An implementation is described herein facilitates certification of goods
and/or identifications of the source of such goods. At least one
implementation, described herein, embeds a watermark into a relatively
small amount of data in a deterministic manner. At least one
implementation, described herein, generates an authentication
transformation matrix based, at least in part, upon an authentication
watermark and a pre-defined humanly perceptible authentication pattern
(e.g., image, audio). With this implementation, it obtains subject goods
that may have the authentication watermark embedded therein. It generates
a humanly perceptible resultant pattern (e.g., image, audio) based, at
least in part, upon the watermark detected in subject goods and the
transformation matrix. If the detected watermark is the authentication
watermark, then the resultant pattern and the pre-defined authentication
pattern will match (or nearly so). At least one implementation, described
herein, hides a secret key around the periphery of watermarked goods.
This abstract itself is not intended to limit the scope of this patent.
The scope of the present invention is pointed out in the appending
claims.