postal stamp, relative to a normal orientation thereof, and
- controlling some aspect of an apparatus in accordance with the decoded data.
A method comprising:
- producing optical scan data by scanning a postal stamp with visible light and sensing visible light reflected thereby, the postal stamp having postage value;
- steganographically decoding plural bits of auxiliary data from said postal stamp;
- and
- controlling some aspect of an apparatus in accordance with the decoded data;
- wherein the steganographic decoding includes performing a domain transformation on the scan data.
Dependencies are inferred from the claim text.