Distributed system for responding to watermarked documents

A system for validating admission tickets to an event, comprising,

• a printing system for printing tickets, each ticket including a digital watermark carrying unique information, wherein the digital watermark is hidden through subtle changes to printing on the admission ticket.
• a registration system for registering validation data in a first server including the unique information in a ticket when a ticket is sold,
• a second server and a program for transferring said validation data to said second server,
• a ticket validation station connected by a local area network (LAN) to said second server,
• a watermark reading program at said ticket validation station, and
• a program to determine if a ticket presented for registration is valid by interrogating said second server via said LAN connection and for receiving a response from said server via said LAN connection.

A method of generating a response to a digital watermark read from an object, wherein the digital watermark is hidden through subtle changes of data carried by the object, said method comprising:

• registering in a first server an identifier associated with the digital watermark together with an indication of an appropriate response to data carried by the digital watermark, wherein the identifier and indication are included in the first server as registration information,
• transferring the registration information to a second server,
• reading at a first station the data carried by the digital watermark,
• communicating the data to the second server utilizing a high speed connection and determining an appropriate response to the data with reference to at least the registration information, and transmitting the response to the first station.

A system for registration of data contained in digital watermarks and for providing a response to data read from a digital watermarked object, said system comprising:

• a plurality of subsystems, each subsystem comprising,
• a program for registering data which is embedded in a digital watermark hosted by an object, said registration data including an indication of a subsystem on which the registration data should be registered,
• a server for storing the registration data, and
• a program for reading a particular digital watermark hosted by an object to determine if the data carried by the particular digital watermark is registered on the subsystem.