Patent ID: 11962875
Assignee: DIGIMARC CORPORATION
Field: Audio-visual technology (Electrical engineering)
Classification: CPC B  H  G | IPC G  H

Claim 1:
2. A product container manufactured of plastic and including a first digital watermark pattern employing a first signaling protocol, a plural-symbol payload of said first digital watermark pattern conveying data indicating a type of plastic from which the product container is manufactured, characterized in that the product container additionally includes a second digital watermark pattern employing a second signaling protocol different than the first signaling protocol, the plural-symbol payload of said second digital watermark pattern also conveying data indicating the type of plastic from which the product container is manufactured, wherein the first digital watermark pattern and the second digital watermark pattern differ in signaling protocol, yet both are useful for plastic recycling;
the first digital watermark pattern is encoded as a 3D texture pattern in a surface of the product container, and the second digital watermark pattern is encoded as a pattern of printed variations in local luminance or chrominance on a printed label conveyed by the product container;
the first digital watermark pattern encodes a plural-symbol payload P1 for sensing by a recycling apparatus, the first digital watermark pattern including a first reference signal comprising a first constellation of peaks in a 2D Fourier magnitude domain;
the second digital watermark pattern encodes a plural-symbol payload P2 that is different than P1, for sensing by a point-of-sale scanner in a retail store, the second digital watermark pattern including a second reference signal comprising a second constellation of peaks in the 2D Fourier magnitude domain different than the first constellation of peaks; and
the first constellation of peaks in the first reference signal prevents a point-of-sale scanner that is attempting to read the plural-symbol payload P2 in a retail store from attempting to decode a payload from the first digital watermark pattern.