Geographic-based watermarking keys

• US 20070204163A1
• Filed: 02/24/2006
• Published: 08/30/2007
• Est. Priority Date: 02/24/2006
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Digimarc Corporation
• Original Assignee: Digimarc Corporation
• Inventors: Rodriguez, Tony F., Rosove, Stuart Filip, Andrews, Hoyet Harrison
• Granted Patent: US 7,945,070 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 713/176
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 21/10 Protecting distributed programs or content, e.g. vending or licensing of copyrighted material protection in video systems or pay television H04N7/16 ; Digital rights management [DRM]
• CPC Class Codes: G06K 19/06028 using bar codes
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 1/0021 Image watermarking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 2209/608 Watermarking
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 9/0872 using geo-location information, e.g. location data, time, relative position or proximity to other entities
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/0264 for a camera module assembly
• CPC Class Codes: H04M 1/72457 according to geographic location
• CPC Class Codes: H04N 1/32352 Controlling detectability or arrangements to facilitate detection or retrieval of the embedded information, e.g. using markers for decoding, detection or retrieval operations H04N1/32149 and subgroups take precedence
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/02 Services making use of location information
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/029 Location-based management or tracking services
• CPC Class Codes: H04W 4/18 Information format or content conversion, e.g. adaptation by the network of the transmitted or received information for the purpose of wireless delivery to users or terminals

Abstract

The present invention relates generally to digital watermarking and steganography. In one implementation, a method includes determining a current geographic area of the cell phone; selecting a first digital watermark detector that is associated with the current geographic area, a selected first digital watermark detector being selected from a plurality of different digital watermark detectors; and controlling the cell phone to employ the selected first digital watermark detector to analyze a signal to obtain a digital watermark message there from, wherein the selected first digital watermark detector corresponds to a particular digital watermark embedder that is uniquely assigned to the geographic area.

Claims

1. A method comprising:

determining a current geographic area;

selecting a first digital watermark detection key that is associated with the current geographic area, a selected first digital watermark detection key being selected from a plurality of digital watermark detection keys; and

controlling a digital watermark detector to employ the selected first digital watermark detection key to analyze a signal to obtain a digital watermark message there from, wherein the selected first digital watermark detection key corresponds to a particular digital watermark embedding key that is uniquely assigned to the geographic area.

2. The method of claim 1 wherein each of the plurality of digital watermark detection keys corresponds to a unique geographic area.

3. The method of claim 1 further comprising controlling the digital watermark detector to employ a different digital watermark detection key to analyze the signal to obtain the digital watermark message there from when the message can not be obtained though use of the first digital watermark detection key.

4. The method of claim 1 wherein the key comprises a decryption key.

5. The method of claim 1 wherein the key comprises a mapping of hiding locations.

6. The method of claim 1 wherein said method is carried out on a cell phone.

7. The method of claim 6 wherein the cell phone comprises a global positioning system (GPS) receiver and the current geographic area is determined from information received by the GPS receiver.

8. The method of claim 6 wherein the current geographic area is determined from information obtained from a network communicating with the cell phone.

9. The method of claim 1 wherein the digital watermark comprises an orientation component.

10. The method of claim 9 wherein prior to analyzing the signal to obtain a digital watermark message, said method comprises determining whether the signal comprises an orientation component, wherein analyzing the signal to obtain a digital watermark message is only carried out when the orientation component is detected.

14. A method comprising:

in a cell phone;

determining a current geographic area of the cell phone;

selecting a first digital watermark detector that is associated with the current geographic area, a selected first digital watermark detector being selected from a plurality of different digital watermark detectors; and

controlling the cell phone to employ the selected first digital watermark detector to analyze a signal to obtain a digital watermark message there from, wherein the selected first digital watermark detector corresponds to a particular digital watermark embedder that is uniquely assigned to the geographic area.

15. The method of claim 14 wherein the different digital watermark detectors are distinguished from one another based on different watermark detection keys.

16. The method of claim 14 further comprising carrying out an action based at least in part on an obtained digital watermark message.

17. The method of claim 14 wherein the cell phone comprises a global positioning system (GPS) receiver and the current geographic area is determined from information received by the GPS receiver.

18. The method of claim 16 wherein the current geographic area is determined from information obtained from a network communicating with the cell phone.

19. A cell phone comprising memory including instructions stored thereon, said instructions comprising instructions to carry out the method of claim 34.

20. A method comprising:

receiving information indicating a geographical area;

with reference to at least a portion of the information indicating a geographical area, selecting a machine-readable indicia detector that corresponds to the information indicating a geographical area;

processing machine-readable indicia with the selected machine-readable indicia detector to obtain a plural-bit message; and

carrying out an action using the plural-bit message.

11. A cell phone comprising memory including instructions stored thereon, said instructions comprising instructions to carry out the method of claim 21.

12. The method of claim 21 wherein the signal comprises optical scan data representing at least a portion of a physical object.

13. The method of claim 21 wherein the signal comprises at least one of audio and video.

21. The method of claim 20 wherein the information indicating a geographical area is received from a global positioning system (GPS) receiver.

22. The method of claim 20 wherein a cell phone executes said method.

23. The method of claim 22 wherein the information indicating a geographical area is received from a network communicating with the cell phone.

24. The method of claim 20 wherein the machine-readable indicia comprises an encrypted 2D-barcode.

26. The method of claim 20 wherein the machine-readable indicia comprises steganographic encoding.

25. The method of claim 25 wherein the selected machine-readable indicia comprises at least a decryption key that corresponds to encryption used to encrypt the encrypted 2D-barcode.

27. A method of comprising:

receiving a signal from a cell phone;

determining, based at least in part on the signal, whether the cell phone is physically located in a predetermined home area; and

if not in the predetermined home area, communicating a machine-readable code detector to the cell phone for use as its primary machine-readable code detector to detect machine-readable code while outside of its predetermined home area.

28. The method of claim 27 wherein the machine-readable code detector comprises a detector for analyzing optical scan data captured by the cell phone.

29. The method of claim 28 wherein the machine-readable code comprises a 2D barcode.

30. The method of claim 28 wherein the machine-readable code comprises digital watermarking.

31. The method of claim 27 wherein the machine-readable code comprises a code hidden in audio or video.

32. The method of claim 27 wherein the detector comprises at least one of a detection key and a software detector.