Patent ID: 6912294

Claim:
A multi-stage watermarking process comprising the steps of: creating a watermark specification which describes how to generate a watermark; generating a template specification which describes how to merge the watermark into a target document; generating the watermark based on the watermark specification; and merging the watermark into the target document based on the template specification to provide a watermarked document, wherein the watermark specification created is described using a watermark specification language and has grammar elements that: identifies the watermark specification, identifies a specific watermarking technology to be used, and identifies a target object in which the watermark is generated, and the template specification generated is described using a watermark specification language and has grammar elements that: identifies version of the watermark specification language, provides a list of a plurality of watermark specifications to be used, and provides a mapped list of how a plurality of watermarks associated with the plurality of watermarks is to be merged with the target document.