Patent ID: 7123741

Claim:
A digital watermark embedding method that embeds watermark information into digital data, the digital watermark embedding method comprising the steps of: (a) providing the watermark information and object data as an object of embedding the watermark information; (b) applying a predetermined orthogonal transformation over the whole object data to obtain transform coefficients; (c) embedding the watermark information into the transform coefficients; and (d) applying an inverse transform of the orthogonal transformation onto the transform coefficients with the watermark information embedded therein, so as to generate embedding-processed object data, wherein the step (c) embeds the watermark information into transform coefficients of an intermediate frequency component among the obtained transform coefficients, and wherein the predetermined orthogonal transformation is two-dimensional discrete cosine transform when the object data consists of two-dimensional discrete values, and the step (c) embeds the watermark information into transform coefficients located on a straight line extending from a direct current component toward a high frequency domain on a two-dimensional plane, among the transform coefficients obtained in the step (b) as two-dimensional transform coefficients.