Allahabad: The invention of a device by two IIIT (Indian Institute of Information Technology) Allahabad students for detecting watermarks in digital data for the purpose of electronic copyright management system has been granted patent by United States Patent and Trademark Office recently.

Trevor Miranda and Mahindra Mohan have invented a method and a device for detecting watermarks in digital data of images, sound, video and the like for the purpose of electronic copyright management system. This is a dream come true after five years anxious waiting. The device was filed for US Patent on May 14, 2003 by the institute.

IIIT-A Director, Dr MD Tiwari congratulated the entire team. This is one of the major achievements of IIIT-A. Elaborating the device, the Director said that with the advent of the Internet and the subsequent publication of digital data on the web, it is becoming increasingly difficult for the owner of the material to exercise his intellectual property right such as copyright. Technologies are widely available for making accurate copies of digital data. Digital techniques let the original information be recreated in a very accurate manner. Any one can copy the data and claim it as his collection.

Dr Tiwari said “In order to uniquely mark the digital data, a technique called watermarking exists in which the digital data is inserted with an invisible watermark. Digital watermarking techniques are used to embed a known piece of digital data within another piece of digital data. The embedded piece of data (watermark) acts as a fingerprint for the owner, allowing the protection of copyright, authentication of the data, and tracing of illegal copies”.

This watermark which is normally not known to anybody helps in catching those who copy the data. Any data that is suspected by its owner to have been copied by a third party can examine the suspected data and look for his watermark. If found, then he can easily prove his ownership.

He said the object of the present invention is to obviate the several existing drawbacks and provide a simple method and system for detaching watermark with high accuracy and without any delay.  “This invention provides a method for detaching watermarks in a digital data for the purpose of electronic copyright management system comprising the steps of  transforming the original, no-watermarked data, tagging the resultant components in the transformed suspected watermark data, transforming the suspected watermarked data, selecting the tagged components from the transformed suspected watermarked data corresponding to those selected as significant in the original transformed data, and comparing said two groups of transformed data selected for the presence of watermarks”, said Dr Tiwari.

The said digital data includes images, sound and video. The said original and suspected watermarked data is transformed using techniques including FFT, block FFT, DCT, modified DCT, wavelet and Hadamrd transform.

IIIT-A plans to set-up incubation centre

Allahabad: The Indian Institute of Information Technology, Allahabad will establish a world class Technology incubation centre for Electronics, Communication and information technology.

Prof R C Tripathi, Dean, Resource Generation, IIIT-A told this at the inaugural ceremony of 11 day” Short term / Refresher Course on Entrepreneurship, Incubation and Innovation at Jhalwa campus.

Prof Tripathi said that the basic objectives of this incubation centre are to carry out research, development work, and training and provide infrastructure. 

The incubation centre would nurture the growth of entrepreneurs by providing them with financial support and services like strategic guidance, access to investors, mentors, and a ready-made network of contacts. The centre will also be extended in building the management team, providing specialized training, providing space, and other professional services at affordable costs.

Expressing the need of having incubation centre, Prof Tiwari said that the IIITA has more milestones to reach and with the strong support of the Government, the industrialists and the academia.” We are confident in taking a lead role in realizing the vision of transforming India into a developed country by sharing its knowledge base in advanced and thrust areas of national importance and in becoming a World Class Institution soon”. 

Nearly 36 faculty members from different parts are taking part in the course.

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