Project No.: 5003-045334 01.04.96 - 31.12.99

Project leader: Prof. Thierry Pun, Centre Universitaire d’Informatique (CUI), University of Geneva
e-mail: pun@cui.unige.ch

Name of project: KryPict: A software environment for copyrighting, authenticating, archiving and retrieving pictorial documents in multimedia databases

Partners: Dr. Alexander Herrigel, Securights Ltd., Zurich

Funding: Sfr 891,187.-

Summary:
The main goal of the KryPict project, part of the MEDIA integrated research project, is to develop copyright enforcement and document authentication methods allowing digital watermark images. The digital watermarking methods will be included in a pictorial database subsystem; digitally watermarked images from this subsystem will be encapsulated in the ASAP agents and made accessible through the MEDIA user interface.

The project features two aspects:

1. digital watermarking algorithms, making it possible to build into a document a digital signature that is resistant to a range of manipulations;
2. a secure environment for copyright enforcement.

Phase one consisted of building a demonstrator integrating the various aspects of digital watermarking. A European patent has been applied for and a practical implementation is being commercially evaluated by the partner company r3 security engineering ag.

The second phase of this project will concentrate on the following aspects:

• Further research on digital watermarking algorithms;
• Further development of the copyright enforcement environment: use of various public-key concepts, use of the X.500 standard to develop a distributed database system for copyright owners, development of a Web crawler to detect copyright infringements, and installation of secure payment mechanisms.

The results (algorithms and a complete copyright enforcement architecture) will be incorporated in the MEDIA project.

Cooperation:
University of Geneva information technology center (CUI) together with the security software company Securights Ltd., Zurich.