Watermarking via quantization of statistics of overlapping regions

• US 7,095,873 B2
• Filed: 06/28/2002
• Issued: 08/22/2006
• Est. Priority Date: 06/28/2002
• Status: Expired due to Fees

• Current Assignee: Microsoft Technology Licensing LLC (Microsoft Corporation)
• Original Assignee: Microsoft Corporation
• Inventors: Mihcak, M. Kivanc, Kesal, Mustafa, Venkatesan, Ramarathnam
• Primary Examiner(s): Mehta, Bhavesh M.
• Assistant Examiner(s): LAVIN, CHRISTOPHER L
• Application Number:
  US10/187,073
• Publication Number:
  US 20040001605A1
• Time in Patent Office: 1,516 Days
• Field of Search: None
• US Class Current: 382/100
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 1/0028 Adaptive watermarking, e.g. Human Visual System [HVS]-based watermarking
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2201/0052 Embedding of the watermark in the frequency domain
• CPC Class Codes: G06T 2201/0202 whereby the quality of watermarked images is measured; Measuring quality or performance of watermarking methods; Balancing between quality and robustness

Abstract

An implementation of a technology, described herein, for facilitating watermarking of digital goods. At least one implementation, described herein, performs quantization watermarking based upon semi-global characteristics of multiple regions of the digital good. Such regions are permissively overlapping. The scope of the present invention is pointed out in the appending claims.

Claims

1. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions that, when executed by a computer, performs a method facilitating protection of digital goods, the method comprising:

obtaining a digital good;

transforming the good;

partitioning the transform of the good into a plurality of permissively overlapped regions, wherein the partitioning comprises segmenting the transform into a plurality of overlapped regions;

calculating statistics of one or more the regions of the plurality, so that the statistics of a region are representative of it;

quantizing such statistics;

generating a perceptual-compensation factor, which is an approximate representation a combination of the quantized statistics of the plurality of the regions the generating comprises finding a minimum distance of multiplicative quantization disturbance;

marking the digital good with the perceptual-compensation factor.

2. A medium as recited in claim 1, wherein the partitioning further comprises pseudorandomly segmenting the transform into a plurality of regions.

3. A medium as recited in claim 1, wherein the statistics of the calculating comprises one or more finite order moments of a segment.

4. A medium as recited in claim 1, wherein the marking comprises embedding a watermark via quantization.

5. A computer comprising one or more computer-readable media as recited in claim 1.

6. A computer-readable medium having computer-executable instructions that, when executed by a computer, performs a method facilitating protection of digital goods, the method comprising:

transforming a digital good;

partitioning the transform of the good into a plurality regions, wherein the partitioning comprises segmenting the transform into a plurality of overlapped regions;

calculating statistics of regions, so that the statistics of a region are representative of it;

generating a quantization-noise factor, which is an approximate representation a quantization of the statistics the plurality of regions the generating comprises finding a minimum distance of multiplicative quantization disturbance;

marking the digital good with the quantization-noise factor.

7. A medium as recited in claim 6, wherein the partitioning comprises pseudorandomly segmenting the transform into a plurality of regions.

8. A medium as recited in claim 6, wherein the statistics of the calculating comprises one or more finite order moments of a region.

9. A medium as recited in claim 6, wherein the generating a quantization-noise factor comprises:

finding a minimum norm quantization noise vector such that watermarked data have quantized statistics;

perceptually correcting the minimum noise vector with a perceptual compensation vector.

10. A medium as recited in claim 6, wherein the marking comprises embedding a watermark via quantization.

11. A computer comprising one or more computer-readable media as recited in claim 6.