Watermarks under the CISRA microscope

The watermark could be the next concept borrowed from paper documents to be applied to electronic files, if research at the Sydney-based Canon Information Systems Research Australia (CISRA) bears fruit.

Phil Robertson, general manager of the solutions division at CISRA, said products went through three sections at the R&D labs in the Sydney suburb of North Ryde: advanced technology, where the ideas were germinated; applied technology, where CISRA technicians worked with Canon’s Tokyo specialists to turn concepts into products; and a solutions area, through which Canon's sales organisation funnelled feedback from customers.

”A number of years ago, we started working on watermark technologies. It is something that will work its way in to our products,” he said.

Like real life paper watermarks, the digital equivalent would give an indication as to the author of the document, but the use of metadata tags would allow much more information to be included in a watermark. The main use of a watermark is to authenticate the identity of the author of the document, and Mr Robertson said Canon’s watermark technology would include security features.

”There will be a range of uses for those kinds of technologies. It would partly be used for authentication purposes, and partly for holding metadata to make the whole document management process more effective,” he said.

While watermarks have traditionally been restricted to paper, digital watermarks could be used for practically any kind of file, and Mr Robertson said it could be used in digital rights management efforts by music and film companies to protect copyrighted audio and video works.

Unlike real equivalents, electronic watermarks could be made invisible to some users.”The watermark could be chosen to be made visible, so it would be easy for people to see it, or it can be chosen to be made invisible. You would need different technologies to do that,” said Mr Robertson.

Other Canon products to have passed through the North Ryde CISRA labs include the CanoBureau and ImageReal applications, and more recently Canon’s PhotoRecord Gold, WebRecord and EZ Web Print applications.

CISRA’s 200 staff have generated over 220 Australian patents and in excess of 100 US patents since the lab’s inception in 1990.