ONLINE IMAGE RETENTION, INDEXING, SEARCH TECHNOLOGY WITH INTEGRATED IMAGE LICENSING MARKETPLACE AND A DIGITAL RIGHTS MANAGEMENT PLATFORM

• US 20180300714A1
• Filed: 06/10/2016
• Published: 10/18/2018
• Est. Priority Date: 06/10/2015
• Status: Active Grant

• Current Assignee: Michael John, Stevan H. Lieberman
• Original Assignee: Michael John
• Inventors: Lieberman, Stevan H., JOHN, Michael
• Granted Patent: US 11,295,300 B2
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/58 Retrieval characterised by using metadata, e.g. metadata not derived from the content or metadata generated manually
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/587 using geographical or spatial information, e.g. location
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/951 Indexing; Web crawling techniques
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 16/953 Querying, e.g. by the use of web search engines
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0482 Interaction with lists of selectable items, e.g. menus
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/0483 Interaction with page-structured environments, e.g. book metaphor
• CPC Class Codes: G06F 3/04845 for image manipulation, e.g. dragging, rotation, expansion or change of colour
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/1235 with control of digital rights management [DRM]
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 20/38 Payment protocols; Details thereof
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 2220/18 Licensing
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/06 Buying, selling or leasing transactions
• CPC Class Codes: G06Q 30/0625 Directed, with specific intent or strategy
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/462 Salient features, e.g. scale invariant feature transforms [SIFT]
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/50 by performing operations within image blocks; by using histograms, e.g. histogram of oriented gradients [HoG]; by summing image-intensity values; Projection analysis
• CPC Class Codes: G06V 10/758 Involving statistics of pixels or of feature values, e.g. histogram matching
• CPC Class Codes: H04L 67/02 based on web technology, e.g. hypertext transfer protocol [HTTP]

Abstract

An online image search and marketplace platform and browser plug-in system is described. The system is configured to execute image-based searches of the Internet to correlate hosted images with ownership and licensing metadata, facilitating the marketing of images to users and expediting the purchase of licensing for said images. The system employs an online platform in communication with an image metadata database, providing a conduit for users to execute an image search from an image search field populated by a target image URL or direct image upload. An auto-cropping feature combined with extensive steganography integration ensures accurate image identification, ownership mapping, and usage tracking. The browser plug-in facilitates the execution of an image search within the right-click menu of any image hosted to the Internet. Image tracking enables content owners to be alerted in real-time when unlicensed use of content is detected.

Claims

1. A browser-based image marketplace system for digital images comprising:

a platform, said platform hosted on a server computer accessible via the Internet;

a browser plug-in, said browser plug-in in communication with said platform;

a database, said database populated with metadata of the digital images;

a search algorithm, said search algorithm executed on said server computer;

wherein said search algorithm employs steganography to facilitate image identification;

wherein said server computer is in communication with said database;

wherein said platform is configured to execute a search of said database via said search algorithm according to search criteria originating from a source image to return metadata of the source image and usage data of the source image on the Internet;

wherein usage data includes a count of instances of use of the source image, licensing history of the source image, locations of each instance of use of the source image, and dates of each instance of use of the source image;

wherein said metadata includes;

ownership information, ownership transfer/assignment information, copyright numbers, and EXIF data;

a right-click menu, said right-click menu accessible via said browser plug-in; and

a ‘

purchase license image’

button of the right-click menu configured to facilitate an image licensing agreement for the image between a image owner and an image licensee upon selection of the ‘

purchase license image’

button atop an image displayed within the browser.

2. The system of claim 1, wherein said metadata includes image specific information including image colors, image hue, line, image size, image date, image location, image resolution, and image capture device.

3. The system of claim 1, wherein said right-click menu is accessible via the browser.

4. The system of claim 1, wherein said search algorithm uses an index of unique features of said source image, which are stored as vectors within the index without duplication, saved as shells of each known image displayed on the Internet;

and

wherein said search algorithm executes a search across said shells.

5. A method for facilitating the identification and subsequent commerce of digital images between image owners and image buyers/licensees comprising:

the image buyer/licensee seeking to use a selected digital image, referenced as a source image;

the image buyer/licensee conveying the source image to a server computer via an online platform;

a server computer ingesting the source image;

the server computer processing the source image by converting the source image to grayscale, splitting the source image into overlapping pieces, resizing the overlapping pieces such that each piece is smaller than 32×

32 pixels, and indexing the overlapping pieces with interest points, histograms, and hashes of internal image data for future reconstruction of the source image;

the server computer generating parameters for an image search by obtaining metadata of the source image;

wherein said metadata includes image color, image hue, image size, image date, image location, image resolution, and image capture device;

the server computer executing an image search for instances of the image over the Internet;

wherein parameters of the image search include the metadata of the source image;

the server computer returning results of the image search;

the platform displaying the results to the image buyer/licensee;

the platform providing licensing information for the source image to the image buyer/licensee;

the image buyer/licensee purchasing a license to use the source image via the platform;

the server computer creating a shell of the source image via compression and indexed and classified histograms employing detected interest points of the source image;

the server computer saving the shell of the source image to a database;

updating the database with metadata aggregated during said the server computer executing an image search for the image over the Internet; and

integrating steganography into an image reference within the database to expedite future image searches relating to the source image.

6. The method of claim 5, wherein parameters of the image search include steganography where applicable.

7. The method of claim 5, wherein the source image is a URL location directed to an image.

8. (canceled)

9. (canceled)

10. (canceled)