A statistical watermark detection technique without using original images for resolving rightful ownerships of digital images.

Digital watermarking has been proposed as the means for copyright protection of multimedia data. Many of existing watermarking schemes focused on the robust means to mark an image invisibly without really addressing the ends of these schemes. This paper first discusses some scenarios in which many current watermarking schemes fail to resolve the rightful ownership of an image. The key problems are then identified, and some crucial requirements for a valid invisible watermark detection are discussed. In particular, we show that, for the particular application of resolving rightful ownership using invisible watermarks, it might be crucial to require that the original image not be directly involved in the watermark detection process. A general framework for validly detecting the invisible watermarks is then proposed. Some requirements on the claimed signature/watermarks to be used for detection are discussed to prevent the existence of any counterfeit scheme. The optimal detection strategy within the framework is derived. We show the effectiveness of this technique based on some visual-model-based watermark encoding schemes.