THE COMPANY
Digimarc Corporation (“Digimarc,” “we”, “our,” and “us”) enables governments, banks, retailers, consumer brands, and other businesses around the world to automatically and reliably identify and interact with virtually any form of media. We have pioneered the Digimarc Platform, featuring three core functions for the identification, discovery and verification of digitally enhanced media. Digimarc provides objects with an indelible, imperceptible data carrier: Digimarc Barcode. Data in the carrier uniquely identifies the object. The Digimarc Platform also provides software for relevant devices to “discover” objects (i.e., decode data from that carrier) using Digimarc software, known as Digimarc Discover. Digimarc Verify, a suite of verification and quality control tools, assesses signal quality and validates data at critical stages of production when the Digimarc Barcode is applied to an object. Together, these core functions enable organizations, application developers and other solution providers to build new features, functionality and additional value on the Digimarc Platform.
The Digimarc Platform provides many benefits for connected objects, including:
Security: An imperceptible and indestructible digital watermark encoded in the object provides a unique identification, whether in a digital image, video or audio file, on paper or cardboard or etched within material substrates such as plastic and other materials. Among other things, this identification supports strong authentication.
Protection: A unique identifier (“ID”) enables fraud deterrence across many use cases, from preventing “barcode swapping” and counterfeiting of currency, media and goods to copyright detection of digital images and e-publications.
Traceability: The ID can carry serial numbers for easier tracking of individual items or entire lots. This has many uses, from ensuring product legitimacy to preventing product pirating to easily identifying products for recall based on source provenance and sales destination.
Sustainability: The ID can contain information specific to packaging content as an aid to broader and more efficient recycling. For example, a microscopic pattern embossed in plastic packaging can identify the materials used and their composition as an aid for sorting and recapture. Similarly, enhanced labels for fresh foods can be used to dynamically adjust pricing and thereby reduce food waste.
Engagement: Consumers can directly interact with enhanced objects simply by scanning the item with their smartphones. Brands can share additional product information online including recipes, instructions, information about ingredients and sources, how-to videos, coupons and more.
Efficiency: Connected items, reliably scanned by machines and mobile devices, enhance supply chain efficiencies, from parts matching in manufacturing to faster and more accurate inventory scanning and faster and easier front-of-store checkout experiences.
Our inventions allow our business partners and customers to provide persistent digital identities for virtually any media content that is digitally processed at some point during its lifecycle. Our technology can be applied to images, video, and audio to supply a wide range of consumer engagement, media management and security solutions across multiple consumer and government industry sectors. Over the years our enabling software and business processes, and associated intellectual property portfolio, have grown to encompass many related technologies.
We provide our solutions directly and through our business partners. Our inventions provide a powerful element of document security, giving rise to a long-term relationship with a consortium of central banks and many leading companies in the information technology industry. We and our business partners have successfully propagated the use of our technology in music, movies, television broadcasts, digital images, e-publications and printed materials. Digimarc Barcodes have been used in these applications to improve media rights and asset management, reduce piracy and counterfeiting losses, improve marketing programs, permit more efficient and effective distribution of valuable media content and enhance consumer entertainment and commercial experiences.
Digimarc Barcodes can be used to enhance all forms of media and are generally imperceptible to human senses, but quickly detected by computers, networks or other digital devices like smartphones and tablets. Unlike traditional barcodes and tags, our solution does not require content owners to give up valuable visual space on their media content; nor does it affect the overall layout or aesthetics of their media content. Digimarc Barcodes are generally imperceptible in normal use and do all that visible barcodes do, but perform better. Our Digimarc Discover platform delivers a range of rich media experiences to its readers on their smartphones or tablets across multiple media formats, including print, audio and video. Unique to Digimarc Discover is its seamless multi-modal use of various content identification technologies as needed, including Digimarc Barcode when present.
Banknote counterfeit deterrence was the first commercially successful large-scale use of our technologies. Innovations based on our existing technology and experience have been leveraged to create new products to deter counterfeiting and tampering of driver licenses and other government-issued secure credentials. In parallel, our business partners, under patent or technology licenses from us, are delivering solutions to track and monitor the distribution of music, images, television and movies to consumers.