Watermarking 2D/3D graphics for copyright protection

In recent years, the importance of 2D maps and 3D models has grown significantly, especially due to the popularity of map data over the Web and computer graphics used in entertainment and e-commerce applications. We review the concept of image watermarking, and extend it to 2D/3D vector data. We present a number of watermarking algorithms for 2D electronic maps and 3D wire-frame models. We show that invisible watermarks can be added to 2D/3D data and detected reliably. The watermarks can be designed to be robust to quantization of the vector data and several other hostile attacks.