Fingerprinting and Watermarking Issued Patents
On Tuesdays the USTPO issues new patents. Today's Spotlight Patents concern various aspects of watermarking and fingerprinting. Assigned to Canon, the first patent concerns techniques for watermarking and digital content distribution. Assigned to M2ANY, the second patent concerns techniques for generating digital fingerprints.
7,461,255, "Digital watermark processing apparatus, and digital contents distribution system using the apparatus," assigned to Canon (JP).
Abstract
This invention has as its object to provide a digital watermark processing apparatus, which can embed a digital watermark while minimizing quality deterioration of objective contents. The image segmentation step segments objective contents into a plurality of partial contents. The encryption step encrypts designated one of the plurality of partial contents. The digital watermarking step embeds a digital watermark in the encrypted partial contents by a scheme corresponding to the characteristics or the purpose of use of an image. The decryption step decrypts the encrypted partial contents embedded with the digital watermark. The composition step composites the decrypted partial contents embedded with the digital watermark and other partial contents
Abstract
For producing a fingerprint of an audio signal, use is made of information defining a plurality of predetermined fingerprint modi, all of the fingerprint modi relating to the same type of fingerprint, the fingerprint modi, however, providing different fingerprints differing from each other with regard to their data volume, on the one hand, and to their characterizing strength for characterizing the audio signal, on the other hand, the fingerprint modi being pre-determined such that a fingerprint in accordance with a fingerprint modus having a first characterizing strength is convertible to a fingerprint in accordance with a fingerprint modus having a second characterizing strength, without using the audio signal. A predetermined fingerprint modus of the plurality of predetermined fingerprint modi is set and subsequently used for computing a fingerprint using the audio signal. The convertibility feature of the fingerprints having been produced by the different fingerprint modi enables setting a flexible compromise between the data volume and the characterizing strength for certain applications without having to re-generate a fingerprint database with each change of the fingerprint modus. Fingerprint representations scaled with regard to time or frequency may readily be converted to a different fingerprint modus.
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