A Functional Taxonomy for Software Watermarking

Abstract

Despite the recent surge of interest in digital watermarking technology from the research community, we lack a comprehensive and precise terminology for software watermarking. In this paper, we attempt to fill that gap by giving distinctive names for the various protective functions served by software watermarks: Validation Mark, Licensing Mark, Authorship Mark and Fingerprinting Mark. We identify the desirable properties and specific vulnerabilities of each type of watermark, and we illustrate the utility of our terminology in a discussion of recent results in software watermarking.