Company Overview

Digimarc, based in the Portland, Oregon, area, produces digital watermarking technology that tracks the use of digital and analog documents. The watermark consists of undetectable coded information embedded within traditional and digital visual content, such as movies, photographic or artistic images, and valuable documents such as financial instruments, passports, and event tickets. The watermarks resist multiple transformations, digital re-editing, or alterations through media such as printing or scanning. They can thus be used to deter counterfeiting, piracy, and other unauthorized activities. Digimarc claims that its software products will help photographers, photography archives, and corporations track the distribution of their works across the Internet and claim extra royalties. Since the first product was introduced in 1996, Digimarc has refined the software to detect counterfeiting and piracy of documents and money. Digimarc went public in 1999.