Patent ID: 7664288

Claim:
A method for generating watermarked data Y based on given original data X, wherein a watermark W associated with the watermarked data Y, comprises a multi-bit informative watermark message and a reference watermark associated with a key, the method comprising the steps of: (a) encoding the multi-bit message, and (b) generating the watermark W as a function of the key, the encoded message, and the reference watermark, whereby the reference watermark acts as a reference to assist in the estimation and recovering from local and global alterations of the original data, wherein the reference watermark is used for recovering from local non-linear geometrical alterations using template matching within a single local microblock of the unflipped watermark, or is used locally with the informative watermark for recovering from local non-linear geometrical alterations based on local autocorrelation function, or local windowed magnitude spectrum of a predicted watermark.