New patents are issued by the USPTO on Tuesdays. Today's Spotlight Patents concern aspects of digital watermarking and digital fingerprinting. Assigned to Nielsen, the first patent addresses techniques for detecting watermark modifications. Assigned to Square, the second patent addresses techniques for processing transactions in offline mode.
10,366,466, "Detecting watermark modifications," assigned to The Nielsen Company.
Abstract
Example systems disclosed herein to detect watermark modifications include a watermark encoder to encode a second watermark in a sampled media signal obtained from a received broadcast signal, the sampled media signal already encoded with a first watermark that was included in the received broadcast signal. Disclosed example systems also include a watermark decoder to detect the first watermark and the second watermark in the sampled media signal, and a watermark modification evaluator to compare a first metric determined for the first watermark and a second metric determined for the second watermark to determine whether the first watermark was modified prior to being included in the received broadcast signal. Disclosed example systems further include a ratings server to revise ratings data corresponding to the received broadcast signal when the first watermark is determined to have been modified prior to being included in the received broadcast signal.
10,366,378, "Processing transactions in offline mode," assigned to Square, Inc.
Abstract
In some examples, methods and systems may process one or more payment transactions between a merchant and a buyer by detecting buyer's communication device as an instrument to approve or reject a payment transaction in offline mode. The method includes detecting at least one transaction activity associated with a payment system, establishing a communication channel between the POS terminal an RF communication device in proximity to the POS terminal to obtain at least one device characteristic of the communication device, related to the operational or physical features of the communication device; generating a digital fingerprint based in part on the obtained device characteristic and the information related to received payment object; determining whether the digital fingerprint substantially compares to an existing fingerprint in a database and if the existing fingerprint is substantially similar to the digital fingerprint, rejecting the payment transaction through presence of the communication device.
