The present invention provides methods, apparatus and systems for embedding and detecting an electronic watermark without requiring signals for geometric compensation. A particular embodiment uses a periodic pattern with repetition as an embedded pattern itself, which has information embedded as an electronic watermark, and observes the change of its period upon detection to calculate the scaling factor. When detecting the electronic watermark, the scaling factor of images is calculated from digital data that underwent the scaling processing, and then the processing to detect the electronic watermark is performed based on the obtained scaling factor.